Stas pondered again.
"No," he finally said, "I can neither take the 'bibi' to a battle nor leave her alone, and I will not do it for anything in the world."
At this Kali rose and folding his hands began to repeat incessantly:
"Luela! Luela! Luela!"
"What is 'Luela'?" Stas asked.
"A great boma for Wahima and Samburu women," the young negro replied.
And he began to relate extraordinary things. Now Fumba and Mamba had been engaged in continual warfare with each other for a great many years. They laid waste to the plantations of each other and carried away cattle. But there was a locality on the southern shore of the lake, called Luela, at which even during the fiercest war the women of both nations assembled in the market-place with perfect safety. It was a sacred place. The war raged only between men; no defeats or victories affected the fate of the women, who in Luela, behind a clay enclosure surrounding a spacious market-place, found an absolutely safe asylum. Many of them sought shelter there during the time of hostilities, with their children and goods. Others came from even distant villages with smoked meat, beans, millet, manioc, and various other supplies. The warriors were not allowed to fight a battle within a distance of Luela which could be reached by the crowing of a rooster. They were likewise not permitted to cross the clay rampart with which the market-place was surrounded. They could only stand before the rampart and then the women would give them supplies of food attached to long bamboo poles. This was a very ancient custom and it never happened that either side violated it. The victors also were always concerned that the way of the defeated to Luela should be cut off and they did not permit them to approach the sacred place within a distance which could be reached by a rooster's crow.
"Oh, great master!" Kali begged, again embracing Stas' knees, "great master, lead 'the bibi' to Luela, and you yourself take the King, take Kali, take the rifle, take fiery snakes and rout the wicked Samburus."
Stas believed the young negro's narrative, for he had heard that in many localities in Africa war does not include women. He remembered how at one time in Port Said a certain young German missionary related that in the vicinity of the gigantic mountain, Kilima-Njaro, the immensely warlike Massai tribe sacredly observed this custom, by virtue of which the women of the contending parties walked with perfect freedom in certain market-places and were never subject to attack. The existence of this custom on the shores of Bassa-Narok greatly delighted Stas, for he could be certain that no danger threatened Nell on account of the war. He determined also to start with the little maid without delay for Luela, all the more because before the termination of the war they could not think of a further journey for which not only the aid of the Wahimas but that of the Samburus was necessary.
Accustomed to quick decisions, he already knew how he should act. To free Fumba, to rout the Samburus but not to permit a too bloody revenge, and afterwards to command peace and reconcile the belligerents, appeared to him an imperative matter not only for himself but also most beneficial for the negroes. "Thus it should be and thus it shall be!" he said to himself in his soul, and in the meantime, desiring to comfort the young negro for whom he felt sorry, he announced that he did not refuse aid.