in the smoke."

And Bassett knew he was beaten in the discussion.

What was the Red One?--Bassett asked himself a thousand times in
the succeeding week, while he seemed to grow stronger. What was
the source of the wonderful sound? What was this Sun Singer, this
Star-Born One, this mysterious deity, as bestial-conducted as the
black and kinky-headed and monkey-like human beasts who worshipped
it, and whose silver-sweet, bull-mouthed singing and commanding he
had heard at the taboo distance for so long?

Ngurn had he failed to bribe with the inevitable curing of his head
when he was dead. Vngngn, imbecile and chief that he was, was too
imbecilic, too much under the sway of Ngurn, to be considered.
Remained Balatta, who, from the time she found him and poked his
blue eyes open to recrudescence of her grotesque female
hideousness, had continued his adorer. Woman she was, and he had
long known that the only way to win from her treason of her tribe
was through the woman's heart of her.

Bassett was a fastidious man. He had never recovered from the
initial horror caused by Balatta's female awfulness. Back in
England, even at best the charm of woman, to him, had never been
robust. Yet now, resolutely, as only a man can do who is capable
of martyring himself for the cause of science, he proceeded to
violate all the fineness and delicacy of his nature by making love
to the unthinkably disgusting bushwoman.

He shuddered, but with averted face hid his grimaces and swallowed