“Your brother the god?” I said.  “If the god is an ape as we have heard, how can he be the brother of a man?”

“Oh! you white men do not understand, but we black people understand.  In the beginning the ape killed my brother who was Kalubi, and his spirit entered into the ape, making him as a god, and so he kills every other Kalubi and their spirits enter also into him.  Is it not so, O Kalubi of to-day, you without a finger?” and he laughed mockingly.

The Kalubi, who was lying on his stomach, groaned and trembled, but made no other answer.

“So all has come about as I foresaw,” went on the toad-like creature.  “You have returned, as I knew you would, and now we shall learn whether White Beard yonder spoke true words when he said that his god would be avenged upon our god.  You shall go to be avenged on him if you can, and then we shall learn.  But this time you have none of your iron tubes which alone we fear.  For did not the god declare to us through me that when the white men came back with an iron tube, then he, the god, would die, and I, the Motombo, the god’s Mouth, would die, and the Holy Flower would be torn up, and the Mother of the Flower would pass away, and the people of the Pongo would be dispersed and become wanderers and slaves?  And did he not declare that if the white men came again without their iron tubes, then certain secret things would happen—­oh! ask them not, in time they shall be known to you, and the people of the Pongo who were dwindling would again become fruitful and very great?  And that is why we welcome you, white men, who arise again from the land of ghosts, because through you we, the Pongo, shall become fruitful and very great.”

Of a sudden he ceased his rumbling talk, his head sank back between his shoulders and he sat silent for a long while, his fierce, sparkling eyes playing on us as though he would read our very thoughts.  If he succeeded, I hope that mine pleased him.  To tell the truth, I was filled with mixed fear, fury and loathing.  Although, of course, I did not believe a word of all the rubbish he had been saying, which was akin to much that is evolved by these black-hearted African wizards, I hated the creature whom I felt to be only half-human.  My whole nature sickened at his aspect and talk.  And yet I was dreadfully afraid of him.  I felt as a man might who wakes up to find himself alone with some peculiarly disgusting Christmas-story kind of ghost.  Moreover I was quite sure that he meant us ill, fearful and imminent ill.  Suddenly he spoke again: 

“Who is that little yellow one,” he said, “that old one with a face like a skull,” and he pointed to Hans, who had kept as much out of sight as possible behind Mavovo, “that wizened, snub-nosed one who might be a child of my brother the god, if ever he had a child?  And why, being so small, does he need so large a staff?” Here he pointed again to Hans’s big bamboo stick.  “I think he is as full of guile as a new-filled gourd with water.  The big black one,” and he looked at Mavovo, “I do not fear, for his magic is less than my magic,” (he seemed to recognise a brother doctor in Mavovo) “but the little yellow one with the big stick and the pack upon his back, I fear him.  I think he should be killed.”