After eating together they became a little talkative, finding that they possessed more words in common than had at first appeared, and these words went limping along supported on the crutches of a highly expressive and intelligible sign-language. Was Bikkoo going back to his tribe? He was not. Where was Bikkoo’s tribe? It was somewhere: it was over there or over there. Was it a big tribe, and had they plenty of women? What kind of squats did they live in? Were the devils of the sky pleased with them? . . . There seemed no end to Ogo’s inquisitiveness, once the subject was started. He was ready to talk of his own people, and so would have been puzzled by Bikkoo’s reticence had he noticed it; but he did not notice it, his real interest being in Bikkoo himself, not in Bikkoo’s unseen relations. To have inferred the existence of a Bikkoo tribe at all was a powerful feat, the leap of an exceptionally active mind: to dwell long on the idea, to give it body and detail, would have carried Ogo unnaturally far from the here and now, the world of immediate wants and satisfactions, in which he was most at home. But he asked one other question. ‘Men hunting. Kill big beast. You belong to them?’ He patted the meat that lay between them on the grass. For it was, after all, not Bikkoo alone, but Bikkoo in conjunction with those earlier events, the hunt and the kill, that had suggested to Ogo the existence of a foreign tribe and set his fancy groping for a picture of its way of life. Or had these things only given shape to a nebula that had been already in his mind; and was there, among his small crowding thoughts, one thought that without his knowledge took command of the others, pushing them this way and that, persuading, cajoling, grouping and drilling them, and urging them forward, with itself borne high in their midst, till the brain should no longer be able to endure their organised pressure but must release them, one host single in aim, back into the heart whence they had come as a crazy rabble, back into the blood, the glands, the nerves, the sinews, the whole physical man, and so into action? His question about the women of Bikkoo’s tribe had been but one of many, and put without any conscious ulterior motive; nor had he listened with anxiety for the answer. As to those hunting men, Bikkoo shook his head and his face was empty of guile. He had evidently seen and heard nothing of the hunt. ‘My people bad people,’ he confided. ‘Not go back. They kill me.’ He had run away. He was outcast. Ogo, liking him, both as an amusing novelty and because they had each rendered the other a service, believed without question that the tribe, not Bikkoo himself, was to blame for his having run away, though this idea, that in any conflict between tribe and individual the tribe as a whole could be ‘bad’ and the individual ‘good,’ was the most astonishing heresy that had ever been presented to him. To Ogo, ‘good’ was what the law of Koor ordained. Sometimes it happened to be also what he himself wanted, but in general he was inclined towards being ‘bad.’ Fear of Koor and the terrible gods of Koor checked his unlawful inclinations, however, often before he became aware of them: his mind, as well as his body, was in thrall. Had it occurred to him that Bikkoo, being outcast, was perhaps taboo, a source of infinite danger, he would have been crazy with fear, would have gone through his whole small repertory of self-protective magic and exhausted himself in prayers of propitiation and in the performance of cleansing ritual. But no such doubts entered his mind. He was happy and friendly and well fed. His only conscious wish was that the night would quickly pass. In the intervals of chattering with Bikkoo he remembered the innumerable demons that infest darkness. Their shapes loomed hideous in his mind’s eye. He shuddered, recalling the face of the man he had killed. He wanted to mention this matter to his companion, wanted to halve his fears by sharing them; but he knew better than to attempt that, for to talk of demons in their own neighbourhood is to increase their malignity and power. So whenever a pang assailed him he did no more than stretch out his hand, and touch Bikkoo, and grin wistfully. And Bikkoo, seeming glad of these shy contacts, would grin back and say: ‘Very good friends, huh?’ He seemed to have quite forgotten his injured leg, but was reminded of it sharply enough when he tried to get up from the ground. Bikkoo in pain was an immensely funny sight to Ogo. When he fell moaning to the ground Ogo laughed with pleasure in the diverting sight. It was the best joke in the world. But he came to his help none the less, hoisting him up carefully, and lending him a shoulder to lean on. In this he rendered service to himself as well as to Bikkoo, for he was anxious not to be left alone and feared that this strange little man, an inscrutable creature, might take it into his head to run off by himself. After repeated trial and failure Bikkoo found himself able to walk, with Ogo’s help: and together they moved away, keeping close to the river. Ogo was excited and curious. Where was he being led? ‘Bikkoo’s boat,’ answered Bikkoo again and again: an answer that Ogo could make nothing of, for he had never heard that word before; but presently they came upon the boat itself, and very cunningly hidden it was, afloat in a tiny natural kink in the river’s serpentine body, and hidden from sight by a low drooping tree, a thick canopy, whose nether leaves, trailing the water, were tugged gently and without avail by the tide. Ogo was at some pains to see the boat, and when he saw it he did not understand. He saw a long dark shape, a log of which a substantial part had been hacked away, scooped out, by untold labour with an axe. What did it mean? He did not understand, but he was so near understanding that his eyes sparkled anew with excitement. ‘Bikkoo’s boat,’ said Bikkoo again, and abandoning the support of Ogo’s shoulder he seized an overhanging branch, swung lightly for a moment, and dropped, Ogo uttered little wondering cries, and stared at the miracle, half-afraid. Bikkoo sat in the boat; the boat still lay on the surface of the water. It was clearly magic. ‘Come,’ said Bikkoo. ‘Ogo come too. Bring meat. Very good friends.’ Ogo, clutching the meat to his breast, stared down at the man in the boat. In this little bay the river’s flux was hardly perceptible: there was only a gentle lap-lapping against the boat’s sides. The overhanging tree cast a dark shadow, in which the boat and Bikkoo made a shadow darker still; but beyond, where Ogo’s glance travelled through gaps in the boughs, flakes of moonlight lay on the lithe water. It was magic. It was wizardry. Was it a magic he could learn, or would he invite the curse of the unseen if he went further with this wizard? This way and that he looked, drawn and repelled by the adventure that offered itself. But his indecision lasted no more than an instant, and now he was in the boat, having ventured the perilous leap, and he uttered a squeal to find it move, as though alive, under the impact. Bikkoo with a big bladed stick pushing off from the bank, Ogo swayed where he stood, tumbled backwards into the bottom of the boat, and shut his eyes in terror. He felt wet leaves lingeringly stroke his face, as the boat from its dark bower moved into mid-stream.