AMOCHOL

By daybreak we had salted our parched corn, soaked, and eaten it, and my Indians were already freshening their paint. The Sagamore, stripped for battle, barring clout and sporran, stood tall and powerfully magnificent in his white and vermilion hue of war. On his broad chest the scarlet Ghost Bear reared; on his crest the scarlet feathers slanted low. The Yellow Moth was unbelievably hideous in the poisonous hue of a toad-stool; his crest and all his skin glistened yellow, shining like the sulphurous belly of a snake. But the Grey-Feather was ghastly; his bony features were painted like a skull, spine, ribs, and limb-bones traced out heavily in yellowish white so that he seemed a stalking and articulated skeleton as he moved in the dim twilight of the trees. And I could see that he was very proud of the effect.