Then the great meeting broke up. Rotembo and his people drank a great quantity of fermented drinks they had made to celebrate my return. There was a grand ball which lasted all night. Rotembo himself danced, and came before me singing and dancing in the midst of vociferous cheers by the people.
The next day I prepared a great feast that Rotembo and I were to eat together. The bottom of our canoe was to be our table. Rogala, Shinshooko, Alapai, and Akenda-Mbani were seated at a table close to ours. Rotembo's wives waited upon us. A mass of people formed a great circle round us, and looked at us, and one of them said: "The great Oguizi loves also Rogala and Shinshooko, Alapai and Akenda-Mbani."
In the evening I called my hunters together, and gave each a new gun, powder, and some iron bars. I gave them beads for their wives also, and the next day I accompanied them to their canoe and bade them good-bye. They felt sad to leave me, and as they embarked, Rogala said: "Oguizi, come again to see us at our plantation."
The people believed that I had killed Andekko and Ndova to take them with me, and wondered why I had not killed my hunters to take them with me also. "When they die," said they, "the Oguizi will take them with him, for he loves them."
Two days afterwards, I bade good-bye to Rotembo. He invoked the spirits of his ancestors, and came to the shore to see me off. He had given me people and a canoe to take me to another part of the great forest, to a great king who was his father-in-law. And with the stars and stripes floating at the stern of my canoe I was paddled out of sight of Rotembo and his village.
End of Project Gutenberg's In African Forest and Jungle, by Paul B. Du Chaillu