Once more we were sitting on the ground, all except Laputa and the Keeper. Henriques was squatting in the front row, a tiny creature among so many burly savages. Laputa stood with bent head in the centre. Then a song began, a wild incantation in which all joined. The old priest would speak some words, and the reply came in barbaric music. The words meant nothing to me; they must have been in some tongue long since dead. But the music told its own tale. It spoke of old kings and great battles, of splendid palaces and strong battlements, of queens white as ivory, of death and life, love and hate, joy and sorrow. It spoke, too, of desperate things, mysteries of horror long shut to the world. No Kaffir ever forged that ritual. It must have come straight from Prester John or Sheba’s queen, or whoever ruled in Africa when time was young. I was horribly impressed. Devouring curiosity and a lurking nameless fear filled my mind. My old dread had gone. I was not afraid now of Kaffir guns, but of the black magic of which Laputa had the key. The incantation died away, but still herbs were flung on the fire, till the smoke rose in a great cloud, through which the priest loomed misty and huge. Out of the smoke-wreaths his voice came high and strange. It was as if some treble stop had been opened in a great organ, as against the bass drone of the cataract. He was asking Laputa questions, to which came answers in that rich voice which on board the liner had preached the gospel of Christ. The tongue I did not know, and I doubt if my neighbours were in better case. It must have been some old sacred language—Phoenician, Sabaean, I know not what—which had survived in the rite of the Snake. Then came silence while the fire died down and the smoke eddied away in wreaths towards the river. The priest’s lips moved as if in prayer: of Laputa I saw only the back, and his head was bowed. Suddenly a rapt cry broke from the Keeper. “God has spoken,” he cried. “The path is clear. The Snake returns to the House of its Birth.” An attendant led forward a black goat, which bleated feebly. With a huge antique knife the old man slit its throat, catching the blood in a stone ewer. Some was flung on the fire, which had burned small and low. “Even so,” cried the priest, “will the king quench in blood the hearth-fires of his foes.” Then on Laputa’s forehead and bare breast he drew a bloody cross. “I seal thee,” said the voice, “priest and king of God’s people.” The ewer was carried round the assembly, and each dipped his finger in it and marked his forehead. I got a dab to add to the other marks on my face. “Priest and king of God’s people,” said the voice again, “I call thee to the inheritance of John. Priest and king was he, king of kings, lord of hosts, master of the earth. When he ascended on high he left to his son the sacred Snake, the ark of his valour, to be God’s dower and pledge to the people whom He has chosen.”