“I am very sick, O Dick; my entrails are being burnt up within me! Cure me at once and I will give thee my daughter Ama as thy wife and make thee a powerful chief!”
“I thank thee, Banda, for thy magnificently generous promises,” answered I, “but I will gladly do my utmost for thee without reward. Tell me, now, how long hast thou been like this?”
“Not very long,” answered the king; “perhaps while the sun has been climbing thus far,”—describing with his hand the arc of a circle measuring about seven degrees, or, say, half an hour—“I had just finished my breakfast when the pains seized me.”
“Ah!” remarked I, trying to look as though I knew all about it; “and of what did thy breakfast consist?”
“Of very little, for I am but a moderate eater,” answered the king. Let me consider. There was, first, a broiled fish, fresh from the river, with boiled yams; then a few roast plantains—not more than a dozen, I think; then the roast rib of a cow; a few handfuls of boiled rice; and—yes, I think that was all, except a bowl of jaro’—the latter being a kind of native beer.
It occurred to me that, probably, after this very “moderate” meal, his Majesty might be suffering from indigestion, although the “burning” pains in the stomach puzzled me a bit. I therefore came to the conclusion that if vomiting could be freely induced almost immediate relief ought to follow; and I accordingly prescribed the only emetic which I could think of at the moment, namely, copious draughts of warm water, followed by tickling the back of the throat with a feather. These means were so far successful that the patient acknowledged a certain measure of relief; but after a time the burning pains recurred and seemed to become more acute than ever, to my profound dismay; for, goaded almost to madness by the intensity of his suffering, the king was rapidly growing as dangerous as a wounded buffalo, and, between the paroxysms of his anguish, began to threaten all and sundry with certain pains and penalties, the mere enumeration of which made my flesh creep and plunged me into a cold perspiration.
At length, after a more than usually intense paroxysm of pain had passed, Gouroo, Banda’s favourite wife, who was present, and whose virulent animosity I had been unfortunate enough to arouse, bent over the patient and whispered something in his ear, the purport of which I could not catch. But it was a suggestion, the nature of which I was able to divine without difficulty, for, by way of reply, Banda ejaculated between his groans:
“Yes, yes; let Mafuta be instantly summoned. And as for the white man, let the presumptuous pretender be closely confined in his own hut until I can decide upon the nature of his punishment. Away with him at once; and if he is allowed to escape, the guards who have him in charge shall be nailed, head downward, to the crucifixion tree!”
Gouroo smiled a smile of triumphant malice as, in reply to her summons, two guards entered, and, seizing me roughly, hurried me away; while Ama, bathed in tears, flung herself upon her knees beside her father’s couch and vainly besought him to have mercy upon me. As I passed out of the room I saw the king, writhing in agony, rise upon his couch and strike the poor girl a violent blow, while he bellowed a fierce command to her to withdraw from his sight.
It was nearly noon when I was conducted back to my hut after my futile attempt to cure the king; and it was not until close upon sunset that I got any further news, when one of the guards who had me in charge informed me, as he brought in my supper, that Mafuta had completely cured the king within an hour of the moment when he was first summoned to his Majesty’s bedside; that Banda had already risen from his couch; and that, in requital for his service, Mafuta had claimed—and been granted—the right to dispose of me as he pleased upon the occasion of the forthcoming festival of the Customs! Which meant, of course, that I was to die by some exquisite refinement of torture, the nature of which would probably be too dreadful for description. For I very shrewdly suspected that Gouroo and Mafuta were equally interested in my downfall—might, indeed, have conspired in some mysterious manner to bring it about—and would probably take care that it should be as complete and disastrous as savage vindictiveness could make it.