Dig in the burrows of the earth and find them, ye rats! Fly through the paths of the air and find them, ye vultures! Smell at the gates of the people and name them, ye jackals! ye hunters in the night! Drag them from the caves if they be hidden, from the distance if they be fled, from the graves if they be dead.

To the work! to the work! Show them to me truly, and your gifts shall be great; and for them, if they be a nation, they shall be slain.

Now begin.

Begin by companies of ten, for you are many, and all must be finished ere the sun sink." "It shall be finished, Father," they answered.
Then ten of the women stood forward, and at their head was the most famous witch-doctress of that day--an aged woman named Nobela, a woman to whose eyes the darkness was no evil, whose scent was keen as a dog's, who heard the voices of the dead as they cried in the night, and spoke truly of what she heard.

All the other Isanusis, male and female, sat down in a half-moon facing the king, but this woman drew forward, and with her came nine of her sisterhood.