t idol, or else
take the change out of my skin." But, all the same, when the question
was put to him again as to whether he would surrender the image, he
flatly refused. There was a certain pride about Kettle which forbade him
to make concessionary treaties with an inferior race.

So forthwith, having got this final refusal, the blacks took him up
again, and under the witch-doctor's lead carried him well beyond the
outskirts of the village. There was a cleared space here, and on the
bare, baked earth they laid him down under the full glare of the
tropical sunshine. For a minute or so they busied themselves with
driving four stout stakes into the ground, and then again they took him
up, and made him fast by wrists and ankles, spread-eagle fashion, to
the stakes.

At first he was free to turn his head, and with a chill of horror he saw
he was not the first to be stretched out in that clearing. There were
three other sets of stakes, and framed in each was a human skeleton,
picked clean. With a shiver he remembered travellers' tales on the
steamers of how these things were done. But then the blacks put down
other stakes so as to confine his head in one position, and were
proceeding to prop open his mouth with a piece of wood, when suddenly
there seemed to be a hitch in the proceedings.

The witch-doctor asked for honey--Kettle recognized the native word--and
none was forthcoming. Without honey they could not go on, and the
captive knew why. One man was going off to fetch it, but then news was
brought that the Krooboy Brass Pan had been caught, and the whole gang
of them went off helter-skelter toward the village--and again Kettle
knew the reason for their haste.

So there he was left alone for the time being with his thoughts, lashed
up beyond all chance of escape, scorched by an intolerable sun, bitten
and gnawed by countless swarms of insects, without chance of sweeping
them away. But this was ease compared with what was to follow. He knew
the fate for which he was apportioned, a common fate amongst the Congo
cannibals. His jaws would be propped open, a train of honey would be led
from his mouth to a hill of driver ants close by, and the savage insects
would come up and eat him piecemeal while he still lived.

He had seen driver ants attack a house before, swamp fires lit in their
path by sheer weight of numbers, put the inhabitants to flight, and eat
everything that remained. And here, in this clearing, if he wanted