The drums throbbed slowly, and to the cadence of their beat the masked dancers struck up a new song, a wailing, minor melody, beseeching, imploring of Massi the continued toleration of their wants. The snake priests and their burden passed between the two lines from the temple doorway to the image of the Ruler of the Dead, halted a moment facing it, turned, and then, with Wiki and Angwusi preceding Kokyan, and the column of masked dancers following the hurdle-bearers, solemnly paraded the circuit of the plaza; whilst all the people sitting or crouching on the ground bent their heads and muttered, "Kachina!" or "The Sacred Dancer comes!" or else addressed impromptu personal prayers to Massi, Yoki, Chua and other lesser divinities.
Tawannears' excitement had grown to an extraordinary degree. The breath whistled in his nostrils. His chest rose and fell as though he were running. His features were drawn and haggard. His eyes never swerved from the enormous pumpkin.
"How could they have nourished it to such a size!" I whispered.
He did not hear me, but Peter, on my other side, made shrill reply—
"Idt is not real."
"Not real?"
"Ja, you vatch."
I peered at it the more closely, myself. Certes, it had all the outward seeming of a pumpkin magnified a score of times. There were the corrugations of the surface, the mottled yellow color with a hint of pale green, the blunt-ended stalk. But whilst I watched, the snake priests completed the plaza's circuit, gently deposited the hurdle in front of Massi, and took their position behind the idol in a single rank, with Kokyan a step in advance, arms folded on their breasts. The masked dancers formed a ring around the image, the giant pumpkin and the group of priests; and Wiki and Angwusi, on either side of the hurdle, commenced the next phase of the elaborate ritual.
Wiki seemed to be delivering an oration to the god. He included by his gestures the people in the plaza, the village, the priests, the valley below the cliff, and finally the pumpkin. Afterward we learned that he had been summing up the tribe's case for divine assistance, speaking from the viewpoint of the men. Angwusi, who followed him, described for the benefit of the deity the efforts put forward by the women and the especial reasons they thought they had for meriting aid. And to cap it, both of them united in an address drawing to Massi's notice the magnificent pumpkin which they would sacrifice to him.
This brought from the ring of dancers a prolonged shout of applause, the drums in the temple pulsed into a jerky, varying beat, and the masked figures pranced crazily around the idol and the pumpkin, the priests singing another of their weird, hesitating songs. Faster and faster thumped the drums. Swifter and swifter whirled the dancers. Wilder and wilder waxed the song. The end came in a crescendo of noise, color and movement. It snapped off almost with a physical jar. Priests and dancers flung themselves upon their faces in the send. The drums were stilled. The quiet was so intense that all about me I could hear people's breathing, the gusty pants of Tawannears as loud as musketry by contrast.