where the chances of battle had pulled out rings and spikes.
His eager eyes gazed up at me out of a face stiffened and set with
elephantiasis, and by his mat lay, unwrapped from their fiber coverings,
that they might comfort his passing spirit, two excellently preserved
negroid heads. I shuddered, but I laid my hand on his slanting
forehead--and I have seen men die with less dignity.

As night brought the closing in of choking jungle shadows, a half-dozen
red fires leaped up to drive their ribbons of red flare into the
blackness. They wavered fitfully and grotesquely upon twisting, leaping
bodies, which were paradoxically preparing for the ordeal of the morrow
by hideous orgies and dances and fatigue and nerve waste. But when the
first light of sunrise attacked the reek of dew that veiled the jungle,
while the dying fires still smouldered into gray ash and my throat
labored in stifling gasps of wet, they trailed out silently into the
bush. They were a long line of shadow shapes whose footfall made no
sound, and whose pigmy bodies melted into the tangle as impalpably as
the dissipating mists. My bearers carried me back to the shore. Two days
later their delegation came chattering in hysterical delight and
bringing in native triumph the head of the king who had three hundred
stones about his house.

About this time I instituted an important policy. By night I had signal
fires kept burning on every high place along the coast. I disingenuously
told my people that where a great shrine is, there must also be at
nightfall mighty banners of flame. They liked the idea. Despite their
hideous ferocity, they liked everything which might have appealed to the
imagination of a child. They liked music, they liked color. The greatest
privilege that their warriors could earn, was that of coming, to the
number of a dozen at a time, to my plateau by night and after due
reverence of squatting for hours on their haunches, while I coaxed from
the violin airs from opera or music hall.

On the point above us blazed one of our signal fires, and between the
reddened crevices of rock its flare struck down and yellowed our
gathering. The portrait would catch the light and leap from its shadow.
Over us were the stars. In a circle of silent absorption sat dark
immovable figures, with high lights gleaming, here and there, on the
mahogany of cheek-bone or forehead. Some fantastic painter might portray
these gatherings on canvas. He would need a bold