The prince of this land, Hombiangymbe, was slain, along with more than one hundred of his chief lords, and their heads were lopped off and thrown at the feet of the great Imbe-Jaqqa Calandola, who sat on his stool of state most solemnly witnessing and savoring his victory. Then the men, women, and children of the tribe were brought in captive alive, and the captive men were made to carry the bodies of the dead Benguelas that were heaped up to be eaten. For these Jaqqas are the greatest cannibals and man-eaters that be in the world, and love to feed chiefly on man’s flesh, notwithstanding that they have vast herds of cattle. And I think they had made this war on the Benguelas principally because for some weeks they had been wandering in a land without settlements, and had not had the opportunity for making a dinner on their favorite sort of meat.
What happened next was frightful, though for my part I had seen something of its like among the man-eaters of Brazil long years ago, and so my soul was hardened somewhat to the sight.
The Jaqqas did build a great fire, and threw upon it much wood from the houses of the captured, and added to it certain stones and powders that their man-witches carried, to cause the flame to rise up in blue and green and violet and other stark hues. While this was being done, some older men of the tribe, using long copper blades that they wielded with great skill, worked a butchery on the dead corpses, making them ready for the meal by cutting away such parts as the Jaqqas do not prefer, and opening certain slits in the skin for better roasting. For sometimes the Jaqqas do boil their prey and sometimes they roast it, but they had not brought their great kettles with them over to this side of the river, so that it behooved them to do the roasting now. They took certain long spits and mounted them with great care, and plainly they were much practiced and expert at this task; and then they did slide the bodies of the dead upon the spits like oxen, and turn them and grill them nicely and baste them with juices as the very best cooks would do that ever served in the kitchen of a king. The meat did sizzle and crack and char quite well, and a flavor came from it that—God help me, it is the truth!— did smell most savory, so long as one kept one’s back turned, and did not let one’s self perceive the source of the savor.
Calandola called out to us quite jovial in his loud roaring way, and it was not hard to divine that the words he was crying were something like, “Come, Portugals, join in this our feast! We will set aside the finest cuts for you, since you are our friends!”
But of course we did not accept the hospitality of him, and in good sooth many of our men went lurching off into the woods, and I heard the sound of retching and puking coming from their direction. I myself was not so hard affected, though it did not enter in my mind to take part of this grisly feeding. As for the defeated folk of Benguela, they were made to stand in two long ranks, naked and weaponless, and to watch as the cookery proceeded. What thoughts went through their souls I cannot say, for they were very silent, except for some wounded who did groan a little, and I could not tell from their eyes whether they were deeply grieved, or else so stunned and numb that they did not comprehend the sense of what was taking place. I think if this had been Essex, and two hundred English men and women had had to stand by while their brothers and sons were roasted, we would have heard some little outcry from them, and more than a little: but these are different folk here, and their way of thinking is very foreign to me. Yet am I fair certain that they grieved, however far inward, for this terrible thing.
When the meat was ready came another great strangeness. For one of Calandola’s man-witches brought him a beautifully worked wicker basket of great size, that I remembered we had carried over specially from the Jaqqa camp on the other side. And from it the witch took certain vestments and utensils of an unmistakably Christian kind, and did hand them one by one to Imbe Calandola. There was the black cassock of a priest, and the mantle called a cope, and a richly worked chasuble, which is the thing they wear when they say the Mass. All these several garments had been slitted open and reworked with rope, so that they could fit over Calandola’s giant body; for the Portuguese priest to whom they had once belonged must have been a much smaller man. When Calandola had donned these things he took up a crucifix, which he held by the short end, and in his other hand he raised up a silver chalice, and with a mighty laugh he did clatter the end of the crucifix against the side of the chalice, like the ringing of a bell to summon men to dinner. And at the sound of this ringing, a great shout did go up from all the Jaqqas, and a whoop of joy, for that they knew it must be feeding-time.
It mattered little to me what blasphemy the Imbe-Jaqqa cared to work with all these Popish vestments and utensils. But I thought it would matter a good deal to my Portugal comrades. Indeed they were taken aback, and I saw their lips clamping tight and their nostrils flaring. Yet they cried out nary a word of protest. In this they took their cue from their scoundrel commander, Pinto Dourado, who stood by with his arms folded, smiling as sweetly as though this were some chorus of Christmastide revelers happening here, and not the shouting of sacrilegious cannibals. Did Pinto Dourado not mind the insult to his faith? Or was he shrewdly thinking that a protest might merely add some Portuguese meat to the banquet? Perhaps some of each; but I think also that he was keeping careful watch over his business arrangements with the Jaqqas, and would not venture any disapproval of his host’s ways until the dealings were consummated.
Well, and well, the feast began.
There was Calandola waving his chalice and crucifix about, and straining his mighty shoulders against the constricting garb of some murdered priest, and there were his long-legged naked warriors turning the spits, and there were the kinfolk of the victims standing silent aside, and then the butcher-Jaqqas commenced their carving, and a great juicy haunch was brought to the king, who threw back his head and roared his vast laughter and dug his teeth into the meat.
As he ate, he pointed to his lieutenants and captains, and they one by one came to take their fill, Kinguri Longshanks first, and then each in order of precedence. Nearly all the Jaqqas are tall and straight-limbed, though some few are short, and the short ones are very brawny in the arms and legs. Since they do multiply themselves by adoption, stealing children out of other tribes and raising them as Jaqqas, there is little blood-kinship among these man-eaters; and yet they resemble each other, as if their bloody life does make them grow to look like one another. Or perhaps it is that they choose a certain shape of captive preferably to adopt into their number. But I was greatly struck by the bigness and strength of them, as I had been from the very first, long ago, when I saw a Jaqqa much the size of Kinguri standing alone and mysterious by the side of the River Kwanza.
And again Calandola beckoned us to eat, crying out what must have been the words, “You are our guests! Eat, eat, eat!”
But we did not do that.
From a distance I did watch the feast, though. And a very strange thing happened to me after a time which you may find hard to comprehend, that is, I ceased to be amazed or repelled, and looked upon what was occurring as quite an ordinary event. What, you say? How, was I become a monster like these cannibals? I think not. I think a kind of wisdom was entering me from having witnessed several previous of these cannibal banquets, going back even to my time in Brazil, and those wild Indians the Taymayas.
And what this wisdom said was, We eat cattle and we eat sheep and we eat fowl, and we think nothing amiss of that; and these folk eat man, and they think nothing amiss of that, and we are all God’s creatures, are we not? I mean by that only that in this huge world there are differing customs, and what seems strange or loathsome to one race is quite usual to another. Are we to be angry with a Frenchman because he will speak no English, and we cannot understand his palaver? But he is French: French is his usual speech. And the flesh of humans is the usual diet of Taymayas and Jaqqas and the others of that kind. And I believe it is not fitting to condemn them out of hand for that.