L. Trotski: Lenin. London, 1925.

Angelica Balabanoff: Evinnerungen und Erlebnisse. Berlin, 1927.
Count Paul Beckendorff: Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo. Lon- don, 1927.
James Colquhoun: Adventures in Red Russia. London, 1927.
Bishop Bury: Russia from Within.
G. Zinovieff: N. Lenin: his Life and Work. Undated pam- phlet of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
Laski: Karl Marx: an Essay. Fabian Society, London, undated.
Pamphlets by Lenin, and various publications of the Socialist Labour Press, Independent Labour Party, Communist Party of Great Britain, Fabian Society and other sub- versive associations.
Articles in Edinburgh Review, Vols. 227, 229, 232, 234, 239; Contemporary Review, March, 1924; Foreign Affairs, vol. 2; Fortnightly Review, vol. 109; Paris Journal : Geo. London’s articles, September, 1927.
Sherr “Sie
ae Seear 7 5
(1) Persia
Ismailians or Assassins—Foundation, to90>—Romantic initiation— Hassan’s supernatural clains—Devotion to the death—Crusaders terror- ised—Mongol invasion—‘ The Arrows of the Sultan.”’
HE Ismailians, Ishmaelites or Assassins were a
military and religious Order, and it is perhaps unfair
to regard them as a merely criminal organisation. In a
sense they might be classified as Nationalists, and they were
probably no more criminal than the Serbian Black Hand,
but to classify them among the humanitarian societies would invite scepticism.
It must be remembered, however, that, when they were defeated at Alamut, their vast library was committed to the flames with all their records and philosophical works, and we are therefore restricted to the narratives of their con- querors, who were naturally prejudiced against them and desired to aggravate their infamy. The name of Assassin was not chosen by them, and originally meant merely a con- sumer of hashish, an Indian hemp gum with properties similar to opium ; the medieval Latin word assassinus and the English assassin came to mean a treacherous murderer owing to the alleged cut-throat propensities of the Order.
The founder was Hassan Sabbah, a missionary from the Moslem school at Cairo in the year 1090. His growing influence aroused jealousy and led to his exile. A terrible storm assailed his ship and the crew were giving themsclves up for lost when he allayed their fears by declaring, ‘‘ Allah hath promised that no evil shall befall me’’; and, sure enough the storm passed. The sailors recognised a miracle and became his devoted followers. They landed on the Persian Gulf and established themselves in the fortress of Alamut on the borders of the Persian province of Irak- Adjemi.
Hassan took the title of Lord of the Mountains, and was
207
208 SECRET SOCIETIES
known to the Crusaders as the Old Man of the Mountains. At first he was regarded as a dependent of the Khalif of Egypt, bufshe soon established an independent Order with himself as supreme chief or Seydna or Sidna, from which the Spanish Cid and the Italian signore are said to be derived.
The nine degrees of the Cairo lodges were reduced to seven, and initiation was conducted on the following lines. Hassan possessed another palace in a beautiful valley amid high mountains and perpendicular cliffs. Here were dreamland gardens and perfumed pavilions sheltering damsels as en- trancing as houris, a foretaste of the Moslem paradise. Aspirants were drugged with hashish and taken to this happy valley, where for a while they wandered at their will and sur- rendered themselves to pleasure. But before they reached satiety they were drugged again and brought back to Alamut, where the Old Man of the | fountains told them that they had tasted heaven and would return thither for the rest of their days, or even after death, once they had accomplished their tasks. Thus they were trained for the performance of the most desperate deeds.
Despising danger, death and torture, they went forth joyfully to accomplish their master’s behests. No sooner was a victim pointed out than they donned the Assassin’s uniform, a white tunic with a red sash, and set out to slay. Distance never deterred them, their patience was infinite and they rarely failed in their designs. If they were caught, they died without a murmur, and the most exquisite tortures could not extract from them a moan ora confession. Daggers, not swords, were their weapons, and so devoted was their solidarity that, if one were thwarted, another would always be waiting to take his place. Before the Emir Kara Soukhor was slain, no less than twelve Assassins suc- cessively perished.
Besides these, there was a higher grade of Assassin, known as Fedovies or the Devoted, also blind fanatics but not dependent on the allurements of a posthumous paradise. They alone were initiated into the secrets of the Order and strictly observed all the rules of the Muhammadan religion in the intervals of assassination. To them the greater tasks
SOCIETY OF ASSASSINS ae
were entrusted, such as the killing of potentates, and their organisation left nothing to be desired.
Hassan, Lord of the Mountains, led a strange life of solitary grandeur in his inaccessible nest, occupying his leisure with theology and devotional exercises. He was like a modern general, entrenched in his headquarters, far from the battle- line, receiving minute reports and directing a plan of cam- paign. The object of his murders was to acquire fame and power by inspiring fear. There was also a spirit of relentless rapture about his acts. He regarded himself as a supreme judge, divinely appointed for the execution of justice. For instance, he scrupled not to kill his two sons, one for tasting wine, the other for “killing a day,” in other words, for wasting his time.
One method of impressing his followers was to claim super- natural gifts. His establishment of a pigeon-post enabled him to prove his knowledge of what happened at a distance with surprising rapidity. Oncea Persian Khalif meditated an attack and the destruction of the Order, but, on retiring to rest, he found a dagger on his pillow with a letter saying, “What has been placed beside thy head may be planted in thy heart.”
Discipline and terrorism were intensified under Hassan’s successors. Henry, Count of Champagne, related how he visited Reshad-ed-Din and was conducted round his fortress. The Lord of the Mountains announced that he would show his power. He clapped his hands and two sentinels imme- diately stabbed themselves, falling dead at his feet. Where- upon the Lord observed with a smile, “‘ Say but the word, and, at a sign from me, every one of my servants here shall fall thus to the ground.”
On another occasion, the Khalif sent a messenger to sum- mon the Assassins to submission. The messenger was led to the battlements and a similar scene occurred. The Lord said to a servant, ‘“‘ Kill thyself,’ and he did so without a word ; then to another, ‘‘ Hurl thyself from yonder tower,” and he immediately obeyed. And the Lord turned to the messenger, saying, ‘I have seventy thousand followers who obey me thus implicitly. Go and tell that to thy master.”
oO
\
210 SECRET SOCIETIES
The number may have been exaggerated, but Reshad-ed- Din was believed to possess forty thousand followers, all bound to him body and soul.
The Assassins spread to Syria and slew many Crusaders. Philip Augustus went in such fear of them that he never stirred abroad without a strong bodyguard, and Richard Lionheart was accused of having instigated their attempts to murder the French King. Such charges were common at the time, and Barbarossa’s nephew, Frederick II, was ex- communicated for causing the Duke of Bavaria to be killed by the Assassins. Nor did they confine their energies to the East. In 1158, at the siege of Milan, a member of the Order was discovered on the point of stabbing the Emperor.
The arrival of the Mongols brought disaster to the Assas- sins. Roku-ed-Din, Lord of the Mountains, was put to death and his fortress taken. In 1260, the Mameluk Sultan of Egypt defeated the Mongols, and the Assassins returned to their fastness, paying tribute and earning the name of “the arrows of the Sultan’”’ by their readiness to execute his will.
Their notoriety and power have passed away, but the Order still exists on a fragmentary scale in Persia and Syria and India, perhaps also among the Druses struggling against French imperialism amid the mountains of Lebanon.
AUTHORITIES
A. P. Marras: Fraternities of the Middle Ages. 1865.
Hammer : Origin, Power and Fall of the Assassins.
S. Guyard: Un Grand Maitre des Assassins aux Temps de Saladin, Paris, 1877.
THUGS 211
(2) India
Assassins begat Thugs—Kali, the goddess of evil—Ritual—Methods of murder—lInitiation—Restrictions—Settlements—Long immunity—Extent of operations—Suppressed, 1835—Possible survival.
There is some evidence to connect the Assassins with the Thugs. Assassins certainly came to India when pursued by the exterminating swords of the Mongols and they were there known as Borahs, which is the name the Thugs give them- selves in their own jargon. Dates seem to harmonise, and the connection would not clash with the Thug tradition of their origin.
This tradition represents seven clans of nomadic Moslems hovering about the neighbourhood of Delhi in the thirteenth century. Without entirely giving up their old creed, they were attracted by the worship of the Hindu goddess Kali, and devoted themselves to her service. All worship being based on love of good or fear of evil, the Thugs decided to propitiate Kali, the wife of Shiva and goddess of destruction. According to Western minds, she is far from prepossessing in appearance. She has a blue face, streaked with yellow, purple lips streaming with blood, tusklike teeth, widespread hair braided with green serpents, a collar of golden skulls descending almost to her knees, ten arms each holding a murderous weapon or sometimes a human head dripping with gore. She revels in human blood, presides over storms and hurricanes, plague and pestilence, ever delighting in destruction.
In the beginning, she determined to destroy the whole human race, sparing only her faithful worshippers. The victims were at first slain by the sword and the slaughter was so great that no man would have remained alive but for * the intervention of Vishnu, the Preserver, who caused the blood of the victims to become the seed of a newrace. Kali then sought to circumvent him by ordering strangulation instead of death by the sword. At first she used to bury
212 . SECRET. SOCIETIES
the corpses herself and destroy all traces of them, but one day a Thug spied upon her, and she decreed that in future ‘burials must be done by the stranglers themselves with the kussee or sacred pickaxe, which she appointed for grave- digging. She also announced that she would afford no further assistance save by auguries.
Accordingly, every murderous expedition is preceded by the sacrifice of a sheep. The Thugs set up a silver or brazen image of Kali, images of a lizard and a snake, a noose and a pickaxe upon an altar, scatter flowers over them, offer fruit and cakes, burn incense and pray for success. They then cut off the sheep’s head, place its right fore-foot in its mouth and lay it with a burning lamp in front of the image of the goddess. A fluid is poured upon the sheep’s mouth, and, if certain twitches are observed, the approval of the goddess may be assumed. If not, the expedition must be post- poned.
The Thugs took their name from a word meaning a de- ceiver, and treachery was always the keynote of their cam- paigns. They preferred to catch their victims asleep and used every sort of wile to take them off their guard. Usually appearing as wealthy merchants or inoffensive artisans, they would travel about the country in parties of ten or twenty or as many as fifty, and seek opportunities of associating with travellers either asking to be allowed to accompany a caravan for protection or finding a pretext for hovering in the neighbourhood.
Sometimes two gangs would proceed a short distance apart. If the first gang aroused the suspicion of travellers, it would signal to the second gang, who pretended to share the suspicion and aroused confidence by driving off their confederates. Then it was easy to find an opportunity for strangling.
In dealing with solitary travellers, two or perhaps three Thugs were considered essential. One would creep up be- hind and fling a silk cloth round his victim’s neck, holding one end, then his accomplice would rush forward and seize the other end ; the head would be pressed forward and the process of strangulation was easy. It is a method much
THE GODDESS KALI 213
favoured by French hooligans, under the name of Je coup du Pere Francois. If a third Thug were present, he would seize the victim’s legs and throw him to the ground. Some Thugs prided themselves on being able to kill a man single- handed, but the greatest distinction of all was earned by pulling a man off his horse and strangling him—a distinction that conferred lustre on a family for generations.
The victims were robbed, but robbery was not the object of the crime, which was intended solely to gratify the goddess Kali. There was no wanton cruelty and absolutely no remorse. However numerous the party assailed, all had to be slain so that none might live to tell the tale. Only young boys were taken prisoners and initiated as Thugs. Their training began when they were ten or twelve years of age, but they were not taken out until they were eighteen or even twenty. Once a Thug always a Thug, and none were ever known to abandon a career which they regarded in the light of a religion. They took their oaths of fidelity on a sacred pickaxe and were consecrated with elaborate ritual.
Among the people they were forbidden to kill were dhobis or laundrymen, bards, dancing men or boys, pro- fessional musicians, sweepers, oil-vendors, blacksmiths and carpenters when travelling together, maimed and leprous persons. Like the Albanians, they would never attack a party containing a woman.
Nor would they ever kill tigers, for they believed that this would augur an early death. Indeed, there seems to have existed a fellow-feeling, for they also believed that no tiger would ever kill a Thug unless to punish him for having cheated a comrade in dividing spoils.
After a while, most of them gave up their nomadic life, settling in villages under the protection of native chiefs and cultivating their land peacefully when not engaged in mur- derous raids. To those who did not know their character, they seemed the most amiable, respectable and intelligent members of the community. Sometimes they rose to the middle and higher ranks of native society, living apparently in the odour of sanctity without ever arousing the faintest breath of suspicion.
214 . SECRET SOCIETIES
It was to this amazing secrecy that they owed their long — immunity. In spite of its network of spies, the British Government never suspected their existence until 1799, after the conquest of Seringapatam, when a hundred Thugs were apprehended in the neighbourhood of Bangalore. Large numbers of native soldiers used to go home on leave, fail to return, and be suspected of desertion, when in reality they had been strangled by Thugs. British magistrates long refused to believe in Thuggee, though definite evidence was brought before them. Even in incomprehensible India such crimes seemed absolutely incredible.
Yet, when the organisation was at last exposed, it was found to have existed on a very large scale. Ten thousand Thugs were reported in 1826, each accounting for an average of three victims a year. Two thousand were arrested during the next few years in the Jubulpoor and Central India es- tablishment alone. One Thug, hanged at Lucknow, was convicted of having strangled six hundred persons. Ano- ther, an octogenarian, confessed to nine hundred and ninety- nine victims, declaring that to be a mystical number.
The suppression of the organisation took years to accom- plish, and may be said to have been completed in 1835, through the energy of the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck. The Thugs themselves ascribed their discomfiture to a breach of the rule which forbade the murder of women.
Whether Thuggee has been entirely stamped out, is not positively known. Thugs who survived the great repression resorted to poisoning and drugging instead of strangulation. As late as 1882, a Thug confessed to having poisoned ninety- six travellers in the Punjab between 1867 and 1879, and he. had evidently been a member of a band that had escaped the notice of the Government. Mysterious murders still occur in India, and men whisper that the spirit of Thuggee has not yet ben entirely exorcised even by the stillbirth of an Indian democracy.
AUTHORITIES
Captain W. H. Sleeman: The Thugs or Phansigars of India. Philadelphia, 1839.
A. P. Marras: Fraternities of the Middle Ages. 1865.
VOODOO WORSHIP 215
(3) West Indies.
Leh, eh! Bomba, heu, heu! Cango bafio tay! Cango mounay de tay | Cango do ke la! Cango le !—Voodoo sacrificial song.
Origin of Voodoo worship—Heathenised christianity—Trials for canni- balism—Priesthood—Political influence—Ritual and ceremonies—A human sacrifice—The spirit of the age.
STRANGE fruit of religion grafted on barbarous minds
has been provided by Voodoo worship, the sub-
terranean semi-State worship of the free and independent Republic of Haiti.
Haiti is the western part of the island of San Domingo, ceded in 1697 by the Spaniards to the French and populated by African slaves. They revolted in 1803 and set up a comic Empire with Dukes of Marmalade and Lemonade, lapsed into a republic in 1859, and submitted to occupation by the United States in 1915.
The slaves had brought with them a secret society to perpetuate serpent-worship and cannibal orgies known as Voodoo, a name that may be derived from the African town of Hoodoo or the Guinea word houedo, a non-poisonous snake. The French wrote it Vaudoux, and there are sug- gestions that this was a dialect form of Vaudois, early Pro- testant missionaries, in which case Voodoo worship may be heathenised Christianity, vaguely recalling that of the Maoris, who adopted the hymn, “ Mothers of Salem,” as their principal war-chaunt. The religious blend is further illustrated by the choice of Christian festivals—Twelfth Night, the eves of Easter, Christmas and the New Year—for special orgies of cannibalism. An European trader relates how his housekeeper once refused to buy pork lest human flesh should be substituted. ‘‘ But I have often seen you buy pork,” he said. ‘‘ Never at Easter,’ she shuddered.
The Americans may have succeeded in suppressing human sacrifices, but the old practice remained widespread until they established their authority. Secrecy was imposed
216 SECRET SOCIETIES
under pain of death, and the more educated Haitians, who are deeply sensitive to the opinion of white men, sought to ignore rather than to eradicate the Voodoos. Attention was drawn to them by a trial at New Orleans in August, 1863, but the alleged cannibals were acquitted after proof that they had exercised a pacifying influence during the American Civil War and prevented negro risings in Louisiana. Round about 1864, there were many Voodoo trials in Haiti, and the reforming Presidents, Geffrard and Boisrond-Canal, were cast out of office by the overwhelming influence of the sect. Geffrard had had eight persons shot at Port-au- Prince, the capital, for immolating a girl of twelve and drinking her blood blended with rum.
The short persecution being ended, Voodoos became more and more powerful. President Salnave performed human sacrifices in 1863, while actually in office; President Hyp- polite used to keep and display the skeletons of his victims. In 1884, the President and most of the Ministers of State were active participants in Voodoo rites. This was quite in accordance with tradition, for Toussaint l’Ouverture, the liberator of Haiti, had been a Papaloi, and so were the black sovereigns of Haiti, Emperor Dessalines and King Christopher.
Papalois and Mamalois are or were the high priests and priestesses, who conducted the human sacrifices to the ser- pent-god and pronounced his oracles. Loz is the negro pronunciation of the French word voz, and the names ac- cordingly suggest paternal or maternal sovereignty—Papa- King, Mamma-King. These celebrants lead depraved lives, enjoy unlimited potations, and are usually covered with sores, often leprous, but they contrive to attain to an evil old age and are feared by all. They possess an extensive knowledge of herbs as poisons and antidotes, and claim the power to cause slow, instantaneous or merely apparent death, as well as madness, paralysis, impotency, idiocy, poverty, riches, and invulnerability. No man dares disobey them, no woman resist them.
Voodooism permeated the whole island and was considered the prime safeguard of national independence. Few of its
CANNIBAL RITUAL 217
devotees were initiated into its secrets, but their solidarity endowed it with sufficient power to decide the fate of govern- ments.
The best accounts of Voodoo ritual are to be found in the German writer, Hans Heinz Ewers’ romance, which sum- marises all the evidence available. There are many ancient signs and symbols. An oval black stone is found in the forests and kept in a plate full of oil, which is replenished every Friday. The stone tells fortunes by rapping the plate on spiritualistic lines.
Festivals are held in temples far away in the forests. During the previous night, a sinister signal is heard in the streets, the beating of the neklessin, an iron triangle, to summon the faithful. Their preparation is to remain in a bath containing a solution of rotten roots until all the water has evaporated, usually three to six weeks.
The temple is a big straw hut in a clearing, with an avenue of spears surmounted by the corpses of black or white hens. At the entrance is a sacred tree, strewn with plates broken in its honour; on the walls are pictures taken from old newspapers—Bismarck, Queen Victoria, or comic cartoons. On all hands are throngs of negroes drinking out of gourds, all naked save for scarlet handkerchiefs round their loins. Big torches hang to the beams with the smoke escaping through holes in the roof, and their red light has a fantastic effect on the black, shining bodies. Logs and faggots are heaped up and kindled with torches before an altar, where stands a basket containing the sacred serpent-god. Drum- mers are bending over their drums, Houn, Hountor and Houn Torgri, dedicated to the apostles Peter, Paul and John, while behind them stands the chief drummer, a Hercules, lashing the great drum Assauntor, made out of the skin of a dead Papaloi.
Suddenly the drums cease as the Papaloi advances, a thin old negro naked save for a few white handkerchiefs. He invokes the god of thunder and the god of winds. Five trembling adepts enter, three men and two women, and he orders them to leap into the fire before the altar. They hesitate and are pushed in, all the congregation laughing
218 SECRET SOCIETIES
over their antics Among the flames. Presently the Papaloi leads them te a smoking cauldron besides the snakes’ basket. He invokes Opete, the divine turkey, and Assouguie, the celestial chatterbox. In honour of these the adepts must snatch pieces of meat out of the boiling-water and distribute them to the congregation on cabbage-leaves. Again and again they dip and burn themselves until everybody is served. Then they are received as members of the church in the name of Attashollos, the great spirit of the worlds, and friends pour oil to relieve their burns.
Now two black bucks and a white one are dragged forward by the horns. The Papaloi pierces their throats with a big knife, and cuts off their heads at one blow, elevating them to the drummers and worshippers and finally casting them into the cauldron with an invocation to Agaou Kata Badagri, Master of Chaos. Meanwhile, attendants have collected the warm blood in bowls and passed it to the congregation. A white participant relates, ‘“I drank some of the blood, at first a little, then more and more. I felt a strange drunken- ness Come over me, a savage drunkenness such as I had never known.”
The bodies of the bucks having been turned on a spit over the fire and devoured half raw, a Mamaloi enters singing the Voodoo sacrificial song: “‘ Lei, eh ! Bomba, heu.” Drunken lips make antiphon: ‘“‘ Cango bafio tay!” A small drum accompanies the song, which grows softer and softer, almost fades away. The Mameloi makes strange passes with her arms in the air. The crowd waits silently in great expecta- tion. At last she cries, ‘‘ Draw near, Houedo listens, Houe- do, the great serpent.” And they all ask questions, trivi- alities for the most part. “Shall I obtain another donkey this year? Will my crops flourish?” The answers are oracular, but all are satisfied and cast coins into a hat.
The serpent is now released from its basket. It is long and yellow-black. Bewildered by the light, it begins to hiss and coils itself round an arm of the priestess. The faithful prostrate themselves, touching the polished floor . with their foreheads, adoring the serpent and swearing eternal fidelity to the priestess.
BLOOD AND RUM 219
She opens another basket to throw white and black hens into the air. No sooner are they released than the faithful leap upon them, tear off their heads and greedily suck the fresh blood.
Six men now gather round the Mamaloi. They wear devil-masks, and their bodies are smeared with blood from fresh goat-skins over their shoulders. ‘‘ Fear, fear of Cimbi Kita!” they yell, and the crowd draws back, leaving a free space. A girl of ten is led in with a rope about her neck. She looks round in astonishment and seems anxious, but does not cry out. She stumbles, intoxicated by the rum they have given her.
The Papaloi approaches her and utters words of solemn consecration: “I consign you to Azilit and Don Pedro, that they may convey you to Cimbi Kita, the Prince of all the Devils.” He presses pieces of horn into the crisp hair of the child and sets fire to them. But before the frightened child can raise her hands to the flames, the Mamaloi leaps forward like a maniac with hoarse screams. Her fingers thrust themselves round the victim’s neck, raise it upwards and press and press.
““ Aa-bo-bo !”’ she cries.
It seems as though she would never let her victim go. At last the high priest tears away the dead child and cuts off the head with one blow of his knife, as he had done with the goats. He casts the head into the cauldron, the blood is collected in basins, the body is hacked and spitted over the fire, the sacrificial song is taken up in tones of thunder: “Leh, eh! Bomba, heu, heu! Cango bafio tay!” The faithful leap at the morsels, fighting for them like wild beasts. The blood is mixed with strong rum and they fight for that still more savagely.
The six men remove their masks and for a while all is tense silence, save for a tiny drum gently tapped. The devils’ dance, the dance of Don Pedro, is about to begin. For long minutes the Papaloi remains motionless. He begins with slow movements, first his head, then his stomach in syncopated time. All his muscles are extended. He is the prey of a strange excitement that communicates itself
220 SECRET SOCIETIES
like a fluid to all present. No one moves yet, but all are watching each other’s eyes, all their nerves shivering. The dancer spins slowly, then faster ; the drummer drums more vigorously and another begins to drum too. Now the black bodies are all beginning to move. One raises a foot, another an arm. They devour each other’s eyes. Two have al- ready clasped each other by the waist and have begun to jazz. The drums are rolling, howling, the one of human skin emitting strident, voluptuous cries. All the niggers are spinning, charging, kicking, bounding, flinging themselves upon the ground, beating the soil with their heads, making frantic movements with arms and legs, howling in savage rhythm, while the Mamaloi raises the divine serpent in their midst and chaunts, “‘ Leh, eh ! Bomba heu, heu....”
Mr. Bertrand Russell declares that the twentieth century will pass down to history as the Age of Lenin, that Kalmuck Papaloi. Should we not look further back and seek the inspiration of our times, the origin of our mass-manias, the sanguinary lust of our new imperialism, even the crude chorybantics of our immodest youth in the worship of serpents among the jungles of Guinea, in the frenzied holo- causts accomplished by the Voodoos of the West Indies ?
AUTHORITIES
Moreau de Saint Mery: Saint Domingue. Philadelphia, 1797.
Moreau de Saint Mery: Description de l’Isle de Saint Domingue. Philadelphia, 1708.
A. B. Ellis: The Land of Fetish. London, 1883.
Otto Henne am Rhyn: Das Buch der Mysterien. 1891.
Sir Spencer St. John: Hayti or the Black Republic. London, 1884.
H. V. Pritchard : Where Black rules White. London, 1goo.