I took the rag from round the lock of the rifle, wiped the wet off the barrel with it and let it fall.  Then I loosed the catch and by touching a certain mechanism, made the rifle hair-triggered.  Now I looked again and began to make out things.  There was the platform and there, alas! on it sat the toad-like Motombo.  But his back was to me; he was gazing not towards the water, but down the cave.  I hesitated for one fateful moment.  Perhaps the priest was asleep, perhaps I could get the canoe away without shooting.  I did not like the job; moreover, his head was held forward and invisible, and how was I to make certain of killing him with a shot in the back?  Lastly, if possible, I wished to avoid firing because of the report.

At that instant the Motombo wheeled round.  Some instinct must have warned him of my presence, for the silence was gravelike save for the soft splash of the rain without.  As he turned the lightning blazed and he saw me.

“It is the white man,” he muttered to himself in his hissing whisper, while I waited through the following darkness with the rifle at my shoulder, “the white man who shot me long, long ago, and again he has a gun!  Oh!  Fate stabs, doubtless the god is dead and I too must die!”

Then as if some doubt struck him he lifted the horn to summon help.

Again the lightning flashed and was accompanied by a fearful crack of thunder.  With a prayer for skill, I covered his head and fired by the glare of it just as the trumpet touched his lips.  It fell from his hand.  He seemed to shrink together, and moved no more.

Oh! thank God, thank God! in this supreme moment of trial the art of which I am a master had not failed me.  If my hand had shaken ever so little, if my nerves, strained to breaking point, had played me false in the least degree, if the rag from Hans’s hat had not sufficed to keep away the damp from the cap and powder!  Well, this history would never have been written and there would have been some more bones in the graveyard of the Kalubis, that is all!

For a moment I waited, expecting to see the women attendants dart from the doorways in the sides of the cave, and to hear them sound a shrill alarm.  None appeared, and I guessed that the rattle of the thunder had swallowed up the crack of the rifle, a noise, be it remembered, that none of them had ever heard.  For an unknown number of years this ancient creature, I suppose, had squatted day and night upon that platform, whence, I daresay, it was difficult for him to move.  So after they had wrapped his furs round him at sunset and made up the fires to keep him warm, why should his women come to disturb him unless he called them with his horn?  Probably it was not even lawful that they should do so.