“Let me do the talking.”
The latter nodded surlily.
Before entering the hut the Priest gave an order to two of his followers to look after the animals. He caught a suspicious glance from Stubbs as the native led them away.
“The brutes look thirsty and I told the boy to give 232 them food and drink. The Sun God loves all dumb things.”
The room in which they found themselves contained no furniture other than a table, a few chairs, and against one wall a bunk covered with a coarse blanket. The floor was of hard clay and uncovered. From one side of the room there led out a sort of anteroom, and from here he brought out a bottle of wine with three wooden goblets.
The afternoon sun streamed in at the open windows, throwing a golden alley of light across the table; the birds sang without and the heavy green leaves brushed whisperingly against the outer walls. It was a picture of summer peace and simplicity. But within this setting, Wilson knew there lurked a spirit that was but the smile which mocks from a death’s head. There was less to be feared from that circle of childlike eyes with which they had been surrounded outside, burning with however much antagonism, than from this single pair of sparkling beads before them, which expressed all the intelligence of a trained intellect strangely mixed with savage impulses and superstition. The Priest poured each of them a cup of sparkling wine and raised his goblet to his lips.
“If my children,” he said, almost as though in apology, “do not like strangers, it is after all the fault of strangers of the past. Some of them have respected but little the gods of my people. You are, I presume, prospecting?”
“After a fashion,” answered Wilson. “But we prospect as much for friends as gold.”
“That is better. You people are strange in your lust for gold. It leads you to do––things which were better not done.”