and has been so called for hundreds of years. He is of the Black Kendah
whose god is the elephant Jana, but as Light-in-Darkness has said, there
are also the White Kendah who are Arab men, the priests and traders of
the people. The Kendah will allow no stranger within their doors; if one
comes they kill him by torment, or blind him and turn him out into the
desert which surrounds their country, there to die. These things the
old woman who married my uncle told me, as she told them to
Light-in-Darkness, also I have heard them from others, and what she
did not tell me, that the White Kendah are great breeders of the beasts
called camels which they sell to the Arabs of the north. Go not near
them, for if you pass the desert the Black Kendah will kill you; and
if you escape these, then their king, Simba, will kill you; and if you
escape him, then their god Jana will kill you; and if you escape him,
then their white priests will kill you with their magic. Oh! long before
you look upon the faces of those priests you will be dead many times
over."

"Then why did they ask me to visit them, Babemba?"

"I know not, Macumazana, but perhaps because they wished to make an
offering of you to the god Jana, whom no spear can harm; no, nor even
your bullets that pierce a tree."

"I am willing to make trial of that matter," I answered confidently,
"and any way we must go to see these things for ourselves."

"Yes," echoed Ragnall, "we must certainly go," while even Savage, for I
had been translating to them all this while, nodded his head although he
looked as though he would much rather stay behind.