The Leopard Cult

African drums are talking. A message booms through the night. Black warriors steal from their huts and slink silently by secret paths to the hidden juju grove. One by one they take their place around the altar, shining ebony bodies, statues of silence squatting in the flickering light of the sacrificial fire.

The witch-doctor rises, the drum-faltors changes its note, and the faster, wilder rhythm causes the circle of black bodies to sway to its urge. This is Africa. An old woman has warned them repeatedly to beware the eyes of the moon.

The professor's party makes its way through the long grass toward a village where ceremonial drums are beating. The natives are grouped around a huge fire. A beautiful girl wearing a leopard skin that hangs from her head and down her back is moving with cat-like steps in a ceremonial dance.

She is the witch of the moon. Over there, I see as apparently changed into a leopard, and the beast charges toward the watchers in the shadow. The animal bounds between them and pauses, snarling. It eyes the party one by one, but seeing Jack, the snarls turned of cat-like pears.

Lola's voice calling for Jack to shoot angers the beast, and it bounds away again, snarling. Then out of the long grass where the leopard disappears, comes the beautiful girl. He speaks to the party. Looks at Jack with a strange look.

Then leaves them to enter again the native circle. Jack seems to be out of trance. He tries to follow the girl saying that her eyes had commanded him to do so. But Nguru holds him back.

Steady Jack, steady. Let me go, I tell you. It was written on the moon. I saw it. Her eyes too. On a moon witchy, will I look for little Bana. Let me go. I knew it would appear.