But this was not all.  Set across the little bay of water just above the canoe that floated there was a wooden platform, eight feet or so square, on either side of which stood an enormous elephant’s tusk, bigger indeed than any I have seen in all my experience, which tusks seemed to be black with age.  Between the tusks, squatted upon rugs of some kind of rich fur, was what from its shape and attitude I at first took to be a huge toad.  In truth, it had all the appearance of a very bloated toad.  There was the rough corrugated skin, there the prominent backbone (for its back was towards us), and there were the thin, splayed-out legs.

We stared at this strange object for quite a long while, unable to make it out in that uncertain light, for so long indeed, that I grew nervous and was about to ask the Kalubi what it might be.  As my lips opened, however, it stirred, and with a slow, groping, circular movement turned itself towards us very slowly.  At length it was round, and as the head came in view all the Pongo from the Kalubi down ceased their low, weird chant and flung themselves upon their faces, those who had torches still holding them up in their right hands.

Oh! what a thing appeared!  It was not a toad, but a man that moved upon all fours.  The large, bald head was sunk deep between the shoulders, either through deformity or from age, for this creature was undoubtedly very old.  Looking at it, I wondered how old, but could form no answer in my mind.  The great, broad face was sunken and withered, like to leather dried in the sun; the lower lip hung pendulously upon the prominent and bony jaw.  Two yellow, tusk-like teeth projected one at each corner of the great mouth; all the rest were gone, and from time to time it licked the white gums with a red-pointed tongue as a snake might do.  But the chief wonder of the Thing lay in its eyes that were large and round, perhaps because the flesh had shrunk away from them, which gave them the appearance of being set in the hollow orbits of a skull.  These eyes literally shone like fire; indeed, at times they seemed positively to blaze, as I have seen a lion’s eyes do in the dark.  I confess that the aspect of the creature terrified and for a while paralysed me; to think that it was human was awful.

I glanced at the others and saw that they, too, were frightened.  Stephen turned very white.  I thought that he was going to be sick again, as he was after he drank the coffee out of the wrong bowl on the day we entered Mazitu-land.  Brother John stroked his white beard and muttered some invocation to Heaven to protect him.  Hans exclaimed in his abominable Dutch: 

“Oh! keek, Baas, da is je lelicher oud deel!” ("Oh! look, Baas, there is the ugly old devil himself!”)

Jerry went flat on his face among the Pongo, muttering that he saw Death before him.  Only Mavovo stood firm; perhaps because as a witch-doctor of repute he felt that it did not become him to show the white feather in the presence of an evil spirit.