Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

224 THINKING BLACK
was Christ's bondslave and led about in triumph as
Christ the Conqueror s trophy.
Swollen with pride and satisfaction, the generalissimo
advances with a strut into the centre of this vast sea of
brilliantly clad negroes, followed by the captured chiefs,
or prisoners of high status, hard in his wake, this line of
the captured tailing off in the broken-kneed dregs of
slavery. They are nearly all women, however, a proof
this that the men they fought were really masculine
enough to die rather than be captured—hence these heaps
of heads hidden in clouds of flies. One brute, you notice,
has three skulls tied together dangling from his mouth,
and Mushidi claims all these heads by formally descending
from his throne and putting his foot on each one : a sort
of trampling on the necks of his enemies, I suppose.
Meanwhile, the army has fired a deafening feu de joie
point blank in our faces, and then begins a show of sham
fighting during which different detachments are seen in
attack and retreat, now simulating a clever ambush and
anon springing like panthers from the grass. There is an
end to all this, and a facetious one. Like Nero, who was
vain of his music, Mushidi has the vanity to think that
he can—dance. Dull, dazed, and dumbfounded you, a
spectator, can scarcely believe your eyes when the old
man is seen to descend and begin his rheumatic shuffles, a
dancing bear indeed !
Nearly tripped by his own bunched-
up vesture, these contortions are a speciality, and called
the R.A.A. dance—Royal August Antics, that is to say
Could you not more truthfully translate this R.A.A.