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

KAVANGA: GATES OF THE MORNING 385
bees, go in at the same door, but we don't sleep in the
same rooms." Nor did this old orator doubt that God
would visit her tormentors even in this life with condign
punishment for their evil deeds. Only he was careful
to explain how this judgment might not come. " They
will not," said he, " become mad, but they may become
too wise, for God sees to it that those who steal bananas
must pay for them in honey." Kather like what Anne
of Austria said :
" God does not pay at the end of every
day, my Lord Cardinal, but at the end God pays." Or
to mix metaphors a bit. Here we have the old error,
that because the lightning zigzags it does not know
where to strike. These leafy bowers, though, were
palatial compared with the cold ant-bear burrows this
poor woman slept in when the forest was aflame with
lightning heralding wild torrents of rain, her only diet
raw wild ants and rawer snakes. There in that living
tomb of clammy clay she passed the wild weather, a
curious watch-dog contrivance being the capturing of a
jackal {Mumbulu) which she tied as sort of sentry to the
mouth of her lair.
"Oh, dwarfed and wronged and stained with sin.
Behold ! thou art a woman still
And by that sacred name and dear,
I bid thy better self appear."
Cringing forward conciliatingly in her direction, I
tried to edge nearer, but no good ! The least suspicion
of my approach made her frantic, and off she sprang from
branch to branch like a wild thing. Fail though I did.