These go about their work without one spark of pity, one qualm of ruth. Will not their own turn come in the course of years, should they not be slain in battle or the chase in the interim? Of course. Why then heed such vain sentiment? It is the custom. Old and useless people are not kept among this tribe.
The other two, who are not old, but prisoners of war, suffer in like manner; and then all five of the bodies are flung on to the blocks and quartered and disjointed with astonishing celerity. And women bearing the oblong baskets return within the stockade, passing through the hideous gateway, staggering beneath the weight of limbs and trunks of their slaughtered fellow-species. Within the open space great fires now leap and crackle into life, roaring upward upon the still air, reddening as with a demon-glow this hellish scene, and, gathering around, the savages impatiently and with hungry eyes watch the cooking of the disjointed members, and, hardly able to restrain their impatience, snatch their horrible roast from the flames and embers before it is much more than warmed through; and with laugh and shout the cannibal orgy goes on, prolonged far into the night, the bones and refuse being flung to the women in the background.
At last, surfeited with their frightful feast, these demons in human shape drop down and sleep like brute beasts. And the full moon soaring high in the heavens looks down with a gibing sneer in her cold cruel face upon this scene of a shocking human shambles; and her light, so far from irradiating this "dark place of the earth," seems but to shed a livid sulphurous glare upon a very antechamber of hell.
The moon floats higher and higher above the tropical forest, flooding the seas of slumbering foliage with silver light. Hour follows upon hour, and in the stockaded village all is silent as with the stillness of death. The ghastly remnants of that fearful feast lie around in the moonbeams—human bones, picked clean, yet expressive in their shape, spectral, as though they would fain reunite, and, vampire-like, return to drain the life-blood of these human wolves who devour their own kind. But the sleep of the latter is calm, peaceful, secure.
Secure? Wait! What are these stealthy forms rising noiselessly among the undergrowth on the outskirts of the clearing? Are they ghosts? Ghosts of those thus barbarously slain and of many others before them? The moonlit sward is alive with flitting shapes, gliding towards the stockade, surrounding it on all sides with a celerity and fixity of purpose which can have but one meaning. And among them is the glint of metal, the shining of rifle barrels and spear blades.
The inhabitants of that village are savages, and thus, for all their flesh-gorged state of heavy slumber, are instinctively on the alert. They wake, and rush forth with wild yells of alarm, of warning. But to many of them it is the last sound they shall utter, for numberless forms are already swarming over the stockade, and now the stillness is rent by the roar of firearms. Dark, ferocious faces grin with exultation as the panic-stricken inhabitants, decimated by that deadly volley, turn wildly in headlong flight for the only side of the stockade apparently left open. But before these arises another mass of assailants, barring their way, then springing upon them spear in hand; and the fiendish war-whistle screeches its strident chorus, as the broad spears shear down through flesh and muscle; and the earth is slippery with blood, ghastly with writhing and disemboweled corpses.
If this nest of man-eaters was hellish before in its bloodstained horror, words fail to describe its aspect now. The savage shouts of the assailants, the despairing screeches of women and children, who have come forth only to find all escape cut off, the gasping groans of the wounded and of the slain, the gaping gashes and staggering forms, and ever around, grim, demon-like countenances, with teeth bared and a perfect hell of blood-fury gleaming from distended eyeballs. All is but another inferno-picture, too common here in the dark places of the earth. It seems that in a very few minutes not a living being in that surprised village will be left alive.
But now voices are raised in remonstrance, in command—loud voices, authoritative voices—ordering a cessation of the massacre, for this is no expedition of vengeance, but a slave-hunting party. In Swahili and Zulu the leaders strive to curb this blood-rage once let loose among their followers. But the savage Wangoni, who are the speakers of the latter tongue and who constitute about half the attacking party, have tasted slaughter, and their ferocity is well-nigh beyond control; indeed, but for the fact of being allowed to massacre a proportion of the inhabitants of each place attacked, they could not be enlisted for such a purpose at all. Still their broad spears flash in the moonlight, and all who are in the way feel them—combatants, shrieking women, paralyzed, crouching children; and not until the leader has threatened to turn his rifles upon them will these ferocious auxiliaries be persuaded to desist, and then only sullenly, and growling like a pack of disappointed wolves.
Fully one-half of the male inhabitants have been slain and not a few women and children, and now, as the heavy, sulphurous fumes of powder smoke roll forth on the still, solemn beauty of the night, and the Wangoni, reluctantly quitting the congenial work of plunder and rapine, drive into open space every living being they can muster, the two leaders step forward, and with critical decision inspect the extent and quality of their capture. Of the latter there are none but able-bodied, for the sufficiently hideous reason already set forth. These are drafted into gangs according to age or sex, and yoked together like oxen, with heavy wooden yokes.
Upon the whole of this wild scene of carnage and massacre the principal leader of the slave-hunters has gazed unmoved. Not a shot has he fired, not deeming it necessary, so complete was the panic wherewith the cannibal village was overwhelmed. Rather have his energies been devoted to restraining the blood-thirst of his ferocious followers, for he looks upon the tragedy with a cold commercial eye. Prisoners represent so many saleable wares. If it is essential that his hell-hounds shall taste a modicum of blood, or their appetite for that species of quarry would be gone, it is his business to see that they destroy no more "property" than can be avoided.