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Updated: May 8, 2025
On the ground crouched three human figures, wretched-looking and emaciated to the last degree. Disease and exhaustion had overpowered them, and they were begging to be left to die. Standing over them in threatening attitude was Lutali, with some half-dozen of the slavers. "They are too far gone to feel the whip," Lutali was saying. "Clearly they are of no further use.
For as he drew nearer to Imvungayo there issued from its gate a crowd of figures of black, grotesque, horrible figures, and in the midst a man, whom they were dragging along in grim silence, even as they had hauled Lutali to his unknown doom, and as they disappeared into the gathering darkness, Laurence knew only too well that here was another victim another hideous sacrifice to the grisly and mysterious demon-god.
He laid himself out to make friends with them, and this was easy, for the natural suspiciousness wherewith the savage invariably regards a new acquaintance, once fairly laid to rest, the Ba-gcatya proved as chatty and genial a race of people as those of the original Zulu stock. But on one point the lips of old and young alike were sealed, and that was the fate of Lutali.
Then when they had pushed farther into the equatorial regions, and, joining with Lutali, had embarked on their present enterprise, all opportunity of withdrawing had gone. The precise point at which he had cast in his lot with this, Holmes could not with certainty define. Yet there were times when he thought he could.
This was soon done, for the three white men and Lutali had arranged all that during the march. The Wangoni were of no great use, save in pursuit of a defeated enemy. They could hardly have hit a haystack once in six shots, nor did Hazon care to intrust with firearms such a turbulent and unruly crew.
He remembered the mystery hanging over the fate of Lutali, and those horrible beings who had hauled the Arab to his doom, whatever it was, who indeed might well constitute the priesthood of the unknown devil-god. Surely never indeed had earth presented a fairer scene than this upon which the adventurer's eyes rested, as he made his way down the mountain-side.
But these horrible beings seemed at first sight to have no arms and no legs, their whole anatomy being encased in a sort of black, hairy sacking, whence tails and streamers, also hairy, flapped in the air as they moved. Hideous, indeed, they looked, hideous and grotesque, half reptile, half devil. They surrounded Lutali all in dead silence, the guards precipitately falling back to give them way.
Then, suddenly, with magical swiftness, the whole party was astir, and it needed a sharp, hurried command or two from Hazon and Lutali to restrain some from leaping on the rocks in order to obtain a better view of what had caused the alarm. Between the kopje and the forest belt the ground, save for an occasional roll, was entirely visible.
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