The king, Bausi,
a very prejudiced fellow, was dead against us. Also by a piece of
foolishness which I now bitterly regretted, as indeed I regretted the
whole expedition, or at any rate entering on it in the absence of
Brother John, we had made an implacable enemy of the head medicine-
man, who to these folk was a sort of Archbishop of Canterbury. Short
of a miracle, there was no hope for us. All that we could do was to
say our prayers and prepare for the end.
Mavovo, it is true, remained cheerful. His faith in his "Snake" was
really touching. He offered to go through that divination process
again in our presence and demonstrate that there was no mistake. I
declined because I had no faith in divinations, and Stephen also
declined, for another reason, namely that the result might prove to be
different, which, he held, would be depressing. The other Zulus
oscillated between belief and scepticism, as do the unstable who set
to work to study the evidences of Christianity. But Sammy did not
oscillate, he literally howled, and prepared the food which poured in
upon us so badly that I had to turn on Hans to do the cooking, for
however little appetite we might have, it was necessary that we should
keep up our strength by eating.
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