“Jambo he! Jambo sana!”
When the women, who were very busy digging up the manioc roots, heard his voice, they sprang up and stood as if rooted to the spot; but this quiet only lasted a moment, for they began to scream and run off toward the trees, in the midst of which the village lay, in their excitement leaving their hoes and rakes behind them.
The small wanderers approached this village slowly and silently. The thicket resounded with the howling of several hundred voices; then silence reigned. At last the hollow, penetrating beating of a drum was heard, which continued incessantly for some time.
This was evidently to call the warriors to war, for suddenly more than three hundred of them appeared from out of the bushes, and they all stood in one long line before the village. When a hundred feet distant Stasch brought King to a standstill and began to look at them. The sun beat down on their well-formed bodies, on their broad chests, and their strong shoulders. They were armed with bows and spears. Around their hips they wore short skirts of heather or monkey skin. Their heads were adorned with ostrich and parrot feathers or large wigs made of baboons’ scalps. They looked warlike and menacing, but stood silent and immovable, for they were so utterly astonished that their inclination to fight was kept within bounds. All eyes were fixed on King, on the white palanquin, and on the white person sitting on the neck of the elephant.
And yet elephants were not strangers to them. On the contrary, they were continually at the mercy of elephants, for at night whole herds would destroy their manioc fields and their plantations of bananas and palms. As spears and arrows can not pierce an elephant’s hide, the poor negroes fought against the mischief-makers by means of fire and screams, in which they imitated the crowing of cocks, and they dug out trenches and made traps with tree trunks. But they had never seen an elephant made the slave of man and allowing him to sit on its neck; and none of them was able to account for this extraordinary sight. What they saw so transcended their wildest imaginations that they did not know what course to pursue—whether to fight or to run away as fast as their feet could carry them and leave the rest to chance. Full of doubt, fear, and surprise, they continually whispered to one another:
“Oh, mother! What are these beings who come here to us, and how will they be disposed toward us?”
Kali, who had ridden up to within a spear’s throw of them, raised himself up in his stirrups and cried:
“People, people! Listen to the voice of Kali, the son of Fumba, the powerful king of the Wa-himas, who live on the banks of the Basso-Narok— Oh, hear, hear!— And if you understand him, listen to every word he is going to say!”
“We understand,” rang the answer from three hundred throats.
“Let your king advance, let him tell me his name, and let him open his ears and lips so that he can hear better.”