Nkunda had seen a silvery jackal skin and a copper-fringed robe among her mother’s treasures, but one thing in the story puzzled her. “Mother,” she said softly, “what is gold?”
The Alo Man heard her and smiled. “Have you never seen gold?” he asked.
The children shook their heads. Gold was not found in that part of the country.
Then the Alo Man explained that in the streams of other parts of the country the people found lumps of a shining yellow metal softer and more beautiful than iron, for which the traders would pay much cloth and many brass rods. When the headman heard what they were talking about, he showed the children a little bright round bangle on his arm, and told them that that was gold. It was really, though no one there knew it, a half-sovereign lost by some trader, or perhaps given in mistake for a sixpence, which is exactly the same size. The headman had kept it, first because of its beauty, and then because a trader had told him that it was worth as much as ten pounds of rubber, or more than a hundred pounds of palm kernels, or a load of palm oil, or about thirty-five pounds of coffee. Nkunda thought that the little piece of gold was rather like a magic stone.
CHAPTER III
THE LEOPARD AND THE DOG
On the third night of the Alo Man’s stay in the village there was a great disturbance out near the goat pen. The frightened bleating of the goats was almost drowned by the barking and growling of dogs, and the angry snarl of some fierce animal.
Some of the hunters caught up their spears and ran to see what the matter was, and Mpoko, catching up his own little spear, raced after them, for he could hear the furious barking of his own dog in the pack. Even the baby brother, who could only just stand on his feet, lifted his head and listened, saying, “Mfwa! Mfwa!” Mpoko’s dog was one of the family; he had played with the children ever since he was a little yellow-brown flop-eared puppy.
But the trouble was soon over. Before any one had had time to ask many questions, the hunters came back in triumph with the body of a big, fierce leopard. He had leaped upon the roof of the goat pen and tried to break in, but the dogs had found it out at once. They had set up such a baying and yelping that the robber was frightened, and he was trying to get away when the hunters arrived with their spears. They tied his paws together and slung him over a pole carried on their shoulders, and tomorrow he would be taken about to all the villages and exhibited. And the chief would have the skin.