large circle round it were gathered about thirty-five men and two women,
Ustane and the woman to avoid whom Job had played the _rôle_ of another
Scriptural character. The men were sitting in perfect silence, as was
their custom, each with his great spear stuck upright behind him, in
a socket cut in the rock for that purpose. Only one or two wore the
yellowish linen garment of which I have spoken, the rest had nothing on
except the leopard's skin about the middle.

"What's up now, sir," said Job, doubtfully. "Bless us and save us,
there's that woman again. Now, surely, she can't be after me, seeing
that I have given her no encouragement. They give me the creeps, the
whole lot of them, and that's a fact. Why look, they have asked Mahomed
to dine, too. There, that lady of mine is talking to him in as nice and
civil a way as possible. Well, I'm glad it isn't me, that's all."

We looked up, and sure enough the woman in question had risen, and was
escorting the wretched Mahomed from his corner, where, overcome by some
acute prescience of horror, he had been seated, shivering, and calling
on Allah. He appeared unwilling enough to come, if for no other reason
perhaps because it was an unaccustomed honour, for hitherto his food had
been given to him apart. Anyway I could see that he was in a state of
great terror, for his tottering legs would scarcely support his
stout, bulky form, and I think it was rather owing to the resources
of barbarism behind him, in the shape of a huge Amahagger with a
proportionately huge spear, than to the seductions of the lady who led
him by the hand, that he consented to come at all.

"Well," I said to the others, "I don't at all like the look of things,
but I suppose we must face it out. Have you fellows got your revolvers
on? because, if so, you had better see that they are loaded."