This argument he had advanced when, at sunrise, he and his two companions had been led forth to die upon the altar before the great stone god; and it had consisted, first, in the narrative of how the Great White Chief in command of his party had miraculously cured a black panther which had been discovered in the last stage of dissolution, and subsequently tamed it, and secondly, in the confident assertion that the man who could do this thing could likewise cure the sick of the village, if he were approached in a becomingly humble spirit. The humble spirit, Inaguy regretfully reported, had proved conspicuous by its absence; but after much discussion a bargain had been eventually struck whereby the two followers of Inaguy were to be retained as hostages while the headman was to be released upon condition that he returned at once to the Great White Chief, conveying a message that unless the latter and his party turned up at the village before sunset, the hostages would be put to death.
It took Earle not a moment to decide what his action should be, when Inaguy brought his narrative to a conclusion. The men’s lives must be saved at any cost; and since the village was situated at a considerable distance from the camp, and it would mean quick marching for the party to reach it within the stipulated time, the tent was immediately struck, and the march was at once commenced.
They arrived at the village with only a few minutes to spare, so few indeed, that they found the villagers already assembling in preparation for the sacrifice, while the sun’s disc was within less than half of its own apparent diameter from the summits of a range of hills that bounded the horizon.
The first object to attract the visitors’ attention was an enormous figure, some forty feet high, bearing a rude resemblance to that of a seated man, which had evidently at some remote period, been sculptured out of a solid block of black marble seemingly springing vertically out of the ground. There was nothing artistic in the conception or execution of the image, which was a mere travesty of the human figure, every member being absurdly out of proportion, while the only features upon the modelling of which any pains had been taken were those of the face, the expression of which hideously suggested the extremes of mingled cunning and ferocity. An altar of the same black marble, about three feet high and ten feet long, stood at the feet of the figure, and this was already piled with wood in preparation for the anticipated sacrifice.
At the precise moment when the party came within sight of this extraordinary figure they also became conscious of a peculiar taint in the air suggestive of mud and rotting vegetation; and as Earle sniffed it he remarked:
“Umph! Big swamp not far off, I guess, which, apart from anything else, is enough to account for sickness in the village. Swamp fever, most likely. Say, Dick, that’s an ugly-looking guy, that idol, eh. Won’t these ginks get a startler when they hear him speak presently!”
“Speak?” repeated Dick. “How do you mean?”
“You just wait and see, sonny,” returned Earle. “Oh, yes, he’ll speak, you bet. And what he is going to say is— But here comes the chief and his principal headmen to meet us. Now, Inaguy, you be very careful in your interpretation of everything that passes, for a good deal may depend upon it. And let’s hurry; I want to get up as close as possible to that idol before the palaver begins.”
The chief of the tribe was easily distinguishable from all the rest, from the fact that he walked some half a dozen paces in front of the others, and also because of his garb, which consisted of a gaudy head-dress of variously coloured feathers and an enormous jaguar’s skin thrown over his left shoulder, half of it covering the front of his body—and the other half the rear, the two halves united at his right hip by knotting the skin of the left foreleg to the left hinder one. He was, like all the rest of his tribe, coal-black in colour, and, like his followers, was armed with a sheaf of formidable-looking barbed spears, the heads of which appeared to be made of bone or horn. They seemed to be a fine race of men, standing nearly six feet high, and their carriage was suggestive of great strength and agility, but they were undeniably ugly and repulsive of feature, the expression being that of mingled cunning and cruelty. As they drew nearer, King Cole, the black panther, began to snarl and show his fangs in an exceedingly hostile fashion, whereupon Dick hurriedly seized one of the tent ropes and deftly looped it about the animal’s neck in a standing bowline knot, at the same time soothing him by word and touch.
The two parties met and came to a halt at a point some thirty feet from the altar; and as they did so Earle waved his hand in greeting toward the figure, airily remarking as he did so: