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Updated: May 1, 2025
On the death of any of the great officers of state, the finger-bones and hair are also preserved; or if they have died shaven, as sometimes occurs, a bit of their mbugu dress will be preserved in place of the hair. Their families guard their tombs.
He was only a young man, and a dandy at that, his face blackened with charcoal, his hair whitened with wood-ashes, with the freshly severed tail of a wild pig thrust through his perforated nose, and two more thrust through his ears. His only other ornament was a necklace of human finger-bones.
His tweeds were as immaculate as though he had just stepped from the hands of his valet, and his tan shoes showed mark neither of mud nor rough trails. Manuel's quick glance caught these details and they set him wondering. "By the Ten Finger-Bones!" ejaculated Leborge. "How did you get in here?" "Why?" asked Cecil, in mild surprise. "Polliovo didn't see you come. I didn't see you come." "No?"
"By these ten finger-bones, if Mary of the mill or little Kate of Compton had waited me on the brow of this cliff, I should have come up it and never known it was there. But surely I see houses and hear voices over yonder in the shadow?" "It is their town," whispered Simon. "There are a hundred as bloody-minded cutthroats as are to be found in Christendom beneath those roofs. Hark to that!"
Then at last his turn came. He slipped his leg behind the other's knee, and, giving a mighty wrench, tore him across it. With a hoarse shout the outlaw toppled backward and had hardly reached the ground before Aylward had his knee upon his chest and his short sword deep in his beard and pointed to his throat. "By these ten finger-bones!" he gasped, "one more struggle and it is your last!"
It is very well in time of peace to lead such a life as we have had together, but now the war-banner is in the wind once more, and, by these ten finger-bones! if he go alone, old Samkin Aylward will walk beside it." These words from a man as popular as Aylward decided many of the waverers, and a shout of approval burst from his audience.
He knew it by the superior size and strength of the Thing, by the almost manlike cunning of the low, gorilla face, the gleam of intelligence in the reddened eye, the crude wreath of maple-leaves upon the head, the necklace of finger-bones strung around the neck. But most of all, he knew it by a thing that shocked him more than the sight of stark, outright cannibalism would have done.
She could show you upon her own round arm, just where the bone which reaches from the shoulder to the elbow begins and ends, and tell you its name, and the names of the two bones which reach from the elbow to the wrist, and of the wrist-bones, and of those which you can feel in the palm of your hand, and the finger-bones.
"By these ten finger-bones! there were some fine bowmen at the intaking of Calais," said Aylward. "I well remember that, on occasion of an outfall, a Genoan raised his arm over his mantlet, and shook it at us, a hundred paces from our line. There were twenty who loosed shafts at him, and when the man was afterwards slain it was found that he had taken eighteen through his forearm."
Nigel, leaning on his sword by the gateway, saw Aylward totter past, a huge bundle under each arm, another slung over his back and a smaller packet hanging from his mouth. He dropped it for a moment as he passed his young master. "By these ten finger-bones! I am right glad that I came to the war, and no man could ask for a more goodly life," said he.
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