THE KING OF KAZOUNDE IS OFFERED A PUNCH.
It was four o'clock in the afternoon when a loud noise of drums,
cymbals, and other instruments of African origin resounded at the
end of the principal street. In all corners of the market-place the
animation was redoubled. Half a day of cries and wrestling had neither
weakened the voices nor broken the limbs of these abominable traders.
A large number of slaves still remained to be sold. The traders
disputed over the lots with an ardor of which the London Exchange
would give but an imperfect idea, even on a day when stocks were
rising.
All business was stopped, and the criers took their breath as soon as
the discordant concert commenced.
The King of Kazounde, Moini Loungga, had come to honor the great
"lakoni" with a visit. A numerous train of women, officers, soldiers
and slaves followed him. Alvez and some other traders went to meet
him, and naturally exaggerated the attention which this crowned brute
particularly enjoyed.
Moini Loungga was carried in an old palanquin, and descended, not
without the aid of a dozen arms, in the center of the large square.
This king was fifty years old, but he looked eighty. Imagine a
frightful monkey who had reached extreme old age; on his head a sort
of crown, ornamented with leopard's claws, dyed red, and enlarged
by tufts of whitish hair; this was the crown of the sovereigns
of Kazounde. From his waist hung two petticoats made of leather,
embroidered with pearls, and harder than a blacksmith's apron. He
had on his breast a quantity of tattooing which bore witness to the
ancient nobility of the king; and, to believe him, the genealogy of
Moini Loungga was lost in the night of time. On the ankles, wrists and
arms of his majesty, bracelets of leather were rolled, and he wore a
pair of domestic shoes with yellow tops, which Alvez had presented him
with about twenty years before.
His majesty carried in his left hand a large stick with a plated knob,
and in his right a small broom to drive away flies, the handle of
which was enriched with pearls.
Over his head was carried one of those old patched umbrellas, which
seemed to have been cut out of a harlequin's dress.
On the monarch's neck and on his nose were the magnifying glass and
the spectacles which had caused Cousin Benedict so much trouble. They
had been hidden in Bat's pocket.
Such is the portrait of his negro majesty, who made the country
tremble in a circumference of a hundred miles.
Moini Loungga, from the fact of occupying a throne, pretended to be
of celestial origin, and had any of his subjects doubted the fact, he
would have sent them into another world to discover it. He said that,
being of a divine essence, he was not subject to terrestrial laws. If
he ate, it was because he wished to do so; if he drank, it was because
it gave him pleasure. It was impossible for him to drink any more. His
ministers and his officers, all incurable drunkards, would have passed
before him for sober men.
The court was alcoholized to the last chief, and incessantly imbibed
strong beer, cider, and, above all, a certain drink which Alvez
furnished in profusion.
Moini Loungga counted in his harem wives of all ages and of all kinds.
The larger part of them accompanied him in this visit to the "lakoni."
Moini, the first, according to date, was a vixen of forty years, of
royal blood, like her colleagues. She wore a bright tartan, a straw
petticoat embroidered with pearls, and necklaces wherever she could
put them. Her hair was dressed so as to make an enormous framework on
her little head. She was, in fact, a monster.
The other wives, who were either the cousins or the sisters of the
king, were less richly dressed, but much younger. They walked behind
her, ready to fulfil, at a sign from their master, their duties as
human furniture. These unfortunate beings were really nothing else. If
the king wished to sit down, two of these women bent toward the earth
and served him for a chair, while his feet rested on the bodies of
some others, as if on an ebony carpet.
In Moini Loungga's suite came his officers, his captains, and his
magicians.
A remarkable thing about these savages, who staggered like their
master, was that each lacked a part of his body--one an ear, another
an eye, this one the nose, that one the hand. Not one was whole.
That is because they apply only two kinds of punishment in
Kazounde--mutilation or death--all at the caprice of the king. For the
least fault, some amputation, and the most cruelly punished are those
whose ears are cut off, because they can no longer wear rings in their
ears.
The captains of the _kilolos_, governors of districts, hereditary or
named for four years, wore hats of zebra skin and red vests for their
whole uniform. Their hands brandished long palm canes, steeped at one
end with charmed drugs.
As to the soldiers, they had for offensive and defensive weapons,
bows, of which the wood, twined with the cord, was ornamented with
fringes; knives, whetted with a serpent's tongue; broad and long
lances; shields of palm wood, decorated in arabesque style. For what
there was of uniform, properly so called, it cost his majesty's
treasury absolutely nothing.
Finally, the kind's cortege comprised, in the last place, the court
magicians and the instrumentalists.
The sorcerers, the "mganngas," are the doctors of the country.
These savages attach an absolute faith to divinatory services, to
incantations, to the fetiches, clay figures stained with white and
red, representing fantastic animals or figures of men and women
cut out of whole wood. For the rest, those magicians were not less
mutilated than the other courtiers, and doubtless the monarch paid
them in this way for the cures that did not succeed.
The instrumentalists, men or women, made sharp rattles whizz, noisy
drums sound or shudder under small sticks terminated by a caoutchouc
ball, "marimehas," kinds of dulcimers formed of two rows of gourds of
various dimensions--the whole very deafening for any one who does not
possess a pair of African ears.
Above this crowd, which composed the royal cortege, waved some flags
and standards, then at the ends of spears the bleached skulls of the
rival chiefs whom Moini Loungga had vanquished.
When the king had quitted his palanquin, acclamations burst forth from
all sides. The soldiers of the caravan discharged their old guns, the
low detonations of which were but little louder than the vociferations
of the crowd. The overseers, after rubbing their black noses with
cinnabar powder, which they carried in a sack, bowed to the ground.
Then Alvez, advancing in his turn, handed the king a supply of fresh
tobacco--"soothing herb," as they call it in the country. Moini
Loungga had great need of being soothed, for he was, they did not know
why, in a very bad humor.
At the same time Alvez, Coimbra, Ibn Hamis, and the Arab traders,
or mongrels, came to pay their court to the powerful sovereign of
Kazounde. "Marhaba," said the Arabs, which is their word of welcome in
the language of Central Africa. Others clapped their hands and bowed
to the ground. Some daubed themselves with mud, and gave signs of the
greatest servility to this hideous majesty.
Moini Loungga hardly looked at all these people, and walked, keeping
his limbs apart, as if the ground were rolling and pitching. He walked
in this manner, or rather he rolled in the midst of waves of slaves,
and if the traders feared that he might take a notion to apportion
some of the prisoners to himself, the latter would no less dread
falling into the power of such a brute.
Negoro had not left Alvez for a moment, and in his company presented
his homage to the king. Both conversed in the native language, if,
however, that word "converse" can be used of a conversation in which
Moini Loungga only took part by monosyllables that hardly found a
passage through his drunken lips. And still, did he not ask his
friend, Alvez, to renew his supply of brandy just exhausted by large
libations?
"King Loungga is welcome to the market of Kazounde," said the trader.
"I am thirsty," replied the monarch.
"He will take his part in the business of the great 'lakoni,'" added
Alvez.
"Drink!" replied Moini Loungga.
"My friend Negoro is happy to see the King of Kazounde again, after
such a long absence."
"Drink!" repeated the drunkard, whose whole person gave forth a
disgusting odor of alcohol.
"Well, some 'pombe'! some mead!" exclaimed Jose-Antonio Alvez, like a
man who well knew what Moini Loungga wanted.
"No, no!" replied the king; "my friend Alvez's brandy, and for each
drop of his fire-water I shall give him----"
"A drop of blood from a white man!" exclaimed Negoro, after making a
sign to Alvez, which the latter understood and approved.
"A white man! Put a white man to death!" repeated Moini Loungga, whose
ferocious instincts were aroused by the Portuguese's proposition.
"One of Alvez's agents has been killed by this white man," returned
Negoro.
"Yes, my agent, Harris," replied the trader, "and his death must be
avenged!"
"Send that white man to King Massongo, on the Upper Zaire, among the
Assonas. They will cut him in pieces. They will eat him alive. They
have not forgotten the taste of human flesh!" exclaimed Moini Loungga.
He was, in fact, the king of a tribe of man-eaters, that Massongo.
It is only too true that in certain provinces of Central Africa
cannibalism is still openly practised. Livingstone states it in his
"Notes of Travel." On the borders of the Loualaba the Manyemas not
only eat the men killed in the wars, but they buy slaves to devour
them, saying that "human flesh is easily salted, and needs little
seasoning." Those cannibals Cameron has found again among the
Moene-Bongga, where they only feast on dead bodies after steeping them
for several days in a running stream. Stanley has also encountered
those customs of cannibalism among the inhabitants of the Oukonson.
Cannibalism is evidently well spread among the tribes of the center.
But, cruel as was the kind of death proposed by the king for Dick
Sand, it did not suit Negoro, who did not care to give up his victim.
"It was here," said he, "that the white man killed our comrade
Harris."
"It is here that he ought to die!" added Alvez.
"Where you please, Alvez," replied Moini Loungga; "but a drop of
fire-water for a drop of blood!"
"Yes," replied the trader, "fire-water, and you will see that it well
merits that name! We shall make it blaze, this water! Jose-Antonio
Alvez will offer a punch to the King Moini Loungga."
The drunkard shook his friend Alvez's hands. He could not contain his
joy. His wives, his courtiers shared his ecstasy. They had never seen
brandy blaze, and doubtless they counted on drinking it all blazing.
Then, after the thirst for alcohol, the thirst for blood, so imperious
among these savages, would be satisfied also.
Poor Dick Sand! What a horrible punishment awaited him. When we think
of the terrible or grotesque effects of intoxication in civilized
countries, we understand how far it can urge barbarous beings.
We will readily believe that the thought of torturing a white could
displease none of the natives, neither Jose-Antonio Alvez, a negro
like themselves, nor Coimbra, a mongrel of black blood, nor Negoro
either, animated with a ferocious hatred against the whites.
The evening had come, an evening without twilight, that was going to
make day change tonight almost at once, a propitious hour for the
blazing of the brandy.
It was truly a triumphant idea of Alvez's, to offer a punch to this
negro majesty, and to make him love brandy under a new form. Moini
Loungga began to find that fire-water did not sufficiently justify its
name. Perhaps, blazing and burning, it would tickle more agreeably the
blunted papillas of his tongue.
The evening's program then comprised a punch first, a punishment
afterwards.
Dick Sand, closely shut up in his dark prison, would only come out to
go to his death. The other slaves, sold or not, had been put back in
the barracks. There only remained at the "tchitoka," the traders, the
overseers and the soldiers ready to take their part of the punch, if
the king and his court allowed them.
Jose-Antonio Alvez, advised by Negoro, did the thing well. They
brought a vast copper basin, capable of containing at least two
hundred pints, which was placed in the middle of the great place.
Barrels holding alcohol of inferior quality, but well refined, were
emptied into the basin. They spared neither the cinnamon, nor the
allspice, nor any of the ingredients that might improve this punch for
savages.
All had made a circle around the king. Moini Loungga advanced
staggering to the basin. One would say that this vat of brandy
fascinated him, and that he was going to throw himself into it.
Alvez generously held him back and put a lighted match into his hand.
"Fire!" cried he with a cunning grimace of satisfaction.
"Fire!" replied Moini Loungga lashing the liquid with the end of the
match.
What a flare and what an effect, when the bluish flames played on the
surface of the basin. Alvez, doubtless to render that alcohol
still sharper, had mingled with it a few handfuls of sea salt. The
assistants' faces were then given that spectral lividness that the
imagination ascribes to phantoms.
Those negroes, drunk in advance, began to cry out, to gesticulate,
and, taking each other by the hand, formed an immense circle around
the King of Kazounde.
Alvez, furnished with an enormous metal spoon, stirred the liquid,
which threw a great white glare over those delirious monkeys.
Moini Loungga advanced. He seized the spoon from the trader's hands,
plunged it into the basin, then, drawing it out full of punch in
flames, he brought it to his lips.
What a cry the King of Kazounde then gave!
An act of spontaneous combustion had just taken place. The king had
taken fire like a petroleum bonbon. This fire developed little heat,
but it devoured none the less.
At this spectacle the natives' dance was suddenly stopped.
One of Moini Loungga's ministers threw himself on his sovereign to
extinguish him; but, not less alcoholized than his master, he took
fire in his turn.
In this way, Moini Loungga's whole court was in peril of burning up.
Alvez and Negoro did not know how to help his majesty. The women,
frightened, had taken flight. As to Coimbra, he took his departure
rapidly, well knowing his inflammable nature.
The king and the minister, who had fallen on the ground, were burning
up, a prey to frightful sufferings.
In bodies so thoroughly alcoholized, combustion only produces a light
and bluish flame, that water cannot extinguish. Even stifled outside,
it would still continue to burn inwardly. When liquor has penetrated
all the tissues, there exists no means of arresting the combustion.
A few minutes after, Moini Loungga and his minister had succumbed, but
they still burned. Soon, in the place where they had fallen, there was
nothing left but a few light coals, one or two pieces of the vertebral
column, fingers, toes, that the fire does not consume, in cases of
spontaneous combustion, but which it covers with an infectious and
penetrating soot.
It was all that was left of the King of Kazounde and of his
minister.