“Eh!”
Another point was scored. But both Zalu Zako and Marufa regarded him as one who, having had dealings with the devil and yet had emerged safely, was to be suspected of some ghastly pact. After a calculated pause Sakamata continued nonchalantly:
“There is no magic like unto Eyes-in-the-hands, the Mighty One. A great fort hath he made upon the hill of thy grandfather (MFunya MPopo), O Zalu Zako, girded with a great palisade, around which walk ever [the] red devils in uniform, each one of whom hath a gun with seven voices. And peering through that palisade, like a terrible black leopard from his lair, are the monster coughing devils. Eh! who are they who can withstand them?”
“Eh!” echoed his audience with lively memories of the “coughing devils.”
“And he hath a mighty hut made from the white man’s cloth of colour like to the forest full of things to make magic. Seated upon his chair like unto a man plucking bananas, the eyes upon his hands and in his head gleam so fiercely that water is made within a man. He who dares to look sees not only Eyes-in-the-hands, but his two souls, even as thou seest thine own two souls staring at thee with the frightened eyes that are thine!”
“Ehh!”
This time a genuine belly grunt was elicited, and even Marufa moved uneasily.
“Thou hast been bewitched,” he added to mask his [pg 157] astonishment. “For a man may see his own soul in any pool, but never two souls!”
“Even is it as I have told thee, O son of MTungo,” asserted Sakamata.
Sakamata discovered the use of snuff again to be necessary. He watched covertly the repressed excitement in the eyes of Zalu Zako.