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.

So they watched, the women beating their bosoms and uttering strange cries, the men stolid but scared.

Trent and the boy came out coughing, and half-stupefied with the rank odour, and a little murmur went up from them.