As nothing happened they lifted their spears and the man bolted up an incline and was lost among the thousands of spectators.
The next one, evidently a person of rank, was not so fortunate.

Jumping into the pool off the gangway, he stood there like a sheep about to be washed, the water reaching up to his middle.

Then Alan saw a terrifying thing, for suddenly the horrid, golden head of Big Bonsa, towing Little Bonsa behind it, began to swim with a deliberate motion across the stream until, reaching the man, it seemed to rear itself up and poke him with its snout in the chest as a turtle might do.

Then it sank again into the water and slowly floated back to its station, directed by some agency or power that Alan could not discover.
At the touch of the fetish the man screamed like a horse in pain or terror, and soldiers leaping on him with a savage shout, dragged him up another gangway opposite to that by which he had descended, whereon, to all appearances more dead than alive, he departed into the shadows.

The horns and drums set up a bray of triumph, the Asika clapped her hands approvingly, the spectators cheered, and another victim was bundled down the gangway and submitted to the judgment of the Bonsas, which came at him like a hungry pike at a frog.