This Last Act Of Barbarism, However, Was Too Much For My
English Blood To Stand; And As I Heard My Name, Mzungu,
Imploringly Pronounced, I Rushed At The King, And, Staying His
Uplifted Arm, Demanded From Him The Woman's Life.
Of course I
ran imminent risk of losing my own in thus thwarting the
capricious tyrant; but his caprice proved the friend of both.
The novelty of interference even made him smile, and the woman
was instantly released.
Proceeding on through the trees of this beautiful island, we next
turned into the hut of the Mgussa's familiar, which at the
farther end was decorated with many mystic symbols amongst others
a paddle, the badge of his high office - and for some time we sat
chatting, when pombe was brought, and the spiritual medium
arrived. He was dressed Wichwezi fashion, with a little white
goat-skin apron, adorned with numerous charms, and used a paddle
for a mace or walking stick. He was not an old man, though he
affected to be so - walking very slowly and deliberately,
coughing asthmatically, glimmering with his eyes, and mumbling
like a witch. With much affected difficulty he sat at the end of
the hut beside the symbols alluded to, and continued his coughing
full half an hour, when his wife came in in the same manner,
without saying a word, and assumed the same affected style. The
king jokingly looked at me and laughed, and then at these strange
creatures, by turn, as much as to say, What do you think of them?
but no voice was heard save that of the old wife, who croaked
like a frog for water, and, when some was brought, croaked again
because it was not the purest of the lake's produce - had the
first cup changed, wetted her lips with the second, and hobbled
away in the same manner as she came.
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