What it heard was no sound by the standards of human ears, yet
to the highly attuned and delicate organs of the beast a message
seemed to be borne to the savage brain. A wondrous transformation
was wrought in the motionless mass of statuesque bone and muscle
that had an instant before stood as though carved out of the living
bronze.
As if it had been poised upon steel springs, suddenly released, it
rose quickly and silently to the top of the palisade, disappearing,
stealthily and catlike, into the dark space between the wall and
the back of an adjacent hut.
In the village street beyond women were preparing many little fires
and fetching cooking-pots filled with water, for a great feast
was to be celebrated ere the night was many hours older. About
a stout stake near the centre of the circling fires a little knot
of black warriors stood conversing, their bodies smeared with white
and blue and ochre in broad and grotesque bands. Great circles
of colour were drawn about their eyes and lips, their breasts and
abdomens, and from their clay-plastered coiffures rose gay feathers
and bits of long, straight wire.
The village was preparing for the feast, while in a hut at one side
of the scene of the coming orgy the bound victim of their bestial
appetites lay waiting for the end.
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