thered, like to leather
dried in the sun; the lower lip hung pendulously upon the prominent and
bony jaw. Two yellow, tusk-like teeth projected one at each corner of
the great mouth; all the rest were gone, and from time to time it licked
the white gums with a red-pointed tongue as a snake might do. But the
chief wonder of the Thing lay in its eyes that were large and round,
perhaps because the flesh had shrunk away from them, which gave them
the appearance of being set in the hollow orbits of a skull. These eyes
literally shone like fire; indeed, at times they seemed positively to
blaze, as I have seen a lion's eyes do in the dark. I confess that the
aspect of the creature terrified and for a while paralysed me; to think
that it was human was awful.

I glanced at the others and saw that they, too, were frightened. Stephen
turned very white. I thought that he was going to be sick again, as
he was after he drank the coffee out of the wrong bowl on the day we
entered Mazitu-land. Brother John stroked his white beard and muttered
some invocation to Heaven to protect him. Hans exclaimed in his
abominable Dutch:

"_Oh! keek, Baas, da is je lelicher oud deel!_" ("Oh! look, Baas, there
is the ugly old devil himself!")

Jerry went flat on his face among the Pongo, muttering that he saw Death
before him. Only Mavovo stood firm; perhaps because as a witch-doctor of
repute he felt that it did not become him to show the white feather in
the presence of an evil spirit.

The toad-like creature on the platform swayed its great head slowly as
a tortoise does, and contemplated us with its flaming eyes. At length
it spoke in a thick, guttural voice, using the tongue that seemed to
be common to this part of Africa and indeed to that branch of the Bantu
people to which the Zulus belong, but, as I thought, with a foreign
accent.

"So _you_ are the white men come back," it said slowly. "Let me count!"
and lifting one skinny hand from the ground, it pointed with the
forefinger and counted. "One. Tall, with a white beard. Yes, that is
right. Two. Short, nimble like a monkey, with hair that wants no comb;
clever, too, like a father of monkeys. Yes, that is right. Three.
Smooth-faced, young and stupid, like a fat baby that laughs at the sky
because he is full of milk, and thinks that the sky is laughing at him.
Yes, that is right. All three of you are just the same as you used to
be. Do you remember, White Beard, how, while we killed you,