re ever interred at all. All about lay the skeletons
of dead elephants, and from among these we collected as much of the best
ivory as we could carry, namely about fifty camel loads. Of course there
was much more, but a great deal of the stuff had been exposed for so
long to sun and weather that it was almost worthless.

Having sent this ivory back to the Town of the Child, which was being
rebuilt after a fashion, we went on to Simba Town through the forest,
dispatching pickets ahead of us to search and make sure that it was
empty. Empty it was indeed; never did I see such a place of desolation.

The Black Kendah had left it just as it stood, except for a pile of
corpses which lay around and over the altar in the market-place, where
the three poor camelmen were sacrificed to Jana, doubtless those of
wounded men who had died during or after the retreat. The doors of the
houses stood open, many domestic articles, such as great jars resembling
that which had been set over the head of the dead man whom we were
commanded to restore life, and other furniture lay about because they
could not be carried away. So did a great quantity of spears and various
weapons of war, whose owners being killed would never want them again.
Except a few starved dogs and jackals no living creature remained in the
town. It was in its own way as waste and even more impressive than the
graveyard of elephants by the lonely lake.

"The curse of the Child worked well," said Harut to me grimly. "First,
the storm; the hunger; then the battle; and now the misery of flight and
ruin."

"It seems so," I answered. "Yet that curse, like others, came back to
roost, for if Jana is dead and his people fled, where are the Child and
many of its people? What will you do without your god, Harut?"

"Repent us of our sins and wait till the Heavens send us another, as
doubtless they will in their own season," he replied very sadly.

I wonder whether they ever did and, if so, what form that new divinity
put on.

I slept, or rather did not sleep, that night in the same guest-house in
which Marut and I had been imprisoned during our dreadful days of fear,
reconstructing in my mind every event connected with them. Once more I
saw the fires of sacrifice flaring upon the altar and heard the roar of
the dancing hail that proclaimed the ruin of the Black Kendah as loudly
as the trumpet of a destroying angel. Very glad was I when the morning
came at length and, having lo