would cut him
loose, and bent over him to do so, when by ill-luck he saw my face and
began to shout, saying,

"'Go away, you yellow devil. I know you have come to take me to hell,
but you are too soon, and if my hands were loose I would twist your head
off your shoulders.'

"He said this in English, Baas, which as you know I can understand quite
well, after which I was sure that I had better leave him alone. Whilst
I was thinking, there came out of the hut above two old men dressed in
night-shirts, such as you white people wear, with yellow things upon
their heads that had a metal picture of the sun in front of them."

"Medicine-men," I suggested.

"Yes, Baas, or Predikants of some sort, for they were rather like
your reverend father when he dressed himself up and went into a box to
preach. Seeing them I slipped back a little way to where the mist began,
lay down and listened. They looked at Red Beard, for his shouts at me
had brought them out, but he took no notice of them, only went on making
a noise like a beetle in a tin can.

"'It is nothing,' said one of the Predikants to the other in the same
tongue that these Amahagger use. 'But when is he to be sacrificed? Soon,
I hope, for I cannot sleep because of the noise he makes.'

"'When the edge of the sun appears, not before,' answered the other
Predikant. 'Then the new queen will be brought out of the hut and this
white man will be sacrificed to her.'

"'I think it is a pity to wait so long,' said the first Predikant, 'for
never shall we sleep in peace until the red-hot pot is on his head.'

"'First the victory, then the feast,' answered the second Predikant,
'though he will not be so good to eat as that fat young woman who was
with the new queen.'

"Then, Baas, they both smacked their lips and one of them went back
towards the hut. But the other did not go back. No, he sat down on the
ground and glowered at Baas Red-Beard upon the stone. More, he struck
him on the face to make him quiet.

"Now, Baas, when I saw this and remembered that they had said that they
had eaten Janee whom I liked although she was such a fool, the spirit in
me grew so very angry and I thought that I would give this old _skellum_
(i.e. rascal) of a Predikant a taste of sacrifice himself, after which I
purposed to creep to the hut and see if I could get speech with the Lady
Sad-Eyes, if she was there.

"So I wriggled up behind the Predikant as he sat glowering over
Red-Beard, and s