The first step in his treatment was the causing of an ox to be slaughtered. The blood of this animal was sprinkled over the hut, inside and outside, the patient coming in for a share. Then with a sharpened stick he made small incisions at different parts of Elijah’s body and limbs, and into these he rubbed some powder which he took from the horn of an antelope. After this he danced, violently but silently, around the hut, coming in every now and then, in a state of copious perspiration, to inquire as to how the patient was.
Soon after this Elijah was reported to be a little better. He had asked for and drunk a little sweet milk. Then ’Ndakana went home, saying that he had driven away the evil spirits, and that if the patient were kept on a milk diet for a week he would surely recover. The “gqira’s” words came true. Elijah improved rapidly, and before the week was over began to complain bitterly at being allowed nothing but milk to stay his biting hunger. ’Ndakana was made happy by a fee which took the form of two of Noquala’s best cattle.
Elijah was by no means grateful for the means which had been undertaken towards his recovery. That he, a Christian and a candidate for the ministry, should have been practised upon by a magician—one of a class which formed the greatest obstacle to the spread, of Christianity among the people—was a bitter reflection. Having been more or less unconscious throughout his illness, he did not know how bad he had been, and was thus firmly convinced that he would have recovered without ’Ndakana’s assistance.
The mother, however, thought differently. She remembered the sinking of the heart with which she had heard the European doctor condemn her son to death, and how the patient had immediately taken a change for the better when ’Ndakana’s treatment once commenced. Thus arose another cause of estrangement between mother and son.
Elijah was still weak when he decided to return to the seminary, not wishing to lose the opening of the session. His father lent him a horse for the occasion, and sent Zingelagahle on foot after him to bring the animal back.
Chapter Nineteen.
The Tempter.
An ominous whisper sounded over the land. Far to the north, it was said, a new and terrible disease had broken out among cattle. The herds of Khama, the Christian chief of the Bamangwato, had, so it was said, been swept utterly away. Like a wayward wind, it was reported, the disease swept hither and thither, leaving nothing but bleaching skeletons to mark its track. Even the wild game of the forest and the plain went down before the might of the plague. When British Bechuanaland was swept and the pestilence reached the herds of the Basuto, it was felt that the danger was indeed at the door of every owner of cattle in South Africa.