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Updated: June 9, 2025
That's when the sentimentalism gushes out, at the end of long journeys, at the novelty of elegance and sophistication. One deifies them then: one gives them a place much larger than they ought to take up in life. How Muene-Motapa would laugh! He, virtually a Neolithic man, never sinks below manly thoughts: his ambitions are never enfeebled by the malady of sentimental love.
We two will rule over the land of my ancestors, the kingdom of the first Muene-Motapa. Through your mouth we will treat with the English, the Arabs, and all the world as equals. I will not kill you, because you will be my mind. Besides, I love you."
So, night after night he repeated the same plea, sitting in the royal pavilion, across the fire from the white man whose guards had been sent out of doors. Muene-Motapa was tall, muscular, bold of gesture and fierce of face. His word was life and death.
They raised their long shields, adorned with crude geometrical designs, and sang for the white man a rambling song of parting. "But he will return some day to bask in the countenance of Muene-Motapa." They all took up the refrain: "To bask in the countenance of Muene-Motapa!" Their voices rose strongly, full of exultation.
The rolling thunder recalled to him the thunder of the Mambava drums at the Dances of the Moon; and in the darkness he remembered the voice of Muene-Motapa pleading with him to cast off the old, to become a new man, to return amid the black forebears of mankind, kill hope and even conscience, forget and be at peace.
In his voice there throbbed a tenderness and pathos, as if he were making vocal the very essence of the king's desire. His eyes even swam in moisture, as he repeated the conjuration: "Speak! Speak the word!" Lawrence Teck returned: "Say this to Muene-Motapa. The medicine that might cure me is far beyond the sea. I thought I might do without it; but see what the lack of it has brought me to.
King Muene-Motapa had said to them long ago: "If he escapes, you shall be beaten to death with sticks; but if he tells me that you have not treated him respectfully, soldier ants shall eat you alive." For despite his chains, Lawrence Teck was the chosen friend of the king. Muene-Motapa had been fond of him even before the drunken riot in which he got his wounds.
Here she was before his eyes, more beautiful than in any of his dreams, a diffuse vision compressed once more into a tangible form, fragrant and warm, full of coursing blood and tremors, no doubt still capable of those same ecstatic appearances and vocal rhapsodies. All his swarming, jealous thoughts were consuming him, as warrior ants might consume some wretched victim of King Muene-Motapa.
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