Madilenda returned with the water, and saw, to her horror, that Tobè had laid the fire-stick on the print, six or seven folds of which had been already burnt through. She snatched away the firebrand, and quenched the burning material with the water which she had brought for Mamagobatyana. The dress, of course, was completely ruined. Mamagobatyana broke out into fierce lamentations and tears of rage. She refused to be comforted. In a few moments she went off to her own hut, muttering threats and calling little Tobè all the abusive names she could think of. Little Tobè, much to his astonishment, received from his mother a spanking more severe than any he had previously suffered.
Two
About two months after the ruination of Mamagobatyana’s dress by little Tobè, measles of a virulent type broke out among the native children, and nearly decimated the kraals. It was not so much the disease itself, as its after effects, that were so fatal. The children usually got over the measles easily enough, but they were allowed directly afterwards to run about naked, no matter how cold the weather might be. Inflammation of the lungs then often supervened, usually with a fatal result.
Little Tobè got the disease in the first instance in a very mild form, but just at the critical stage of convalescence, very cold, wet weather set in, and he soon developed a bad cough. Soon afterwards he began to pine, and lose his appetite. His eyes became unnaturally large and bright, and he evidently suffered severely from pains in his poor little chest. Sometimes the cough nearly left him, but at the least recurrence of unfavourable weather another violent cold would ensue.
A “gqira” (native doctor) was sent for, and a goat killed for his entertainment. He made an infusion of ashes obtained from burnt roots of different sorts, frogs’ feet, baboons’ hair, lizards’ tails, and other items included in his grotesque pharmacopoeia, and with this poor little Tobè was heavily dosed. He then hung some infallible charms tied up in a little skin bag around the invalid’s neck by a string made of twisted hairs from the tail of the “ubulunga” (see Note) cow. Next morning, after promising a speedy recovery, he departed, taking a fat ox as his fee. But poor little Tobè became worse and worse; his legs and arms that had been so chubby were now mere skinny sticks, and his ribs were sharply defined under the dry, feverish skin of his thorax. When not coughing he wailed almost incessantly, and he hardly ever slept.
Madilenda grew very thin and hollow-eyed herself, and she went her weary way the picture of utter misery. Sikulumè was very much distressed at the poor little boy’s plight, and he sent to a distance for another “gqira,” a most celebrated practitioner. Upon arriving at the kraal this one required a fat black ox to be killed, with the blood of which he sprinkled every member of Sikulumè’s family, poor little Tobè coming in for an extra share.
After speaking in the most slighting terms of the former doctor’s treatment, he made a powder of the burnt bones of several kinds of snakes and birds. He then made small incisions with a sharpened stick across the chest, and around the neck, arms, and body of the patient, and into these rubbed the powder. After this he applied a plaster of fresh cow-dung to little Tobè’s chest, and then wrapped him up in the skin of the black ox killed on the previous evening. Then he carried him out of the hut and laid him in the middle of the cattle kraal. This occurred at noon, and until sundown the “gqira” danced and chanted around his patient in the most violent and grotesque manner conceivable. Just after sundown he fell down in a kind of fit, foaming at the mouth and yelling horribly, and then appeared to go off into a swoon. When he awoke from this he crawled over to where the poor little child was looking out from among his wraps with wondering eyes, inserted his hands between the folds of the skin, and drew forth a lizard about four inches in length. This he held up to view of the admiring and applauding crowd. Here was the cause of the malady, rid of which the child would at once mend. Madilenda wept tears of joy as she released little Tobè from his unsavoury durance.
The “gqira” left next morning with a reputation more firmly established than ever. He took with him two of Sikulumè’s best cattle.
For about a week after the function described the weather was mild and dry, and little Tobè really appeared to be somewhat better. Unfortunately, however, the improvement did not last. A cold rain set in, and the cough became worse than ever. The mother then grew desperate; she loved the child so passionately that the thought of the possibility of losing him maddened her. The idea that little Tobè had been bewitched had gradually developed in her mind. Among the uncivilised natives, illness, especially in the case of one who is young, is almost always attributed to witchcraft. Some enemy, by means of occult arts, has caused the disease, embodied in a snake, a lizard, or a toad, to enter the body of the sufferer during sleep. The unhappy mother strongly suspected Mamagobatyana of having committed some iniquity of this kind in revenge for the spoiling of her dress. She was confirmed in this idea by an old woman from a neighbouring kraal, who had a spite against Mamagobatyana, and who suggested to Madilenda what she had loner been thinking of. As a matter of fact, however, it had been for some little time whispered throughout the neighbourhood that Mamagobatyana had bewitched little Tobè.
Here and there among the Hlubi kraals are to be found the dwellings of Basuto waifs who have drifted over the Maluti and Drakensberg mountains to find a refuge from deserved punishment or despotic oppression. Among the natives an alien is often believed to be an adept in magic more effective than that practised by their own local tribal doctors, and the sorcery of the Basuto, being associated with the awful, mysterious, and cloudy mountains of his (in parts) almost impenetrable land, is held to be very potent indeed.