“O Priests and Priestesses of the Child, the ancient serpent is dead.  I whose office it is to feed the serpent on the day of the new moon have found him dead in his house.”

“You hear,” I interpolated calmly.  “The Father of Snakes is dead.  If you want to know how, I will tell you.  We looked on it and it died.”

They might have answered that poor Savage also looked on it with the result that he died, but luckily it did not occur to them to do so.  On the contrary, they just stood still and stared at us like a flock of startled sheep.

Presently the sheep parted and the shepherd in the shape of Harut appeared looking, I reflected, the very picture of Abraham softened by a touch of the melancholia of Job, that is, as I have always imagined those patriarchs.  He bowed to us with his usual Oriental courtesy, and we bowed back to him.  Hans’ bow, I may explain, was of the most peculiar nature, more like a skulpat, as the Boers call a land-tortoise, drawing its wrinkled head into its shell and putting it out again than anything else.  Then Harut remarked in his peculiar English, which I suppose the White Kendah took for some tongue known only to magicians: 

“So you get here, eh?  Why you get here, how the devil you get here, eh?”

“We got here because you asked us to do so if we could,” I answered, “and we thought it rude not to accept your invitation.  For the rest, we came through a cave where you kept a tame snake, an ugly-looking reptile but very harmless to those who know how to deal with snakes and are not afraid of them as poor Bena was.  If you can spare the skin I should like to have it to make myself a robe.”

Harut looked at me with evident respect, muttering: 

“Oh, Macumazana, you what you English call cool, quite cool!  Is that all?”

“No,” I answered.  “Although you did not happen to notice us, we have been present at your church service, and heard and seen everything.  For instance, we saw the wife of the lord here whom you stole away in Egypt, her that, being a liar, Harut, you swore you never stole.  Also we heard her words after you had made her drunk with your tobacco smoke.”

Now for once in his life Harut was, in sporting parlance, knocked out.  He looked at us, then turning quite pale, lifted his eyes to heaven and rocked upon his feet as though he were about to fall.

“How you do it?  How you do it, eh?” he queried in a weak voice.

“Never you mind how we did it, my friend,” I answered loftily.  “What we want to know is when you are going to hand over that lady to her husband.”

“Not possible,” he answered, recovering some of his tone.  “First we kill you, first we kill her, she Nurse of the Child.  While Child there, she stop there till she die.”

“See here,” broke in Ragnall.  “Either you give me my wife or someone else will die.  You will die, Harut.  I am a stronger man than you are and unless you promise to give me my wife I will kill you now with this stick and my hands.  Do not move or call out if you want to live.”