What is the interpretation of this sign, if it does
not point to the favour in which Mtesa is upheld by the spirits?
I wished to go, but no: "Stop a little more," they said, all in a
breath, or rather out of breath in their excitement; "remove the
hat and show the hair; take off the shoes and tuck up the
trousers; what on earth is kept in the pockets? Oh, wonder of
wonders! - and the iron!" As I put the watch close to the ear of
one of them, "Tick, tick, ticks - woh, woh, woh" - everybody must
hear it; and then the works had to be seen. "Oh, fearful!" said
one, "hide your faces: it is the Lubari. Shut it up, Bana, shut
it up; we have seen enough; but you will come again and bring us
beads." So ended the day's work.
6th. - To-day I sent Bombay to the palace for food. Though rain
fell in torrents, he found the king holding a levee, giving
appointments, plantations, and women, according to merit, to his
officers. As one officer, to whom only one woman was given,
asked for more, the king called him an ingrate, and ordered him
to be cut to pieces on the spot; and the sentence was, as Bombay
told me, carried into effect - not with knives, for they are
prohibited, but with strips of sharp-edged grass, after the
executioners had first dislocated his neck by a blow delivered
behind the head, with a sharp, heavy-headed club.
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