"Do they believe that stuff?" said Tom. "It's all nonsense."
Mwesa was not at all sure that he had not believed it himself, for how was a simple African to deny what was told him with such assurance? Indeed, even among the Germans, settlers and soldiers alike, in those early days of the war, no rumour was too fantastic to find easy credence. Conceit is a hotbed for credulity. But Tom's vigorous assertion that it was all nonsense was enough to convince Mwesa.
"Dey silly fellas, sah," he said scornfully. "Mwesa him English: he know all right."
Tom knew nothing of the relative strength of the British and German forces in East Africa; but having a Briton's invincible faith in the British Navy, he could not believe that the German colony, cut off from Europe as it must be, could really measure itself against the resources of the British Empire. But he remembered how, in the past, British carelessness and want of foresight had bred disasters only painfully retrieved, and he felt no little anxiety as to how far Northern Rhodesia was prepared to resist the expedition which the Germans were organising.
He was only the more eager to join his fellow-countrymen, and take his part in the fight, if fight there was to be. At school he had been colour-sergeant in the cadet corps, and looked back with reminiscent pleasure on the field days, when, in the intervals of business, he had munched apples in a farmer's orchard or solaced himself and his squad with junket in a dairy. "Rummy," he thought, "if all that swat were to turn out useful after all. But here it will be minus the apples and junket."
This being his state of mind, he was doubly curious about the healing properties of the stuff"--Mirambo's plasticine, he called it--that Mwesa had brought from his uncle. He was aware almost at once of a lessening of the pain in his ankle. After the second application the swelling was sensibly reduced; within a week he found himself able to walk freely. Mwesa took the cure as a matter of course.
"What's the stuff made of?" Tom asked him.
Mwesa shook his head gravely.
"Berry good medicine: Mirambo him savvy all same."
And that was all that Tom could get out of him.