They also give Tambo a wooden pot of honey. When Bong and Rita were hunt ing for grubs, they saw wild bees going in and out of a little hole far up in the top of a tall tree. The children told their father about it, and he put a rope of raw hide around the tree and around himself, and walked up the bee tree almost as fast as you walk upstairs. When he came down, he brought enough honey out of the bees' nest to fill three wooden pots. One of these he gave to King Tambo, one he kept for the family to eat, and one he placed at the foot of a very large tree in the forest. This is the tree that the family worships, and often they give it pots of honey and bundles of food.
437. The everybody is tired of eating grubs and fish, Taree goes hunting. Before he goes, he puts on a necklace of leopard claws for good luck. Then he takes a strong spear, the iron head of which the village blacksmith had made from iron ore that he had smelted in a little clay furnace. Taree starts off into the forest before daylight. After two hours, he finds the tracks of an antelope, an animal something like a deer. For two hours more he follows these tracks, until at last he catches sight of the antelope. In another hour he has managed to creep up close to it, and he throws his spear and kills it. He pats his right arm because it threw the spear so well, and grins with pride.
On the way home with the dead ante lope, Taree is thinking of how much meat his family will now have to eat; of how the dried antelope skin will make a nice soft sleeping mat to be used when travel ing through the forest.
The white man comes. — When Taree gets back to the village, he sees the people standing around in groups, talking. A runner has come down the path from the next village to bring the news that the white man is coming, that he has no toes, (He wears shoes.) and that he is a mighty hunter who kills animals with a terrible "bang" noise. They had heard three weeks before that a white man was coming. The news had come more than a hundred miles, by drum taps from village to village. Old Gado, the drum tapper of Tambo's village, is next to the king himself in honor among the people. He is the only man there who knows the secret drum language he learned from his father. By long taps and short taps on the big bass drum and the little tenor drum, he talks at night to the other drum men miles away through the still forest.
Everyone is greatly excited over the news of the white man, and nobody does anything but watch and ' talk until at sunset the white man comes. He is fol
lowed by twenty-five strange black men carrying bundles on their heads. Neither horses, nor cattle, nor donkeys can live in this forest because of the sting of an insect called the tsetse fly. Therefore, men must carry the burdens. These twenty-five carriers who travel with the white man are called porters. The white man is an American, and has come to Central Africa to collect birds for a museum in New York.
The American and his porters are hungry. Tarita builds a big fire to roast Taree's antelope. The strangers eat it all, and pick the bones clean. Afterward they split the bones open and eat the marrow. The white man gives Taree a handful of beauti ful glass beads, red and yellow and green, enough of them to make a chain to go around the neck of every member of the family. Each one feels as rich as you would with a new bicycle.
The next morning the white man goes into the forest to hunt birds. He is sur prised to see how much Taree and Bong and Rita know about the birds. The children have often gone with their father in the forest. That is their school. They know every animal in it. They know every bird, and where its nest can be found, and at what time of the day it is to be seen. The American is also surprised to find that Taree can hear and see the birds better than white men can, and can shoot them with his bow and arrow as well as he him self can with his gun. Bong and Rita can shoot them, too, for they have played by the hour with bows and arrows. Rita is the champion of all the village girls at arrow shooting. Sometimes she can even beat Bong.
While the party is standing watching some birds, a leopard springs from the branch of a big tree, right on to the back of the porter who is carrying the white man's extra gun. A leopard is a big cat, somewhat like a tiger. He is about five feet long. The American shoots him in a second, but it is too late to save the porter. His neck has been broken by one blow from the leopard's paw.
The white man carefully skins the birds they shoot, so that he may show the people in his country what the birds in Africa are like. At the end of three days, he goes on down the river. Before he leaves, he gives to the people who have helped him presents of beads, red handkerchiefs, and brass wire. They consider this wire fine jewelry. Rita and Bong, as well as their father and mother, are very proud indeed to have bracelets of brass wire on both wrists, and anklets of brass wire on both ankles.