g the palm creepers which tapestried it
he heard a noise of lamentation. The noise came from the village and
was general enough to assure him that a chief was dead. It rose in a
chorus of discordant howls, low in note and long-drawn out--wordless,
something like the howls of an animal in pain and yet human by reason
of their infinite melancholy.

Walker pushed forward, came out upon a hillock, fronting the palisade
which closed the entrance to the single street of huts, and passed
down into the village. It seemed as though he had been expected. For
from every hut the Fans rushed out towards him, the men dressed in
their filthiest rags, the women with their faces chalked and their
heads shaved. They stopped, however, on seeing a white man, and Walker
knew enough of their tongue to ascertain that they looked for the
coming of the witch doctor. The chief, it appeared, had died a natural
death, and, since the event is of sufficiently rare occurrence in the
Fan country, it had promptly been attributed to witchcraft, and the
witch doctor had been sent for to discover the criminal. The village
was consequently in a lively state of apprehension, since the end of
those who bewitch chiefs to death is not easy. The Fans, however,
politely invited Walker to inspect the corpse. It lay in a dark hut,
packed with the corpse's relations, who were shouting to it at the top
of their voices on the on-chance that its spirit might think better of
its conduct and return to the body. They explained to Walker that they
had tried all the usual varieties of persuasion. They had put red
pepper into the chief's eyes while he was dying. They had propped open
his mouth with a stick; they had burned fibres of the oil nut under
his nose. In fact, they had made his death as uncomfortable as
possible, but none the less he had died.

The witch doctor arrived on the heels of the explanation, and Walker,
since he was powerless to interfere, thought it wise to retire for
the time being. He went back to the hillock on the edge of the trees.
Thence he looked across and over the palisade and had the whole length
of the street within his view.

The witch doctor entered it from the opposite end, to the beating
of many drums. The first thing Walker noticed was that he wore a
square-skirted eighteenth century coat and a tattered pair of brocaded
knee breeches on his bare legs; the second was that he limped--ever
so slightly. Still he limped and--with the right