It was an hour later before the tribe began to stir about.
We watched them from our "apartment," as Lys called it.
Neither men nor women wore any sort of clothing or ornaments,
and they all seemed to be about of an age; nor were there any
babies or children among them. This was, to us, the strangest
and most inexplicable of facts, but it recalled to us that
though we had seen many of the lesser developed wild people
of Caspak, we had never yet seen a child or an old man or woman.

After a while they became less suspicious of us and then quite
friendly in their brutish way. They picked at the fabric of our
clothing, which seemed to interest them, and examined my rifle
and pistol and the ammunition in the belt around my waist.
I showed them the thermos-bottle, and when I poured a little water
from it, they were delighted, thinking that it was a spring which
I carried about with me--a never-failing source of water supply.

One thing we both noticed among their other characteristics: they
never laughed nor smiled; and then we remembered that Ahm had
never done so, either. I asked them if they knew Ahm; but they
said they did not.

One of them said: "Back there we may have known him." And he
jerked his head to the south.

"You came from back there?" I asked. He looked at me in surprise.

"We all come from there," he said. "After a while we go there."
And this time he jerked his head toward the north. "Be Galus,"