We will rise as Luata has ordained that we
shall rise, and only thus. No batu may win to the estate of a Galu
by treachery and force of arms while Chal-az lives and may wield
a heavy blow and a sharp spear with true Kro-lus at his back!"
"I hope that I may live to aid you," I replied. "If I had my weapons
and my ammunition, I could do much. Do you know where they are?"
"No," he said, "they have disappeared." And then: "Wait! You
cannot go forth half armed, and garbed as you are. You are going
into the Galu country, and you must go as a Galu. Come!" And
without waiting for a reply, he led me into another apartment, or
to be more explicit, another of the several huts which formed his
cellular dwelling.
Here was a pile of skins, weapons, and ornaments. "Remove your
strange apparel," said Chal-az, "and I will fit you out as a true
Galu. I have slain several of them in the raids of my early days
as a Kro-lu, and here are their trappings."
I saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and as my clothes were by now
so ragged as to but half conceal my nakedness, I had no regrets in
laying them aside. Stripped to the skin, I donned the red-deerskin
tunic, the leopard-tail, the golden fillet, armlets and leg-ornaments
of a Galu, with the belt, scabbard and knife, the shield, spear,
bow and arrow and the long rope which I learned now for the first
time is the distinctive weapon of the Galu warrior.
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