“Jeekie,” said Alan, “can you not find a messenger?  Have you, who were born of this people, no friend among them at all?”

Jeekie shook his white head and rolled his eyes.  Then suddenly an idea struck him.

“Yes,” he said, “I think one, p’raps.  I mean my ma.”

“Your ma!” said Alan.  “Oh!  I remember.  Have you heard anything more about her?”

“Yes, Major.  Very old girl now, but strong on leg, so they say.  Believe she glad go anywhere, because she public nuisance; they tired of her in prison and there no workhouse here, so they want turn her out starve, which of course break my heart.  Perhaps she take message.  Some use that way.  Only think she afraid go Ogula-land because they nasty cannibal and eat old woman.”

When all this was translated to Fahni he assured Jeekie with earnestness that nothing would induce the Ogula people to eat his mother; moreover, that for her sake they would never look carnivorously on another old woman, fat or thin.

“Well,” said Jeekie, “I try again to get hold of old lady and we see.  I pray priests, whom you save other day, let her out of chokey as I sick to fall upon bosom, which quite true, only so much to think of that no time to attend to domestic relation till now.”

That very afternoon, on returning to his room from walking in the dismal cedar garden, Alan’s ears were greeted by a sound of shrill quarrelling.  Looking up he saw an extraordinary sight.  A tall, gaunt, withered female who might have been of any age between sixty and a hundred, had got Jeekie’s ear in one hand, and with the other was slapping him in the face while she exclaimed: 

“O thief, whom by the curse of Bonsa I brought into the world, what have you done with my blanket?  Was it not enough that you, my only son, should leave me to earn my own living?  Must you also take my best blanket with you, for which reason I have been cold ever since.  Where is it, thief, where is it?”

“Worn out, my mother, worn out,” he answered, trying to free himself.  “You forget, honourable mother, that I grow old and you should have been dead years ago.  How can you expect a blanket to last so long?  Leave go of my ear, beloved mother, and I will give you another.  I have travelled across the world to find you and I want to hear news of your husband.”

“My husband, thief, which husband?  Do you mean your father, the one with the broken nose, who was sacrificed because you ran away with the white man whom Bonsa loved?  Well, you look out for him when you get into the world of ghosts, for he said that he was going to wait for you there with the biggest stick that he could find.  Why I haven’t thought of him for years, but then I have had three other husbands since his time, bad enough, but better than he was, so who would?  And now Bonsa has got the lot, and I have no children alive, and they say I am to be driven out of the prison to starve next week as they won’t feed me any longer, I who can still work against any one of them, and—­you’ve got my blanket, you ugly old rascal,” and collapsing beneath the weight of her recited woes, the hag burst into a melancholy howl.