Avon Fantasy Reader No. 11 — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

enthusiasm of an artist, already had leaped out of the pit and led the way te the great house beyond the furnace. Mogglesby followed him and presently was in a great single malodorous room which was evidently a lodge room of some sort. At the farther end was a faised dais and drums on each side. In the center arose a grotesque idol of heroic size, crudely carved out of wood. In front of this idol, ranged along the edge of the dais, stood a long row of exquisitely done bronze heads of Negroes and gorillas. Each piece stood on its neck, without the faintest suggestion of shoulders, and faced the great fantastic idol. The re- volting smell, the beautifully done bronzes and the crude carving of the central piece formed a sort of riddle for the Englishman. He turned to Loaga and asked him the meaning of the odor. Sammu answered— ‘Mumbo fives on the odor of the departed men; but when we put the reat heads on his altar, the scent became too strong for human beings, so we molded them in bronze and poured the blood on the ground for the odor.” Of a sudden the Englishman realized that the heads he saw were not sculpture at all, but death masks. The particular head he had seen cast doubt- less came from the headless body he and his party had found that morning. He stood regarding the semicircle with a painful feeling of the wholesale murder it involved. He turned to Loaga and asked the dignified black man to conduct him to the hut set apart for him. “I want to have a talk with you about this,” he told the head-man. “Now each one of those bronzes represents some one killed and eaten by the M’Bembi, doesn’t it?” ““Master,”’ began the black man, “I don’t remember each one—” “You don’t have to remember each one,” snapped the white man, putting his handkerchief to his nose. ‘I’m talking about how they were al! done.” The head-man said nothing as the two turned out into the night again. When they were once more in the street Mogglesby was about to begin his homily when his attention was attracted by a torchlight procession entering the village gate. Drums began to beat with the involved rhythm of African drummers on the march. Rum-tidy-dum-dum-rum-tidy-ay-dy-dum! The black phalanx came down the village alley, swaying to the tempo and bristling with assegais. As they drew near Mogglesby heard a white man’s voice pro- clarming: ‘“‘“Ho, men of the Baloongas, his Excellency the governor's agent has ar- rived! Make way for the governor's agent!” And then Mogglesby saw the diminutive form of the doctor leading the procession with Jolo the guard as head-man, and on the other side, the gloomy Mokato with his earplates missing, fingering his empty ear lobes as he marched. As the procession came past, the doctor saw his superior in front of the lodge house and drew up in some confusion. “Mr. Mogglesby,” he said, ‘‘we looked for you everywhere outside. I] had an idea it might—you know—give us—er—standing to make something of apn entry.” ws! api 35 Comicbooks.com