A dark figure stood beside the pool, on the very brink, the figure of a man—a native—and in his hands he held something white—something that struggled. It was a half-bred Angora kid—the little animal whose bleat we had heard. I could see the glint of the man’s head-ring in the moonlight; then for a moment, as he turned it upward, I could see his face, and it was that of Ukozi, the one-eyed witch doctor. An increased pressure on my arm told that my companion had seen it too. I dared not speak, for I was curious to see what he was about to do. I could only motion her to preserve the strictest silence.
The witch doctor stood waving the kid—held in both hands by the fore and hind feet—high over his head, and chanting a deep-toned incantation; yet in such “dark” phraseology was this couched that even I couldn’t make head or tail of it. It seemed to call upon some “Spirit of the Dew” whatever that might be, and was so wrapped up in “dark” talk as to be unintelligible failing a key. Then, as we looked, there arose a splashing sound. The surface of the pool was disturbed. A sinuous undulation ran through it in a wavy line, right across the pool, and then—and then—a mighty length rose glistening from the water, culminating in a hideous head whose grisly snout and sunken eye were those of the python species. This horror glided straight across to where the witch doctor stood, and as it reached him its widely-opened jaws seemed to champ down upon his head. Not upon it, however, did they close, but upon the body of the white kid which he had deftly placed there, quickly springing back at the same time. Then it turned, and as it glided back, the wretched little animal kicking and bleating frantically in its jaws, it seemed as if the hideous brute were rushing straight for us. Aïda’s face was white as death, and I had to repress in her a panic longing to turn and fly. My firm touch however sufficed to calm her, and we crouched motionless, watching Ukozi on the further side. The serpent had disappeared from our view.
The whole thing was horrible and eerie to a degree. The witch doctor now was in a species of frenzy, walking up and down, with a half-dancing movement, as he called out, thick and fast, the sibongo of the serpent. It was a nasty, uncanny, heathenish performance, and revolted me; although through it there shone one redeeming—even humorous—side. We had sat and watched it while Ukozi was blissfully ignorant of our presence. He, the great witch doctor, had no inspiration or inkling that he was being watched! One day I would twit him with it.
Not long, however, did he stay there, and on Aïda’s account I was glad to see the last of him. Had I been alone I might have gone after him and asked the meaning of the performance. As it was, she had better forget it. For a time we sat there in the dead silence of the moonlight.
“What does it mean?” she whispered, when we had allowed Ukozi sufficient time to make himself scarce.
“Oh, some Mumbo Jumbo arrangement all his own,” I answered. “Well that certainly is a whacking big python—the very biggest I’ve ever seen. If I had anything in the shape of a gun I’d be inclined to try and sneak the brute wherever he’s lying.”
“Wouldn’t it be in the water then?”
“No. Lying up somewhere under the banks. In hot weather they’re fond of lying in a waterhole, but on a cool night like this—not. I must come and stalk the brute another night though; and yet, do you know, it seems strange, but I don’t like interfering with anything that bears a sort of religious significance to anybody. And the snake does come in that way with Zulus.”
She thought a moment. Then:
“You remember, dear, how I told you that one of the things this man was going to show father was the mystery of the waterhole. Now supposing that horror had suddenly seized him?”