“Him say much,” he declared. “Too much me tell. But him mean Prophet bad man, take away honor from Mfum-ba so him be cast out by tribe unless him save face. Him say he help white men kill Prophet.”
“We don’t want to kill The Prophet but to capture him,” said Mr. Hampton. “Look here, you ask him if he’ll help us capture him and carry him away?”
When this was translated, Mfum-ba shook his head in emphatic assurance. Quite evidently he was willing to go any length to be rid of an obnoxious rival.
CHAPTER XXVII
JACK WORKS FAST
Thereupon the four white men together with the medicine man and the interpreter put their heads together, with what result will presently be seen. And at length the Wizard Mfum-ba, after first poking an opening in the straw wall with a finger and peering out, parted the thatch sufficiently to permit him to slip out the way he had come.
“Well, things are looking up,” said Jack. “But one thing puzzles me. Just one little thing. Did you all notice that out there in the square, whenever the old fellow spoke, his words were preceded by a peculiar rattling sound, a sound which caused a look of awe to appear on the faces of many of his hearers?”
“Oh, that nothing,” said the interpreter, with the superiority of a man who has come in contact with civilizing influences and has lost his awe of home town ways. “Him carry li’l bag, made of skin, underneath him robe, filled with pebbles. When him want to fool somebody him rattle bag and say spirits talk. My uncle,” he added, “him medicine man, too.”
At this naive remark, his auditors laughed heartily.
“Well, now, if there’s anything to that medicine man, Chief Namla is due to appear,” said Mr. Ransome.
And scarcely had the words been uttered than one of the guards putting his head inside the doorway announced the chief wanted them in the square.