them
that we come as friends."

"I know what to tell them, master," exclaimed the young negro with
great self-assurance.

And turning the horses towards the workers, he placed the palms of his
hands around his lips and began to shout:

"Yambo, he yambo sana!"

At this sound, the women engaged in hoeing the manioc field started up
suddenly and stood as if thunderstruck, but this lasted only the
twinkling of an eye, for afterwards, flinging away in alarm the hoes
and baskets, they began to run away, screaming, to the trees amidst
which the village was concealed.

The little travelers approached slowly and calmly. In the thicket
resounded the yelling of some hundred voices, after which silence fell.
It was interrupted finally by the hollow but loud rumble of a drum,
which did not cease even for a moment.

It was evidently a signal of the warriors for battle, for three hundred
of them suddenly emerged from the thicket. All stood in a long row
before the village. Stas stopped the King at the distance of one
hundred paces and began to gaze at them. The sun illuminated their
well-shaped forms, wide breasts, and powerful arms. They were armed
with bows and spears. Around their thighs some had short skirts of
heath, and some of monkey skin. Their heads were adorned with ostrich
and parrot feathers, or great scalps torn off baboons' skulls. They
appeared warlike and threatening, but they stood motionless and in
silence, for their amazement was simply unbounded and subdued the
desire for fighting. All eyes were fastened upon the King, on the white
palanquin, and the white man sitting on his neck.

Nevertheless, an elephant was not an unknown animal to them. On the
contrary, they continually live in dread of elephants, whole herds of
which destroy at night their manioc fields as well as banana and
doom-palm plantations. As the spears and arrows do not pierce the
elephant's hide, the poor negroes fight the depredators with the help
of fire, with the aid of cries imitating a cockerel's crow, by digging
pits, and constructing traps made of the trunks of trees. But that an
elephant should become slave of man and permit one to sit on his neck
was something which none of them ever saw before, and it never entered
into the mind of any of them that anything like that was possible. So
the spectacle which was presented to them passed so far beyond their
understanding and imagination that they did not know what to do:
whether to fi