The mist cleared away, rolling up like a curtain and
revealing on the shore a number of men and women clad
in white robes, who were martialled in ranks there,
chanting and staring out at the dim waters of the
lagoon. Yonder upon the waters, driven forward
by the gentle breeze, floated a canoe and lo! in the
prow of that canoe sat a white man and on his head
the god which they had lost a whole generation gone.
On the head of a white man it had departed; on the
head of a white man it returned. They saw and
fell upon their knees.
“Blow, Major, blow!” whispered Jeekie,
and Alan blew a feeble note through the whistle in
the mouth of the mask. It was enough, they knew
it. They sprang into the water and dragged the
canoe to land. They set Alan on the shore and
worshipped him. They haled up a lad as though
for sacrifice, for a priest flourished a great knife
above his head, but Jeekie said something that caused
them to let him go. Alan thought it was to the
effect that Little Bonsa had changed her habits across
the Black Water, and wanted no blood, only food.
Then he remembered no more; again the darkness fell
upon him.
CHAPTER X
BONSA TOWN
When consciousness returned to Alan, the first thing
of which he became dimly aware was the slow, swaying
motion of a litter. He raised himself, for he
was lying at full length, and in so doing felt that
there was something over his face.
“That confounded Little Bonsa,” he thought.
“Am I expected to spend the rest of my life
with it on my head like the man in the iron mask?”
Then he put up his hand and felt the thing, to find
that it was not Little Bonsa, but something made apparently
of thin, fine linen, fitted to the shape of his face,
for there was a nose on it, and eyeholes through which
he could see, yes, and a mouth whereof the lips by
some ingenious contrivance could be moved up and down.
“Little Bonsa’s undress uniform, I expect,”
he muttered, and tried to drag it off. This,
however, proved to be impossible, for it was fitted
tightly to his head and laced or fastened at the back
of his neck so securely that he could not undo it.
Being still weak, soon he gave up the attempt and
began to look about him.
He was in a litter, a very fine litter hung round
with beautifully woven and coloured grass mats, inside
of which were a kind of couch and cushions of soft
wool or hair, so arranged that he could either sit
up or lie down. He peeped between two of these
mats and saw that they were travelling in a mountainous
country over a well-beaten road or trail, and that
his litter was borne upon the shoulders of a double
line of white-robed men, while all around him marched
numbers of other men. They seemed to be soldiers,
for they were arranged in companies and carried large
spears and shields. Also some of them wore torques
and bracelets of yellow metal that might be either
Copyrights
A Yellow God: an Idol of Africa from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
