midnight
The news was brought to me that the king had received a number of visitors of an unauthorized character , and though I had , as I have reported to you , Illustrious and Excellent Senhor , the most unpleasant experience at the hands of the king , I deemed it advisable to go to the city of the Greater M'fusi and conduct an inquiry . `` I learnt that the king had indeed received the visitors , and that they had departed on the morning of my arrival carrying with them one of their number who was sick . With this party was a white man . But the most remarkable circumstance , Illustrious and Excellent Senhor , was that the king had called a midnight palaver of his councillors and high people of state and had told them that the strangers had brought news of such sorrowful character that for four moons it would be forbidden to look upon his face . At the end of that period he would disappear from the earth and become a god amongst the stars . `` At these words , Illustrious and Excellent Senhor , the king with some reluctance took from one of the strangers a bag in which two eyes had been cut , and pulled it over his head and went back into his hut . `` Since then he has done many remarkable things .