"'And what did he do?' I queried, for the chief assured me that the drug
itself did not produce death, but only caused an irresistible desire for
it.
"The chief did not reply in words, but with a meaning smile, pointed to
a vein on his black wrist, and set his sharp, pointed teeth against it,
in a way that was a reply.
"I was anxious to see for myself, naturally, suspecting some
hocus-pocus, so I ventured to be respectfully dubious.
"The chief was in an amiable mood; he bade me visit his tent with my
servant at moon-rise, and he would prove that this was no lie, but the
truth.
"When we went out, it was about eleven o'clock, and the surrounding
jungle was full of the horrible noises of an African night; the wail of
the small lemur, that sounds like the death-moan of a child; the more
distant roar of the lion in the black depths of the forest, too thick
for the moonlight to ever penetrate; the giant trees of the bombax
around the encampment, wreathed with llianes and parasitical poison
vines that cast fantastic shadows on the ground, white with the
perfectly white moonlight of the tropics, that reminds one of the
electric light in its purity of ray and the blackness of the shadows
that contrast with it.
"Noiselessly my black servant and I proceeded to the chief's enclosure.
His slaves permitted us to pass, by his orders, and we found ourselves
in his tent, where he sat in grave silence on a pile of skins, the flare
of a torch revealing fitfully the ugly face of the medicine-man,
crouched with due humility on the earthen floor at his master's feet.
Pages:
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84