They built sheds to sleep under. When the nginas and the njokoos heard the noise they made, they moved away in all haste, and soon the country was free from them.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE THREE NGINAS KILLED BY HUNTERS
A few days after their departure from the plantain field, the three nginas found themselves in a part of the forest where food was scarce.
One evening the old ngina said to his mate: “We have had a hard time of late, and our little one is often hungry. We go to sleep with empty stomachs. Let us go back to that part of the forest from which the human beings drove us by their noise. Perhaps we shall discover more plantain fields in the neighborhood that we have not yet seen.”
Early the following morning they started back. They found the way easily, though they took a somewhat different course, so that they could find food.
After some wanderings, the nginas came to a koola-tree, and many of its nuts were ripe and had fallen on the ground. At this sight they uttered chuckles of delight, and said, “It is a good thing that the ngoas [wild boars] have not been here else we would have found no nuts.” And soon they were busy crushing their hard shells.
The koola nut is larger than a walnut, and the shell is very hard. The kernel is about the size of a very big cherry. They cracked one nut after another between their powerful jaws, and each time they crushed one there was a great noise, for these nuts are so hard that a man has to give a very heavy blow with a big stone to crack them; for men also eat these nuts. They did not forget their little one, but cracked many nuts for him, for he had only his first set of teeth, twenty in number, and these were not strong enough to crack shells.
The nginas, as they ate, would say: “How delicious are the koola nuts! How lucky we are to be the first here!” and they grinned when they thought of their good fortune. How ugly they looked when they grinned! Their faces were simply fiendish.
When they had eaten all the nuts that had fallen on the ground, they looked up at the koola-tree, but could not see its top on account of the thick foliage of the trees under it. Seeing its huge trunk (about fifteen feet in diameter), they said, “What a pity the koola-trees are so tall and big! We cannot climb the trunk, and reach the nuts.” After their meal, they continued on their way, and when night came they went to sleep in the usual ngina way.
Time passed, and at last, as they approached the plantain field the njokoos had destroyed, and where they themselves had been, they became exceedingly cautious. The big ngina and his mate would stand up as human beings do, and look around and listen, their ugly, wrinkled, intensely black faces peering through the trees to see if there were any danger threatening them.