But I changed my mind when the leader came out into a patch of light.

He carried no torch, but a long stave with which he belaboured the heads of those who were too tightly packed to flee.
It was the most eldritch apparition you can conceive.

A tall man dressed in skins, with bare legs and sandal-shod feet.

A wisp of scarlet cloth clung to his shoulders, and, drawn over his head down close to his eyes, was a skull-cap of some kind of pelt with the tail waving behind it.

He capered like a wild animal, keeping up a strange high monotone that fairly gave me the creeps.
I was suddenly aware that the crowd had gone.