I looked at the fierce faces of the Isanusis before me, as they crept, crept like snakes.

I glanced behind and saw the slayers grasping their kerries for the deed of death, and I say I felt like one for whom the bitterness is overpast.

Then I remembered the words which the king and I had whispered together of the cause for which this Ingomboco was set, and hope crept back to me like the first gleam of the dawn upon a stormy night.

Still I did not hope overmuch, for it well might happen that the king had but set a trap to catch me.
Now they were quite near and halted.
"Have we dreamed falsely, sisters ?" asked Nobela, the aged.
"What we dreamed in the night we see in the day," they answered.
"Shall I whisper his name in your ears, sisters ?" They lifted their heads from the ground like snakes and nodded, and as they nodded the necklets of bones rattled on their skinny necks.

Then they drew their heads to a circle, and Nobela thrust hers into the centre of the circle and said a word.
"Ha! ha!" they laughed, "we hear you! His is the name.