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It led to Banza Nkulu, a shabby settlement of unclean plantations and ragged huts of far inferior construction: stacks of grass were piled upon the ground, and this new thatch was greatly wanted. Here the lands of the "bush-men" begin: instead of marching directly to the chief's house, we sat in our wet clothes under a friendly wild fig.
Old Shimbal, the linguist, had declared that a year would be required by the suspicious "bush-men" to palaver over the knotty question of a stranger coming only to "make mukanda," that is to see and describe the country. My wishes were expounded, and every possible promise of hammocks and porters, guides and interpreters, was made by the hosts.
They won't come out in the open and attack you. Keep the work-gangs close. Stop the clearing till this blows over. They'll get any detached gangs you send out. And, whatever you do, don't be fooled into going into the bush after Koho. If you do, he'll get you. All you've got to do is wait for McTavish. I'll send him up with a bunch of his Malaita bush-men. He's the only man who can go inside.
One evening Tom was unusually brightly awake, and Frederick, joining the rapt young circle, sat and listened to his brother's serio-comic narrative of the night of wreck on the island of Blang; of the swim through the sharks where half the crew was lost; of the great pearl which Desay brought ashore with him; of the head-decorated palisade that surrounded the grass palace wherein dwelt the Malay queen with her royal consort, a shipwrecked Chinese Eurasian; of the intrigue for the pearl of Desay; of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric night, and quick dangers and sudden deaths; of the queen's love-making to Desay, of Desay's love-making to the queen's daughter, and of Desay, every joint crushed, still alive, staked out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by the sharks; of the coming of the plague; of the beating of tom-toms and the exorcising of the devil-devil doctors; of the flight over the man-trapped, wild-pig runs of the mountain bush-men; and of the final rescue by Tasman, he who was hatcheted only last year and whose head reposed in some Melanesian stronghold and all breathing of the warmth and abandon and savagery of the burning islands of the sun.
D. Leslie, 'Kafir Character and Customs, 1871, p. 4. On the Bush-men, Burchell, 'Travels in S. Africa, ii. 1824, p. 59. On the Koraks by McKennan, as quoted by Mr.
Do you remember a story about the bush-men dying from a curse? Here." She held her two precious Kalis in one arm while she tapped the base of her skull. "In here is a bulb, the old brain, not even an idiot's brain, that brought you up from the jungle. It is a simple, worrying brain. Easily frightened. Easily convinced. It was convinced that you were dead. We had to arouse it."
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