Loaded with chains, he was placed in the dungeon where Alvez was accustomed to confine slaves who had been condemned to death for mutiny or violence. That he had no communication with the outer world gave him no concern; he had avenged the death of those for whose safety he had felt himself responsible, and could now calmly await the fate which he could not doubt was in store for him; he did not dare to suppose that he had been temporarily spared otherwise than that he might suffer the cruellest tortures that native ingenuity could devise. That the Pilgrim’s cook now held in his power the boy captain he so thoroughly hated was warrant enough that the sternest possible measure of vengeance would be exacted.
Two days later, the great market, the lakoni, commenced. Although many of the principal traders were there from the interior, it was by no means exclusively a slave-mart; a considerable proportion of the natives from the neighbouring provinces assembled to dispose of the various products of the country.
Quite early the great chitoka of Kazonndé was all alive with a bustling concourse of little under five thousand people, including the slaves of old Alvez, amongst whom were Tom and his three partners in adversity—an item by no means inconsiderable in the dealer’s stock.
Accompanied by Coïmbra, Alvez himself was one of the first arrivals. He was going to sell his slaves in lots to be conveyed in caravans into the interior. The dealers for the most part consisted of half-breeds from Ujiji, the principal market on Lake Tanganyika, whilst some of a superior class were manifestly Arabs.
The natives that were assembled were of both sexes, and of every variety of age, the women in particular displaying an aptitude in making bargains that is shared by their sisters elsewhere of a lighter hue; and it may be said that no market of the most civilized region could be characterized by greater excitement or animation, for amongst the savages of Africa the customer makes his offer in equally noisy terms as the vendor.
The lakoni was always considered a kind of fête-day; consequently the natives of both sexes, though their clothing was scanty in extent, made a point of appearing in a most lavish display of ornaments. Their headgear was most remarkable. The men had their hair arranged in every variety of eccentric device; some had it divided into four parts, rolled over cushions and fastened into a chignon, or mounted in front into a bunch of tails adorned with red feathers; others plastered it thickly with a mixture of red mud and oil similar to that used for greasing machinery, and formed it into cones or lumps, into which they inserted a medley of iron pins and ivory skewers; whilst the greatest dandies had a glass bead threaded upon every single hair, the whole being fastened together by a tattooing-knife driven through the glittering mass.
As a general rule, the women preferred dressing their hair in little tufts about the size of a cherry, arranging it into the shape of a cap, with corkscrew ringlets on each side of the face. Some wore it simply hanging down their backs, others in French fashion, with a fringe across the forehead; but every coiffure, without exception, was daubed and caked either with the mixture of mud and grease, or with a bright red extract of sandalwood called nkola.
But it was not only on their heads that they made this extraordinary display of ornaments; the lobes of their ears were loaded till they reached their shoulders with a profusion of wooden pegs, openwork copper rings, grains of maize, or little gourds, which served the purpose of snuffboxes; their necks, arms, wrists, legs, and ankles were a perfect mass of brass and copper rings, or sometimes were covered with a lot of bright buttons. Rows of red beads, called sames-sames, or talakas, seemed also very popular. As they had no pockets, they attached their knives, pipes and other articles to various parts of their body; so that altogether, in their holiday attire, the rich men of the district might not inappropriately be compared to walking shrines.
With their teeth they had all played the strangest of vagaries; the upper and lower incisors had generally been extracted, and the others had been filed to points or carved into hooks, like the fangs of a rattlesnake. Their fingernails were allowed to grow to such an immoderate length as to render the hands well-nigh useless, and their swarthy skins were tattooed with figures of trees, birds, crescents and discs, or, not unfrequently, with those zigzag lines which Livingstone thinks he recognizes as resembling those observed in ancient Egyptian drawings. The tattooing is effected by means of a blue substance inserted into incisions previously made in the skin. Every child is tattooed in precisely the same pattern as his father before him, and thus it may always be ascertained to what family he belongs. Instead of carrying his armorial bearings upon his plate or upon the panels of his carriage, the African magnate wears them emblazoned on his own bosom!
The garments that were usually worn were simply aprons of antelope-skins descending to the knees, but occasionally a short petticoat might be seen made of woven grass and dyed with bright colours. The ladies not unfrequently wore girdles of beads attached to green skirts embroidered with silk and ornamented with bits of glass or cowries, or sometimes the skirts were made of the grass cloth called lambda, which, in blue, yellow, or black, is so much valued by the people of Zanzibar.
Garments of these pretensions,
