leg. Walker felt a
strong desire to see the man's face, and his heart thumped within him
as he came nearer and nearer down the street. But his hair was so
matted about his cheeks that Walker could not distinguish a feature.
"If I was only near enough to see his eyes," he thought. But he was
not near enough, nor would it have been prudent for him to have gone
nearer.

The witch doctor commenced the proceedings by ringing a handbell in
front of every hut. But that method of detection failed to work.
The bell rang successively at every door. Walker watched the
man's progress, watched his trailing limb, and began to discover
familiarities in his manner. "Pure fancy," he argued with himself. "If
he had not limped I should have noticed nothing."

Then the doctor took a wicker basket, covered with a rough wooden lid.
The Fans gathered in front of him; he repeated their names one after
the other and at each name he lifted the lid. But that plan appeared
to be no improvement, for the lid never stuck. It came off readily at
each name. Walker, meanwhile, calculated the distance a man would have
to cover who walked across country from Bonny river to the Ogowe, and
he reflected with some relief that the chances were several thousand
to one that any man who made the attempt, be he black or white, would
be eaten on the way.

The witch doctor turned up the big square cuffs of his sleeves, as a
conjurer will do, and again repeated the names. This time, however,
at each name, he rubbed the palms of his hands together. Walker was
seized with a sudden longing to rush down into the village and examine
the man's right forearm for a bullet mark. The longing grew on him.
The witch doctor went steadily through the list. Walker rose to his
feet and took a step or two down the hillock, when, of a sudden, at
one particular name, the doctor's hands flew apart and waved wildly
about him. A single cry from a single voice went up out of the group
of Fans. The group fell back and left one man standing alone. He made
no defence, no resistance. Two men came forward and bound his hands
and his feet and his body with tie-tie. Then they carried him within a
hut.

"That's sheer murder," thought Walker. He could not rescue the victim,
he knew. But--he could get a nearer view of that witch doctor. Already
the man was packing up his paraphernalia. Walker stepped back among
the trees and, running with all his speed, made the circuit of the
village. He reac