For a moment after the outcry the orator’s lips closed over the firelit sheen of his white teeth. I suppose that he (like his paternal uncle) had recited this tropic saga a hundred times in the villages of the black south. I doubt not that at this point he had been accustomed to pause, to receive for a moment the sweet applause of a groan. “And so,” he resumed, “they were sold that day into labor. And of the Brothers of the Milk, those whose eyes saw a single thing and whose lips spoke the same, Moa was taken one way and Djeba another, and their hearts died. Djeba, the blood-child of chieftains, was driven like a bullock up into the bush by a white driver, and when his weakness grew on him and he stumbled that driver struck him with a thong. “That country beyond the great lake is a fat country, full of plantings of maize and cotton in the uplands where the bush is cleared. It is known by the name of Djoja, and in extent it lies from the banks of the lake into the interior many marches away. Djeba was taken to a certain planting and thrown into a _dar_ in a stockade as great as a small _ksar_. There he had the company of other captives from the River, from the Camaroun, and from the River Greater than the River in the south. Some there were who had been there so great a time that they had forgotten their own tongues and knew only the Djoja speech, and some had been born in that stockade. “Then they were driven into the fields to labor. In his weakness the sun beat upon the head of Djeba and made him forget. Then he was driven back to the stockade, and the rain came through the thatch of the _dar_ and wet his body and fever consumed his heart. But already his heart was dead; only when he slept and saw Moa in a dream did he live. “And that driver said to him, ‘How art thou called?’ And he said, ‘Djeba.’ And the driver laughed and cried, ‘That is no name for a black boy; I christen thee Djim; and Djim thou art!” And he went away, still laughing as if he had turned a word of wit. So a hate of him came into Djeba, and Djeba would have killed him, only that he was a tall, great-bodied man, and Djeba, who had been worth five warriors in his strength, was like a child in weakness now. “That fever burned his heart and his bowels. He was given to eat of a cous-cous made of sour maize and swineflesh. Then his stomach turned over. He vomited. He said, ‘Now at last I am to die.’ “But then a woman came into that _dar_. She laid a hand on his head and called him Djim, but the hand was cool, and the anger went from his heart. She gave him milk to drink, and his pain ceased. His sickness passed. In the darkness of that shelter that woman was like the healing benignity of the moon when it has come an hour high in the east. She spoke in tones of compassion, and he was made whole. “‘Who then is that woman?’ he asked of the men, ‘and how is she called?’ “‘She is Mis’us, and she lives in the _dar kebir_’ (the Big House).