I kept my head pretty
well; but when I had him at last stretched on the couch, I wiped my
forehead, while my legs shook under me as though I had carried half a
ton on my back down that hill. And yet I had only supported him, his
bony arm clasped round my neck--and he was not much heavier than a
child.
"When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of whose presence behind the
curtain of trees I had been acutely conscious all the time, flowed out
of the woods again, filled the clearing, covered the slope with a mass
of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze bodies. I steamed up a bit, then
swung down stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolutions of
the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon beating the water with its
terrible tail and breathing black smoke into the air. In front of the
first rank, along the river, three men, plastered with bright red earth
from head to foot, strutted to and fro restlessly. When we came abreast
again, they faced the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned
heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook towards the fierce
river-demon a bunch of black feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent
tail--something that looked a dried gourd; they shouted periodically
together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human
language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were
like the responses of some satanic litany.
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