Even those who had helped to supply the magnificence were impressed and comforted.
"I have lent Arachi two bags of salt," said Pidini, the chief of Kolombolo, the fishing village, "and my stomach was full of doubt, though he swore by Death that he would repay me three days after the rains. Now I see that he is indeed very rich, as he told me he was, and if my salt does not return to me I may seize his fine bed."
In another village across the River Ombili, a headman of the Isisi confided to his wife:
"Woman, you have seen the hut of Arachi, now I think you will cease your foolish talk. For you have reproached me bitterly because I lent Arachi my fine bed."
"Lord, I was wrong," said the woman meekly; "but I feared he would not pay you the salt he promised; now I know that I was foolish, for I saw many bags of salt in his hut."
The story of Arachi's state spread up and down the river, and when the borrower demanded the hand of Koran, the daughter of the chief of the Putani ("The Fishers of the River"), she came to him without much palaver, though she was rather young.
A straight and winsome girl well worth the thousand rods and the twenty bags of salt which the munificent Arachi promised, by Death, devils, and a variety of gods, should be delivered to her father when the moon and the river stood in certain relative positions.
Now Arachi did no manner of work whatever, save to walk through the village street at certain hours clad in a robe of monkey tails which he had borrowed from the brother of the king of the Isisi.
He neither fished nor hunted nor dug in the fields.
He talked to Koran his wife, and explained why this was so. He talked to her from sunset until the early hours of the morning, for he was a great talker, and when he was on his favourite subject—which was Arachi—he was very eloquent. He talked to her till the poor child's head rocked from side to side, and from front to back, in her desperate sleepiness.