They exchanged greetings with Kebocu and asked his business.
“Where is the antelope for the white man’s soup?” he asked.
They explained that we had failed to catch any on the day previous, and that they were expecting our arrival at any time, and then the animal would be dispatched immediately.
His answer was to raise and load his gun, an action not understood by the old men, who simply stood still waiting. Calling to a woman who was crossing the road to get out of the way, he fired. The shot passed through Bomoya’s thigh, disabling him; but old Isekasofa, stooping down to hide behind his friend, received the bullet in his breast, and dropped dead on the spot.
Just as the deed was done, we all rushed into the village with our antelopes, proving the truth [[102]]of what the old men had said. We heard all about the shooting from the woman who had seen it all, and whose husband was a workman of the white men of God. Kebocu himself ran away when he saw us all come into the village.
Basofa, the son of Isekasofa, and another man picked up the corpse, put it on a bier of forest poles, and set off with many others of us to tell our sorrowful story to the white man of God.
We arrived first at the school-house where Mama, the white woman, was teaching the children; when she saw us and our burden she was much grieved, for Isekasofa was a friend of the white people and had visited them only a few days previously. We went on to the dwelling-house, and told our story to the two white men of God, who sympathised with us in our sorrow, and wrote a letter to the white man of rubber about the outrage.
We went on to the rubber compound, and waited there a long time, because the white man had gone to the river. He kept us so long waiting to show him the corpse of Isekasofa (he knew why we were there, for messengers had been sent to tell him) that, sitting there in the heat of the midday sun, we became very angry, and some of our people even set out to attack [[103]]the village of which Kebocu, the sentry, was a native.
At last the white man came and listened to our story, but he seemed so strange that we thought—of course we did not know—that he had been drinking the strong palm-wine of Europe which makes people dizzy in their heads. Once a white man gave some to one of our people, and he was quite foolish after it.
We were persuaded not to attack Kebocu’s village, as the white man would see that he was punished; and we went back to our own place to weep for and bury our dead, and attend to the wounded man.