An hour or two later her husband arrived and [[71]]was told that if he wanted to redeem his wife he must bring the white man twenty fowls. He succeeded in collecting sixteen, which were refused, then he made up the number, and so redeemed his wife and babe. This redemption must have cost him a great deal of money, and he was a poor man.
Three days after her return to her home the wife died.
It seems strange, but the child lived, and is alive to-day, a puny, ill-nourished child, as you may imagine.
O white women, can you listen to such things unmoved? Think, then, how much worse it must be to see them, and live in the midst of them, knowing that the same thing might happen to you any day?
In a village situated at some distance from the white man’s compound the sentries had established themselves in their usual style of living, in the best houses the village could boast of, and began to supply themselves lavishly from the gardens and poultry-houses of the villagers. They ordered the old men who were past rubber collecting out into the bush to hunt monkeys for them to feast upon.
Day after day the old men went, and brought [[72]]back the animals required, but one morning there was a heavy fall of rain.
One old man refused to go out in the wet, he said that he could not stand the cold, and so remained in his house. His failure to go to the hunt was discovered by the sentries, and he was arrested by two of them, stripped, and held down on the ground in the open street of the village.
Then they—but I must not tell you what they did, white people do not talk of such things.
After that one of the sentries held the left arm of the old man out straight on the ground, while another, with his walking-staff (a square sawn stick), beat him on the wrist until at last his hand fell off. His sister came to his assistance, and he went away with her to his hut to suffer agonies of pain for months.
A long time after the white man of God and his wife were visiting a neighbouring village, teaching the people, and this old man found courage to go and tell them his story, and show them his arm. Then the wound was green, the bones protruding, and he was in a hopeless condition.