“What are you——­” began Alan.

“Hold tongue,” he answered savagely, “make you god, I priest.  Ogula know Little Bonsa.  Quick, quick!”

In a minute it was done, the golden mask was clapped on to Alan’s head, and the leather thongs were fastened.  Moreover, Jeekie himself was arrayed in the solar-tope to which all this while he had clung, allowing streams of green mosquito netting to hang down over his white robe.

“Come out now, Major,” he said, “and play god.  You whistle, I do palaver.”

Then hand in hand they walked from behind the rock.  By this time the particular company of the cannibals that was opposite to them, which happened to include their chief, had climbed the steep slope of the hill and arrived within a distance of twenty yards.  Having seen the two men and guessed that they had taken refuge behind the rock, their spears were lifted to kill them, since when he beholds anything strange, the first impulse of a savage is to bring it to its death.  They looked; they saw.  Of a sudden down went the raised spears.

Some of those who held them fell upon their faces, while others turned to fly, appalled by the vision of this strangely clad man with the head of gold.  Only their chief, a great yellow-toothed fellow who wore a necklace of baboon claws, remained erect, staring at them with open mouth.

Alan blew the whistle that was set between the lips of the mask, and they shivered.  Then Jeekie spoke to them in some tongue which they understood, saying: 

“Do you, O Ogula, dare to offer violence to Little Bonsa and her priests?  Say now, why should we not strike you dead with the magic of the god which she has borrowed from the white man?” and he tapped the gun he held.

“This is witchcraft,” answered the chief.  “We saw two men running, hunted by the dwarfs, not three minutes ago, and now we see—­what we see,” and he put his hand before his eyes, then after a pause went on—­“As for Little Bonsa, she left this country in my father’s day.  He gave her passage upon the head of a white man and the Asiki wizards have mourned her ever since, or so I hear.”

“Fool,” answered Jeekie, “as she went, so she returns, on the head of a white man.  Yonder I see an elder with grey hair who doubtless knew of Little Bonsa in his youth.  Let him come up and look and say whether or no this is the god.”

“Yes, yes,” exclaimed the chief, “go up, old man, go up,” and he jabbed at him with his spear until, unwillingly enough, he went.

The elder arrived, making obeisance, and when he was near, Alan blew the whistle in his face, whereon he fell to his knees.

“It is Little Bonsa,” he said in a trembling voice, “Little Bonsa without a doubt.  I should know, as my father and my elder brother were sacrificed to her, and I only escaped because she rejected me.  Down on your face, Chief, and do honour to the Yellow God before she slay you.”