Whereon they clapped their hands and said I was evidently
innocent and a great medicine man."
And again, further on--"never did I see so much gold whether in dust,
nuggets, or worked articles. I imagine it must be worth millions, but
at that time gold was the last thing with which I wished to trouble
myself."
After this entry many pages were utterly effaced.
The last legible passage ran as follows--"So guided by the lad Jeekie,
and wearing the gold mask, Little Bonsa, on my head, I ran through
them all, holding him by the hand as though I were dragging him away.
A strange spectacle I must have been with my old black clergyman's coat
buttoned about me, my naked legs and the gold mask, as pretending to be
a devil such as they worship, I rushed through them in the moonlight,
blowing the whistle in the mask and bellowing like a bull. . . . Such
was the beginning of my dreadful six months' journey to the coast.
Setting aside the mercy of Providence that preserved me for its own
purposes, I could never have lived to reach it had it not been for
Little Bonsa, since curiously enough I found this fetish known and
dreaded for hundreds of miles, and that by people who had never seen it,
yes, even by the wild cannibals.
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