"Let us speak with Djath on this matter." He singled out Koyala, Lkath, and the Sadonger's brother, inviting them to enter the temple with him. A dusky pallor came over the Sadonger's face, but he followed the others into the enclosure.
"The great god Djath is not my god," Peter Gross said, when they had entered the silent hall and stood between the rows of grinning idols. "Yet I have heard that he is a god who loves the truth and hates falsehood. It seems good to me, therefore, that the Bintang Burung call down Djath's curse on this slayer of one of your people. Then, when the curse falls, we may know without doubt who the guilty one is. Is it good, Lkath?"
The chief, although plainly amazed at hearing such a suggestion from a white man, was impressed with the idea.
"It is good," he assented heartily.
Peter Gross looked at Koyala. She was staring at him with a puzzled frown, as if striving to fathom his purpose.
"Invoke us a curse, O Bintang Burung, on the slayer," he asked. "Speak your bitterest curse. Give him to the Budjang Brani, to the eternal fires at the base of the Gunong Agong."
Koyala's frown deepened, and she seemed on the point of refusal, when Lkath urged: "Call us down a curse, daughter of Djath, I beg you."
Seeing there was no escape, Koyala sank to her knees and lifted her hands to the vault above. A vacant stare came into her eyes. Her lips began to move, first almost inaudibly; then Peter Gross distinguished the refrain of an uninterpretable formula of the Bulungan priesthood, a formula handed down to her by her grandfather, Chawatangi. Presently she began her curse in a mystic drone:
"May his eyes be burned out with fire; may the serpents devour his limbs; may the vultures eat his flesh; may the wild pigs defile his bones; may his soul burn in the eternal fires of the Gunong Agong—"
"Mercy, bilian, mercy!" Shrieking his plea, the dead Sadonger's brother staggered forward and groveled at Koyala's feet. "I will tell all!" he gasped. "I shot the arrow; I killed my brother; for the love of his woman I killed him—"