As the Akkas, taking advantage of their diminutive stature and our kindness to them, very soon were guilty of certain indiscretions, we left them to themselves and our servants. Then it was that Joseph, emerging, theatrically speaking, from the wings, appeared on the stage. Full as ever of importance and presumption, inflated with his own personal advantages, proud of his physical superiority, and deeming himself, as a white man, to be far above all the Africans put together, he took it into his head to hold an inspection of the Akkas.
He walked to and fro amongst them, did the very heavy swell, stroked his whiskers, and looked down with lofty contempt upon all these funny beings, the tallest of whom was about the height of a child of ten years old. From time to time he stopped in his perambulation to cast a contemptuous glance on those around him, grinning, as he did so, in an idiotic, imbecile manner, and here and there bestowing a back-handed slap, intended to be encouraging.
Several of the Akkas, serious old gentlemen, very grand personages, perhaps, in their own little way, speedily came to the conclusion that the white man was making fun of them, and they began to betray signs of impatience. Joseph was utterly blind to all this; not content with his promenading and grinning, he showed an inclination to play with his little companions, like a fat schoolmaster with the small urchins of his village. The game he invented to take the place of a ball or a hoop was not a very happy idea, for he took it into his head, after the manner of Gulliver, to convert himself into a triumphal arch and make the newly-discovered Liliputians pass underneath it.
Some of them, good-tempered and entering into the spirit of the thing, joined in the game, but, all of a sudden, a man of about thirty, who had previously shown symptoms of annoyance at being treated like a child, and was now rendered positively furious by this final indignity, instead of passing beneath the triumphal arch, jumped on Joseph's back, clasped him round the neck with his arms, and bit his shoulder until it bled.
The pain was excessive, but it was nothing to the fear experienced by Joseph. The unexpected attack, and savage bite, conjured up all the ghosts of cannibalism which had haunted his troubled spirit for some time past. The Akka dwarfs, whom he had looked upon as harmless, disappeared; he saw before him only gigantic cannibals; they were not biting him, they were not eating him up bit by bit; he was being swallowed wholesale.
He uttered the most piercing shrieks, and begged for mercy, but the Pygmy was quite comfortable pick-a-back, relished the flavour of his steed's shoulder, and gave himself up to it with all his heart, or, rather, with all his teeth, whilst the whole of his companions, with their little hands holding their fat stomachs, laughed all over their tiny faces, as they had seen Joseph do.
The more our servant struggled, the more he curvetted about in order to throw the Akka, the tighter the latter held on to his neck with his arms, and to his shoulder with his teeth. He used Joseph as a steed, spurred him with his heels, and made him run or stop as he pleased, clasping him round the neck more and more firmly, and digging his teeth into him with increasing ferocity. Joseph wanted a game, so that he had no right to complain. He was playing at horses, only he was the steed, and the Akka the rider.
And what a rider! It was impossible to unhorse him. His steed, recalling the way a donkey has of rolling on his back, with his four legs in the air, lay down at full length and attempted to crush his jockey under his weight. But the skilful cavalier was quite up to that move; he slid round in front, and when Joseph got up the Akka was face to face with him, with his little eyes glistening, and every pointed tooth showing.
At last Joseph's piercing shrieks attracted the attention of some Monbuttoo soldiers. Seeing what was taking place, and having themselves, possibly, marked Joseph down as a toothsome morsel in case provisions should run short, they rescued him from the grinders of the dwarf, so that at all events a little bit of him might be left.
On the day after this occurrence, Joseph, whose head had been troubling him, was seized with a raging fever, accompanied by contractions of the muscles, and severe cramp. In the height of this fever, he imagined that he had been bitten by some mad animal, and that he had himself gone mad in consequence. "Get away," he shouted, "get away, I shall bite you!" Dr. Delange, though he did not fear rabies, which is nearly unknown in Africa, was at first alarmed by the violence of the delirium, but Nassar informed us that it was almost an invariable feature in the disease from which Joseph was suffering, peculiar to this climate, and called kichyoma.