The Paramount Chief had many wives. A newly arrived missionary, determined to convert the great man, opened his attack by asking why he had so many wives. The answer was disconcerting: "For political reasons." This matter of the Chief's was a rock upon which all missionary endeavours foundered. The Chief must discard all his wives, save one. The Chief was determined to keep them all.

To another reformer he said: "Leave me alone. Do what you will with the children and young people. Leave me to myself. You have shown me that my beliefs are foolish. You have not proved to me that yours are any wiser."

A third good man, about to transfer his activities to other fields, offered to present the Chief with his bright brass bedstead provided he became a Christian.

"Let me see it," said the old heathen. The bed was produced. "I have a better one. I paid a trader ten head of cattle for it." So no bargain was struck.

I think there must have been some grounds for saying that he clung to his many wives "for political reasons," because they, or at any rate some of them, were more trouble to the Chief than they were perhaps worth.

There was Mavevana, for instance, who was large and fat and therefore very beautiful from a native point of view, but whose tongue was a constant source of strife without and within the harem.

I should explain that each wife had her own group of huts. These groups—there were seventeen of them—were surrounded by a high reed fence, strengthened by sharply-pointed poles. The harem was a village within a village. Outside the fence the common people lived.

Each woman had her slaves. A strong guard of fully-armed men patrolled the harem at night. Old Sikoro, the keeper of the harem, was about day and night.

Then there was Mironda. Poor Mironda, who later paid, as women do, be they white, black or yellow.

Mironda was rather nearer to yellow than to black. I think she had some European blood in her. One does not often see a native woman with hazel eyes nor with freckles; and besides, she was very tall and slim.

As a special mark of his good will the Chief once took me through his harem. That is how I first came to see Mironda.

The woman aroused my interest. When we entered her compound she glared at her lord and master as a caged beast does upon free men. She did not for a moment take her eyes off him. She never so much as glanced in my direction. Her eyes caught the light once and reflected it as do those of a cat, a tiger. Yes, that was it, she put me in mind of a caged tiger.

She clasped her hands continuously during our short stay. The click, click, click of her ivory bangles drew my attention to her hands. Her hands and her wrists were very small, her finger nails long and sharp. I noticed her hands particularly because she had solid ivory bangles on each arm from wrist to elbow. These bangles were very small and, as they were solid, could only pass over very small hands.

I saw this curious woman twice only: the second time was some years later.

As I have said before, old Sikoro was the keeper of the harem. I hated him instinctively the moment I first set eyes on him: I hated him more when I heard the whole story.

Sikoro had only one eye. In his youth he had had smallpox, which pitted his face remorselessly and destroyed one eye. He wore a soldier's red tunic, the colour dimmed with age and dirt. Perched on his head was a tall cone-shaped fur cap which he plucked off whenever he met a superior. He was always plucking it off, not because he was really inferior in the black man's social scale to all he so saluted; on the contrary, in view of his office, he was an important person; he was over polite because he chose to appear humble.

The man knew his power well: his occupation gave him the ear of the Chief. All realized this and were ready to show him the respect which was justly his due: Sikoro was before them in showing respect, which was unnecessary. Men did not understand this humbleness of his and feared him. Sikoro loved their fear.

The woman, Mironda, alone had no fear of him. She despised the man and did not try to hide it. She often refused to see him. It was only utter boredom that induced her to admit him to her compound at all. The truth is he was a great gossip and was the link between the harem and the outer world. Sikoro knew everything, was an authority on everything, and the first to hear all news.

Now this is what befell Mironda. I don't blame her; no one could. I consider her a victim of circumstances. The old, old story. A young and impulsive woman, an elderly, much married lord, a well-favoured young man. The long and the short of it is that Mironda was in the end divorced; but the manner of that divorce enrages me whenever I think of it.

One morning she was sitting on a mat in the shade thrown by the overhanging thatch of her hut. She was singing in a low voice and threading beads picked with the point of her needle from a wooden bowl held by a small girl slave.

The monotonous chant in a minor key was interrupted by someone scratching on the reed fence.

"Go," said Mironda to the child, "see who it is."

The child put down the bowl of beads and ran to the fold in the fence which formed the gate. She looked out. A glance was sufficient. She ran back past her mistress and into a far hut, muttering as she went "Ma—we! Ma—we! It is Sikoro!"

Mironda moved uneasily on her mat, then fell to fumbling nervously with the brightly-dyed bark patterns which ornamented it.

Sikoro slouched into the compound, removing his fur cap as he came. Just inside he knelt down and sat on his heels, placing his cap on the ground beside him. He arranged his voluminous skirts carefully round him and then clapped his hands very respectfully.

Mironda did not look at him. After a short interval Sikoro broke the silence.

"Good day to you, Morena."

"Yes, good day."

"And has the Chief's wife slept well?"

"She has."

"And the slaves of her house, have they slept well?"

"They have."

"And is the Chief's wife pleased with the new shawl chosen by Sikoro as a gift from the Chief to his wife?"

"It is all right."

Sikoro relapsed into silence and Mironda did not speak. Presently the man got up and, in a crouching attitude, shuffled nearer and sat down as close as possible to the edge of the woman's mat without actually touching it. To touch the mat of the Chief's wife would have been an offence, to come so near to it was studied insolence.

Mironda looked up angrily, met the bloodshot eye of Sikoro and opened her mouth as if to speak. Instead of doing so, however, she looked away and examined the work upon which she had been engaged when the man arrived.

Sikoro grinned and, detaching from his belt a small gourd, emptied some snuff into the palm of his hand.

This was a deliberate insult to the Chief's wife and conclusive evidence to her, if indeed she needed it, that she might now expect the worst.

Sikoro blew his nose unpleasantly and loudly sniffed up the snuff from the palm of his hand. Then, clearing his throat, he said: "Someone has stolen one of the Chief's heifers."

"Eh."

"A yellow one which the Chief might well have sold to a Jew."

"So."

"It is no great loss to the Chief, as the heifer is barren."

Mironda's eyes blazed with fury; she had no child.

"The thief has been caught."

"What will be done with him?"

Ah! he had aroused her interest at last. Sikoro smiled pleasantly as he said: "He will, of course, be strangled."

"Will not the Missionaries prevent it?"

"The Missionaries? They do not know and may not know for many days, and anyhow, what could they do?"

"The white man's Government will prevent the killing of people."

"No doubt the white man's Government will do many foolish things, but the Magistrate has not yet come."

"He is coming soon."

"But they strangle Miyobo to-day, now."

No name had been mentioned before: indeed it was not necessary even now; Mironda had known Sikoro's errand from the manner of entry into her compound.

The abominable man leant forward and repeated: "Now, now, now," then put his hand to his ear. The woman listened, too, and heard distinctly the shriek and gurgle of a dying man: then silence save for the pattering of slaves' feet and their shrill inquiries and conjectures. Miyobo had been strangled just outside the compound in which the woman sat.

Mironda looked at Sikoro with wide eyes of fear. He, of course, enjoyed the situation. Did he not hate this woman for her overbearing pride? Had not she and Miyobo fooled him more than once, and had it not been the merest chance which had delivered them into his hand?

His one eye contracted with merriment, a cruel smile lifted his lip and disclosed a row of sharply-filed teeth—the tribal mark of a subject race; he was a freed slave.

Pointing to the bangles on the woman's arm, Sikoro asked: "What are you doing with the Chief's ivory?"

One by one Mironda took her bangles off and placed them on the mat before her.

"Is not that the Chief's new shawl?"

The wretched woman took the garment from her shoulders and laid it on the mat beside the bangles.

"And why," said Sikoro, "do you sit on the Chief's mat?"

Mironda slowly rose to her feet.

"And is not this the Chief's hut?"

This was the last word, the full sentence of divorce; she, now a common woman, had no right to stand where she stood. She looked hastily round the compound and then walked silently to the gate and so out.

The man gathered up the ivory bangles and tied them in the shawl. He rolled up the mat upon which Mironda had been sitting and tucked it under his arm. Then, spitting contemptuously on the ground, he followed.

Some years later I saw Mironda, clothed in the rags of a slave woman, begging food at the Mission station.

When the wife of the Chief is divorced, her fall is gradual. For a space she becomes the wife of a head man, who presently passes her on to someone lower in the social scale, and so from hand to hand she passes until she becomes the consort of a slave.

In Mironda's case she first became the wife of Sikoro; surely a no more cruel punishment could have been devised for her.

MAN AND BEAST.