But still the trouble grew, for by now the witch-doctors, with Hokosa at the head of them, were frightened for their place and power, and fomented it both openly and in secret. Of the women they asked what would become of them when men were allowed to take but one wife? Of the heads of kraals, how they would grow wealthy when their daughters ceased to be worth cattle? Of the councillors and generals, how the land could be protected from its foes when they were commanded to lay down the spear? Of the soldiers, whose only trade was war, how it would please them to till the fields like girls? Dismay took hold of the nation, and although they were much loved, there was open talk of killing or driving away the king and Nodwengo who favoured the white man, and of setting up Hafela in their place.
At length the crisis came, and in this fashion. The Amasuka, like many other African tribes, had a strange veneration for certain varieties of snakes which they declared to be possessed by the spirits of their ancestors. It was a law among them that if one of these snakes entered a kraal it must not be killed, or even driven away, under pain of death, but must be allowed to share with the human occupants any hut that it might select. As a result of this enforced hospitality deaths from snake-bite were numerous among the people; but when they happened in a kraal its owners met with little sympathy, for the doctors explained that the real cause of them was the anger of some ancestral spirit towards his descendants. Now, before John was despatched to instruct Owen in the language of the Amasuka a certain girl was sealed to him as his future wife, and this girl, who during his absence had been orphaned, he had married recently with the approval of Owen, who at this time was preparing her for baptism. On the third morning after his marriage John appeared before his master in the last extremity of grief and terror.
"Help me, Messenger!" he cried, "for my ancestral spirit has entered our hut and bitten my wife as she lay asleep."
"Are you mad?" asked Owen. "What is an ancestral spirit, and how can it have bitten your wife?"
"A snake," gasped John, "a green snake of the worst sort."
Then Owen remembered the superstition, and snatching blue-stone and spirits of wine from his medicine chest, he rushed to John's hut. As it happened, he was fortunately in time with his remedies and succeeded in saving the woman's life, whereby his reputation as a doctor and a magician, already great, was considerably enlarged.
"Where is the snake?" he asked when at length she was out of danger.
"Yonder, under the kaross," answered John, pointing to a skin rug which lay in the corner.
"Have you killed it?"
"No, Messenger," answered the man, "I dare not. Alas! we must live with the thing here in the hut till it chooses to go away."
"Truly," said Owen, "I am ashamed to think that you who are a Christian should still believe so horrible a superstition. Does your faith teach you that the souls of men enter into snakes?"
Now John hung his head; then snatching a kerry, he threw aside the kaross, revealing a great green serpent seven or eight feet long. With fury he fell upon the reptile, killed it by repeated blows, and hurled it into the courtyard outside the house.
"Behold, father," he said, "and judge whether I am still superstitious." Then his countenance fell and he added: "Yet my life must pay for this deed, for it is an ancient law among us that to harm one of these snakes is death."
"Have no fear," said Owen, "a way will be found out of this trouble."
That afternoon Owen heard a great hubbub outside his kraal, and going to see what was the matter, he found a party of the witch-doctors dragging John towards the place of judgment, which was by the king's house. Thither he followed to discover that the case was already in course of being opened before the king, his council, and a vast audience of the people. Hokosa was the accuser. In brief and pregnant sentences, producing the dead snake in proof of his argument, he pointed out the enormity of the offence against the laws of the Amasuka wherewith the prisoner was charged, demanding that the man who had killed the house of his ancestral spirit should instantly be put to death.
"What have you to say?" asked the king of John.
