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By and by the Malaki felt sleepy while his hair was being combed; and he said to the Bia, "Do not wake me up." He fell asleep, and did not waken until the next day. Then he married the Bia Tuangun Katakia. After they had been married for three months, the Bia said to the Malaki, "The best man I know is the Manigthum. He was my first husband."
Straightway at the summons of the Bia, all the fine things appeared; and the Tuglay got ready to go away. He was no longer the poor Tuglay. His name was now the Malaki Dugdag Lobis Maginsulu. Like two big moons, his ivory ear-plugs shone; when he moved his shield, flames of living fire shot from it; and when he held up his spear, the day would grow dark, because he was a brave man.
But the Moglung did not go to her own home: she at once started for her brother's house that was up in the sky-country. Presently the Malaki woke up, and when he looked at his toes, he found that his brass toe-rings were gone. "The Moglung has been here!" he cried in a frenzy. "Why didn't you waken me, as I told you?" Then he seized his sharp-bladed kampilan, and slew the Bia.
"I am contemplating a trip into the interior via the Bia River and came to you to see if you could arrange transportation." M. Desplaines looked at the boys.
When he had finished chewing it, he stood up and went to the place where the Bia Tuangun Katakia was sitting, and he lay down beside her, and said, "Come, put away your work, and comb my hair." "No, I don't like to comb your hair," she replied. The Malaki was displeased at this retort, so at last the woman agreed to comb his hair, for she did not want to see the Malaki angry.
It was in the early nineties that his exploits made his name one of the greatest in African conquest and exploration. He went out to the Congo as second in command of what was known as the Bia Expedition, sent to explore the Katanga and adjacent territory. After two hard years of incessant campaigning the expedition fell into hard lines.
"But the Moglung is my wife, and she is the best woman in the world." "Never mind that," smiled the Bia. "Just let me comb your hair." Then the Bia gave him some betel-nut, and combed his hair until he grew sleepy. But as he was dropping off, he remembered a certain promise he had made his wife, and he said to the Bia, "If the Moglung comes and finds me here, you be sure to waken me."
He informed the boys that, acting on cabled instructions, he had laid in a good supply of gasoline by the last steamer from Sierra Leone and that arrangements for a train of carriers and for boats up the river had been made. There was a wheezy steam launch belonging to the trading post which would tow the boats up the Bia River as far as they desired.
Take the road that is marked with the prints of many horses and carabao. Do not stop at the place of the crossroads, for if you stop, the Bia who makes men giddy will hurt you." Then the Malaki went away, and reached the place where a hundred roads crossed, as Moglung had said. But he stopped there to rest and chew betel-nut.
There be who hold that the deeper tragedy were a Prometheus Bound not after but before he had well got the celestial fire into the narthex whereby it might be conveyed to mortals: thrust by the Kratos and Bia of instituted methods into a solitude of despised ideas, fastened in throbbing helplessness by the fatal pressure of poverty and disease a solitude where many pass by, but none regard.
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