The next day Isaaco was summoned to the presence of the King, who
scented his presents from afar. Indeed the royal message was concerned
only with the pigs: they were to be brought in the same ingenious
manner by which Isaaco had tied them for transit. In this fashion
then, with the swine, like peace-offerings, suspended in advance,
Isaaco's motley company, begrimed with eight months' travel, came
straggling into Sego.
Encircled with his companies of guards, "young, strong, and
beardless," the great King Dacha squatted on the ground. Behind and
beside him, standing upright in the earth, glittered the four
broadswords which Mungo Park had given. As a sign that he had loosed
his hounds of war, the King was dressed in his military coat, shining
with countless amulets of gold. In the wild flaming sky burned the
remnants of the storm which had just driven him back from Douabougou.
So squatted King Dacha, and with royal impassive face, showing no mark
of the boiling curiosity within, stared at those unknown animals, the
swine. Hard on their heels shuffled Isaaco, himself also on all fours
in a deep obeisance. Behind him the bearers of the inevitable bribes:
a drum, two blunderbusses, a bed, a piece of scarlet cloth, and a
solitary dog. (There should have been another, but it had bolted far
back at Mariancounda.) Then said Isaaco: "Maxwell, Governor of
Senegal, salutes you and sends his compliments to you. Here is the
present your father asked of Mr. Park and which he promised to send
him." "Is the Governor well?" asked Dacha. "Yes," replied Isaaco, "he
is well and desired me to beg your assistance to discover what has
become of Mr. Park. We would know if he is dead or alive." After these
civilities they fell to business, and Isaaco bargained for a canoe to
row as far as needful down the Niger. The King hesitated over the
Governor's offer of two hundred bars, for was he not far enough away
to break his word? But when the two pigs got loose and waddled about,
he became as happy as a child, and was no more trouble to Isaaco. To
confirm his goodwill, he killed a bullock for him, and begged him to
remain as his guest throughout the remainder of that moon. After a
fortnight's festivities, Isaaco was preparing to depart, when the
King's mind was suddenly turned another way. A message was brought in
that the Prince of Timbuctoo was at hand and desired an audience. King
Dacha scowled. Then he leapt to his feet, summoned his 600 guards, and
went out in full war-paint to meet him. The Prince rode up airily and
said: "Being a friend of your father, I thought it my duty to let you
know of my coming to take a wife, promised to me in your tribe." "And
why," asked Dacha in his dreadful voice, "why have you permitted the
people of your country to plunder one of my caravans, and why did
_you_ yourself plunder another?"
With no more said, the King returned to his kraal. It was from others
the Prince learned that the merchants of the caravans had denounced
him before the King, that his betrothed had been given to another, and
that he was in danger of being plundered of his life. With almost
indecent haste he despatched three horses to the King, gave pieces of
colored stuff to all the captains of the guards, and slunk back
ashamed to Timbuctoo. But King Dacha was so furiously enraged, he
could neither stay in his kraal nor allow Isaaco to take leave. Away
he rode to Impelbara and Banangcoro, with Isaaco trailing behind, very
much out of temper and somewhat out of breath. It seemed, as the chief
slave tried to explain, that when the King was angry, he pacified
himself by visiting his children. Apparently he visited his wrath on
them. Isaaco groaned and wondered how many there might be, and in what
score of villages they dwelt apart. But he cheered up when they told
him the legitimate children were six. There had been more, but by an
ancient law of Sego, if a male child was born of one of the King's
wives upon a Friday, its throat was cut immediately. This had
accounted for three. After a decent interval, Isaaco made it known to
the King that he also was very angry, and demanded to have his canoe
and go after Mungo Park. The King then sent for him, apologized for
forgetting all about him, and pointed in justification to the pigs,
which, like a good father, he had brought along to please the
children. He himself could hardly keep his eyes off such fat and
unusually happy creatures. The next day Isaaco pressed the bargain,
and, though it was Friday, steered away in the King's canoe for
Sansanding, where he had parted from Mungo Park. And then, with the
prospect of hundreds of miles in hostile country before him, he had a
stroke of good fortune; for in the next village of Medina, whom should
he run against but Amady Fatouma! As one might expect, Isaaco nailed
him to the spot with a hundred questions. Poor Amady began to weep.
"They are all dead," he sobbed. Isaaco demanded to know when and where
and why. "They are all dead," the guide repeated. "They are lost for
ever. It is no use asking. It is no good looking for what is
irrecoverably lost." Like a sensible man, Isaaco checked the ardor of
his curiosity. It certainly was hopeless to ply Amady with questions;
his tears threatened to flood the Niger; it was not safe to stay
there. So Isaaco gave him a day or two to subside, and arranged a
meeting higher up the river.