Chap. VII. BOBBED BY THE ASHIRA PEOPLE. 137 



especially when I saw tliat all the people of the 

 village knew how I had heen plundered. I detected 

 them often whispering secretly and casting furtive 

 glances towards my hut ; hut orders had heen given 

 to every Ashira man, woman, and child to keep 

 the matter secret from me, and not a single one 

 betrayed it. It is wonderful how even the young- 

 children here are tauglit to be " discreet." I was 

 obliged to act the hypocrite and pretend that I 

 believed Ondonga was ignorant of the arrival of 

 Arangui. The day following the arrival of my men, 

 Ondonga, Mintcho, and several others came to me and 

 told me they would endeavour to persuade Arangui 

 to give up the man. Arangui was obstinate, and 

 neither the arguments of his friends nor my threats 

 could prevail upon him. It appeared that two years 

 previously the Otandos had seized a relative of his, 

 and still kept him in nchogo (the native stocks). 

 Here was a sample of the complicated difficulties 

 a poor African traveller has to contend with. At 

 length Arangui fell ill ; and, in his superstitious 

 fears that I had caused his illness, he released the 

 man, but with limbs so cruelly lacerated by the 

 wooden blocks in which he had been confined, that 

 he was unable to move for several days afterwards. 



Meantime the news of Olenda's death and my 

 detention had reached Goumbi, and Quengueza had 

 sent word that he must come and fetch me back, that 

 Olenda had left no people to carry the white man's 

 goods to the next country, and so forth. The men 

 who brought the message told us (what I afterwards 

 learnt to be true) that all the negroes who had ac- 

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