Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/198

 I could to sift the matter to the bottom. In spite of the absurdity of expecting to get an applicant, I sent one of Blockley’s servants to the town to circulate the report that I had found a stick, which I should be happy to return to its proper owner.” Late in the afternoon a middle-aged man appeared and claimed the stick, and as he said that the fish was also his property, I took him off forthwith to the king. Meanwhile the stolen articles had been concealed, and when the man’s hut was searched by the king’s messenger nothing could be found, and accordingly the man was declared not guilty. I expressed my dissatisfaction with the judgment, whereupon the king said that if I wished it the man should be punished, but as I quite understood that this punishment meant death, I acquiesced in his being released; nevertheless I made it thoroughly well known that I should shoot the very next burglar that I found trying to get into my hut. Sepopo assented to all I said, and repeated my words aloud to the crowd that had been drawn together by the affair.

Later in the evening some Barotse men arrived with their subsidies of corn, one of them being a Matabele who had been captured by Sekeletu. Sepopo took them in and showed them over his hut, of which he was not a little proud.

As it had been intimated to me by Masangu, an official who might be described as the controller of the arsenal, that the king was willing to grant me some favour by way of compensation for my annoyance at the robbery, I considered it a good opportunity to prefer my formal request for permission to explore his dominions. For this purpose I was conducted into the little courtyard, where I found