the sky, so that the gloom was
great, in places almost that of night.

Oh! it was a melancholy journey as, filled with fears, we stole, a
pallid throng, from trunk to trunk, searching them for the notches that
indicated our road, and speaking only in whispers, lest the sound of our
voices should attract the notice of the dreadful god. After a mile or
two of this we became aware that its notice was attracted despite our
precautions, for at times we caught glimpses of some huge grey thing
slipping along parallel to us between the boles of the trees. Hans
wanted me to try a shot, but I would not, knowing that the chances of
hitting it were small indeed. With only three charges, or rather three
caps left, it was necessary to be saving.

We halted and held a consultation, as a result of which we decided
that there was no more danger in going on than in standing still or
attempting to return. So we went on, keeping close together. To me, as
I was the only one with a rifle, was accorded what I did not at all
appreciate, the honour of heading the procession.

Another half-mile and again we heard that strange rolling sound which
was produced, I believe, by the great brute beating upon its breast, but
noted that it was not so continuous as on the previous night.

"Ha!" said Hans, "he can only strike his drum with one stick now. Your
bullet broke the other, Baas."

A little farther and the god roared quite close, so loudly that the air
seemed to tremble.

"The drum is all right, whatever may have happened to the sticks," I
said.

A hundred yards or so more and the catastrophe occurred. We had reached
a spot in the forest where one of the great trees had fallen down,
letting in a little light. I can see it to this hour. There lay the
enormous tree, its bark covered with grey mosses and clumps of a giant
species of maidenhair fern. On our side of it was the open space
which may have measured forty feet across, where the light fell in a
perpendicular ray, as it does through the smoke-hole of a hut. Looking
at this prostrate trunk, I saw first two lurid and fiery eyes that
glowed red in the shadow; and then, almost in the same instant, made
out what looked like the head of a fiend enclosed in a wreath of the
delicate green ferns. I can't describe it, I can only repeat that it
looked like the head of a very large fiend with a pallid face, huge
overhanging eyebrows and great yellow tushes on either side of the
mouth.

Before