lack and cherry-colored, shaggy spiders big as
plums, caterpillars of the thickness of a finger, covered as though
with thorns, and loathsome and at the same time venomous scolopendras
whose bite may even cause death. In view of what was occurring on the
outside of the trunk it was easy to surmise how many similar creatures
must have perished from the fumes of the smoke on the inside. Those
which fell from the bark and lower branches upon the grass were crushed
unmercifully with a stone by Kali, who was continually gazing at the
upper and lower openings as if he feared that at any moment something
strange might appear in either of them.

"Why are you looking so?" Stas asked. "Do you think that another snake
is hiding in the tree?"

"No, Kali fears Mzimu!"

"What is a Mzimu?"

"An evil spirit."

"Did you ever in your life see a Mzimu?"

"No, but Kali has heard the horrible noise which Mzimu makes in the
huts of fetish-men."

"Nevertheless your fetish-men do not fear him."

"The fetish-men know how to exorcise him, and afterwards go to the huts
and say that Mzimu is angry; so the negroes bring them bananas, honey,
pombe (beer made of sorghum plant), eggs, and meat in order to
propitiate the Mzimu."

Stas shrugged his shoulders.

"I see that it is a good thing to be a fetish-man among your people.
Perhaps that snake was Mzimu?"

Kali shook his head.

"In such case the elephant could not kill the Mzimu, but the Mzimu
would kill the elephant. Mzimu is death."

Some kind of strange crash and rumble within the tree suddenly
interrupted his reply. From the lower aperture there burst out a
strange ruddy dust, after which there resounded a second crash, louder
than the former one.

Kali threw himself in the twinkling of an eye upon his face and began
to cry shrilly:

"Aka! Mzimu! Aka! Aka! Aka!"

Stas at first stepped back, but soon recovered his composure, and when
Nell with Mea came running up he began to explain what might have
happened.

"In all probability," he said, "a whole mass of decayed wood in the
interior of the trunk, expanding from the heat, finally tumbled down
and buried the burning wood. And he thinks that it was Mzimu. Let Mea,
however, pour water a few times through the opening; if the live embers
are not extinct for want of air and the decayed wood is kindled, the
tree might be consumed by fire."

After which, seeing that Kali continued lying down and did not cease
repeating with ter