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<h2> CHAPTER XIII<br/> RICA TOWN </h2>
<p>As a matter of fact we did not leave Beza Town till twenty-four hours
later than had been arranged, since it took some time for old Babemba, who
was to be in charge of it, to collect and provision our escort of five
hundred men.</p>
<p>Here, I may mention, that when we got back to our huts we found the two
Mazitu bearers, Tom and Jerry, eating a hearty meal, but looking rather
tired. It appeared that in order to get rid of their favourable evidence,
the deceased witch-doctor, Imbozwi, who for some reason or other had feared
to kill them, caused them to be marched off to a distant part of the land
where they were imprisoned. On the arrival of the news of the fall and
death of Imbozwi and his subordinates, they were set at liberty, and at
once returned to us at Beza Town.</p>
<p>Of course it became necessary to explain to our servants what we were
about to do. When they understood the nature of our proposed expedition
they shook their heads, and when they learned that we had promised to
leave our guns behind us, they were speechless with amazement.</p>
<p>“<i>Kransick! Kransick!</i>” which means “ill in the skull,” or “mad,”
exclaimed Hans to the others as he tapped his forehead significantly.
“They have caught it from Dogeetah, one who lives on insects which he
entangles in a net, and carries no gun to kill game. Well, I knew they
would.”</p>
<p>The hunters nodded in assent, and Sammy lifted his arms to Heaven as
though in prayer. Only Mavovo seemed indifferent. Then came the question
of which of them was to accompany us.</p>
<p>“So far as I am concerned that is soon settled,” said Mavovo. “I go with
my father, Macumazana, seeing that even without a gun I am still strong
and can fight as my male ancestors fought with a spear.”</p>
<p>“And I, too, go with the Baas Quatermain,” grunted Hans, “seeing that even
without a gun I am cunning, as <i>my</i> female ancestors were before me.”</p>
<p>“Except when you take medicine, Spotted Snake, and lose yourself in the
mist of sleep,” mocked one of the Zulus. “Does that fine bedstead which
the king sent you go with you?”</p>
<p>“No, son of a fool!” answered Hans. “I’ll lend it to you who do not
understand that there is more wisdom within me when I am asleep than there
is in you when you are awake.”</p>
<p>It remained to be decided who the third man should be. As neither of
Brother John’s two servants, who had accompanied him on his cross-country
journey, was suitable, one being ill and the other afraid, Stephen
suggested Sammy as the man, chiefly because he could cook.</p>
<p>“No, Mr. Somers, no,” said Sammy, with earnestness. “At this proposal I
draw the thick rope. To ask one who can cook to visit a land where he will
be cooked, is to seethe the offspring in its parent’s milk.”</p>
<p>So we gave him up, and after some discussion fixed upon Jerry, a smart and
plucky fellow, who was quite willing to accompany us. The rest of that day
we spent in making our preparations which, if simple, required a good deal
of thought. To my annoyance, at the time I wanted to find Hans to help me,
he was not forthcoming. When at length he appeared I asked him where he
had been. He answered, to cut himself a stick in the forest, as he
understood we should have to walk a long way. Also he showed me the stick,
a long, thick staff of a hard and beautiful kind of bamboo which grows in
Mazitu-land.</p>
<p>“What do you want that clumsy thing for,” I said, “when there are plenty
of sticks about?”</p>
<p>“New journey, new stick! Baas. Also this kind of wood is full of air and
might help me to float if we are upset into the water.”</p>
<p>“What an idea!” I exclaimed, and dismissed the matter from my mind.</p>
<p>At dawn, on the following day, we started, Stephen and I riding on the two
donkeys, which were now fat and lusty, and Brother John upon his white ox,
a most docile beast that was quite attached to him. All the hunters, fully
armed, came with us to the borders of the Mazitu country, where they were
to await our return in company with the Mazitu regiment. The king himself
went with us to the west gate of the town, where he bade us all, and
especially Brother John, an affectionate farewell. Moreover, he sent for
Komba and his attendants, and again swore to him that if any harm happened
to us, he would not rest till he had found a way to destroy the Pongo,
root and branch.</p>
<p>“Have no fear,” answered the cold Komba, “in our holy town of Rica we do
not tie innocent guests to stakes to be shot to death with arrows.”</p>
<p>The repartee, which was undoubtedly neat, irritated Bausi, who was not
fond of allusions to this subject.</p>
<p>“If the white men are so safe, why do you not let them take their guns
with them?” he asked, somewhat illogically.</p>
<p>“If we meant evil, King, would their guns help them, they being but few
among so many. For instance, could we not steal them, as you did when you
plotted the murder of these white lords. It is a law among the Pongo that
no such magic weapon shall be allowed to enter their land.”</p>
<p>“Why?” I asked, to change the conversation, for I saw that Bausi was
growing very wrath and feared complications.</p>
<p>“Because, my lord Macumazana, there is a prophecy among us that when a gun
is fired in Pongo-land, its gods will desert us, and the Motombo, who is
their priest, will die. That saying is very old, but until a little while
ago none knew what it meant, since it spoke of ‘a hollow spear that
smoked,’ and such a weapon was not known to us.”</p>
<p>“Indeed,” I said, mourning within myself that we should not be in a
position to bring about the fulfilment of that prophecy, which, as Hans
said, shaking his head sadly, “was a great pity, a very great pity!”</p>
<p>Three days’ march over country that gradually sloped downwards from the
high tableland on which stood Beza Town, brought us to the lake called
Kirua, a word which, I believe, means The Place of the Island. Of the lake
itself we could see nothing, because of the dense brake of tall reeds
which grew out into the shallow water for quite a mile from the shore and
was only pierced here and there with paths made by the hippopotami when
they came to the mainland at night to feed. From a high mound which looked
exactly like a tumulus and, for aught I know, may have been one, however,
the blue waters beyond were visible, and in the far distance what, looked
at through glasses, appeared to be a tree-clad mountain top. I asked Komba
what it might be, and he answered that it was the Home of the gods in
Pongo-land.</p>
<p>“What gods?” I asked again, whereon he replied like a black Herodotus,
that of these it was not lawful to speak.</p>
<p>I have rarely met anyone more difficult to pump than that frigid and
un-African Komba.</p>
<p>On the top of this mound we planted the Union Jack, fixed to the tallest
pole that we could find. Komba asked suspiciously why we did so, and as I
was determined to show this unsympathetic person that there were others as
unpumpable as himself, I replied that it was the god of our tribe, which
we set up there to be worshipped, and that anyone who tried to insult or
injure it, would certainly die, as the witch-doctor, Imbozwi, and his
children had found out. For once Komba seemed a little impressed, and even
bowed to the bunting as he passed by.</p>
<p>What I did not inform him was that we had set the flag there to be a sign
and a beacon to us in case we should ever be forced to find our way back
to this place unguided and in a hurry. As a matter of fact, this piece of
forethought, which oddly enough originated with the most reckless of our
party, Stephen, proved our salvation, as I shall tell later on. At the
foot of the mound we set our camp for the night, the Mazitu soldiers under
Babemba, who did not mind mosquitoes, making theirs nearer to the lake,
just opposite to where a wide hippopotamus lane pierced the reeds, leaving
a little canal of clear water.</p>
<p>I asked Komba when and how we were to cross the lake. He said that we must
start at dawn on the following morning when, at this time of the year, the
wind generally blew off shore, and that if the weather were favourable, we
should reach the Pongo town of Rica by nightfall. As to how we were to do
this, he would show me if I cared to follow him. I nodded, and he led me
four or five hundred yards along the edge of the reeds in a southerly
direction.</p>
<p>As we went, two things happened. The first of these was that a very large,
black rhinoceros, which was sleeping in some bushes, suddenly got our wind
and, after the fashion of these beasts, charged down on us from about
fifty yards away. Now I was carrying a heavy, single-barrelled rifle, for
as yet we and our weapons were not parted. On came the rhinoceros, and
Komba, small blame to him for he only had a spear, started to run. I
cocked the rifle and waited my chance.</p>
<p>When it was not more than fifteen paces away the rhinoceros threw up its
head, at which, of course, it was useless to fire because of the horn, and
I let drive at the throat. The bullet hit it fair, and I suppose
penetrated to the heart. At any rate, it rolled over and over like a shot
rabbit, and with a single stretch of its limbs, expired almost at my feet.</p>
<p>Komba was much impressed. He returned; he stared at the dead rhinoceros
and at the hole in its throat; he stared at me; he stared at the still
smoking rifle.</p>
<p>“The great beast of the plains killed with a noise!” he muttered. “Killed
in an instant by this little monkey of a white man” (I thanked him for
that and made a note of it) “and his magic. Oh! the Motombo was wise when
he commanded——” and with an effort he stopped.</p>
<p>“Well, friend, what is the matter?” I asked. “You see there was no need
for you to run. If you had stepped behind me you would have been as safe
as you are now—after running.”</p>
<p>“It is so, lord Macumazana, but the thing is strange to me. Forgive me if
I do not understand.”</p>
<p>“Oh! I forgive you, my lord Kalubi—that is—to be. It is clear
that you have a good deal to learn in Pongo-land.”</p>
<p>“Yes, my lord Macumazana, and so perhaps have you,” he replied dryly,
having by this time recovered his nerve and sarcastic powers.</p>
<p>Then after telling Mavovo, who appeared mysteriously at the sound of the
shot—I think he was stalking us in case of accidents—to fetch
men to cut up the rhinoceros, Komba and I proceeded on our walk.</p>
<p>A little further on, just by the edge of the reeds, I caught sight of a
narrow, oblong trench dug in a patch of stony soil, and of a rusted
mustard tin half-hidden by some scanty vegetation.</p>
<p>“What is that?” I asked, in seeming astonishment, though I knew well what
it must be.</p>
<p>“Oh!” replied Komba, who evidently was not yet quite himself, “that is
where the white lord Dogeetah, Bausi’s blood-brother, set his little
canvas house when he was here over twelve moons ago.”</p>
<p>“Really!” I exclaimed, “he never told me he was here.” (This was a lie,
but somehow I was not afraid of lying to Komba.) “How do you know that he
was here?”</p>
<p>“One of our people who was fishing in the reeds saw him.”</p>
<p>“Oh! that explains it, Komba. But what an odd place for him to fish in; so
far from home; and I wonder what he was fishing for. When you have time,
Komba, you must explain to me what it is that you catch amidst the roots
of thick reeds in such shallow water.”</p>
<p>Komba replied that he would do so with pleasure—when he had time.
Then, as though to avoid further conversation he ran forward, and
thrusting the reeds apart, showed me a great canoe, big enough to hold
thirty or forty men, which with infinite labour had been hollowed out of
the trunk of a single, huge tree. This canoe differed from the majority of
those that personally I have seen used on African lakes and rivers, in
that it was fitted for a mast, now unshipped. I looked at it and said it
was a fine boat, whereon Komba replied that there were a hundred such at
Rica Town, though not all of them were so large.</p>
<p>Ah! thought I to myself as we walked back to the camp. Then, allowing an
average of twenty to a canoe, the Pongo tribe number about two thousand
males old enough to paddle, an estimate which turned out to be singularly
correct.</p>
<p>Next morning at dawn we started, with some difficulty. To begin with, in
the middle of the night old Babemba came to the canvas shelter under which
I was sleeping, woke me up and in a long speech implored me not to go. He
said he was convinced that the Pongo intended foul play of some sort and
that all this talk of peace was a mere trick to entrap us white men into
the country, probably in order to sacrifice us to its gods for a religious
reason.</p>
<p>I answered that I quite agreed with him, but that as my companions
insisted upon making this journey, I could not desert them. All that I
could do was to beg him to keep a sharp look-out so that he might be able
to help us in case we got into trouble.</p>
<p>“Here I will stay and watch for you, lord Macumazana,” he answered, “but
if you fall into a snare, am I able to swim through the water like a fish,
or to fly through the air like a bird to free you?”</p>
<p>After he had gone one of the Zulu hunters arrived, a man named Ganza, a
sort of lieutenant to Mavovo, and sang the same song. He said that it was
not right that I should go without guns to die among devils and leave him
and his companions wandering alone in a strange land.</p>
<p>I answered that I was much of the same opinion, but that Dogeetah insisted
upon going and that I had no choice.</p>
<p>“Then let us kill Dogeetah, or at any rate tie him up, so that he can do
no more mischief in his madness,” Ganza suggested blandly, whereon I
turned him out.</p>
<p>Lastly Sammy arrived and said:</p>
<p>“Mr. Quatermain, before you plunge into this deep well of foolishness, I
beg that you will consider your responsibilities to God and man, and
especially to us, your household, who are now but lost sheep far from
home, and further, that you will remember that if anything disagreeable
should overtake you, you are indebted to me to the extent of two months’
wages which will probably prove unrecoverable.”</p>
<p>I produced a little leather bag from a tin box and counted out to Sammy
the wages due to him, also those for three months in advance.</p>
<p>To my astonishment he began to weep. “Sir,” he said, “I do not seek filthy
lucre. What I mean is that I am afraid you will be killed by these Pongo,
and, alas! although I love you, sir, I am too great a coward to come and
be killed with you, for God made me like that. I pray you not to go, Mr.
Quatermain, because I repeat, I love you, sir.”</p>
<p>“I believe you do, my good fellow,” I answered, “and I also am afraid of
being killed, who only seem to be brave because I must. However, I hope we
shall come through all right. Meanwhile, I am going to give this box and
all the gold in it, of which there is a great deal, into your charge,
Sammy, trusting to you, if anything happens to us, to get it safe back to
Durban if you can.”</p>
<p>“Oh! Mr. Quatermain,” he exclaimed, “I am indeed honoured, especially as
you know that once I was in jail for—embezzlement—with
extenuating circumstances, Mr. Quatermain. I tell you that although I am a
coward, I will die before anyone gets his fingers into that box.”</p>
<p>“I am sure that you will, Sammy my boy,” I said. “But I hope, although
things look queer, that none of us will be called upon to die just yet.”</p>
<p>The morning came at last, and the six of us marched down to the canoe
which had been brought round to the open waterway. Here we had to undergo
a kind of customs-house examination at the hands of Komba and his
companions, who seemed terrified lest we should be smuggling firearms.</p>
<p>“You know what rifles are like,” I said indignantly. “Can you see any in
our hands? Moreover, I give you my word that we have none.”</p>
<p>Komba bowed politely, but suggested that perhaps some “little guns,” by
which he meant pistols, remained in our baggage—by accident. Komba
was a most suspicious person.</p>
<p>“Undo all the loads,” I said to Hans, who obeyed with an enthusiasm which
I confess struck me as suspicious.</p>
<p>Knowing his secretive and tortuous nature, this sudden zeal for openness
seemed almost unnatural. He began by unrolling his own blanket, inside of
which appeared a miscellaneous collection of articles. I remember among
them a spare pair of very dirty trousers, a battered tin cup, a wooden
spoon such as Kaffirs use to eat their <i>scoff</i> with, a bottle full of
some doubtful compound, sundry roots and other native medicines, an old
pipe I had given him, and last but not least, a huge head of yellow
tobacco in the leaf, of a kind that the Mazitu, like the Pongos, cultivate
to some extent.</p>
<p>“What on earth do you want so much tobacco for, Hans?” I asked.</p>
<p>“For us three black people to smoke, Baas, or to take as snuff, or to
chew. Perhaps where we are going we may find little to eat, and then
tobacco is a food on which one can live for days. Also it brings sleep at
nights.”</p>
<p>“Oh! that will do,” I said, fearing lest Hans, like a second Walter
Raleigh, was about to deliver a long lecture upon the virtue of tobacco.</p>
<p>“There is no need for the yellow man to take this weed to our land,”
interrupted Komba, “for there we have plenty. Why does he cumber himself
with the stuff?” and he stretched out his hand idly as though to take hold
of and examine it closely.</p>
<p>At this moment, however, Mavovo called attention to his bundle which he
had undone, whether on purpose or by accident, I do not know, and
forgetting the tobacco, Komba turned to attend to him. With a marvellous
celerity Hans rolled up his blanket again. In less than a minute the
lashings were fast and it was hanging on his back. Again suspicion took
me, but an argument which had sprung up between Brother John and Komba
about the former’s butterfly net, which Komba suspected of being a new
kind of gun or at least a magical instrument of a dangerous sort,
attracted my notice. After this dispute, another arose over a common
garden trowel that Stephen had thought fit to bring with him. Komba asked
what it was for. Stephen replied through Brother John that it was to dig
up flowers.</p>
<p>“Flowers!” said Komba. “One of our gods is a flower. Does the white lord
wish to dig up our god?”</p>
<p>Of course this was exactly what Stephen did desire to do, but not
unnaturally he kept the fact to himself. The squabble grew so hot that
finally I announced that if our little belongings were treated with so
much suspicion, it might be better that we should give up the journey
altogether.</p>
<p>“We have passed our word that we have no firearms,” I said in the most
dignified manner that I could command, “and that should be enough for you,
O Komba.”</p>
<p>Then Komba, after consultation with his companions, gave way. Evidently he
was anxious that we should visit Pongo-land.</p>
<p>So at last we started. We three white men and our servants seated
ourselves in the stern of the canoe on grass cushions that had been
provided. Komba went to the bows and his people, taking the broad paddles,
rowed and pushed the boat along the water-way made by the hippopotami
through the tall and matted reeds, from which ducks and other fowl rose in
multitudes with a sound like thunder. A quarter of an hour or so of
paddling through these weed-encumbered shallows brought us to the deep and
open lake. Here, on the edge of the reeds a tall pole that served as a
mast was shipped, and a square sail, made of closely-woven mats, run up.
It filled with the morning off-land breeze and presently we were bowling
along at a rate of quite eight miles the hour. The shore grew dim behind
us, but for a long while above the clinging mists I could see the flag
that we had planted on the mound. By degrees it dwindled till it became a
mere speck and vanished. As it grew smaller my spirits sank, and when it
was quite gone, I felt very low indeed.</p>
<p>Another of your fool’s errands, Allan my boy, I said to myself. I wonder
how many more you are destined to survive.</p>
<p>The others, too, did not seem in the best of spirits. Brother John stared
at the horizon, his lips moving as though he were engaged in prayer, and
even Stephen was temporarily depressed. Jerry had fallen asleep, as a
native generally does when it is warm and he has nothing to do. Mavovo
looked very thoughtful. I wondered whether he had been consulting his
Snake again, but did not ask him. Since the episode of our escape from
execution by bow and arrow I had grown somewhat afraid of that unholy
reptile. Next time it might foretell our immediate doom, and if it did I
knew that I should believe.</p>
<p>As for Hans, he looked much disturbed, and was engaged in wildly hunting
for something in the flap pockets of an antique corduroy waistcoat which,
from its general appearance, must, I imagine, years ago have adorned the
person of a British game-keeper.</p>
<p>“Three,” I heard him mutter. “By my great grandfather’s spirit! only three
left.”</p>
<p>“Three what?” I asked in Dutch.</p>
<p>“Three charms, Baas, and there ought to have been quite twenty-four. The
rest have fallen out through a hole that the devil himself made in this
rotten stuff. Now we shall not die of hunger, and we shall not be shot,
and we shall not be drowned, at least none of those things will happen to
me. But there are twenty-one other things that may finish us, as I have
lost the charms to ward them off. Thus——”</p>
<p>“Oh! stop your rubbish,” I said, and fell again into the depths of my
uncomfortable reflections. After this I, too, went to sleep. When I woke
it was past midday and the wind was falling. However, it held while we ate
some food we had brought with us, after which it died away altogether, and
the Pongo people took to their paddles. At my suggestion we offered to
help them, for it occurred to me that we might just as well learn how to
manage these paddles. So six were given to us, and Komba, who now I noted
was beginning to speak in a somewhat imperious tone, instructed us in
their use. At first we made but a poor hand at the business, but three or
four hours’ steady practice taught us a good deal. Indeed, before our
journey’s end, I felt that we should be quite capable of managing a canoe,
if ever it became necessary for us to do so.</p>
<p>By three in the afternoon the shores of the island we were approaching—if
it really was an island, a point that I never cleared up—were well
in sight, the mountain top that stood some miles inland having been
visible for hours. In fact, through my glasses, I had been able to make
out its configuration almost from the beginning of the voyage. About five
we entered the mouth of a deep bay fringed on either side with forests, in
which were cultivated clearings with small villages of the ordinary
African stamp. I observed from the smaller size of the trees adjacent to
these clearings, that much more land had once been under cultivation here,
probably within the last century, and asked Komba why this was so.</p>
<p>He answered in an enigmatic sentence which impressed me so much that I
find I entered it verbatim in my notebook.</p>
<p>“When man dies, corn dies. Man is corn, and corn is man.”</p>
<p>Under this entry I see that I wrote “Compare the saying, ‘Bread is the
staff of life.’”</p>
<p>I could not get any more out of him. Evidently he referred, however, to a
condition of shrinking in the population, a circumstance which he did not
care to discuss.</p>
<p>After the first few miles the bay narrowed sharply, and at its end came to
a point where a stream of no great breadth fell into it. On either side of
this stream that was roughly bridged in many places stood the town of
Rica. It consisted of a great number of large huts roofed with palm leaves
and constructed apparently of whitewashed clay, or rather, as we
discovered afterwards, of lake mud mixed with chopped straw or grass.</p>
<p>Reaching a kind of wharf which was protected from erosion by piles formed
of small trees driven into the mud, to which were tied a fleet of canoes,
we landed just as the sun was beginning to sink. Our approach had
doubtless been observed, for as we drew near the wharf a horn was blown by
someone on the shore, whereon a considerable number of men appeared, I
suppose, out of the huts, and assisted to make the canoe fast. I noted that
these all resembled Komba and his companions in build and features; they
were so like each other that, except for the difference of their ages, it
was difficult to tell them apart. They might all have been members of one
family; indeed, this was practically the case, owing to constant
intermarriage carried on for generations.</p>
<p>There was something in the appearance of these tall, cold, sharp-featured,
white-robed men that chilled my blood, something unnatural and almost
inhuman. Here was nothing of the usual African jollity. No one shouted, no
one laughed or chattered. No one crowded on us, trying to handle our
persons or clothes. No one appeared afraid or even astonished. Except for
a word or two they were silent, merely contemplating us in a chilling and
distant fashion, as though the arrival of three white men in a country
where before no white man had ever set foot were an everyday occurrence.</p>
<p>Moreover, our personal appearance did not seem to impress them, for they
smiled faintly at Brother John’s long beard and at my stubbly hair,
pointing these out to each other with their slender fingers or with the
handles of their big spears. I remarked that they never used the blade of
the spear for this purpose, perhaps because they thought that we might
take this for a hostile or even a warlike demonstration. It is humiliating
to have to add that the only one of our company who seemed to move them to
wonder or interest was Hans. His extremely ugly and wrinkled countenance,
it was clear, did appeal to them to some extent, perhaps because they had
never seen anything in the least like it before, or perhaps for another
reason which the reader may guess in due course.</p>
<p>At any rate, I heard one of them, pointing to Hans, ask Komba whether the
ape-man was our god or only our captain. The compliment seemed to please
Hans, who hitherto had never been looked on either as a god or a captain.
But the rest of us were not flattered; indeed, Mavovo was indignant, and
told Hans outright that if he heard any more such talk he would beat him
before these people, to show them that he was neither a captain nor a god.</p>
<p>“Wait till I claim to be either, O butcher of a Zulu, before you threaten
to treat me thus!” ejaculated Hans, indignantly. Then he added, with his
peculiar Hottentot snigger, “Still, it is true that before all the meat is
eaten (i.e. before all is done) you may think me both,” a dark saying
which at the time we did not understand.</p>
<p>When we had landed and collected our belongings, Komba told us to follow
him, and led us up a wide street that was very tidily kept and bordered on
either side by the large huts whereof I have spoken. Each of these huts
stood in a fenced garden of its own, a thing I have rarely seen elsewhere
in Africa. The result of this arrangement was that although as a matter of
fact it had but a comparatively small population, the area covered by Rica
was very great. The town, by the way, was not surrounded with any wall or
other fortification, which showed that the inhabitants feared no attack.
The waters of the lake were their defence.</p>
<p>For the rest, the chief characteristic of this place was the silence that
brooded there. Apparently they kept no dogs, for none barked, and no
poultry, for I never heard a cock crow in Pongo-land. Cattle and native
sheep they had in abundance, but as they did not fear any enemy, these
were pastured outside the town, their milk and meat being brought in as
required. A considerable number of people were gathered to observe us, not
in a crowd, but in little family groups which collected separately at the
gates of the gardens.</p>
<p>For the most part these consisted of a man and one or more wives, finely
formed and handsome women. Sometimes they had children with them, but
these were very few; the most I saw with any one family was three, and
many seemed to possess none at all. Both the women and the children, like
the men, were decently clothed in long, white garments, another
peculiarity which showed that these natives were no ordinary African
savages.</p>
<p>Oh! I can see Rica Town now after all these many years: the wide street
swept and garnished, the brown-roofed, white-walled huts in their fertile,
irrigated gardens, the tall, silent folk, the smoke from the cooking fires
rising straight as a line in the still air, the graceful palms and other
tropical trees, and at the head of the street, far away to the north, the
rounded, towering shape of the forest-clad mountain that was called House
of the Gods. Often that vision comes back to me in my sleep, or at times
in my waking hours when some heavy odour reminds me of the overpowering
scent of the great trumpet-like blooms which hung in profusion upon
broad-leaved bushes that were planted in almost every garden.</p>
<p>On we marched till at last we reached a tall, live fence that was covered
with brilliant scarlet flowers, arriving at its gate just as the last red
glow of day faded from the sky and night began to fall. Komba pushed open
the gate, revealing a scene that none of us are likely to forget. The
fence enclosed about an acre of ground of which the back part was occupied
by two large huts standing in the usual gardens.</p>
<p>In front of these, not more than fifteen paces from the gate, stood
another building of a totally different character. It was about fifty feet
in length by thirty broad and consisted only of a roof supported upon
carved pillars of wood, the spaces between the pillars being filled with
grass mats or blinds. Most of these blinds were pulled down, but four
exactly opposite the gate were open. Inside the shed forty or fifty men,
who wore white robes and peculiar caps and who were engaged in chanting a
dreadful, melancholy song, were gathered on three sides of a huge fire
that burned in a pit in the ground. On the fourth side, that facing the
gate, a man stood alone with his arms outstretched and his back towards
us.</p>
<p>Of a sudden he heard our footsteps and turned round, springing to the
left, so that the light might fall on us. Now we saw by the glow of the
great fire, that over it was an iron grid not unlike a small bedstead, and
that on this grid lay some fearful object. Stephen, who was a little
ahead, stared, then exclaimed in a horrified voice:</p>
<p>“My God! it is a woman!”</p>
<p>In another second the blinds fell down, hiding everything, and the singing
ceased.</p>
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