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Updated: September 19, 2025
"Have you seen these eh spirits, Muata?" Muata put the question aside. He rose and pointed to the east. "The sun dies away and the hunters return." "I don't hear them. Where are they?" "The birds cry out and fly.
"Must white men lose their sleep because a robber is to die?" roared the hunter again. Venning snatched up a beaker of water and ran out barefooted. He held the water to the chiefs mouth. Muata turned his smouldering eyes on the boy, sucked in a mouthful of the water, and then shot it out over Venning's outstretched arm.
"Yes; up out of this stagnation," cried Venning, with a longing look up. Mr. Hume ran the boat in, and Muata leapt ashore. As his feet felt the firm ground he raised one hand high and broke into a chant, the woman joining in at intervals. As he chanted he stamped his feet on the sand; and this song was of himself of his deeds in the past, of his triumphs in the future.
"Good, then. Go to your brother. Bring him and his warriors to the point you spoke of, light a fire there to guide us, and in the dark we will join you." Muata hauled on the rope, boarded the Okapi, and set the canoe adrift. "Do as I have said gather the men quickly, light a fire, guide us to the hiding-place, and in the morning we will share the riches. Hurry!"
Muata was still bound to the post, and, with his face to the sun, was chanting his words of greeting or of farewell in tones that lacked the deep chest-notes of his war-cry. One of the natives, hearing the order of the white man, flung a stick at the chief with an insult; but Muata, nothing heeding, sang on his slow song in a voice that was almost like a woman's.
Oh, here they come, I suppose," as half of Muata's body-guard detached themselves and advanced towards the palm-tree. "Shall we go down?" said Compton, rising. "Sit still, my lad. No chief ever hurries; and, you understand, we are all chiefs." "Are we, though?" "We take rank with Muata, if he is the head chief; not out of pride, you understand, but out of policy. So just keep cool.
"And what did the man do?" "He took a message to my father, the chief," said Muata, enigmatically. "The chief's son has been like a hunted dog. His stomach hungers for red meat. His spirit thirsts for the hunt. Wow! O hunter, set your shining boat for the shore, and let us follow the trail. There be buffalo in the lands beyond the hills which line the river."
"Wow!" said Muata, as his dark eyes swiftly took in the details. "If I climbed up that branch, I think I could get into the other tree, and you could then use the rope." "What is it now?" asked Mr. Hume. "They have cut the track," said the chief; "and it is as I thought, they have gone down from this tree to the ground, maybe to climb up further on." "Why?"
"I said we had not done with the thief-of-the-wood and the river, the man-robber, the slayer of babes." "Hassan! Do you mean that the Arabs are coming?" "Even so, O great one. They are well matched, the man-eaters and the man-stealers." "And whom do they go against?" "What should bring Hassan here but one thing, and that the fear of Muata?" "Humph!" muttered Mr. Hume.
"We'll have to lie up to-night, I suppose, or else we shall overrun the spot where we are to meet Muata." "It cannot be very far. I take it we are now travelling on the short leg of a triangle, the long leg being the track we made through the forest, and the other leg the tributary stream down which Hassan went to pick up his cannibal allies."
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