166 JOUKNEY WITHOUT MAPS

he sit here, his wife she sat there, Mr. Trout he sat
here, Mrs. Trout she sat there and the devil passed
through." He said that if we went and saw the devil,
the devil would put a medicine on the town and there
would be no white man after we had gone with better
medicine. The boys went into the two rooms and
drew the mosquito-screens over the windows; after
they had cleared dinner they sat with the carriers in
the cookhouse with the blinds pulled down; we could
see the lamp shining on the floor through the slats
and the shadows of the silent figures.

But the needs of the body had to be satisfied, and
taking our electric torches we went out through the
compound to the edge of the forest. The town of
over two thousand inhabitants might have been de-
serted; the pale sickle of a new moon, a sky luminous
with stars, circle after circle of shuttered huts,
The place had an eerie air after Nicoboozu and
Duogobmai, where music and dancing, laughter and
cries went on till midnight, for it was not yet nine.
But as we returned up the path out o^. the forest and
flashed our torches on the town, we lit up two human
figures who were standing silently outside the devil's
hut. Perhaps the devil had set a watch on Zigita to
see who moved or peeped, because for some time after
we returned to the rest-house we could hear feet
moving in the compound, lightly stirring in the dust
outside. As we undressed the devil's music began in
Zigita, the pulse of a drum. We turned out the lamps
and lifted the screen from the window which faced
the town, but there was nothing to be seen from the
direction of the devil's hut; no lights moved. "When
race," Saki wrote, "you have taken the Impossible