The Mong counted and poked and pinched us as if we had been so many hogs at market. Then they haggled with the head overseer. At last they were persuaded to add a few more shells to the pile. The Gbaru gathered up the spoil and marched back the way they had come, while the Mong herded us off on another trail.
The main village of the Mong, called Dinale, was between Gombli and Klimoko in size; but it was the cleanest African town I had seen. It was also the best laid out, with the huts in regular rows, like the tents in a Roman camp.
Again we were lined up and looked over by the chief men. At least I suppose they were such, although it is hard to distinguish ranks and offices where everyone goes as nude as a frog. Then another man appeared—a small, lean man with his face painted like a skull, anklets of monkey fur, and other adornments. He came towards us in a kind of shuffling
"Who is this?"
"Nkoa, the wizard," replied the man. "What is he doing?"
"He is smelling for witches."
"What if he finds one?"
"Then that one will be burnt at once, instead of being kept to eat."
Nkoa danced up and down the line, peering into our eyes and smelling our breasts. He pointed to one man and spoke in Mong, whereupon that one was dragged away. I heard the sound of a heavy blow and a shriek. This was repeated with several others.
Nkoa looked at the man next to me and said something else. This man was dragged away and tied to a post. While the wizard continued his inspection, firewood was piled around the last man and ignited. The screams of this man mingled with the shrieks and moans of the previous victims, who, I later learnt, had had their legs broken to prevent escape.
Nkoa came to me last of all. My tired old brain had been working at extra speed. Before the wizard reached me, I had picked up a couple of pebbles. When the skull-faced one danced up to me, I said in Gbaru:
"O Nkoa, I am a wizard in my land, too. I can show you some useful tricks, like this—what is that in your ear?"
I took one of the stones out of his ear, as Hippalos had taught me to do. "And what is this in your nose?" I produced the other pebble.
Nkoa started back. "What is this?" he snapped.
"Of course," I said, "I cannot be useful to you if I have been burnt or eaten. Do you understand?"
He looked at me narrowly. "Are you a member of the Poro in your land?"
I assumed that the Poro was some wizards' society. "We call it by another name, but it is the same thing."
"We cannot waste a good Poro man," said Nkoa. He spoke to the other Mong, who cut my thongs.
I followed Nkoa back to his hut. Inside, sitting on a reed mat on the floor facing him, I showed him my little repertory of sleight-of-hand, handicapped as I was by having no clothes to hide things in. When I showed him how the tricks worked, he gave a dry little chuckle.
"Now that I know your tricks, I could turn you over to the warriors to break your legs like the others," he said. "But you interest me, man. I have heard of this land of the palefaces but never believed it until now, when I have seen some of these creatures with my own eyes. Can you tell me all about this land of yours?"
"I can tell you a good deal. I have lived long and traveled far among the lands beyond the great desert."
"Very well, then. So long as you keep me entertained by such tales, you shall live."
"Perhaps I could be your assistant?"
"If you were younger, perhaps. I need an apprentice, and there is none among the young men of Dinale who suits me." He spat. "Stupid oafs, caring for nought but filling their bellies and futtering their women. But alas! you are too old. You must be well past forty."
I did not mention that I had just turned sixty. Nkoa judged me by the standards of his own folk, whose primitive, disease-ridden lives aged them fast. He was, I think, about my age, which made him practically an immortal among the Mong.
"Besides," he continued, "when I die, my apprentice would take my place, and the people would never accept a man so strange as yourself, with your ghostly color and all. Nevertheless, you shall be useful to me."
"How so, master?"
"When your companions have been eaten, the people will clamor for more meat. I must prepare a spell to assure the success of their next foray. You shall help me."
Thus I became Nkoa's assistant in fact if not in name. The next day, he and I built a small hut outside Dinale. We retired to this hut for two days, while Nkoa consulted his spirits. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he went into a trance, moaning and muttering. When he came out of it, he told me the spirits had given him instructions for the spell.
I am sure he honestly believed in these spirits. If he sometimes played tricks on the tribesmen, he reasoned that spirits are flighty creatures on whom one cannot rely. One must herefore have a few tricks ready to save one's credit with the tribe when one's spirits let one down. The priests of Alexandria, I understand, justify their fakeries by similar reasoning.. We moved back into Nkoa's regular hut, and the wizard assembled the warriors of the village. He sent one into the forest to get the seed pod of a certain tree. Another he sent to dig up a curious two-pronged spear, which had been buried outside the village in a secret place.
Then, on the night of the new moon, Nkoa and I went into the forest, with me carrying a basket. Far from Dinale, Nkoa found another tree. He chewed the seeds from the pod and spat them against the tree, chanting: "Phaa! Let no arrow strike me! Let no spear pierce me! Let no club smite me!"
Then he climbed the tree, with agility surprising in such a withered oldster. At the first main branches, he picked off pieces of bark with his nails and fluttered them down to me. I caught them in the basket, not being allowed to pick one up from the ground if I missed it. Nkoa climbed down, and we repeated the whole process with a tree of another kind.
Back at Dinale, Nkoa commanded the warriors to fetch a large clay pot. The men laid a fire in front of his hut, with stones around it and the pot resting on the stones. The following night, Nkoa took me to a fresh grave, which we opened. We dug out the corpse, that of a middle-aged Mong. Nkoa cut off the corpse's head with a knife. While I held the two-pronged spear, he jammed the head down upon it, saying:
"O corpse! Let no man hear what I say! And harm me not for thus entreating you!"
He brought the head back to his hut on the points of the spear. There we twisted off the head of a speckled fowl and let the blood drip on a large leaf. Nkoa also dripped some of the blood into the big pot. Then he put into the pot the corpse's head—still on the points of the spear, whose shaft stuck up out of the pot—some arrows, and water.
Again he summoned the warriors and lit the fire. When the water boiled, he dipped the skin of some beast of the cat tribe into the pot and sprinkled the warriors, saying:
"Let no man go in unto his woman for the rest of this month!"
For the next month, the warriors practiced war songs and dances in the village, while their wives worked on their farm plots as usual. Nkoa quizzed me about the land of the palefaces. One by one my unfortunate sailors, whose sufferings with their broken legs must have been terrible, were slain, broiled, and devoured. I racked my brains for some scheme to save them, without success. Nkoa bristled at the mere suggestion, and I was in no position to coerce him.
With the coming of the next new moon, Nkoa performed more magical operations. He mixed some powdered wood with the fowl's blood that he had caught on the leaf, tied up the mixture with the corpse's head in the skin of another animal, and hung the stinking bundle in bis hut. Next day he again gathered the men. They tore apart a fowl and some plantains, put the pieces in the pot, cooked them, and ate the stew. Nkoa opened the bundle, mixed the mess inside with the bark of another tree, and smeared the stuff on the men's chests, crying: