Jules Verne For Children: 16 Incredible Tales of Mystery, Courage & Adventure (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
that hardly found a passage through his drunken lips. And still, did he not ask his friend, Alvez, to renew his supply of brandy just exhausted by large libations?
“King Loungga is welcome to the market of Kazounde,” said the trader.
“I am thirsty,” replied the monarch.
“He will take his part in the business of the great ‘lakoni,’” added Alvez.
“Drink!” replied Moini Loungga.
“My friend Negoro is happy to see the King of Kazounde again, after such a long absence.”
“Drink!” repeated the drunkard, whose whole person gave forth a disgusting odor of alcohol.
“Well, some ‘pombe’! some mead!” exclaimed Jose-Antonio Alvez, like a man who well knew what Moini Loungga wanted.
“No, no!” replied the king; “my friend Alvez’s brandy, and for each drop of his fire-water I shall give him——”
“A drop of blood from a white man!” exclaimed Negoro, after making a sign to Alvez, which the latter understood and approved.
“A white man! Put a white man to death!” repeated Moini Loungga, whose ferocious instincts were aroused by the Portuguese’s proposition.
“One of Alvez’s agents has been killed by this white man,” returned Negoro.
“Yes, my agent, Harris,” replied the trader, “and his death must be avenged!”
“Send that white man to King Massongo, on the Upper Zaire, among the Assonas. They will cut him in pieces. They will eat him alive. They have not forgotten the taste of human flesh!” exclaimed Moini Loungga.
He was, in fact, the king of a tribe of man-eaters, that Massongo. It is only too true that in certain provinces of Central Africa cannibalism is still openly practised. Livingstone states it in his “Notes of Travel.” On the borders of the Loualaba the Manyemas not only eat the men killed in the wars, but they buy slaves to devour them, saying that “human flesh is easily salted, and needs little seasoning.” Those cannibals Cameron has found again among the Moene-Bongga, where they only feast on dead bodies after steeping them for several days in a running stream. Stanley has also encountered those customs of cannibalism among the inhabitants of the Oukonson. Cannibalism is evidently well spread among the tribes of the center.
But, cruel as was the kind of death proposed by the king for Dick Sand, it did not suit Negoro, who did not care to give up his victim.
“It was here,” said he, “that the white man killed our comrade Harris.”
“It is here that he ought to die!” added Alvez.
“Where you please, Alvez,” replied Moini Loungga; “but a drop of fire-water for a drop of blood!”
“Yes,” replied the trader, “fire-water, and you will see that it well merits that name! We shall make it blaze, this water! Jose-Antonio Alvez will offer a punch to the King Moini Loungga.”
The drunkard shook his friend Alvez’s hands. He could not contain his joy. His wives, his courtiers shared his ecstasy. They had never seen brandy blaze, and doubtless they counted on drinking it all blazing. Then, after the thirst for alcohol, the thirst for blood, so imperious among these savages, would be satisfied also.
Poor Dick Sand! What a horrible punishment awaited him. When we think of the terrible or grotesque effects of intoxication in civilized countries, we understand how far it can urge barbarous beings.
We will readily believe that the thought of torturing a white could displease none of the natives, neither Jose-Antonio Alvez, a negro like themselves, nor Coimbra, a mongrel of black blood, nor Negoro either, animated with a ferocious hatred against the whites.
The evening had come, an evening without twilight, that was going to make day change tonight almost at once, a propitious hour for the blazing of the brandy.
It was truly a triumphant idea of Alvez’s, to offer a punch to this negro majesty, and to make him love brandy under a new form. Moini Loungga began to find that fire-water did not sufficiently justify its name. Perhaps, blazing and burning, it would tickle more agreeably the blunted papillas of his tongue.
The evening’s program then comprised a punch first, a punishment afterwards.
Dick Sand, closely shut up in his dark prison, would only come out to go to his death. The other slaves, sold or not, had been put back in the barracks. There only remained at the “tchitoka,” the traders, the overseers and the soldiers ready to take their part of the punch, if the king and his court allowed them.
Jose-Antonio Alvez, advised by Negoro, did the thing well. They brought a vast copper basin, capable of containing at least two hundred pints, which was placed in the middle of the great place. Barrels holding alcohol of inferior quality, but well refined, were emptied into the basin. They spared neither the cinnamon, nor the allspice, nor any of the ingredients that might improve this punch for savages.
All had made a circle around the king. Moini Loungga advanced staggering to the basin. One would say that this vat of brandy fascinated him, and that he was going to throw himself into it.
Alvez generously held him back and put a lighted match into his hand.
“Fire!” cried he with a cunning grimace of satisfaction.
“Fire!” replied Moini Loungga lashing the liquid with the end of the match.
What a flare and what an effect, when the bluish flames played on the surface of the basin. Alvez, doubtless to render that alcohol still sharper, had mingled with it a few handfuls of sea salt. The assistants’ faces were then given that spectral lividness that the imagination ascribes to phantoms.
Those negroes, drunk in advance, began to cry out, to gesticulate, and, taking each other by the hand, formed an immense circle around the King of Kazounde.
Alvez, furnished with an enormous metal spoon, stirred the liquid, which threw a great white glare over those delirious monkeys.
Moini Loungga advanced. He seized the spoon from the trader’s hands, plunged it into the basin, then, drawing it out full of punch in flames, he brought it to his lips.
What a cry the King of Kazounde then gave!
An act of spontaneous combustion had just taken place. The king had taken fire like a petroleum bonbon. This fire developed little heat, but it devoured none the less.
At this spectacle the natives’ dance was suddenly stopped.
One of Moini Loungga’s ministers threw himself on his sovereign to extinguish him; but, not less alcoholized than his master, he took fire in his turn.
In this way, Moini Loungga’s whole court was in peril of burning up.
Alvez and Negoro did not know how to help his majesty. The women, frightened, had taken flight. As to Coimbra, he took his departure rapidly, well knowing his inflammable nature.
The king and the minister, who had fallen on the ground, were burning up, a prey to frightful sufferings.
In bodies so thoroughly alcoholized, combustion only produces a light and bluish flame, that water cannot extinguish. Even stifled outside, it would still continue to burn inwardly. When liquor has penetrated all the tissues, there exists no means of arresting the combustion.
A few minutes after, Moini Loungga and his minister had succumbed, but they still burned. Soon, in the place where they had fallen, there was nothing left but a few light coals, one or two pieces of the vertebral column, fingers, toes, that the fire does not consume, in cases of spontaneous combustion, but which it covers with an infectious and penetrating soot.
It was all that was left of the King of Kazounde and of his minister.