As a pallid moon rose, as if fearfully, above the deep ultramarine of the banana fronds, was a magic potion brewed from certain herbs in enchanted water, with which the King, Zalu Zako, his son, and the King’s wives were laved. Amid a tempest of screams and drums rose Kawa Kendi purified, to be driven by Bakahenzie and the wizards back to the hill of his father, leaving the assembled lay chiefs squatting humbly and in dread of the spirits abroad in the night. While the procession leaped and twirled, screamed and groaned to the frantic thrum of the drums through the blue darkness, the magicians ran and pranced through and around the village, seeking any blasphemer who dared to look upon sacred things; banging on hut doors and shaking thatches, the more to terrify the shrinking inhabitants.
Without the gate of the old enclosure all remained, except Bakahenzie and the four wizards who encircled Kawa Kendi and Kingata Mata and hustled them across the clearing. With his back to the dim form of the idol stood Kawa Kendi as behind it grouped the master magicians. From the base Bakahenzie took two large gourds and gave them into the keeping of Kingata Mata.
Came an abrupt cessation of the drums and cries. [pg 56] The wailing of the women behind the temple died. The tense air pulsed with electricity. A cock crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to totter. Louder screeched the magicians; faster fled the drums. Slowly the idol leaned and subsided on to the shoulders of Kawa Kendi. Grasping the mass firmly upon his bent back, he bore the burden out of the enclosure and down the hill.
Behind his unsteady steps pranced and yelled the doctors with more prodigious a noise than ever before as they scourged the King’s legs and arms with cords of fibre. Through the listening village panted the King. As he gasped slowly up the hill the thrashing was redoubled. But into the new enclosure the King staggered, let slide the heavy mass into a hole prepared for the sacred feet and, gleaming blue points of sweat in the faint moon, let out a hoarse yell, proving to the assembly of magicians and chiefs that he was powerful enough to bear the burden of the world and moreover that none could wrest his office from him.
No time was given for the incarnation of a god to recoup from his labours. The motive principle of the accusation and for the death of the king was the drought. That only concerned the soul of the tribe in the person of Bakahenzie. For him and his brothers of the inner cult, while certain pretensions of power over the supernatural were for the “good of the people,” the truths of magic and divine functions were inviolable. The person of Kawa Kendi, heretofore merely one in whom was a potentiality, became after the [pg 57] purification and “coronation” the very incarnation of the god. Kawa Kendi had crossed from the comparative safe haven of the potential into divine activity.
Also there were, as ever, political reasons for the hastening of the offices of the god. Should the new King-God fail, as his father had done, to accomplish the duties of the rainmaker, then, as no precedent had ever been known for the failure of two kings in succession, an enemy might accuse Bakahenzie of having committed some sacrilege which had displeased the Unmentionable One. Politics and religion are often inseparable. Therefore, as soon as Zalu Zako had witnessed the ascent of his father into the dangerous zone of the gods, was he bidden as the victim apparent, to produce the sacred rain-making paraphernalia. From the Keeper of the Fire, Kingata Mata, Zalu Zako received one of the large gourds, which he deposited at the feet of his father squatting before the sacred fire, and retired to his allotted place among the other lay chiefs. Only Bakahenzie and the four of the inner cult were permitted within the enclosure.
Fumbling within the pot Kawa Kendi produced a bundle of twigs tied with banana fibre, which he unbound and cast into the fire. The herbs smouldered and sent up a pungent smoke forming a heavy cloud like some strange blue tree sheltering the form of the idol against the green sky. Save for the faint wailing of the distant women there was silence, in which an owl screeched harshly, a good omen. Little flames flickered. The smoke grew denser, obliterating the figure of the King. The drums began to mutter, Bakahenzie cried out in a loud voice:
“O great God, the Unmentionable One! let thy powers be made manifest!”
The Keeper of the Fires came forward upon his hands and thrust the other sacred gourd in front of the King, a deep one containing water, and a wand made from a sacred tree which had upon the end a crook. To the groaning of the magicians, the King took from the one gourd two stones of quartz and granite, the male and the female, and spat upon each one, thus placing part of his royal body upon them; then did he put them on the ground, and pouring water, chanted:
“Go forth, male spirit, with my ghost in thy hands!