Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/84

 *co; and now for the first time they broke silence by giving utterance to a wild, low incantation.

It was a rude sort of rhythmical recitative, of alternate parts—first one and then the other, rising upon their knees and sitting back upon their heels, with brawny arms held out to the frowning heavens, would utter their fiendish jargon in some strange pagan tongue, to which the deep bass of the prolonged and rolling thunder lent a fearful accompaniment; and still, at the close of every thunder-peal, the demon-like performers answered it with fierce peals of mocking, idiot laughter.

But at length the unhallowed flame has burned itself out, and the devil worship is ended. John Indian enveloped the image in its mats, and laid it back into its grave; and, while he covered it up again with earth, Tituba stamped out the remaining embers and scattered them. With infinite care, the two performers in these awful rites gathered up twigs and branches and scattered them about, so as to conceal all traces of their presence, and then together they began their homeward way.