Again Leonie flung out both arms, and, just as the roomal was slipping over the small head, with the scream of a tigress whose cub is in danger, the ayah leapt straight at her beloved child, wrenching the knotted handkerchief from the priest's hand.
A horrible cry of disappointed blood lust shook the very earth; drums beat, horns screamed, daggers flashed in the dense mass, and fingers met round many a throat.
They were mad indeed the people, but none so mad as Leonie as she stood with feet apart glaring down at the ayah's sleek head, which she held by the hair, in one hand.
So mad was she that the priests drew back as from one divine; all but the high-caste youth who stood unnoticed amongst them and who advanced one step as Leonie raised her face to the moon.
"She of the full moon," she chanted, "was the first worshipped one with depths of days, of nights. They who, O worshipful one, gratify thee with offerings, those well doers are entered into thy firmament!"
To which the waiting multitude thundered a response.
"A sacrifice! A sacrifice! A sacrifice!"
Over and over again went up the cry as men and women and children fell foaming to the ground, "and conches and kettledrums, tabors and drums, and cow-horns blared."
Then came a silence, deep, sinister, and foreboding; only for one second before it was broken by a gasp, the catching of the breath in ecstasy of thousands of mankind.
And followed screams of pure delight as Leonie flung back her hand, in which gleamed the diamond hilted dagger, just as a terrific peal of thunder crashed upon the searing flash of lightning, which flamed from the dense clouds as they swept over and blotted out the moon.