Entering the house, Mr. Reade found him lying on the bamboo bedstead in a
state of stupor. The house was thronged with women, who had stripped off their
garments and shaved the heads in token of mourning, and were “raining tears” in
their purchased and admirably acted grief. Sometimes one of them would sit by
his side, and flinging her arms around him, would shriek—almost in the very
words of the Irish death-wail,—“Why did ye die, darling? why did ye die?” For
they regarded him as really dead, when he could neither look at them nor speak
to them.
In contrast to their loud sorrow was the silent mourning of the men who, hushed
and fasting, sat in the chief house of the town. In their midst crouched the seven
years old boy, the marks of a severe wound visible on his arm, and his wrists
securely bound together. The dogged expression of the child’s face was
something wonderful. It wore that look of stolid endurance which seems natural
to the negro. One of the men with horrible pleasantry held an axe below his eyes;
but the boy contemplated it without emotion—he displayed all the cold
indifference of the ancient Stoicism. When his name was first mentioned, his
eyes flashed; but this indication of passion was only momentary. He showed the
same indifference when a plea was put in for his life, as when, just before, he
had been threatened and taunted with death.
Mr. Reade did not see the unfortunate mother, but was afterwards told that she
had been flogged into confessing that she and she only had bewitched the man.
Her son had acknowledged the crime as soon as he was charged with it. It is well
known that such confessions amount to nothing. During the witch epidemic in
Mediæval Europe, scores of unhappy creatures confessed to the practice of
witchcraft, though by so doing they doomed themselves to death. The
imagination in some way or other is powerfully excited, and completely
overcomes the judgment; or it may be from a fear of torture or a thirst for
notoriety that such confessions are made.
Mr. Mackey, the missionary, said that he had come to speak to Okota, the
nearest kinsman of the dying chief, upon whom, in all such cases, the
responsibility rests. Okota came out from the throng, placed his stool near the
feet of the missionary, and listened to him attentively.
“Death,” said the missionary, “must come to all. It is foolish to think that
because a man dies he has been bewitched.”
“Yes,” replied Okota, “death must come to all, but not always from GOD.