Now I, the listener, thought for a moment or two.  The words of this fighting savage, Mavovo, even those of them of which I had heard only the translation, garbled and beslavered by the mean comments of the unutterable Sammy, stirred my imagination.  Who was I that I should dare to judge of him and his wild, unknown gifts?  Who was I that I should mock at him and by my mockery intimate that I believed him to be a fraud?

Stepping through the gateway of the fence, I confronted him.

“Mavovo,” I said, “I have overheard your talk.  I am sorry if I laughed at you in Durban.  I do not understand what you call your magic.  It is beyond me and may be true or may be false.  Still, I shall be grateful to you if you will use your power to discover, if you can, whether Dogeetah is coming here, and if so, when.  Now, do as it may please you; I have spoken.”

“And I have heard, Macumazana, my father.  To-night I will call upon my Snake.  Whether it will answer or what it will answer, I cannot say.”

Well, he did call upon his Snake with due and portentous ceremony and, according to Stephen, who was present, which I declined to be, that mystic reptile declared that Dogeetah, alias Brother John, would arrive in Beza Town precisely at sunset on the third day from that night.  Now as he had divined on Friday, according to our almanac, this meant that we might hope to see him—­hope exactly described my state of mind on the matter—­on the Monday evening in time for supper.

“All right,” I said briefly.  “Please do not talk to me any more about this impious rubbish, for I want to go to sleep.”

Next morning early we unpacked our boxes and made a handsome selection of gifts for the king, Bausi, hoping thus to soften his royal heart.  It included a bale of calico, several knives, a musical box, a cheap American revolver, and a bundle of tooth-picks; also several pounds of the best and most fashionable beads for his wives.  This truly noble present we sent to the king by our two Mazitu servants, Tom and Jerry, who were marched off in the charge of several sentries, for I hoped that these men would talk to their compatriots and tell them what good fellows we were.  Indeed I instructed them to do so.

Imagine our horror, therefore, when about an hour later, just as we were tidying ourselves up after breakfast, there appeared through the gate, not Tom and Jerry, for they had vanished, but a long line of Mazitu soldiers each of whom carried one of the articles that we had sent.  Indeed the last of them held the bundle of toothpicks on his fuzzy head as though it were a huge faggot of wood.  One by one they set them down upon the lime flooring of the verandah of the largest hut.  Then their captain said solemnly: 

“Bausi, the Great Black One, has no need of the white men’s gifts.”

“Indeed,” I replied, for my dander was up.  “Then he won’t get another chance at them.”