who decided the guilt or innocence of the accused by the test of
administering poison. If the poison killed the man, he was guilty; if he
survived, he was innocent. For four thousand years his land had stood a
solid bulwark of unbroken barbarism. Out of its darkness he had been
thrust upon the seat of judgment of the laws of the proudest and highest
type of man evolved in time. It seemed a hideous dream.

His thoughts were interrupted by a shout. It came spontaneous and
tremendous in its genuine feeling. The magnificent figure of Lynch, their
idol, appeared walking down the aisle escorted by the little scallawag who
was the Governor.

He took his seat on the platform with the easy assurance of conscious
power. His broad shoulders, superb head, and gleaming jungle eyes held
every man in the audience before he had spoken a word.

In the first masterful tones of his voice the doctor's keen intelligence
caught the ring of his savage metal and felt the shock of his powerful
personality--a personality which had thrown to the winds every mask, whose
sole aim of life was sensual, whose only fears were of physical pain and
death, who could worship a snake and sacrifice a human being.

His playful introduction showed him a child of Mystery, moved by Voices
and inspired by a Fetish. His face was full of good humour, and his whole
figure rippled with sleek animal vivacity. For the moment, life was a
comedy and a masquerade teeming with whims, fancies, ecstasies and
superstitions.

He held the surging crowd in the hollow of his hand. They yelled, laughed,
howled, or wept as he willed.

Now he painted in burning words the imaginary horrors of slavery until the
tears rolled down his cheeks and he wept at the sound of his own voice.
Every dusky hearer burst into tears and moans.

He stopped, suddenly brushed the tears from his eyes, sprang to the edge
of the platform, threw both arms above his head and shouted:

"Hosannah to the Lord God Almighty for Emancipation!"

Instantly five thousand negroes, as one man, were on their feet, shouting
and screaming. Their shouts rose in unison, swelled into a thunder peal,
and died away as one voice.

Dead silence followed, and every eye was again riveted on Lynch. For two
hours the doctor sat transfixed, listening and watching him sway the vast
audience with hypnotic power.

There was not one note of hesitation or of doubt. It was the challenge of
race against race to mortal combat.