“Little Bonsa has chosen.  What fate for the fallen?  Ask her, priest?”

The man stopped his capering and held the mouth of Little Bonsa to his ear, nodding from time to time as though she were speaking to him and he heard what she said.  Then he passed round the dais where Alan could not see him, and presently reappeared holding Little Bonsa in his right hand and in his left a great gold cup.  A silence fell upon the place.  He advanced to the first man who had jumped and offered him the cup.  He turned his head away, but a thousand voices thundered “Drink!” Then he took it and drank, passing it to a companion in misfortune, who in turn drank also and gave it to the third priest, he who would have snatched the mask had not the Asika lifted it out of his reach.

This man drained it to the dregs, and with an exclamation of rage dashed the empty vessel into the face of the chosen priest with such fury that the man rolled upon the ground and for a while lay there stunned.  Now he who had drunk first began to spring about in a ludicrous fashion, and presently was joined in his dance by the other two.  So absurd were their motions and tumblings and clownlike grimaces, for they had dragged off their masks, that roars of brutal laughter rose from the audience, in which the Asika joined.

At first Alan thought that the thing was a joke, and that the men had merely been made mad drunk, till catching sight of their eyes in the moonlight, he perceived that they were in great pain and turned indignantly to remonstrate with the Asika.

“Be silent, Vernoon,” she said savagely, “blood is your orunda and I respect it.  Therefore by decree of the god these die of poison,” and again she fell to laughing at the contortions of the victims.

Alan shut his eyes, and when at length, drawn by some fearful fascination, he opened them once more, it was to see that the three poor creatures had thrown themselves into the water, where they rolled over and over like wounded porpoises, till presently they sank and vanished there.

This farce, for so they considered it, being ended and the stage, so to speak, cleared, the audience having laughed itself hoarse, set itself to watch the proceedings of the newly chosen high-priest of Little Bonsa, who by now had recovered from the blow dealt to him by one of the murdered men.  With the help of some other priests he was engaged in binding the fetish on to a little raft of reeds.  This done he laid himself flat upon a broad plank which had been made ready for him at the edge of the water, placing the mask in front of him and with a few strokes of his feet that hung over the sides of the plank, paddled himself out to the centre of the canal where the god called Big Bonsa floated, or was anchored.  Having reached it he pushed the little raft off the plank into the water, and in some way that Alan could not see, made it fast to Big Bonsa, so that now the two of them floated one behind the other.  Then while the people cheered, shouting out that husband and wife had come together again at last, he paddled his plank back to the water’s edge, sat down and waited.