Again I was the
center of a wildly chattering horde. I was pulled this way and
that. Pinched, pounded, and thumped until I was black and blue,
yet I do not think that their treatment was dictated by either
cruelty or malice--I was a curiosity, a freak, a new plaything,
and their childish minds required the added evidence of all their
senses to back up the testimony of their eyes.
Presently they dragged me within the village, which consisted of
several hundred rude shelters of boughs and leaves supported upon
the branches of the trees.
Between the huts, which sometimes formed crooked streets, were dead
branches and the trunks of small trees which connected the huts
upon one tree to those within adjoining trees; the whole network
of huts and pathways forming an almost solid flooring a good fifty
feet above the ground.
I wondered why these agile creatures required connecting bridges
between the trees, but later when I saw the motley aggregation of
half-savage beasts which they kept within their village I realized
the necessity for the pathways. There were a number of the same
vicious wolf-dogs which we had left worrying the dyryth, and many
goatlike animals whose distended udders explained the reasons for
their presence.
My guard halted before one of the huts into which I was pushed;
then two of the creatures squatted down before the entrance--to
prevent my escape, doubtless. Though where I should have escaped
to I certainly had not the remotest conception.
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