IOLET twilight stained with green died hurriedly, leaving the dented moon as if battered with the boredom of the chiliads to gaze incuriously upon microcosmical contortions. From the village of Basayaguru rose continuously, like puffs of invisible steam from an engine-exhaust, the rhythm of a drum above the murmur of the forest and the swirl of the river in the sulky air.
Like the red eye of a familiar, winking in masonic import to old Yamala, the witch-doctor, squatting like an idol carved in ebony, was the glow of the little doctor's cigar as he sat in the doorway of his tent in the lee of the greenwood fire. Half in shadow beside him was Ali, his robes a volume of carven turquoise supporting the dignity of his turbaned head, a cameo in lazulite.
"Now, Ali," said the doctor, "it's really about time you got to business. We've had a week of this fooling. We've got a general idea of the supply of ivory and that your confounded people ruined the vine rubber ages ago. But we could have got that almost anywhere. Now try to find out exactly what is the basis of their cult—whether it is the same in this part as down-country. Understand?"
"It most usually is so, Doctor," responded Ali.
"Well, but you don't know. I want facts, not suppositions."
"I still venture to doubt whether the moment be expedient yet," objected Ali tonelessly.
"Do as I tell you, confound you!"
"The Occidental and the Oriental"
"Shut up!"
"Very good, Doctor. But you will please note that I do not take the responsibility. I obey."
As tonelessly as an oracle Ali spoke fluently to the old man Yamala, who at length replied as monotonously.
"The witch-doctor states that they have a goddess who dwells in the woods."
"Well?"
"Please to contain your most natural emotions," reproved Ali. "It is not the custom of the Orient"
"Oh, the Orient!"
"Please to be patient," remonstrated Ali and began anew to talk with the witch-doctor.
The old man rumbled on in periods, punctuated by assenting grunts from Ali. The doctor finished his cigar and lighted another. Yet still the two voices blended as if in a liturgy to the rhythmic throb of the single drum and the faint anthem of the mosquitoes. The old man ceased and relapsed into immobility.
"Well, well? What is it?"
Ali was undoubtedly in a state of excitement indicated by a slight half-tone raise in the timbre of his voice.
"These peoples have, as you know, Doctor, been much influenced by the incursions of my own people. They were at one remote period the storehouse of our slaves, although in these days of your exquisite civilization one is compelled to take tribute in the form of merchandise only. I desire to point out that our ancient ruins have influenced even these savages."
"You have," interrupted the doctor dryly. "Get on."
"The Occidental are not the ways of the Oriental"
"Ali, shut up and get along with the yarn!"
"I hasten to obey, Doctor. I desire to state that these savages have confused an ancient philosophy with their own ignorant superstitions."
"Never mind that. What is the superstition?"
"As you will doubtless have read or learned, Doctor, each of these peoples have, with scarcely any exception, a belief in the spirits of the trees and the rivers. The correct word flees from me."
"Animism."
"Thank you, Doctor. Animism. But in this case they have confused"
"Confound it," grumbled Herdwether, "never mind that!"
"They, as I wish to express, believe in the spirits of the wood and the plants. They have, the priest tells me, here a sacred and holy tree, which is the mother—I desire to express that it is the mother."
"Well, you have. What about it?"
"Because all other trees are male."
"The devil they are! Trees have sex as well as anybody else."
"Indeed true words as your exquisite education has taught me. But not with these peoples. It is that I wish to express that they have confused their superstition with the truths of my peoples, the Berbers. As may and yet may not be known to you, Doctor, the Berbers of the Atlas before the coming of the true believers"
"Meaning your crowd, eh?"
"Indeed surely, Doctor. The Berbers, I may state, had faith in the mother of the universe, the sun, which is, they said with admirable logic, the source of heat and therefore of all things and therefore was fecund and therefore was a female, the mother of all."
"What the devil's that got to do with this ju~ju idol?"
"THERE is no idol, Doctor. It is a tree."
"What?"