Lastly, we cannot conduct you hence until we have buried our dead." Then, without giving me time to answer, he turned and left the place, followed by the others.

Only at the gateway the diviner wheeled round on his crutches and glared at us both, muttering something with his thick lips; probably it was curses.
"At any rate they are going to set us free," I said to Marut, not without exultation, when they had all vanished.
"Yes, Lord," he replied, "but _where_ are they going to set us free?
The demon Jana lives in the forests and the swamps by the banks of the Tava River, and it is said that he ravages at night." I did not pursue the subject, but reflected to myself cheerfully that this mystic rogue-elephant was a long way off and might be circumvented, whereas that altar of sacrifice was extremely near and very difficult to avoid.
Never did a thief with a rich booty in view, or a wooer having an assignation with his lady, wait for sundown more eagerly than I did that day.

Hour after hour I sat upon the house-top, watching the Black Kendah carrying off the dead killed by the hailstones and generally trying to repair the damage done by the terrific tempest.

Watching the sun also as it climbed down the cloudless sky, and literally counting the minutes till it should reach the horizon, although I knew well that it would have been wiser after such a night to prepare for our journey by lying down to sleep.
At length the great orb began to sink in majesty behind the tattered western forest, and, punctual to the minute, Simba, with a mounted escort of some twenty men and two led horses, appeared at our gate.

As our preparations, which consisted only of Marut stuffing such food as was available into the breast of his robe, were already made, we walked out of that accursed guest-house and, at a sign from the king, mounted the horses.