“Not only did she tell me how thou wert called, but she described thee to me, told me of thy huge stature and immense strength, how thou wert clothed, the wonderful weapon from which thou dost discharge thy lightnings, and even the great black beast which thou dost bestride!”
I fell into a rather uneasy reverie. Could this man be by any possibility telling the truth? The story was so astounding, so utterly incredible—and yet it was told so simply, and with such an utter lack of all straining after effect: the man made no attempt to impress me with the marvel of it all; his tone and manner were those of one who told of the most matter-of-fact, everyday occurrences. Besides, if he were not telling the truth, how could he possibly have come to know the name which had been given me by Lomalindela, the King of the Mashona?—for I was perfectly certain that he had had no opportunity to learn it from either of my own “boys.”
But if this and the other things that he had told me concerning Bimbane were indeed true, she must be a most extraordinary woman, endowed with strange and wonderful powers, and it might be that I should find her rather more than I could manage before I had done with her. To admit the possibility that she might indeed possess such uncanny powers led inevitably toward several very unpleasantly suggestive reflections; but with an effort I threw them off, for I had already determined to go through with the adventure, and would not allow myself to be diverted from my purpose by the thought of any possibilities, however unpleasant. Therefore I roused myself and continued my conversation with Pousa by describing the fight between the men-monkeys and its awful conclusion, and asked him to tell me what he could about both the beasts and the trees. He could not tell me much about either, but what he did tell was grim enough; for, with regard to the monkeys, he informed me that they were well known as the most ferocious beasts to be found in Bandokolo, and that a certain number were captured by means of pitfalls, in which they were permitted to remain until they were all but dead from starvation, when they were removed to Masakisale (the capital city), and carefully tended until they were restored to a condition of normal health and strength. Then they were used to test the guilt or otherwise of persons charged with offences of exceptional enormity; the test being made by setting the accused to fight with one or more of the brutes, when, if he conquered, it was presumed that he was innocent.
I naturally enquired whether anyone had ever thus succeeded in demonstrating his innocence, and was not surprised to be answered in the negative. Then I asked why, if Bimbane really knew all things, it was necessary to subject a suspect to such a test in order to determine his guilt or innocence, to which Pousa replied that, of course, the test was quite unnecessary, for the queen could always tell whether or not a man was guilty, and to sentence a prisoner to such an ordeal was equivalent to pronouncing him guilty and ordering his execution; but the form of trial was retained since it was one of the institutions of the country which had existed from time immemorial.
As to the tree, into the foliage of which the victorious monkey had flung his antagonist, I was told that it, like the monkeys, was indigenous to Bandokolo, and that one of its most gruesome peculiarities was the ghoulish avidity with which it enveloped any unfortunate individual or animal in its tentacle-like leaves and forthwith proceeded to absorb its victim into itself. These trees, Pousa added, were sometimes employed instead of the monkeys as a means for the disposal of criminals. “A truly charming country and people,” thought I, “apparently abounding in the most delightful characteristics!”
About half an hour before sunset we reached the foot of the mountains toward which we had been trekking all through the afternoon, and outspanned on the veld at the entrance to a pass which had revealed itself about an hour earlier.
The scenery in this pass, when we entered it on the following morning, proved to be very similar in character to that of the gorge through which we had passed on the previous day, before encountering Pousa and his troopers, but, if anything, even more wild, gloomy, and sombre; and I was not sorry when, about eleven o’clock, we emerged from it into a kind of basin, hemmed in on all sides by hills. Through the centre of this basin a narrow road ran, bordering a tiny rivulet which had its rise somewhere among the adjacent hills; and on either hand the ground was cultivated, maize, sugar cane, cassava, and fruit of various kinds being among its products, while the far end of the basin consisted of pasture land, upon which a herd of quite a thousand cattle were grazing. There were a few people at work in the field and orchards, pygmies, like Pousa and his band, but at sight of us they hastily retired, having been previously ordered—as I subsequently learned—to keep well out of our way and not intrude their presence upon us. There was no sign of buildings of any description, but when I questioned Pousa on the subject he drew my attention to a large number of almost invisible openings in the rocky sides of the encircling hills, which he told me were the entrances to the cave dwellings of this extraordinary people; and when I examined them through my telescope I discovered that the reason why these openings were so difficult to detect was because they were each choked with people staring intently out at us as we wound our way through the valley far below them. My telescope enabled me to discover that almost every opening, however small, was decorated with more or less carving, executed in the living rock; and beneath each I also noticed the little heap of débris which had been thrown out by the owner when he took possession of his cave and proceeded to enlarge its interior according to his wants.
We outspanned at the far end of the valley, where the pasture had been reserved, and spent the night there, having made a sort of forced march through the valley in order to reach grass for the cattle—that forced march, by the way, costing me one of my rapidly diminishing team of oxen.
On the following day we passed another of the extraordinary Bandokolo villages, and, on the day following that, two more, each being considerably larger than the preceding one, while the distance between them steadily decreased, so that on the tenth day after Pousa found us we passed through no less than five villages, the last two being within three miles of each other, and of such extent that I estimated each of them to contain at least four thousand inhabitants, if not more. And now, as every mile brought us appreciably nearer to Masakisale, the capital and the abode of the mysterious and redoubtable Queen Bimbane, it was no longer possible to keep the people at a distance, and I had abundant opportunity to study their appearance, manners, dress, and customs generally.
I feel bound to say that, taking into consideration all that I had heard about them, my first impression was distinctly favourable. For, pygmies though they were, they were as a rule perfectly formed; their colour was so light that it soon became scarcely noticeable; their expression was intelligent, and by no means unamiable, at least in the case of the women, while as for the latter, though real beauty might be rare it was certainly not entirely absent, and many of the younger ones were quite good-looking, if not actually pretty. In the matter of attire, the dress generally worn was admirably adapted to the tropical climate in which the wearers lived, that of the men consisting simply of a pair of tight-fitting drawers reaching to just above the knee, over which was worn a sleeveless shirt of thick silk, confined at the waist by a belt; while that of the women appeared to be a single garment of thick silk, generally white, but occasionally dyed, the favourite colours being a rich crimson, a sea green, and a very pale blue. But, apart from the soldiers, neither sex wore any head covering, their thick hair seeming to afford them all the protection needed from the fierce rays of the vertical sun; but both sexes wore a kind of buskin of soft leather reaching to just below the knee, the sole consisting of a shaped piece of thick hide stitched on to the under part of the buskin.