Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
"Do, Major?" he replied with affected cheerfulness. "Oh! that quite simple. Jeekie arrange everything. You marry Asika and by and by, when you master here and tired of her, you give her slip. Very interesting experience; no white man ever have such luck before. Asika not half bad, if she fond of you; she like little girl in song, when she good, she very, very good. At any rate, nothing else to do.
Or would some dim power such as had drawn Mungana to the death drag him back to the arms of the Asika or to the torture pit of "Great Swimming Head." He remembered his dream in the Treasure Hall and shuddered at the very thought of it, for all he had undergone and seen made him superstitious; then bade the men paddle faster, ever faster.
Indeed he would have grasped it had he not met with foul play, for the Asika, seeing that he was about to succeed, lifted it an inch or two, so that he also missed and with a groan joined the band of the defeated.
Then a man challenged, saying, "Who passes from the krantz?" and a woman's voice answered, "It is I, Asika, the wife of Bull-Head." "I hear you," answered the man. "Now tell me, Asika, what happens yonder." "What happens? How do I know what happens?" she answered crossly.
Farewell, dear brother in Bonsa, I wish that I were you to get the great reward that the Asika will give to you. Farewell, farewell." Then the two owls flitted apart again, hooting as they went, till they came to their respective camps. Jeekie was in the tent performing a strange toilet upon the sleeping Aylward by the light of a single candle.
"Welcome, Vernoon," said the Asika through the lips of the mask, which to Alan, notwithstanding the dreadful cruelty of its expression, looked less hateful than the lovely, tigerish face it hid. "Welcome and be seated here on my left hand, since on my right you may not sit as yet."
At first Alan thought that the thing was a joke, and that the men had merely been made mad drunk, till catching sight of their eyes in the moonlight, he perceived that they were in great pain and turned indignantly to remonstrate with the Asika. "Be silent, Vernoon," she said savagely, "blood is your orunda and I respect it.
"Look out!" it said, "here come Asika. Go sleep and seem better, Major, please, or I catch it hot." So Alan almost shut his eyes and lay still. In another moment she was standing over him and he noticed that her hair was dishevelled and her eyes were red as though with weeping.
Then noting how white and wasted he was, of a sudden she began to weep, saying between her sobs: "Oh! if you should die, Vernoon, I will die also and be born again not as Asika, as I have been for so many generations, but as a white woman that I may be with you.
"Why do more ghosts come very night to sit with the queen's husband, Jeekie?" she asked. "Where do they come from?" "Out of the dead, miss, dead husbands of Asika from beginning of the world; what they call Munganas. Also always they make sacrifice to Yellow God. From far, far away them poor niggers send people to be sacrifice that their house or tribe get luck.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking