Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full effect.
"By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,"[1] he said slowly and impressively, "were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found his magic box—which is full of devils of great power—Ro!"
He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.
There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.
Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.
"M'shimba M'shamba—he lives!" he roared, and the crash of thunder in the forest answered him.
Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest, for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed, having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened, lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.
Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali—the drum that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.
"O Secundi," said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, "I have not heard that call for many moons—for it is the war call of the N'gombi."
"Lord, it is no war call," said the old man, shifting his feet for greater comfort, "yet it is a call which may mean war, for it calls spears to a dance, and it is strange, for the N'gombi have no enemies."