Ere he could utter another word six black slaves, veritable giants in stature, seized the unfortunate wretch, and as the mouth of the monster again opened, they flung him headlong into it.
Next second the cruel terrible mouth closed, and the shrieks and crushing of bones told how terrible was the torture of the human victim within its insatiable maw.
The sight caused me to shudder. To this frightful ignominious death had this fair-faced, soft-spoken woman condemned me.
Again the enormous golden jaws opened, and again, as they closed, the victim’s piercing shrieks told that his agony was renewed, and that death did not come quickly within that weird colossal figure of the insect, once held sacred from the shores of the Red Sea unto the great black ocean. In this, the last place in all the world where its worship still remained, the people were the most cruel and relentless of any in our great dark continent, Africa. A dozen times the mouth opened and closed, and each occasion the cries of the agonised man were frightful to hear, until at last they died away, and as they did so the light also died from the monster’s eyes.
Soon, however, another thin, cringing man, starved almost to a skeleton, was brought forth, and with similar scant ceremony was cast into the colossal jaws, whereupon the light in the giant eyes grew brilliant again, and the shrieks for release, as the mouth reopened, were only answered by the loud jeers of the assembled multitude, by this time increased until every part of the magnificent building was crowded to suffocation, while at that instant Nara, still upon the Throne of the Thousand Eyes, was dragged in by a crowd of nearly a thousand persons. Twelve black slaves slowly fanned her as she sat, her chin resting upon her hand, watching in silence.
One after another were victims brought forth and hurled to the horrible monster, to be slowly cut to pieces by the myriad gleaming knives and fine-edged saws set within those terrible jaws, until at last some one in the crowd cried out with a loud voice—
“Let the pirate Ahamadou die! His men killed our Prince, the valiant Kourra, therefore no mercy shall be shown the Veiled Man. Let him be given to the Sacred Beetle!”
In an instant the cry was taken up on every hand. “Let him die!” they shouted wildly. “Let us witness his body being cut to ribbons!”
The priests hesitated, while in that perilous moment I repeated a sûra, and heeded not these Infidel worshippers of insects and idolators of golden effigies.
But at a sign from Nara, the relentless figure in white seated upon her wondrous Throne of the Thousand Eyes, they seized me, forced me to kneel upon the circular stone, and then, as those hideous jaws opened with a swift movement, they lifted me and cast me in.