“Thou hast answered well, Macoma,” retorted the king. “It shall be as thou sayest; and if our lord replies through his mouth it shall be a sign that Anamac prefers Inaguy to thee, and Inaguy shall be chief priest in thy stead.”
Thus neatly did Jiravai turn the tables upon the man who, a moment before, had been congratulating himself upon having got the best of the king in a public battle of wits.
Meanwhile, Dick and Earle had been interested watchers of the scene; and although the language in which the king and the chief priest had been sparring was strange to them, they caught a word here and there which sounded so nearly like words with the same meaning in the language with which they were by this time becoming fairly conversant, that they were able to follow, without very much difficulty the general trend of the conversation, including that portion of it in which Macoma had ventured to cast a doubt upon Inaguy’s bona fides. And although Earle had no great liking for the task of exercising his ventriloquial powers while seated in such close proximity to the king, he felt that he must make the effort, and make it successfully, too, if Inaguy’s life was to be saved. Therefore, when a few minutes later, Inaguy was led forth, and the king put to him the question which Macoma had declared himself unable to answer, and Inaguy had in turn passed it on to the idol, the latter was heard to reply, sharply:
“Let a young bull be found, without blemish, and let him be slain upon the altar and his carcass be burned before me, and I shall be satisfied; for ye can offer me no more acceptable sacrifice than this and your obedience to my commands. It is enough. I have spoken. Henceforth, trouble me not, for I will speak no more.”
Chapter Eleven.
A Definite Clue at last.
This final communication from the god Anamac was received by the vast multitude with great shouts of rejoicing, for it was accepted as putting an end finally and for ever to the practice of offering annually human sacrifices to him. And upon those occasions the choice of victims was usually made jointly by the king and the chief priest; and the choice was always of so capricious a character that, when invited to attend the festival, no man could ever know whether he would survive to return from it. Therefore the substitution of a single animal for several human victims—seldom less in number than half a dozen—was regarded as a national boon; and never, perhaps, was Anamac worshipped with more sincerity, or with more gratitude, than he was upon the day when Dick Cavendish and Wilfrid Earle so narrowly escaped dying upon his altar.
The festivities not only lasted through the entire day, but were continued far into the night, some fifty oxen being slaughtered and roasted to provide a feast for the numerous visitors whom King Jiravai had invited to Yacoahite to participate in the great annual festival; and when at length it was all over, and the guests had departed to their respective homes, everybody agreed in the opinion that it had been the most joyous and successful festival within living experience. As for Dick and Earle, they were lodged in the king’s own house, with Inaguy to act as their interpreter—that astute individual having soon made up his mind that service with the white men was safer, and likely to be more profitable in the end, than even the position of chief of the Mangeroma priests. And on the night of the festival, when the great square of Yacoahite was given up to the populace, and all the great chiefs were being entertained at a banquet given by the king, Earle, “the white man with the black hair,” availed himself of the opportunity to demonstrate his capabilities as a great medicine-man by performing a few very clever conjuring tricks before the king and his guests, which the simple Mangeromas regarded as absolute miracles. It was a stroke of sound policy on Earle’s part; for after seeing him cause a pack of cards to vanish into thin air, extract coins—a few of which he still had in his pocket—from the hair, ears and noses of great warriors, and perform sundry other marvels, there was not a Mangeroma in all that great assemblage who did not regard the American as something superhuman, or who would have ventured, even in the most secret recesses of his soul, to meditate treachery to him or anybody connected with him.