sy were
Bakahenzie and wizards, great and small, in the preparing of amulets of
the hearts of lions, livers of leopards and galls of birds, and the
brewing of potent decoctions to be smeared with parrot feathers upon the
warriors old and young against the evil eye and the spirits of the night.
And dispensed by Bakahenzie and Marufa, from whom had come the original
idea, was a special and rather expensive charm against the coughing
monsters, which was made by, and invested with, the magic of the King-God
himself, a can key. That morning had there been a special meeting of the
craft and the chiefs before the sacred enclosure, where they had looked
upon the sacred form of the King-God and heard the magic elephant's ear
give them instructions and a prophecy. Around and about a hundred fires,
flickering mystically in the moist cavern of the forest, shuffled and
chanted the warriors invoking the aid of Tarum, the spirit of their
ancestors.

On the threshold of his hut squatted a sullen Zalu Zako. He had discovered
that he had escaped from the river bearing him to the pool of celibacy to
find that the bird had been captured by another. Although he had known
that before attaining his desire he would have had to extricate Bakuma
from the net of the tabu, yet, lover-like and human, that task
unconsidered had seemed as easy as stalking a buck in a wood. But the joy
of his own release had been dissipated as a cloud of dust by a shower by
the news of MYalu's abduction of the girl and his desertion. Zalu Zako was
so obsessed by chagrin at this wholly unexpected appearance of a rival
that he was inclined to regret that he had ever thought of the move by
which he could escape his late doom and rescue Bakuma at the same time.
The illusion of nearness to the desired object had served naturally to
whet his appetite; the balked love motive dominated him almost to the
exclusion of political affairs. What his official status was now that all
precedent had been broken Bakahenzie did not know and had not decided, and
Zalu Zako cared less.

Though his faith in most of the tribal theology was unshaken, he did not
believe in the sanctity, or the necessity, of the marriage of the Bride of
the Banana, because he had a defensive complex of desire for her that
inhibited that belief. Towards MYalu, Zalu Zako's natural reaction was
revenge. The matter was how to accomplish that end. To reveal to
Bakahenzie that he was the lover of Bakuma would be tant