Suddenly a power seemed to come upon her and she became frenzied, dancing round the skull circle in time to the refrain, but undulating her body in a strange, snake-like manner. Then she knelt down on the ground, and from somewhere about her person produced something which she rubbed on her hands. At first it resembled phosphorus, a quick, flickering faint blue light, but gradually it grew in strength until streamers of blue flame, some six inches long, seemed to project from her fingers while her whole person seemed outlined in a faint shape of flame. From the ground she picked up a short length of cane which in her grasp seemed to project this blue emanation--then with a final chorus of evocation, she leapt upon the altar and knelt astride of the dead man. With quick passes, she ran her hands the length of his slack limbs and then poised both hands above the navel of the corpse, about a foot higher than the shroud. The emanation curved down like a blue-green waterfall of flame and seemed to enter the man. Incredible as it may seem, the dead limbs slowly began to stretch out jerkily, uneasily, as if awaking, yet--instinct with a new vitality. The ghastly, lolling head, stained with corruption and bound with the jaw bandage, began to oscillate on the dreadful neck and the whole corpse began to phosphoresce with a dull green luminosity. The chorus now ceased chanting and a small fire was lighted on a cairn of stones. From this certain objects were taken and placed in the dead man’s hands. The fingers slowly curled up and grasped them! The singing began again and the sorceress, still across the body, took the cane she carried and, breaking the bandage that bound the dead man’s jaw, inserted the end in his mouth. Then making certain passes and signs with her hands, she began to exhale deep breaths into the body, seeming to make the mystic passes as if to force the living breath down into the dead man’s lungs. Little by little life seemed to creep back into that unholy shell. The dreadful contours of death sunk back, the form became more human and the motions not the strange jerky rigors of the first part of the ceremony, but the very signs of life. The eyelids flickered and retracted, the dreadful drawn lips relaxed and in a minute or so the dead man sat up in his cerements--and spoke. Then followed the dread consultation of the dead. It was evident from the awe and respect with which he was addressed that he was treated not as a reanimated individual, but as an august visitant from another world. Thin, high and shrill, the usually coarse gutturals of the Shilluh tongue seemed strange from _Its_ lips. I suspected ventriloquy for a while, but could see the slow movements of its throat muscles and glottis and the rise and fall of the shroud over the sunken abdomen. Nevertheless it was sheer horror to listen to and dreadful, monstrous to see.