ch," answered Brother John; "I think something has
happened."

I struck a match, which burnt up very well, for the air was quite still.
In the light of it I saw first the anxious faces of our party--how
ghastly they looked!--and next the Kalubi who had risen and was waving
his right arm in the air, a right arm that was bloody and _lacked the
hand_.

"The god has visited me and taken away my hand!" he moaned in a wailing
voice.

I don't think anybody spoke; the thing was beyond words, but we tried to
bind the poor fellow's arm up by the light of matches. Then we sat down
again and watched.

The darkness grew still denser as the thick of the cloud passed over the
moon, and for a while the silence, that utter silence of the tropical
forest at night, was broken only by the sound of our breathing, the buzz
of a few mosquitoes, the distant splash of a plunging crocodile and the
stifled groans of the mutilated man.

Again I saw, or thought I saw--this may have been half an hour
later--that black shadow dart towards us, as a pike darts at a fish in
a pond. There was another scuffle, just to my left--Hans sat between me
and the Kalubi--followed by a single prolonged wail.

"The king-man has gone," whispered Hans. "I felt him go as though a wind
had blown him away. Where he was there is nothing but a hole."

Of a sudden the moon shone out from behind the clouds. In its sickly
light about half-way between us and the edge of the clearing, say thirty
yards off, I saw--oh! what did I see! The devil destroying a lost soul.
At least, that is what it looked like. A huge, grey-black creature,
grotesquely human in its shape, had the thin Kalubi in its grip. The
Kalubi's head had vanished in its maw and its vast black arms seemed to
be employed in breaking him to pieces.

Apparently he was already dead, though his feet, that were lifted off
the ground, still moved feebly.

I sprang up and covered the beast with the rifle which was cocked,
getting full on to its head which showed the clearest, though this was
rather guesswork, since I could not see distinctly the fore-sight. I
pulled, but either the cap or the powder had got a little damp on
the journey and hung fire for the fraction of a second. In that
infinitesimal time the devil--it is the best name I can give the
thing--saw me, or perhaps it only saw the light gleaming on the barrel.
At any rate it dropped the Kalubi, and as though some intelligence
warned it what to expect