Explore "The Flying Girl and her Chum" by L. Frank Baum on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Halfway up the road they noticed on the left a large clearing, in which stood a group of thatched huts. Some women and children -- all with dark skins and poorly dressed -- were lounging around the doorways. These stood silently as the strangers passed by. A little farther along three men, attired in exactly the same manner as the two who were escorting them, were cultivating a garden patch. They gave no indication they were aware of the presence of strangers.
There was something uncanny -- wholly unnatural -- about the manner of their reception and even about the place itself, that caused some of them to harbor forebodings that all was not right. Yet they had experienced no opposition, so far -- no unfriendliness whatsoever.