In fact at this moment I saw a group of men busy over something at the narrow door of the boma; but the crowd was too great to see what it was. My first care was to attend to Knudsen’s arm, which was badly swollen, though I could discover no indication of a fracture. The only thing to be done, therefore, was to apply cold water bandages and support the arm in as easy a position as possible. Knudsen dropped into his chair like a log and sank into gloomy thought, while I went to look at the corpse. It was laid out on a kitanda or native bedstead, under a shady tree at the other end of the boma, and scantily covered with a cloth; the mouth was open, the glassy eyes staring vacantly. Hemedi Maranga came up and closed them, while I examined the injuries. I could find no serious wound; the tips of the fingers were crushed and bleeding, and the skin slightly grazed on the left temple, which also showed a moderate-sized swelling, but that was all. Notwithstanding this, the Wali and I agreed that the swelling must indicate the cause of death, and on feeling the head, we found that the skull was broken. The man must have received a terrible blow, but a blow with some soft object, otherwise the outside of the head would have been shattered.
The afternoon brought plenty of work. The dead man was sewn up in a piece of the sanda I had, in accordance with custom, brought with me, never dreaming that I should have to apply it to its traditional use. The grave was dug outside the boma just beyond the crest of the hill. I had fixed the time of the funeral at sunset; but about three I found that Wanduwandu’s friends and relations, thinking this too long to wait, had carried off the corpse in order to proceed with the obsequies on their own account; so that I had to send off my fleetest runner with orders to have it brought back again. At six my whole troop was drawn up on funeral parade. Here, too, I noticed the instinctive tact of the native; every man was in full-dress uniform, though I had given no orders to that effect, and Hemedi Maranga was wearing his medal. Of all the natives with whom I have come in contact, Wanduwandu attracted me most; he was a splendid figure of a man, the only one I ever saw who exemplified the “Herculean build” one so often hears of. At the same time he was quiet, dignified, and yet fully conscious of his strength. He had accompanied the expedition for some months, liked by all and hated by none. I felt it quite a matter of course that I should put on a clean white suit to convoy him on his last journey, though he was “only” a native.
I had already seen and photographed a number of Yao graves, but, apart from human sympathy, I was naturally interested in witnessing a native funeral, and therefore did not attempt to interfere in the least with the people’s arrangements. The grave had been dug of the same shape as in Europe, but much shallower, being not much over a yard in depth; and the men had also made it much too short. Two of the bystanders at once came forward to lengthen it, while the corpse was waiting to be lowered; but not altogether successfully, for if in future times any excavations are undertaken on that spot a skeleton will be found lying on its side, with the knees drawn up in a squatting position.[[70]] Mats were spread over the body to prevent its coming in contact with the bare earth, which the native likes to avoid, even in death. Now, however, comes an exotic touch. Daudi, the native pastor from Chingulungulu, had been with us for some days, having been sent for by me, that I might talk over some points in my notes with him. Wanduwandu had remained a heathen; in fact, when Knudsen and I, as we often did, asked him, teasingly, whether he would not rather become a Muslim, or even a Christian, he always shook his head with a calm air of superiority, and said that what was good enough for his fathers was good enough for him. Nevertheless, Daudi was in attendance at the grave, and now spoke a few words in Swahili, in which I clearly distinguished, “Udongo kwa udongo, majivu kwa majivu” (“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes”). A few boys—I had not previously known that there were any Christians at Mahuta—then sang a short hymn in hushed, grave voices, as the sun sank glowing in the west; Daudi softly uttered a prayer, and the first shovelfuls of yellow sand fell with a dull sound on the wrappings of the corpse. My soldiers marched away in precise order, the rest of the crowd followed, laughing and joking. Death? What more is there to say about it? It may happen any day; that cannot be helped. Kismet!
To-day, the visitor to Mahuta will find on the spot referred to, a plain, low, but well-built structure—a thatched roof supported on posts, and looking accurately east and west, with pieces of coloured calico fluttering in the breeze from its ridge-pole. This marks Wanduwandu’s grave.
WANDUWANDU’S GRAVE
But it was only after the funeral was over that Nils Knudsen’s mourning really began. In his speculative way, he has been brooding over the cause of death. It was directly caused—there can be no doubt about that—by the elephant, a huge, solitary brute—a “rogue,” in fact. Knudsen first fired a couple of shots at him, and then his followers, people from the Nkundi plain, poured a whole volley from their muzzle-loaders on the unlucky beast. The elephant sank on his knees, but pulled himself up again with his trunk, and charged the hunters. All at once made for the rendezvous agreed on, but Knudsen fell while running, spraining his arm and losing his gun, which was flung into the bushes by the shock of his fall. When, after some time, they missed Wanduwandu, Knudsen returned to the scene of the encounter and heard a low groaning. He thought at first that it proceeded from the wounded elephant, but soon found his faithful follower lying senseless under a heap of branches. Knudsen did not notice whether the elephant’s tracks passed close to this spot or not, and indeed even now he does not clearly recollect the details of the tragedy. It may be assumed with tolerable certainty that Wanduwandu, who had the reputation of a brave, even a rash hunter, crossed the track of the infuriated animal and was struck down. The blood spoor of the elephant was lost in the bush.
This, then, is the direct cause of death, and for matter-of-fact Europeans it would be quite enough, but in this country it is otherwise. “It is that confounded fat woman’s fault; she deceived him once before, and I expect she has been at the same games again.” Such is the conclusion arrived at by Nils, who has quite fallen into native ways of thinking. My researches at Chingulungulu had revealed to me the universality of the belief that if a man’s wife is unfaithful to him while he is hunting elephants in the bush, he will be sure to meet with a fatal accident. I was told of a number of cases which had actually happened, and even the names of the people concerned. Wanduwandu’s wife is a buxom woman who, according to native ideas, is strikingly handsome—rotundity and beauty being equivalent terms in this country—and wears a nose-pin of unusual size and beautifully inlaid. It is therefore quite natural that she should be much admired, and, taking this circumstance in connection with her husband’s violent death, for these African intellects, and for Nils Knudsen as well, the logical inference is that, because the man has been killed his wife must have betrayed him.
It will be understood that I was at first very sceptical as to this interpretation; but I must now confess that there is really something in it, only that the links in the chain of cause and effect follow each other in a somewhat different order of time. The woman is, as a matter of fact, indirectly responsible for her husband’s death. Knudsen now remembers that Wanduwandu was strangely excited and reckless throughout the expedition, and I have heard from other quarters that the plump wife has always been a great coquette, and that there was a violent scene between the couple immediately before his departure. Here we have the key to the whole enigma; the elephant did not kill the hunter who in his confusion blundered into his way, because the man’s wife was at that moment flirting with another, but because the wife’s behaviour had already driven the man almost to desperation. In any case it is instructive to see how occurrences of this sort, several times repeated, come to be accepted as laws of nature.
Wanduwandu’s death did not change the date of our departure, which was already fixed; but it was noticeable that even our men were more eager to get away than before.