After a brief
rest Trent called them to follow him. He walked across to the
dwelling of the fetish man and tore down the curtain of dried grass
which hung before the opening. Even then it was so dark inside that
they had to light a torch before they could see the walls, and the
stench was horrible.
A little chorus of murmurs escaped the lips of the Europeans as the
interior became revealed to them. Opposite the door was a life-size
and hideous effigy of a grinning god, made of wood and painted in
many colours. By its side were other more horrible images and a row
of human skulls hung from the roof. The hand of a white man,
blackened with age, was stuck to the wall by a spear-head, the stench
and filth of the whole place were pestilential. Yet outside a number
of women and several of the men were on their knees hoping still
against hope for aid from their ancient gods. There was a cry of
horror when Trent unceremoniously kicked over the nearest idol
- a yell of panic when the boy, with a gleam of mischief in his
eyes, threw out amongst them a worm-eaten, hideous effigy and with
a hearty kick stove in its hollow side. It lay there bald and ugly
in the streaming sunshine, a block of misshapen wood ill-painted in
flaring daubs, the thing which they had worshipped in gloom and
secret, they and a generation before them - all the mystery of its
shrouded existence, the terrible fetish words of the dead priest,
the reverence which an all-powerful and inherited superstition had
kept alive within them, came into their minds as they stood there
trembling, and then fled away to be out of the reach of the empty,
staring eyes - out of reach of the vengeance which must surely
fall from the skies upon these white savages.
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