"It means, my dear Dick," said she, laying her hand upon my arm, and looking very serious--she had insisted upon knowing my name, and calling me by it, early in our acquaintance--"that the Customs begin six days hence; and those men whom you saw setting up the posts round the crucifixion tree are making preparations for them." "The Customs!" I exclaimed, in horrified accents, for I had heard of these grim and ghastly festivities before. "And pray, Ama, what is the nature of these Customs under your father's beneficent rule?" "Oh, they are horrible; I hate them!" answered the girl. "They last six days--six whole days, in which the people abandon themselves to every kind of licence and cruelty, in which human blood is shed like water. I do not think _you_ will like them, Dick--at least I hope not!" "Like them?" I ejaculated indignantly. "I should think not, indeed. But I suppose a fellow is not obliged to watch them, is he? I shall go off into the forest, or up the river, during those six days--" "Nay, Dick, you will not be able to do either of those things," answered Ama. "In the first place I am not at all certain that the king would give you leave; and, even if he did, you would not be permitted to go alone; and where would you find men willing to absent themselves from the Customs for the sake of accompanying you? There is not a man in the town who would consent to do so. No, I am afraid that we shall both be obliged to witness them." "No," I said. "We must devise some scheme whereby we may both be exempted. You say that they take place six days hence; it will be strange indeed if our united ingenuity is not equal to the task of devising some simple yet efficacious plan. But, tell me, Ama, where do the victims come from, and how many of them are usually sacrificed?" "The number sacrificed depends, of course, upon how many can be found," answered Ama; "but generally there are at least three hundred; this time it is hoped that there may be many more. As to where they come from, a good many are `smelled out' by Mafuta and his assistants, and the rest are made up of such prisoners as may happen to be in our possession at the time. There are five hundred hunters out now securing prisoners; we expect them back to-morrow or the next day. And that reminds me, Dick," she added, with a sudden access of gravity, "if you had not been clever enough to save my life when the snake bit me, you would most certainly have been one of the victims; indeed it was with a view to sacrificing you at the Customs that my father accepted you from the Igbo." "The dickens it was!" ejaculated I, in some dismay. "Then who is to say that I shall not be still included in the batch?"