THE ALO MAN

CHILDREN OF THE WORLD

THE ALO MAN

STORIES FROM THE CONGO

BY

MARA L. PRATT-CHADWICK

AND

L. LAMPREY

Illustrated by Rollin Crampton

1921
WORLD BOOK COMPANY
YONKERS-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK

WORLD BOOK COMPANY

THE HOUSE OF APPLIED KNOWLEDGE

Established, 1905, by Caspar W. Hodgson
Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York
2126 Prairie Avenue, Chicago

This little book is the third in the Children of the World, a series of books for young readers which are designed to open up to them the study of geography and history as living subjects. “Paz and Pablo: A Story of Two Little Filipinos” and “Sunshine Lands of Europe” have already been published, and other volumes will be added to the series from time to time, until stories of the life of children in every land are told.

CW: CLAM-1

Copyright, 1921, by World Book Company
Copyright in Great Britain
All rights reserved

CONTENTS

MAP OF AFRICA

Shaded portions represent regions inhabited by the BANTU tribes

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY WORLD BOOK COMPANY

THE ALO MAN

CHAPTER I

THE DRUM IN THE FOREST

Mpoko the boy and Nkunda the girl were squatting in the firelight just outside their mother’s hut, where they could smell the smells from the cooking pots the women were tending so carefully. Their father, the chief of the tiny village, had gone with his men two days before on a trading journey to one of the great markets. They should have been at home before this.

Mpoko was busy winding a precious piece of brass wire round the handle of his pet hunting spear, and Nkunda was watching him. Each man or boy of the village had his favorite spear with its leaf-shaped iron blade, and the wire on the handle was useful as well as ornamental, for it gave a good grip. Iron is found almost everywhere in Africa, and the native blacksmiths made not only spear heads but knife blades and little axes. They could not make brass, which is a mixture of copper and zinc, but all traders had brass rods in their stores, and these could be hammered into all sorts of shapes. When these rods were first brought into the country, they were made about thirty inches long; but there was so much demand for smaller pieces to use in trading like small change, that they were now made only six or seven inches in length. Nkunda had a piece of brass wire almost as long as Mpoko’s, but hers was coiled round her slender brown wrist as a bracelet.

In Central Africa, supper time is about six o’clock all the year round. From one season to another, night and day are nearly equal and the time of sunrise and of sunset changes hardly more than fifteen minutes throughout the year. The year begins with the first heavy rain of the wet season, and when the new green shoots come out on the spurge thickets the people know that the new year is at hand.

The evening meal is the most important one of the day, sometimes the only regular meal. Soon after sunrise on this particular day the women, as usual, had picked up their hoes, their baskets, and their babies and had gone out to work on the farms outside the village. They had come back in the middle of the afternoon to begin preparing supper, which was a matter of some hours’ work, because there were so many different things to be done. Grain for bread or mush had to be ground on heavy stone slabs, vegetables must be made ready for cooking, water, fetched from the spring, wood brought, and fires made. Mpoko and Nkunda had helped a little, and they knew where, in a heap of hot ashes, the sweet potatoes from their own corner of the field were baking. There would be boiled fowl and cassava bread, and maybe some stewed fruit.

Besides helping their mothers, the children of the village had their own special work,—to drive in the goats from the fields,—and they had done this before sunset. All the shaggy, bleating little animals were now safe in the pen built of logs and roofed with planks, and Mpoko had seen to it that stakes were set firmly across the entrance to keep them in and keep out wild beasts. Even as the children sat here in the firelight they heard from time to time the hunting call of a leopard or hyena, but no fierce prowling creature of the jungle would come near the fires.

The cooking fires were in the middle of the open space around which the village was built. The village itself was nothing more than a rather irregular circle of huts inside a fence. Mpoko and Nkunda were sitting at the very edge of the great black shadow that closed in the lighted space and, beyond the huts, melted into the deep velvet darkness of the forest. The forest was all around them, and it was full of the noises of the night. The wind was whispering in the great leaves and walking in the tall grasses; the chitter and scamper of some small animal or the call of sleepy birds now and then broke the silence of the night. Under the many rustlings and whisperings there was always to be heard the voice of a mighty river flowing through the wilderness.

The people of the village knew a great deal about this river, but they could not have found it on a map, for they had never seen such a thing. White men call it the Congo. This was the name of a chief who ruled the country near the mouth of the river more than five hundred years ago, before even the first Portuguese explorers came. It was the Portuguese who gave his name to the river. But the Congo has many names in the twenty-five hundred miles of its length. Here in the jungle it has a very long name which means The-great-river-out-of-the-lake-that-drowns-the-locust-who-tries-to-fly-across. If a person knows, as the Bantu people do, how far a locust can fly without alighting, this name for the great lake is really useful. The whole of the name is Mwerukatamuvudanshi, but nobody used it unless the chiefs were having a formal council, and on the white men’s maps the lake is called Mweru. In other parts of its course the river was called after whatever lakes, mountains, or cataracts there might be in the neighborhood.

Mpoko and Nkunda talked a little about the river as they squatted there in the warm darkness. Mpoko had been promised that he should go fishing when the canoes went downstream to mend a bridge that was shaky, and Nkunda promised to help him make new nets for the fishing. He finished winding the wire round the spear handle and began to polish it with great care.

Then very far away in the forest they heard the tapping of a drum.

The sound of a drum in the African jungle always means something. It may mean a village dance; it may mean news; it may mean sudden danger. It is not like any other noise in the forest.

On the other side of the mountain, the great towering mass of stone beyond the forest, was the country of Tswki, the Snake, who was not friendly to the river villages. When he was getting ready to make war, whichever village heard of it first, warned the others. Messengers were not needed to take the warning, for the sound of the drum could be heard over lake and marsh, through tangles of wild jungle where a man would have to cut his way at every step. The drum was made of wood, covered with oxhide stretched tight, or with the skin of a large snake or lizard.

The children had been the first to hear the tapping, because they were nearest to the ground, but in a minute all the others, old and young, heard it too, and listened. They stopped whatever they were doing and stood as still as trees, and listened, and listened.

Then through the blackness of the forest, far away, there sounded singing, and Mpoko and Nkunda were not afraid any more. This was not one of Tswki’s war parties that was coming; it was their own men, singing all together to forget their weariness on the last miles of the trail. A Central African carrier will travel with a load of sixty pounds from fifteen to thirty miles a day. And this is not walking on a level road; the carriers go through a wilderness without anything like a road, the trail often only a few inches wide. They may have to climb steep hills, scramble over boulders, or force their way through matted grasses ten and twelve feet high. There are no pack animals. Everything is carried on men’s backs, and during most of the year the mercury is at about eighty in the shade. When the men sing toward the end of a journey, it is likely to be a sign that they are very tired indeed. Often they beat time with their sticks on their loads. But now they surely had a drum, and somebody was playing it.

At last Mpoko, listening very closely, caught a line or two of the song, and he jumped up, whirling his spear round his head and shouting, “The Alo Man! The Alo Man!” Then Nkunda, too, sprang up and began to dance and whirl round and round, clapping her hands and singing, “The Alo Man! The Alo Man is coming!”

Every one was glad. The Alo Man, the wandering story teller who went from place to place telling stories and making songs, came only once in a very long time. When he did come, he told the most interesting and exciting stories that any one in the village had ever heard. He knew old stories and new ones, and it was hard to say which were the finest. No one could make the people see pictures in their minds as he could. No one knew so many wise sayings and amusing riddles. No one had seen so many wonderful and interesting things among the people of so many different tribes. Even when some one could remember and tell over again the stories that the Alo Man had told, they did not sound as they did when he told them himself.

Even the dogs knew that something was going to happen and began to bark excitedly, and the slaty-blue, speckled guinea hens half woke and ruffled their feathers and gave hoarse croaks of surprise. The beat of the drum and the singing voices grew louder and louder, until the people waiting in the firelight caught the tune and joined in the song, keeping time with the clapping of their hands curved like cymbals.

Then there was a blaze of torches in the forest, the dogs burst into a wild chorus of yelping and baying, and out of the dark they came, the whole company of them. Every man was keeping step to the splendid new song that the Alo Man led. Each one marched into the open circle of firelight, flung down his pack, and began to tell the news to his own family and ask for something to eat as soon as it could possibly be had.

They were all glad—the whole village—to see the Alo Man, and he was just as glad to see them. His white teeth flashed and his eyes shone as he greeted one old friend after another, and asked and answered questions as fast as his tongue would go. Cooking pots were hustled off the fire and good things ladled out, and soon the feasting and laughter and story-telling and singing of the Alo Man’s visit had fairly begun.

CHAPTER II

THE STRING OF BEADS

There was great chattering in the village over the unloading of the packs with the various wares brought from the market. The marketing arrangements of wild Africa are very curious. There are four days in a Congo week,—Konzo, Nkenge, Nsona, and Nkandu,—and on at least one of the four days a market is held somewhere near every important village. All markets held on Konzo are called Konzo markets, those held on Nkenge are called Nkenge markets, and so on. Each of the four kinds of markets is in a different place, but there is one of the four within five miles of every town. In the village where Mpoko and Nkunda lived, the people had to go four miles to the Konzo market, nine to the Nkenge market, sixteen to the Nsona and twenty to the Nkandu, but this last market was quite near the next village downstream.

Some of these markets were noted for certain goods. Mpoko’s mother could always depend on pigs being on sale at the Nkenge market, and whoever had a pig to sell would be likely to take it there. At the Konzo market, four miles away, were good pots, calabashes, and saucepans, some of which were made by women in their village, for one of the old grandmothers was rather famous for her pottery. Other markets were known for palm wine, iron work, oil, or some other specialty, and besides these things cassava roots, peanuts, kwanga (native bread), palm oil, beans and other vegetables, grains and fowls were generally sold in all markets.

Besides these markets, larger markets were held occasionally, from one to another of which the traders traveled with things not made in the country. Besides the brass rods, blue beads were sometimes used as a kind of money, a farthing string of a hundred beads being passed from hand to hand; or it might be used to buy food in small quantities, ten or fifteen blue beads three eighths of an inch long and about a quarter of an inch thick being used as small change.

A great deal of produce was simply swapped from one person to another. A man might gather a quantity of some produce like tobacco, rubber, raffia, palm oil, or grain, at one market and another, and take it finally to the great market to exchange for beads, brass, calico, or whatever else he found there. Salt is so rare in some parts of Africa that it is used for money, and a man will work as a porter so many days for so many bags of salt. When the people make salt on the shores of an inland lake, they have to gather the salty sand and wash it out in pots specially made, with little holes in the bottom into which the salt water runs; then the water is dried away over slow fires and the salt scraped off the sides of the kettle. It takes less time and labor to earn salt ready made than to make it in this way. Salt is also made from grass ashes.

The packs of the village men had in them not only salt, but many pieces of gay-colored cloth, beads, and wire. Nkunda felt that hers was the best share of all, when her mother called her to have hung round her neck a string of bright red coral beads. No other little girl had a string half so pretty, Nkunda thought. The more she fingered the little, smooth, scarlet drops of her necklace, the more she admired them.

Seeing her delight, the Alo Man grinned and showed all his white teeth.

“Perhaps they will bring you luck,” he said, “as the youngest sister’s beads did in the story.”

Of course, after that, every one wanted to hear the story.

The Alo Man settled himself cross-legged on a mat, all the listeners squatted down within easy hearing distance, and he began the story of the String of Beads.

I often am reminded [he said] of the three sisters who lived in a land many days’ journey from here. Each of them had a string of beads, but the youngest sister, her beads were of red coral, and the others, their beads were only common cowrie shells. Naturally, they hated her, and one day when they had all been bathing in the river, the older sisters hid their beads in the sand.

“See,” said the eldest sister as the youngest sister came out of the water, “we have thrown our beads into the river, where there is a strong water-goblin who will give us back twice as many. Throw your own beads into the river and then you will have two strings of coral beads, and two is always better than one.”

“Except when you have a lame foot,” said the other sister, giggling.

The youngest sister believed what they said, and threw her beads into the river, and they went down, down, down to the bottom of the deepest pool and did not come up again.

Then the two elder sisters laughed and took their own beads and hung them round their necks, and filled their water jars and went home.

“How foolish I was,” said the youngest sister, sadly. “I wonder if the river would not give them back to me if I should ask very politely?”

She began to walk along the bank, saying, “Water, water, please give me back my beads, my pretty beads!” And the water answered, “Go down the stream! Go down the stream!”

[The Alo Man made his voice sound exactly like the gurgle and splash of the ripples.]

She went on a little way and asked the river again to give back her beads. And again the river answered, “Go down the stream! Go down the stream!”

The youngest sister went along the river bank until she could no longer see the village. She had never been so far away from it before. At last she came to a place where the river leaped over a great cliff. Under the waterfall was a hut with an old woman sitting at the door. She was bent and wrinkled and very, very ugly, and she looked up as the youngest sister looked down at her from the bank.

“Do not laugh at me!” said the old woman. “I am ugly now, but once I was beautiful as you are.”

“I am not laughing at you, good mother,” said the youngest sister. “I should like to do something to help you.”

“You are very kind, my child,” said the old woman. “Will you be so good as to bind up my wounds and give me water to drink?”

The youngest sister took a strip of her garment and bound up the old woman’s wounds and fed and comforted her as if she had been the old woman’s own daughter. Scarcely had she done this when the old woman caught her by the arm. “My child,” she said, “you have come to a place where a terrible giant lives. Every one who comes down the river is in danger of falling into his hands. But do not be afraid; he shall not hurt you. Hark! there he comes now, like a great wind that brings the rain.”

Sure enough, the wind began to blow, and the rain poured, and the lightning flashed, and it grew very cold. The old woman hid the youngest sister behind a wall.

Then the giant came to the bank of the river.

“Some one has come to the hut,” said he, in a great roaring voice. “I am hungry. Bring her out and let me have her for my supper.”

“But you must have your sleep first,” said the old woman.

“Yes,” said the giant, “it is true; I am very weary.”

Then the giant lay down and went to sleep.

When he was sound asleep the old woman led the youngest sister out from behind the wall, and hung round her neck a string of beads more beautiful than any she had ever seen, and put rings of gold on her arms and on her ankles. Around her waist she hung a kirtle of the softest and finest kidskin, with copper fringe, and over her shoulders she threw a silver jackal skin. In her hand she placed a magic stone.

“When you reach the river bank,” said the old woman, “press the stone to your lips. Then throw it over your shoulder, and it will return to me.”

The youngest sister did as the old woman told her, and very soon she reached the place where she lived with her two sisters. They looked with the greatest surprise at her beautiful dress and ornaments and asked where she had found them. When she told them an old woman had given them to her, they said, without waiting to hear the story, “We too will go to the old woman,” and throwing their beads into the river they ran along the banks, calling to the waters to return them.

After so long a time they came to the hut where the old woman sat. The giant was no longer there, and the old woman was sitting crouched in the doorway as before.

“Do not laugh at me,” said the old woman. “I am ugly now, but once I was young and beautiful as you are.”

The two sisters laughed at this, and ridiculed the old woman, and called her all the jeering names they could think of.

“Will you not bind up my wounds and give me water to drink?” asked the old woman.

But the sisters said that they had never heard of such impudence.

“Where are the bracelets and beads you have to give away?” asked the elder sister.

“Where are your mantles and kirtles with fringe?” asked the younger. “We come for these, not to waste our time on you. We must make haste and go home.”

“Indeed, I think you must,” said the old woman, “for this place is the home of a giant who comes in the form of wind and rain, and I hear him coming now!”

Then the hut sank under the waters, and the maidens found themselves standing on the bank without even their own beads to deck themselves with. That very moment they heard the wind and the rain sweeping through the trees, and they turned and ran as fast as their feet would carry them, back to their own village, while the wind and the rain howled behind them and the giant pelted them with stones.

All the people laughed and shouted over the ill fortune of the two selfish sisters. Nkunda, where she lay curled up at her mother’s side, fingered her beads and wondered if the youngest sister’s beads from beneath the waterfall could have been any prettier than these. In the part where the giant came in, the story sent delightful shivers down all their backs, for they could every one remember storms in which the great wind had shaken the trees like an invisible giant and the rain had come pelting down like stones. Sometimes, after a storm, the path of the wind through the forest looked like the track of a huge giant who had gone walking up and down, twisting off boughs and rooting up trees merely to show what he could do. During one of these storms the temperature often falls from thirty to forty degrees in half an hour.

Nkunda had seen a silvery jackal skin and a copper-fringed robe among her mother’s treasures, but one thing in the story puzzled her. “Mother,” she said softly, “what is gold?”

The Alo Man heard her and smiled. “Have you never seen gold?” he asked.

The children shook their heads. Gold was not found in that part of the country.

Then the Alo Man explained that in the streams of other parts of the country the people found lumps of a shining yellow metal softer and more beautiful than iron, for which the traders would pay much cloth and many brass rods. When the headman heard what they were talking about, he showed the children a little bright round bangle on his arm, and told them that that was gold. It was really, though no one there knew it, a half-sovereign lost by some trader, or perhaps given in mistake for a sixpence, which is exactly the same size. The headman had kept it, first because of its beauty, and then because a trader had told him that it was worth as much as ten pounds of rubber, or more than a hundred pounds of palm kernels, or a load of palm oil, or about thirty-five pounds of coffee. Nkunda thought that the little piece of gold was rather like a magic stone.

CHAPTER III

THE LEOPARD AND THE DOG

On the third night of the Alo Man’s stay in the village there was a great disturbance out near the goat pen. The frightened bleating of the goats was almost drowned by the barking and growling of dogs, and the angry snarl of some fierce animal.

Some of the hunters caught up their spears and ran to see what the matter was, and Mpoko, catching up his own little spear, raced after them, for he could hear the furious barking of his own dog in the pack. Even the baby brother, who could only just stand on his feet, lifted his head and listened, saying, “Mfwa! Mfwa!” Mpoko’s dog was one of the family; he had played with the children ever since he was a little yellow-brown flop-eared puppy.

But the trouble was soon over. Before any one had had time to ask many questions, the hunters came back in triumph with the body of a big, fierce leopard. He had leaped upon the roof of the goat pen and tried to break in, but the dogs had found it out at once. They had set up such a baying and yelping that the robber was frightened, and he was trying to get away when the hunters arrived with their spears. They tied his paws together and slung him over a pole carried on their shoulders, and tomorrow he would be taken about to all the villages and exhibited. And the chief would have the skin.

Mpoko was very proud to be able to tell his sister that he had seen the leopard killed, and that his dog had been in the very thick of the fight. Moreover, he was sure that when he flung his own spear at the leopard it had gone through the skin somewhere, even if he could not point out the exact place.

“Mfwa! Mfwa!” said the baby, with his fat fists waving at the dog, and all the dogs strutted about, very proud of their night’s work.

“I wonder why dogs hate a leopard so,” said Nkunda, as the excitement quieted down.

“My dog belongs to me, and he knows the leopard is my enemy,” said Mpoko.

“Cats and dogs hate each other too, and the cat is not my enemy,” said Nkunda, trying to coax her pet cat down from the branch of a tree where she crouched, hissing at the dogs.

“Cats and dogs always hate each other,” said Mpoko, and he seemed to think that that was reason enough.

“There is a good reason why the dog and the leopard do not like each other,” said the Alo Man. Then he told the story of the Leopard and the Dog.

I often tell of the time when all the animals lived in a country by themselves, and the mother of leopards had two fine young cubs in her cave in the forest. As they grew older, she knew she must go out to find food for them, and she was afraid that if she left them alone, they would be stolen from her.

She began to look about among the animals to find some one to take care of her cubs while she went hunting.

“What will you give me to come and take care of your cubs?” asked the Hyena.

“I will give you a good home in my cave and plenty of food,” said the Leopard.

“He-yah! he-yah! he-yah!” laughed the Hyena, in a loud, harsh voice that almost frightened the Leopard herself.

“Your voice is too loud,” she said. “You would make such a noise that my cubs would be frightened to death.”

The Hyena laughed again louder than before and went away to tell how he had scared the Leopard with his laughing.

“What will you give me to take care of your cubs?” called the Owl up in the tree top.

“I will give you a good home in my cave and plenty of food,” said the Leopard.

“Hoo! hoo! hoo-oo!” hooted the Owl, glaring down at the Leopard with great round eyes that almost frightened the Leopard herself.

“Your eyes are too large and bright,” said the Leopard. “My cubs would be frightened out of their wits when you stared at them.”

The Owl hooted even louder than before and flew away to tell all the animals how he had frightened the Leopard by staring at her.

“What will you give me to take care of your cubs?” asked the Snake from the tall grass.

“I will give you a good home in my cave and plenty of food,” said the Leopard.

“Tsz! tsz! tsz!” hissed the Snake, so loudly that the Leopard jumped and was almost frightened at the noise.

“I do not want you to take care of my cubs,” said the Leopard. “If they heard you hiss like that, they would be frightened to death.”

The Snake hissed again louder than before, and slid away through the tall grass to tell all the other animals how he had startled the Leopard by hissing at her.

“What will you give me to take care of your cubs?” asked the Dog.

“I will give you a good home in my cave and plenty of food,” said the Leopard.

“Mfwa! Mfwa!” barked the Dog, wagging his tail as hard as he could, and grinning so that every one of his white teeth showed. The Leopard looked at him and was pleased.

[Here the Alo Man, who had imitated the voice of each animal in the story, barked so well that all the dogs barked and whined, and came to rub their heads against his legs. Everybody laughed, and it really seemed as if the dogs understood the story as well as any one.]

The Leopard went to her cave, with the Dog trotting after her and sniffing at her tracks. She gave him a good supper of rabbit bones, and when she told him how to take care of the cubs he listened very carefully.

The next day the Leopard went out to hunt, and the Dog stayed in the cave and did exactly as he had been told. After a while the Leopard came back, dragging a fine Antelope.

“This is for my supper and the cubs’ supper,” she said, “and tomorrow you shall have the bones for your dinner.”

The Dog thought of the good dinner he would have off those large bones, and he wagged his tail and grinned.

“But remember this,” went on the Leopard, “you must never take bones outside the cave. We never eat outside our caves, but always inside. If people change their customs, there is no telling what will happen.”

Next day the Leopard went to hunt, and the Dog lay down across the doorway of the cave and watched over the cubs. At dinner time he began to gnaw at the bones of the Antelope, as he had been told, inside the cave. But it was inconvenient. The rock floor was uneven, and he could not get his teeth into the bones properly. When he cracked the bone to get at the marrow he got some earth into it, and he did not like that at all.

“I may as well take the bones out on the clean grass and finish my dinner,” said the Dog to himself. “Nobody will ever know.”

But when he had taken the bones out of the cave upon the grass, the strangest things began to happen. The bones began to move about as if they were coming to life. Before the Dog could catch them and drag them back into the cave, one of the great leg-bones of the Antelope hit a Leopard cub on the head and killed it dead.

This was a dreadful thing indeed. The Dog had never dreamed of hurting the cub. He dragged all the bones back into the cave as quickly as he could, for fear the other cub might be killed. He could not think what he should do in this terrible situation, and while he stood trembling and whimpering with fear and grief, he heard the Leopard coming.

“I will try to hide the dead cub until the Leopard has gone to sleep,” he said to himself, “and then I will run away.”

The Leopard came up to the cave, dragging a fine fat wild pig. First of all she asked, “Are the cubs well and happy?”

The Dog was very much frightened, but he went into the cave and fetched out the live cub. “See how well he looks,” he said.

The Leopard looked the cub all over and licked it with her strong tongue. Then she said, “This one seems very well. Now show me the other.”

The Dog took the live cub back into the cave and brought it out again. The two cubs looked so much alike that he had never been able to tell them apart, and he thought that perhaps the Leopard would be deceived.

But the Leopard gave one look at the cub and then sprang at the Dog.

“You stupid creature,” she snarled, “do you think you can fool me in that way?”

The Dog made one dash away from the cave entrance and down the path through the forest, with the Leopard at his heels. He ran out of the forest and across the plain, up hills and down valleys, with the Leopard at his heels. He ran until he was almost dead, and when he had hardly strength to go another step he saw a hollow tree with a hole in it big enough for him to get into, but too small for the Leopard to follow him. Into it he went, his tail curled between his legs and all four feet gathered under him. Hard as she tried, the Leopard could not quite reach him with her paw.

In the tree sat a Monkey, watching the goings-on and chattering with excitement. The Leopard looked up and saw him.

“Come down out of that tree and watch this hole for me,” said the Leopard. “I am going to gather sticks and kindle a fire to burn up this good-for-nothing Dog.”

The Monkey dared not refuse, and he came down and sat in front of the hole.

When the Leopard had gone away, the Dog peeped out very cautiously.

“I know where there is a tree full of ripe nuts,” he said to the Monkey. “If you will let me get away, I will show you where it is.”

“But I am afraid of the Leopard,” chattered the Monkey.

“The Leopard will never know,” said the Dog. “When the tree burns, she will think that I am burning inside of it.”

Finally the Monkey let the Dog out, and he crept into the grass and hid, for he saw the Leopard coming back with a load of sticks.

“Have you kept close watch of the hole?” asked the Leopard.

“I have not gone away for a minute,” said the Monkey. “I have kept my eyes on the hole ever since you went away.”

Then the Leopard made a fire and the tree began to blaze up.

“Hear the Dog’s bones crackle!” chattered the Monkey as the branches began to snap in the flames.

The Dog thought that this might be a good time for him to escape through the grass, but the Leopard saw the grass wave where he was hiding, and she made a quick jump for the place. Away ran the Dog once more for dear life, with the Leopard coming after him in great leaps.

It would have been a sad day for the Dog if there had not been coming that way a party of Men. He rushed up to them and crouched at the feet of the Chief and looked up into his face for protection.

When the Chief saw the Leopard, who had often carried off goats and cattle from his village, and looked down at the panting, terrified Dog, he was sorry for the Dog and, bending over, patted him on the head.

“Do not be afraid,” he said. “The Leopard shall not hurt you.”

The Leopard looked at the sharp spears of the Chief and his followers, and went growling away to her cave in the forest. Ever since that time the Dog loves man better than he does any of the animals of the forest, and serves him against all his enemies; and if the Leopard comes to steal from the village, the Dog will call for the man to drive him away.

“Mfwa! Mfwa!” said Mpoko’s dog, looking up into his master’s face and then grinning at the leopard. And Mpoko and Nkunda were certain that he had understood every word of the story that the Alo Man had told.

CHAPTER IV

THE CAT AND THE RAT

On the fourth night of the Alo Man’s stay, Nkunda was looking for her cat. She had been feeling a little jealous that day, because Mpoko and every one else gave so much attention to the dogs. It seemed as if the cat too might be jealous, or perhaps the dogs were so proud of themselves that they wanted the village to themselves, for Nkunda had not seen her pet since the night before.

Even the baby, rolling about in the doorway, had missed his playmate, and he repeated Nkunda’s call, which sounded very like cat language. In the Ki-sukama dialect of the Bantu language the cat is called Ca-ungu, in the Ki-fipa dialect, Inyao, and in Isi-nyixa talk it is Unyawu; but all these names sound like the little “miaou” that the cat makes when she has something to show you, and this was the sound that came out of the darkness in answer to Nkunda’s call.

The sound came from the direction of the granary. This was a building planned very carefully for its special purpose. It was a large round basket-work structure, plastered with mud and built on a floor raised above the ground on short legs of forked branches. This floor or platform was made in such a way as to keep out rats. Nevertheless, now and then one would make an entrance, and as Nkunda came up to the platform the cat leaped down, carrying in her mouth a large rat. It was as if she wished to prove that she could take care of herself, whether any one else remembered her or not.

Nkunda called her mother and showed her what the cat had brought, and a little crowd gathered about the granary. Purring proudly, the cat led the way to a hole where the wall had crumbled from dampness or had been gnawed away, and it was quite large enough for a rat to get in. If the cat had not been so prompt in disposing of the thief, he and his family might have gone to housekeeping in there; but as it was, little harm had been done.

“The hole must be stopped up,” said Nkunda’s mother. “The rain might get in and all the grain would mold, through a hole like that.”

“And we must have a rat hunt,” said Mpoko, coming up with his special friend Nkula to look at the hole. “But we must make some new traps and get our bows and arrows in order first. There will be no rats about when we have finished with them!”

“That is all very well,” said Nkunda, stroking her cat; “but your trap did not catch this rat and my cat did.”

The rat hunt took place, however. All the boys in the village came to it, and it was a most exciting time. The farm rat of Equatorial Africa is a rather pretty little brown animal with black stripes, and the boys do their hunting with traps and their small bows and arrows. The traps are made of basket-work and are cone-shaped. They are set in a group in the middle of a large grassy space where there is reason to suppose the rats are, and then the boys take their stand in a circle round the edge of this ground and begin to walk toward the center, kicking up the grass as they go, and shouting. The rats scamper toward the center, where they are likely to run into the traps; but they have a habit of starting to run and then stopping for a moment to look about, and this gives the boys a chance to shoot them down with their small, sharp arrows. Between the traps and the shooting a considerable number of rats rewarded the hunters, and meanwhile the hole in the granary was well patched up with wattle and mud.

Rats find a great deal that they like in an African village, and there are usually plenty of them to be hunted by both cats and boys. The people do not raise wheat, but they have other things that they eat as we eat bread. Millet, barley, and maize or “mealies” are cultivated on the farms and ground on stone slabs. The meal is made into mush or into flat cakes baked before the fire like hoecake.

The commonest substitute for bread is manioc or cassava, which was brought from South America about four hundred years ago by Portuguese explorers. The jungle people call it madioka. The making of manioc flour is quite a long and troublesome piece of work. Nine months after planting, the bulblike roots are pulled up and are soaked for a few days in pools or streams. The fresh root is poisonous, and the soaking takes out the poison. After this, the roots are peeled, cut in pieces, and dried in the sun on small platforms or on stones. When they are quite dry, they are laid on shelves over the fire until they are brittle enough to be pounded and sifted and made into flour.

Another way of using manioc is to make kwanga, or native bread. For this, the root is soaked as for making flour, but instead of then being dried, it is kneaded to remove all lumps until it is a kind of dough that can be shaped into rolls or round balls. After being moulded into shape, the rolls are wrapped in large, smooth leaves and steamed until they are cooked.

The taste of manioc prepared in this way is like that of tapioca. In fact, the starch washed out of cassava roots, and dried and packed, is the tapioca found in grocery stores. The fresh tapioca that is eaten in a cassava country is, however, very much better than what is sold in stores.

Kwanga is sold in markets at the rate of a shilling for fifty pounds, and four pounds will last a man a day. When the men of the village went on a trading journey, or into the forest to gather palm nuts or to cut wood, they always took with them a supply of kwanga. The women had been busy making some that very day, for there was to be an expedition down the river which would start the following morning. This was why the rat, in his corner of the granary, had been left to nibble and to gnaw undisturbed.

While the cat enjoyed her well-earned supper, Nkunda sidled up to the Alo Man. She had been thinking that perhaps it was as important to keep the rats out of the grain as to keep the leopards away from the goat pen.

“Is there a story about the cat?” she asked. “She knew that the rat was stealing our grain when no one else did.”

“There is certainly a story about her,” said the Alo Alan. Then he told the story which explains why the Cat and the Rat are enemies.

I often think [said the Alo Man] of the time, very long ago, when the Cat and the Rat were friends and lived together on an island. It was so long ago that they have both forgotten it, but they led a very happy life. There were birds in the trees for the Cat to eat, and there were nuts and manioc roots for the Rat to eat.

But nobody was ever so happy as not to want something more. One day the Rat said, “I am tired of living on this island. Let us go and find a village to live in. There you can have food without catching birds, and I can have food without digging in the ground.”

“That will be delightful,” said the Cat. “But how are we to cross this great water?”

“Nothing is more easy,” said the Rat. “We will carve a boat from the root of a manioc.”

Then the Cat and the Rat dug up a large manioc root and began making it into a boat.

The Rat gnawed and gnawed and gnawed with his sharp teeth, until he had made a hollow large enough to hold the two friends. While he was busy at this, the Cat scratched and scratched and scratched, to make the outside of the boat smooth and to scrape off all the earth that clung to the great root.

[“Look! look!” cried Nkunda, laughing, for her cat was standing on two legs, scratching at a tree, just as if she wanted to show what cat-claws can do.]

Then the Cat and the Rat [went on the Alo Man] made two little paddles and started out in their boat.

It was much farther across the great water than it had looked from their island. Also they had forgotten to put any food into the boat. Presently the Cat began to say “Caungu! Caungu!” which means “I am hungry! I am hungry!”

And the Rat said “Quee! Quee!” which means in his language “I am hungry! I am hungry!”

But that did not do any good. They grew hungrier and hungrier. At last the Cat said “Caungu! Caungu!” very faintly, and curled herself up to sleep. And the Rat said “Quee! Quee!” very faintly, and curled himself up also, at the other end of the boat.

[When the Alo Man made the Cat and Rat noises, the listeners made them too, and there was a great deal of laughing. Nkunda’s own cat was cuddled up in the little girl’s arms, her yellow eyes shining like two little moons, and she seemed to know that this was her very own story.]

But while the Cat slept, the Rat stayed awake and thought. Suddenly he remembered that the boat itself was made of manioc. He had eaten so much while he was gnawing out the hollow that he had not wanted any more for some time, but now he said, “Good! I will eat a little more and make the hollow deeper.”

So he began—nibble, nibble, nibble!

“What is that noise?” exclaimed the Cat, waking at the sound.

But the Rat had shut his eyes and made himself as if he were fast asleep.

“I must have been dreaming,” said the Cat, and she laid her head down on her paws and went to sleep again.

The Rat began again—nibble, nibble, nibble!

“What is that noise?” cried the Cat, waking up.

But the Rat made himself seem to be fast asleep.

“What strange dreams I have,” said the Cat, as she curled herself up and went to sleep again.

Once more the Rat began to nibble very fast, and the noise awoke the Cat.

“What is that noise?” asked the Cat.

But the Rat made believe to be sound asleep.

“My dreams are certainly very troublesome,” said the Cat, as she curled herself up and went to sleep once more with her paw folded over her eyes.

Then the Rat began nibbling again, and this time he gnawed a hole right through the bottom of the boat, and the water began to come in.

“What is this?” cried the Cat, jumping up quickly.

“Quee, quee, quee!” squealed the Rat, perching on one end of the boat.

“Caungu! Caungu!” miaued the Cat, climbing up on the other end, for she did not like the water at all.

“Quee, quee!”

“Caungu! Ca-ungu-u-u!”

“Quee, quee!”

“You did this, you wicked creature!” squalled the Cat.

“I was so hungry!” squeaked the Rat, and then the boat began to sink, and there was no time for any more talk. They had to swim for their lives.

“I am going to eat you,” said the Cat, glaring at the Rat as they swam.

“I deserve it,” squeaked the Rat; “but don’t eat me now or you will be choked by the water. Wait until we reach the shore.”

“I will wait,” said the Cat, “but when we reach the shore I will certainly eat you.”

At last they reached the dry land.

“Now,” said the Cat, “I will eat you.”

“I deserve it,” said the Rat, “but I am too wet to be good eating now. Let me dry myself, while you dry your own beautiful coat. I shall be ready when you are.”

They sat down and began to dry their coats. [Nkunda’s cat was licking her breast and her coal-black paws and the fur of her striped and mottled gray back with all the care in the world.] And the Cat [went on the Alo Man] was so interested in making her beautiful coat quite smooth and glossy that she did not see that the Rat was busily digging a hole in the earth behind her.

“Are you ready?” asked the Cat at last, when every part of her coat was dry and glossy and smooth.

“Certainly,” said the Rat, and he disappeared into the hole.

“You rascal!” cried the Cat, for the hole was only just big enough for the Rat to dive into it.

“Quee, quee!” said the Rat from the bottom of the hole.

“You will never get out of that hole alive,” said the Cat. “I will stay here and wait for you, and when you come out I will eat you.”

“What if I never come out?” said the Rat. “Quee, quee!”

“Then you can stay in that hole and starve,” said the Cat, and she settled down in front of the hole with her nose on her paws and all four feet under her, watching for the Rat to come out.

“Quee, quee!” said the Rat, in the hole, and he began to dig himself in deeper.

All day long the Rat went on digging.

All day long the Cat watched beside the hole.

When night came, the Rat had dug down under a tree root and had come up on the other side of the tree, and he crept out of the other end of his tunnel and went on to the village, while the Cat still watched at her end.

From that day to this the Cat is never so fast asleep that she does not hear the gnawing of a Rat, and she is never tired of watching for the Rat to come out of a hole. And from that day to this the Rat knows that if there is a Cat in the village where he goes to steal grain, he will find the Cat waiting for him at one end or the other of his hole in the ground.

CHAPTER V

THE JACKAL AND HIS TRACKS

There seemed to be no animal in the forest or the swamp or on the plain about which the Alo Man did not know a story. In the nine hundred thousand miles of country, more or less, through which the Congo and its branches flow, there is land suitable for almost every kind of wild creature known to Africa. Elephants, buffalo, wild cattle, rhinoceros, antelope, koodoo, eland, giraffes, pigs, and other grazing and browsing animals wander over the grassy table-lands. Hippopotami, crocodiles, and other water creatures live in the rivers and swamps, and among the beasts of prey are lions, leopards, hyenas, and jackals, although the jackal is not much to be feared. Monkeys large and small are numerous in the forests, and in a part of the forest so old and deep that the people call it the Plantations of God, the gorilla is sometimes found. In the Alo Man’s stories, however, the smaller animals almost always had the best of it. They also had much more to say for themselves at night. As the old people put it, it is not always the biggest man whose words come in crowds.

“Do you know the reason why the hyena’s legs are not alike?” asked the Alo Man one night after supper, when there was a great to-do out in the darkness.

No one did, and of course every one wanted to hear the story of the Hyena and the Jackal.

I often recall [began the Alo Man] the days when the animals could talk and the Hyena and the Jackal lived in the same village. One day they were looking up at the clouds.

“They are very thick and white,” said the Jackal. “Can it be possible that they are solid white fat?”

The Jackal waited until one cloud floated quite near the earth, and then he climbed a tree and sprang into the very middle of that cloud.

[That the Jackal should climb a tree did not seem strange to any of the listeners when the Alo Man told the story; all of them had seen a man climb a palm tree for nuts by looping two ropes around the trunk and putting his feet in one and the other by turns, walking up the trunk to the very top.]

“I was right,” said the Jackal; “it is the most delicious white fat.”

Then he ate and ate, until he was so full that he was afraid to try to climb down the tree.

“I am coming down!” cried the Jackal to the Hyena. “Catch me as I fall, or I shall be hurt.”

The Hyena planted her feet firmly in the earth and arched her back, and when the Jackal jumped he landed on her back unhurt.

“Thank you,” said he, but he was not really grateful at all. He was already planning to play a joke on the Hyena.

“Climb up on the cloud and eat some of the good white fat,” said he. “It is the finest food I have ever eaten in my life.”

The Hyena was glad to hear that the Jackal had left some for her, and she climbed the tree and jumped out upon the cloud and began to eat. She ate and ate, as the Jackal had done, until she was so full that she did not dare to try to climb down the tree.

“I am coming down! Catch me!” she called to the Jackal, and he planted his four feet firmly in the ground and stood under the cloud. But as she jumped he stepped back, and down came the Hyena on her hind legs. So far and so hard did she fall that her hind legs were driven into her body, and have ever since been shorter than her fore legs, as you may see to this day.

But the Jackal’s turn came in time, for no dog is top dog in every fight. This is what happened to him.

One day the sun came down into the forest and sat down on the soft green earth, to rest. The Jackal came by and saw the sun resting there, and his eyes were dazzled so that he thought it was a goat. Now a goat would make him a fine dinner, so he pounced upon it quickly and put it in a sack and threw the sack over his shoulders to carry home.

He had not traveled far when the sun began to burn his shoulders.

“Oh! oh! oh!” cried the Jackal, trying to throw the sun off his shoulders. “Get down! get down!”

But the sun would not get down until he was quite ready, and the Jackal’s back was scorched in a long black stripe which he wears to this day.

When the Hyena saw the long black stripe she howled with delight, and ever since then, when the Hyena and the Jackal meet and the Hyena sees the stripe on the Jackal’s back, the Hyena laughs and the Jackal yelps, just as you hear them doing now [concluded the Alo Man].

The Hyena and the Jackal were certainly making an uncommon racket even for them, and then, quite suddenly, they stopped.

“The Jackal must have been at his old tricks again,” said the Alo Man. “It sounds as if he still remembered what he did in the time of the great drought.”

“Tell about it,” begged the girls.

“Yes, tell about it; that is a good story,” said Mpoko. He had heard it before.

In this forest region the air was so hot and moist that such a thing as a drought was almost unknown, but the people all knew what it was like. Here the hot air took up the moisture from the swamps and rivers, and the sun could hardly get through the thick leaves of the forest. But out on the plains, where there were few trees, the sun beat down with a fierce heat and the winds blew with a dry, hot fury that made every water pool precious to man and beast for miles around. Rivers that were deep and swift in the rainy season dried up completely in the dry season, and there were no villages on the wide table-lands, because there was no water there for months at a time. A few people wandered about who lived as they could by hunting, and the river villages, in which families lived in houses and kept goats, fowls, and cattle, had nothing to do with these wild savages.

It was a drought such as the people of the plains knew in the dry season that the Alo Man meant when he began to tell the story of the Jackal and the Drought.

I often remember [he said] the very dry time in the land when many animals died of thirst. It was in the days when the animals lived in villages and talked one with another, and when the drought was over the Lion called the animals together and said that some plan must be found to keep this from ever happening again.

The Ape said that they might go to some country where there were no droughts, but the Tortoise said that he would never live to complete such a long journey.

“Let us sleep through the next dry season,” said the Snake.

“That would never suit me,” said the Hare.

At last, after a great deal of discussion, the Jackal and the Hyena suggested that they might all join in digging a great pool to hold water through the next dry season.

This seemed a wise plan, and on the very next day the animals came to dig the hole.

They agreed to take turns. It was settled that as the Hyena and the Jackal had made the plan, the Hyena should be first and the Jackal last; but when the Jackal’s turn came he was nowhere to be found. The pool was almost finished, and the others decided to go on and get it done without him. Soon the rain began to fall, and filled it full of pure, sweet water. Then a rule was made that no one except those who had helped to dig the pool should be allowed to drink there.

The Jackal was hiding in the bushes and heard all that was said, and he came very early the next morning and drank all that he wanted. Every morning, before any one else was about he did this, and after a while he grew bolder and took a swim in the pool, so that the water was muddy when the others came to drink.

“Who did this?” asked the Lion.

“Who did this?” asked the Leopard.

“Who did this?” asked all the other animals when they came to drink.

But no one knew.