"Denis might have whispered more, but a fresh burst of distant wailing cut us short. For the first time we knew what it was, for a westerly veering wind brought articulate words at last. We ought to have known long before, since sounds much like it had often come from the same source. It was wrinkled Sophonisba, the ancient Zulu witchwoman who had fawned on Marceline, keening from her cabin in a way which crowned the horrors of this nightmare tragedy. We could both hear some of the things she howled, and knew that secret and primordial bonds linked this savage sorceress with that other inheritor of Elder secrets who had just been extirpated. Some of the words she used betrayed her closeness to demonic and palesgean traditions. "'_Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Ya-R'lyeh! N'gagi n'bulu bwana n'lolo!_ Ya, yo, pore Missy Tanit, pore Missy Isis! Marse Clooloo, come up outen de water an' git yo' chile--she done daid! She done daid! De har ain' got no missus no mo', Marse Clooloo. Ol' Sophy, she know! Ol' Sophy, she done got de black stone outen Big Zimbabwe in ol' Affriky! Ol' Sophy, she done dance in de moonshine roun' de crocodile-stone befo' de N'bangus cotch her and sell her to de ship folks! No mo' Tanit! No mo' Isis! No mo' witchwoman to keep de fire a-goin' in de big stone place! Ya, yo! _N'gagi 'bulu bwana m'lolo! Iä! Shub-Niggurath!_ She daid! Ol' Sophy know!' "That wasn't the end of the wailing, but it was all I could pay attention to. The expression on my boy's face showed that it had reminded him of something frightful, and the tightening of his hand on the machete boded no good. I knew he was desperate, and sprang to disarm him if possible before he could do anything more. "But I was too late. An old man with a bad spine doesn't count for much physically. There was a struggle, but he had done for himself before many seconds were over. I'm not sure yet but that he tried to kill me, too. His last panting words were something about the need of wiping out everything that had ever been connected with Marceline, either by blood or marriage. "I wonder to this day that I didn't go stark mad in that instant, or in the moments and hours afterward. In front of me was the slain body of my boy, the only human being I had to cherish, and ten feet away, in front of that shrouded easel, was the body of his best friend, with a nameless coil of horror wound around it. Below was the scalped corpse of that she-monster, about whom I was half ready to believe anything. I was too dazed to analyze the probability of the hair story, and even if I had not been, that dismal howling from Aunt Sophy's cabin would have been enough to quiet doubt.