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Updated: May 5, 2025
It was by then too late, however, to mend matters, unless I were prepared to make an unconditional surrender by sending Machenga the particular gifts that he coveted; and it is always unwise in the extreme to surrender to the demands of a savage. I therefore decided to let matters take their course, but to be prepared as fully as possible for any untoward contingency.
At this moment Machenga, who seemed to have gradually sunk into a kind of trance, rose slowly to his feet, and, with fixed, glassy eyes staring straight before him, began to mutter to himself in a voice pitched so low that at first I could distinguish nothing of what he said.
The good little weapon barked out as the hammer fell, and through the thin veil of powder smoke I saw Machenga spin round on his heels, flinging up his arms at the same time, and the next instant down he crashed upon his back, with a small blue hole in the very centre of his forehead, from which a thin stream of blood began to trickle slowly.
"Thou hast heard my question, Chia'gnosi, and Mapela's answer," said he. "Canst thou tell me what I want to know?" "Listen to my words, O King," said I. "Last night, when the moon was so high in the heavens," I pointed to the approximate altitude of the planet "Machenga came secretly and in disguise to my wagon, asking for gifts.
This was no common, ordinary individual, I at once told myself: there could be but one man in all Gwanda with such a countenance as that, and I instantly guessed the truth, that my visitor was none other than Machenga himself.
It would be no kindness on my part to give Machenga a fire tube, for he would not know how to use it " "But you could teach him," hastily interposed the stranger. "Nay," answered I, "not so, for it is a thing of magic; and the magic of the white man is unlike that of the black man, nor can the black man learn it.
But thank thy snake, O Lomalindela, King of the Mashona, that Chia'gnosi saw the evil and falsehood that lurked in that black heart," pointing to the dead body of Machenga "else would many another of thy friends myself among the number, perchance have died before yon sun sank behind the hills."
Yet I did nothing of the kind, for when I stretched myself out upon my cartel I found my thoughts dwelling upon my mysterious visitor, who I felt sure could be none other than Machenga himself, stolen surreptitiously away from the mysterious rites of the fetish house in the hope of cajoling a rifle out of me; and I began to wonder whether the two white men to whom he had referred as having visited Mashonaland many moons ago one only of whom went out of the country again could by any chance have been my friend Henderson and his Boer partner, Van Raalte.
Then I turned to my visitor and, pointing to the heap, said: "Friend, your words are words of wisdom. You see these gifts? Take them and place them in the hut of Machenga, saying that I, Chia'gnosi, send them in token of my goodwill.
I learned, further, that while the king put the most implicit faith in the infallibility of the witch doctors, and especially in that of Machenga, the head or chief of them, a few of the indunas who were then talking to me held rather strongly to the opinion that the selection of victims was not so much the result of supernatural guidance and wisdom vouchsafed to the witch doctors, as it was at least in the case of the more important and distinguished victims governed rather by Machenga's personal hatred, or his cupidity; a few of the shrewder observers having noticed, each year, that the chosen victims invariably included certain men toward whom the head witch doctor was well known to cherish a feeling of strong enmity, while other victims comprised those chiefs who were numbered among the richest men in the community the law being that, while the property of the alleged traitors was forfeited to the king, half of it was surrendered to the head witch doctor, as his fee for the detection of the criminals.
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