In the middle of the night you have a feeling that something is near, something moving stealthily in the darkness, and you see two glaring eyes gazing at you—a leopard or civet cat is prowling round your shelter. You throw a burning firebrand at it, and with a growl it dashes off into the bush. In the morning you tie another knot in your string, by which you count the days, and say, “If only I can get a lot to-day! The time grows short, I shall soon go home.” Day after day passes in this way, and at last the rubber is ready, or even if it is not, the day has dawned; you must start for the white man’s place—and home is on the way! One or two nights are passed on the road, and you draw near to the village. “What a welcome I shall have! Bamatafe with the baby, Isekokwala, my father, now an old man, and my mother, and a feast of good things as I always find.” As we get near the village, I begin to sing and feel happy, and tell the other men what a good wife I have, and what a feast she will have ready for me! But how quiet it all is—and yes, surely I hear a wail! What can it be? I rush on ahead, and hear the following story. In the morning some sentries arrived to bring the rubber men to the white man’s place. We had not come in from the forest, so they took our wives, quite a number of them—Bamatafe amongst them with her baby at her breast—away to the white man’s prison, or hostage house as he calls it, and my relatives are crying over it! I was mad with rage, but it was too late to do anything that night. In the morning we took our rubber in to the white man, who received it, refused to pay anything for it, but allowed it to pass for the redemption of our wives! Of course, we did not say anything; we were only too glad to get them free at any price; for what could we do without them? You, white men in Europe, who say you feel pity for us, how would you feel if such a thing happened to you and your wife and little child? We were treated like that not once, but many times. In a village not far from my father’s the men were all away on one occasion trying to procure what was required of them as their weekly tax. When the day for bringing it in fell due, they did not arrive in good time, and as usual sentries were sent out to inquire into it. Finding no men in town, and most of the women having fled into the bush in fear at the approach of the sentries, they seized the wife of one of the absent men. She had recently become a mother; perhaps she was not strong enough to run away with her companions. Anyway she was arrested with her babe at her breast, and taken off to the white man’s place, where it was decided to give the village a lesson that they would not soon forget.