Last night, after the council of which you have heard, the Kalubi wrapped himself up like a corpse and visited the white men in their hut.

I thought that he would do so, and had made ready.
With a sharp spear I bored a hole in the wall of the hut, working from outside the fence.

Then I thrust a reed through from the fence across the passage between the fence and the wall, and through the hole in the hut, and setting my ear to the end of the reed, I listened." "Oh! clever, clever!" muttered Hans in involuntary admiration, "and to think that I looked and looked too low, beneath the reed.

Oh! Hans, though you are old, you have much to learn." "Among much else I heard this," went on Komba in sentences so clear and cold that they reminded me of the tinkle of falling ice, "which I think is enough, though I can tell you the rest if you wish, O Mouth.
I heard," he said, in the midst of a silence that was positively awful, "our lord, the Kalubi, whose name is Child of the god, agree with the white men that they should kill the god--how I do not know, for it was not said--and that in return they should receive the persons of the Mother of the Holy Flower and of her daughter, the Mother-that-is-to-be, and should dig up the Holy Flower itself by the roots and take it away across the water, together with the Mother and the Mother-that-is-to-be.
That is all, O Motombo." Still in the midst of an intense silence, the Motombo glared at the prostrate figure of the Kalubi.

For a long while he glared.