‘Ah,’ Jericho says, relief tinged with regret.

The next afternoon, Jericho dresses in the loincloth Nelly’s mother made for him, and the heavy headdress Hector has helped him prepare, sewing the white feathers to the black, attaching them to the wooden frame, ready for this night. Jericho is paired with Hector, and he understands that it is an honour to dance with one so strong. He also knows it is a test. Only the strongest men and the strongest of the women can dance the full twelve hours from dusk to dawn. Hector has done it before, and with all the chiefs present, every one of them, he says that Jericho must let them see that he is strong – a man of the mountain. Such a man, he says, will surely be trusted to carry the cloth to London. Or rather, Jericho thinks, is it that a man who dances the mountain from dusk to dawn cannot walk away and never return? He slaps away the thought and limbers up as if for a cross-country run. He remembers them from school, the hours of running, the exhaustion and the achievement.

But cross-country running is nothing to the dance that lies ahead. At dusk hundreds of dancers circle the amorire: old men, young men, old women, mothers with babies on their hips, small children dancing in pairs. They fill the amorire, each clan with its line of dancers, crossing the ground in step, circling out from each other, and re-forming to circle again. And all the time the kundus mark the beat. The bellybutton tattoos of Jericho’s loincloth mark him as a mountain man, and in his place beside Hector he feels exactly as he is: participant and witness. Around his ankles are small ruffs of dried grass and in his armbands are pungent herbs. On his head is the cumbersome headdress he wears with a sense both of pride and fraudulence.

For the first hours, he keeps abreast of Hector, joined with him in a dance that becomes increasingly mesmeric. By midnight, somewhere in the middle of the long twelve hours of dark, many of the dancers leave the amorire; they stand at the side, lie on the platform, or sit on the ground watching. Jericho dances out for water from a gourd, a stick of sugarcane. When he lingers, Hector waves him back and he returns to the beat of the drums. The moon is bright, the dancers cast shadows on the ground.

After another few hours, only the strongest of the dancers remain. The dreadlocked women are dancing with capes of bark-cloth hanging from their shoulders. The hours go slowly, the kundus slow the beat, and Jericho goes out again for more sugarcane, cold water from a gourd. He wants to lie on the grass and sleep, but he sees the chiefs on their platform watching as he hesitates, and Hector makes a circuit of the amorire alone. When Hector comes level with Jericho, he dances out, takes a stick of sugarcane, leans in towards Jericho. Do not fail me, brother-man. The outline of Huvaemo is clear against the night sky. The white feathers shine, the anklets of dried grass rustle in the moonlight. Jericho removes the heavy headdress, hands it to Napo and returns to the dance.