Black Tales for White Children

by C. H. Stigand; Nancy Yulee Stigand

So she went into an inner room and took out a bag of a thousand dollars, and clothes, and a robe, and turbans, and came and gave them to Omari, and said, "Take these and give them to my father, and say that they are from his daughter, Binti Fatima."

Then she went in and brought out another bag and said, "Take these hundred dollars; they are a present for you, as you are taking these things for my father."

So Omari gathered up the bags of money and the clothes and left that woman, and mounted his donkey and rode away.

He had only just left when the husband of that woman in the house returned home. He noticed that his wife was very joyful, so he asked her, "My wife, why are you so glad to-day?"

She said to him, "A man has just been here who has come from the next world, and he has met my father there in great trouble. So I have given him a thousand dollars and clothes to take to my father. That is why I am so happy; for now the spirit of my father will be very pleased with us, and it will bring us great good fortune."

Now that man saw that his wife had been fooled, but he feared to say so, in case his wife should tell him no more, and he wished to follow that man and get the money back.

So he said to her, "You are not a good wife, for when a man came from the next world to tell you about your father you gave him an offering to take back to him, but you never asked him about my father, or gave him anything to take to him."

Then the wife said, "Oh, forgive me, my husband, but as he has only just left you may overtake him. He was riding a donkey, and he left by that road."

Then she described him. So the husband called for his horse, and the wife ran in and brought out another bag of a thousand dollars, and as he mounted she gave it to him, saying, "Take this, my husband, and give it to him for your father, and if you gallop after him down that road you will surely overtake him."

Now Omari had ridden away on his donkey till he came to a plantation, then he turned his head and saw, in the distance, the dust made by a galloping horse. There was no one on that plantation except one male slave, and so Omari said to him, "Do you see that dust? It is made by a man of great violence. I am going to hide from him, and I advise you to climb up into a coco-nut tree, lest he do you some harm. If he speaks to you do not answer him, for it will only make him more angry."