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progress of a native clambering from trunk to trunk and over undergrowth
ten feet deep was slow and tortuous, was the temporary village of Zalu
Zako; some six or seven hundred huts of branches and creepers straggling
over a wide area of ground which had been roughly cleared from undergrowth
by a few slaves and women.

The hut of Zalu Zako, as those of most of the bigger chiefs and wizards,
was furnished with reeds upon the floor to avoid squatting actually in the
green slime, and boasted a palisade run from tree to tree enclosing the
huts of his two wives, women and slaves. Every morning the leader of a
long line of slaves bringing supplies from the villages in the open,
chanting softly the song of the march, entered the village through a mass
of creepers which hung like a curtain of humid green. Many hundreds of
warriors with their chiefs had deserted their king after the flight from
Yagonyana's village.

In the mind of Zalu Zako was doubt and perplexity as in those of his
people. All the accepted "laws" and "facts" of his world had been set at
naught; it was as if buck lived in the rivers and fish ran roaring through
the forests. Fear, curiosity, and resentment filled him. Sometimes it
appeared that Eyes-in-the-hands had indeed proved to be a more powerful
god than the Unmentionable One, of whom he was, or should have been, high
priest and king; that he had eaten him up as they said; so perhaps the
better course was to submit to this being invincible. Yet this very
anarchy of his beliefs had released once more the passion for Bakuma whom
he had renounced, the desire for whom had been inhibited by the sense of
the inevitability of the mandate of the witch-doctors. Hereditary custom,
which made him feel that it was incumbent upon him--a primitive sense of
duty--to be king-god warred with this longing for Bakuma. The fact that he
was not yet bound to celibacy quickened the seed of rebellion against the
domination of the wizards. If he could escape the godhood then Bakuma was
alive again. For to his mind a ban upon the personal ego was far stronger
than any ban upon a second person.

Chewing the cud of this sweet grass of hope squatted Zalu Zako one morning
in the dignified solitude of his compound on the threshold of his hut.
Opposite him sat the brother conspirator of Bakahenzie, Marufa, a brown
shadow in comparison to the gleaming of the royal insignia of the ivory
bangles. They sat silent, motionless, save for the