"Well and truly you have spoken," murmured the circles. "Shall Mazamboni be a son of 'Bula Matari?'" "He shall." "Shall there be true peace between us and the strangers?" "Yea," came in an emotional shout from the mass. Then the mutual right hands of my son, Mr. Jephson, who volunteered to be sacrificed, were clasped crosswise over the crossed knees, the native Professor of Medicine made a slight incision in his arm until the red blood dyed it. My Professor of Secret Ritualism caused the dark red blood of Mazamboni to well out of the vein, and as the liquid of life flowed and dropped over the knees, the incantations were commenced by the sage with the white beard, and as he shook the pebbles in the magic gourd at the range of the peak opposite, and at the horse-shoe range yonder in the plains, and to eastward and westward of the valley, he delivered his terrible curses from the summit of Nzera-Kum, and all men listened unto him with open lips:-- "Cursed is he who breaks his plighted vow. "Cursed is he who nourisheth secret hate. "Cursed is he who turneth his back against his friend. "Cursed is he who in the day of war denieth his brother. "Cursed is he who deviseth evil to his friend whose blood has become one with his own. "May the itch make him loathsome, and the hair of his head be lost by the mange; may the adder wait for him by the path, and the lion meet him on his way; may the leopard in the darkness besiege his house, and his wife when she draweth water from the stream, be seized; may the barbed arrow pin his entrails, and the sharp spear be dyed in his vitals; may sickness waste his strength, and his days be narrowed with disease; may his limbs fail him in the day of battle, and his arms stiffen with cramps," and so on, invoking every evil and disease most dreaded, and the Zanzibari Professor of Secret Ritualism, somewhat dumbfounded at first at the series of curses delivered so volubly by Nestor, seized his magic gourd, and shook it at the hills and the valley, at the head of Mazamboni with awful solemnity; at Nestor himself, and the awe-struck following around, and outdid Nestor, from perverted ambition, by frenzy, voice, and gesture, in harmony with it; his eyes rolled wildly, foam came from his lips; he summoned every blight to fall upon the land and its productions, every damnable agency in his folk-lore to hound Mazamboni for ever; every dark and potent spirit out of the limbo of evil imagination to torture him in his waking and sleeping hours, until his actions were so fantastic, his denunciation so outrageous, his looks so like one possessed with a demon, that everyone, native and Zanzibari, broke out into uncontrollable laughter, which caused Murabo, our "medicine man," to sober instantly, and to say in Swahili to us, with a conceited shake of the head, "Ay! master, how do you like that style for high acting?" which reminded me of nothing so much as Hamlet out-ranting Laertes.