I Had Positively Never Seen The Real Kamrasi Up To This Moment, And This Man M'Gambi Now Confessed To Having

Impersonated the king, his brother, as Kamrasi was afraid that I might be in league with Debono's people to murder

Him, and therefore he had ordered his brother M'Gambi to act the king.

I told M'Gambi that I did not wish to see his brother, the king, as I should perhaps be again deceived and be introduced to some impostor like himself; and that as I did not choose to be made a fool of, I should decline the introduction. This distressed him exceedingly. He said that the king was really so great a man that he, his own brother, dared not sit on a stool in his presence, and that he had only kept in retirement as a matter of precaution, as Debono's people had allied themselves with his enemy Rionga in the preceding year, and he dreaded treachery. I laughed contemptuously at M'Gambi, telling him that if a woman like my wife dared to trust herself far from her own country among such savages as Kamrasi's people, their king must be weaker than a woman if he dared not show himself in his own territory. I concluded by saying that I should not go to see Kamrasi, but that he should come to visit me.

On the following morning, after my arrival at Kisoona, M'Gambi appeared, beseeching me to go and visit the king. I replied that "I was hungry and weak from want of food, and that I wanted to see meat, and not the man who had starved me." In the afternoon a beautiful cow appeared with her young calf, also a fat sheep and two pots of plantain cider, as a present from Kamrasi. That evening we revelled in milk, a luxury that we had not tasted for some months. The cow gave such a quantity that we looked forward to the establishment of a dairy, and already contemplated cheese-making. I sent the king a present of a pound of powder in canister, a box of caps, and a variety of trifles, explaining that I was quite out of stores and presents, as I had been kept so long in his country that I was reduced to beggary, as I had expected to return to my own country long before this.

In the evening M'Gambi appeared with a message from the king, saying that I was his greatest friend, and that he would not think of taking anything from me as he was sure that I must be hard up; that he desired nothing, but would be much obliged if I would give him the "little double rifle that I always carried, and my watch and compass!" He wanted "NOTHING," only my Fletcher rifle, that I would as soon have parted with as the bone of my arm; and these three articles were the same for which I had been so pertinaciously bored before my departure from M'rooli.

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