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consciousness plodded on and up through the miasmic silt until at length he was able to open his eye; and behold something quite as unreal as the narcotic-inspirec horrors from which he had just emerged. There was a continuous motion which kept his head a-bobbing, and a darting pain which seemed centered in his ankles and wrists. The parched dryness of his lips and mouth extended far dowr into his stomach and the throbbing in his head made hia feel as if the top of his skull had been sliced off and birds were picking out the insides like ravens around a bursi calabash. An eerie light of alternate white and red stripes, which seemed like hot bars of metal, enveloped him.
    As he gradually became more aware of his surroundings he discovered that the bobbing of his head was caused bj the motion of the horse he was riding. The pain in his ankles came from the straw rope which was fastened tc one ankle, pulled tautly under the horse's belly and tied to the other ankle. Both his wrists were secured to th( high wooden pommel of the saddle with leather thongs anc spread over him was a smothering tent-like affair of red and white striped material, supported on thin bamboo poles. He had seen such a contraption in the slave caravans when some True Believer of Allah carried one of his favorite wives along with him, and took care that she be shielded from the view of profaning eyes.
    He struggled vainly, pullhig at his wrists to free himself, but the thongs only dug deeper into his already raw flesh. His feet, too, were securely anchored. Now he could view his body, which had been so gaudily painted with clay the night before. The white clay was streaked with his own black skin where the sweat had soaked through and run

    down his body in serpentine meanderings. The sticky clay reminded him of the ceremony of the night before. He remembered no pain and strangely enough he felt none now —at least not where pain should be. By spreading his arms as wide as his bound hands would allow and leaning as far back in the saddle as he could, he was able to look down at himself. Now he understood why there was no pain. There had been no cut. He was exactly the same as he had been before.
    It was all so diflScult to understand. That it was day now was certain—the light and heat of the sun proved it. But the ceremony was to have taken place last night and by rights he should now be waking in the hut of Man-. domna, sore but happy. Instead he was . . . where was he? I Suddenly he had an impulse to scream out, to raise his |i voice in a shrill cry of fear that would summon someone or some thing to him—a hand to raise the striped canopy, a knife to cut the binding thongs, an arm to stop the plodding of the horse, a voice to explain where he was and why. But a man did not scream. A man did not cry out in his grief and bewilderment. Tamboura stifled the outburst and tried to remember what had happened the night before.
    He had left Mandouma's hut and gone across the dance compound to the hut of Kanili, rich in the knowledge that he had killed his antelope with one fling of the wooden spear. Yes, he had bragged about it before the other boys. Kanili had only grunted, but that was sufficient praise from the old witch doctor. Kanili was kneeling before one of the boys and beside him on the floor was an iron trade kettle, filled with a viscous white mixture. This he had smeared over the boy until the lad's whole body gleamed with a white phosphorescence in the firelight of the hut, except for the one vital spot which must of course remain black. Then he had dipped his finger in a bowl of red clay and drawn jagged lines down from the boy's shoulders over his thighs to his ankles. Once finished, he dismissed the boy, cautioning him to stand still and not sit down. Kanili had brushed aside the next boy in line and beckoned to Tamboura to take his place. It seemed to Tamboura that the witch doctor took special pains with his ornamentation. In addition to the