Part 27 (2/2)
The king, into whose presence they were ushered at last, was round and squat, very yellow and very fat.
He showered his questions on Kenneth through Essequibo as interpreter.
Where did they come from? What did they want? Were they Arab or foreign? Did they come to steal his wives and little ones? How long did they want to stop? For ever, of course. Where were the gifts?
Guns? Yes. Beads? Good. Pistols? Good again. But was this all?
Where was the rum? Arab men had been here before, they brought much good rum. What, _no_ rum? Never a skin of _rum_? Ugh!
With this last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, which was almost a shriek, the king sprang from the mat on which he had squatted.
”They must die?” he shouted; ”die every one of them. The Arab must first die, then the black men. Then the white men. Essequibo he would fatten and kill and eat. Bring chains; away with them! _away_! away!
AWAY!”
The king's eyes shot fire as he waved his arms aloft, and shouted, ”_Away_, away!” and his lips were flecked with blood and foam.
He was a fearful being to behold, this irate African savage.
Almost at the same moment our heroes were seized rudely from behind, disarmed, and dragged off. They soon found themselves huddled together in one room, with stone walls, slimy, damp, and over-run with creeping things that made them shudder, albeit they were under the very shadow of death.
Towards evening the king sent to ”comfort” them; it was very condescending of him. The ”comfort” lay in the information that at sunrise next day they would be led out to die, by spear or by knife, as they might choose.
Meanwhile, poor Essequibo's chains were knocked off, and he was led away to his fattening pen.
Such is life in Central Africa. But stranger things still befell our heroes.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
LAND OF DARKNESS.
Scene: The interior of King 'Ntango's palace. The king seated on a mat in the middle of the floor of the princ.i.p.al apartment--a large square room with walls of mud and gra.s.s. The only furniture, a tall tom-tom, a mat-covered dais, and a heap of empty stone bottles in a corner. Those bottles once contained gin.
It is near sunset, the king is alone. There is no sound to break the silence, except the tap, tap, tap the gecko lizards that crawl on the walls make, as they beat to death the moths they catch.
Yes, the king is alone in his glory, though his spear-armed attendants wait outside. He is quite a study, this savage potentate, to any one fond of an anthropology. Look at him now! he is leaning his fat face on his podgy fingers, his elbows are resting on his knees--he is thinking.
There are but two things in this world that this king dearly loves; one is to see human blood spilled, the other is to drink gin or rum. These last two words are the only English ones he can p.r.o.nounce or understand.
He learnt them from itinerant Arabs, unscrupulous scoundrels, who bought the youth and flower of his people for a bottle each.
The king is thinking; the question that exercises his mind at present is this, ”Shall I kill these white men, and laugh to see the red blood flow; or keep two, and send the others back for rum?”
”Room,” this is how he p.r.o.nounces the word ”rum,” and ”gin” he calls ”geen.”
”Room, room, room,” he mutters to himself, ”geen, geen, geen.”
He rises; a thought strikes him. May it not be possible that one, just one full bottle remains still among that heap of empty ones? He goes straight to the heap, and turns them over. No, not one. Still, he has a glimmering notion that in a dazed moment he hid one. Ha! he remembers all of a sudden. He seizes the stick with which he is wont to beat the tom-tom, and hies him to a corner, and speedily unearths, not one bottle, but two.
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