"I have sinned, I
have sinned. Mercy, mercy!"
Tu-Kila-Kila smiled as before, a smile of imperial pride. No ray of pity
gleamed from those steel-gray eyes. "Does Tu-Kila-Kila show mercy?" he
asked, in a mocking voice. "Does he pardon his suppliants? Does he
forgive trespasses? Is he not a god, and must not his wrath be appeased?
She, being a woman, and not a wife sealed to Tu-Kila-Kila, has dared to
look from afar upon his sacred home. She has spied the mysteries.
Therefore she must die. My people, bind her."
In a second, without more ado, while the poor trembling girl writhed and
groaned in her agony before their eyes, that mob of wild savages, let
loose to torture and slay, fell upon her with hideous shouts, and bound
her, as they had bound their comrade before, with coarse native ropes of
twisted plantain fibre.
"Lay her head on the stone," Tu-Kila-Kila said, grimly. And his votaries
obeyed him.
"Now light the sacred fire to make our feast, before I slay the victims,"
the god said, in a gloating voice, running his finger again along the
edge of his huge hatchet.
As he spoke, two men, holding in their hands hollow bamboos with coals of
fire concealed within, which they kept aglow meanwhile by waving them up
and down rapidly in the air, laid these primitive matches to the base of
a great pyramidal pile of wood and palm-leaves, ready prepared beforehand
in the yard of the temple.
Pages:
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34