I turned away impatiently. I was trembling as if with an ague, which I tried my best to conceal. I felt that this was not the time for lightness of speech. I looked about me to discover, if possible, an avenue of escape. But there was no break in the ranks of dark bodies which hemmed us in on every side. There was a stir about the throne. The Mamanloi had again arisen. She stretched out her graceful arm and waved her hand toward the fateful curtain.
She wreathed the serpent round her waist as a Northern girl would have twisted a ribbon, and said in her sweet and dreadful voice:
"Bring in the final sacrifice—the goat without horns!"
Then I heard to begin a faint tapping of the drum. As it grew louder and louder, taking upon itself the weird and gloomy "tum-tum-tum, tum-tum-tum," the music of the savage, many voices caught up the refrain, and sang not unmusically, and shouted until the rafters rang:
"The goat without horns! The goat without horns!" Then we heard the shuffling of many feet, and a crowd came pushing in from the back of the throne. The mass of people which surrounded this latest victim was so impenetrable that I could not discover what manner of person they had brought with them. The crowd approached the throne and lifted to a standing posture on the cover of the serpent box, a form. It stood, its feet dabbled in the blood of the recent victims, and faced us. My breath was taken away. I absolutely could not believe my eyes.
"Is it?" I asked of the Skipper.
"It is," said he.
It was the Minion, as cool apparently as ever he had been. He turned to his jailors and uttered two words:
"I'm tough!" said he.
The Captain looked at the Minion critically. He was grimy to a degree, and more unkempt than even I had ever seen him.