ting my ear to the end of the reed, I listened."

"Oh! clever, clever!" muttered Hans in involuntary admiration, "and
to think that I looked and looked too low, beneath the reed. Oh! Hans,
though you are old, you have much to learn."

"Among much else I heard this," went on Komba in sentences so clear and
cold that they reminded me of the tinkle of falling ice, "which I
think is enough, though I can tell you the rest if you wish, O Mouth.
I heard," he said, in the midst of a silence that was positively awful,
"our lord, the Kalubi, whose name is Child of the god, agree with the
white men that they should kill the god--how I do not know, for it was
not said--and that in return they should receive the persons of the
Mother of the Holy Flower and of her daughter, the Mother-that-is-to-be,
and should dig up the Holy Flower itself by the roots and take it away
across the water, together with the Mother and the Mother-that-is-to-be.
That is all, O Motombo."

Still in the midst of an intense silence, the Motombo glared at the
prostrate figure of the Kalubi. For a long while he glared. Then the
silence was broken, for the wretched Kalubi sprang from the floor,
seized a spear and tried to kill himself. Before the blade touched
him it was snatched from his hand, so that he remained standing, but
weaponless.

Again there was silence and again it was broken, this time by the
Motombo, who rose from his seat before which he stood, a huge, bloated
object, and roared aloud in his rage. Yes, he roared like a wounded
buffalo. Never would I have believed that such a vast volume of sound
could have proceeded from the lungs of a single aged man. For fully a
minute his furious bellowings echoed down that great cave, while all
the Pongo soldiers, rising from their recumbent position, pointed their
hands, in some of which torches still burned, at the miserable Kalubi
on whom their wrath seemed to be concentrated, rather than on us, and
hissed like snakes.

Really it might have been a scene in hell with the Motombo playing the
part of Satan. Indeed, his swollen, diabolical figure supported on the
thin, toad-like legs, the great fires burning on either side, the lurid
lights of evening reflected from the still water beyond and glowering
among the tree tops of the mountain, the white-robed forms of the tall
Pongo, bending, every one of them, towards the wretched culprit and
hissing like so many fierce serpents, all suggested some uttermost d