"The head man replied that that was a good saying, and they did not
complain at it, and so the meeting ended.
"Next day we spent in preparations for departure. Mine consisted chiefly
in superintending the digging up of the stockade of ivory tusks, which I
did with the greatest satisfaction. There were some five hundred of them
altogether. I made inquiries about it from Every, who told me that the
stockade had been there so long that nobody seemed to know exactly
who had collected the tusks originally. There was, however, a kind of
superstitious feeling about them which had always prevented the chiefs
from trying to sell this great mass of ivory. Every and I examined it
carefully, and found that although it was so old its quality was really
as good as ever, and there was very little soft ivory in the lot. At
first I was rather afraid lest, now that my services had been rendered,
Nala should hesitate to part with so much valuable property, but this
was not the case. When I spoke to him on the subject he merely said,
'Take it, Macumazahn, take it; you have earned it well,' and, to speak
the truth, though I say it who shouldn't, I think I had. So we pressed
several hundred Matuku bearers into our service, and next day marched
off with the lot.
"Before we went I took a formal farewell of Maiwa, whom we left with a
bodyguard of three hundred men to assist her in settling the country.
She gave me her hand to kiss in a queenly sort of way, and then said,
"'Macumazahn, you are a brave man, and have been a friend to me in my
need.
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