The Hills of the Dead

The twigs which N'Longa flung on the fire broke and crackled. The
upleaping flames lighted the countenances of the two men. N'Longa,
voodoo man of the Slave Coast, was very old. His wizened and gnarled
frame was stooped and brittle, his face creased by hundreds of
wrinkles. The red firelight glinted on the human finger-bones which
composed his necklace.

The other was an Englishman, and his name was Solomon Kane. He was
tall and broad-shouldered, clad in black close garments, the garb of
the Puritan. His featherless slouch hat was drawn low over his heavy
brows, shadowing his darkly pallid face. His cold deep eyes brooded in
the firelight.

"You come again, brother," droned the fetish-man, speaking in the
jargon which passed for a common language of black man and white on
the West Coast. "Many moons burn and die since we make blood-palaver.
You go to the setting sun, but you come back!"

"Aye," Kane's voice was deep and almost ghostly. "Yours is a grim
land, N'Longa, a red land barred with the black darkness of horror and
the bloody shadows of death. Yet I have returned."

N'Longa stirred the fire, saying nothing, and after a pause Kane
continued.

"Yonder in the unknown vastness"--his long finger stabbed at the black
silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight--"yonder lie mystery
and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle--once she
nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something
stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and
brooding --over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with
the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious
adventure--mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the
ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with
bitter longing."

"She call," muttered N'Longa. "At night she coil like serpent about my
hut and whisper strange things to me. Ai ya! The jungle call. We be
blood brothers, you and I. Me, N'Longa, mighty worker of nameless
magic! You go to the jungle as all men go who hear her call. Maybe you
live, morelike you die. You believe in my fetish work?"

"I understand it not," said Kane grimly, "but I have seen you send
your soul forth from your body to animate a lifeless corpse."

"Aye! Me N'Longa! priest of the Black God! Now watch, I make magic."

Kane gazed at the old voodoo man who bent over the fire, making even
motions with his hands mumbling incantations. Kane watched and he
seemed to grow sleepy. A mist wavered in front of him, through which
he saw dimly the form N'Longa, etched dark against the flames. Then
faded out.

Kane awoke with a start, hand shooting to pistol in his belt. N'Longa
grinned at him across the flame and there was a scent of early dawn
the air. The fetish-man held a long stave of curious black wood in his
hands. This stave was carved in a strange manner, and one end tapered
to a sharp point.

"This voodoo staff," said N'Longa, putting it in the Englishman's
hand. "Where your guns and long knife fail, this save you. When you
want me lay this on your breast, fold your hands on it and sleep. I
come to you in your dreams."

Kane weighed the thing in his hand, highly suspicious of witchcraft.
It was not heavy, but seemed as hard as iron. A good weapon at least,
he decided. Dawn was just beginning to steal over the jungle and the
river.