The drumming ceased, and pulling himself together, Brother John continued his pious demonstrations.  Also just at that time a thick rain-cloud quite obscured the moon, so that the darkness grew dense.  I heard John explaining to the Kalubi that he was not really a Kalubi, but an immortal soul (I wonder whether he understood him).  Then I became aware of a horrible shadow—­I cannot describe it in any other way—­that was blacker than the blackness, which advanced towards us at extraordinary speed from the edge of the clearing.

Next second there was a kind of scuffle a few feet from me, followed by a stifled yell, and I saw the shadow retreating in the direction from which it had come.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Strike a match,” answered Brother John; “I think something has happened.”

I struck a match, which burnt up very well, for the air was quite still.  In the light of it I saw first the anxious faces of our party—­ how ghastly they looked!—­and next the Kalubi who had risen and was waving his right arm in the air, a right arm that was bloody and lacked the hand.

“The god has visited me and taken away my hand!” he moaned in a wailing voice.

I don’t think anybody spoke; the thing was beyond words, but we tried to bind the poor fellow’s arm up by the light of matches.  Then we sat down again and watched.

The darkness grew still denser as the thick of the cloud passed over the moon, and for a while the silence, that utter silence of the tropical forest at night, was broken only by the sound of our breathing, the buzz of a few mosquitoes, the distant splash of a plunging crocodile and the stifled groans of the mutilated man.

Again I saw, or thought I saw—­this may have been half an hour later—­ that black shadow dart towards us, as a pike darts at a fish in a pond.  There was another scuffle, just to my left—­Hans sat between me and the Kalubi—­followed by a single prolonged wail.

“The king-man has gone,” whispered Hans.  “I felt him go as though a wind had blown him away.  Where he was there is nothing but a hole.”

Of a sudden the moon shone out from behind the clouds.  In its sickly light about half-way between us and the edge of the clearing, say thirty yards off, I saw—­oh! what did I see!  The devil destroying a lost soul.  At least, that is what it looked like.  A huge, grey-black creature, grotesquely human in its shape, had the thin Kalubi in its grip.  The Kalubi’s head had vanished in its maw and its vast black arms seemed to be employed in breaking him to pieces.

Apparently he was already dead, though his feet, that were lifted off the ground, still moved feebly.