Towards evening the king sent to “comfort” them; it was very condescending of him. The “comfort” lay in the information that at sunrise next day they would be led out to die, by spear or by knife, as they might choose.
Meanwhile, poor Essequibo’s chains were knocked off, and he was led away to his fattening pen.
Such is life in Central Africa. But stranger things still befell our heroes.
Chapter Twenty.
Land of Darkness.
Scene: The interior of King ’Ntango’s palace. The king seated on a mat in the middle of the floor of the principal apartment—a large square room with walls of mud and grass. The only furniture, a tall tom-tom, a mat-covered dais, and a heap of empty stone bottles in a corner. Those bottles once contained gin.
It is near sunset, the king is alone. There is no sound to break the silence, except the tap, tap, tap the gecko lizards that crawl on the walls make, as they beat to death the moths they catch.