Acute terror, as Mr. Darby discovered during his grim journey through the jungle, is so exhausting that the nervous system soon ceases to react to it. In fact, long before he had reached the end of his journey, he had ceased to be afraid. His indifference surprised him. He told himself that he was defenceless in the power of the savages on whose shoulders he was riding, that no doubt new ordeals awaited him at some unknown destination in the heart of the jungle, but his nerves stubbornly refused to respond. A mood of callous fatalism had settled down on him: he was aware of nothing but that he was sleepy and this rhythmic swing of his conveyance was extraordinarily soothing. The twilight was already so deep that he seemed to be moving along the bottom of a lake. Huge weeds rose up on either side of him and sometimes a dangling festoon of strongly perfumed flowers beat softly against his head and trailed across his recumbent body. Far overhead a faint and pallid luminosity, that seemed to be rather felt than seen, hinted here and there of open air and open sky. Carried aloft on his litter he seemed to be utterly alone, for he could see nothing of his bearers except their heads—six black heads on either side of him—and nothing at all of the rest of the savages, nor of Punnett who stalked, a solitary albino, among that crowd of swarthy animals.
How long the silent progress lasted Mr. Darby could not guess: he had lost all sense of time. Now and then he glanced at the row of heads on his right or left. A strange and repellent smell came from them that turned his stomach and made him shudder, but it was physical horror, not fear, that shook him. His only desire was that the journey would go on for ever, that there would be no destination, no break in this eventless limbo, that he would be ceaselessly dandled in this soothing darkness until death—death by natural causes—received him into a peace still more absolute.
But this was not to be. Gradually his ear became aware of a remote noise, a confused and distant clamour, as if the jungle itself were breathing out a thick, continuous lamentation. Minute by minute it increased. It seemed to be drifting towards him, a turbid fog of sound that swelled and thickened along the deep channel of the jungle through which he was gliding. The little man’s fears, dormant for so long, leapt up and tortured him again, grew with the terribly growing clamour into an agony of terror. The whole jungle was echoing and brawling now like a huge, hollow, empty hall; and to make the growing horror more horrible, the great trunks and dangling growths began to emerge from their obscurity around and above him, in a subdued, fiery glow that grew stronger with the growing roar. Now his journey became a mad progression through a flickering hell of fire and darkness. The jungle had roused itself to a ghastly animation; an angry and sinister splendour had replaced the night.
Suddenly the moving litter stopped and Mr. Darby, sitting up, saw before him an immense open arena full of fiery light and madly dancing black demons. The light came from seven enormous bonfires whose hissings and cracklings were audible through the pandemonium of howling chants. Gesticulating black silhouettes were hurling great bundles of fuel into the flames and running off into the darkness to return with more, while others danced madly between the fires, pouring out a babel of raucous chants. In the centre of each of two circles within the huge circle of the arena stood a straw-thatched hut raised high on wooden posts, and in the centre of the arena itself a ring of motionless figures crouched on their hams with their heads bowed to the ground before a great central bonfire. The crowds of black figures, motionless or wildly active, each group intent on its appointed ritual, each figure splashed with the flickering ruddy glare of fire that roofed all with a leaping and sinking dome of light, gave to the scene the appearance of a gigantic anthill. Mr. Darby, appalled at the hugeness of their numbers and the sinister madness of their activities, felt his individuality shrivel to the last insignificance and gave himself up for lost.
Then a brief movement stirred his human conveyance and next moment he saw his two green-feathered examiners step forward into the flaming arena and make their way through the leaping, hurrying crowd to the crouching ring in the centre. With a bound they leapt inside the circle and stood there moving their outstretched arms in solemn gestures. In a moment the crouching shapes had leapt to their feet. A loud, shrill chant that rose clear above the roar of the crowd burst from them and at the sound of it immobility and silence, broken only by the leaping, flickering flames and the voracious crackling of the bonfires, fell upon the clearing. Then Mr. Darby felt his litter lurch and he was borne into the area. The crowd had swept aside, leaving a broad avenue to the centre; and along this avenue, fenced with upright brazen bodies whose white eyes stared up at him, Mr. Darby was borne to the central point where the ring of standing figures broke to admit him. There his bearers lowered him on his litter of spears to the ground and vanished into the encircling crowd.
Then the silence was shattered by wild exultant shouts in which he distinguished the constantly recurring syllable Taan. Mr. Darby rose to his feet. Once more a desperate calm had descended upon him. The central bonfire blazed upon his left: all his left side glowed and burned with the fierce heat of it. Beyond the bonfire and within his line of vision stood another litter, but the figure on it was lying down. He stood there alone on his litter, his hands clasped behind his back. His face and naked chest and paunch were ruddy in the glare of the bonfire. His spectacles blazed like burning coals. Then, to his intense relief, the figure of Punnett, his nakedness gleaming as red as his master’s, stepped into the circle and approached him. When he was within a yard of the litter he prostrated himself before Mr. Darby three times, and then, still on his knees, he addressed to him what to outwards appearances was a prayer. ‘We’re safe, sir, as safe as can be. We struck a lucky moment, sir. The King died two days before we landed and they’ve been scouring the country for another. I told them you were a god, sir, and they took up the idea at once. They say you’re a cousin of Oushtoub, the wheel-god, and they’re going to make you the new King. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, sir, the body of the late King on the litter there. There’ll be some rather unpleasant ceremonies, no doubt; but nothing to hurt, sir. I’m your chief magician, so I shall be able to give you the hints you need. It’s really the best thing that could have happened, because none of them can touch us. You see, you’re sacred, sir, and so am I, I’m glad to say. All most convenient, sir. So don’t worry about what happens.’
Punnett rose from his knees and immediately the ring of attendants began to recede from them, expanding as it receded and driving further and further back the crowd behind it until the space left empty included the two strawthatched huts. Into this arena thirteen giants advanced in single file dressed in barbaric splendour of feathers and shells. They were the twelve chiefs of the tribe, lead by the Head Chief. The leader carried a burnished spear. He approached Mr. Darby and offered him the spear.
‘Take it, sir!’ said Punnett.
Mr. Darby, like a child receiving a strange toy, took the spear. The Head Chief made an incoherent sound.
‘Sit down, sir!’ translated Punnett.
Mr. Darby sat down and thereupon the twelve chiefs stooped, lifted him shoulder high on his litter of spears, and bore him in slow pomp past the bonfire. When he was lowered to earth again he saw with horror that they had set him down beside the corpse of the late King. It lay stark naked on its litter, the eyes shrunk to two small shrivelled pits, the lips drawn so tight over the mouth that the teeth under them formed two protruding ridges, and the body so terribly wasted that every bone was visible under the dry and shrunken skin. Something that looked like a half-filled sack lay beside it, and as Mr. Darby stood gazing in fascinated horror at the corpse, the Head Chief stooped to the sack. It was not a sack but a cloth and when he twitched it aside he uncovered a great heap of green parrot-feathers. He lifted them, shook them, and they fell open into a great cloak. Then two of the chiefs seized the corpse by the shoulders, heaved it up, and held it in a standing position. The dead King faced the living. Stiff, gaunt, hideously withered, he grinned sightlessly at Mr. Darby, and Mr. Darby, ripe, well-nourished, full-blooded, stared back at him with fallen jaw. The Head Chief, holding the feathered cloak open, moved behind the corpse and clasped the cloak about its neck. At the same time another chief lowered the point of the spear which Mr. Darby still held and set it against the left breast of the corpse, just over the heart. Then the master of the ceremony fixing his eyes on Mr. Darby loudly uttered two raucous syllables.
‘Strike, King!’ translated Punnett. ‘It’s got to be done, sir. Shove the spear into its heart, sir. Make a good show of it.’
Mr. Darby, with a sudden desperate effort of will, did what was demanded of him, and then in a paroxysm of loathing let go the spear. The point remained fixed between the corpse’s ribs and the haft dropped to the ground. The Head Chief still held the cloak about the corpse, but the two attendant chiefs, who had supported it, stepped aside. For a moment the body stood alone, propped by the spear: then it swayed, fell out of the upheld cloak, and pitched forward headlong on its face. Then the Head Chief, still holding the cloak open, advanced on Mr. Darby, walked round him, and flung the cloak about him. Mr. Darby’s flesh recoiled in horror, but he stood firm, while one of the attendant chiefs set a great head-dress of jewels and feathers on his head. A riot of shouting broke from the silent crowd that edged the arena. ‘Daabee!’ they shouted. ‘Daabee Taan! Aboo Daabee Taan!’
It was a tremendous moment. The universal exultation infected Mr. Darby himself: his spirit rose to the greatness that had been thrust upon him, and flinging aside the folds of the green cloak he freed his arms and stretched them to their full extent as if blessing his subjects. At that instant he savoured to the lees the glory and power of sovereignty.
The shouting died away: there was silence once more. The Head Chief made a sign to Mr. Darby. ‘Follow him, sir!’ translated Punnett, and Mr. Darby followed him, himself followed by Punnett, to one of the two strawthatched huts. At the foot of the ladder the Head Chief stepped aside and motioned to Mr. Darby to ascend. He did so and Punnett followed him. Having reached the platform Mr. Darby stood and surveyed the scene. In the empty space below, another less impressive ceremony was taking place. Two attendant chiefs were bearing the poor dishonoured corpse to the other thatched hut, the hut which had been its home in life. They hoisted it, like a stiff beam, up the ladder, and dragged it inside. Next moment they emerged and a slow mist of smoke followed them. With bated breath the whole arena stood watching. The smoke suddenly increased, thickened, and the whole roof flowered suddenly into a great bloom of fire. It burned with fury: blazing sparks showered upwards from the flaming thatch like swarms of angry golden bees from a hive of fire. Minute by minute the thatch crumbled from flame to ash, from ash to nothing. Then the whole hut fell in, crashed down upon its smouldering piles and lay in a heap of glowing wreckage.
And quite suddenly Mr. Darby realized that he was dead tired. His physical endurance had sufficed for the great claims which had been made upon it, but now it was at an end.
‘Punnett,’ he said, ‘I must lie down. I’m at the end of my … ah … tether.’
Punnett stepped forward to the edge of the platform and spoke to the thirteen giants who stood in a circle round King Darby’s hut. ‘The King would sleep,’ he said in Mandratic.
A hoarse sound came from below and the circle of black figures scattered across the flame-shot arena and melted into the thinning crowd.
Mr. Darby and Punnett retired into the royal hut. Mr. Darby flung off his royal cloak and headdress and dropped on to the first couch that caught his eye.
‘Good-night, Punnett!’ he said.
Punnett, mindful as ever of his duties, took up the cloak and carefully began to fold it. ‘Good-night, Your Majesty!’ he replied.