“/Begin! begin!/” piped Gagool, in her thin piercing voice; “the hyaenas are hungry, they howl for food. /Begin! begin!/”
Then for a moment there was intense stillness, made horrible by a presage of what was to come.
The king lifted his spear, and suddenly twenty thousand feet were raised, as though they belonged to one man, and brought down with a stamp upon the earth. This was repeated three times, causing the solid ground to shake and tremble. Then from a far point of the circle a solitary voice began a wailing song, of which the refrain ran something as follows:–
“/What is the lot of man born of woman?/”
Back came the answer rolling out from every throat in that vast company–
“/Death!/”
Gradually, however, the song was taken up by company after company, till the whole armed multitude were singing it, and I could no longer follow the words, except in so far as they appeared to represent various phases of human passions, fears, and joys. Now it seemed to be a love song, now a majestic swelling war chant, and last of all a death dirge ending suddenly in one heart-breaking wail that went echoing and rolling away in a volume of blood-curdling sound.
Again silence fell upon the place, and again it was broken by the king lifting his hand. Instantly we heard a pattering of feet, and from out of the masses of warriors strange and awful figures appeared running towards us. As they drew near we saw that these were women, most of them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in stripes of white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and round their waists rattled circlets of human bones, while each held a small forked wand in her shrivelled hand. In all there were ten of them. When they arrived in front of us they halted, and one of them, pointing with her wand towards the crouching figure of Gagool, cried out–
“Mother, old mother, we are here.”
“/Good! good! good!/” answered that aged Iniquity. “Are your eyes keen, /Isanusis/ [witch doctresses], ye seers in dark places?”
“Mother, they are keen.”
“/Good! good! good!/ Are your ears open, /Isanusis/, ye who hear words that come not from the tongue?”
“Mother, they are open.”
“/Good! good! good!/ Are your senses awake, /Isanusis/–can ye smell blood, can ye purge the land of the wicked ones who compass evil against the king and against their neighbours? Are ye ready to do the justice of ‘Heaven above,’ ye whom I have taught, who have eaten of the bread of my wisdom, and drunk of the water of my magic?”
“Mother, we can.”
“Then go! Tarry not, ye vultures; see, the slayers”–pointing to the ominous group of executioners behind–“make sharp their spears; the white men from afar are hungry to see. /Go!/”
With a wild yell Gagool’s horrid ministers broke away in every direction, like fragments from a shell, the dry bones round their waists rattling as they ran, and headed for various points of the dense human circle. We could not watch them all, so we fixed our eyes upon the /Isanusi/ nearest to us. When she came to within a few paces of the warriors she halted and began to dance wildly, turning round and round with an almost incredible rapidity, and shrieking out sentences such as “I smell him, the evil-doer!” “He is near, he who poisoned his mother!” “I hear the thoughts of him who thought evil of the king!”
Quicker and quicker she danced, till she lashed herself into such a frenzy of excitement that the foam flew in specks from her gnashing jaws, till her eyes seemed to start from her head, and her flesh to quiver visibly. Suddenly she stopped dead and stiffened all over, like a pointer dog when he scents game, and then with outstretched wand she began to creep stealthily towards the soldiers before her. It seemed to us that as she came their stoicism gave way, and that they shrank from her. As for ourselves, we followed her movements with a horrible fascination. Presently, still creeping and crouching like a dog, the /Isanusi/ was before them. Then she halted and pointed, and again crept on a pace or two.