Also there we can be alone." So speaking he turned and crawled into the hut, looking like a gigantic white-headed beetle as he did so, a creature, I remembered, to which I had once compared him in the past.

I followed, carrying the historic stool, and when he had seated himself on his kaross on the further side of the fire, took up my position opposite to him.

This fire was fed with some kind of root or wood that gave a thin clear flame with little or no smoke.

Over it he crouched, so closely that his great head seemed to be almost in the flame at which he stared with unblinking eyes as he had done at the sun, circumstances which added to his terrifying appearance and made me think of a certain region and its inhabitants.
"Why do you come here, Macumazahn ?" he asked after studying me for a while through that window of fire.
"Because you brought me, Zikali, partly through your messenger, Nombe, and partly by means of a dream which she says you sent." "Did I, Macumazahn?
If so, I have forgotten it.

Dreams are as many as gnats by the water; they bite us while we sleep, but when we wake up we forget them.