Musa, However, For His Own Reasons - Which Will Appear Presently - Eagerly Listened To The Arab's Tale, And Gave Full Credence To It.

Having well digested its horrible details, he came to the Doctor to give him the full benefit of what he had heard with such willing ears.

The traveller patiently listened to the narrative, which lost nothing of its portentous significance through Musa's relation, and then asked Musa if he believed it. "Yes," answered Musa, readily; "he tell me true, true. I ask him good, and he tell me true, true." The Doctor, however, said he did not believe it, for the Mazitu would not have been satisfied with merely plundering a man, they would have murdered him; but suggested, in order to allay the fears of his Moslem subordinate, that they should both proceed to the chief with whom they were staying, who, being a sensible man, would be able to advise them as to the probability or improbability of the tale being correct. Together, they proceeded to the Babisa chief, who, when he had heard the Arab's story, unhesitatingly denounced the Arab as a liar, and his story without the least foundation in fact; giving as a reason that, if the Mazitu had been lately in that vicinity, he should have heard of it soon enough.

But Musa broke out with "No, no, Doctor; no, no, no; I no want to go to Mazitu. I no want Mazitu to kill me. I want to see my father, my mother, my child, in Johanna. I want no Mazitu." These are Musa's words _ipsissima verba_.

To which the Doctor replied, "I don't want the Mazitu to kill me either; but, as you are afraid of them, I promise to go straight west until we get far past the beat of the Mazitu."

Musa was not satisfied, but kept moaning and sorrowing, saying, "If we had two hundred guns with us I would go; but our small party of men they will attack by night, and kill all."

The Doctor repeated his promise, "But I will not go near them; I will go west."

As soon as he turned his face westward, Musa and the Johanna men ran away in a body.

The Doctor says, in commenting upon Musa's conduct, that he felt strongly tempted to shoot Musa and another ringleader, but was, nevertheless, glad that he did not soil his hands with their vile blood. A day or two afterwards, another of his men - Simon Price by name - came to the Doctor with the same tale about the Mazitu, but, compelled by the scant number of his people to repress all such tendencies to desertion and faint-heartedness, the Doctor silenced him at once, and sternly forbade him to utter the name of the Mazitu any more.

Had the natives not assisted him, he must have despaired of ever being able to penetrate the wild and unexplored interior which he was now about to tread. "Fortunately," as the Doctor says with unction, "I was in a country now, after leaving the shores of Nyassa, which the foot of the slave-trader has not trod; it was a new and virgin land, and of course, as I have always found in such cases, the natives were really good and hospitable, and for very small portions of cloth my baggage was conveyed from village to village by them." In many other ways the traveller, in his extremity, was kindly treated by the yet unsophisticated and innocent natives.

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