On reaching the Abum River which is quite close to Insofan, Ewa Abagi went to bathe, and took her little daughter with her, putting down her cloth and beads on the ground. As the river was very shallow, it being the dry season, they walked and waded down to the Cross River.
When she got there, she washed her daughter and then called upon Mossim to scrub her back. The slave woman then came up behind her mistress, and pushed her into the Cross River, where she at once disappeared.
When the little girl, whose name was Essere, saw that her mother had gone, she began to cry, but Mossim said, “Do not cry. You must call me your mother, and I will treat you well. When we get to the town, you must not tell anyone that I am not your mother, or I will punish you severely.”
She then dressed the child and put on the cloth and beads of Ewa Abagi herself, having just tied up her own clothes into a bundle with some stones and thrown them into the Cross River.
Mossim and the child then walked on to Insofan, and, when they got there, the slave woman went to Chief Awor’s house and said, “I am Ewa Abagi whom you wanted to marry, and this (turning to the little girl) is my daughter Essere.” The chief welcomed her, but was not very pleased, as he had expected to see a much finer woman from all the reports he had heard of her beauty.
When the people of Insofan heard that the chief’s new wife had arrived, many of them went to see her, as she was so well known by name. When they saw Mossim, they were not greatly impressed by her looks, and said so quite freely in very plain terms.
Now, one of the young men of the town, who had been down the river trading, knew Ewa Abagi very well indeed, and, when he saw the slave woman, he recognized her as the servant, so he told Chief Awor. The chief said, “Very well, I hear what you say, and will not marry the woman at present. We will wait for a time, and I will make enquiries.”
In the morning Mossim told the girl to go and get water from the spring, and the little girl went off with the water pot on her head. Essere, however, did not go to the spring as she had been told, but went to the place where she had seen the slave woman push her mother into the water. She then sat down and began to cry for her mother.
When Ewa Abagi heard her daughter crying, she came out of the river and talked to her. She then painted her daughter with okukum,[1] and having helped the child with the water pot, she returned to the river, and Essere went home.
When she arrived at the house, Mossim asked her who had painted her with okokum and why she had been so long getting the water from the spring. The child did not answer, so the slave woman said to her, “Don’t you be so long another time, or you will get into trouble.”