"Then did I ride the iron monster, for which I gave money--"

"Thou saidst it was fed with stone."

"And likewise, thou fool, I said money was a thing of which you know
nothing. As I say, I rode the monster through the land, and through
many villages, until I came to a big village on a salt arm of the sea.
And the houses shoved their roofs among the stars in the sky, and the
clouds drifted by them, and everywhere was much smoke. And the roar of
that village was like the roar of the sea in storm, and the people were
so many that I flung away my stick and no longer remembered the notches
upon it."

"Hadst thou made small notches," Koogah reproved, "thou mightst have
brought report."

Nam-Bok whirled upon him in anger. "Had I made small notches! Listen,
Koogah, thou scratcher of bone! If I had made small notches neither the
stick, nor twenty sticks, could have borne them--nay, not all the
driftwood of all the beaches between this village and the next. And if
all of you, the women and children as well, were twenty times as many,
and if you had twenty hands each, and in each hand a stick and a knife,
still the notches could not be cut for the people I saw, so many were
they and so fast did they come and go."

"There cannot be so many people in all the world," Opee-Kwan objected,
for he was stunned and his mind could not grasp such magnitude of
numbers.