but received them in their own negro way. When Stas
told them of the creation of the world, about paradise and about the
snake, the teaching proceeded fairly well, but when he related how Cain
killed Abel, Kali involuntarily stroked his stomach and asked quite
calmly:

"Did he eat him afterwards?"

The black boy always claimed, indeed, that the Wahimas never ate
people, but evidently memory of that custom still lingered among them
as a national tradition.

He likewise could not understand why God did not kill the wicked
"Mzimu," and many similar things. His conception of good and evil was
too African; in consequence of which there once occurred between the
teacher and pupil this colloquy:

"Tell me," asked Stas, "what is a wicked deed?"

"If any one takes away Kali's cow," he answered after a brief
reflection, "that then is a wicked deed."

"Excellent!" exclaimed Stas, "and what is a good one?"

This time the answer came without any reflection:

"If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed."

Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good
deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole
nations.

Nevertheless, slowly, very slowly, the light dawned in their benighted
minds, and that which they could not comprehend with their heads they
understood with their warm hearts. After a time they were fitted for
the baptismal rites, which were performed with great solemnity. The
god-parents gave to each child sixteen yards of white percale and a
string of blue beads. Mea, nevertheless, felt somewhat disappointed,
for in the simplicity of her soul she thought that after the baptism
her skin would at once turn white, and great was her astonishment when
she observed that she remained as black as before. Nell comforted her,
however, with the assurance that now she possessed a white soul.

XV

Stas instructed Kali also how to shoot from a Remington rifle, and this
instruction proceeded more easily than the teaching of the catechism.
After ten days' shooting at a mark and at crocodiles which slept on the
sandy river banks, the young negro killed a big antelope cob; after
that a few ariels and finally a wart-hog. The encounter with the
latter, however, almost resulted in the same kind of accident which
befell Linde, for the wart-hog, which Kali approached carelessly after
the shot, started up suddenly and charged at him with tail upraised.
Kali, flinging aw