Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/274

 266 Stas shrugged his shoulders.

"I see that it is a good thing to be a fetish-man among your people. Perhaps that snake was Mzimu?"

Kali shook his head.

"In such case the elephant could not kill the Mzimu, but the Mzimu would kill the elephant. Mzimu is death."

Some kind of strange crash and rumble within the tree suddenly interrupted his reply. From the lower aperture there burst out a strange ruddy dust, after which there resounded a second crash, louder than the former one.

Kali threw himself in the twinkling of an eye upon his face and began to cry shrilly:

"Aka! Mzimu! Aka! Aka! Aka!"

Stas at first stepped back, but soon recovered his composure, and when Nell with Mea came running up he began to explain what might have happened.

"In all probability," he said, "a whole mass of decayed wood in the interior of the trunk, expanding from the heat, finally tumbled down and buried the burning wood. And he thinks that it was Mzimu. Let Mea, however, pour water a few times through the opening; if the live embers are not extinct for want of air and the decayed wood is kindled, the tree might be consumed by fire."

After which, seeing that Kali continued lying down and did not cease repeating with terror, "Aka! Aka!" he took the rifle with which he usually shot at guinea-fowl and, firing into the opening, said, shoving the boy with the barrel:

"Your Mzimu is killed. Do not fear."

And Kali raised his body, but remained on his knees.

"Oh, great master! great! You do not even fear Mzimu!"

"Aka! Aka!" exclaimed Stas, mimicking the negro.

And he began to laugh.