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Updated: July 22, 2025
As for you, at the next coming of the snake god after the one that is about to take place you will assuredly be offered as a sacrifice, for I may tell you that a solemn vow has been made by the council to that effect. While I, at the same time, am to be given in marriage to Ackbau, a fate from which I shrink more than from death.
On the day of the sacrifice I was bidden to be present, and not daring to refuse, I accompanied the queen to a barren spot at the foot of the mountain where some gaunt trees rose out of a bed of lava. Here we found Ackbau haranguing the victims, and describing to them the tortures they would shortly be called upon to suffer.
In order to conciliate Ackbau I offered to explain to him the secret of my fire-making, but he answered coldly that he himself knew how to make fire by taking a burning brand from one fire and thrusting it among dried wood and leaves, of which there were great quantities on the island, as fire had never been alight there before.
Those who had become eaters of human flesh avoided her, and even Ackbau seemed ashamed to intrude himself upon her. "What is it, Peter?" she asked me, and I read the questioning fear in her eyes. I did my best to pacify her, but I could see that the repugnance with which she regarded Ackbau now almost amounted to a mania. "I feel inclined to run from Ackbau when I see him," she said.
If captured I had no doubt that both of us would be condemned by Ackbau to a cruel death, and if we succeeded in getting away how should we exist until some chance vessel came to our rescue? I mentioned my fears to Melannie, but she would not hear of abandoning the project we had formed. "Let us go, Peter," she urged. "Nothing but death, or worse, awaits us here.
He makes me speak his words, but sometimes I would rather not say what he bids me." I sympathized with her, for I could readily understand why this Ackbau, who was the chief before whom I had been taken, chose her to be his mouthpiece. She had become a goddess to the tribe, and it was thought she could speak nothing wrong.
As for the queen, I set her down for a Portuguese maiden, whose mother must have accompanied the captain of some trading vessel, probably in search of the Island of Gems, when, by a stroke of fate, the ship, with all hands, had foundered, leaving Melannie the sole survivor. Ackbau seldom spoke to me, and when he did his tone was unfriendly.
A great shout arose from the savages, who seemed amazed at the act of sacrilege I had committed. The reed pipes stopped playing. Melannie rose from her throne pale and trembling. Ackbau advanced towards me with a threatening gesture. "This must not be, Ackbau," I said, pointing to where Van Luck lay at my feet gazing at the monster in mute terror. "I will prevent it."
"If he touched me I am sure that I would scream." "You will soon be beyond his power," I answered. "Do not think of him, and you will not fear him." "Oh, Peter, take me away, I am frightened!" she sobbed. "Do not let Ackbau and the others come near me. They have done something. I don't know what it is. But they are not as they were before they made the fire.
I had made some rude vessels of clay, hardened by fire, in which to boil the shell-fish, and with these simmering in the pot, and a fine rock cod grilling upon the hot coals, we were awaiting our dinner with pleasurable anticipation, when Ackbau appeared.
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