Witch-Doctors

by Charles Beadle

“And what said the great magician unto thee?” Marufa demanded to cover his discomfort.

“He spoke white words as a warrior should,” said Sakamata. “He gave words which told me that he was but a small wizard. He made my eyes to see the soul of a greater god than he, who was there and yet was not there; for at the touch of his magic hand with many eyes, behold! there were two more souls of the god which returned even as I looked.”

“Ehh! A greater god than he?” demanded Zalu Zako, with a flicker of the white of his eyes.

“Even as I have said, a greater god who is king of all the white man’s countries in the sea, who eats up those whom he pleases. Yet, even though he may bewitch with one of his eyes, did he speak softly to Yagombi, the son of Bagazaan, and Zalayan, the son of Kilmanyana, who were with me, bidding us to tell our brethren that if they would not acknowledge the true king that then he would eat us up, even as he ate up the Unmentionable One. But to those who would submit and make due tribute, would he protect in peace from the white men who, fleeing from the wrath of the great god, would soon come to eat up our country like the locusts.”

“Eh! ehh! white men as the locusts!”

“Thus he spoke and bade us to go forth and tell our brethren.”

This was a wholly new notion and proportionally serious if true. But Marufa, recovering from the first shock, wrapped himself in his professional cloak of omniscient indifference as he recollected that Sakamata was an unfrocked priest of the craft. The group took snuff sternly until Sakamata, having accomplished his mission, deemed it wise to retire to allow the suggestive ideas to germinate. So gravely he arose and departed from the hut of Zalu Zako and went under the patronage of Yabolo to another compound where, to a group of the most disaffected chiefs, including MYalu, he repeated nearly word for word the same harangue.

In the minds of [Zalu Zako] and Marufa the report of Sakamata had been exceedingly disquieting. Marufa began to wonder whether he had not better make terms with the new god before worse came to the worst in the form of white men like locusts, a menace fraught with dire possibilities which were based upon the rumours which every native had heard of the ways of white men in bulk: to the Wongolo merely vague stories from the north of the conquest of the Sudan by the British. Marufa’s ambitions in the craft were almost submerged in the dread that, wizard though he was, he would have small chance of distinction and power among a race of wizards. To Zalu Zako, although the prospect of unlimited white men swooping upon them was terrifying, his semi-conscious mind was rather occupied with Bakuma than with affairs of state which seemed merely to exist to torment lovers. However he, too, was sufficiently impressed to consider seriously the [pg 159] advisability of submitting before it was too late; the motivating principle of the scheme was an idea which suggested that, in some indefinable way, such action might lead to the avoidance of the ban of godhood and thus to the reinstatement of Bakuma in the realm of possibilities.

To Bakahenzie the report was more alarming than to the others, inasmuch as it appeared to portend the irretrievable loss of his power. He saw the effect upon their minds, the inclination to yield to the new conqueror, which, of course, would mean the last of his followers being swept away in the crowd like dry leaves in the wind. But more than the others he suspected the motives of Sakamata, the man whom he had unfrocked. Arguing in terms of his own mental processes he saw correctly enough that Sakamata was surely playing for himself, and guessed equally truly that Sakamata would get, or imagined that he would get, many rewards, political as well as in kind, for his services as jackal to the white man. But he listened and said no word for, or against, him. He was astute enough never to make a move until he had, or thought that he had, all the moves of the game worked out. Marufa was just as wily; he related the news given by Sakamata in a voice which gave no hint by tone or word what any of his opinions might be. Then, as they sat like graven images, supremely indifferent to the doings of Sakamata or aught else, entered the warrior bearing greetings from Birnier to Zalu Zako.

Immediately Zalu Zako, to whose less skilled mind in intrigue this succession of world-shaking events was bewildering, feared that already the plague of [pg 160] white men like locusts had commenced. But when he learned that the white man was alone and was Infunyana, the only white man whom he had ever met, he perceived vaguely some remote prospect of achieving his desires. Almost eagerly, for a native, he commanded the messenger to summon the white man to his presence.