nd.

"Fire!" cried he with a cunning grimace of satisfaction.

"Fire!" replied Moini Loungga lashing the liquid with the end of the
match.

What a flare and what an effect, when the bluish flames played on the
surface of the basin. Alvez, doubtless to render that alcohol
still sharper, had mingled with it a few handfuls of sea salt. The
assistants' faces were then given that spectral lividness that the
imagination ascribes to phantoms.

Those negroes, drunk in advance, began to cry out, to gesticulate,
and, taking each other by the hand, formed an immense circle around
the King of Kazounde.

Alvez, furnished with an enormous metal spoon, stirred the liquid,
which threw a great white glare over those delirious monkeys.

Moini Loungga advanced. He seized the spoon from the trader's hands,
plunged it into the basin, then, drawing it out full of punch in
flames, he brought it to his lips.

What a cry the King of Kazounde then gave!

An act of spontaneous combustion had just taken place. The king had
taken fire like a petroleum bonbon. This fire developed little heat,
but it devoured none the less.

At this spectacle the natives' dance was suddenly stopped.

One of Moini Loungga's ministers threw himself on his sovereign to
extinguish him; but, not less alcoholized than his master, he took
fire in his turn.

In this way, Moini Loungga's whole court was in peril of burning up.

Alvez and Negoro did not know how to help his majesty. The women,
frightened, had taken flight. As to Coimbra, he took his departure
rapidly, well knowing his inflammable nature.

The king and the minister, who had fallen on the ground, were burning
up, a prey to frightful sufferings.

In bodies so thoroughly alcoholized, combustion only produces a light
and bluish flame, that water cannot extinguish. Even stifled outside,
it would still continue to burn inwardly. When liquor has penetrated
all the tissues, there exists no means of arresting the combustion.

A few minutes after, Moini Loungga and his minister had succumbed, but
they still burned. Soon, in the place where they had fallen, there was
nothing left but a few light coals, one or two pieces of the vertebral
column, fingers, toes, that the fire does not consume, in cases of
spontaneous combustion, but which it covers with an infectious and
penetrating soot.

It was all that was left of the King of Kazounde and of his
minister.

CHAPTER XII.

A ROYAL BURIAL.