"He dies!"
Again the negro grinned. "Me pow'rful ju-ju man," he announced apropos
of nothing. He bent closer. "White man you hunt, eyes like a leopard,
eh? Yes? Ha! ha! ha! ha! Listen, white man: man-with-eyes-of-a-leopard,
he and Chief Songa make pow'rful palaver; they blood brothers now. Say
nothing, I help you; you help me, eh?"
"Why should you help me?" asked Kane suspiciously.
The ju-ju man bent closer and whispered, "White man Songa's right-hand
man; Songa more pow'rful than N'Longa. White man mighty ju-ju!
N'Longa's white brother kill man-with-eyes-of-a-leopard, be blood
brother to N'Longa, N'Longa be more pow'rful than Songa; palaver set."
And like a dusky ghost he floated out of the hut so swiftly that Kane
was not sure but that the whole affair was a dream.
Without, Kane could see the flare of fires. The drums were still
booming, but close at hand the tones merged and mingled, and the
impulse-producing vibrations were lost. All seemed a barbaric clamor
without rime or reason, yet there was an undertone of mockery there,
savage and gloating. "Lies," thought Kane, his mind still swimming,
"jungle lies like jungle women that lure a man to his doom."
Two warriors entered the hut--black giants, hideous with paint and
armed with crude spears. They lifted the white man and carried him out
of the hut. They bore him across an open space, leaned him upright
against a post and bound him there. About him, behind him and to
the side, a great semicircle of black faces leered and faded in the
firelight as the flames leaped and sank. There in front of him loomed a
shape hideous and obscene--a black, formless thing, a grotesque parody
of the human. Still, brooding, blood-stained, like the formless soul of
Africa, the horror, the Black God.
And in front and to each side, upon roughly carven thrones of teakwood,
sat two men. He who sat upon the right was a black man, huge, ungainly,
a gigantic and unlovely mass of dusky flesh and muscles. Small,
hog-like eyes blinked out over sin-marked cheeks; huge, flabby red
lips pursed in fleshly haughtiness.