This meal, rough as it was, greatly refreshed me, for I had taken no food since the previous day; but I was in a good deal of pain from the tight bands of rope round my arms, and the bruises that the fetish-man’s staff had produced. This did not escape the good-natured slave’s observation, for, when I had finished drinking, he proceeded to loosen the bands somewhat, and soaking a corner of his cloth in water, he bathed my black and swollen bruises very gently and tenderly. These charitable ministrations were interrupted by the approach of a procession consisting of the fetish-men (who were now loaded with uncouth cowrie ornaments and had their faces and limbs painted with broad white stripes), a body of armed men, and a band of musicians, who produced appalling noises with trumpets formed of large antelope’s horns and long drums, black and shiny with dried blood and elaborately ornamented with festoons of human jaw-bones. When the musicians had played a few selections from some kind of devil’s opera outside the hut, the fetish-men entered, and having untied my halter led me forth; and I now observed that a large crowd had collected near a shade tree in the village. Towards this spot our procession slowly advanced, preceded by the musicians and followed by the guard, and as we came near to the crowd the people arranged themselves into a long line and eventually enclosed us in a circle. I noticed that the villagers were not dressed in their usual fashion, but wore kilts or short petticoats of soft fibre and carried on their wrists and ankles a number of curious plaited bangles that rattled loudly at every movement; and that, moreover, each bore in his or her hand a long tassel or brush of the same fibre as the kilts were made of. When the circle was formed, the musicians and the guard disappeared; a wooden stool, thickly coated with dried blood, was placed in the centre of the circle, and I was seated on it with the party of fetish-men behind me. Then the people began to chant a melancholy minor air, and as they chanted, they stooped and swept the ground with their brushes, moving slowly round me, punctuating the chant by stamping their feet and shaking their rattles in unison. This strange ceremonial had an effect that was very devilish and horrid, which was enhanced by the quiet and orderly manner in which it was performed, and by the sad, plaintive character of the chant. As I sat and watched the unending line of stooping figures slowly filing past, the brushes moving softly and rhythmically to and fro, and listened to the weird song and the murmur of the rattles, like the shingle on a sea beach, I could scarcely repress a feeling of superstitious dread. Suddenly there appeared within the circle a most horrible and grotesque figure that instantly recalled the horned image in the path by the pool.