The king, however, apparently continued to ponder on the affair, for presently he sent for the tall physician.
“Yagoube,” said the king, “did you soberly say to Guebra Mascal that an end of a tallow candle, in a gun in your hand, would do more execution than an iron bullet in his?”
Said Bruce—“Will piercing the table on which your dinner is served (it was of sycamore, about three-quarters of an inch thick) at the length of this room be deemed a sufficient proof of what I advanced?”
“Ah, Yagoube,” said the king, “take care what you say.”
Now follows an odd scene. Yagoube the stranger calls for a gun, and under the eagerly curious eye of the king and some attendants loads it with half of “a farthing candle.” Slaves then bring forth three stout battle shields of toughest and thickest bull hide, and set them one behind the other. One feels the incredulity, the sense of something miraculous about to happen, even the little touch of awe.
Now comes quiet, the aiming of the gun, a crash, and a palace room full of pungent powder smoke. Yagoube’s half of a farthing candle has pierced all three shields. Then comes the turning on its side of the royal table, and another roar; the candle has passed through the table top!
The principle involved is a simple matter of physics, but such learning of the devil had not yet arrived in Abyssinia. The prestige which Yagoube’s height, composed manner, and well-born air had already won for him was enormously increased. The old Ras presently heard of it, and begged the tall physician to repeat his miracle. “Magic!” said the Abyssinian priests, yet bore their guest no ill will; the exploit was visible proof of the world by which they lived.
Bruce now brought to light the mission which had really led him to Abyssinia. He was in search of the source of the Blue Nile, the true Nile of the ancients. The other half of the mystery, the source of the White Nile, the Nile of the inundations, apparently did not stir the eighteenth century mind, and it was not till 1856, when Burton and Speke arrived at the great Nyanza lakes, that the true source of the floods became known to modern Europeans. There is interesting evidence that the Romans possessed the secret, for Nero sent “two centurions” up the river, who returned with the report that it arose amid “great lakes.”
Yagoube’s notion of “going to see a river and a bog, no part of which he could take away” seemed incomprehensible to his hosts, and they were very loath to let him go into the wild, half-hostile hinterland. Coming to some realisation that his friend’s wish to reach the ancient river was the ambition of his life, the king solemnly invested Yagoube Bruce, the Laird of Kinnaird, with the feudal overlordship of the district of Geesh in which the springs of the Nile arose.
The road between the capital and his fief was a dangerous one, for it wound through the territories of a quasi-independent native prince named Fasil, and this prince was hostile to the then rulers of Abyssinia. Would not Yagoube, their friend, remain with them in the safety of the capital? Bruce, however, rose to the challenge to his courage and resolution.