“Remember, O Kalubi, that my fate to-day will be yours also in a day to come.  The god wearies of his priests.  This year, next year, or the year after; he always wearies of his priests.”

“Then, O Kalubi-that-was,” answered Komba in a mocking voice as the canoe was pushed off, “pray to the god for me, that it may be the year after; pray it as your bones break in his embrace.”

While we watched that craft depart there came into my mind the memory of a picture in an old Latin book of my father’s, which represented the souls of the dead being paddled by a person named Charon across a river called the Styx.  The scene before us bore a great resemblance to that picture.  There was Charon’s boat floating on the dreadful Styx.  Yonder glowed the lights of the world, here was the gloomy, unknown shore.  And we, we were the souls of the dead awaiting the last destruction at the teeth and claws of some unknown monster, such as that which haunts the recesses of the Egyptian hell.  Oh! the parallel was painfully exact.  And yet, what do you think was the remark of that irrepressible young man Stephen?

“Here we are at last, Allan, my boy,” he said, “and after all without any trouble on our own part.  I call it downright providential.  Oh! isn’t it jolly!  Hip, hip, hooray!”

Yes, he danced about in that filthy mud, threw up his cap and cheered!

I withered, or rather tried to wither him with a look, muttering the single word:  “Lunatic.”

Providential!  Jolly!  Well, it’s fortunate that some people’s madness takes a cheerful turn.  Then I asked the Kalubi where the god was.

“Everywhere,” he replied, waving his trembling hand at the illimitable forest.  “Perhaps behind this tree, perhaps behind that, perhaps a long way off.  Before morning we shall know.”

“What are you going to do?” I inquired savagely.

“Die,” he answered.

“Look here, fool,” I exclaimed, shaking him, “you can die if you like, but we don’t mean to.  Take us to some place where we shall be safe from this god.”

“One is never safe from the god, lord, especially in his own House,” and he shook his silly head and went on, “How can we be safe when there is nowhere to go and even the trees are too big to climb?”

I looked at them, it was true.  They were huge and ran up for fifty or sixty feet without a bough.  Moreover, it was probable that the god climbed better than we could.  The Kalubi began to move inland in an indeterminate fashion, and I asked him where he was going.

“To the burying-place,” he answered.  “There are spears yonder with the bones.”

I pricked up my ears at this—­for when one has nothing but some clasp knives, spears are not to be despised—­and ordered him to lead on.  In another minute we were walking uphill through the awful wood where the gloom at this hour of approaching night was that of an English fog.

Three or four hundred paces brought us to a kind of clearing, where I suppose some of the monster trees had fallen down in past years and never been allowed to grow up again.  Here, placed upon the ground, were a number of boxes made of imperishable ironwood, and on the top of each box sat, or rather lay, a mouldering and broken skull.