XXIII 
SUPERSTITION AND A SEQUEL 
221 
clothes by way of chastisement for her unseemly 
conduct. 
Those of my men who had been left in camp 
then asked him how it was that he had returned 
with my cartridges, binoculars, etc., to which he 
replied that I had given him permission, but they, 
with the keen intuition of their race, guessed that 
he had deserted, and promptly tied him up pending 
my return. My men’s wives, infuriated at the 
brutal way Makabuli had treated his wife, begged 
me on my return to punish him severely. Feeling 
that Makabuli deserved it, I told them that they 
had better take the law into their own hands and 
mete out the punishment they thought most appro¬ 
priate to the occasion. This they promptly did : 
about a dozen of them (and I may say that a native 
woman is no weakling) soundly thrashed him, and, 
as a native can suffer no greater humiliation than to 
be beaten by women, Makabuli, I think, thoroughly 
expiated his misdemeanour. 
