“Certainly, sir. I’m much obliged to you for coming.”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve seen you. Mind when the Dragon comes in you go and see Captain Thompson. He will do what he can to make the caboceer move in this business.”
Captain Howard went off, and Mr. Macarthy and my father were soon busy about trade, while I was sent under the charge of a native clerk to have a look round the town.
I was much astonished at seeing some women walking about armed with muskets and great curved knives, and still more so when I was told that they were a part of the regular forces of the king of Dahomey, whose most trusted troops were women formed into regiments.
Another curious thing which the clerk took me to see was the house where the sacred snakes were kept. Here, in a hut standing in the middle of a courtyard, I saw hundreds of snakes, nearly if not all being a species of python, which seemed quite tame, and allowed themselves to be handled by the attendant priests with impunity. The priests had to be given rum for allowing us to look at their charges, and we had to buy fowls to throw to the snakes.
As it chanced, one of these fowls was a white cock with red hackles and tail feathers, and it was seized upon by the biggest of the snakes.
As soon as one of the priests saw this he ran at me and smeared a great stripe of some noisome compound down my face. I was about to shove him away and wipe the nasty stuff off, when my guide begged me to be quiet, for if we did anything to offend the fetichmen our lives would be forfeited. I remained as quiet as I could. Two more of the priests caught hold of my hands and began examining them; while the first pulled open my shirt, and seeing a mole on my breast pointed to it, and began chattering away in a most excited manner to his companions.
I asked the clerk what all this meant, and he said he could not tell, but that it was evidently nothing bad for me. After a time my tormentors, for so I deemed them, became quiet, and my companion managed to make out from them that I was a great fetichman, and that I would go far and see many things, and that
