figures, one male and the other
female, to the number of about a hundred, each advancing round the human
bonfire, arrayed only in the usual leopard and buck skins. They formed
up, in perfect silence, in two lines, facing each other between us
and the fire, and then the dance--a sort of infernal and fiendish
cancan--began. To describe it is quite impossible, but, though there was
a good deal of tossing of legs and double-shuffling, it seemed to our
untutored minds to be more of a play than a dance, and, as usual with
this dreadful people, whose minds seem to have taken their colour from
the caves in which they live, and whose jokes and amusements are drawn
from the inexhaustible stores of preserved mortality with which they
share their homes, the subject appeared to be a most ghastly one. I
know that it represented an attempted murder first of all, and then the
burial alive of the victim and his struggling from the grave; each act
of the abominable drama, which was carried on in perfect silence, being
rounded off and finished with a furious and most revolting dance round
the supposed victim, who writhed upon the ground in the red light of the
bonfire.

Presently, however, this pleasing piece was interrupted. Suddenly there
was a slight commotion, and a large powerful woman, whom I had noted as
one of the most vigorous of the dancers, came, made mad and drunken with
unholy excitement, bounding and staggering towards us, shrieking out as
she came:--

"I want a Black Goat, I must have a Black Goat, bring me a Black
Goat!" and down she fell upon the rocky floor foaming and writhing, and
shrieking for a Black Goat, about as hideous a spectacle as can well be
conceived.

Instantly most of the dancers came up and got round her, though some
still continued their capers in the background.

"She has got a Devil," called out one of them. "Run and get a black
goat. There, Devil, keep quiet! keep quiet! You shall have the goat
presently. They have gone to fetch it, Devil."

"I want a Black Goat, I must have a Black Goat!" shrieked the foaming
rolling creature again.

"All right, Devil, the goat will be here presently; keep quiet, there's
a good Devil!"

And so on till the goat, taken from a neighbouring kraal, did at last
arrive, being dragged bleating on to the scene by its horns.

"Is it a Black One, is it a Black One?" shrieked the possessed.

"Yes, yes, Devil, as black as night;" then aside, "keep it behind thee,
don