"These, O son of Maliko, are the hands of Tarum made manifest. He wishes that thou shouldst feel the itch of his desire!" and with the words he clapped one handle to the belly and the other at the base of the spine of the chief witch-doctor. Bakahenzie convulsed as he was compelled to do.

Swiftly Birnier applied the shock to the shoulders, holding the handles there as he remarked to a violently trembling Bakahenzie: "Behold! the itch of the fingers of Tarum!"

But as he lowered his hands towards the spine again, Bakahenzie moved rapidly and with no dignity.

Solemnly Birnier replaced the handles and closed the lid, and said quietly:

"Thou hast felt, O brother magician, that the fingers of Tarum do itch indeed?"

"Truly!" responded Bakahenzie with a celerity as unusual as the quaver in his voice. "Indeed thy words are white, O mightiest of magicians. What are indeed the evil eyes of savages against the power of thy magic, O son of the Lord-of-many-Lands!"

And contrary to all precedent Bakahenzie rose and left. Within a quarter of an hour his voice announced that slaves with the magic "things" were without the palisade, and called upon Mungongo to go to the gate to fetch them as strangers were forbidden even to look upon the King-G.o.d. Birnier, by the light of a torch, opened the mail, sent a wad of letters and a sheaf of telegraph slips on to the floor, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a long green envelope scrawled in French characters:

Monsieur le Curateur du Jardin des Plantes.

For a moment he stared at it perplexedly, for there was no stamp or cancellation.

"What in the name--" he muttered as he slit it open.

Entebbe, Aout 13, 19-

Mon pet.i.t loup, what have you been doing? Ou est tu? Comment et pourquoi?

Oh, I am cross with you, with Monsieur le Professeur! Why do you write me so ridiculous a letter? I laugh, but always I laugh, so what good is that to you? I will not reply to your letter, mon vieux-jamais. But I will tell you so that you may know why I am here. Yes, parmi les animaux!

Birnier winced at the phrase which seemed to come back at him like a boomerang from the lips of zu Pfeiffer.

I am to go for vacation to Wiesbaden with some very terrible peoples. Oh, on me degoute! I have an engagement for the winter in Berlin as before. I have engagement for Paris-eh! but-pouf! Figure me on the charming _Mauretania_ and I am sitting on the deck where you once made yourself so ridiculous. Rappelle toi? I am sick-No, mon vieux, pas du mal de mer! I should not be for everybody to look at. Oh, no! I am sick, I tell you. Je reve de mon pet.i.t coco parmi les sales animaux! Je me dis: Zut! il est fou! il est tape! Mais en moi meme je l'adore! Tout de suite I tell a creature who brings me my books, my fan, un espece de tapette, je m'en vais la, moi! He ask me where? I tell him I go to look for mon amant in Afrique Centrale! Mais oui! He thinks I am mad! I tell him so and I laugh!

How I laugh. But he is right, yes, je suis folle-de toi!

Alors I come to Ma.r.s.eilles and I catch a boat to Momba.s.sa. Ouf! Je vais mourir a cause de mon pet.i.t loup! La mer rouge! Quel cauchemar! Enfin I still arrive what of Lucille is left and I ask for you, for Monsieur le Professeur Americain, but no one knows you. On the boat I have attached to myself trois mousquetaires Anglais. Tous les trois sont droles! They bring me on the ever so funny little train to here. Entebbe. Les Anglais sont tres polis, tu sais! Monsieur le Gouverneur stop drinking whisky politely to tell me that Monsieur has been and has gone! Quelle horreur! You have gone but three days! Pense tu! I ask myself what have I done that the bon Dieu should be so unkind. Then quel malheur! I remember to myself that I commence to come to you on _Friday!_ You laugh! Yes, I laugh too but-Quien sabe? I commence to come to you on a Friday and you are gone three little days!

Then my good friends, les trois mousquetaires, send for me a what they call a runner-the red peas-C'est drole! but the little pea black he did not find you. He brings a message that you had gone to some place with a terrible name.

Then come the two most ridiculous letters. I will _not_ reply to any such ridiculous letters-jamais!

Birnier scowled. Two letters? he muttered. What letters?

You must come now. Immediately. I want you. I will wait here for you. You must leave your ridiculous animals as I have left mes affaires for you.

Come to me. I wait for you.

Lower down on the same page, but written with a thick pen, the letter continued:

Again I have read your absurd letter. Tu es fou! You make such a noise because this foolish young man is jealous of mon mari and make you to go round the detestable country, which you like so much, instead of straight through to the ridiculous place you say you want to go.

Birnier smiled grimly.

Peuh! ecoute, mon cher, it is true I have met the young man in Washington.

Mon Dieu, are there not plenty of young men in Washington, Paris, Berlin?

He fell in love with me. Mon Dieu, they are as thick as the blackberries!

Perhaps I tease him pour faire la blague! Pourquoi pas? I give him a photograph and I sign it, just as I sign plenty for amusing friends. But then he become too ridiculous. He has no sense of humour comme tous les Allemands. He wishes to fight all my friends, tes compatriotes si sombres et graves! Figure toi! Then he make a challenge and naturellement it is not the custom in thy country. Mon pauvre pet.i.t Dorsay refuse and this person become crazy wild, as you say, and he strike him with his cane in the street. Quelle horreur! Quel scandale! He run away of course. The Emba.s.sy help him. Qui sait? That is the last I hear until I receive this ridiculous letter, together with thy ridiculous letter. I send him to you.

How drole that you two should meet all among les animaux. It is so funny that he did not kill you, this monstre allemand! Tu es en cross encore avec moi? Zut! mon vieux it is not my fault that everybody goes mad after me except mon pet.i.t mari! Leave the ridiculous garcon where he is. But why do I talk so much about a cochon? Because you are ridiculous! Tant pis pour toi! Now sois gentil and come to me _immediately_-unless you love your sales animaux plus que moi! If you do not come I will never never, jamais de ma vie, give you one single baiser again! No! Mille baisers!

Mais comme je te deteste!

LUCILLE.

CHAPTER 30

Forty-eight hours later, the furious drumming, chanting and screaming heralded the return of the victorious troops of Zalu Zako. Birnier from his gaol on the hill watched the bronze flood pour like a stream of lava out of the plantation and flood the village, spears flashing silver points in the slanting rays of the sun. But what had happened to zu Pfeiffer and the white sergeants? No sign of them could he see. Waves of sound lapped continuously around the temple.

The long mauve shadow of the hill ate up the village. Fires began to flicker amid the huts and away in the recesses of the plantation. The lowing of cattle added to the general clamour. As the western sky was still ablaze with incandescent colour stole the cold green of the advancing moon in the east.

"Mungongo, what are thy brethren about to do?"

"It is the Festival of the Harvest, as I have told thee, O son of the Lord-of-many-Lands."

"But they have not the Bride?"

"Nay." Mungongo glanced apprehensively towards the temple where in what was to have been a bathroom, was Bak.u.ma hidden.

"He-who-may-not-be-mentioned demands but blood. The Bride is the food of the wizards. But to each warrior is every woman his bride this night."

"Why didst thou not tell me this thing before?" demanded Birnier, who knew that such was one of the customs of primitive tribes in all parts of the world and in all ages.

"Thou didst not ask me," retorted Mungongo, to whom the affair was such a matter of course that it was not worth mentioning.

"Do they make sacrifice?"

"The Bride is married to the Banana, but of the manner of her nuptial know I not. Am I a wizard?"

The divine king grimly watched his subjects. In the growing light flitted gnomes around the huts in and out the sepia caverns of the plantation. As a banana front was etched in sepia against the great moon, the ocean of clamour was cleft by the high treble of the tribal troubadour. At the bottom of the wide street appeared dancing figures. As they approached, Birnier could distinguish Bakahenzie, Marufa and Yabolo in the van, dressed in full panoply, whirling and leaping with untiring energy. Behind them shuffled and pranced a vast ma.s.s of warriors, behind whom again several hundred women shrilled and wriggled in the mighty chorus. The rhythm of the drums increased to the maddening action impulse of the two short-long beat:

Pm-pm-Pommmmm! Pm-pm-Pommmmm! Pm-pm-Pommmmm!

The treble solo of the chant darted above that throb and grunt like a mad bird skimming the turbulent tops of a dark forest.

Pm-pm-Pommmmm! Pm-pm-Pommmmm! Pm-pm-Pommmmm!

The rhythm seemed like a febrile pulse within Birnier's brain, dominating him with hypnotic suggestion to action. An urge to scream and to yell, to dance and to leap, plucked at his limbs. Resurgent desires from he knew not what subconscious catacombs, wriggled and struggled furiously within him. The great moon scattered blue stars upon the spears as if upon the green scales of some leviathan squirming in delirious torment.

Control the twitching of his muscles to that rhythm Birnier could not. He had to fight to resist the waves of hysteria permeating the air. He glanced at Mungongo. The whites of his eyes were rolling. Birnier cursed the insistency of the drums and the orgiastical grunts. Forcibly he kept up a running fire of psychological explanations: "Annihilation of inhibitions ... dissociation of personality ... triumph of the subconscious animal," as a wizard muttering incantations against evil spirits. He felt dizzy. "G.o.d, I'm drunk with rhythm!" he exclaimed.

The priests were entering the large gate of the outer enclosure. In the village and on the opposite hill the people resembled a swarm of black locusts. The drums ceased. Bakahenzie and Marufa and Yabolo ran straight towards him screeching. This was the cue.

Birnier walked back slowly. In awful silence they began to push the idol.

The wood creaked protestingly. Slowly the ma.s.s slid on to Birnier's back.