After a few moments I took the box back into my hut, and brought out a powerful electric battery. Then I ordered the forty-three elders and the king to come and stand in a line. They came, but were evidently awed. The people dared not say a word. Every thing being ready, I told them to hold the ninety feet of conducting wire. "Hold hard!" I cried.
The people looked at the old men with wonder, and could not understand how they dared to hold that charmed string of the Oguizi. The Ishogos, my guides, were themselves bewildered, for they had not seen this thing in their village. My Commi men did not utter a word, but their faces were as long as if they never had seen any thing.
"Hold on!" I repeated; "do not let the string go out of your hands." I then gave a powerful continuous shock. The arms of the elders twisted backward against their will, and their bodies bent over; but they still held the wire, which, indeed, now they had not the power to drop. Their mouths were wide open; their bodies trembled from the continuous electric shock; they looked at me and cried "Oh! oh! oh! Yo! yo! yo!" I had really given a too powerful shock. The people fled.
In an instant all was over. I stopped the current of electricity. The wire fell from the elders' hands, and they looked at me in perfect bewilderment. The people came back. The elders explained their electric sensation, and then a wild hurra and a shout went up. "There is not another great oguizi like the one in our village," was the general exclamation; and they came and danced around me, and sang mbuiti songs, bending their bodies low, and looking at me in the face as if I had been one of their idols. "Great Oguizi, do not be angry with us," they cried repeatedly.
"Don't be afraid, Ashangos," I said. I then ordered my men to fire their guns again, and, to add to the noise, our dogs began to bark; so that, with the barking, the shouting, the firing, and the beating of drums by the natives, Niembouai was very lively for a few minutes.
"Come again!" shouted the Ishogos. "The Oguizi we brought to you has more things to show you." Then I came out with a powerful magnet, which held many of the implements of iron used by the Ashangos. Up and down went the knives; the magnet sometimes held them by the end, sometimes by the blade. The people were so afraid of the magnet that not one of them dared to touch it when I asked them to do so.
That night I hung a large clock under the piazza, and the noise it made frightened the Ashangos very much.
My power was established. The electric battery had been effective. How droll the sight was when they received the shock! You would have laughed heartily if you could have seen them.