In a great part of wild Africa, slave-raiding has always gone on more or less, and the forest paths are never really safe. Mpoko and Nkunda had heard their mother tell of a little sister of her own who was sent to the market four miles away to buy a saucepan, and on the way home, straying from the party with whom she went, had been lost and never again heard of. There were people they knew who had been slaves themselves, or had lost a mother, father, or friend in this way. A person carried off by the slave trader would never be able to get home again or to find people who talked his own language. There are no maps, no letters, no police, no common language in these wild places. A great shadow is over all the land, the shadow of constant danger.
All things considered, the beasts of the forest are less feared than human enemies. In all the Alo Man’s stories, the animals behaved as they did in the old days when the world was new and there was order in the land. Each tribe had its king; the elephant, of course, was king of the large animals; the largest of the eagles was king of the birds; a certain large fish was king of the fishes; and there was a king also of the locusts and one of the ants.
But for all that he was the king of the largest animals, the Elephant did not always get the better of the others, as is shown in the story of the Elephant and the Rabbit. The Alo Man had been watching the boys playing at trading; suddenly he began to tell the story.
The Rabbit said to the Elephant [The Alo Man began], “Let us go into partnership.”
“But I am so much stronger than you,” said the Elephant.
“And I am so much more nimble than you,” said the Rabbit.
[The children began to laugh, for that was exactly how the boys had argued when they began to quarrel in their game. They all gathered about the Alo Man to hear the story, and soon everybody felt quite good-natured.]
After a great deal of talk the Rabbit and the Elephant decided to become partners, and sell nuts, manioc root, and bananas.