The Kendah will allow no stranger within their doors; if one comes they kill him by torment, or blind him and turn him out into the desert which surrounds their country, there to die.

These things the old woman who married my uncle told me, as she told them to Light-in-Darkness, also I have heard them from others, and what she did not tell me, that the White Kendah are great breeders of the beasts called camels which they sell to the Arabs of the north.

Go not near them, for if you pass the desert the Black Kendah will kill you; and if you escape these, then their king, Simba, will kill you; and if you escape him, then their god Jana will kill you; and if you escape him, then their white priests will kill you with their magic.

Oh! long before you look upon the faces of those priests you will be dead many times over." "Then why did they ask me to visit them, Babemba ?" "I know not, Macumazana, but perhaps because they wished to make an offering of you to the god Jana, whom no spear can harm; no, nor even your bullets that pierce a tree." "I am willing to make trial of that matter," I answered confidently, "and any way we must go to see these things for ourselves." "Yes," echoed Ragnall, "we must certainly go," while even Savage, for I had been translating to them all this while, nodded his head although he looked as though he would much rather stay behind.
"Ask him if there are any snakes there, sir," he said, and foolishly enough I put the question to give me time to think of other things.
"Yes, O Bena.

Yes, O Cock of the Ashpit," replied Babemba.