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And behold! a darling little fairy of about twelve or fifteen years of age, slim, and already a coquette, already a woman, dressed in a long robe of shaded dark blue china crape, covered with embroidery representing bats gray bats, black bats, golden bats. Suddenly there are steps on the stairs, the light footsteps of barefooted women pattering over the white mats.
I went to the bottom of the garret turnpike. The little barred door stood open, and I heard I was sure that I heard light, irregularly pattering footsteps moving about above. It gave me strange shakings of my heart only to listen. So I mustered all my courage not from any fear of Gottfried Gottfried, but rather from the uncertainty of what I should see, and quickly mounted the stair.
Then the hotel manager struck his palms together sharply, and two Chinese "boys" came pattering in from the dining room. With a gesture which was without any kind of emotional expression, the manager indicated the silent crumpled figure on the floor and gave the room number. The Chinamen raised the limp body and carried it to the hall staircase, up which they mounted laboriously.
That wait under the logs seemed interminable, and meanwhile the riflemen within the stockade and the carbineers without exchanged several volleys, and in between there was an indecisive pattering of independent rifles, and Jim saw the vague figures of his comrades falling in the gloom, falling falteringly, without apparent motive.
Even the rabbits, that an hour before had scampered here and there in the brush with their furry feet, would never again go pattering through the sand. The sun shone warmly down. The great world of valley and mountains, gray, severe, unpeopled, was profoundly still, in that wonderful way of the dying year, when even the crickets and locusts have ceased to sing.
But he was not to miss it for long. Just as he was about to knock out his pipe and go to bed, the native came pattering up the slope on excitedly rapid feet; and squatted as usual on the ground beside the American's lounging chair. In Najib's manner there was a scarce-repressed jubilant thrill. His beady eyes shone wildly.
I saw the bed for a moment, distinctly, and it appeared to me that Smith lay therein, with the sheets pulled up over his head. The light was gone, and I could hear big drops of rain pattering upon the leaden gutter below the open window. My mood was strange, detached, and characterized by vagueness.
The echo of a distant organ stole into the room and the soft solemn notes harmonised with the melancholy pattering of the raindrops and the gusts of wind that moaned fitfully around the house. In a sudden revulsion of feeling the life he had mapped out for himself seemed horrible beyond thought. He could not bear it.
The warrior that followed, passing the word behind him, rode after, and likewise disappeared in the darkness; then another, and another, until five hundred mounted men were engulfed in that fearful-looking abysm. Not one remained upon the upper plain. For a while there struck upon the ear a continued pattering sound the sound of a thousand hoofs as they fell upon rocks and loose shingle.
Toward morning it grows chilly, and I am but fitfully dozing in the early gray, when I am awakened by the bleating and the pattering feet of a small sea of Angora goats. Starting up, I discover that I am at that moment the mysterious and interesting subject of conversation between four goatherds, who have apparently been quietly surveying my sleeping form for some minutes.
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