“Find the wizard!” echoed those whom she had already passed by as she commenced her passage along the line.
“Find the wizard!” they shouted, rapping the ground with their sticks. Those who had yet to undergo the ordeal kept stem silence.
The chorus grew in volume as the number qualified to swell it increased. Not merely a lust for blood did that horrid shout represent—it embodied also a delirious relief on the part of those already safe.
Suddenly Ngcenika made a half pause, raising her voice in the midst of her yelling chant. The serpent, its black coils writhing and twisting around her arm, opened its jaws and hissed horribly. Those still expectant held their breaths; those already relieved shouted and hammered with their sticks harder than ever. Those directly opposite the sorceress, at this ill-omened juncture, stood turned to stone.
“Find him, Inyoka!” snarled the hag.
“Find him! Find him!” echoed the deep-toned chorus.
But the pause was only momentary. Not yet was the victim singled out. Ngcenika resumed her way, only to repeat the process further along the line. And this she would do at intervals, sometimes coming to a dead stop in such significant and purpose-fraught fashion that the whole body of spectators stood ready to hurl themselves like lightning upon the unlucky one denounced. The hellish hag was enjoying the terror she inspired, and as strong men of tried bravery one after another quailed before her she gloated over their fears to such a pitch that her voice rose to a deafening shriek of demoniacal glee.
The other end of the great human crescent was nearly reached and still no victim. And now those who had escaped so far began to feel their apprehensions return. It would be no unprecedented affair were a second trial to occur, or even a third. The sorceress might elect to make her fatal progress through the ranks again and again. There were barely fifty men left. Unless the victim or victims should be found among those, a second progress was inevitable.
The bloodthirsty chorus rose into a deafening roar. The tension was fearful to witness. The hideous possession of the repulsive witch-doctress had communicated itself in some degree to the mass of excitable savages. Many were foaming at the mouth and apparently on the eve of convulsions. Not satisfied with the shouting, the infuriated mob beat time with their feet in addition to their sticks, as they joined in the hell-hag’s demoniacal incantations, and the perspiration streamed from every pore till the very air was heavy with a sickening and musky odour. It was a repellent and appalling scene, and even the white spectator, apart from the extreme peril of his own situation, felt his blood curdle within him at this vision of what was very like a diabolical power let loose. But there was worse to follow.
Suddenly the sorceress was seen to halt. Her voice rose to a frightful yell, as with blazing eyes, and pouring forth a torrent of denunciation, she raised the great black serpent aloft in such wise that its writhing neck and hissing jaws made a dart straight at the face of a man in the rear rank of the line and near the end of the latter.