“Tush, boy! be not too hasty with thy tongue. Ferodia is chief in his own right of a large tract of country. Dost thou wish me to take that from him which he has won by his spear and his bow?” asked Katalambula, slightly frowning.
“He has not won by himself, with his sword and his spear, the battle against the Arabs. Fight hundred of the ten hundred warriors he has with him are thine, taken from thy country. Wilt thou that he shall choose for himself what he shall please to reserve, or wilt thou choose what he shall have and what thou wilt keep?”
“Boy, boy, Ferodia is the chief warrior of the Watuta; he knows every art of war. He has never been beaten in the battle, either by the Wabena, or the Warungu, or the Wawemba, or any other; and though I have furnished him with men, he has always given me the greater and the most valuable share. Why wilt thou, who art but a boy, tell me these things concerning Ferodia? Be patient; I will ask him when he comes for these slaves for thee. But had it not been for the good deed this man did for thee, I should have ordered Ferodia to roast them all alive. Go thou, rather, and do thy duty towards these travellers; give them food and drink; and when they have rested, give each a house. Then let my daughter Lamoli be given to Moto for wife; and to this tall man give one of my female slaves for wife. Katalambula has spoken.”
While the King was speaking he was evidently getting more peevish, for he was old and soon tired; so Kalulu refrained from taxing his patience further, and beckoning to Moto and Simba, he walked away with his guests, leaving the King to be assisted by his chiefs to his quarters.
When young Kalulu arrived at his own house, or rather room—for the entire square was surrounded but by one house—he again embraced Moto, and promised to leave no stone unturned until he had secured the freedom of the Arab boys. “But,” said Kalulu, “it is well for them that you are my friend, as I do not think I can ever forgive the Arabs for murdering my father; and the King finds it very hard to do this thing for you, because in Mostana he lost a brother; and those of our tribe who have travelled far to hunt and kill elephants always come back with tales of their cruelty. I fear if Ferodia insists on their being slaves my uncle will not resist him; for, but for you, nothing would please him better than to torture them, and I should have liked it too.”
“Oh, Kalulu,” said Moto, “you do not know Selim. He would never have treated a man badly, neither did his father. Simba and I were proud to be slaves of such a man as Amer bin Osman, and we were proud to call Selim our young master. Do you know that Selim is just your age, though you are taller than he is, and you are thinner than he was; though, poor boy! he will be thin enough when he comes here. But how you have grown, Kalulu! yet you cannot be more than sixteen years old!”
“I do not know how old I am,” Kalulu said, laughing. “I wae little when I saw you, or you would never have caught me. But I must do what the King has commanded me to do.” And Kalulu darted out, spear in hand, his ostrich plumes trailing over his head far behind.
Perhaps here would be a fit place to intercalate a description of the native youth whose name forms the title-page to this strange historical romance.
Since ancient Greece displayed the forms of her noblest, finest youth in the Olympian games, and gave her Phidias and Praxiteles models to immortalise in marble, all civilised nations have borrowed their ideas of manly beauty from the statues left to us by Grecian and Roman sculptors, because civilised nations seldom can furnish us with models to compete with the super-excellent types designed by Greece. While American and English sculptors go to Rome to play with marble and plaster, and borrow for their patterns of an athlete or perfect human form, the vulgar, low, and uncouth lazzaroni of Rome, the centre of Africa teems with finer specimens of manhood than may be found in this world; such types as would even cause the marble forms of Phidias to blush, Kalulu was one of the best specimens which the ancient sculptors would have delighted to imitate in stone. His face or head may not, perhaps, have kindled any very great admiration, but the body, arms, and limbs were unmistakably magnificent in shape. He had not an ounce of flesh too much, yet without the tedious training which the modern athlete has to undergo, and following nothing but the wild instinct of his adopted tribe, he was a perfect youthful Apollo in form. The muscles of his arms stood out like balls, and the muscles of his legs were as firm as iron. There was not one of the tribe of his age who could send a spear so far, or draw the bow with so true and steady aim as he, or could shoot the arrow farther. None had such a springy, elastic movement as he, none was so swift of foot, none followed the chase with his ardour, none was so daring in the attack; yet with all that constant exercise, the following of which had given him these advantages, his form lost nothing of that surpassing grace of movement and manly beauty for which he was styled by me, just now, a perfect youthful Apollo.
If I give him such praise for his elegance of form and free graceful carriage, I may not continue in the same strain in the description of his face. Kalulu was a negro, but his colour was not black by any means, it was a deep brown or bronze. His lips were thick, and, according to our ideas, such as would not lend beauty to his face; his nose was not flat, neither was it as correct in shape as we would wish it; but, with the exception of lips and nose, one could find no fault with his features. His eyes were remarkably large, brilliant, sparkling, and black as the blackest ink, while the whites of his eyes were not disfigured by the slightest tinge of unhealthy yellow, nor seamed with the red veins common to negroes of older growth. His ears were small and shapely, and, strange to say, the lobes were not as yet distorted out of all form with the pieces of wood or gourd-necks, which, unhappily, with the Watuta, are too common among their ear ornaments. His ears were simply decorated with two Sungomazzi beads, (these beads are as large as a pigeon’s egg, and are either of coloured porcelain or coloured glass) one to each ear, each bead suspended by a piece of very fine brass wire. His hair, though woolly, hung below his shoulders in a thousand fine braids, adorned with scores of fine red, yellow, and white beads. His ornaments, besides those already mentioned, consisted of three snow-white ostrich plumes, fastened in a band which ran around his head, and which, besides holding the plumes, served to hold his hair; a braided necklace, ivory bands above each elbow, and ivory bracelets, and broad bead-worked anklets.