eat the process further along the
line. And this she would do at intervals, sometimes coming to a dead
stop in such significant and purpose-fraught fashion that the whole body
of spectators stood ready to hurl themselves like lightning upon the
unlucky one denounced. The hellish hag was enjoying the terror she
inspired, and as strong men of tried bravery one after another quailed
before her she gloated over their fears to such a pitch that her voice
rose to a deafening shriek of demoniacal glee.

The other end of the great human crescent was nearly reached and still
no victim. And now those who had escaped so far began to feel their
apprehensions return. It would be no unprecedented affair were a second
trial to occur, or even a third. The sorceress might elect to make her
fatal progress through the ranks again and again. There were barely
fifty men left. Unless the victim or victims should be found among
those, a second progress was inevitable.

The bloodthirsty chorus rose into a deafening roar. The tension was
fearful to witness. The hideous possession of the repulsive
witch-doctress had communicated itself in some degree to the mass of
excitable savages. Many were foaming at the mouth and apparently on the
eve of convulsions. Not satisfied with the shouting, the infuriated mob
beat time with their feet in addition to their sticks, as they joined in
the hell-hag's demoniacal incantations, and the perspiration streamed
from every pore till the very air was heavy with a sickening and musky
odour. It was a repellent and appalling scene, and even the white
spectator, apart from the extreme peril of his own situation, felt his
blood curdle within him at this vision of what was very like a
diabolical power let loose. But there was worse to follow.

Suddenly the sorceress was seen to halt. Her voice rose to a frightful
yell, as with blazing eyes, and pouring forth a torrent of denunciation,
she raised the great black serpent aloft in such wise that its writhing
neck and hissing jaws made a dart straight at the face of a man in the
rear rank of the line and near the end of the latter.

"Thou hast found him, _Inyoka_! Thou hast found him! Show us the
wizard!" screeched the hideous witch-doctress. The grinning skull and
the two devil-like horns of hair which surmounted her head quivered
convulsively. Her eyes started from the sockets, and the weird and
barbaric amulets hung about her person rattled like ca