The whole assemblage of that cavern chamber stood in perfect silence when the negro priest stooped and raised the lid of the basket, revealing the enclosed victim, trussed, ready for the sacrificial altar—a terror-stricken mulatto girl! The girl’s eyes gazed in vacant terror at the stern chiselled-like faces of the papaloi who at once surrounded her. No mercy shone in the eyes of those hungry looking fanatics of the most bloodthirsty creed that has ever sent cries of anguish to God. The girl’s mute appeal, for her mouth was gagged, made no impression on the hearts of the hot-blooded African and Haytian men and women who witnessed that sight. The greater her grief, the more terrifying her convulsive throes, the more glory to the fetish deities whom they worshipped. The wretched victim was the _Goat Without Horns_; her living blood the anticipated libation that must be drunk with white rum when those terrible fetish men and women knelt before the _vaudoux_ altars. No Marquesan, no Fijian cannibalistic orgy of the old pre-Christian times ever approached in cruelty and lingering terror the torture that those semi-civilised Haytians meted out to their victims. The _Goat Without Horns_ was the chosen of the dark powers, the honoured of their people, and so why should their hearts be touched by the victim’s anguish?
Undoing the sennet thongs that bound the girl’s legs together, they made her stand on the _vaudoux_ altar. Her terror was so great that her limbs trembled like blown leaves, her fingers moving convulsively.
“_Savoot, garou!_” wailed a hoarse voice. That voice and those dreadful words sent a death-like silence and chill into Clensy’s soul. Even Biglow’s bosom gave a half-stifled sigh as he quietly drew his revolver from his pocket. A tall, handsome man had suddenly stepped forward; he removed his cloak.
“Good heavens! impossible!” murmured Clensy. But it wasn’t impossible at all, for there, as real as Clensy’s surprise, stood President Gravelot, Sestrina’s father. The fear of Clensy’s heart over the risk he was running through being in that place, was extinguished as his whole soul became centred with an intense curiosity on the scene before him. His eyes began to scan eagerly the rows of robed women and girls, many in their teens, who made up the strangely assorted audience of that terrible seraglio of bloodthirsty superstition and indiscribable lust that was sanctified by the presence of the _vaudoux_ priests. A great fear had begun to haunt Clensy’s brain—was Sestrina among that crew? Why were some of the female adherents as well as the men, wearing masks that only revealed their burning eyes? Already the frenzy of drink and superstition had seized those fetish devotees. The hot-blooded negro and Haytian priests were already lifting their hands as they chanted the weird _vaudoux_ melodies. They were wonderful strains that they chanted, inasmuch as they suggested the indescribable debauchery of the men and women who sang. Some of the young mulatto and creole girls were already lying in postures of stupefied abandonment on the couches and settees of that sumptiously furnished subterreanean temple chamber, some weeping and laughing in the hysteria and religious fervour which had seized them. Others stood as though transfixed by a terrible curiosity, yes, as they watched in fiendish anticipation to see the coming torture of the sacrificial victim.