THE HYRAX AND THE ELEPHANT
The returning caravan brought new people to the village. It had met an Arab trader coming up the river with his porters and some armed men for a bodyguard. The Arab could speak a little Bantu, and the language he talked to his men was a dialect called Swahili, which is something like Bantu and is spoken by most of the traders. When he saw the villagers’ rubber and palm oil and heard about their country, he seemed much interested, and wished to try their markets. He seemed very glad of their company on the journey.
When he showed his wares, there was great excitement in the village. He had brass rods, of course, and glass bottles of perfumery that smelled stronger than a whole tree in blossom. The bottles themselves would do to make into bangles; some of the Bantu tribes understood how to melt glass and make it into ornaments. He had little bright mirrors, gay cloth, and knives that were more shiny and attractive than any the people had seen, though Nkula’s father said that they were not very sharp. The trader wore clothes all over him, and a white cloth on his head; in the sash round his waist were stuck strange weapons, and he did not eat as they did in the village. He had his own cook.
The Alo Man did not say much about the trader, and he was polite enough to him; but Mpoko felt sure that he did not like the stranger. It is possible to say many things without words.
As time went on, pleasant as it was to see all these new things and share in the presents the trader gave, Nkunda and some of the other children began to wish he would go away soon. Everybody was so cross in these days that there was no comfort in living. Even the mother of Mpoko and Nkunda, who was usually very gentle and kind, had said sharp words now and then. In some of the other families the mothers whipped the children all round with no excuse whatever.
When the trader and his men had gone to the Nkenge market, two days’ journey away, every one was glad to hear the drum sound after supper for a dance and some story-telling. Mpoko climbed up in the big tree under which the chief held his councils and gave his judgments, to get a better view of the dancing. When that was over and the story began, he let himself down to a lower branch, and lay along it like a little tree animal. He was almost as much at home in the trees as on the ground. Sometimes he would go up to the very tiptop of some giant of the forest and perch among the cool green leaves, looking out over the great green sea of tree tops and tree ferns beneath him, and thinking.
Tonight the story was about the Elephant and the Hyrax. One of the hunters that day had brought home a hyrax from the rocky hillside where he had been hunting, and that may have been what reminded the Alo Man of the story. The hyrax is a little beast about as big as a rabbit and something like one, but with ears like a guinea pig; and although neither the story-teller nor his listeners knew it, he is a very distant cousin of the rhinoceros, the elephant, and the other thick-skinned animals. But he has no tusks or horns, and he wears a coat of grayish-brown fur, and hides in holes among the rocks.
In the days when all the animals lived in villages and owned plantations [began the Alo Man], there were a Hyrax and his wife who had a little son. Father Hyrax was so proud of his baby that he told Mother Hyrax to ask for anything she liked and she should have it.