The escort clapped their hands in salute or approval, after which four of them, at a sign, took up the body and started with it at a trot for Rica Town, where probably that night it appeared upon the grid.  Brother John saw, and his big white beard bristled with indignation like the hair on the back of an angry cat, while Stephen spluttered something beginning with “You brute,” and lifted his fist as though to knock the Kalubi down.  This, had I not caught hold of him, I have no doubt he would have done.

“O Kalubi!” gasped Brother John, “do you not know that blood calls for blood?  In the hour of your own death remember this death.”

“Would you bewitch me, white man?” said the Kalubi, glaring at him angrily.  “If so——­” and once more he lifted the spear, but as John never stirred, held it poised irresolutely.  Komba thrust himself between them, crying: 

“Back, Dogeetah, who dare to meddle with our customs!  Is not the Kalubi Lord of life and death?”

Brother John was about to answer, but I called to him in English: 

“For Heaven’s sake be silent, unless you want to follow the boy.  We are in these men’s power.”

Then he remembered and walked away, and presently we marched forward as though nothing had happened.  Only from that moment I do not think that any of us worried ourselves about the Kalubi and what might befall him.  Still, looking back on the thing, I think that there was this excuse to be made for the man.  He was mad with the fear of death and knew not what he did.

All that day we travelled on through a rich, flat country that, as we could tell from various indications, had once been widely cultivated.  Now the fields were few and far between, and bush, for the most part a kind of bamboo scrub, was reoccupying the land.  About midday we halted by a water-pool to eat and rest, for the sun was hot, and here the four men who had carried off the boy’s body rejoined us and made some report.  Then we went forward once more towards what seemed to be a curious and precipitous wall of black cliff, beyond which the volcanic-looking mountain towered in stately grandeur.  By three o’clock we were near enough to this cliff, which ran east and west as far as the eye could reach, to see a hole in it, apparently where the road terminated, that appeared to be the mouth of a cave.

The Kalubi came up to us, and in a shy kind of way tried to make conversation.  I think that the sight of this mountain, drawing ever nearer, vividly recalled his terrors and caused him to desire to efface the bad impression he knew he had made on us, to whom he looked for safety.  Among other things he told us that the hole we saw was the door of the House of the Motombo.

I nodded my head, but did not answer, for the presence of this murderous king made me feel sick.  So he went away again, looking at us in a humble and deprecatory manner.