xxv MAD BUFFALO AND FAITHLESS WIFE 233 



my inquiring of him the cause of his unusual low 

 spirits, he replied : 



' Oh, bwana, do you wonder at my feeling de- 

 pressed ? My wife must have taken another 

 husband, for that is why the buffalo tried to kill 

 me.' 



All my endeavours to laugh the fellow out of 

 this curious belief proved futile, and he, for whom 

 life had always been an affair of bubbles and 

 butterflies, went about his work a changed being. 

 Curiously enough, two months after this little 

 conversation, some of Malingum's friends, hailing 

 from the Fipa country, near Lake Tanganyika, 

 about three hundred miles away, turned up at 

 my camp, bringing with them a note for my 

 tracker from his brother. On learning from this 

 missive that his wife had deserted him for another 

 man, my tracker at once brought the note for 

 my perusal. 



' Read this letter, bwana ! ' he cried. ' Didn't I 

 tell you that my wife must have been faithless to me 

 when that accursed buffalo endeavoured to kill me? 

 You laughed at what you called my superstitious 

 beliefs what do you think of them now ? However, 

 now that I am certain, my mind is at rest. She is 

 nothing to me, for I can get plenty of younger and 

 prettier women in every village to which we go. As 

 for a wife, when I return to my own kraal, I shall 



