Whereupon the kettles were heated and they did all greedily devour the dead bodies of the fallen. The choicest parts were handed up the scaffold to Calandola and his nobles, and we did pounce upon the meat like vultures, since that there is much virtue in consuming the flesh of those who have died bravely in this sport. I held back a while, letting them have their fill, for they were so eager.
But when I went for mine, I came in the way of Machimba-lombo, whose lips and jowls were besmeared with grease and whose eyes were wild with hunger and something else, a sort of frenzy. I thought he would strike me as I reached past him for my slice: but again he controlled himself, holding taut, and I heard him rumbling in his throat. For this man was mine enemy, and I was coming now to learn it. Yet I could not let him threaten me before the others. So courteously I said, “I pray you, good cousin, let me have my due share.”
His eyes were wolf-eyes upon me. But what could he do? I had spoken sweet words, yet not in any sweet tone. And he gave ground, and let me eat.
The music now began again, and singing and dancing, and crying, “Long live our Lord Imbe-Jaqqa! Long live our Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.” And some of the strongest of the warriors below commenced a kind of wrestling, that was most graceful and beautiful, like unto a kind of dance, for all its fierceness. This was the first time that ever I beheld Jaqqa wrestling. They twined their long arms, they matched each other’s movements like men in a mirror, they bent forward and backward, and leaped about, and pounced, and cast each other down with the greatest of elegance.
As for the lion, her flesh was not eaten, but her skin and head was taken, and used for ornaments in the Imbe-Jaqqa’s household. And all the week that followed I saw Jaqqas in the camp that were scratched and torn from the rage of the lion; and in this manner did these man-eaters train themselves to greater bravery; as though more of that commodity were needed amongst them.
The other thing they did for valor’s sake was hunting of elephantos to take their tails. This was not done, as among the settled Bakongo folk, to make ornaments out of the dark and glossy tail-hairs. Nay, it was the entire tail of the giant beast that the Jaqqas prized. For when any one of their captains or chief lords came to die, they commonly did preserve one of these tails in memory of him, and to which they paid a sort of adoration, out of an opinion they had of its great strength. They would say, holding up the shrine in which a certain tail was kept, “This is the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Ntotela,” or, “This is the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Zimbo,” or whichever. So to increase the number of these tails they did pursue the elephantos into narrow places, as I have told earlier. But the amputation had to be performed at one blow, and from a living elephanto, or their superstition would allow it no value.
I did not see this elephanto-hunting myself, for it was a most sacred thing that was done privately by Jaqqas to enhance their ghostly stature, and not the sort of quest on which one would invite a companion. But three separate times I saw a Jaqqa come running into camp holding a fresh-cut elephanto tail aloft, and each one of them was shining in the face, and altogether transfigured with radiant joy, as though the bloody thing he carried was none other than the Holy Grail of the Lord.
We saw elephantos often, wandering hither and thither across the land. And frightsome things they were to behold, at close distance, though they are in the main gentle and tractable creatures. As is well for all other creatures, when one considers their great size. For if there were an animal with the bulk of an elephanto and the spirit of a wolf or a she-lion, it should have conquered all the world.
When elephantos came near us, even the Jaqqas gave them a wide way, since, when angered, they are beyond being killed by any weapon, and do great destruction. They have great hanging ears and long lips, and a tongue that is very little, and so far in their mouth that it cannot be seen; but the snout or trunk is so long and in such form that it is to him in the stead of a hand, for he neither eats nor drinks but by bringing his trunk to his mouth. Also can he overthrow trees with it, to eat the tender shoots high up. Once I saw an elephanto take a boy around the middle with his trunk, that had done something idle to annoy him, and hurl that foolish boy far away, flying through the air with arms and legs wildly waving, so that he landed all shattered against a remote rock.
The male elephanto lives two hundred years or at the least one hundred and twenty, the female almost as long. They love rivers and will often go into them up to the snout, wherewith they blow and snuff, and play in the water; but swim they cannot, for the weight of their bodies. I know from reading the Greek and Roman writers that the elephanto can be trained, and made to bear burdens and be a beast of war, but the Africans do no such thing that I ever heard. The eye of the elephanto is very small, and high up along its head, yet it shows great wisdom and even a kind of sadness, and always when I looked at the eye of an elephanto I did feel a little shiver go down my back, for I told myself, This is a deep and thoughtful creature, that lives long and understandeth much, and has something holy in its aspect.
We saw another ponderous famous beast in our wanderings through this district of Kalungu that I had heard much of, but had not previously encountered in Africa. These were rhinocerotes, which are a sort of elephanto, but not so tall, and without the snout or the great ears, but having horns upon their noses. Like elephantos, the rhinocerotes are massive and armor-skinned, and gray or white in color, with heavy flat feet, and they can make the ground shake when they run. I saw two first, that my Jaqqa wife Kulachinga pointed out to me, saying, “They are mother and daughter,” and soon after came the husband, such a monster as I could hardly believe, gigantic, like unto a fortress on four thick heavy legs. They went past without anyone doing them harm, and I stared after them as if I had seen three phantoms out of nightmare.
Kulachinga said, “Do you not have such animals in England, An-dubatil?”
“Nay,” said I, “not rhinocerotes, nor elephantos, nor coccodrillos, nor zevveras, neither.”
“You have no animals, then?”
“Ah, we have cattle,” I said, “and sheep, and goats, and pigs, and dogs, and cats, and the like. And in the forests are great stags, and perchance a unicorn or two, though I think it is many years since one of those was seen upon our shores. But of rhinocerotes not a one.”
“What a strange land,” said Kulachinga.
And I thought to myself, Yea, how very strange, with its green fields like tended carpets, and its little hills, and its cool rainy air, and its oak trees and elms and such that did drop their withered leaves when the first chill blasts of autumn came by. I had by now lived half as long in Africa as ever I did in England, or close upon that, and I was growing used to ollicondi trees and palms and thorny things, and elephantos and coccodrillos. And in time even rhinocerotes would seem as comfortable to me as a roebuck on a hillside, I could readily believe.
I was in these days living in most congenial harmony with this Jaqqa wife of mine, and that of itself was strange. For surely we were not designed to companion one another. At the first we could scarce speak to one another, I having only the bare smattering of the Jaqqa tongue and she no knowledge of my languages. In my usual way I did come to be fluent quickly in Jaqqa-speech, but even that did not by itself augur any true marriage, since there are in England many millions of men and women who speak each other’s language as though they be native to it, and yet would make most woeful consorts to one another. And here was Kulachinga with her scarred and ridged skin, and her body all greased and oiled with strange substances of alien odor, and her hair done up with red clay and yet more grease, and she should have been as unsuited for me, and I for her, as a coccodrillo for a rhinocerote. But yet we did pleasantly together.