The days now dragged themselves away upon leaden feet, yet—apparent paradox—with frightful rapidity; for I now no longer had a household to attend to my wants; my meals were brought to me with unfailing regularity by my guards, but they had apparently been forbidden to communicate with me, for not a word could I get out of them, good, bad, or indifferent. I was not permitted to show myself in the doorway of my dwelling, or even to approach it nearly enough to see what was going on; and in this dreadful solitude, waiting and hoping for I knew not what impossible happening to occur and effect my deliverance, each day seemed to drag itself out to the length of a month—until the darkness came; and then, with the realisation of the fact that I was so much nearer to a hideous fate, the hours seemed suddenly to have sped with lightning swiftness. The excited buzz and bustle of preparation pervaded the town all day, and every day, while night again became a pandemonium of barbarous sounds—for the tom-tom and flageolet concerts had been resumed with tenfold virulence since my incarceration—and on one occasion a terrific uproar announced the arrival of the unhappy prisoners who had been captured, in order that the festival might lose nothing of its importance or impressiveness through lack of a sufficient tale of victims; but I could not detect any indications of an attempt on the part of any one to communicate with me; and at length the latent hope that Ama’s boast of her influence with her father might be verified, and that she might succeed in inducing the king to spare me, died out, and I began to prepare myself, as best I could, to meet whatever fate might have in store for me with the fortitude befitting a Christian and an Englishman. But do not suppose that all this while I was supinely and tamely acquiescing in the fate that awaited me. Far from it. For the first few days of my captivity my brain was literally seething with schemes for effecting my escape, most of them wildly impossible, I admit; but some there were that seemed to promise just a ghost of a chance of success—until I attempted to put them into effect, when the vigilance of my guards—with the fear of crucifixion, head downward, before their eyes—invariably baffled me.
Thus the time passed on until the first day of the Customs dawned, when, having received a more than usually substantial meal, I was stripped of the few rags that still covered my nakedness, and, with my hands tightly bound behind me by a thin but strong raw-hide rope, was led forth to the great square wherein the Customs were celebrated, and firmly bound to one of the posts, the erection of which I had witnessed a week earlier. Of course I was but one of many who were to gasp out their lives in this dreadful Aceldama; and in a very short time each post, or stake, was decorated with its own separate victim, some of whom, it seemed, were to perish by the torture of fire, for after the victims had been secured to the stakes, huge bundles of faggots, composed of dry twigs and branches, were piled around some of them. What the fate of the rest of us was to be there was nothing to indicate, but I had no doubt that it would be something quite as dreadful as fire; and I had fully made up my mind that when my turn came I would endeavour, by insult and invective, to goad my tormentors to such a state of fury and exasperation as should provoke them to finish me off quickly.
All being now ready, the gate in the palisade was thrown open, a conch-shell was blown, and the waiting inhabitants began to pour into the enclosure with all the eagerness and excitement of an audience crowding into the unreserved portions of a theatre, and in a very short time the great square was full, the front ranks pressing close up to a cordon of armed guards that had been drawn round the circle of posts. Then, while the air vibrated with the hum and murmur of many excited tongues, shouts and a disturbance in the direction of the palace proclaimed the approach of the king and his household, and presently the entire party, numbering some three hundred, passed in and made their way to a kind of grand-stand, from which an admirable view of all the proceedings was to be obtained. I looked for Ama, but could not see her; Gouroo, however, was present and favoured me with a smile of malicious triumph. Banda himself took not the slightest notice of my presence.
No sooner were the royal party seated than a commotion on the opposite side of the square portended another arrival; and in a few minutes, through a narrow lane that had been formed in the dense mass of people, Mafuta and his myrmidons, to the number of nearly a hundred, came leaping and bounding into the open space beneath the crucifixion tree. Daubed all over their naked bodies with black, white, and red paint, with their hair gathered into a knot on the crown of the head, and decorated with long feathers, strings of big beads, and long strips of scarlet cloth—obtained from goodness knows where—with necklaces of birds’ and animals’ claws about their necks, and girdles of animals’ entrails round their waists, they presented as hideous and revolting a picture as can possibly be imagined as they went careering madly round the circle, each man waving a long spear over his head. Now I noticed a curiously subdued but distinct commotion among the spectators of the front rank, each of whom seemed anxious to surrender his apparently advantageous position to whomsoever might be willing to accept it. But, singularly enough, no one seemed desirous to avail himself of his neighbour’s generosity; and the reason soon became apparent; for presently, in the midst of their wild bounding round the inner edge of the tightly packed mass of spectators, they came to a sudden halt, and Mafuta, advancing alone, proceeded to “smell out” those who were supposed to be inimical to the king’s or his own authority, or against whom either of them had a secret grudge. With his body bent, his head thrust forward, and his nostrils working, he slowly passed along the inner face of the crowd, his shifty eyes darting hither and thither, until his gaze happened to fall upon one of the individuals for whom he was looking, when he would come to a halt, appear to be following a scent, and finally stretch forth his spear and lightly smite some man or woman on the head with it. The unhappy victim, thus “smelled out,” would thereupon be instantly taken in charge by Mafuta’s followers, and the process would be repeated until all those whose removal was desired had been gathered in. In the present case the victims numbered nearly a hundred, and the finding of them consumed the best part of two hours.
The process of “smelling out” being at an end, and those who had passed the ordeal unscathed being relieved of all further apprehension, the enormous crowd which had gathered to witness the “sports” settled down to thoroughly enjoy itself. And certainly there was a very commendable celerity manifested by those who had the direction of affairs; there was no disposition to keep the holiday-makers waiting; the unhappy victims were led up, one after the other, before King Banda, and their supposed crimes very briefly recited to him, whereupon his Majesty, with equal brevity, pronounced their sentence—in all cases that of death—which was at once carried out, the only difference consisting in the mode of execution; some of the unfortunate wretches being secured to the crucifixion tree in one way, some in another; but it was very difficult for a mere onlooker to decide which of the plans adopted inflicted the most suffering. These victims, it should be explained, were doomed to remain fastened to the tree until death should ensue from hunger, thirst, exposure, and the agony of their wounds.
Then, in batches of ten at a time, forty more victims were triced up to the boughs of this accursed tree by raw-hide ropes fastened to one wrist or one ankle, in such positions that their bodies showed clearly against the bright background of sky; and, while thus suspended, whosoever would was at liberty to shoot at them with bows and arrows, the great object being, apparently, to pierce the body with as many arrows as possible without inflicting a mortal injury. King Banda evidently prided himself upon his skill in this direction. But there were a few bunglers among the crowd, for some of the shots went so far astray that instead of hitting the mark at which they were supposed to be aimed, they hit and slew some half-a-dozen of the crucified ones. I wondered whether by any chance the fatal wounds were actually inflicted by interested persons who desired to put as speedy an end as possible to the sufferings of their unfortunate friends; and if so, whether the idea would occur to Ama to enlist the services of a few good marksmen in my behalf when my turn should come.
When all those who had been condemned to die in the above manner had perished, a further variety was imparted to the proceedings by compelling some fifty victims to “run the gauntlet.” This is a very favourite form of pastime among savages, and is carried out in a variety of ways. In the present instance a narrow circular course was arranged round the great square, a lane of about a yard in width being formed through the mass of spectators, and into this lane the victims, stripped naked, were introduced, one at a time, to run round and round until beaten to death by the bare fists of as many as could get in a blow at them. And, since the lane was so exceedingly narrow, it happened that practically every individual on either side of the lane was able to get in at least one blow. To the uninitiated this may seem a not particularly inhumane form of inflicting the death punishment; but I, who saw the whole remaining part of the day spent in doing some fifty poor wretches to death in that fashion, can tell a very different story; there is no need to enter into details, but I may say that those who were weakest, and who succumbed most quickly, were to be most envied.
The day had opened with a cloudless sky and brilliant sunshine; but, as the hours dragged themselves slowly away, clouds, light and filmy at first but gradually growing more dense and threatening, began to gather, until toward evening the sun became blotted out and the whole vault of heaven grew overcast and louring, as though nature, horrified and disgusted at the orgy of human cruelty being enacted here on this little spot of earth, were veiling her face to shut out the shameful sight. By the time that the proceedings of the day were over and the enormous crowd began to disperse, it became evident that a more than usually violent tropical thunderstorm was brewing, although it might be some hours yet before it would burst over the blood-stained town. Naturally, I was very thankful that the awful day had passed over, and that its end found me still in the land of the living; for “while there is life there is hope,” and in the course of my somewhat adventurous career I have seen so many extraordinary escapes from apparently inevitable disaster that the one piece of advice above all others which I would give to everybody is “Never despair!” I can recall more than one occasion when, if I had abandoned hope and the effort which goes with it, I should not now have been alive to pen these words. No man can ever know what totally unexpected happening may occur to effect his deliverance at the very moment when fate looks blackest and most threatening. But although I had passed through the day unscathed, so far as actual bodily injury was concerned, it had nevertheless been a day of suffering for me, growing ever more acute as the hours dragged wearily away, for, apart from the feelings of horror with which I had witnessed the display of so much unimaginable cruelty and torture, the bonds which confined me to my post had been drawn so tightly as greatly to impede the circulation of blood through my extremities, until by the time that the great square was empty of its crowd of bloodthirsty revellers, the anguish had become so great that I was almost in a fainting condition and could give but scant attention to anything beyond the pangs that racked every nerve of my tortured body; in fact I observed, with feelings of envy, that many of my fellow-sufferers had already succumbed and become unconscious, if indeed they were not dead. However, since we had been spared thus far, I concluded that we might reasonably hope to be reprieved at least until the next day, and I looked with impatience to be released and conveyed back to my place of confinement until dawn should again summon me forth to witness and, peradventure, be the victim of accumulative horrors.
But I soon discovered that even this small measure of mercy was to be denied me; food and drink were indeed to be served out to us—in order, as I surmised, that we might meet the ordeal in store for us with unabated strength—but the night was to be passed, as the day had been, secured to the sacrificial post, exposed, naked and helpless, to the elements and to the myriad insect plagues that attacked us unceasingly. I noted that while those who had not succumbed to their sufferings were fed as they stood still bound to their posts, those who had become unconscious were temporarily released, and revived by being copiously soused with water, and, further, were allowed to eat and drink while seated on the ground, before they were lashed up afresh; and I took the hint, feigning insensibility for the sake of the few minutes of temporary relief that I hoped thus to win.
By the time that the attendants reached me I was so near to swooning that very little pretence was necessary, and when at length they released me I sank to the ground in a heap with a low groan. I gathered from their remarks that they were seriously concerned at my condition, for it seemed that I was reserved for some very especial refinement of torture, the satisfactory application of which demanded that I must come to it in the possession of my full strength, which they feared had been seriously sapped by the suffering which I had already endured, and they freely expressed their concern lest, under existing circumstances, I should not furnish quite so much sport as was being expected of me. They therefore displayed real solicitude in their efforts to revive me, which I took especial care they should not accomplish too quickly. But, oh, what exquisite torment was mine when, my bonds being released, the blood once more began to circulate through my benumbed members! I could have screamed aloud with the excruciating agony, had not my pride prevented me; and it was a full hour before I had sufficiently recovered the use of my hands to enable me to convey food and drink to my lips. The food and drink provided for me were of an especially nourishing character, and when at length I had partaken of as much as I could force down my throat I was again lashed to my stake, but this time so carefully that, while for me to loose my bonds was an impossibility, the circulation of blood was in nowise impeded; and for even this small mercy I was inexpressibly grateful.