resolve, calling Ngurn to him, out under the shade of the
breadfruit tree, and with the old devil-devil doctor discussing the
terms and arrangements of his last life effort, his final adventure
in the quick of the flesh.

"I know the law, O Ngurn," he concluded the matter. "Whoso is not
of the folk may not look upon the Red One and live. I shall not
live anyway. Your young men shall carry me before the face of the
Red One, and I shall look upon him, and hear his voice, and
thereupon die, under your hand, O Ngurn. Thus will the three
things be satisfied: the law, my desire, and your quicker
possession of my head for which all your preparations wait."

To which Ngurn consented, adding:

"It is better so. A sick man who cannot get well is foolish to
live on for so little a while. Also is it better for the living
that he should go. You have been much in the way of late. Not but
what it was good for me to talk to such a wise one. But for moons
of days we have held little talk. Instead, you have taken up room
in the house of heads, making noises like a dying pig, or talking
much and loudly in your own language which I do not understand.
This has been a confusion to me, for I like to think on the great
things of the light and dark as I turn the heads in the smoke.
Your much noise has thus been a disturbance to the long-learning
and hatching of the final wisdom that will be mine before I die.
As for you, upon whom the dark has already brooded, it is well that
you die now. And I promise you, in the long days to come when I
turn your head in the smoke, no man of the tribe shall come in to
disturb us. And I will tell you many secrets, for I am an old man