XI.

Moonlight was flooding the forest beyond the native village of Moumbossa on the Upper Gambia, but where Dr Koomadhi was walking no moonbeam penetrated. The branches formed an arch above him as dense with interwoven boughs and thick leaves as though the arch was a railway tunnel. Only in the far distance a gleam of light could be seen.

At times the deep silence of the night was broken by the many sounds of the tropical jungle. Every sound was familiar to Dr Koomadhi, and he laughed joyously as one laughs on recognising the voice of a friend. The wild shriek of a monkey pounced upon by some other creature, the horrible laugh of a hyena, the yell of a lory, and then a deep silence. He felt at home in the midst of that forest, though when he spoke of home within the hearing of civilised people, he meant it to be understood that he referred to England.

When he emerged from the brake he found himself gazing at a solitary beehive hut in the centre of a great cleared space, A quarter of a mile away the moonlight showed him the village of Moumbossa, with its lines of palms and plantains.

He walked up to the hut without removing his rifle from his shoulder, and stood for some moments at the entrance. Then he heard a voice saying to him in the tongue of the Ashantees—

“Enter, my son, and let thy mother see if thy face is changed.”

“I cannot enter, mother,” he replied in the same language. “But I have come far and in peril to talk with you. We must talk together in the moonlight.”

He retained among his other memories a vivid recollection of the interior of a native hut. He could not bring himself to face the ordeal of entering the one before him.

“I will soon be beside you,” came the voice; and in a few moments there crawled out from the entering-place a half-naked old negress, of great stature, and with only the smallest perceptible stoop. She walked round Dr Koomadhi, and then looked into his face with a laugh.

“Yes,” she said, “it is indeed you, my son, and I see that you need my services.”

“You are right, mother,” said he. “I wondered if you still retained your old powers. That is why I stood for some minutes outside the hut. I said, ‘If my mother has still her messengers in the air, and in the earth, they will tell her that her son has come to her once more.

“You should not have doubted,” she said. “Do you fancy that such powers as have come to me by the possession of the Sacred Khabela can decay by reason of age or the weight of days?”

“If that had been my belief, should I have come to you this night?” he asked. “I have need of all your powers. I have need of all the powers of the Khabela.”

“You shall have all that I can command: are you not my son?” said the old woman. “But have you found the Sacred Ear to fail you?”

“Never, mother,” said Dr Koomadhi. “You told me what it could do, and it has never failed me within its limits. But I must have the more powerful charm of the Sacred Mouth. My need is extreme.”

“It must be extreme, and I will not deny it to you,” said his mother. “You know what it can do. No man or woman can withstand it. If any offspring of woman should hold that Sacred Mouth to his ear, or her ear, as the case may be, the words which you whisper into the Sacred Ear will seem the truth, whatever those words may be. You know that. But the magic of the Khabela is far greater. It will work at a distance. But if it is lost you know what the consequences will be. You know the decree of the great Fanshatee, the monkey-god?”

“I know it. The stone Khabela shall not be lost. I accept the responsibility. I must have command over it until the return of the moon.”

“And thou shalt have control of it, whether for good or evil. It told me that thou wert nigh to-night, so that thou must have the Ear charm in thy possession even now.”

“It is here, mother, in this pocket. I have shown it to no mortal whose colour is not as our colour, whose hair is not as our hair.”

“The white men laugh at all magic such as ours, I have heard.”

“Yes, they laugh at it. But some of them practise a form of it themselves. I have seen one practise it in a great room in England. Without the aid of a mystic stone he told sober men that they were drunk, and they acted as drunk men; he told rough fellows that they were priests, and they preached sermons as long and as stupid as any that we have heard missionaries preach.”

“And yet they say that our magic is a thing accursed.”

“Yes; that is the way with the white men. When they have said their word ‘damn’ on any matter, they believe that the last word has been said upon it, and all that other men may say they laugh at.”

“They are fools, my son; and thou art a fool to dwell among them.”

“They are wise men up to a certain point. They are only fools on the subject of names. They say that magic is accursed; but they say that hypnotism is science, and science is the only thing in which they believe.” He had some trouble translating the word hypnotism into the native speech. “Enough about them. Let me have the mystery, and then let me have a cake that has been baked in the earth with the leaves of the betel.”

“Thou shalt have both, ray son, before the morning light. Enter my hut, and I will dream that thou art a child again.”

But that was just where Dr Koomadhi drew the line. He would not crawl into the hut even to make his venerable mother fancy that his youth was renewed like the eagles.

He returned to Picotee the next day, and as he walked through the forest each side of the bush track was lined with monkeys. They came from far and near and put their faces down to the ground, their fore-hands at the back of their heads.

He talked to them in simian.

“Yes,” he said. “Ye know that I am the holder of the Khabela, intrusted to me by my brother Fanshatee; but if I lose it your attitude will not be the same.”