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<h2> CHAPTER XV<br/> THE MOTOMBO </h2>
<p>After my dream I went to sleep again, till I was finally aroused by a
strong ray of light hitting me straight in the eye.</p>
<p>Where the dickens does that come from? thought I to myself, for these huts
had no windows.</p>
<p>Then I followed the ray to its source, which I perceived was a small hole
in the mud wall some five feet above the floor. I rose and examined the
said hole, and noted that it appeared to have been freshly made, for the
clay at the sides of it was in no way discoloured. I reflected that if
anyone wanted to eavesdrop, such an aperture would be convenient, and went
outside the hut to pursue my investigations. Its wall, I found, was
situated about four feet from the eastern part of the encircling reed
fence, which showed no signs of disturbance, although there, in the outer
face of the wall, was the hole, and beneath it on the lime flooring lay
some broken fragments of plaster. I called Hans and asked him if he had
kept watch round the hut when the wrapped-up man visited us during the
night. He answered yes, and that he could swear that no one had come near
it, since several times he had walked to the back and looked.</p>
<p>Somewhat comforted, though not satisfied, I went in to wake up the others,
to whom I said nothing of this matter since it seemed foolish to alarm
them for no good purpose. A few minutes later the tall, silent women
arrived with our hot water. It seemed curious to have hot water brought to
us in such a place by these very queer kind of housemaids, but so it was.
The Pongo, I may add, were, like the Zulus, very clean in their persons,
though whether they all used hot water, I cannot say. At any rate, it was
provided for us.</p>
<p>Half an hour later they returned with breakfast, consisting chiefly of a
roasted kid, of which, as it was whole, and therefore unmistakable, we
partook thankfully. A little later the Majestic Komba appeared. After many
compliments and inquiries as to our general health, he asked whether we
were ready to start on our visit to the Motombo who, he added, was
expecting us with much eagerness. I inquired how he knew that, since we
had only arranged to call on him late on the previous night, and I
understood that he lived a day’s journey away. But Komba put the matter by
with a smile and a wave of his hand.</p>
<p>So in due course off we went, taking with us all our baggage, which now
that it had been lightened by the delivery of the presents, was of no
great weight.</p>
<p>Five minutes’ walk along the wide, main street led us to the northern gate
of Rica Town. Here we found the Kalubi himself with an escort of thirty
men armed with spears; I noted that unlike the Mazitu they had no bows and
arrows. He announced in a loud voice that he proposed to do us the special
honour of conducting us to the sanctuary of the Holy One, by which we
understood him to mean the Motombo. When we politely begged him not to
trouble, being in an irritable mood, or assuming it, he told us rudely to
mind our own business. Indeed, I think this irritability was real enough,
which, in the circumstances known to the reader, was not strange. At any
rate, an hour or so later it declared itself in an act of great cruelty
which showed us how absolute was this man’s power in all temporal matters.</p>
<p>Passing through a little clump of bush we came to some gardens surrounded
by a light fence through which a number of cattle of a small and delicate
breed—they were not unlike Jerseys in appearance—had broken to
enjoy themselves by devouring the crops. This garden, it appeared,
belonged to the Kalubi for the time being, who was furious at the
destruction of its produce by the cattle which also belonged to him.</p>
<p>“Where is the herd?” he shouted.</p>
<p>A hunt began—and presently the poor fellow—he was no more than
a lad, was discovered asleep behind a bush. When he was dragged before him
the Kalubi pointed, first to the cattle, then to the broken fence and the
devastated garden. The lad began to mutter excuses and pray for mercy.</p>
<p>“Kill him!” said the Kalubi, whereon the herd flung himself to the ground,
and clutching him by the ankles, began to kiss his feet, crying out that
he was afraid to die. The Kalubi tried to kick himself free, and failing
in this, lifted his big spear and made an end of the poor boy’s prayers
and life at a single stroke.</p>
<p>The escort clapped their hands in salute or approval, after which four of
them, at a sign, took up the body and started with it at a trot for Rica
Town, where probably that night it appeared upon the grid. Brother John
saw, and his big white beard bristled with indignation like the hair on
the back of an angry cat, while Stephen spluttered something beginning
with “You brute,” and lifted his fist as though to knock the Kalubi down.
This, had I not caught hold of him, I have no doubt he would have done.</p>
<p>“O Kalubi!” gasped Brother John, “do you not know that blood calls for
blood? In the hour of your own death remember this death.”</p>
<p>“Would you bewitch me, white man?” said the Kalubi, glaring at him
angrily. “If so——” and once more he lifted the spear, but as
John never stirred, held it poised irresolutely. Komba thrust himself
between them, crying:</p>
<p>“Back, Dogeetah, who dare to meddle with our customs! Is not the Kalubi
Lord of life and death?”</p>
<p>Brother John was about to answer, but I called to him in English:</p>
<p>“For Heaven’s sake be silent, unless you want to follow the boy. We are in
these men’s power.”</p>
<p>Then he remembered and walked away, and presently we marched forward as
though nothing had happened. Only from that moment I do not think that any
of us worried ourselves about the Kalubi and what might befall him. Still,
looking back on the thing, I think that there was this excuse to be made
for the man. He was mad with the fear of death and knew not what he did.</p>
<p>All that day we travelled on through a rich, flat country that, as we
could tell from various indications, had once been widely cultivated. Now
the fields were few and far between, and bush, for the most part a kind of
bamboo scrub, was reoccupying the land. About midday we halted by a
water-pool to eat and rest, for the sun was hot, and here the four men who
had carried off the boy’s body rejoined us and made some report. Then we
went forward once more towards what seemed to be a curious and precipitous
wall of black cliff, beyond which the volcanic-looking mountain towered in
stately grandeur. By three o’clock we were near enough to this cliff,
which ran east and west as far as the eye could reach, to see a hole in
it, apparently where the road terminated, that appeared to be the mouth of
a cave.</p>
<p>The Kalubi came up to us, and in a shy kind of way tried to make
conversation. I think that the sight of this mountain, drawing ever
nearer, vividly recalled his terrors and caused him to desire to efface
the bad impression he knew he had made on us, to whom he looked for
safety. Among other things he told us that the hole we saw was the door of
the House of the Motombo.</p>
<p>I nodded my head, but did not answer, for the presence of this murderous
king made me feel sick. So he went away again, looking at us in a humble
and deprecatory manner.</p>
<p>Nothing further happened until we reached the remarkable wall of rock that
I have mentioned, which I suppose is composed of some very hard stone that
remained when the softer rock in which it lay was disintegrated by
millions of years of weather or washings by the water of the lake. Or
perhaps its substance was thrown out of the bowels of the volcano when
this was active. I am no geologist, and cannot say, especially as I lacked
time to examine the place. At any rate there it was, and there in it
appeared the mouth of a great cave that I presume was natural, having once
formed a kind of drain through which the lake overflowed when Pongo-land
was under water.</p>
<p>We halted, staring dubiously at this darksome hole, which no doubt was the
same that Babemba had explored in his youth. Then the Kalubi gave an
order, and some of the soldiers went to huts that were built near the
mouth of the cave, where I suppose guardians or attendants lived, though
of these we saw nothing. Presently they returned with a number of lighted
torches that were distributed among us. This done, we plunged, shivering
(at least, I shivered), into the gloomy recesses of that great cavern, the
Kalubi going before us with half of our escort, and Komba following behind
us with the remainder.</p>
<p>The floor of the place was made quite smooth, doubtless by the action of
water, as were the walls and roof, so far as we could see them, for it was
very wide and lofty. It did not run straight, but curved about in the
thickness of the cliff. At the first turn the Pongo soldiers set up a low
and eerie chant which they continued during its whole length, that
according to my pacings was something over three hundred yards. On we
wound, the torches making stars of light in the intense blackness, till at
length we rounded a last corner where a great curtain of woven grass, now
drawn, was stretched across the cave. Here we saw a very strange sight.</p>
<p>On either side of it, near to the walls, burned a large wood fire that
gave light to the place. Also more light flowed into it from its further
mouth that was not more than twenty paces from the fires. Beyond the mouth
was water which seemed to be about two hundred yards wide, and beyond the
water rose the slopes of the mountain that was covered with huge trees.
Moreover, a little bay penetrated into the cavern, the point of which bay
ended between the two fires. Here the water, which was not more than six
or eight feet wide, and shallow, formed the berthing place of a good-sized
canoe that lay there. The walls of the cavern, from the turn to the point
of the tongue of water, were pierced with four doorways, two on either
side, which led, I presume, to chambers hewn in the rock. At each of these
doorways stood a tall woman clothed in white, who held in her hand a
burning torch. I concluded that these were attendants set there to guide
and welcome us, for after we had passed, they vanished into the chambers.</p>
<p>But this was not all. Set across the little bay of water just above the
canoe that floated there was a wooden platform, eight feet or so square,
on either side of which stood an enormous elephant’s tusk, bigger indeed
than any I have seen in all my experience, which tusks seemed to be black
with age. Between the tusks, squatted upon rugs of some kind of rich fur,
was what from its shape and attitude I at first took to be a huge toad. In
truth, it had all the appearance of a very bloated toad. There was the
rough corrugated skin, there the prominent backbone (for its back was
towards us), and there were the thin, splayed-out legs.</p>
<p>We stared at this strange object for quite a long while, unable to make it
out in that uncertain light, for so long indeed, that I grew nervous and
was about to ask the Kalubi what it might be. As my lips opened, however,
it stirred, and with a slow, groping, circular movement turned itself
towards us very slowly. At length it was round, and as the head came in
view all the Pongo from the Kalubi down ceased their low, weird chant and
flung themselves upon their faces, those who had torches still holding
them up in their right hands.</p>
<p>Oh! what a thing appeared! It was not a toad, but a man that moved upon
all fours. The large, bald head was sunk deep between the shoulders,
either through deformity or from age, for this creature was undoubtedly
very old. Looking at it, I wondered how old, but could form no answer in
my mind. The great, broad face was sunken and withered, like to leather
dried in the sun; the lower lip hung pendulously upon the prominent and
bony jaw. Two yellow, tusk-like teeth projected one at each corner of the
great mouth; all the rest were gone, and from time to time it licked the
white gums with a red-pointed tongue as a snake might do. But the chief
wonder of the Thing lay in its eyes that were large and round, perhaps
because the flesh had shrunk away from them, which gave them the
appearance of being set in the hollow orbits of a skull. These eyes
literally shone like fire; indeed, at times they seemed positively to
blaze, as I have seen a lion’s eyes do in the dark. I confess that the
aspect of the creature terrified and for a while paralysed me; to think
that it was human was awful.</p>
<p>I glanced at the others and saw that they, too, were frightened. Stephen
turned very white. I thought that he was going to be sick again, as he was
after he drank the coffee out of the wrong bowl on the day we entered
Mazitu-land. Brother John stroked his white beard and muttered some
invocation to Heaven to protect him. Hans exclaimed in his abominable
Dutch:</p>
<p>“<i>Oh! keek, Baas, da is je lelicher oud deel!</i>” (“Oh! look, Baas,
there is the ugly old devil himself!”)</p>
<p>Jerry went flat on his face among the Pongo, muttering that he saw Death
before him. Only Mavovo stood firm; perhaps because as a witch-doctor of
repute he felt that it did not become him to show the white feather in the
presence of an evil spirit.</p>
<p>The toad-like creature on the platform swayed its great head slowly as a
tortoise does, and contemplated us with its flaming eyes. At length it
spoke in a thick, guttural voice, using the tongue that seemed to be
common to this part of Africa and indeed to that branch of the Bantu
people to which the Zulus belong, but, as I thought, with a foreign
accent.</p>
<p>“So <i>you</i> are the white men come back,” it said slowly. “Let me
count!” and lifting one skinny hand from the ground, it pointed with the
forefinger and counted. “One. Tall, with a white beard. Yes, that is
right. Two. Short, nimble like a monkey, with hair that wants no comb;
clever, too, like a father of monkeys. Yes, that is right. Three.
Smooth-faced, young and stupid, like a fat baby that laughs at the sky
because he is full of milk, and thinks that the sky is laughing at him.
Yes, that is right. All three of you are just the same as you used to be.
Do you remember, White Beard, how, while we killed you, you said prayers
to One Who sits above the world, and held up a cross of bone to which a
man was tied who wore a cap of thorns? Do you remember how you kissed the
man with the cap of thorns as the spear went into you? You shake your head—oh!
you are a clever liar, but I will show you that you are a liar, for I have
the thing yet,” and snatching up a horn which lay on the kaross beneath
him, he blew.</p>
<p>As the peculiar, wailing note that the horn made died away, a woman dashed
out of one of the doorways that I have described and flung herself on her
knees before him. He muttered something to her and she dashed back again
to re-appear in an instant holding in her hand a yellow ivory crucifix.</p>
<p>“Here it is, here it is,” he said. “Take it, White Beard, and kiss it once
more, perhaps for the last time,” and he threw the crucifix to Brother
John, who caught it and stared at it amazed. “And do you remember, Fat
Baby, how we caught you? You fought well, very well, but we killed you at
last, and you were good, very good; we got much strength from you.</p>
<p>“And do you remember, Father of Monkeys, how you escaped from us by your
cleverness? I wonder where you went to and how you died. I shall not
forget you, for you gave me this,” and he pointed to a big white scar upon
his shoulder. “You would have killed me, but the stuff in that iron tube
of yours burned slowly when you held the fire to it, so that I had time to
jump aside and the iron ball did not strike me in the heart as you meant
that it should. Yet, it is still here; oh! yes, I carry it with me to this
day, and now that I have grown thin I can feel it with my finger.”</p>
<p>I listened astonished to this harangue, which if it meant anything, meant
that we had all met before, in Africa at some time when men used
matchlocks that were fired with a fuse—that is to say, about the
year 1700, or earlier. Reflection, however, showed me the interpretation
of this nonsense. Obviously this old priest’s forefather, or, if one put
him at a hundred and twenty years of age, and I am sure that he was not a
day less, perhaps his father, as a young man, was mixed up with some of
the first Europeans who penetrated to the interior of Africa. Probably
these were Portuguese, of whom one may have been a priest and the other
two an elderly man and his son, or young brother, or companion. The manner
of the deaths of these people and of what happened to them generally would
of course be remembered by the descendants of the chief or head
medicine-man of the tribe.</p>
<p>“Where did we meet, and when, O Motombo?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Not in this land, not in this land, Father of Monkeys,” he replied in his
low rumbling voice, “but far, far away towards the west where the sun
sinks in the water; and not in this day, but long, long ago. Twenty
Kalubis have ruled the Pongo since that day; some have ruled for many
years and some have ruled for a few years—that depends upon the will
of my brother, the god yonder,” and he chuckled horribly and jerked his
thumb backwards over his shoulder towards the forest on the mountain.
“Yes, twenty have ruled, some for thirty years and none for less than
four.”</p>
<p>“Well, you <i>are</i> a large old liar,” I thought to myself, for, taking
the average rule of the Kalubis at ten years, this would mean that we met
him two centuries ago at least.</p>
<p>“You were clothed otherwise then,” he went on, “and two of you wore hats
of iron on the head, but that of White Beard was shaven. I caused a
picture of you to be beaten by the master-smith upon a plate of copper. I
have it yet.”</p>
<p>Again he blew upon his horn; again a woman darted out, to whom he
whispered; again she went to one of the chambers and returned bearing an
object which he cast to us.</p>
<p>We looked at it. It was a copper or bronze plaque, black, apparently with
age, which once had been nailed on something for there were the holes. It
represented a tall man with a long beard and a tonsured head who held a
cross in his hand; and two other men, both short, who wore round metal
caps and were dressed in queer-looking garments and boots with square
toes. These man carried big and heavy matchlocks, and in the hand of one
of them was a smoking fuse. That was all we could make out of the thing.</p>
<p>“Why did you leave the far country and come to this land, O Motombo?” I
asked.</p>
<p>“Because we were afraid that other white men would follow on your steps
and avenge you. The Kalubi of that day ordered it, though I said No, who
knew that none can escape by flight from what must come when it must come.
So we travelled and travelled till we found this place, and here we have
dwelt from generation to generation. The gods came with us also; my
brother that dwells in the forest came, though we never saw him on the
journey, yet he was here before us. The Holy Flower came too, and the
white Mother of the Flower—she was the wife of one of you, I know
not which.”</p>
<p>“Your brother the god?” I said. “If the god is an ape as we have heard,
how can he be the brother of a man?”</p>
<p>“Oh! you white men do not understand, but we black people understand. In
the beginning the ape killed my brother who was Kalubi, and his spirit
entered into the ape, making him as a god, and so he kills every other
Kalubi and their spirits enter also into him. Is it not so, O Kalubi of
to-day, you without a finger?” and he laughed mockingly.</p>
<p>The Kalubi, who was lying on his stomach, groaned and trembled, but made
no other answer.</p>
<p>“So all has come about as I foresaw,” went on the toad-like creature. “You
have returned, as I knew you would, and now we shall learn whether White
Beard yonder spoke true words when he said that his god would be avenged
upon our god. You shall go to be avenged on him if you can, and then we
shall learn. But this time you have none of your iron tubes which alone we
fear. For did not the god declare to us through me that when the white men
came back with an iron tube, then he, the god, would die, and I, the
Motombo, the god’s Mouth, would die, and the Holy Flower would be torn up,
and the Mother of the Flower would pass away, and the people of the Pongo
would be dispersed and become wanderers and slaves? And did he not declare
that if the white men came again without their iron tubes, then certain
secret things would happen—oh! ask them not, in time they shall be
known to you, and the people of the Pongo who were dwindling would again
become fruitful and very great? And that is why we welcome you, white men,
who arise again from the land of ghosts, because through you we, the
Pongo, shall become fruitful and very great.”</p>
<p>Of a sudden he ceased his rumbling talk, his head sank back between his
shoulders and he sat silent for a long while, his fierce, sparkling eyes
playing on us as though he would read our very thoughts. If he succeeded,
I hope that mine pleased him. To tell the truth, I was filled with mixed
fear, fury and loathing. Although, of course, I did not believe a word of
all the rubbish he had been saying, which was akin to much that is evolved
by these black-hearted African wizards, I hated the creature whom I felt
to be only half-human. My whole nature sickened at his aspect and talk.
And yet I was dreadfully afraid of him. I felt as a man might who wakes up
to find himself alone with some peculiarly disgusting Christmas-story kind
of ghost. Moreover I was quite sure that he meant us ill, fearful and
imminent ill. Suddenly he spoke again:</p>
<p>“Who is that little yellow one,” he said, “that old one with a face like a
skull,” and he pointed to Hans, who had kept as much out of sight as
possible behind Mavovo, “that wizened, snub-nosed one who might be a child
of my brother the god, if ever he had a child? And why, being so small,
does he need so large a staff?” Here he pointed again to Hans’s big bamboo
stick. “I think he is as full of guile as a new-filled gourd with water.
The big black one,” and he looked at Mavovo, “I do not fear, for his magic
is less than my magic,” (he seemed to recognise a brother doctor in
Mavovo) “but the little yellow one with the big stick and the pack upon
his back, I fear him. I think he should be killed.”</p>
<p>He paused and we trembled, for if he chose to kill the poor Hottentot, how
could we prevent him? But Hans, who saw the great danger, called his
cunning to his aid.</p>
<p>“O Motombo,” he squeaked, “you must not kill me for I am the servant of an
ambassador. You know well that all the gods of every land hate and will be
revenged upon those who touch ambassadors or their servants, whom they,
the gods, alone may harm. If you kill me I shall haunt you. Yes, I shall
sit on your shoulder at night and jibber into your ear so that you cannot
sleep, until you die. For though you are old you must die at last,
Motombo.”</p>
<p>“It is true,” said the Motombo. “Did I not tell you that he was full of
cunning? All the gods will be avenged upon those who kill ambassadors or
their servants. That”—here he laughed again in his dreadful way—“is
the rights of the gods alone. Let the gods of the Pongo settle it.”</p>
<p>I uttered a sigh of relief, and he went on in a new voice, a dull,
business-like voice if I may so describe it:</p>
<p>“Say, O Kalubi, on what matter have you brought these white men to speak
with me, the Mouth of the god? Did I dream that it was a matter of a
treaty with the King of the Mazitu? Rise and speak.”</p>
<p>So the Kalubi rose and with a humble air set out briefly and clearly the
reason of our visit to Pongo-land as the envoys of Bausi and the heads of
the treaty that had been arranged subject to the approval of the Motombo
and Bausi. We noted that the affair did not seem to interest the Motombo
at all. Indeed, he appeared to go to sleep while the speech was being
delivered, perhaps because he was exhausted with the invention of his
outrageous falsehoods, or perhaps for other reasons. When it was finished
he opened his eyes and pointed to Komba, saying:</p>
<p>“Arise, Kalubi-that-is-to-be.”</p>
<p>So Komba rose, and in his cold, precise voice narrated his share in the
transaction, telling how he had visited Bausi, and all that had happened
in connection with the embassy. Again the Motombo appeared to go to sleep,
only opening his eyes once as Komba described how we had been searched for
firearms, whereon he nodded his great head in approval and licked his lips
with his thin red tongue. When Komba had done, he said:</p>
<p>“The gods tell me that the plan is wise and good, since without new blood
the people of the Pongo will die, but of the end of the matter the god
knows alone, if even he can read the future.”</p>
<p>He paused, then asked sharply:</p>
<p>“Have you anything more to say, O Kalubi-that-is-to-be? Now of a sudden
the god puts it into my mouth to ask if you have anything more to say?”</p>
<p>“Something, O Motombo. Many moons ago the god bit <i>off</i> the finger of
our High Lord, the Kalubi. The Kalubi, having heard that a white man
skilled in medicine who could cut off limbs with knives, was in the
country of the Mazitu and camped on the borders of the great lake, took a
canoe and rowed to where the white man was camped, he with the beard, who
is named Dogeetah, and who stands before you. I followed him in another
canoe, because I wished to know what he was doing, also to see a white
man. I hid my canoe and those who went with me in the reeds far from the
Kalubi’s canoe. I waded through the shallow water and concealed myself in
some thick reeds quite near to the white man’s linen house. I saw the
white man cut off the Kalubi’s finger and I heard the Kalubi pray the
white man to come to our country with the iron tubes that smoke, and to
kill the god of whom he was afraid.”</p>
<p>Now from all the company went up a great gasp, and the Kalubi fell down
upon his face again, and lay still. Only the Motombo seemed to show no
surprise, perhaps because he already knew the story.</p>
<p>“Is that all?” he asked.</p>
<p>“No, O Mouth of the god. Last night, after the council of which you have
heard, the Kalubi wrapped himself up like a corpse and visited the white
men in their hut. I thought that he would do so, and had made ready. With
a sharp spear I bored a hole in the wall of the hut, working from outside
the fence. Then I thrust a reed through from the fence across the passage
between the fence and the wall, and through the hole in the hut, and
setting my ear to the end of the reed, I listened.”</p>
<p>“Oh! clever, clever!” muttered Hans in involuntary admiration, “and to
think that I looked and looked too low, beneath the reed. Oh! Hans, though
you are old, you have much to learn.”</p>
<p>“Among much else I heard this,” went on Komba in sentences so clear and
cold that they reminded me of the tinkle of falling ice, “which I think is
enough, though I can tell you the rest if you wish, O Mouth. I heard,” he
said, in the midst of a silence that was positively awful, “our lord, the
Kalubi, whose name is Child of the god, agree with the white men that they
should kill the god—how I do not know, for it was not said—and
that in return they should receive the persons of the Mother of the Holy
Flower and of her daughter, the Mother-that-is-to-be, and should dig up
the Holy Flower itself by the roots and take it away across the water,
together with the Mother and the Mother-that-is-to-be. That is all, O
Motombo.”</p>
<p>Still in the midst of an intense silence, the Motombo glared at the
prostrate figure of the Kalubi. For a long while he glared. Then the
silence was broken, for the wretched Kalubi sprang from the floor, seized
a spear and tried to kill himself. Before the blade touched him it was
snatched from his hand, so that he remained standing, but weaponless.</p>
<p>Again there was silence and again it was broken, this time by the Motombo,
who rose from his seat before which he stood, a huge, bloated object, and
roared aloud in his rage. Yes, he roared like a wounded buffalo. Never
would I have believed that such a vast volume of sound could have
proceeded from the lungs of a single aged man. For fully a minute his
furious bellowings echoed down that great cave, while all the Pongo
soldiers, rising from their recumbent position, pointed their hands, in
some of which torches still burned, at the miserable Kalubi on whom their
wrath seemed to be concentrated, rather than on us, and hissed like
snakes.</p>
<p>Really it might have been a scene in hell with the Motombo playing the
part of Satan. Indeed, his swollen, diabolical figure supported on the
thin, toad-like legs, the great fires burning on either side, the lurid
lights of evening reflected from the still water beyond and glowering
among the tree tops of the mountain, the white-robed forms of the tall
Pongo, bending, every one of them, towards the wretched culprit and
hissing like so many fierce serpents, all suggested some uttermost deep in
the infernal regions as one might conceive them in a nightmare.</p>
<p>It went on for some time, I don’t know how long, till at length the
Motombo picked up his fantastically shaped horn and blew. Thereon the
women darted from the various doorways, but seeing that they were not
wanted, checked themselves in their stride and remained standing so, in
the very attitude of runners about to start upon a race. As the blast of
the horn died away the turmoil was suddenly succeeded by an utter
stillness, broken only by the crackling of the fires whose flames, of all
the living things in that place, alone seemed heedless of the tragedy
which was being played.</p>
<p>“All up now, old fellow!” whispered Stephen to me in a shaky voice.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I answered, “all up high as heaven, where I hope we are going. Now
back to back, and let’s make the best fight we can. We’ve got the spears.”</p>
<p>While we were closing in the Motombo began to speak.</p>
<p>“So you plotted to kill the god, Kalubi-who-<i>was</i>,” he screamed,
“with these white ones whom you would pay with the Holy Flower and her who
guards it. Good! You shall go, all of you, and talk with the god. And I,
watching here, will learn who dies—you or the god. Away with them!”</p>
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