and there, that conveyed no particular meaning to me.

These men were all decorated and garbed exactly like their chief,
excepting that, instead of a bangwan, each carried a slender white wand,
about twelve feet in length, in his right hand. For a period of about
five minutes these terrible beings whirled and flashed hither and
thither in bewildering confusion; then, with the precision of highly
trained soldiers, they suddenly halted, and I became aware that
Machenga, their chief, was again upon his feet, standing in their midst.
Then, while the cloud of dust raised by their mad gyrations still
hovered in the air, half obscuring the company, the tramp of feet was
heard, and into the small arena marched twenty stalwarts, ten of whom
were armed with enormous bangwans, while the remainder carried heavy,
straight-bladed knives, about two feet long, and some six inches wide at
the hilt, tapering away from there to a sharp point. These twenty--whom
Lomalindela grimly condescended to inform me were the Slayers--halted on
the king's left, just clear of the left wing of His Majesty's bodyguard,
arranging themselves in pairs--a spearman and a knife-bearer
alternately--as they did so. Then Machenga, at a nod from the king,
raised his bangwan, and immediately his satellites began to circle
hither and thither, with a slow, waltz-like movement, similar to that
with which he had begun his own mad dance; and as they moved, gradually
widening their circles until they were strung out all along the face of
the motionless regiments, they hummed a low, weird, wordless song that
was somehow inexpressibly suggestive of vague, nameless horror. As for
Machenga, after watching his assistants for a minute or two, he stalked
slowly toward the king and seated himself at His Majesty's feet, where,
after a time, he seemed to lose all consciousness of outward things, and
to sink into a state of profound and anxious thought. Meanwhile the
general company of the witch doctors had separated into units who were
slowly working their way along the front ranks of the closely packed
regiments, pausing occasionally as though in doubt, and then passing on
again, to the obvious relief of the individuals before whom the ominous
pause had been made. For a little while, possibly five or six minutes,
matters proceeded thus, and nothing happened; then I observed that one
of the witch doctors had halted, with his head thrown up, and was
sniffing the air, like a d