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Updated: May 3, 2025
The slightest sound of that would fill this empty camp with hundreds of angry warriors; they would drop from above, they would spring up from the ground, from the forest about, from everywhere." "Sho! Tell that story to the old women, and not to a chief like Ngalyema. My boy tells me it is a kind of a bell. Strike it and let me hear it."
"Ah, Ngalyema, did I not tell you that thing was a powerful fetish? Let me strike it again, and show you what else it can do." "No! no! no!" he shrieked. "I have seen enough!" The day ended peacefully. I was invited to hasten on to Stanley Pool. The natives engaged themselves by the score to assist me in hauling the wagons.
Stanley Pool has always been associated in my mind with one of the most picturesque episodes in Stanley's life. He tells about it in his monumental work on the Congo Free State and again relates it in his Autobiography. It deals with Ngalyema, who was chief of the Stanley Pool District in the early eighties.
I was indolently seated in a chair reading a book, and appeared too lazy to notice anyone; but, suddenly looking up and seeing my "brother Ngalyema" and his warriors, scowlingly regarding me, I sprang up and seized his hands, and affectionately bade him welcome, in the name of sacred fraternity, and offered him my own chair. He was strangely cold, and apparently disgruntled, and said:
His eyes were reaching round seeking to discover an excuse to fight, when they rested on the round, burnished face of the Chinese gong. "What is that?" he said. "Ah, that that is a fetish." "A fetish! A fetish for what?" "It is a war-fetish, Ngalyema.
"Has not my brother forgotten his road? What does he mean by coming to this country?" "Nay, it is Ngalyema who has forgotten the blood-bond which exists between us. It is Ngalyema who has forgotten the mountains of goods which I paid him. What words are these of my brother?" "Be warned, Rock-Breaker. Go back before it is too late.
"Oh, Ngalyema, my brother, the consequences would be too dreadful! Do not think of such a thing!" "Strike it, I say." "Well, to oblige my dear brother Ngalyema, I will." And I struck hard and fast, and the clangourous roll rang out like thunder in the stillness.
My elders and people all cry out against allowing the white man to come into our country. Therefore, go back before it be too late. Go back, I say, the way you came." Speech and counter-speech followed. Ngalyema had exhausted his arguments; but it was not easy to break faith and be uncivil, with plausible excuse.
Presently the order was given, "Fall in!" and quickly the leaping forms became rigid, and the men stood in two long lines in beautiful order, with eyes front, as though "at attention!" Then Ngalyema relaxed his hold of my coat-tails, and crept from behind, breathing more freely; and, lifting his hand to his mouth, exclaimed, in genuine surprise, "Eh, Mamma! where did all these people come from?"
But Ngalyema and his son did not fly. They caught the tails of my coat, and we began to dance from side to side, a loving triplet, myself being foremost to ward off the blow savagely aimed at my "brothers," and cheerfully crying out, "Hold fast to me, my brothers. I will defend you to the last drop of my blood. Come one, come all."
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