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

'^ "NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT 309
one in his country laid under tribute to serve him. " He
used," says Dr. Moloney, " to call these worthy men, the
Missionaries, his * white slaves,' insult them before the
public, and despoil them of their goods."
Across the Eastern doorway of his empire on the
Lualaba, Mushidi had figuratively written the prophecy,
"My death will come from the East." All travellers entering
from the East were suspect, and the most able diplomatist
had a hopeless task before him. Nor did the wily old
warrior draw blank here in this death-prophecy of his.
Yes, die he did, and from the suspected East the mortal
bullet came. All his life he dreaded that East Coast and
resented with extreme asperity the advance of any stranger
along his old route. Does not the thief who burgles
through the pantry window suspect that the policeman
will follow by the same aperture? Little did Mushidi
imagine that his own curiously shaped head was destined
to make the long journey out to the Ocean preserved in
a petroleum tin. A mere instance of the curio craze writ
large, the Central African negro thinks that preserved
head of Mushidi the cap and climax of it all. For was
not this the Mushidi who made his Babylon a vast
museum of skulls ? Skulls piled up in pyramids on long
tables ; skulls used as drinking-cups for warriors ; skulls
hung up like hats on pegs on the lifeless spokes of withered
trees. Such a '' dramatic neatness " do they see in God's
methods that they speak of the dead despot's skull ever
** dripping, dripping blood all the long journey to the
Ocean." This curious idea of the ** blood that never dries "