Pinocchio had slept for hours when he was aroused by strange sounds. Were these the voices of human beings.
“Yah! Yah! Hoi! Hoi! Uff! Uff!”
What could it possibly be? The marionette opened an eye, but quickly shut it again when he saw a number of coal-black faces turned toward him.
“What do these ugly people want of me?” he asked himself, as he lay there perfectly still.
When Pinocchio next opened his eyes he saw to his great surprise that the men had formed a circle about him. At their chief’s command they began to dance. It was all so funny that Pinocchio could hardly keep from laughing. Then the chief made a sign, at which the savages advanced toward the marionette, took him up by his arms and legs, and started away with him.
“This is not so bad,” thought the marionette.
After a time his bearers laid him gently upon the ground and commenced to examine him. Pinocchio decided to make believe he was dead.
For that reason he kept his eyes shut tightly and lay still.
Suddenly there was a great noise. He was startled. Opening one eye, he saw approaching a chief followed by a crowd of attendants. Judging from the manner in which the new arrivals were received, they were persons of high rank. At their approach the savages knelt down, raised their hands high in the air, and bent their foreheads to the ground.
A man stepped out from the ranks and came toward Pinocchio. He examined the marionette from head to foot, while all the others looked on in silence.
When the examination was over the marionette hoped to be left in peace, but another approached him and went through the same performance. Then came a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on.
Pinocchio was somewhat tired of this. As the last one came up he muttered, “Now I shall see what they are going to do with me.”
The man who had first examined Pinocchio now approached him again, and calling the bearers, said, in a tongue which, curiously enough, the marionette understood, “Turn the little animal over!”
Upon hearing himself called an animal, Pinocchio was seized with a mad desire to give his tormentor a kick, but he thought better of it.
The bearers advanced, took the marionette by the shoulders, and rolled him over.
“Easy! easy! this bed is not too soft,” Pinocchio said to himself.
A second examination followed, and then another command, “Roll him over again!”
“What do you take me for,—a top?” muttered the marionette in a burst of rage. But he pricked up his ears when the man who had been rolling him over turned to another and said, “Your majesty!”
“Indeed!” thought Pinocchio, “we are not dealing with ordinary persons! We are beginning to know great people. Let me hear what he has to say about me to his black majesty,” and the marionette listened with the deepest attention.
“Your majesty, my knowledge of the noble art of cooking assures me that this creature”—and he gave Pinocchio a kick—“is an animal of an extinct race. It has been turned into wood, carried by the water to the beach, and then brought here by the wind.”
“Not so bad for a cook,” thought Pinocchio. He felt half inclined to strike out and hit the nose of the wise savage, who had again knelt down to examine him.
“Your majesty,” continued the cook, “this little animal is dead, because if it were not dead—”
“It would be alive,” Pinocchio muttered. “What a beast! How stupid!”
“Because if it were not dead, it would not be so hard. To conclude, had it not been made of wood, I could have cooked it for your majesty’s dinner.”
Pinocchio said to himself: “Listen to this black rascal! Eaten alive! What kind of country have I fallen into? What vulgar people! It’s lucky for me that I am made of wood!”
His majesty then commanded that as the animal was not good to eat it should be buried.
Immediately three or four of the men began to dig a hole, while the unfortunate marionette, half dead with fright, tried to form some plan of escape. The time passed. The hole was dug, and the poor fellow could not think of any plan. Run away! But how? And if they found out that he was alive would he not be cooked and eaten? The marionette did not know what to do.
In the meantime two men had raised him from the ground and stood ready to throw him into the hole. Then in spite of himself, the marionette began to shout at the top of his lungs: “Stop! Stop! I will not be buried alive! Help! Help! My good Fatina!—Fatina!—my Fatina! Help!”
At the first shout the two men who were holding him let him fall to the ground and started off in a great fright. All the others followed their example.
“What funny people!” said Pinocchio. “If I had known that they would all run away like this, I should not have been so uneasy. However, I really do not know why I have come here. If I only knew where to find diamonds and gold, it would not be so hard. I might return home to my father, for who knows how much he is suffering because I am not there!”
At that moment he would have given up the whole trip, but he was too stupid to keep an idea in his head for more than a few seconds. Another thought flashed across his mind, and he forgot his poor father.
“If these people run away, it means that they are afraid, and if they are afraid, it means that they have no courage. Now then, I, being very brave, may in a short time come to rule over everything in Africa. Perhaps—who knows!—I may become a king or an emperor!”
Pinocchio, you lazy dreamer, are you never going to learn wisdom? Only a blockhead like you could be so foolish. A wooden emperor, indeed!
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