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

THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 269
omniscient bullet, sure as the scent of a blood-hound,
zigzagging through the land, dealing death to all desir-
able victims. More : they made a double lie out of
double bullets ; two bullets like two pills being a double
dose of death, the said bullets separating to find
different victims ad infinitum. Superstition dies hard, but
here in Bunkeya it doesn't die at all. So well does this
idea of " God-firing " soak into the negro brain, that
when I was down in the Lufira Valley the King's brother
corroborated this idea. He had gone out into the
savannah to try his Bwanga or luck at hunting a herd
of red-buck round the ant-hills ; but when he had hoped
to draw upon one of these decisively, flash ! came a vivid
fork of lightning, half blinding him for the moment. A
second passed, and then he saw nearly the whole heap of
buck lying stone dead from the forked flash. Then it
was, rubbing his hands with glee, the noble hunter
naively said, " Fancy ! God
beating me at gun-firing !
It was with this blasphemous idea he pushed his
"God" pretensions in Lubaland on going North to
Kayumba's. The legend of Kara ya Kova found all over
the Garenganze took Mushidi's fancy. This Kara ya
Rova is the legendary Creator of the Human Race, called
literally the Captain of Humanity, and he it was who
headed for the North with the long Indian file of human
nations in his wake. We, the whites, were there with
our federal ancestor, and they, the blacks, were there too.
But spying on the march, day by day, a changing
panorama of bewitching vales watered by noble rivers,
"