At this talk of zumbis and ndundus the men of Cashil showed great fear, and conferred among themselves, and I think were making themselves ready to sell me to Mofarigosat. But the Jaqqas of the town, hearing what was taking place, did go to the emissaries and say loudly, “Begone, fools, or we will slit off your skins and tie them around pigs, and send you back to your master in the guise of the beasts that you are.”
“We demand—” said one of the men of Mofarigosat, and then he said no more, for the Jaqqas slew him that instant, and the others turned and fled. I was summoned from my hiding place so that the Jaqqas might tell me all that had befallen. Very cool and easy did they seem about the murder they had done.
“And will not Mofarigosat make war upon us now?” I asked.
“Nay,” replied the Jaqqas, “for he fears the Imbe-Jaqqa, and does not want you that much. But we will leave this place tomorrow, and take you to the Imbe-Jaqqa.”
That night the Jaqqas boiled the man of Mofarigosat in a great metal tub that they had with them, and threw in spices and savories of many kinds, to make a soup in which morsels of flesh did float. The people of Cashil watched this festival from afar, looking most gloomy over it, for man-eating was not to their liking, and this was going on in the center of their own town. When the meat was ready the Jaqqas did carouse with great gulpings of the palm-wine, and called to me, saying, “Ho, white one, dine with us, it is tender flesh!”
I said a nay to that, claiming an illness of the stomach that would not let me eat meat just then. The which gave them no offense, and they took their bellies’ fill of their awful delicacy without me. And afterward they lay about the plaza very satisfied, sleeping that light Jaqqa sleep which is almost no sleep at all.
In the morning they brought me onward to the camp of Imbe Calandola at the town of Calicansamba.
This way passed through a grove of giant ollicondi trees, the biggest I had yet seen, that darkened the air with the spread of their leaves. This tree is one of the marvels of Angola, very tall and exceeding great, some of them as big around as twelve men can fathom, all bloated and distended of trunk, and of limb. Some of them are hollow, and from the liberal skies receive such plenty of water at the time of the rainy season, that they are hospitable entertainers of thousands in the hard thirsty months that follow. I have seen whole villages of three or four thousand souls remain at one of these trees for four and twenty hours, receiving watery provision from it, and yet not empty it. I think some one tree can hold forty tuns of water. Also do they have in them great store of honey, for this is the favored tree of the bees here, and as I have said the blacks do drive the bees off by smoke, rewarding the laborious creatures with robbery, exile, death, and stealing their produce. To get the honey the Negroes climb up with pegs of hardwood, which the softer wood of the ollicondi easily receives.
When we passed through this forest of mysterious tree-monsters, which are like unto whales that have taken root in the ground—albeit whales with gnarled arms and myriad little leaves—we entered into the town of Calicansamba.
The great Jaqqa had made his camp here for some months, and all the place was greatly despoiled by his triumphing, drinking, dancing, and banqueting. The native folk of Calicansamba did stand about like sad ghosts, helpless to resist the Jaqqas and forced to give them all that they desired: the Jaqqas being like a plague of locusts that had come this way to help themselves to cattle, corn, wine, and oil, not to mention the flesh of human beings. The town was full of them. I think there were more Jaqqas here than villagers, the difference between them being readily apparent, for the Jaqqas had their skins ornamented differently, and did practice the knocking out of front teeth, and wore scarce any clothing, but mainly just beads and shells. And also the Jaqqas did comport themselves with terrible pride, like grand swaggering masters, even the humblest of them who still wore the slave-collar of boyhood about his neck. Whereas the Calicansamba people had been utterly defeated without striking a blow, and their manhood was altogether humbled, and they went with drooping shoulders and dim eyes, the look of conquered folk.
The town of Calicansamba was very like the one of Cashil, except that nearly all its palm-wine trees were cut down, save only one grove at the eastern end of the place. It too had a great idol in the center of the town and many elephanto tusks thrust into the earth in front of it. And here also was an altar of human skulls, very grisly indeed, and making me think how close I had come to leaving my own skull for Mofarigosat’s pleasure.
But also in the great square of Calicansamba were certain things that I had not seen in Cashil, for they were things of the Jaqqas. Lined up all in a row were three gigantic metal tubs, which I knew to be their cooking-pots. To one side of these was a great vat made of woven fiber very tightly drawn, and smeared on the inner side with a sort of dark wax. It contained some several hogsheads’ full of a thick purple fluid, and when I asked what that was, the Jaqqas who were my guides did dip their hands merrily in it and anoint themselves with streaming runlets of it, and laugh, and say, “It is blood, that we save for our feasts.”
I did not ask, nor did I need to be told, what sort of blood that blood might be.
And on the other side of the three tubs was another such wickerwork basket, the contents of which were even more repelling, for it was a kind of soft pale blubbery stuff that did make my stomach heave and churn to behold it, a great store of fat that had been carved from thighs and breasts and bellies and buttocks, and I turned away, gagging, holding my gut in distress.
“It is the Imbe-Jaqqa’s own supply,” they told me, “but we have so much in this town that he shares it freely.”
Aye! Such was his generosity, this grand Calandola, that he did let others of his nation besmear himself with the fat of fallen foes that made his own skin so glossy, and they deemed it a rare privilege.
And these were my hosts. And these were the beings to whom I had fled for safety, because I had found my own Christian kind to be too traitorous toward me. Aye, in such a way do we choose our friends and allies, in this bleak and sorrowful world, as we make our path through the pitfalls and turmoil of life toward the joyous reward that lieth at the end.
10
Never had most of these Jaqqas seen a white man before, and the amazement that I caused among them was tenfold greater than I had ever previously created. They circled round and round me with their eyes wide and their mouths agape, and they pointed, and muttered, and jostled each other and said things, and came close, and rubbed my skin and my hair, and made strange soft cries deep in their throats, like the sound of no other man nor beast on this earth. So many of them came to view me upon my arrival in Calicansamba, that I thought I might be crushed in the frenzy. They snuffled and snorted and pressed in, murmuring, “Skin is white, hair is gold…. Skin is white, hair is gold…. Skin is WHITE, hair is GOLD…. O Calandola! O Sumba-Jaqqa! O Kalunga! Skin is white! Hair is gold!” And many more such outcries, and a howling like that of tormented spirits, and a dancing on the round part of their heels, with their arms thrust upward stiffly as though they were joined on wires to the sky.
This frightened me greatly. But I stood my ground, smiling at them and nodding and bowing slightly, and accepting their curiosity for all the world like the Pope of Rome accepting the homage of a tremendous multitude of Papists, or like a king greeting subjects crazed with awe. But my hand was close upon my musket, and I resolved to fire off some loud shots into the air if the crowding of them seemed to grow more perilous to me.