rees
grew in front of a large native house. Not far from the door of this
house a fat, middle-aged and angry-looking man was seated on a stool,
naked except for a moocha of catskins about his loins and a string of
large blue beads round his neck.

"Bausi, the King," whispered Babemba.

At his side squatted a little hunchbacked figure, in whom I had no
difficulty in recognising Imbozwi, although he had painted his scorched
scalp white with vermillion spots and adorned his snub nose with a
purple tip, his dress of ceremony I presume. Round and behind there were
a number of silent councillors. At some signal or on reaching a given
spot, all the soldiers, including old Babemba, fell upon their hands and
knees and began to crawl. They wanted us to do the same, but here I drew
the line, feeling that if once we crawled we must always crawl.

So at my word we advanced upright, but with slow steps, in the midst of
all this wriggling humanity and at length found ourselves in the august
presence of Bausi, "the Beautiful Black One," King of the Mazitu.

CHAPTER X

THE SENTENCE

We stared at Bausi and Bausi stared at us.

"I am the Black Elephant Bausi," he exclaimed at last, worn out by our
solid silence, "and I trumpet! I trumpet! I trumpet!" (It appeared that
this was the ancient and hallowed formula with which a Mazitu king was
wont to open a conversation with strangers.)

After a suitable pause I replied in a cold voice:

"We are the white lions, Macumazana and Wazela, and we roar! we roar! we
roar!"

"I can trample," said Bausi.

"And we can bite," I said haughtily, though how we were to bite or do
anything else effectual with nothing but a Union Jack, I did not in the
least know.

"What is that thing?" asked Bausi, pointing to the flag.

"That which shadows the whole earth," I answered proudly, a remark that
seemed to impress him, although he did not at all understand it, for he
ordered a soldier to hold a palm leaf umbrella over him to prevent it
from shadowing _him_.

"And that," he asked again, pointing to the music box, "which is not
alive and yet makes a noise?"

"That sings the war-song of our people," I said. "We sent it to you as a
present and you returned it. Why do you return our presents, O Bausi?"

Then of a sudden this potentate grew furious.

"Why do you come here, white men," he asked, "uninvited and against
the law of my land, where only one white man is