'They shall in white clothes clothed to meet the Collector and his
well-born lady come down, singing “NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD.” Then he
will the Chapel open, and--yes--even Gallio to believe will begin. Stand
so, my children, two by two, and--Lotta, why do they thus themselves
bescratch? It is not seemly to wriggle, Nala, my child. The Collector
will be here and be pained.'
The Collector, his wife, and Gallio climbed the hill to the
Mission-station. The converts were drawn up in two lines, a shining band
nearly forty strong. 'Hah!' said the Collector, whose acquisitive bent
of mind led him to believe that he had fostered the institution from the
first. 'Advancing, I see, by leaps and bounds.'
Never was truer word spoken! The Mission _was_ advancing exactly as he
had said--at first by little hops and shuffles of shamefaced uneasiness,
but soon by the leaps of fly-stung horses and the bounds of maddened
kangaroos. From the hill of Panth the Red Elephant Tusk delivered a
dry and anguished blare. The ranks of the converts wavered, broke and
scattered with yells and shrieks of pain, while Justus and Lotta stood
horror-stricken.
'It is the Judgment of Dungara!' shouted a voice. 'I burn! I burn! To
the river or we die!'
The mob wheeled and headed for the rocks that over-hung the Berbulda,
writhing, stamping, twisting and shedding its garments as it ran,
pursued by the thunder of the trumpet of Dungara. Justus and Lotta fled
to the Collector almost in tears.
'I cannot understand! Yesterday,' panted Justus, 'they had the Ten
Commandments.--What is this? Praise the Lord all good spirits by land
and by sea. Nala! Oh, shame!'
With a bound and a scream there alighted on the rocks above their heads,
Nala, once the pride of the Mission, a maiden of fourteen summers,
good, docile, and virtuous--now naked as the dawn and spitting like a
wild-cat.
'Was it for this!' she raved, hurling her petticoat at Justus; 'was it
for this I left my people and Dungara--for the fires of your Bad Place?
Blind ape, little earthworm, dried fish that you are, you said that I
should never burn! O Dungara, I burn now! I burn now! Have mercy, God of
Things as They Are!'
She turned and flung herself into the Berbulda, and the trumpet of
Dungara bellowed jubilantly. The last of the converts of the Tubingen
Mission had put a quarter of a mile of rapid river between herself and
her teachers.
'Yesterday,' gulped Justus, 'she taught in the school A,B,C,D.--Oh! It
is the work of Satan!'
But Gallio was curiously regarding the maiden's petticoat where it had
fallen at his feet. He felt its texture, drew back his shirt-sleeve
beyond the deep tan of his wrist and pressed a fold of the cloth against
the flesh. A blotch of angry red rose on the white skin.
'Ah!' said Gallio calmly, 'I thought so.'
'What is it?' said Justus.
'I should call it the Shirt of Nessus, but--Where did you get the fibre
of this cloth from?'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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