So that night we slept under a roof again. But it was not a restful night nor a merry one, except that it is possible to see merriment in a discomfort so extreme that it takes on a character of absurdity.
This is what befell. They gave us for sleeping, one of their largest palaces, which of course was no palace but only a building of brush and straw and plastered mud, but it had many rooms. When we had eaten and had our fill to drink, we took to our chambers gladly, and quickly our joy was dissipated. My bed was against the wall, which was of fat clay ill put together, and might well be called a nest of rats; for there were so many of them and so large, that they troubled me very much, running over me and biting my toes. To prevent this I caused my bed to be laid in the middle of the room, but to no purpose, for those cursed creatures knew where to find me. The others had the same difficulty, and when an hour had passed thus plagued by the rats, Cristovão and I went to the dwelling of the Mani Kasanza, to protest the place we had been given.
He was not at all surprised at our complaint, but said he would provide us with an infallible remedy against it. This was a little monkey that would secure me against the rats by blowing on them when he spied them, and by giving off a kind of musky perfume that the rats found displeasing. We took this small agile creature to our house, and indeed it did its duty; for he was quite tame, and picked through my hair and beard for hidden creatures, which he devoured, and after doing me this service did lay down at the foot of my bed. When the rats came as they were wont, the monkey blew hard at them two or three times, and made them run away; and then he went on into the other rooms and did the same for my companions.
Thus I had perhaps two hours of sleep without interruption, which my body sorely needed after my long march across the hot land. But just as I was sinking into the true depths of my slumber, that is the most nourishing part of the night, several blacks did rush helter-skelter into the chamber, crying, “Out! Out! The ants are broke out, and there is no time to be lost!”
I was fuddled with weariness and scarce understood what they were saying, so without waiting for me to stir, they lifted me upon my straw bed and did carry bed and me together out of the building. The same was occurring to the others of my party, and we gathered outside, now thoroughly awake. The nimbleness of the blacks stood me in good stead, for the ants had already begun to run upon my legs, and get to my body, and bit in like prickling needles. A certain Portugal named Vaz Martin, much agitated by the sight of them, said, “We should give God thanks that we were delivered from these pismires, for they are most deadly.” And he told me how this thing often happens in the kingdom of Angola, that men are taken in their sleep and unable to stir and are eaten up alive by them, and also cows are found devoured in the night by these ants, and nothing left of them but the bones. It is no small deliverance to escape the troublous insects, for there are some that fly, and are hard to be removed from the place where they lay hold: but God be praised that my body was not devoured by them alive.
To rid the village of the small attackers the blacks took straw, and fired it on the floor of the four rooms, where the ants were marching already above half a foot thick. But while this was being done the fire took hold of the thatch of the house, and fearing the fire might increase with the wind, we drew back to a further distance. And also the pismires broke into a neighboring cottage, where again the blacks did burn them; but the hut being all of straw, it was consumed as well as the ants, which made the blacks get out of their houses for fear the wind should carry the flame about and burn all that quarter. This may all sound amusing in the telling of it long after, but I assure you we found that comedy of rats and monkey and ants and fire to be no cheering comedy at all, but rather exceeding somber. We were without sleep that night once all this commenced, and before dawn we departed, more weary than we had come, and hied ourselves off to the shores of the lake of Kasanza.
Here at least we had some repose, and took some fish and birds for the benefit of our bellies. And at dusk the next day we proceeded onward to the north until we arrived at the river. To cross the Mbengu entailed us in great danger, for that the place is a nesting-ground of coccodrillos, in such number that they reminded us of the swarms of ants. I have told you that coccodrillos have a musky scent, but here they were so numerous that the water itself was rank with their flavor, which was distasteful in the extreme. And they are roaring beasts, that in the night do call to one another, especially toward break of day, with a sound much resembling the sound of a deep well, that might be easily heard a league away. But we found a place where we could safely ford the river between two great lairs of these monsters, and we lit torches, which they seemed not to like.
All the following day we crossed another dry hot terrain and toward night we came to the River Dande, the next one north of the Mbengu. Owing to the bleakness of the land we turned east and traveled so far that we were right against the mountains of Manibangono, which is a lord that warreth against the King of Kongo, whither we intended to go. Ahead of us we saw a village, but we were uncertain of our reception there and so we slipped most secretly into his outskirts, and hid ourselves in a field nearby.
God’s death, that was folly! For we had planted ourselves right down in the great burial-ground of the village, and hardly were we established there when a procession came wending out of the town to perform some funeral rites. We could not flee, for the lay of the land was such that we would surely be seen; so we had no recourse but to huddle ourselves down behind some of the great heaped-up tumuli of the dead and hope that we went unnoticed.
So they came forth, and when they reached the edge of the cemetery they all paused while some hens were killed by their painted sorcerers, and the blood liberally scattered around. Cristovão, beside me, whispered, “D’ye know the import of that?”
“Not at all,” said I.
“It is to prevent the soul of the dead person from coming to give the zumbi to any of the townsfolk.”
“I know not this word zumbi.”
“It means an apparition of the deceased one. They are of the opinion that to whomsoever it shall appear, that person will presently die.”
“Have we then escaped the ants and coccodrillos only to deliver ourselves up to the zumbi?” I asked.
To this he laughed quietly, and we fell silent and watched as the ceremony of lamenting proceeded, with much singing and dancing and weeping, and the sound of drums and iron bells and ivory horns. Then the corpse, wrapped in bright clothes and blankets, was taken into its grave. They did cover it with rich goods, blankets and robes and ornaments and the like, and poured an ocean and a half of palm-wine over it, the which I would gladly have had for my own use just then, and covered the top over with straw mats. And then the sorcerers did go back and forth with a thousand superstitious interlacings and interweavings, after which the earth was heaped high. Then to the sound of a beating drum they all withdrew back into their town, and during the night we heard from afar the sounds of merriment, and I know not what idolatrous delights and abominable pleasures.
There was no sleep for us that night. Who could tell what mourners lurked about, or what sentinels, or what zumbi? With the first pink streaks of dawn in the sky all did seem quiet, and we stole away to the north. And we passed the river, and rested again, and proceeded by the day, crossing, as we hoped, into the kingdom of Kongo, and thinking of ourselves as much like unto the children of Israel, wandering out of the desert toward the promised land.