Meanwhile the sun is setting in a gorgeous west, and the golden glow is already fading on the temple walls. Then come the shadows of night, and these settle down rapidly. By the time the hut is reached the kya boy has lit the candles, laid the table, and is ready with the skoff. The boys are sitting round their fire or finishing a game of isafuba in the semi-darkness. Their evening meal is being cooked. One of them has brought a gourd of doro, and another a pot of fat, in which each handful of porridge is dipped before being eaten.
Sitting on the stoep of the hut at this time of the day is a perfect rest. The air is agreeably cooled by a light breeze, which is laden with the scent of verbena. The night is calm and peaceful. Large bats fly swallow-wise, fire flies dart in all directions, glow-worms shine steadily in the grass, and birds, frogs, and insects join in mild choruses. The call of a boy in our camp to some companion up on Mogabe’s Kopje is repeated half a dozen times by the precipices of Zimbabwe Hill, where the echoes die out in a series of sharp raps. The large full moon rises serenely from behind the trees on Beroma Range, and bathes the country in delicate soft light, imparting a greenish-grey tint to the mist-veils which fill the gorges, throwing a deeper suggestion of mystery and awe over the wide expanse of bush where the lion holds his court.
The boys, having finished their meal, now indulge in post-prandial rhetoric, and dialectic ping-pong. The ruddy glow of the fire reddens the huts and shines on the naked bodies and limbs of the crowd, making them resemble polished ebony, while as their tall and well-proportioned figures with kingly walk pass and repass in the flickering lurid light they appear to resemble shades from across the Styx. Such a scene is at least Dantesque, and to many might seem weird. But the boys are as happy as their hearts can wish. Their joviality is irrepressible. Harmony from their instruments, rhythmic chants, peals of laughter, wild recitatives, constant talking, with perhaps a wrestling match and a war-dance executed in simulated form thrown in, fill up two hours, by the end of which they are all under their blankets, sleeping and snoring as only natives can.
“Porridge,” the kya boy’s under-study, and eight years old, has brought in the hut door, which also acts as drawing-board and stoep table, and has gone to the kitchen-hut, where he rolls himself up in his tiny blanket.
An occasional bark of a baboon or wolf, or yelp of jackal, or hoot of owl, is heard in addition to the usual nightjar and frog choruses. The sounds of the village drums, and of singing and dancing at Mogabe’s or Chenga’s kraal, where the full-moon feast is being celebrated, are wafted down to us. The night is perfectly lovely, but for Havilah Camp the day is past and over.
But the moon—itself a dead world—looks down upon the ruins of a dead city and on the graves of a forgotten race, as it has done ever since the stern policeman Fate ordered these ancients to “Pass on!”
CHAPTER IV
ZIMBABWE DISTRICT
Chipo-popo Falls—Frond Glen—Lumbo Rocks—“Morgenster” Mission—Wuwulu—Mojejèje, or Mystic Bar—Suku Dingle—Bingura’s Kraal—Motumi’s Kraal—Chipfuko Hill—Chipadzi’s Kraal