I kicked him on the shins to keep him quiet, and just then at a distance I heard the sound of chanting. It was a weird and melancholy music that seemed to swing backwards and forwards between two bands of singers, each strophe and antistrophe, if those are the right words, ending in a kind of wail or cry of despair which turned my blood cold. When this had gone on for a little while, I thought that I saw figures moving through the gloom in front of us. So did Hans, for he whispered:
"The Hairy People are here, Baas."
"Can you see them?" I asked in the same low voice.
"I think so, Baas. At any rate, I can smell them."
"Then keep your pistol ready," I answered.
A moment later I saw a lighted torch floating in the air in front of us, though the bearer of it I could not see. The torch was bent downwards, and I heard the sound of kindling taking fire. A little flame sprang up revealing a pile of logs arranged for burning, and beyond it the tall form of Dacha wearing a strange headdress and white, priestlike robes, different from those in which he had been clad at the feast. Between his hands, which he held in front of him, was a white human skull reversed, I mean that its upper part was towards the floor.
"Burn, Dust of Illusion, burn," he cried, "and show us our desires," and out of the skull he emptied a quantity of powder on to the pile of wood.
A dense, penetrating smoke arose which seemed to fill the cave, vast though it was, and blot out everything. It passed away and was followed by a blaze of brilliant flame that lit up all the place and revealed a terrific spectacle.
Behind the fire, at a distance of ten paces or so, was an awful object, an appalling black figure at least twelve feet in height, a figure of Heu–Heu as we had seen him depicted in the Cave of the Berg, only there his likeness was far too flattering. For this was the very image of the devil as he might have been imagined by a mad monk, and from his eyes shot a red light.
As I have said before, the figure was like to that of a huge gorilla and yet no ape but a man, and yet no man but a fiend. There was the long gray hair growing in tufts about the body. There was the great, red, bushy beard. There were the enormous limbs and the long arms and the hands with claws on them where the thumbs should be, and the webbed fingers. The bull neck on the top of which sat the small head that somehow resembled an old woman's with a hooked nose; the huge mouth from which the baboon–like tusks protruded, the round, massive, able–looking brow, the deepest glaring eyes, now alight with red fire, the cruel smile—all were there intensified. There, too, was the shape of a dead man into the breast of which the clawed foot was driven, and in the left hand the head that had been twisted from the man's body.
Oh! evidently the painter of the picture in the Berg can have been no Bushman as once I had supposed, but some priest of Heu–Heu whom fate or chance had brought thither in past ages, and who had depicted it to be the object of his private worship. When I saw the thing I gasped aloud and felt as though I should fall to the ground through fear, so hellish was it. But Hans gripped my arm and said:
"Baas, be not afraid. It is not alive; it is but a thing of stone and paint with fire set within."
I stared again; he was right.
Heu–Heu was but an idol! Heu–Heu did not live except in the hearts of his worshippers!
Only out of what Satanic mind had this image sprung?
I sighed with relief as this knowledge came home to me, and began to observe details. There were plenty to be seen. For instance, on either side of the statue stood a line of the hideous Hairy Folk, men to the right and women to the left, with white cloths tied about their middles. In front of this line behind their high priest, Dacha, were the other priests, Heu–Heu's clergy, and on a raised table behind them just at the foot of the base of the statue, which I now saw stood upon a kind of pedestal so as to make it more dominant, lay a dead body, that of one of the Hairy women, as the clear light of the flame revealed.
"Baas," said Hans again, "I believe that is the gorilla–woman I shot in the river. I seem to know her pretty face."
"If so, I hope we shall not join her on that table presently," I answered.
After this suddenly I went mad; everybody went mad. I suppose that the vapour from that accursed powder had got into our brains. Had not Dacha called it the "Dust of Illusions"? Certainly, of illusions there were plenty, most of them bad, like those of a nightmare.
Still, before they possessed me completely, I had the sense to understand what was happening to me and to grip hold of Hans, who I saw was going mad also, and command him to sit quiet. Then came the illusions which really I can't describe to you. You fellows have read of the effects of opium smoking; well, it was that kind of thing, only worse.
I dreamed that Heu–Heu got off his pedestal and came dancing down the hall, also that he bent over me and kissed me on the forehead. In fact, I think it was Dramana who kissed me, for she, too, had gone mad. Everything that I had done bad in my life re–enacted itself in my mind and, all put together, seemed to make me a sinner indeed, because you see the good was entirely omitted. The Hairy Folk began an infernal dance before the statue; the women round us raved and shouted with extraordinary expressions upon their faces; the priests waved their arms and set up yells of adoration as did those of Baal in the Old Testament. In short, literally there was the devil to pay.
Yet strangely enough it was all wildly, deliriously exciting and really I seemed to enjoy it. It shows how wicked we must be at bottom. A sight of hell while you remain on the terra firma of our earth is not uninteresting, even though you be temporarily affected by its atmosphere.
Presently the nightmare came to an end, suddenly as it had commenced, and I woke to find my head on Dramana's shoulder, or hers on mine, I forget which, with Hans engaged in kissing my boot under the impression that it was the chaste brow of some black maiden whom he had known about thirty years before. I kicked him on his snub nose, whereon he rose and apologized, remarking that this was the strongest dacca—the hemp which the natives smoke with intoxicating effects— that he had ever tasted.
"Yes," I answered, "and now I understand where Zikali's magic comes from. No wonder he wants more of the leaves of that tree and thought it worth while to send us so far to get them."
Then I ceased talking, for something in the atmosphere of the place absorbed my attention. A sudden chill seemed to have fallen upon it and its occupants who, in strange contrast to their recent excesses, now appeared to be possessed by the very spirit of Mrs. Grundy. There they stood, exuding piety at every pore and gazing with rapt countenance at the hideous image of their god. Only to me those countenances had grown very cruel. It was as though they awaited the consummation of some dreadful drama with a kind of cold joy, which, of course, may have been an aftermath of their unholy intoxication. It was the scene at the feast repeated but with a difference. There they had been drunken with liquor and sobered by the potent stuff they had swallowed after it; now they had been made drunken with fumes and were sobered by I knew not what. Their master Satan, perhaps!
The fire still burnt brightly though it gave off no more of these fumes, being fed I suppose with natural fuel, and by the light of it I saw that Dacha was addressing the image with impassioned gestures. What he said I do not know, for my ears were still buzzing and of it I could hear nothing. But presently he turned and pointed to us and then began to beckon.
"What is it he wants us to do?" I asked of Dramana who now was seated at my side, a perfect model of propriety.