and put the thought into the girl's mind, and the witch-doctor has
pronounced him guilty." She persisted. The crowd became angry and
excited; they surged round her demanding why a stranger who was there
on sufferance should interfere with the dignity and power of free-born
people, and clamoured for the instant death of the prisoner. Threats
were shouted, guns and swords were waved, and the position grew
critical, but she stood her ground, quiet and cool and patient. Her
tact, her good humour, that spiritual force which seemed to emanate
from her in times of peril, at last prevailed. The noise and confusion
calmed down, and ultimately it was decided to spare the man's life. She
had won her first victory.

But the victim was loaded with chains, placed in the women's yard,
starved, and then flogged, and his body cruelly cut in order to
exorcise the powers of sorcery that were in him. When Mary went to him
he was a bruised and bleeding heap of flesh lying unconscious by the
post to which he was fastened. The women in the yard were sitting about
indifferent to his plight.




V. LIFE IN HAREM

For many weeks she was an inmate of the harem, a witness of its
degraded intimacies, enduring the pollution of its moral and physical
atmosphere, with no other support than hallowed memories and the
companionship of her Bible. Her room was next that of the chief and his
head wife: the quarters of five lesser wives were close by; other wives
whose work and huts were at the farms shared the yard with the slaves,