hair in talon-like fingers, Beizam jerked the face toward the skies and slit the throat beneath. Through this he thrust the singai, until the cane loop poked out from the mouth; then, thrusting the handle through the loop, he drew the knot tight.
There followed a roar like that of stampeding cattle, as the people, all frenzied at the kill, packed themselves before the Zogo-house.
Grasping the singai handle, Beizam jerked up the head so that the throat strained as the reason-cords of the brown man gazing on were straining. One quick slash of the knife cut through the neck to the joint of the spinal cord. With a flick of the wrist the head was jerked sideways, so that the back muscles tautened, and the knife without a jar completed the circle. With left hand stretching the singai and right twisting the head, Beizam pulled strongly but evenly upwards. There was a pronounced “click” and sob, the head parted, and, as Beizam raised it on high, a tapering streak of marrow was drawn out with it. Beizam clenched his teeth on the grizzly neck and sucked and chewed. Thus was the courage and strength of the dying man being drawn into himself! The headless body rose on staggering feet and, with grotesquely thrashing limbs, spun round and round like a stunned fowl giddily striving to keep its balance. A screaming roar rent the air to accompany the dance, and the contorting face and kissing lips of the head above Beizam’s mouth seemed to be screaming in unison. For several moments the body writhed, then sagged down, but Beizam still danced to the roaring acclamations of the throng.
One among them danced too, but his movements seemed regulated as the dead man’s had been; the eyes stared as his had done, the mouth gaped open too, soundlessly.
A sickly feeling touched a sense in his brain. He shouted wild congratulations upon the triumph-intoxicated Beizam and acted more like a human being guided by his own power, for he knew that the eye of C’Zarcke was upon him, that coldly and cruelly C’Zarcke was deciphering his very thoughts and fear. He dare not now even glance towards the Zogo.
Presently the brown man slunk from the Sacred Grove; he was at liberty now to go. Like a shadow he moved among the Wongai-trees, shuddering from their touch. He avoided the village path, though it was broad and deserted and lit up by the moon. Instead, he stole through the banana-trees, emerged on the shadowed hill-track, and crept into his hut. The darkness was a friend. There was no human eye to see. The tense savagery left his face, and he sighed like a tired child. He bowed himself upon his mat, and prayed.
“Dear God, help me, let them not do to me as to the aboriginal, as to all that fall into their hands. Succour me, or kill me, but protect me from the Dance of Death. Death itself would be sweet, but I die a thousand deaths each time I see the Dance of Death. I dance with the dying man, I feel the drawing of life from the body – and C’Zarcke knows! Please God help me!”
CHAPTER II
PREPARING FOR THE END
On the second hill of Mer sat Jakara the Strange – dreaming. His eyes saw the palm-tops that shaded the village roofs; they saw the shore hills and the little jungles, then peeping villages again. Some were palisaded, and each had its golden beach speckling the island edge; the curling waves beyond foamed in song upon the reef, for it was low tide, with spume in the air and a clearness of sky that betrayed the presence of the great reef, which showed as a water-cloud of vivid yellow-green surrounding nearly all the island. Peeping from below the surface there shone up wondrous coral gardens stretching seaward to vanish in deep blue water. From his eyrie on the hill Jakara could distinguish a mile of queer under-water growths. But his mind saw unseen things which caused heart-ache for deep below that coral ledge there lay a ship. He sighed, his eyes misted with tears, for his ship-mates, even the skulls of his father and mother, had been traded to New Guinea savages. He alone was saved, for Gobeda had snatched him and claimed him as the “Lamar” of his son.
Jakara’s eyes cleared and he could distinguish Eroob, thirty miles away towards New Guinea, its big hill, Lalour, showing like a rounded pyramid through a haze. And away towards the eastern horizon a peculiar sight; columns of smoke, miles in length, spouting skywards as bursting shells fall on distant trenches. It was the rollers from the open Pacific thundering upon the Great Barrier Reef. Away out there lay the frigate, Pandora, with the mutinous bones of some Bounty men strewn among the guns.
Jakara glanced down at Dauar and Waiar close inshore, joined fittingly by a treacherous coral reef. Tiny Dauar thrust upward its big and little peaks; Au (big) Dauar must be six hundred feet high, Kebi Dauar about three hundred. On the hummocky ground between the two peaks was a small dull patch of vegetation. Au Dauar was very steep, covered with grass, as if to ape giant Gelam, the extinct crater of Mer.
Waiar stood frowning in a crescent-shaped wall of battlemented rock three hundred feet high, grim and foreboding. In its barren gullies clung scanty tufts of vegetation. Both islets were the remnants of two blown-out craters. Waiar often reminded Jakara of a monstrous decayed tooth thrust up from the coral jawed sea. The islet’s associations are as sinister as its fantastic crags. He looked to the skies and found pleasure in their unending beauty.
So far he had done well – preserved his life, his intelligence, and a clean white heart. The rock beside him was scarred with rude marks, his diary of the years. Twelve marks – and he was sixteen when wrecked. Twelve years’ study of the native mind – above all, study of C’Zarcke’s. By the knowledge gained he had kept his head, which mattered less than the Dance of Death, the dance of the headless body. He had learned intimately the language of the people, their customs, their ceremonies, their ideals, their life-pursuits. He could sail a canoe with the best, throw the heaviest wawp (harpoon), shoot an unerring arrow, and laugh and dance to their delight and admiration. He had won initiation step by step as their own youths had done, had fought in battles and killed his men, but – he was not a warrior. The only thing he could not do was to stun a man and —
He understood the native mind so intimately that at a smile and a word he could turn a blood-thirsty animal into a smiling boy. And the women – they were complicated.
As for the Council of the Zogo-le, and their attendant priesthood, he had studied them in the delirium of the ceremonial dances and all alone in the brooding quiet of the night. He had studied them for fear of his head, and later, as the years passed, because of an intense curiosity as to the secret of their undoubted powers. He had gradually realized that the mummery which kept the natives in subjection was merely a means to an end, that behind it all there lay a tangible power hardly realized by civilized man. Jakara knew that the three of the Zogo-le, headed by the dreaded Zogo, C’Zarcke, could and did converse and plan with one another while long distances apart, without the aid of words or written messages or sound. He had often known C’Zarcke to inform the clans, to the very hour, of a happening a hundred miles away. This strange power seemed partly dependent on atmospheric conditions and on the mental state of groups of people at different points. C’Zarcke could read men’s minds, too. He could decipher secret thoughts, and could put men to sleep at a glance. Their medicine-men were a degree lower in the cultural scale, but could cure apparently hopeless diseases by mesmerism and hypnotism and some allied mysterious power.
Far
