e a photograph of Lucille was
pinned upon the canvas. Upon the camp bed, screened by a mosquito net, lay
the new King-God, Moonspirit, the magic book in his hands.

"Kings, princes, monarchs, and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look
into their estate; you shall find them to be most cumbered with cares, in
perpetual fear, agony, suspicion, jealousy: that as he (Valer. i. 7, c. 3)
saith of a crown, if they but knew the discontents that accompany it, they
would not stoop to pick it up. Quem mihi regem dabis (saith Chrysostom)
non curis plenum?"

The Incarnation of the Unmentionable One smiled, put down the book and
glanced across at the photograph.

"And yet they still talk of the advantages of a monarchy!" he commented.

The original plan concocted with Marufa and Zalu Zako in the forest when
making the new idol was that Birnier should become chief witch-doctor and
Zalu Zako be anointed King-God, with Marufa as the power behind the
throne. Although Zalu Zako desired to escape the yoke, his protest was
enfeebled by the sense of fatality, and had been utterly squashed by the
promise of Marufa, at Birnier's suggestion, that the sex tabu would be
lifted from the godhead. But the negligence of Marufa in allowing the
white man to carry the idol, arranged with the idea of investing
Moonspirit with greater prestige according to the prophecies already
announced by Tarum, had permitted Bakahenzie to make his _coup
d'etat_--thrust the godhood upon the white and recover his own position.

Birnier in truth had little option of refusal as well as little time for
reflection upon a situation the possibility of which had not occurred to
him; for Marufa was completely out-manoeuvred by his rival, and the
certainty of escape from his doom offered by Bakahenzie revived the image
of Bakuma in Zalu Zako and bought his partisanship instantly.

With Napoleonic swiftness to grasp the advantages gained Bakahenzie drove
the lay chiefs from the sacred presence, which he surrounded by a
bodyguard of the awed brethren; expelled the household from Zalu Zako's
compound and hustled the incarnation, bearing the new god, into holy
isolation.

Bewildered by the rapidity of the moves Marufa and Zalu Zako were
separated from Moonspirit. In the general confusion, not knowing exactly
what was happening, Birnier complied with what he believed to be the
regulations regarding gods. But when he perceived that he was about to be
left alone he c