Komba thrust himself between them, crying: "Back, Dogeetah, who dare to meddle with our customs! Is not the Kalubi Lord of life and death ?" Brother John was about to answer, but I called to him in English: "For Heaven's sake be silent, unless you want to follow the boy.

We are in these men's power." Then he remembered and walked away, and presently we marched forward as though nothing had happened.

Only from that moment I do not think that any of us worried ourselves about the Kalubi and what might befall him.
Still, looking back on the thing, I think that there was this excuse to be made for the man.

He was mad with the fear of death and knew not what he did.
All that day we travelled on through a rich, flat country that, as we could tell from various indications, had once been widely cultivated.
Now the fields were few and far between, and bush, for the most part a kind of bamboo scrub, was reoccupying the land.

About midday we halted by a water-pool to eat and rest, for the sun was hot, and here the four men who had carried off the boy's body rejoined us and made some report.
Then we went forward once more towards what seemed to be a curious and precipitous wall of black cliff, beyond which the volcanic-looking mountain towered in stately grandeur.