Time is of no value whatever to these wild and woolly savages, and as we had of necessity to get together a small army of several hundred "supers," literally weeks elapsed before we were ready. I chafed dreadfully at the delay, but there was no help for it. The requisite number of natives had to be laboriously collected from a score or more of villages scattered over a wide area of country, and then, when we had got them together, everything had to be explained to them over and over again through the medium of three or four different interpreters. In fact, it was nothing but talk, talk, talk, palaver, palaver, palaver, from morning till night.
There was considerable difficulty, too, in getting them to face the camera. Like most savages, these Togo natives have an inherent rooted aversion to being photographed. Luckily, however, Major Schomburgk had taken moving pictures of some of their villages during a previous expedition he had led into these parts, and some of the very natives we had engaged figured in them.
So, as we had brought a projecting machine with us, we made shift to rig up a screen, and showed them themselves, their wives and their little ones, going about their ordinary avocations in their own homes. The effect was instantaneous. They had, of course, seen ordinary photographs before, but none of them had ever beheld any moving pictures. Now they all wanted to come into one; and whereas before the most of them hung back, they were now only too anxious to push themselves in the forefront of every scene.
Only one act they shirked. This was a battle scene in which several of the warriors were supposed to be slain. We had the greatest difficulty in persuading even one native to "act dead." Their objection, they explained, was due to the fact that they believed that if they played at being dead before the white man's mysterious machine, they would most likely be dead in reality before morning.
At length, by the promise of a liberal bonus, one warrior, greatly daring, consented to play the part. The next morning the head interpreter knocked at the door of my hut to inform me that there were "eight dead natives lying in the compound outside."
"What!" I screamed, in great alarm. And, hastily donning my dressing-gown, I ran out.
But I need not have got scared. The eight were not really defunct. They were merely shamming death, and wanted me to see how well they could do it, with a view to being taken on for the part in the forthcoming day's rehearsal.
The one who had played dead the day before had not of course died during the night, as they more than half expected he would have done, and they were consequently now only too willing and anxious to follow the lead he had set them.
At length the long, wearisome series of preliminary rehearsals came to an end. Everybody was supposed to be part perfect, and we made ready to film the play.
Up to this I had, of course, rehearsed in ordinary attire. Now I had to don native dress; and as I am a stickler for realism I insisted—against Major Schomburgk's advice—in playing in bare feet and legs, bare shoulders and arms, and with no head covering.