Witch-Doctors

In a bayou in the south-eastern corner of the Victoria Nyanza was the station of Ingonya, a brown scab on the face of the green earth. The round mud huts of the askaris were lik...

Like a topaz set in a jade ring was the city of the Snake, the place of Kings, a village of some eight hundred huts huddled upon a slight rise above a sea of banana fronds, some...

At five-thirty zu Pfeiffer was stretched in the long Bombay chair in the coolest portion of the screened verandah. On the table beside him was a tall glass, a decanter of cognac...

Over the city of the Snake the sun sank red dry, leaving the Place of Kings hot in the electric air of magic and world happenings. The people were still confined to their huts,...

The same vast balloons of sepia rolled over the lake, vomited a host of liquid ramrods and, after short intervals of brilliant glare, were succeeded by others. The gutters of th...

In the violet shadow of his square hut inside the compound, squatted Zalu Zako. The lips and nose were nearer to the Aryan delicacy than the negroid bluntness; for the Wongolo,...

Gerald Birnier had flattered himself that he was a philosopher with a sense of humour, fairly well developed by ten years’ wandering about Central Africa, but deep emotions subm...

Bakuma sat in the shade of the reed fence preparing the evening meal of boiled bananas. From her slender neck swung the precious amulet at which, as if to reassure herself of it...

Before the green tent strutted a sentry as pompously as if he were on duty before the Kommandant’s bungalow. Inside, sprawling in a camp chair, was the corporal, in blue striped...

On the morning of Birnier’s departure there was much movement in Ingonya station. Every sign of preparation for the expedition had been carefully concealed while a stranger was...

The doom pronounced by the Council of Witch-Doctors was to Bakuma and all concerned as a Bull of Excommunication in mediæval Europe. MYalu was the one who exhibited the most emo...

The village of Yagonyana, the son of Zahilazaan, was situated some five days’ march to the north-west of Kawa Kendi’s, in open cattle country near the fringe of the forest. Here...

On the morning on which zu Pfeiffer burned the village of Yagonyana, Birnier was encamped upon the southern boundary of Wongolo. By his “coup de superstition” had he recovered a...

About a mile from Birnier’s camp, through forest so dense that even the progress of a native clambering from trunk to trunk and over undergrowth ten feet deep was slow and tortu...

Just after sun-up next morning as Birnier was seated at the door of his tent reading his _Melancholy_ and drinking his coffee, a startled “clk” caused him to glance round. He sa...

Changed was the City of the Snake, the place of kings. Upon the site where had been the hive of huts wrapped in the green arms of the banana plantation, laboured under the incan...

In his favourite seat by the door of his hut sat Zalu Zako waiting as patiently as only a native can to see the white man, symbol of a subconscious hope. The fact that Bakuma ha...

Meanwhile the object of Bakahenzie’s political perplexities was also holding a council of war. Mungongo and Bakuma were divided in opinion. The former had recovered his complete...

When Zalu Zako was notified of the verdict of the Council and the words of Tarum the sense of the inevitable returned, extinguishing the spark of rebellion that had been kindled...

The actual sight of spirits from ghostland, of which hitherto they had only heard, had been too much for the nerves of the tribe already overstrung by the overthrow of the idol...

The desertion of Sakamata, Yabolo, and three chiefs, had corroborated his suspicions of the unfrocked priest. That Sakamata had been preaching open sedition he had known, yet Ba...

In the humid heat of the forenoon the small hills of Fort Eitel, as zu Pfeiffer had renamed the Place of Kings, in the centre of the rased banana plantations, resembled scabby p...

Upon the site of Birnier’s old camp in the forest was a high palisade built from tree to tree. Inside of the gate beside a small conical hut burned the sacred fires tended by Mu...

A favourite panacea for the results of a stupid action is the sentiment of martyrdom. When MYalu persisted in bitter reproaches to Yabolo and Sakamata the first retorted that th...

In the camp of Bakahenzie was the low mutter of the drums by day and night. The village had straggled farther through the forest in each direction save that of the sacred enclos...

In a corner of one of the half-completed huts in a half-completed street of the new village of the Place of Kings squatted Yabolo and other chiefs. As Sakamata was up in the for...

All day at Fort Eitel had been stir and bustle, the blare of trumpets and the barking of sergeants, white and black. Long lines of women and slaves streamed in from the surround...

Zu Pfeiffer, crazed with wounded pride or magic, according to the white or black point of view, had held rigidly to his schedule; precisely at four-thirty he had inspected the e...

Bakahenzie had come to announce that the certain magic “things,” which a messenger had brought from the white man’s country, had arrived. Although he could not expect an answer...

Forty-eight hours later, the furious drumming, chanting and screaming heralded the return of the victorious troops of Zalu Zako. Birnier from his gaol on the hill watched the br...

The reflection of a shaft of moonlight through the half-completed thatch upon zu Pfeiffer’s “magic” mirror, which the natives had not dared to remove, set afire the sapphires up...