rms and they fell
upon their faces and lay as though they were dead. A third time she
threw up her arms and they rose and remained so silent that the only
sound to be heard was that of their thick breathing. Then she spoke, or
rather screamed, saying:

"Little Bonsa has come back again, bringing with her the white man whom
she led away," and all the audience answered, "Little Bonsa has come
back again. Once more we see her on the head of the Asika as our fathers
did. Give her a sacrifice. Give her the white man."

"Nay," she screamed back, "the white man is mine. I name him as the next
Mungana."

"Oho!" roared the audience, "Oho! she names him as the next Mungana.
Good-bye, old Mungana! Greeting, new Mungana! When will be the marriage
feast?"

"Tell us, Mungana, tell us," cried the Asika, patting her wretched
husband on the cheek. "Tell us when you mean to die, as you are bound to
do."

"On the night of the second full moon from now," he answered with a
terrible groan that seemed to be wrung out of his heavy heart; "on that
night my soul will be eaten up and my day done. But till then I am
lord of the Asika, and if she forgets it, death shall be her portion,
according to the ancient law."

"Yes, yes," shouted the multitude, "death shall be her portion, and her
lover we will sacrifice. Die in honour, Mungana, as all those died that
went before you."

"Thank Heaven!" muttered Alan to himself, "I am safe from that witch
for the next two months," and through the eye-holes of his mask he
contemplated her with loathing and alarm.

At the moment, indeed, she was not a pleasing spectacle, for in the heat
and excitement of her mad dance she had cast off her gold breast-plate
or stomacher, leaving herself naked except for her kirtle and the thin,
gold-spangled robe upon her shoulders over which streamed her black,
disordered hair. Contrasting strangely in the silver moonlight with her
glistening, copper-coloured body, the mask of Little Bonsa on her head
glared round with its fixed crystal eyes and fiendish smile as she
turned her long neck from side to side. Seen thus she scarcely looked
human, and Alan's heart was filled with pity for the poor bedizened
wretch she named her husband, who had just been forced to announce the
date of his own suicide.

Soon, however, he forgot it, for a new act in the drama had begun. Two
priests clad in horns and tails leapt on to the dais and at a signal
unlaced the mask of Little Bo