THE MOTOMBO
After my dream I went to sleep again, till I was finally aroused by a
strong ray of light hitting me straight in the eye.
Where the dickens does that come from? thought I to myself, for these
huts had no windows.
Then I followed the ray to its source, which I perceived was a small
hole in the mud wall some five feet above the floor. I rose and examined
the said hole, and noted that it appeared to have been freshly made, for
the clay at the sides of it was in no way discoloured. I reflected that
if anyone wanted to eavesdrop, such an aperture would be convenient, and
went outside the hut to pursue my investigations. Its wall, I found, was
situated about four feet from the eastern part of the encircling reed
fence, which showed no signs of disturbance, although there, in the
outer face of the wall, was the hole, and beneath it on the lime
flooring lay some broken fragments of plaster. I called Hans and asked
him if he had kept watch round the hut when the wrapped-up man visited
us during the night. He answered yes, and that he could swear that no
one had come near it, since several times he had walked to the back and
looked.
Somewhat comforted, though not satisfied, I went in to wake up the
others, to whom I said nothing of this matter since it seemed foolish
to alarm them for no good purpose. A few minutes later the tall, silent
women arrived with our hot water. It seemed curious to have hot water
brought to us in such a place by these very queer kind of housemaids,
but so it was. The Pongo, I may add, were, like the Zulus, very clean in
their persons, though whether they all used hot water, I cannot say. At
any rate, it was provided for us.
Half an hour later they returned with breakfast, consisting chiefly of
a roasted kid, of which, as it was whole, and therefore unmistakable,
we partook thankfully. A little later the Majestic Komba appeared.
After many compliments and inquiries as to our general health, he asked
whether we were ready to start on our visit to the Motombo who, he
added, was expecting us with much eagerness. I inquired how he knew
that, since we had only arranged to call on him late on the previous
night, and I understood that he lived a day’s journey away. But Komba
put the matter by with a smile and a wave of his hand.
So in due course off we went, taking with us all our baggage, which now
that it had been lightened by the delivery of the presents, was of no
great weight.
Five minutes’ walk along the wide, main street led us to the northern
gate of Rica Town. Here we found the Kalubi himself with an escort of
thirty men armed with spears; I noted that unlike the Mazitu they had no
bows and arrows. He announced in a loud voice that he proposed to do us
the special honour of conducting us to the sanctuary of the Holy One, by
which we understood him to mean the Motombo. When we politely begged him
not to trouble, being in an irritable mood, or assuming it, he told us
rudely to mind our own business. Indeed, I think this irritability was
real enough, which, in the circumstances known to the reader, was not
strange. At any rate, an hour or so later it declared itself in an act
of great cruelty which showed us how absolute was this man’s power in
all temporal matters.
Passing through a little clump of bush we came to some gardens
surrounded by a light fence through which a number of cattle of a small
and delicate breed--they were not unlike Jerseys in appearance--had
broken to enjoy themselves by devouring the crops. This garden, it
appeared, belonged to the Kalubi for the time being, who was furious at
the destruction of its produce by the cattle which also belonged to him.
“Where is the herd?” he shouted.
A hunt began--and presently the poor fellow--he was no more than a lad,
was discovered asleep behind a bush. When he was dragged before him the
Kalubi pointed, first to the cattle, then to the broken fence and the
devastated garden. The lad began to mutter excuses and pray for mercy.
“Kill him!” said the Kalubi, whereon the herd flung himself to the
ground, and clutching him by the ankles, began to kiss his feet, crying
out that he was afraid to die. The Kalubi tried to kick himself free,
and failing in this, lifted his big spear and made an end of the poor
boy’s prayers and life at a single stroke.
The escort clapped their hands in salute or approval, after which four
of them, at a sign, took up the body and started with it at a trot for
Rica Town, where probably that night it appeared upon the grid. Brother
John saw, and his big white beard bristled with indignation like the
hair on the back of an angry cat, while Stephen spluttered something
beginning with “You brute,” and lifted his fist as though to knock the
Kalubi down. This, had I not caught hold of him, I have no doubt he
would have done.
“O Kalubi!” gasped Brother John, “do you not know that blood calls for
blood? In the hour of your own death remember this death.”
“Would you bewitch me, white man?” said the Kalubi, glaring at him
angrily. “If so----” and once more he lifted the spear, but as John
never stirred, held it poised irresolutely. Komba thrust himself between
them, crying:
“Back, Dogeetah, who dare to meddle with our customs! Is not the Kalubi
Lord of life and death?”
Brother John was about to answer, but I called to him in English:
“For Heaven’s sake be silent, unless you want to follow the boy. We are
in these men’s power.”
Then he remembered and walked away, and presently we marched forward as
though nothing had happened. Only from that moment I do not think that
any of us worried ourselves about the Kalubi and what might befall him.
Still, looking back on the thing, I think that there was this excuse to
be made for the man. He was mad with the fear of death and knew not what
he did.
All that day we travelled on through a rich, flat country that, as we
could tell from various indications, had once been widely cultivated.
Now the fields were few and far between, and bush, for the most part a
kind of bamboo scrub, was reoccupying the land. About midday we halted
by a water-pool to eat and rest, for the sun was hot, and here the four
men who had carried off the boy’s body rejoined us and made some report.
Then we went forward once more towards what seemed to be a curious
and precipitous wall of black cliff, beyond which the volcanic-looking
mountain towered in stately grandeur. By three o’clock we were near
enough to this cliff, which ran east and west as far as the eye could
reach, to see a hole in it, apparently where the road terminated, that
appeared to be the mouth of a cave.
The Kalubi came up to us, and in a shy kind of way tried to make
conversation. I think that the sight of this mountain, drawing ever
nearer, vividly recalled his terrors and caused him to desire to efface
the bad impression he knew he had made on us, to whom he looked for
safety. Among other things he told us that the hole we saw was the door
of the House of the Motombo.
I nodded my head, but did not answer, for the presence of this murderous
king made me feel sick. So he went away again, looking at us in a humble
and deprecatory manner.
Nothing further happened until we reached the remarkable wall of rock
that I have mentioned, which I suppose is composed of some very
hard stone that remained when the softer rock in which it lay was
disintegrated by millions of years of weather or washings by the water
of the lake. Or perhaps its substance was thrown out of the bowels of
the volcano when this was active. I am no geologist, and cannot say,
especially as I lacked time to examine the place. At any rate there it
was, and there in it appeared the mouth of a great cave that I presume
was natural, having once formed a kind of drain through which the lake
overflowed when Pongo-land was under water.
We halted, staring dubiously at this darksome hole, which no doubt was
the same that Babemba had explored in his youth. Then the Kalubi gave
an order, and some of the soldiers went to huts that were built near the
mouth of the cave, where I suppose guardians or attendants lived,
though of these we saw nothing. Presently they returned with a number of
lighted torches that were distributed among us. This done, we plunged,
shivering (at least, I shivered), into the gloomy recesses of that great
cavern, the Kalubi going before us with half of our escort, and Komba
following behind us with the remainder.
The floor of the place was made quite smooth, doubtless by the action of
water, as were the walls and roof, so far as we could see them, for it
was very wide and lofty. It did not run straight, but curved about in
the thickness of the cliff. At the first turn the Pongo soldiers set up
a low and eerie chant which they continued during its whole length, that
according to my pacings was something over three hundred yards. On we
wound, the torches making stars of light in the intense blackness, till
at length we rounded a last corner where a great curtain of woven grass,
now drawn, was stretched across the cave. Here we saw a very strange
sight.
On either side of it, near to the walls, burned a large wood fire that
gave light to the place. Also more light flowed into it from its further
mouth that was not more than twenty paces from the fires. Beyond the
mouth was water which seemed to be about two hundred yards wide, and
beyond the water rose the slopes of the mountain that was covered with
huge trees. Moreover, a little bay penetrated into the cavern, the point
of which bay ended between the two fires. Here the water, which was not
more than six or eight feet wide, and shallow, formed the berthing place
of a good-sized canoe that lay there. The walls of the cavern, from
the turn to the point of the tongue of water, were pierced with four
doorways, two on either side, which led, I presume, to chambers hewn in
the rock. At each of these doorways stood a tall woman clothed in
white, who held in her hand a burning torch. I concluded that these were
attendants set there to guide and welcome us, for after we had passed,
they vanished into the chambers.
But this was not all. Set across the little bay of water just above the
canoe that floated there was a wooden platform, eight feet or so square,
on either side of which stood an enormous elephant’s tusk, bigger indeed
than any I have seen in all my experience, which tusks seemed to be
black with age. Between the tusks, squatted upon rugs of some kind of
rich fur, was what from its shape and attitude I at first took to be a
huge toad. In truth, it had all the appearance of a very bloated toad.
There was the rough corrugated skin, there the prominent backbone (for
its back was towards us), and there were the thin, splayed-out legs.
We stared at this strange object for quite a long while, unable to make
it out in that uncertain light, for so long indeed, that I grew nervous
and was about to ask the Kalubi what it might be. As my lips opened,
however, it stirred, and with a slow, groping, circular movement turned
itself towards us very slowly. At length it was round, and as the head
came in view all the Pongo from the Kalubi down ceased their low, weird
chant and flung themselves upon their faces, those who had torches still
holding them up in their right hands.
Oh! what a thing appeared! It was not a toad, but a man that moved upon
all fours. The large, bald head was sunk deep between the shoulders,
either through deformity or from age, for this creature was undoubtedly
very old. Looking at it, I wondered how old, but could form no answer in
my mind. The great, broad face was sunken and withered, like to leather
dried in the sun; the lower lip hung pendulously upon the prominent and
bony jaw. Two yellow, tusk-like teeth projected one at each corner of
the great mouth; all the rest were gone, and from time to time it licked
the white gums with a red-pointed tongue as a snake might do. But the
chief wonder of the Thing lay in its eyes that were large and round,
perhaps because the flesh had shrunk away from them, which gave them
the appearance of being set in the hollow orbits of a skull. These eyes
literally shone like fire; indeed, at times they seemed positively to
blaze, as I have seen a lion’s eyes do in the dark. I confess that the
aspect of the creature terrified and for a while paralysed me; to think
that it was human was awful.
I glanced at the others and saw that they, too, were frightened. Stephen
turned very white. I thought that he was going to be sick again, as
he was after he drank the coffee out of the wrong bowl on the day we
entered Mazitu-land. Brother John stroked his white beard and muttered
some invocation to Heaven to protect him. Hans exclaimed in his
abominable Dutch:
“_Oh! keek, Baas, da is je lelicher oud deel!_” (“Oh! look, Baas, there
is the ugly old devil himself!”)
Jerry went flat on his face among the Pongo, muttering that he saw Death
before him. Only Mavovo stood firm; perhaps because as a witch-doctor of
repute he felt that it did not become him to show the white feather in
the presence of an evil spirit.
The toad-like creature on the platform swayed its great head slowly as
a tortoise does, and contemplated us with its flaming eyes. At length
it spoke in a thick, guttural voice, using the tongue that seemed to
be common to this part of Africa and indeed to that branch of the Bantu
people to which the Zulus belong, but, as I thought, with a foreign
accent.
“So _you_ are the white men come back,” it said slowly. “Let me count!”
and lifting one skinny hand from the ground, it pointed with the
forefinger and counted. “One. Tall, with a white beard. Yes, that is
right. Two. Short, nimble like a monkey, with hair that wants no comb;
clever, too, like a father of monkeys. Yes, that is right. Three.
Smooth-faced, young and stupid, like a fat baby that laughs at the sky
because he is full of milk, and thinks that the sky is laughing at him.
Yes, that is right. All three of you are just the same as you used to
be. Do you remember, White Beard, how, while we killed you, you said
prayers to One Who sits above the world, and held up a cross of bone to
which a man was tied who wore a cap of thorns? Do you remember how you
kissed the man with the cap of thorns as the spear went into you? You
shake your head--oh! you are a clever liar, but I will show you that you
are a liar, for I have the thing yet,” and snatching up a horn which lay
on the kaross beneath him, he blew.
As the peculiar, wailing note that the horn made died away, a woman
dashed out of one of the doorways that I have described and flung
herself on her knees before him. He muttered something to her and she
dashed back again to re-appear in an instant holding in her hand a
yellow ivory crucifix.
“Here it is, here it is,” he said. “Take it, White Beard, and kiss it
once more, perhaps for the last time,” and he threw the crucifix
to Brother John, who caught it and stared at it amazed. “And do you
remember, Fat Baby, how we caught you? You fought well, very well,
but we killed you at last, and you were good, very good; we got much
strength from you.
“And do you remember, Father of Monkeys, how you escaped from us by your
cleverness? I wonder where you went to and how you died. I shall not
forget you, for you gave me this,” and he pointed to a big white scar
upon his shoulder. “You would have killed me, but the stuff in that iron
tube of yours burned slowly when you held the fire to it, so that I had
time to jump aside and the iron ball did not strike me in the heart as
you meant that it should. Yet, it is still here; oh! yes, I carry it
with me to this day, and now that I have grown thin I can feel it with
my finger.”
I listened astonished to this harangue, which if it meant anything,
meant that we had all met before, in Africa at some time when men used
matchlocks that were fired with a fuse--that is to say, about the year
1700, or earlier. Reflection, however, showed me the interpretation of
this nonsense. Obviously this old priest’s forefather, or, if one put
him at a hundred and twenty years of age, and I am sure that he was not
a day less, perhaps his father, as a young man, was mixed up with
some of the first Europeans who penetrated to the interior of Africa.
Probably these were Portuguese, of whom one may have been a priest
and the other two an elderly man and his son, or young brother, or
companion. The manner of the deaths of these people and of what happened
to them generally would of course be remembered by the descendants of
the chief or head medicine-man of the tribe.
“Where did we meet, and when, O Motombo?” I asked.
“Not in this land, not in this land, Father of Monkeys,” he replied in
his low rumbling voice, “but far, far away towards the west where the
sun sinks in the water; and not in this day, but long, long ago. Twenty
Kalubis have ruled the Pongo since that day; some have ruled for many
years and some have ruled for a few years--that depends upon the will
of my brother, the god yonder,” and he chuckled horribly and jerked his
thumb backwards over his shoulder towards the forest on the mountain.
“Yes, twenty have ruled, some for thirty years and none for less than
four.”
“Well, you _are_ a large old liar,” I thought to myself, for, taking the
average rule of the Kalubis at ten years, this would mean that we met
him two centuries ago at least.
“You were clothed otherwise then,” he went on, “and two of you wore
hats of iron on the head, but that of White Beard was shaven. I caused a
picture of you to be beaten by the master-smith upon a plate of copper.
I have it yet.”
Again he blew upon his horn; again a woman darted out, to whom he
whispered; again she went to one of the chambers and returned bearing an
object which he cast to us.
We looked at it. It was a copper or bronze plaque, black, apparently
with age, which once had been nailed on something for there were the
holes. It represented a tall man with a long beard and a tonsured head
who held a cross in his hand; and two other men, both short, who wore
round metal caps and were dressed in queer-looking garments and boots
with square toes. These man carried big and heavy matchlocks, and in the
hand of one of them was a smoking fuse. That was all we could make out
of the thing.
“Why did you leave the far country and come to this land, O Motombo?” I
asked.
“Because we were afraid that other white men would follow on your steps
and avenge you. The Kalubi of that day ordered it, though I said No,
who knew that none can escape by flight from what must come when it must
come. So we travelled and travelled till we found this place, and here
we have dwelt from generation to generation. The gods came with us also;
my brother that dwells in the forest came, though we never saw him on
the journey, yet he was here before us. The Holy Flower came too, and
the white Mother of the Flower--she was the wife of one of you, I know
not which.”
“Your brother the god?” I said. “If the god is an ape as we have heard,
how can he be the brother of a man?”
“Oh! you white men do not understand, but we black people understand. In
the beginning the ape killed my brother who was Kalubi, and his spirit
entered into the ape, making him as a god, and so he kills every other
Kalubi and their spirits enter also into him. Is it not so, O Kalubi of
to-day, you without a finger?” and he laughed mockingly.
The Kalubi, who was lying on his stomach, groaned and trembled, but made
no other answer.
“So all has come about as I foresaw,” went on the toad-like creature.
“You have returned, as I knew you would, and now we shall learn whether
White Beard yonder spoke true words when he said that his god would be
avenged upon our god. You shall go to be avenged on him if you can,
and then we shall learn. But this time you have none of your iron tubes
which alone we fear. For did not the god declare to us through me that
when the white men came back with an iron tube, then he, the god, would
die, and I, the Motombo, the god’s Mouth, would die, and the Holy Flower
would be torn up, and the Mother of the Flower would pass away, and the
people of the Pongo would be dispersed and become wanderers and slaves?
And did he not declare that if the white men came again without their
iron tubes, then certain secret things would happen--oh! ask them not,
in time they shall be known to you, and the people of the Pongo who were
dwindling would again become fruitful and very great? And that is why we
welcome you, white men, who arise again from the land of ghosts, because
through you we, the Pongo, shall become fruitful and very great.”
Of a sudden he ceased his rumbling talk, his head sank back between his
shoulders and he sat silent for a long while, his fierce, sparkling
eyes playing on us as though he would read our very thoughts. If he
succeeded, I hope that mine pleased him. To tell the truth, I was filled
with mixed fear, fury and loathing. Although, of course, I did not
believe a word of all the rubbish he had been saying, which was akin to
much that is evolved by these black-hearted African wizards, I hated the
creature whom I felt to be only half-human. My whole nature sickened at
his aspect and talk. And yet I was dreadfully afraid of him. I felt as
a man might who wakes up to find himself alone with some peculiarly
disgusting Christmas-story kind of ghost. Moreover I was quite sure that
he meant us ill, fearful and imminent ill. Suddenly he spoke again:
“Who is that little yellow one,” he said, “that old one with a face like
a skull,” and he pointed to Hans, who had kept as much out of sight as
possible behind Mavovo, “that wizened, snub-nosed one who might be a
child of my brother the god, if ever he had a child? And why, being so
small, does he need so large a staff?” Here he pointed again to Hans’s
big bamboo stick. “I think he is as full of guile as a new-filled gourd
with water. The big black one,” and he looked at Mavovo, “I do not fear,
for his magic is less than my magic,” (he seemed to recognise a brother
doctor in Mavovo) “but the little yellow one with the big stick and the
pack upon his back, I fear him. I think he should be killed.”
He paused and we trembled, for if he chose to kill the poor Hottentot,
how could we prevent him? But Hans, who saw the great danger, called his
cunning to his aid.
“O Motombo,” he squeaked, “you must not kill me for I am the servant of
an ambassador. You know well that all the gods of every land hate and
will be revenged upon those who touch ambassadors or their servants,
whom they, the gods, alone may harm. If you kill me I shall haunt you.
Yes, I shall sit on your shoulder at night and jibber into your ear so
that you cannot sleep, until you die. For though you are old you must
die at last, Motombo.”
“It is true,” said the Motombo. “Did I not tell you that he was full of
cunning? All the gods will be avenged upon those who kill ambassadors
or their servants. That”--here he laughed again in his dreadful way--“is
the rights of the gods alone. Let the gods of the Pongo settle it.”
I uttered a sigh of relief, and he went on in a new voice, a dull,
business-like voice if I may so describe it:
“Say, O Kalubi, on what matter have you brought these white men to speak
with me, the Mouth of the god? Did I dream that it was a matter of a
treaty with the King of the Mazitu? Rise and speak.”
So the Kalubi rose and with a humble air set out briefly and clearly the
reason of our visit to Pongo-land as the envoys of Bausi and the heads
of the treaty that had been arranged subject to the approval of the
Motombo and Bausi. We noted that the affair did not seem to interest the
Motombo at all. Indeed, he appeared to go to sleep while the speech was
being delivered, perhaps because he was exhausted with the invention
of his outrageous falsehoods, or perhaps for other reasons. When it was
finished he opened his eyes and pointed to Komba, saying:
“Arise, Kalubi-that-is-to-be.”
So Komba rose, and in his cold, precise voice narrated his share in the
transaction, telling how he had visited Bausi, and all that had happened
in connection with the embassy. Again the Motombo appeared to go to
sleep, only opening his eyes once as Komba described how we had been
searched for firearms, whereon he nodded his great head in approval and
licked his lips with his thin red tongue. When Komba had done, he said:
“The gods tell me that the plan is wise and good, since without new
blood the people of the Pongo will die, but of the end of the matter the
god knows alone, if even he can read the future.”
He paused, then asked sharply:
“Have you anything more to say, O Kalubi-that-is-to-be? Now of a sudden
the god puts it into my mouth to ask if you have anything more to say?”
“Something, O Motombo. Many moons ago the god bit _off_ the finger of
our High Lord, the Kalubi. The Kalubi, having heard that a white man
skilled in medicine who could cut off limbs with knives, was in the
country of the Mazitu and camped on the borders of the great lake, took
a canoe and rowed to where the white man was camped, he with the beard,
who is named Dogeetah, and who stands before you. I followed him in
another canoe, because I wished to know what he was doing, also to see
a white man. I hid my canoe and those who went with me in the reeds far
from the Kalubi’s canoe. I waded through the shallow water and concealed
myself in some thick reeds quite near to the white man’s linen house.
I saw the white man cut off the Kalubi’s finger and I heard the Kalubi
pray the white man to come to our country with the iron tubes that
smoke, and to kill the god of whom he was afraid.”
Now from all the company went up a great gasp, and the Kalubi fell down
upon his face again, and lay still. Only the Motombo seemed to show no
surprise, perhaps because he already knew the story.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“No, O Mouth of the god. Last night, after the council of which you have
heard, the Kalubi wrapped himself up like a corpse and visited the white
men in their hut. I thought that he would do so, and had made ready.
With a sharp spear I bored a hole in the wall of the hut, working from
outside the fence. Then I thrust a reed through from the fence across
the passage between the fence and the wall, and through the hole in the
hut, and setting my ear to the end of the reed, I listened.”
“Oh! clever, clever!” muttered Hans in involuntary admiration, “and
to think that I looked and looked too low, beneath the reed. Oh! Hans,
though you are old, you have much to learn.”
“Among much else I heard this,” went on Komba in sentences so clear and
cold that they reminded me of the tinkle of falling ice, “which I
think is enough, though I can tell you the rest if you wish, O Mouth.
I heard,” he said, in the midst of a silence that was positively awful,
“our lord, the Kalubi, whose name is Child of the god, agree with the
white men that they should kill the god--how I do not know, for it was
not said--and that in return they should receive the persons of the
Mother of the Holy Flower and of her daughter, the Mother-that-is-to-be,
and should dig up the Holy Flower itself by the roots and take it away
across the water, together with the Mother and the Mother-that-is-to-be.
That is all, O Motombo.”
Still in the midst of an intense silence, the Motombo glared at the
prostrate figure of the Kalubi. For a long while he glared. Then the
silence was broken, for the wretched Kalubi sprang from the floor,
seized a spear and tried to kill himself. Before the blade touched
him it was snatched from his hand, so that he remained standing, but
weaponless.
Again there was silence and again it was broken, this time by the
Motombo, who rose from his seat before which he stood, a huge, bloated
object, and roared aloud in his rage. Yes, he roared like a wounded
buffalo. Never would I have believed that such a vast volume of sound
could have proceeded from the lungs of a single aged man. For fully a
minute his furious bellowings echoed down that great cave, while all
the Pongo soldiers, rising from their recumbent position, pointed their
hands, in some of which torches still burned, at the miserable Kalubi
on whom their wrath seemed to be concentrated, rather than on us, and
hissed like snakes.
Really it might have been a scene in hell with the Motombo playing the
part of Satan. Indeed, his swollen, diabolical figure supported on the
thin, toad-like legs, the great fires burning on either side, the lurid
lights of evening reflected from the still water beyond and glowering
among the tree tops of the mountain, the white-robed forms of the tall
Pongo, bending, every one of them, towards the wretched culprit and
hissing like so many fierce serpents, all suggested some uttermost deep
in the infernal regions as one might conceive them in a nightmare.
It went on for some time, I don’t know how long, till at length the
Motombo picked up his fantastically shaped horn and blew. Thereon the
women darted from the various doorways, but seeing that they were not
wanted, checked themselves in their stride and remained standing so, in
the very attitude of runners about to start upon a race. As the blast
of the horn died away the turmoil was suddenly succeeded by an utter
stillness, broken only by the crackling of the fires whose flames,
of all the living things in that place, alone seemed heedless of the
tragedy which was being played.
“All up now, old fellow!” whispered Stephen to me in a shaky voice.
“Yes,” I answered, “all up high as heaven, where I hope we are going.
Now back to back, and let’s make the best fight we can. We’ve got the
spears.”
While we were closing in the Motombo began to speak.
“So you plotted to kill the god, Kalubi-who-_was_,” he screamed, “with
these white ones whom you would pay with the Holy Flower and her who
guards it. Good! You shall go, all of you, and talk with the god. And I,
watching here, will learn who dies--you or the god. Away with them!”