Lives of Alcyone

many cases, but in other cases not. There seems no sign of rank,
nor any kind of government—indeed, there is nothing to govern.
Sometimes there are quarrels, but all on a small scale. As regards
property they may be said to own some sort of weapons. The
majority of them have no clothing. There is no day and night with
them; they mostly throw themselves down to sleep after taking a
meal. The children sometimes amuse themselves with dances.
There are plenty of rivers, and the people swim in them in a curious
dog-like fashion.
Our two friends abode among these extraordinary savages for
a period which, measured by day and night, would have been
perhaps a couple of weeks. Their difficulties were considerable, and
a great portion of each day had to be devoted to sleep, as they
never both slept at the same time, feeling it always necessary that
one should be on the watch. The savages seemed to have no evil
intentions towards them, and indeed to be on the whole rather afraid
of them, though full of curiosity, but at the same time they could not
trust them, and it is also certain that some of the reptiles were
carnivorous, and probably poisonous. There was a good deal of
vegetation, specially in the neighbourhood of water; nothing of any
great size, except what might be called a sort of gigantic grass, a
kind of bamboo which could not support itself, but crept along the
ground. There were also spiky plants of the general appearance of
aloes, and various kinds of cactus and rushes and sedges and that
kind of thing, but all of a curious bleached unhealthy colour, many of
them darkish, but none really green.
After they had become somewhat accustomed to this weird
and uncomfortable condition of affairs, the voice directed Alcyone
79