puckered face of the thing above her head, every time she danced it up,
and then, as she danced it down again, I lost sight of it for a second,
until it reappeared once more. I kept my eye fixed on the thing's face
every time it came up, and--do not believe me if you had rather not--it
began to be _alive_. Its eyes seemed to me to be open, and its mouth was
working like a little child's when it tries to laugh and is too young to
do it properly. Juggins saw it too, for I could hear him drawing his
breath harder, and shorter than a healthy man should. Then, all in a
moment, she did something. It looked to me as though she bent forward
and kissed it, and at that very instant a cry went up like the wail of a
lost soul. It may have been something in the jungle, but I know my
jungles pretty thoroughly, and I swear to you that I have never heard
any cry like it before or since. Then, before we knew what she was
doing, that old hag threw the body back into the grave, and began
dumping down the earth, and jumping on it, while the cry grew fainter
and fainter. It all happened so quickly, that I had not time to think of
doing anything, till I was startled back into action by the sharp crack
of Juggin's pistol in my ear as he fired at the hag.

'"She's burying it alive!" cried Juggins, which was a queer thing for a
man to say, who had seen the baby lying stark and dead more than thirty
hours earlier, but the same thought was in my mind too, and we started
forward at a run. The hag had vanished into the jungle like a shadow.
Juggins had missed her, he was always a shocking bad shot, but we did
not trouble about her. We just threw ourselves upon the grave, and dug
at it with our hands until the baby lay in my arms. It was cold and
stiff, and putrefaction had already begun its work. I forced open its
mouth, and saw something that I expected. The tip of its tongue was
missing. It had been bitten off by a set of very bad teeth, for the edge
of it was like a saw.

'"The thing is quite dead," I said to Juggins.

'"But it cried! it cried!" sobbed Juggins, "I can hear it now. Oh to
think that we let that hag kill it."

'Juggins sat down with his head in his hands. He was utterly unmanned.
Now that the fright was over, I was beginning to be quite brave again.
It is a way I have.

'"Never mind," I said. "Here is your specimen if you want it." I had put
the thing down, and now pointed at it from a distance. It was not
pleasant to touch.