They showed their flashing teeth and smiled from
time to time in frank wonder, whereas the boys, superbly savage, like
young panthers caught in a trap, kept their eyes downcast or threw
distrustful, defiant glances round them. Here they sat in silence,
smoking tobacco and taking deep draughts out of a pitcher of milk which
was handed round from one to the other. Occasionally the older people
would pick up their instruments--bagpipes of sheepskin, small drums and
gourd-like mandolines--and draw from them strange dronings, gurglings,
thrummings, twangings; soon a group of youngsters would rise gravely
from the ground and, without any preconcerted signal, begin to move in
a dance--a formal and intricate measure, such as had never yet been
witnessed on Nepenthe.
Something inhuman and yet troublingly personal lay in the performance;
it invaded the onlookers with a sense of disquietude. There was
primeval ecstasy in those strains and gestures. Giant moths, meanwhile,
fluttered overhead, rattling their frail wings against the framework of
the paper lanterns; the south wind passed through the garden like the
breath of a friend, bearing the aromatic burden of a thousand
night-blooming shrubs and flowers.
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