I Thought Little Of This Affair Myself, Beyond
Regretting The Delay Which It Might Occasion, As M'yonga, I Knew,
Would Not Permit Such Usage, If I Chose To Go Round By His Palace
And Make A Complaint.
Both Bui and Nasib, however, were so
greatly alarmed, that before I could say a word they got the gun
back again by paying four yards merikani.
We had continued
bickering again, for Bui had taken such fright at this kind of
rough handling, and the "push-ahead" manner in which I persisted
"riding over the lords of the soil," that I could hardly drag the
party along.
However, on the 18th, after breakfasting at Ruhe's, we walked
into Mihambo, and took all the camp by surprise. I found the
Union Jack hoisted upon a flag-staff, high above all the trees,
in the boma. Baraka said he had done this to show the Watuta that
the place was occupied by men with guns - a necessary precaution,
as all the villages in the neighbourhood had, since my departure,
been visited and plundered by them. Lumeresi, the chief of the
district, who lived ten miles to the eastward, had been
constantly pressing him to leave this post and come to his
palace, as he felt greatly affronted at our having shunned him
and put up with Ruhe. He did not want property, he said, but he
could not bear that the strangers had lived with his mtoto, or
child, which Ruhe was, and yet would not live with him. He
thought Baraka's determined obstinacy on this could only be
caused by the influence of the head man of the village, and
threatened that if Baraka did not come to visit him at once, he
would have the head man beheaded. Then, shifting round a bit, he
thought of ordering his subjects to starve the visitors into
submission, and said he must have a hongo equal to Ruhe's. To
all this Baraka replied, that he was merely a servant, and as he
had orders to stop where he was, he could not leave it until I
came; but to show there was no ill-feeling towards him, he sent
the chief a cloth.
These first explanations over, I entered my tent, in which Baraka
had been living, and there I found a lot of my brass wires on the
ground, lying scattered about. I did not like the look of this,
so ordered Bombay to resume his position of factotum, and count
over the kit. Whilst this was going on, a villager came to me
with a wire, and asked me to change it for a cloth. I saw at
once what the game was; so I asked my friend where he got it, on
which he at once pointed to Baraka. I then heard the men who
were standing round us say one to another in under-tones,
giggling with the fun of it, "Oh, what a shame of him! Did you
hear what Bana said, and that fool's reply to it?
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