nsa. Now the Asika lifted it from her
streaming face and held it on high, then she lowered it to the level
of her breast, and holding it in both hands, walked to the edge of
the dais, whereon priests, disguised as fiends, began to leap at it,
striving to reach it with their fingers and snatch it from her grasp.
One by one they leapt with the most desperate energy, each man being
allowed to make three attempts, and Alan noted that this novel jumping
competition was watched with the deepest interest by all the audience,
at the time he knew not why.

The first two were evidently elderly men who failed to come anywhere
near the mark. Their failure was received with shouts of derision. They
sank exhausted to the ground and from the motion of his body Alan could
see that one of them was weeping, while the other remained sullenly
silent. Then a younger man advanced and at the third try almost grasped
the fetish. Indeed he would have grasped it had he not met with foul
play, for the Asika, seeing that he was about to succeed, lifted it an
inch or two, so that he also missed and with a groan joined the band of
the defeated. Next appeared a fourth priest, even more horribly arrayed
than those before him, but Alan noticed that his mask was of the
lightest, and that his garments consisted chiefly of paint, the main
idea of his make-up being that of a skeleton. He was a thin active
fellow, and all the watching thousands greeted him with a shout. For
a few seconds he stood back gazing at the mask as a wolf might at an
unapproachable bone. Then suddenly he ran forward and sprang into the
air. Such an amazing jump Alan had never seen before. So high was
it indeed that his head came level with that of the fetish, which he
snatched with both hands tearing it from Asika's grasp. Coming to the
ground again with a thud, he began to caper to and fro, kissing the
mask, while the audience shouted:

"Little Bonsa has chosen. What fate for the fallen? Ask her, priest?"

The man stopped his capering and held the mouth of Little Bonsa to his
ear, nodding from time to time as though she were speaking to him and he
heard what she said. Then he passed round the dais where Alan could not
see him, and presently reappeared holding Little Bonsa in his right
hand and in his left a great gold cup. A silence fell upon the place.
He advanced to the first man who had jumped and offered him the cup. He
turned his head away, but a thousand voices thundered "D