Oh! it was a melancholy journey as, filled with fears, we stole, a pallid throng, from trunk to trunk, searching them for the notches that indicated our road, and speaking only in whispers, lest the sound of our voices should attract the notice of the dreadful god.  After a mile or two of this we became aware that its notice was attracted despite our precautions, for at times we caught glimpses of some huge grey thing slipping along parallel to us between the boles of the trees.  Hans wanted me to try a shot, but I would not, knowing that the chances of hitting it were small indeed.  With only three charges, or rather three caps left, it was necessary to be saving.

We halted and held a consultation, as a result of which we decided that there was no more danger in going on than in standing still or attempting to return.  So we went on, keeping close together.  To me, as I was the only one with a rifle, was accorded what I did not at all appreciate, the honour of heading the procession.

Another half-mile and again we heard that strange rolling sound which was produced, I believe, by the great brute beating upon its breast, but noted that it was not so continuous as on the previous night.

“Ha!” said Hans, “he can only strike his drum with one stick now.  Your bullet broke the other, Baas.”

A little farther and the god roared quite close, so loudly that the air seemed to tremble.

“The drum is all right, whatever may have happened to the sticks,” I said.

A hundred yards or so more and the catastrophe occurred.  We had reached a spot in the forest where one of the great trees had fallen down, letting in a little light.  I can see it to this hour.  There lay the enormous tree, its bark covered with grey mosses and clumps of a giant species of maidenhair fern.  On our side of it was the open space which may have measured forty feet across, where the light fell in a perpendicular ray, as it does through the smoke-hole of a hut.  Looking at this prostrate trunk, I saw first two lurid and fiery eyes that glowed red in the shadow; and then, almost in the same instant, made out what looked like the head of a fiend enclosed in a wreath of the delicate green ferns.  I can’t describe it, I can only repeat that it looked like the head of a very large fiend with a pallid face, huge overhanging eyebrows and great yellow tushes on either side of the mouth.

Before I had even time to get the rifle up, with one terrific roar the brute was on us.  I saw its enormous grey shape on the top of the trunk, I saw it pass me like a flash, running upright as a man does, but with the head held forward, and noted that the arm nearest to me was swinging as though broken.  Then as I turned I heard a scream of terror and perceived that it had gripped the poor Mazitu, Jerry, who walked last but one of our line which was ended by Mavovo.  Yes, it had gripped him and was carrying him off, clasped to its breast with its sound arm.  When I say that Jerry, although a full-grown man and rather inclined to stoutness, looked like a child in that fell embrace, it will give some idea of the creature’s size.