“Something, O Motombo.  Many moons ago the god bit off the finger of our High Lord, the Kalubi.  The Kalubi, having heard that a white man skilled in medicine who could cut off limbs with knives, was in the country of the Mazitu and camped on the borders of the great lake, took a canoe and rowed to where the white man was camped, he with the beard, who is named Dogeetah, and who stands before you.  I followed him in another canoe, because I wished to know what he was doing, also to see a white man.  I hid my canoe and those who went with me in the reeds far from the Kalubi’s canoe.  I waded through the shallow water and concealed myself in some thick reeds quite near to the white man’s linen house.  I saw the white man cut off the Kalubi’s finger and I heard the Kalubi pray the white man to come to our country with the iron tubes that smoke, and to kill the god of whom he was afraid.”

Now from all the company went up a great gasp, and the Kalubi fell down upon his face again, and lay still.  Only the Motombo seemed to show no surprise, perhaps because he already knew the story.

“Is that all?” he asked.

“No, O Mouth of the god.  Last night, after the council of which you have heard, the Kalubi wrapped himself up like a corpse and visited the white men in their hut.  I thought that he would do so, and had made ready.  With a sharp spear I bored a hole in the wall of the hut, working from outside the fence.  Then I thrust a reed through from the fence across the passage between the fence and the wall, and through the hole in the hut, and setting my ear to the end of the reed, I listened.”

“Oh! clever, clever!” muttered Hans in involuntary admiration, “and to think that I looked and looked too low, beneath the reed.  Oh!  Hans, though you are old, you have much to learn.”

“Among much else I heard this,” went on Komba in sentences so clear and cold that they reminded me of the tinkle of falling ice, “which I think is enough, though I can tell you the rest if you wish, O Mouth.  I heard,” he said, in the midst of a silence that was positively awful, “our lord, the Kalubi, whose name is Child of the god, agree with the white men that they should kill the god—­how I do not know, for it was not said—­and that in return they should receive the persons of the Mother of the Holy Flower and of her daughter, the Mother-that-is-to-be, and should dig up the Holy Flower itself by the roots and take it away across the water, together with the Mother and the Mother-that-is-to-be.  That is all, O Motombo.”

Still in the midst of an intense silence, the Motombo glared at the prostrate figure of the Kalubi.  For a long while he glared.  Then the silence was broken, for the wretched Kalubi sprang from the floor, seized a spear and tried to kill himself.  Before the blade touched him it was snatched from his hand, so that he remained standing, but weaponless.