It was the night of full moon and of the great feast of the return of Little Bonsa.  Alan sat in his chamber waiting to be summoned to take part in this ceremony and listening the while to that Wow!  Wow!  Wow! of the death drums, whereof Jeekie had once spoken in England, which could be clearly heard even above the perpetual boom of the cataract tumbling down its cliff behind the town.  By now he had recovered from the fatigue of his journey and his health was good, but the same could not be said of his spirits, for never in his life had he felt more downhearted, not even when he was sickening for blackwater fever, or lay in bondage in the City, expecting every morning to wake up and find his reputation blasted.  He was a prisoner in this dreadful, gloomy place where he must live like a second Man in the Iron Mask, without recreation or exercise other than he could find in the walled garden where grew the black cedar trees, and, so far as he could see, a prisoner without hope of escape.

Moreover, he could no longer disguise from himself the truth; Jeekie was right.  The Asika had fallen in love with him, or at any rate made up her mind that he should be her next husband.  He hated the sight of the woman and her sinuous, evil beauty, but to be free of her was impossible, and to offend her, death.  All day long she kept him about her, and from his sleep he would wake up and as on the night of his arrival, distinguish her leaning over him studying his face by the light of the faintly-burning lamps, as a snake studies the bird it is about to strike.  He dared not stir or give the slightest sign that he saw her.  Nor indeed did he always see her, for he kept his eyes closely shut.  But even in his heaviest slumber some warning sense told him of her presence, and then above Jeekie’s snores (for on these occasions Jeekie always snored his loudest) he would hear a soft footfall, as cat-like, she crept towards him, or the sweep of her spangled robe, or the tinkling of the scales of her golden breastplate.  For a long while she would stand there, examining him greedily and even the few little belongings that remained to him, and then with a hungry sigh glide away and vanish in the shadows.  How she came or how she vanished Alan could not discover.  Clearly she did not use the door, and he could find no other entrance to the room.  Indeed at times he thought he must be suffering from delusion, but Jeekie shook his great head and did not agree with him.

“She there right enough,” he said.  “She walk over me as though I log and I smell stuff she put on hair, but I think she come and go by magic.  Asika do that if she please.”

“Then I wish she would teach me the secret, Jeekie.  I should soon be out of Asiki-land, I can tell you.”