About a mile from Birnier’s camp, through forest so dense that even the
progress of a native clambering from trunk to trunk and over undergrowth
ten feet deep was slow and tortuous, was the temporary village of Zalu
Zako; some six or seven hundred huts of branches and creepers straggling
over a wide area of ground which had been roughly cleared from undergrowth
by a few slaves and women.
The hut of Zalu Zako, as those of most of the bigger chiefs and wizards,
was furnished with reeds upon the floor to avoid squatting actually in the
green slime, and boasted a palisade run from tree to tree enclosing the
huts of his two wives, women and slaves. Every morning the leader of a
long line of slaves bringing supplies from the villages in the open,
chanting softly the song of the march, entered the village through a mass
of creepers which hung like a curtain of humid green. Many hundreds of
warriors with their chiefs had deserted their king after the flight from
Yagonyana’s village.
In the mind of Zalu Zako was doubt and perplexity as in those of his
people. All the accepted “laws” and “facts” of his world had been set at
naught; it was as if buck lived in the rivers and fish ran roaring through
the forests. Fear, curiosity, and resentment filled him. Sometimes it
appeared that Eyes-in-the-hands had indeed proved to be a more powerful
god than the Unmentionable One, of whom he was, or should have been, high
priest and king; that he had eaten him up as they said; so perhaps the
better course was to submit to this being invincible. Yet this very
anarchy of his beliefs had released once more the passion for Bakuma whom
he had renounced, the desire for whom had been inhibited by the sense of
the inevitability of the mandate of the witch-doctors. Hereditary custom,
which made him feel that it was incumbent upon him—a primitive sense of
duty—to be king-god warred with this longing for Bakuma. The fact that he
was not yet bound to celibacy quickened the seed of rebellion against the
domination of the wizards. If he could escape the godhood then Bakuma was
alive again. For to his mind a ban upon the personal ego was far stronger
than any ban upon a second person.
Chewing the cud of this sweet grass of hope squatted Zalu Zako one morning
in the dignified solitude of his compound on the threshold of his hut.
Opposite him sat the brother conspirator of Bakahenzie, Marufa, a brown
shadow in comparison to the gleaming of the royal insignia of the ivory
bangles. They sat silent, motionless, save for the occasional sparse
movement of snuff taking. In the steamy heat a continual mutter and rustle
persisted, punctuated by the harsh scream of a green parrot or the squawks
of a troop of monkeys. In the faintly spattered sunlight percolating
through the bowered roof vivid lizards rivalled in colour the rare finger
of an orchid clinging to the great tree beside the hut. Through the humid
air came the faint chant of carriers at the end of a journey; swelled
louder and ceased. At the mutter of greeting near by Marufa grunted.
“The beaten dog returns to nose in the garbage,” he mumbled.
“Maybe he hath news of the doings,” commented Zalu Zako after a pause.
“The young dog starts a buck in every tree stump,” returned Marufa.
The mumble of voices in the hut of Yabolo near to Zalu Zako’s continued.
Neither Zalu Zako nor Marufa knew other than that, after his downfall,
Sakamata had retired to his native village on the southern boundary where
the people, being laymen, had believed the excuse for his absence given by
Sakamata that he had retired to the forest for one moon in the guise of
his totem, the wart hog, which animal became accordingly tabu to their
killing for that period. At length came a young slave from Yabolo who,
after saluting, delivered a message from Yabolo requesting that Zalu Zako
receive him and his relative, Sakamata, who had weighty news for him.
Presently entered the recusant bearing signs of prosperity in the flowered
print about his loins, the ancient cartridge pouch slung around his waist
and a huge revolver of the pin-fire model dangling from a neck which
appeared more tortoise-like than ever. Before Zalu Zako he squatted and
after they had exchanged the usual hostages to hostility, Sakamata
inquired most politely after the health of the Son-of-the-Snake, of his
cattle and of his fortune, and last of all of his women. Sakamata, aware
of the loss of prestige suffered by his old enemy, Bakahenzie, presented
Zalu Zako with a duplicate of the pin-fire revolver. Followed an equally
extensive greeting to Marufa. Only when these ceremonies had been
punctiliously performed did they begin to discuss the news.
At first Sakamata proceeded to repeat the popular saying regarding the
doings of Eyes-in-the-hands. Various chiefs had visited the fort of the
white man bringing presents in their hands, terrified of what might
happen, yet, according to Sakamata, their fears had been dispelled
immediately; for the wise new god had received them as brothers and had
made offerings to them as was the custom for strangers to do. It was true,
he admitted in cross-examination, that whole villages had been put to the
sword and burned; but, he demanded, was not that the way of a mighty
warrior to those who resisted him?
Moreover, continued Sakamata, to fight him was death. His magic was such
that no man could prevail against him. Had any doctor yet succeeded in
making successful magic against the Invincible One? His magic was terrible
to behold. Spirits which were imprisoned in houses of trees (boxes) spoke
and sang according to their tribe.
“Clk!” commented Zalu Zako incredulously.
“These words are as the wind in the trees at night speaking to girls,”
commented Marufa slowly. “What man hath beheld those things with his own
eyes?”
Deliberately Sakamata tapped snuff, inhaled it with relish, meticulously,
that not one grain was lost upon his white caterpillar moustache, and said
indifferently:
“Even he who sits before you.”
“Eh!”
Another point was scored. But both Zalu Zako and Marufa regarded him as
one who, having had dealings with the devil and yet had emerged safely,
was to be suspected of some ghastly pact. After a calculated pause
Sakamata continued nonchalantly:
“There is no magic like unto Eyes-in-the-hands, the Mighty One. A great
fort hath he made upon the hill of thy grandfather (MFunya MPopo), O Zalu
Zako, girded with a great palisade, around which walk ever the red devils
in uniform, each one of whom hath a gun with seven voices. And peering
through that palisade, like a terrible black leopard from his lair, are
the monster coughing devils. Eh! who are they who can withstand them?”
“Eh!” echoed his audience with lively memories of the “coughing devils.”
“And he hath a mighty hut made from the white man’s cloth of colour like
to the forest full of things to make magic. Seated upon his chair like
unto a man plucking bananas, the eyes upon his hands and in his head gleam
so fiercely that water is made within a man. He who dares to look sees not
only Eyes-in-the-hands, but his two souls, even as thou seest thine own
two souls staring at thee with the frightened eyes that are thine!”
“Ehh!”
This time a genuine belly grunt was elicited, and even Marufa moved
uneasily.
“Thou hast been bewitched,” he added to mask his astonishment. “For a man
may see his own soul in any pool, but never two souls!”
“Even is it as I have told thee, O son of MTungo,” asserted Sakamata.
Sakamata discovered the use of snuff again to be necessary. He watched
covertly the repressed excitement in the eyes of Zalu Zako.
“And what said the great magician unto thee?” Marufa demanded to cover his
discomfort.
“He spoke white words as a warrior should,” said Sakamata. “He gave words
which told me that he was but a small wizard. He made my eyes to see the
soul of a greater god than he, who was there and yet was not there; for at
the touch of his magic hand with many eyes, behold! there were two more
souls of the god which returned even as I looked.”
“Ehh! A greater god than he?” demanded Zalu Zako, with a flicker of the
white of his eyes.
“Even as I have said, a greater god who is king of all the white man’s
countries in the sea, who eats up those whom he pleases. Yet, even though
he may bewitch with one of his eyes, did he speak softly to Yagombi, the
son of Bagazaan, and Zalayan, the son of Kilmanyana, who were with me,
bidding us to tell our brethren that if they would not acknowledge the
true king that then he would eat us up, even as he ate up the
Unmentionable One. But to those who would submit and make due tribute,
would he protect in peace from the white men who, fleeing from the wrath
of the great god, would soon come to eat up our country like the locusts.”
“Eh! ehh! white men as the locusts!”
“Thus he spoke and bade us to go forth and tell our brethren.”
This was a wholly new notion and proportionally serious if true. But
Marufa, recovering from the first shock, wrapped himself in his
professional cloak of omniscient indifference as he recollected that
Sakamata was an unfrocked priest of the craft. The group took snuff
sternly until Sakamata, having accomplished his mission, deemed it wise to
retire to allow the suggestive ideas to germinate. So gravely he arose and
departed from the hut of Zalu Zako and went under the patronage of Yabolo
to another compound where, to a group of the most disaffected chiefs,
including MYalu, he repeated nearly word for word the same harangue.
In the minds of Zalu Zako and Marufa the report of Sakamata had been
exceedingly disquieting. Marufa began to wonder whether he had not better
make terms with the new god before worse came to the worst in the form of
white men like locusts, a menace fraught with dire possibilities which
were based upon the rumours which every native had heard of the ways of
white men in bulk: to the Wongolo merely vague stories from the north of
the conquest of the Sudan by the British. Marufa’s ambitions in the craft
were almost submerged in the dread that, wizard though he was, he would
have small chance of distinction and power among a race of wizards. To
Zalu Zako, although the prospect of unlimited white men swooping upon them
was terrifying, his semi-conscious mind was rather occupied with Bakuma
than with affairs of state which seemed merely to exist to torment lovers.
However he, too, was sufficiently impressed to consider seriously the
advisability of submitting before it was too late; the motivating
principle of the scheme was an idea which suggested that, in some
indefinable way, such action might lead to the avoidance of the ban of
godhood and thus to the reinstatement of Bakuma in the realm of
possibilities.
To Bakahenzie the report was more alarming than to the others, inasmuch as
it appeared to portend the irretrievable loss of his power. He saw the
effect upon their minds, the inclination to yield to the new conqueror,
which, of course, would mean the last of his followers being swept away in
the crowd like dry leaves in the wind. But more than the others he
suspected the motives of Sakamata, the man whom he had unfrocked. Arguing
in terms of his own mental processes he saw correctly enough that Sakamata
was surely playing for himself, and guessed equally truly that Sakamata
would get, or imagined that he would get, many rewards, political as well
as in kind, for his services as jackal to the white man. But he listened
and said no word for, or against, him. He was astute enough never to make
a move until he had, or thought that he had, all the moves of the game
worked out. Marufa was just as wily; he related the news given by Sakamata
in a voice which gave no hint by tone or word what any of his opinions
might be. Then, as they sat like graven images, supremely indifferent to
the doings of Sakamata or aught else, entered the warrior bearing
greetings from Birnier to Zalu Zako.
Immediately Zalu Zako, to whose less skilled mind in intrigue this
succession of world-shaking events was bewildering, feared that already
the plague of white men like locusts had commenced. But when he learned
that the white man was alone and was Infunyana, the only white man whom he
had ever met, he perceived vaguely some remote prospect of achieving his
desires. Almost eagerly, for a native, he commanded the messenger to
summon the white man to his presence.
To Bakahenzie the unexpected arrival of another white was an unforeseen
potentiality of force which might be utilized to his own benefit; so
thought Marufa, which was in effect exactly the same reaction as Zalu
Zako’s. Therefore Bakahenzie immediately protested upon the ground that no
stranger could be allowed to approach the Son-of-the-Snake, or even the
village, who had not been purified according to custom. When Zalu Zako
demurred he retorted:
“Hath not one white man who was permitted to enter our country without the
demon being exorcised wreaked disaster upon us? Wouldst thou then destroy
us utterly?”
Zalu Zako was silent. Much as he would have desired to browbeat
Bakahenzie, much as his confidence in the powers of the chief witch-doctor
had waned in his estimation, yet there remained sufficient to overawe him
when the matter was put to a crucial test. Bakahenzie would, so he stated,
go himself to see the new white man, thus unselfishly taking upon his
person the whole risk of the lasting magic of a stranger unpurified. But
Marufa had no intention of allowing Bakahenzie to obtain a monopoly of
this possible new ally. Unlike Zalu Zako he was not burdened with awe and
had confidence in his own magic to overcome any evil that Bakahenzie might
seek to work against him. So when he announced that he would accompany
Bakahenzie, that distressed wizard was too conscious of his dwindling
prestige to object.