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Updated: May 4, 2025
It was the night of full moon and of the great feast of the return of Little Bonsa. Alan sat in his chamber waiting to be summoned to take part in this ceremony and listening the while to that Wow! Wow! Wow! of the death drums, whereof Jeekie had once spoken in England, which could be clearly heard even above the perpetual boom of the cataract tumbling down its cliff behind the town.
Then he halted and said: "How can I kiss your hand through this mask, Asika?" "True," she answered, then considered a little and added, "White man, you have brought back Little Bonsa, have you not, Little Bonsa who ran away with you a great many years ago?" "I have," he said, ignoring the rest of the question. "Your messengers said that you required a present of gold in return for Little Bonsa.
"Hold tongue," he answered savagely, "make you god, I priest. Ogula know Little Bonsa. Quick, quick!" In a minute it was done, the golden mask was clapped on to Alan's head, and the leather thongs were fastened. Moreover, Jeekie himself was arrayed in the solar-tope to which all this while he had clung, allowing streams of green mosquito netting to hang down over his white robe.
"Not say 'infernal mask, Major, say 'face of angel. Little Bonsa woman and like it better, also true, if on this occasion only, for she save our skins," said Jeekie as he unknotted the thongs and reverently replaced the fetish in its tin box.
These steps the Mungana motioned him to mount, but when Jeekie tried to follow him he turned and struck him contemptuously in the face. At once the Asika, who was watching Vernon's approach through the eye-holes in the Little Bonsa mask, said fiercely: "Who bade you strike the servant of my guest, O Mungana? Let him come also that he may stand behind us and interpret."
That worthy sprang back and asked what in the name of Bonsa, Big and Little, they were doing, whereon the man explained with humility that the Asika had said that she thought the white lord wanted the wood to make a box to bury his servant in, as he, the said servant, had offended her that morning, and doubtless the white lord wished to kill him on that account, or perhaps to put him away under ground alive.
"Saved!" she exclaimed, recovering herself and placing it on the table, whereon Jeekie, to their astonishment, began to execute a kind of war dance. "Oh! yes," he said, "saved, very much saved. All saved, most magnificent omen. Lady kneel to Little Bonsa and Little Bonsa nip out of box, make bow and jump in lady's arms. That splendid, first-class luck, for miss and everybody.
He thought that he was back in what Jeekie had rudely called "City bucket shop," bargaining across the telephone wire, upon which came all the sounds of the infernal regions, with a financial paper for an article on a Little Bonsa Syndicate that he proposed to float.
Alan looked at it and shivered, for the thing was horrid and uncanny, and the utter loneliness in which it lay staring up at the moon, seemed to accentuate the horror. The Mungana noticed his fear and whispered: "We must swim the water. If you have a god, white man, pray him to protect you from Bonsa." "Lead on," answered Alan, "I do not dread a foul fetish, only the look of it.
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