"Often have I sat here and talked with him, and well do I remember his teaching."
"Let us hear, mother," said Compton.
"He taught us how to till the land, so that it would produce other crops than manioc. The men he showed how to win iron from the rock, and how to forge the spear-heads and the hoes for the tilling. Medicine he made from the leaves and the juices of the trees, and he bade the women keep clean the huts and the place around the village. But the thing he said most was that living here in peace, in a place set aside for the weak, it was well we saw that no strangers who came in should ever leave. For, said he, the strong will take from the weak."
"This is a small place," said Venning—"too small for any people to fight over."
"I thought I heard the sound of battle in the valley but two days since."
"It might serve Hassan as a robber's den; but I spoke of other people—white men, mother."
"Since I had ears to hear the meaning of words," she said, "the talk was ever of white men, and one 'white man' warned us against those very men who eat up the land and the waters."
"But what use would this little spot be to them? In a short time it will be too small for your own people."
"When that day comes, O Spider, we would be free to go to the land of my fathers, where my son will find his kraal."
"You will want many canoes, mother, when that day comes."