.

"_Excommunicado_ ----"

The Latin rolled on, sonorous, menacing. It ceased; the candle-flame
snuffed out, the bell tinkled, there was the flash of a cope in the
doorway, and the priest was gone.

"He has excommunicated you!" Simpson shouted, almost shrieked. "Thank
God for that, my people!"

They faced him again; ecstatic, beside himself, he flung at them
incoherent words. But the Latin, mysterious as magic, fateful as a
charm, had frightened them, and they did not yield to Simpson
immediately. Perhaps they would not have yielded to him at all if it
had not been for Madame Picard.

From her corner rose an eerie chant in broken minors; it swelled
louder, and down the lane her people made for her she came dancing.
Her turban was off, her dress torn open to the breasts; she held the
child horizontally and above her in both hands. Her body swayed
rhythmically, but she just did not take up the swing of the votive
African dance that is as old as Africa. Up to the foot of the platform
she wavered, and there the cripple joined her, laughing as always.
Together they shuffled first to the right and then to the left, their
feet marking the earth floor in prints that overlapped like scales.
She laid the baby on the platform, sinking slowly to her knees as she
did so; as though at a signal the wordless chant rumbled upward from
the entire building, rolled over the platform like a wave, engulfing
the white man in its flood.

"Symbolism! Sacrifice!" Simpson yelled. "She offers all to God!"

He bent and raised the child at arm's length above his head. Instantly
the chanting ceased.

"To the grove!" screamed the _mamaloi_. She leaped to the platform,
almost from her knees it seemed, and snatched the child. "To the
grove!"

The crowd took up the cry; it swelled till Simpson's ears ached under
the impact of it.

"To the grove!"

Doubt assailed him as his mind--a white man's mind--rebelled.

"This is wrong," he said dully; "wrong."

Madame Picard's fingers gripped his arm. Except for the spasms of the
talons which were her fingers she seemed calm.

"No, m'sieu'," she said. "You have them now. Atonement--atonement,
m'sieu'. You have many times spoken of atonement. But they do not
understand what they cannot see. They are behind you--you cannot leave
them now."

"But--the child?"

"The child shall show them--a child shall lead them, m'sieu'. They
must see a _theatre_ of atonement--then they will believe. Come."

P