“It is a wise man who hath that which is his always within his hand, even as Moonspirit hath the soul of his favourite wife with him always, so that she may not be unfaithful unto him.”
“Eh, he is wiser than the Banana Eater!” grunted the warrior in admiration.
Birnier’s training to control his features was strained in the effort not to express surprise. He could not imagine from what Mungongo had derived this astonishing statement, until he recollected that the boy had seen a photograph of Lucille among his papers.
After this successful demonstration of his sophistication, Mungongo was anxious that Moonspirit give an exhibition of his magic to dumbfound the chief witch-doctor, desiring most ardently to work the gramophone, to operate which he had also learned. But on reflection, Birnier decided that it was not his policy [to make] his thunder too cheap.
Each evening as the last subtle violet quivered in the [pg 170] trees had Bakuma glided from the shelter of the undergrowth under the flap of Birnier’s tent, where she had lain until the first tint of dawn on the foliage of the forest. Birnier had wished her to leave for some village until Bakahenzie had left the camp, but Bakuma had frantically pleaded to remain, knowing that the craft was seeking her throughout the country since Bakahenzie’s latest interview with mighty Tarum.
But upon the third day as Birnier was seated reading philosophically at his tent door, the inevitable happened. A loud outcry arose and from the tangle of creepers started the lithe figure of Bakuma, who darted past him into the tent. For a moment there was silence. But Birnier guessed what the matter was. Bakahenzie emerged from the wall of green and cried out in a loud voice. Instantly the warriors around leaped to their feet, and broke out into great clamour.
Mungongo, busy with the cooking pots, rushed to Birnier’s side, gesticulating wildly. Inside the tent crouched Bakuma. Towards Birnier advanced Bakahenzie and the warriors, whose dilated eyes and spears in their hands betokened that Bakahenzie had stirred their deepest feelings of terror and murder. Birnier smoked placidly, neither stirring nor permitting a sign of their presence to cross his features.
Mungongo, startled out of his confidence in Moonspirit, excitedly bade Bakuma go forth as Bakahenzie, stopping in front of the white man, broke into a harangue, bidding him to give up Bakuma whose sacrilege in breaking the magic circle, as he had said, had brought the terrible Eyes-in-the-hands upon them; that the welfare of the tribe depended upon [pg 171] her sacrifice to the angered Unmentionable One even as she had been doomed; and threatening that they would take the insolent white man, whose magic was as water, and sacrifice him as well, as was desired by the spirit of Tarum.
The longer he spoke the more excited he grew. Motivated by the sudden conviction that the sacrifice of Bakuma, whose action he had foretold so successfully, and the slaughter of the white would really restore to him his repute and remove at the same time the problem of controlling a superior magician who threatened to become his rival, Bakahenzie began to work himself up into the necessary state of prophetic hysteria. Cowering against the camp-bed Bakuma whimpered with terror; Mungongo incoherently begged Moonspirit to give up the girl.
Not a muscle moved upon Birnier’s face; nor even did his eyes turn in the direction of the menacing crowd who with uplifted spears joggled each other around Bakahenzie. Birnier knew that it was a supreme test of nerve; knew that any attempt to snatch a rifle or a movement of any sort, would precipitate action on their side. He had no intention of surrendering the girl to a hideous fate, and also he saw beyond the incident that if Bakahenzie were to triumph over him now, not only would his prestige with the natives be gone for ever, but that his fate would be surely sealed. Slowly, exaggeratedly, as if he were alone, he killed a mosquito upon his bare right breast and lighted his pipe anew.