United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then after another quarter I concluded that there was no elephants' cemetery although by the way my old friend, Dogeetah or Brother John, had mentioned such a thing to me but that probably there was a tribe, as he had also mentioned, called the Kendah, who worshipped a baby, or rather its effigy.
This being so, since it matters little whether you die now or later, my command is that you be kept prisoners till sunset of the second day from this, and that then you will be led out and tied to stakes in the market-place, there to wait till the approach of darkness, by when you say Dogeetah will be here.
Moreover, it is not I who have passed sentence on you. It is Imbozwi here, the chief of the doctors, who has told me all about you, and whose spirit says you must die unless my brother Dogeetah appears to save you. If Dogeetah comes, which he cannot do because he is dead, and vouches for you, then I shall know that Imbozwi is a wicked liar, and as you were to die, so he shall die."
He prays me to hold my hand, first because you have bewitched him into liking you and secondly because if you should happen to be speaking the truth which we do not believe and to have come here at the invitation of my brother Dogeetah, he, Dogeetah, would be pained if he arrived and found you dead, nor could even he bring you to life again.
He wishes to go back to his hole in the world beneath." "Well, then," I answered in rather a shamefaced fashion, for Mavovo had an uncanny way of seeing into one's secret motives, "I should like to know, if you can tell me, which you can't, what has become of the white man with the long beard whom you black people call Dogeetah?
The old, lame Griqua, Jack, who looked after the place for me and once had been one of my hunters, said that shortly after I went away in the ship, Dogeetah, as he called him, had taken his tin box and his net and walked off inland, he knew not where, leaving, as he declared, no message or letter behind him.
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. I answered that I was much of the same opinion, but that Dogeetah insisted upon going and that I had no choice.
"Because Mavovo's Snake was a snake with a true tongue after all, and Dogeetah came as it foretold. Because we are all alive and well, and it is Imbozwi with his spawn who are dead upon the posts.
Well, he did call upon his Snake with due and portentous ceremony and, according to Stephen, who was present, which I declined to be, that mystic reptile declared that Dogeetah, alias Brother John, would arrive in Beza Town precisely at sunset on the third day from that night.
Babemba said that Dogeetah and Wazela were bewitched, and that I, Macumazana, alone retained my senses. "Then that's settled," exclaimed Stephen. "John and I are to go as envoys to the Pongo, and you, Quatermain, will stop here to look after the hunters and the stores." "Young man," I replied, "do you wish to insult me? After your father put you in my charge, too!
Word Of The Day