Brother John stroked his white beard and muttered some invocation to Heaven to protect him.

Hans exclaimed in his abominable Dutch: "_Oh! keek, Baas, da is je lelicher oud deel!_" ("Oh! look, Baas, there is the ugly old devil himself!") Jerry went flat on his face among the Pongo, muttering that he saw Death before him.

Only Mavovo stood firm; perhaps because as a witch-doctor of repute he felt that it did not become him to show the white feather in the presence of an evil spirit.
The toad-like creature on the platform swayed its great head slowly as a tortoise does, and contemplated us with its flaming eyes.

At length it spoke in a thick, guttural voice, using the tongue that seemed to be common to this part of Africa and indeed to that branch of the Bantu people to which the Zulus belong, but, as I thought, with a foreign accent.
"So _you_ are the white men come back," it said slowly.

"Let me count!" and lifting one skinny hand from the ground, it pointed with the forefinger and counted.