Abiboo reappeared with a baby boy in the crook of his arm, naked and
tearful.
This child was a first-born, and had been left on a sandy spit so that a
crocodile might come and complete the sacrifice.
This happened nearly twenty years ago, and the memory of the drastic
punishment meted out to the father of that first-born is scarcely a
memory.
"We will call this child 'N'mika,'" Sanders had said, which means "the
child of sacrifice."
N'mika was brought up in the hut of a good man, and came to maturity.
* * * * *
When the monkeys suddenly changed their abiding-place from the little
woods near by Bonganga, on the Isisi, to the forest which lies at the
back of the Akasava, all the wise men said with one accord that bad
fortune was coming to the people of Isisi.
N'mika laughed at these warnings, for he was in Sanders's employ, and
knew all things that happened in his district.
Boy and man he served the Government faithfully; loyalty was his high
fetish, and Sanders knew this.
The Commissioner might have taken this man and made him a great chief;
and had N'mika raised the finger of desire, Sanders would have placed
him above all others of his people; but the man knew where he might
serve best, and at nineteen he had scotched three wars, saved the life
of Sanders twice, and had sent three petty chiefs of enterprising
character to the gallows.
Then love came to N'mika.
He loved a woman of the Lesser Isisi--a fine, straight girl, and very
beautiful by certain standards. He married her, and took her to his hut,
making her his principal wife, and investing her with all the privileges
and dignity of that office.
Kira, as the woman was called, was, in many ways, a desirable woman, and
N'mika loved her as only a man of intelligence could love her; and she
had ornaments of brass and of beads exceeding in richness the
possessions of any other woman in the village.
Now, there are ways of treating a woman the world over, and they differ
in very little degree whether they are black or white, cannibal or
vegetarian, rich or poor.
N'mika treated this woman too well. He looked in the forest for her
wishes, as the saying goes, and so insistent was this good husband on
serving his wife, that she was hard put to it to invent requirements.
"Bright star reflected in the pool of the world," he said to her one
morning, "what is your need this day? Tell me, so that I may go and
seek fulfilment."