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‘But he will not be able to take it off now!’

‘Take what off?’ said Pollock.

‘And all dese cards are spoiled!’

‘What do you mean by taking off?’ said Pollock.

‘You must send me a new pack from Freetown. You can buy dem dere.

‘But — “take it off”?’

‘It is only superstition. I forgot. De niggers say dat if de witches — he was a witch — But it is rubbish … You must make de Porroh man take it off, or kill him yourself … It is very silly.’

Pollock swore under his breath, still staring hard at the head in the corner.

‘I can’t stand that glare,’ he said. Then suddenly he rushed at the thing and kicked it. It rolled some yards or so, and came to rest in the same position as before, upside down, and looking at him.

‘He is ugly,’ said the Anglo-Portuguese. ‘Very ugly. Dey do it on deir faces with little knives.’

Pollock would have kicked the head again, but the Mendi man touched him on the arm. ‘De gun?’ he said, looking nervously at the head.

‘Two — if you will take that beastly thing away.’ said Pollock.

The Mendi shook his head, and intimated that he only wanted one gun now due to him, and for which he would be obliged. Pollock found neither cajolery nor bullying any good with him. Perera had a gun to sell (at a profit of three hundred per cent), and with that the man presently departed. Then Pollock’s eyes, against his will, were recalled to the thing on the floor.

‘It is funny dat his head keeps upside down,’ said Perera, with an uneasy laugh. ‘His brains must be heavy, like de weight in de little images one sees dat keep always upright wid lead in dem. You will take him wiv you when you go presently. You might take him now. De cards are all spoilt. Dere is a man sell dem in Freetown. De room is in a filthy mess as it is. You should have killed him yourself.’

Pollock pulled himself together, and went and picked up the head. He would hang it up by the lamp-hook in the middle of the ceiling of his room, and dig a grave for it at once. He was under the impression that he hung it up by the hair, but that must have been wrong, for when he returned for it, it was hanging by the neck upside down.

He buried it before sunset on the north side of the shed he occupied, so that he should not have to pass the grave after dark when he was returning from Perera’s. He killed two snakes before he went to sleep. In the darkest part of the night he awoke with a start, and heard a pattering sound and something scraping on the floor. He sat up noiselessly, and felt under his pillow for his revolver. A mumbling growl followed, and Pollock fired at the sound. There was a yelp, and something dark passed for a moment across the hazy blue of the doorway. ‘A dog!’ said Pollock, lying down again.

In the early dawn he awoke again with a peculiar sense of unrest. The vague pain in his bones had returned. For some time he lay watching the red ants that were swarming over the ceiling, and then, as the light grew brighter, he looked over the edge of his hammock and saw something dark on the floor. He gave such a violent start that the hammock overset and flung him out.

He found himself lying, perhaps, a yard away from the head of the Porroh man. It had been disinterred by the dog, and the nose was grievously battered. Ants and flies swarmed over it. By an odd coincidence, it was still upside down, and with the same diabolical expression in the inverted eyes.

Pollock sat paralysed, and stared at the horror for some time. Then he got up and walked round it — giving it a wide berth — and out of the shed. The clear light of the sunrise, the living stir of vegetation before the breath of the dying land-breeze, and the empty grave with the marks of the dog’s paws, lightened the weight upon his mind a little.