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Having taken the fence, they thought that they might as well take the kraal also, so they just ran over it. One hive-shaped hut was turned quite over on to its top, and when I arrived upon the scene the people who had been sleeping there were bumbling about inside like bees disturbed at night, while two more were crushed flat, and a third had all its side torn out.
All regretted their families, and their houses; the poor their hive-shaped huts, with the shells on the threshold and the hanging net, and the patricians their large halls filled with bluish shadows, where at the most indolent hour of the day they used to rest listening to the vague noise of the streets mingled with the rustling of the leaves as they stirred in their gardens; to go deeper into the thought of this, and to enjoy it more, they would half close their eyelids, only to be roused by the shock of a wound.
In her perplexity Sihamba cast her eyes upwards and saw that a fine line of light shone from the smoke-hole at the very top of the hut, which was hive-shaped, and a thought came into her head. "If I climb up there," she said to herself, "I can look down through the smoke-hole and see and hear what passes in the hut.
A net-work of paths showed that we were approaching a populous place; and presently men swarmed forth from their hive-shaped tents, testifying their satisfaction at our arrival, the hostile Habr Awal having threatened to "eat them up."
Within three-quarters of an hour we were seated on the mud veranda of the tembe of Sultan bin Ali, who, because of his age, his wealth, and position being a colonel in Seyd Burghash's unlovely army is looked upon by his countrymen, high and low, as referee and counsellor. His boma or enclosure contains quite a village of hive-shaped huts and square tembes.
We saw the yellowing groves and brown fields of our first autumn; we heard the long-drawn, wavering, mounting, falling, persistent howl of the thresher among the settings of hive-shaped stacks; we saw the loads of red and yellow corn at the corn-cribs, as men at the board of the green cloth hear the striking of the hours. And we heeded them as little.
If rain poured down, I kept inside my own tent, or visited my Kirghiz neighbours and talked with them, for by that time I had learned to speak their language. Round the large hive-shaped tents fierce dogs keep watch, and small naked sunburnt children tumble about in play. They are charmingly sweet, and it is hard to believe that they will grow up into tall rough half-wild Kirghizes.
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