“It is no work of ours, King Simba,” answered Marût. “It is your own work. You stole the magic weapon of the white lord and made it angry, so that it has revenged itself upon you.” “It is true,” said Simba, “that the tube has killed one of those who took it away from you and wounded the other” (here was luck indeed). “But it was you who ordered it to do so, magicians. Now, hark! Yesterday I promised you safety, that no spear should pierce your hearts and no knife come near your throats, and drank the cup of peace with you. But you have broken the pact, working us more harm, and therefore it no longer holds, since there are many other ways in which men can die. Listen again! This is my decree. By your magic you have taken away the life of one of my servants and hurt another of my servants, destroying the middle toe of his left foot. If within three days you do not give back the life to him who seems to be dead, and give back the toe to him who seems to be hurt, as you well can do, then you shall join those whom you have slain in the land of death, how I will not tell you.” Now when I heard this amazing sentence I gasped within myself, but thinking it better to keep up my rôle of understanding nothing of their talk, I preserved an immovable countenance and left Marût to answer. This, to his credit be it recorded, he did with his customary pleasant smile. “O King,” he said, “who can bring the dead back to life? Not even the Child itself, at any rate in this world, for there is no way.” “Then, Prophet of the Child, you had better find a way, or, I repeat, I send you to join them,” he shouted, rolling his eyes. “What did my brother, the great Prophet, promise to you but yesterday, O King, if you harmed us?” asked Marût. “Was it not that the three great curses should fall upon your people? Learn now that if so much as one of us is murdered by you, these things shall swiftly come to pass. I, Marût, who am also a Prophet of the Child, have said it.” Now Simba seemed to go quite mad, so mad that I thought all was over. He waved his spear and danced about in front of us, till the silver chains clanked upon his breast. He vituperated the Child and its worshippers, who, he declared, had worked evil on the Black Kendah for generations. He appealed to his god Jana to avenge these evils, “to pierce the Child with his tusks, to tear it with his trunk, and to trample it with his feet,” all of which the wounded diviner ably seconded through his horrid mask.