The Root of Ampoi
                                   by
                           Clarke Ashton Smith

A CIRCUS had arrived in Auburn. The siding at the station was
crowded with long lines of cars from which issued a medley of
exotic howls, growls, snarls and trumpetings. Elephants and
zebras and dromedaries were led along the main streets; and many
of the freaks and performers wandered about the town.
     Two bearded ladies passed with the graceful air and walk of
women of fashion. Then came a whole troupe of midgets, trudging
along with the look of mournful, sophisticated children. And then
I saw the giant, who was slightly more than eight feet tall and
magnificently built, with no sign of disproportion which often
attends giantism. He was merely a fine physical specimen of the
ordinary man, somewhat more than life-size. And even at first
glance there was something about his features and his gait which
suggested a seaman.
     I am a doctor; and the man provoked my medical curiosity.
His abnormal bulk and height, without trace of acromegaly, was
something I had never happened to meet before.
     He must have felt my interest, for he returned my gaze with
a speculative eye; and then, lurching in sailor-like fashion, he
came over to me.
     "I say, sir, could a chap buy a drink in this 'ere town?" He
queried cautiously.
     I made a quick decision.
     "Come with me," I replied. "I'm an allopath; and I can tell
without asking that you're a sick man."
     We were only a block from my office. I steered the giant up
the stairs and into my private sanctum. He almost filled the
place, even when he sat down at my urging. I brought out a bottle
of rye and poured a liberal glassful for him. He downed it with
manifest appreciation. He had worn an air of mild depression when
I first me him; now he began to brighten.
     "You wouldn't think, to look at me, that I wasn't always a
bloomin' giant," he soliloquized.
     "Have another drink," I suggested.
     After the second glass, he resumed a little mournfully: "No,
sire, Jim Knox wasn't always a damn circus freak."
     Then, with little urging on my part, he told me his story.
     Knox, an adventurous Cockney, had followed half the seas of
the world as a common sailor and boatswain in his younger years.
He had visited many strange places, had known many bizarre
experiences. Before he had reached the age of thirty, his
restless and daring disposition led him to undertake an
incredibly fantastic quest.
     The events preceding this quest were somewhat unusual in
themselves. Ship-wrecked by a wild typhoon in the Banda Sea, and
apparently the one survivor, Knox had drifted for two days on a
hatch torn from the battered and sinking vessel. Then, rescued by
a native-fishing-proa, he had been carried to Salawatti.
     The Rajah of Salawatti, an old and monkey-like Malay, was
very nice to Knox. The Rajah was a teller of voluminous tales;
and the boatswain was a patient listener. On the basis of
congeniality, Knox became an honored guest for a month or more in
the Rajah's palace. Here, among other wonders retailed by his
host, he heard for the first time the rumor of a most remarkable
Papuan tribe.
     This unique tribe dwelt on a well-nigh inaccessible plateau
of the Arfak Mountains. The women were nine feet tall and white
as milk; but the men, strangely, were of normal stature and
darker hue. They were friendly to the rare travelers who reached
their domains; and they would trade for glass beads and mirrors
the pigeon's blood rubies in which their mountain-slopes
abounded. AS proof of the latter statement, the Rajah showed Knox
a large, flawless, uncut ruby, which he claimed had come from
this region.
     Knox was hardly inclined to credit the item about the giant
women; but the rubies sounded far less improbable. It was
characteristic of him that, with little thought of the danger,
difficulty, or the sheer absurdity of such a venture, he made up
his mind at once to visit the Arfak Mountains.
     Bidding farewell to his host, who mourned the loss of a good
listener, he continued his odyssey. By means that he failed to
specify in his history, Knox procured two sackfuls of mirrors and
glass beads, and managed to reach the coast of northwestern New
Guinea. At Andai, in Arrak, he hired a guide who purported to
know the whereabouts of the giant Amazons, and struck boldly
inland toward the mountains.
     The guide, who was half Malay and half Papuan, bore one of
the sacks of baubles on his shoulders; and Knox carried the
other. He fondly hoped to return with the two sacks full of
smoldering dark-red rubies.
     It was a little known land. Some of the peoples were reputed
to be head-hunters and cannibals; but Knox found them friendly
enough. But somehow, as he went on, the guide began to exhibit a
growing haziness in his geography. When they reached the middle
slopes of the Arfak range, Knox realized that the guide knew
little more than he himself regarding the location of the
fabulous ruby-strewn plateau.
     They went on through the steepening forest. Before them,
above trees that were still tall and semi-tropical, arose the
granite scarps and crags of a high mountain-wall, behind which
the afternoon sun had disappeared. In early twilight, they camped
at the foot of a seemingly insuperable cliff.
     Knox awoke in a blazing yellow dawn, to discover that his
guide had departed, taking one of the sacks of trinkets--which,
from a savage viewpoint, would constitute enough capital to set
the fellow up in business for life. Knox shrugged his shoulders
and swore a little. The guide wasn't much of a loss; but he
didn't like having his jewel-purchasing power diminished by half.
     He looked at the cliffs above. Tier on tier they toward in
the glow of dawn, with tops scarce distinguishable from the
clouds about them. Somehow, the more he looked the surer he
became that they were the cliffs guarding the hidden plateau.
With their silence and inaccessible solitude, their air of
eternal reserve and remoteness, they couldn't be anything else
but the ramparts of a realm of titan women and pigeons' blood
rubies.
     He shouldered his pack and followed the granite wall in
search of a likely starting-place for the climb he had determined
to attempt. The upright rock was smooth as a metal sheet, and
didn't offer a toehold for a spider monkey. But at least he came
to a deep chasm which formed the bed of a summer-dried cataract.
He began to ascend the chasm, which was no mean feat in itself,
for the stream-bed was a series of high shelves, like a giant
stairway.
     Half the time he dangled by his fingers without a toehold,
or stretched on tiptoe and felt precariously for a finger-grip.,
The climb was a ticklish business, with death on the pointed
rocks below as the penalty of the least miscalculation.
     He dared not look back on the way he had climbed in that
giddy chasm. Toward noon, he saw above him the menacing overhang
of a huge crag, where the straightening gully ceased in a black-
mouthed cavern.
     He scrambled up the final shelf into the cave, hoping that
it led, as was likely, to an upper entrance made by the mountain
torrent. By the light of struck matches, he scaled, he scaled a
slippery incline. The cave soon narrowed; and Knox could often
brace himself between the walls, as if in a chimney's interior.
     After long upward groping, he discerned a tiny glimmering
ahead, like a pin-prick in the solid gloom. Knox, nearly worn out
with his efforts, was immensely heartened. But again the cave
narrowed, till he could squeeze no farther with the pack on his
back. He slid back a little and removed the sack, which he then
proceeded to push before him up a declivity of forty-five
degrees. In those days, Knox was of average height and somewhat
slender; but even so, he could barely wriggle through the last
ten feet of the cavern.
     He gave the sack a final heave and landed it on the surface
without. Then he squirmed through the opening and fell exhausted
in the sunlight. He lay almost at the fountain head of the dried
stream, in a saucer-like hollow at the foot of a gentle slope of
granite beyond whose bare ridge the clouds were white and near.
     Knox congratulated himself on his gift as an alpine climber.
He felt no doubt whatever that he had reached the threshold of
the hidden realm of rubies and giant women.
     Suddenly, as he lay there, several men appeared against the
clouds, on the ridge above. Striding like mountaineers, they came
toward him with excited jabberings and gestures of amazement; and
he rose and stood awaiting them.
     Knox must have been a singular spectacle. His clothing and
face were bestreaked with dirt and with the stains of parti-
colored ores acquired in his passage through the cavern. The
approaching men seemed to regard him with a sort of awe.
     They were dressed in short reddish-purple tunics, and wore
leather sandals. They did not belong to any of the lowland types:
their skin was a light sienna, and their features were good
according to European standards. All were armed with long
javelins but seemed friendly. Wide-eyed, and apparently somewhat
timorous, they addressed Knox in a language which bore no
likeness to any Melanesian tongue he had ever heard.
     He replied in all the languages of which he head the least
smattering: but plainly they could not understand him. Then he
untied his sack, took out a double handful of beads, and tried to
convey by pantomime the information that he was a trader from
remote lands.
     The man nodded their heads. Beckoning him to follow them,
they returned toward the cloud-rimmed ridge. Knox trudged along
behind them, feeling quite sure that he had found the people of
the Rajah's tale.
     Topping the ridge, he saw the perspectives of a long
plateau, full of woods, streams and cultivated fields. In the
mild and slanting sunlight, he and his guides descended a path
among flowering willow-herbs and rhododendrons to the plateau.
There it soon became a well-trodden road, running through forests
of dammar and fields of wheat. Houses of rough -hewn stone with
thatched roofs, evincing a higher civilization than the huts of
the Papuan seaboard, began to appear at intervals.
     Men, garbed in the same style as Knox's guides, were working
in the fields. Then Knox perceived several women, standing
together in an idle group. Now he was compelled to believe the
whole story about the hidden people, for these women were eight
feet or more in height and had the proportions of shapely
goddesses! Their complexion was not a milky fairness, as in
Rajah's tale, but was tawny and cream-like and many shade lighter
than that of the men. Knox felt a jubilant excitement as they
turned their calm gaze upon him and watched him with the air of
majestic statues. He had found the legendary realm; and he had
peered among the pebbles and grasses of the wayside, half
expecting to see them intersown with rubies. None was in
evidence, however.
     A town appeared, circling a sapphire lake with one-storied
but well-built houses laid out in regular streets. Many people
were strolling or standing about; and all the women were tawny
giantesses, and all the men were of average stature, with umber
or sienna complexions. 
     A crowd gathered about Knox; and his guides were questioned
in a quite peremptory manner by some of the titan females, who
eyed the boatswain with embarrassing intentions. He divined at
once the respect and obeisance paid these women by the men, and
inferred the superior position which they held. They all wore the
tranquil and assured look of empresses.
     Knox was led to a building near the lake. It was larger and
more pretentious than the others. The roomy interior was arrased
with roughly pictured fabrics and furnished with chairs and
couches of ebony. The general effect was rudely sybaritic and
palatial, and much enhanced by the unusual height of the
ceilings.
     In a sort of audience-room, a woman sat enthroned on a broad
dias. Several others stood about her like a bodyguard. She wore
no crown, no jewels, and her dress differed in no wise from the
short kilts of the other women. But Knox knew that he had entered
the presence of a queen. The woman was fairer than the rest, with
long rippling chestnut hair and fine oval features. The gaze that
she turned upon Knox was filled with a feminine mingling of
mildness and severity.
     The boatswain assumed his most gallant manner, which must
have been a little nullified by his dirt-smeared face and
apparel. He bowed before the giantess; and she addressed him with
a few soft words in which he sensed a courteous welcome. Then he
opened his pack and selected a mirror and string of blue beads,
which he offered to the queen. She accepted the gifts gravely,
showing neither pleasure nor surprise.
     After dismissing the men who had brought Knox to her
presence, the queen turned and spoke to her female attendants.
They came forward and gave Knox to understand that he must
accompany them. They led him to an open court, containing a huge
bath fed by the waters of the blue lake. Here, in spite of his
protests and strugglings, they undressed him as if he had been a
little boy. They then plunged him into the water and scrubbed him
thoroughly with scrapers of stiff vegetable fiber. One of them
brought him a brown tunic and a pair of sandals in lieu of his
former raiment.
     Though somewhat discomforted and abashed by his summary
treatment, Knox couldn't help feeling like a different man after
his renovation. And when the woman brought in a meal of taro and
millet-cake and roast pigeon, piled on enormous platters, he
began to forgive them for his embarrassment.
     Two of his fair attendants remained with him during the
meal; and afterwards they gave him a lesson in their language by
pointing at various objects and naming them. Knox soon acquired a
knowledge of much domestic nomenclature.
     The queen herself appeared later and proceeded to take a
hand in his instruction. Her name, he learned, was Mabousa. Knox
was an apt pupil; and the days lesson was plainly satisfactory to
all concerned. Knox realized more clearly than before that the
queen was a beautiful woman; but he wished that she was not quite
so large and imposing. He felt so juvenile beside her. The queen,
on her part, seemed to regard Knox with a far from unfavorable
gravity. He saw that she was giving him a good deal of thought
and consideration.
     Knox almost forgot the rubies of which he had come in
search; and when he remembered them, he decided to wait till he
had learned more of the language before broaching the subject.
     A room in the palace was assigned to him; and he inferred
the he could remain indefinitely as Mabousa's guest. He ate at
the same table with the queen and a half-dozen attendants. It
seemed that he was the only man in the establishment. The chairs
were all designed for giantesses, with one exception, which
resembled the high chair in which a child sits at table amongst
its elders. Knox occupied this chair.
     Many days went by; and he learned enough of the language for
all practical purposes. It was a tranquil but far from unpleasant
life. He soon grew familiar with the general conditions of life
in the country ruled by Mabousa, which was called Ondoar. It was
quite isolated from the world without, for the mountain walls
around it could be scaled only at the point which Knox had so
fortuitously discovered. Few strangers had ever obtained the
entrance. The people were prosperous and contented, leading a
pastoral existence under the benign but absolute matriarchy of
Mabousa. The women governed their husbands by sheer virtue of
physical superiority; but there seemed to be fully as much
domestic amity as in household of countries where a reverse
dominion prevails.
     Knox wondered greatly about the superior stature of the
women, which struck him as being a strange provision of nature.
Somehow he did not venture to ask any questions; and no one
volunteered to tell him the secret.
     He kept an eye open for rubies, and was puzzled by the
paucity of these gems. A few inferior rubies, as well as small
sapphires and emeralds, were worn by some of the men as ear-ring
pendants, though none of the women was addicted to such
ornaments. Knox wondered if they didn't have a lot of rubies
stored away somewhere. He had come here to trade for red corundum
and had carried a whole sack-load of the requisite medium of
barter up an impossible mountainside; so he was loath to
relinquish the idea.
     One day he resolved to open the subject with Mabousa. For
some reason, he never quite knew why, it was hard to speak of
such matters to the dignified and lovely giantess. But business
was business.
     He was groping for suitable words, when he suddenly noticed
that Mabousa too had something on her mind. She had grown
uncommonly silent and the way she kept looking at him was
disconcerting and even embarrassing. He wonder what was the
matter; also, he began to wonder if these people were
cannibalistic. Her gaze was so eager and avid.
     Before he could speak of the rubies and his willingness to
buy them with glass beads, mabousa startled him by coming out
with flatly phrased proposal of marriage. To say the least, Knox
was unprepared. But it seemed uncivil, as will as unpolitic, to
refuse. He had never been proposed to before by a queen or a
giantess, and he thought it would be hardly proper etiquette to
decline a heart and hand of such capacity. Also, as Mabousa's
husband, he would be in a most advantageous position to negotiate
for rubies. And Mabousa was undeniably attractive, even though
she was built on a grand scale. After a little hemming and
hawing, he accepted her proposal, and was literally swept of his
feet as the lady gathered him to the gargantuan charms of her
bosom.
     The wedding proved to be a very simple affair: a mere matter
of verbal agreement in the presence of several female witnesses.
Knox was amazed by the ease and rapidity with which he assume the
bonds of holy matrimony.
     He learned a lot of things from his marriage with Mabousa.
He found at the wedding-supper that the high chair he had been
occupying at the royal table was usually reserved for the queen's
consort. Later, he learned the secret of the woman's size and
stature. All the children, boys and girls, were of ordinary size
at birth; but the girls were fed by their mothers on a certain
root which caused them to increase in height and bulk beyond the
natural limits.
     The root was gathered on the highest mountain slopes. Its
peculiar virtu was mainly due to the mode of preparation whose
secret had been carefully guarded by the women and handed down
from mother to daughter. Its use had been known for several
generals. At one time the men had been the ruling sex; but an
accidental discovery of the root by a down-trodden wife named
Ampoi had soon led to a reversal of this domination. In
consequences the memory of Ampoi was highly venerated by the
females, as that of a savioress.
     Knox also acquired much other information, on matters both
social and domestic. But nothing was ever said about rubies. He
was forced to decide that the plenitude of these jewels in Ondoar
must have been sheer fable; a purely decorative addition to the
story of the giant Amazons.
     His marriage led to other disillusionments. as the queen's
consort, he had expected to have a share in the government of
Ondoar, and had looked forward to a few kingly prerogatives. But
he soon found that he was merely a male adjunct of Mabousa, with
no legal rights, no privileges other than those which she, out of
wifely affection, might choose to accord him. She was kind and
loving, but also strong-minded, not to say bossy; and he learned
that he couldn't do anything or go anywhere without first
consulting her and obtaining permission.
     She would sometimes reprimand him, would often set him right
on some point of Ondoarian etiquette, or the general conduct of
life, in a sweet but strict manner; and it never occurred to her
that he might even wish to dispute any of her mandates. He,
however was irked more and more by this feminine tyranny. His
male pride, his many British spirit, revolted. If the lady had
been of suitable size he would, in his own phrase, "Have knocked
her about a little." But, under the circumstances, any attempt to
chasten her by main strength hardly seemed advisable.
     Along with all this, he grew quite found of her in this
fashion. There were many things that endeared her to him; and he
felt that she would be an exemplary wife, if there were only some
way of curbing her deplorable tendency to domineer.
     Time went on, as it was a habit of doing. Mabousa seemed to
be well enough satisfied with her spouse. But Knox brooded a good
deal over the false position in which he felt she had placed him,
and the daily injury to his manhood. He wished that there were
some way of correcting matters, and of asserting his natural
rights and putting Mabousa in her place.
     One day he remembered the root on which the women of Ondoar
were fed. Why couldn't he get hold of some of it and grow big
himself like Mabousa, or bigger? Then he would be able to handle
her in the proper style. The more the thought of it, the more
this appealed to him as the ideal solution of his marital
difficulties.
     The main problem, however, was to obtain the root. He
questioned some of the other men in a discreet way, but none of
them could tell him anything about it. The women never permitted
the men to accompany them when they gathered the stuff; and the
process of preparing it for consumption was carried on in deep
caverns. Several men had dared to steal the food in past years;
tow of them indeed, had grown to giant stature on what they had
stolen. But all had been punished by the women with life-long
exile from Ondoar.
     All this was rather discouraging. also, it served to
increase Knox's contempt for the men of Ondoar, whom he looked
upon as spineless, effeminate lot. However, he didn't give up his
plan. But, after much deliberation and scheming, he found himself
no nearer to a solution of the problem than before.
     Perhaps he would have resigned himself, as better men have
done, to an inevitable life-long henpecking. But at least, in the
birth of a female baby to Mabousa and himself, he found the
opportunity  he had been seeking.
     The child was like any other girl infant, and Knox was no
less proud of it, no less imbued with the customary parental
sentiments, than other fathers have been. It did not occur to
him, till the baby was old enough to be weaned and fed on the
special food, that he would now have in his own home a first-rate
chance to appropriate some of this food for his personal use.
     The simple and artless Mabousa was wholly without suspicion
of such unlawful designs. Male obedience to the feministic law of
the land was so thoroughly taken for granted that she even showed
him the strange foodstuff and often fed the child in his
presence. Nor did she conceal from him the large earthen jar in
which she kept her reserve supply.
     The jar stood in the palace kitchen, among others filled
with more ordinary staples of diet. One day, when Mabousa had
gone to the country on some political errand, and the waiting
women were all preoccupied with other than culinary matters, Knox
stole into the kitchen and carried away a small bagful of the
stuff, which he then hid in his own room. In his fear of
detection, he felt more of an actual thrill than at any time
since the boyhood days when he had pilfered apples from London
street-barrows behind the backs of the vendors.
     The stuff looked like a fine variety of sago, and had an
aromatic smell and spicy taste. Knox ate a little of it at once
but dared not indulge himself to the extent of a full meal for
fear that the consequences would be visible. He had watched the
incredible growth of the child, which had gained the proportions
of a normal six-year old girl in a fortnight under the influence
of the miraculous nutrient; and he did not wish to have his theft
discovered, and the further use of the food prevented, in the
first stage of his own development toward gianthood.
     He felt that some sort of seclusion would be advisable till
he could attain the bulk and stature which would ensure a
position as master in his own household. He must somehow remove
himself from all female supervision during the period of growth.
     This, for one so thoroughly subject to petticoat government,
with all his goings and comings minutely regulated, was no mean
problem. But again fortune favored Knox: for the hunting season
in Ondoar had now permitted by their wives to visit the higher
mountains and spend days or weeks in tracking down a certain
agile species of alpine deer, known as the oklah.
     Perhaps Mabousa wondered a little at the sudden interest
shown by Knox in oklah-hunting, and his equally sudden devotion
to a practice with the javelins used by the hunters. But she saw
no reason for deny him permission to make the desired trip;
merely stipulating that he should go in company with certain
other dutiful husbands, and should be very careful of dangerous
cliffs and crevasses.
     The company of other husband was not exactly in accord with
Knox's plan; but he knew better than to argue the point. He had
contrived to make several more visits to the palace pantry, and
had stolen enough of the forbidden food to turn him into a robust
and wife-taming titan. Somehow, on that trip among the mountains,
in spite of the meek and law-abiding males with whom he was
condemned to go, he would find chances to consume all he had
stolen. He would return a conquering Anakim, a roaring Goliath;
and everyone, especially Mabousa, would stand from under.
     Knox hid the food, disguised as a bag of millet meal, in his
private supply of provisions. He also carried some of it in his
pockets, and would eat a mouthful or two whenever the men weren't
looking. And at night, when they were all sleeping quietly, he
would steal to the bag and devour the aromatic stuff by the
handful.
     The result was truly phenomenal, for Knox could watch
himself swell after the first square meal. He broadened and shot
up inch by inch, to the manifest bewilderment of his companions,
none of whom, at firs, was imaginative enough to suspect the true
reason. He saw them eyeing him with a sort of speculative awe and
curiosity, such as civilized people would display fore a wild man
from Borneo. Obviously they regarded his growth as a kind of
biological anomaly, or perhaps as part of the queer behavior that
might well be expected from a foreigner of doubtful antecedents. 
     The hunters were now in the highest mountains, at the
northernmost end of Ondoar. Here, among the stupendous riven
crags and piled pinnacles, they pursued the elusive oklah; and
Knox began to attain a length of limb that enabled him to leap
across chasms over which the others could not follow.
     At least one or two of them must have gotten suspicious.
They took to watching Knox, and one night they surprised him in
the act of devouring the sacred food. They tried to warn him,
with a sort of holy horror in their demeanor, that he was doing a
dreadful and forbidden thing, and would bring himself the direct
consequences.
     Knox, who was beginning to feel as well as look like an
actual giant, told them to mind their own business. Moreover, he
went on to express his frank and uncensored opinion of the
sapless, decadent, and effeminate males of Ondoar. After that the
men left him alone but murmured fearfully among themselves and
watched his every move with apprehensive glances. Knox despised
them so thoroughly, that he failed to attach any special
significance to the furtive disappearance of two members of the
party. Indeed, at the time, he hardly noticed that they had gone.
     After a fortnight of alpine climbing, the hunters had slain
their due quota of long-horned and goat-footed oklah; and Knox
had consumed his entire store of the stolen food and had grown to
proportions which, he felt sure, would enable him to subdue his
domineering helpmate and show her the proper inferiority of the
female sex. It was time to return: Knox's companions would not
have dreamt of exceeding the limit set by the women, who had
enjoined them to come back at the end of a fortnight; and Knox
was eager to demonstrate his new-won superiority of bulk and
brawn.
     As they came down from the mountains and crossed the
cultivated plain, Knox saw that the other men were lagging behind
more and more, with a sort of fearfulness and shrinking timidity.
He strode on before them, carrying three full-sized oklah slung
over his shoulders, as a lesser man would have carried so many
rabbits.
     The fields and roads were deserted, and none of the titan
women was in sight anywhere. Knox wondered a little about this;
but feeling himself so much the master of the general situation,
he did not over-exert his mind in curious conjectures.
     However, as they approached the town, the desolation and
silence became a trifle ominous. Knox's fellow-hunters were
obviously stricken with dire and growing terror. But Knox did not
feel that he should lower his dignity be even asking the reason.
     They entered the streets, which were also strangely quite.
There was no evidence of life, other than the pale and frightened
faces of a few men that peered from the windows and furtively
opened doors.
     At last they came in sight of the palace. Now the mystery
was explained, for apparently all the women of Ondoar had
gathered in the square before the building! They were drawn up in
a massive and appallingly solid formation, like an army of giant
Amazons; and their utter stillness was more dreadful than the
shouting and tumult of battle-fields. Knox felt an unwilling but
irresistible dismay before the swelling thews of their mighty
arms, the solemn heaving of gargantuan bosoms, and the awful and
austere gaze with which they regarded him in unison.
     Suddenly he perceived that he was quite alone--the other men
had faded away like shadows, as if they did not even dare to
remain and watch his fate. He felt an almost undeniable impulse
to flee; but his British valor prevented him from yielding to it.
Pace by face he forced himself to go on toward the embattled
women.
     They waited for him in stony silence, immovable as
caryatides. He saw Mabousa in the front rank, her serving-women
about her. She watched him with eyes in which he could read
nothing but unutterable reproach. She did not speak; and somehow
the jaunty words with which he had intended to greet her were
congealed on his lips.
     All at once, with a massed and terrible striding movement,
the women surrounded Knox. He lost sight of Mabousa in the solid
wall of titanesses. Great, brawny hands were grasping him,
tearing the spear from his fingers and oklah from his shoulders.
He struggled as became a doughty Briton. But one man, even though
he had eaten the food of giantesses, could do nothing against the
whole tribe of eight-foot females.
     Maintaining a silence more formidable than any outcry, they
bore him through the town and along the road by which he had
entered Ondoar, and up the mountain path to the outmost ramparts
of the land. There from the beetling crag above the gully he had
climbed, they lowered him with a tackle of heavy ropes to the dry
torrent-bed two hundred feet below, and left him to find his way
down the perilous mountainside and back to the outer world that
would accept him hence-forward only as a circus freak.