You Should Have
Been Supplied With Fat Cows And Milk And Butter, Had You Behaved Well.
I
will have my men ready to attack Fowooka tomorrow; - the Turks have ten
men; you have thirteen; thirteen
And ten make twenty-three; - you shall
be carried if you can't walk, and we will give Fowooka no chance - he
must be killed - only kill him, and MY BROTHER will give you half of his
kingdom." He continued, "You shall have supplies tomorrow; I will go to
my brother, who is the great M'Kammaa Kamrasi, and he will send you all
you require. I am a little man, he is a big one; I have nothing; he has
everything, and he longs to see you; you must go to him directly, he
lives close by." I hardly knew whether he was drunk or sober - "my
brother the great M'Kamma Kamrasi!" I felt bewildered with astonishment:
then, "If you are not Kamrasi, pray who are you ?" I asked. "Who am I?"
he replied, "ha, ha, ha! that's very good; who am I? - why I am
M'Gambi, the brother of Kamrasi, - I am the younger brother, but he is
the King."
The deceit of this country was incredible - 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 now remembered, that the woman Bacheeta had on several occasions
during the journey told us that the Kamrasi we had seen was not the true
M'Kamma Kamrasi; but at the time I had paid little attention to her, as
she was constantly grumbling, and I imagined that this was merely said
in ill temper, referring to her murdered master Sali as the rightful
king.
I called the vakeel of the Turks, Eddrees: he said, that he also had
heard long since that M'Gambi was not Kamrasi as we had all supposed,
but that he had never seen the great king, as M'Gambi had always acted
as viceroy; he confirmed the accounts I had just received, that the real
Kamrasi was not far from this village, the name of which was "Kisoona."
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 dare
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.
M'Gambi promised to send a good cow on the following morning, as we had
not tasted milk for some months, and we were in great want of
strengthening food. He took his leave, having received a small present
of minute beads of various colours.
I could not help wondering at the curious combination of pride and
abject cowardice that had been displayed by the redoubted Kamrasi ever
since our first entrance to his territory. Speke when at Gondokoro had
told me how he had been kept waiting for fifteen days before the king
had condescended to see him. I now understood that this delay had been
occasioned more by fear than pride, and that, in his cowardice, the king
fell back upon his dignity as an excuse for absenting himself.
With the addition of the Turks' party we were now twenty-four armed men.
Although they had not seen the real king Kamrasi, they had been well
treated since Ibrahim's departure, having received each a present of a
young slave girl as a wife, while, as a distinguishing mark of royal
favour, the vakeel Eddrees had received two wives instead of one; they
had also received regular supplies of flour and beef - the latter in
the shape of a fat ox presented every seventh day, together with a
liberal supply of plantain cider.
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 have
returned 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:
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