I said, "Akondogo, you could not help it; you are not chief over the leopards. But, after the first man had been killed, why did you not make a trap to catch the leopard?"
"The leopard I mean," said he, "is not one that can be trapped; it was a man who had changed himself into a leopard, and then, after he had been a leopard for some time, he changed himself into a man again."
I said, "Akondogo, why do you talk to me in that way? You know I do not believe that men are turned into beasts, and afterward into men again. It is stupid for people to believe so, but I can not shake that belief in you alombè" (black men).
Poor Akondogo said, "Chally, I assure you that there are men who change into leopards, and from leopards into men again."
Not wishing to argue the question, I said, "Never mind; tell me the story of your trouble." Then Akondogo once more filled his pipe with tobacco, gave three or four big puffs of smoke, which rose high in the air, and thus begun:
"My people and myself had been in the woods several days collecting India-rubber. One day a man disappeared, and nothing could be found of him but a pool of blood. The next day another man disappeared, and in searching for him more blood was found. We all got alarmed, and I sent for a great doctor; he came and drank the mboundou, so that he might be able to say how these two deaths came about. After the ouganga (doctor) had drank the mboundou, and as all the people stood round him asking him what had killed these two men, and just as we were waiting with breathless silence for what he was going to say, he spoke to me and said, 'Akondogo, your own child [his nephew and heir] Akosho killed the two men.' Immediately Akosho was sent for and seized, and he answered that it was true that he had killed the two men, but that he could not help it; he remembered well that that day, as he was walking in the woods, he suddenly became a leopard; that his heart longed for blood, and that he had killed the two men, and then, after each murder, he became a man again.
"There was a great uproar in the village; the people shouted, 'Death to the aniemba Akosho!'
"But," said Akondogo, "I loved my boy so much that I said to the people, 'Let us not believe Akosho; he must have become a kendé' (idiot, fool). But Akosho kept saying he had killed the men, and took us into the woods where lay the two bodies, one with the head cut off, and the other with the belly torn open.
"Upon this," said Akondogo, "I ordered Akosho to be bound with cords, and tied in a horizontal position to a post, and to have a fire lighted at his feet, and be burned slowly to death, all which was done, the people standing by until he expired."