sider. The juju is just. He only wants the sacrifice of one of you, and you yourselves must decide which one shall go, and which one shall stay. And—remember the little, little knives. Be pleased to remember the many ants which follow the honey trail. I shall return shortly and hear your choice."
He had bowed and, with his silent warriors, had stepped back into the jungle that had closed behind them like a curtain.
Even in that moment of stark, enormous horror, horror too great to be grasped, horror that swept over and beyond the barriers of fear—even in that moment Stuart McGregor had realized that, by leaving the choice to them, the Bakoto had committed a refined cruelty worthy of a more civilized race, and had added a psychic torture fully as dreadful as the physical torture of the little knives.
Too, in that moment of ghastly expectancy, he had known that it was Farragut Hutchison who would be sacrificed to the juju—Farragut Hutchison who sat there, staring into the camp fire, making queer little, funny noises in his throat.
Suddenly, Stuart McGregor had laughed—he remembered that laugh to his dying day—and had
