The Witch Doctor and other Rhodesian Studies Part 41

Somehow it did get about at last that he had a box of medicines. How, it doesn't really matter. The fact remains that a native came to the waggon one morning with a strip of bark tied tightly round his forehead, another round his chest, and a third round his belly.

Warner, recognising a case, asked the native what the matter was.

The boy replied: "I have much pain here and here and here," touching the bands of bark in downward succession.

Warner, pleased at getting a patient at last, took the box of medicines from the waggon, opened it, took out the bottles one by one, and examined the labels with the eye of a master.

"Iodine? No, that's for housemaid's knee, gumboils and that sort of thing. Corrosive sublimate? Wounds. Nitrate of potash? No, eyes. Why not a pill? Yes, a pill."

But there were boxes and boxes of them. He picked up one after the other, but met with a check. Each box had on its label the name of its pill contents, followed by the words: "From one to three as ordered by the physician." In some cases: "From two to six." There was nothing about the complaint for which the pill might be used.

Just a little difficult. Doctoring was not such an easy job after all.

"What's this?"

The gaudy label on a small box read:

Sovereign Remedy. Trick No. 10.

Never known to fail. Surprising in its effects.

_Directions:_--Borrow a sovereign. Request the lender to take a seat. Ask him how he feels. Tell him he is looking off-colour.

Suggest headache. Say you will brighten him up, that you will make his head glow pleasantly, etc. Palm the sovereign in your left hand. Empty contents of box into your right. Rub the powder well into gent's head, which will become golden (metallic). Then proceed as in Trick No. 6.

The directions seemed clear enough.

"Sit down," said Warner.

The native obeyed, squatting on the ground and spreading his loin cloth over his knees like an ap.r.o.n.

"I am going to take away your pains."

"Thank you, sir."

It suddenly occurred to Warner that, though the native might have a shilling, he certainly would not possess a sovereign, so he took one from his own pocket, wishing he had thought of this before.

"You see this?" said Warner, holding up the coin.

"Yes sir, much money."

Now Warner didn't know how to palm a coin. He had seen it done, of course, but had never yet tried to palm or to do anything else in the nature of a conjuring trick. To guard against possible accident, he turned his back upon the boy and very cautiously opened the box.

It was full of some bright yellow metallic powder. He read the directions again and wondered what Trick No. 6 might be. He wished he had risked a pill.

However, he had not the courage to go back now. The native might suspect his ignorance if he selected another box. It was hardly playing the game perhaps to trick a poor confiding black, but Warner consoled himself with the thought that it is said of even real doctors that when in doubt they sometimes give their patients bread pills.

So, emptying the contents of the box into his right hand, he turned again and began to rub the golden powder into the native's woolly head.

The sovereign he held in his left hand.

The more he rubbed, the brighter grew his patient's head. It scintillated.

The trick pleased Warner, who soon forgot his misgivings; he forgot the sovereign too, and rubbed the powder in with both hands.

The coin fell into the patient's lap. Warner was busy and didn't notice the accident at once, but the native did. He picked up the money and quietly slipped it into the rawhide pouch attached to his belt.

At length Warner stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. The boy's head shone like a bra.s.s k.n.o.b. He glanced at his own hands. They looked as if they had been gilded. Both hands! Where the devil had that sovereign gone to?

He looked on the ground. He felt in all his pockets. He looked at the boy, who said nothing. He therefore dismissed the patient without mentioning his loss.

Whilst washing the greasy gold stuff off his hands, Warner was conscious of a hum of excitement rising from the spot where his natives had made their midday shelter. Trick No. 10 was evidently a success. The hospital orderly was right; he had surprised the natives.

That night all his boys, and a score of strange natives besides, came to Warner complaining of pains. Each one had a strip of bark tied tightly round his forehead, a second round his chest, and a third round his stomach. They lingered as if dissatisfied when he gave pills to each--one or more as ordered by the physician--taken at random from his many little pill boxes.

IODINE.

Warner was sitting under a tree on the south bank of the Zambesi, watching the local natives floating his waggon across the stream. He was wondering how long, at the present rate of progression, it would take to get the whole of his stuff across. Two days, three, perhaps more.

"Sir, my felicitations upon the indefectibility of the climatology."

The startled Warner looked round and saw a black man very stout and short, in European clothes and perspiring freely. He carried his large elastic-sided boots in his hand and a black alpaca coat over his arm.

As Warner turned towards him, this strange creature politely lifted his ridiculously small sun helmet. It could not be said that he bowed to the white man, but the braces which he wore over his waistcoat sagged slightly in front and became taut behind, whilst the crease which represented the highest contour of his stomach deepened a little. Warner gaped stupidly at the man. He made mental note of the large gold spectacles astride the fat, flat nose; the collar, once white and starched, now grubby and collapsed; the heavy bra.s.s watchchain stretched tightly across the ample s.p.a.ce between pocket and pocket; the badly creased loud check trousers, and the dirty white socks; the large green umbrella which, held to shield the back, framed face and form.

Warner forgot the man's ridiculous speech in his more ridiculous appearance.

"As I ventured to remark, sir, although the orb of day smiles down with radiance from the firmament, the temperamental calidity is not unendurable."

"Yes," said Warner vaguely, "but who are you?"

"Sir, if you will pardon the expression I may say I am a kind of a wandering refugee hailing from Jamaica with a mission to carry the apprehensions of civilisation to the unspeakably incomprehending aboriginal inhabitants of this beatific equatorial region who are doubtless immersed in the chaotic complexity of irreligious heathenism and incondite boorishness."

Warner eyed the speaker with astonishment, feeling tired, somehow, and out of breath.

The black man saw, with obvious pleasure, the effect which his speeches had produced.

He had spoken fluently, continuously, without pause or effort. Without expression or inflexion the long unbroken flow of chosen words had rumbled off his tongue.

He cleared his throat as if about to speak again, but Warner hastily interposed.

"What is your name?"

"Joseph Johnson, sir."

"You are obviously a man of some education."

"Sir, if I may presume to express an opinion upon Your Honour's personality I would hazard the conclusion that Your Excellency is a gentleman of kindly but penetrating discernment for I received my education at the hands of the Reverend Westinghouse Wilberforce of Kingston Jamaica alas now dead of whom as the cla.s.sical writer has it _de mort nil ni b.u.m_ I repeat sir _de mort nil ni b.u.m_."

Warner abruptly turned his back, s.n.a.t.c.hed out his handkerchief, and held it tightly to his nose.