"Let no shaft strike here! Let no spear pierce here! Let no club smite here!"
Then he led them in procession through the town calling upon the people to shoot him to prove his invulnerability. At the right time, I shot a headless arrow at his chest. When it bounced off, he cried out that it was a real arrow, whose head his magic had destroyed at the last instant The Mong shouted yes, they had seen the real head on it, too. The ceremony closed with an orgy of drumming, singing, and dancing, during which Nkoa anointed the rest of the townsfolk with his foul ointment. The next day, the warriors marched off, leaving Nkoa and me safely behind in Dinale to watch the magical bundle and to pray to the spirits for success.
During this time I came to know Nkoa quite well. I think he even developed a small affection for me—as much as these wizardry types ever do for anyone but themselves. By our standards I suppose he was a heartless, bloody, tricky old scoundrel. But in intellect he was far above his fellow tribesmen. With a little formal education, he could have held his own in the company of any Athenian philosophers.
He was full of interesting ideas and loved to argue, reason, and speculate. Theology fascinated him, and he loved to hear my tales of the gods of Hellas. I thought it wiser not to admit my own skeptical viewpoint. He knew that different tribes had different tales of how the creator-god made the universe, and that these stories could not be reconciled. This puzzled and disturbed him, but he never came to any conclusion about it. When he was a little drunk on plantain wine, he taught me some of his sleight-of-hand tricks.
While I told him about the lands and peoples of the Inner Sea, I also extracted from him information about the countries between the Mong and the great desert. I had not given up hope of escape, although my efforts were more lethargic than usual. Age, disease, and the unaccustomed diet seemed to have stolen away my energy. I was no longer able to plan so readily, nor yet to carry out my plans so promptly and resolutely, as in former years. Thus, for instance, I never did learn to speak Mong well. Somehow I could no longer compel myself to grasp the new grammar and memorize the new words.
Ever since my arrival on the African coast, I had wondered at the lack of domestic animals, other than the dog and the speckled fowl. Such beasts would have done much to relieve the blacks' constant danger of starvation, and there was no lack of greenery for the beasts to feed on. Nkoa knew about domestic hoofed animals; he told me of a tribe to the north that had asses and cattle. But it seemed there was something about the dense jungle that caused all such beasts to sicken and die whenever they entered it.
As the months passed, the folk of Dinale got used to me. I even took part in some of their cannibal feasts, when an expedition brought back a few trembling captives for their larder. Human flesh, I found, tastes much like veal. Some savages, I have heard, eat their fallen foes for magical reasons, for example in hope of ingesting the courage of the deceased. But the Mong ate people simply to fill their bellies. Lacking cattle, sheep, and swine, they had no other ready source of meat.
Their dietary habits aside, I found the Mong in many ways admirable savages—at least, in their dealings with one another. They were brave, honest, dignified, and courteous—in one word, gentlemen. Outsiders, however, they viewed as fair game, against whom any cruelty or treachery was legitimate.
Shortly after the first spell in which I had assisted Nkoa, I came upon a group of Mong loafing in the shade of a big tree and laughing loudly. Approaching, I found that they were tormenting a young monkey, which one of them held on a leash. They poked the creature, pulled its stumpy tail, turned it upside down, and rubbed its face in the dirt. It screamed at them and tried to bite, meanwhile rolling blood-shot eyes in a vain quest for escape.
I was not overly softhearted about animals, but this made me indignant. Like Pythagoras, I thought it wrong to inflict pain wantonly upon them. I knew better than to upbraid these young killers, however. I strolled back to Nkoa's hut and asked the wizard:
"Will you lend me a few cowries, Nkoa?"
"What for?" he snapped.
"I have seen something I wanted, that is all."
"Oh, well, take them," he said, pushing a handful of the shells at me.
I walked back to the scene I had witnessed. The Mong had begun to be bored by their game. Two had fallen asleep and the rest were tormenting the monkey in a halfhearted, lackadaisical manner. When I offered the man with the leash a couple of cowries for his beast, he was glad to hand it over.
I tried to lead the monkey back to the hut, but it sat down and had to be dragged. I did not care to pick it up for fear of being bitten. Back at the hut, I tied it to one of the wall slats. I fed it, and in a few days it had become quite tame as far as I was concerned, although it still hated blacks and screamed and bared its teeth when one came near. It had olive-brown fur, a black face, and a long, piglike snout. Nkoa told me it was the young of the big baboon of these parts—a fiendish-looking creature the size of a large dog, with a startling red-and-blue face and an equally disconcerting red-and-blue arse.
With familiarity, Nkoa and his people came to trust me more, even though I could never be truly one of them. I went on a couple of their foraging expeditions for human meat, to utter spells to make the Mong invulnerable and invincible and to fill the hearts of their foes with terror. If the raid failed, Nkoa could always aver that some warrior had violated his injunction against copulation. Men being what they are, one or another was sure to have broken this rule, thus giving the wizard an infallible excuse for failure. My own purpose was to familiarize myself with the country roundabout, in case a chance of escape was offered.
One day, a Mong ran excitedly into Dinale to say that an elephant had fallen into one of their covered pitfalls. The warriors boiled out of the town and rushed to the site. The beast was already nearly dead from the piercing of its vitals by the stake at the bottom of the pit. A few spear thrusts finished it off.
Then the whole town turned out to cut up the beast, salvage its hide, and gorge on its meat. I have never seen people eat so much at once. They invited the folk of the other Mong villages to the feast, and for a ten-day the carcass seethed with black humanity, like a swarm of ants attacking a piece of garbage. They kept at it after the stench became too strong for me to endure.
The chief saw to it that the tusks were removed to Dinale. Then he called a council of elders. These decided that, when the two new tusks were added to those already in the village, there would be enough to justify a trading venture to the La-kopi country, in the north, to sell the tusks for metal.
Among barbarians, an affair of this sort is set in motion only after an enormous amount of talk. Everything must be discussed: who should go on the expedition, what route they should follow, who should command the party, and so on. The chiefs power to order his men around is not very great, since, if he tries to enforce too many unpopular commands, his people simply walk out on him and go to dwell in other villages. So night after night, the warriors squatted in the square, talking and talking until they arrived at a common policy.
They would carry the tusks on their own shoulders, since they did not keep slaves in the usual manner. The captives they took in their raids had their legs broken to prevent escape and were eaten soon after their capture. At this time there were only a few such unfortunates awaiting consumption. If the Mong obtained a good cargo of metal, they would try to capture a few victims on their return journey. When these had served their purpose of bearing the cargo to Dinale, they would be devoured in their turn.