rm.

The throb of the drums and the roar of the people who knew not but that
this act was in accordance with the rules, continued. The priests remained
motionless: expectant. Bakahenzie stood rigid as if paralysed by the
unexpected: the knife was a blue snake in his hand.

Half blinded with sweat, with his muscles cracking, Birnier staggered on
with the heavy burden, dragging the nude body after him. Hours seemed to
pass, each second of which might bring a spear in his back before he
reached the place before the temple. He slid the idol into the hole and
turned.

From the tumult of sound the screech of Bakahenzie shot up like a snipe
from a rice field. The other wizards sprang with him. The moonlight kissed
a spearhead beside the stone figure of Mungongo by the Sacred Fires.
Birnier leaped, plucked the spear, caught zu Pfeiffer in his arms and
raised him shoulder high that all might see.

At the entrance of the enclosure Bakahenzie and the other two were
arrested by astonishment. Lowering the body to the base of the idol which
leaned sideways in a drunken leer, Birnier lifted the spear and brought it
down accurately between zu Pfeiffer's left arm and breast, and dropping
swiftly upon his knees to cover his actions, slashed his own left forearm.
Then he jumped to his feet and held the blooded spear aloft as he cried
aloud:

"The god hath taken his own!"

Bakahenzie was the first to see that the white breast of the victim was
indeed deluged in blood; perhaps the veneration engendered by "the fingers
of Tarum" moved beneath the blood lust.

"The god hath taken his own!" he repeated in a piercing scream. Marufa
echoed the shout. As they turned the cry was ricocheted beyond the
farthest hill.

"The god hath taken his own!"

CHAPTER 31

The reflection of a shaft of moonlight through the half-completed thatch
upon zu Pfeiffer's "magic" mirror, which the natives had not dared to
remove, set afire the sapphires upon his bracelet as he sat rigidly in a
camp chair in a suit of pyjamas. Upon the bed lay Birnier, nursing his
bandaged left arm. Now and again the thrumming, chanting and the shrilling
of the saturnalia without rose into discordant yells like a gust of wind
whipping tree-tops into fury.

Zu Pfeiffer appeared taciturn and suspicious. Perhaps the slackening of
his will, tautened to meet death as his caste demanded that he should, and
the confrontation of the object o