DAVID PREVAILED"
(I. Sam. 17:50)
Be glad if ye know the accursed thing
And know it accurst, for the Gift is yours
Of Sight where the prophets of blindness sing
By the brink of death. And the Gift endures;
Ye shall see the last of the sharpened lies
That rivet privilege’s gripe.
Be still, then, ye with the opened eyes,
Come away from the thing till the time is ripe.
Be glad that ye loathe the accurséd thing,
It is given to you to foreknow the end.
But they who the unwise challenge fling
Shall startle foe at the risk of friend
As yet unready to endure—
And can ye fend Goliath’s swipe?
The slowly grinding mills are sure,
Let terror alone till the time is ripe.
Be glad when the shout for the spoils, and the glee,
The hoofs and the wheels of the prophets of wrong,
Out thunder the warning of what shall be;
Be still, for the tumult is not for long.
The Finger that wrote, from a polished wall
As surely the closed account shall wipe;
The accursed thing ye feared shall fall
To a boy with a sling when the time is ripe.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
If the dhow had been seaworthy; if the crew had understood the rigging and the long unwieldy spar; if we had had any chart, or had known anything whatever of the coast; if nobody had been afraid; and, above all, if that incessant din of surf pounding on rocks not far away to starboard had not threatened disaster even greater than the Germans in the steam launch, our problem might have been simple enough.
But every one was afraid, including me who held the tiller (and the lives of all the party) in my right hand. Lady Saffren Waldon disguised fear under an acid temper and some villainously bad advice.
“Steer toward them!” she kept shouting in my ear. “Steer toward them! Ram them! Sink them!”
Coutlass, on my other hand, made feverish haste with his love-affair, fearful lest discovery by the Germans should postpone forever the assuaging of his hungry heart’s desire.
“Steer toward shore!” he urged me. “Who cares if we run on rocks? Can’t we swim? Gassharamminy! Take to the land and give them a run for it!”
He seized the tiller to reinforce the argument, and wrenched at it until I hit him, and Fred threatened him with the only rifle.
“Get up forward!” Fred ordered; but Georges Coutlass would not go.
“Gassharamminy!” he snarled. “You want my girl! I will fight the whole damned crew before I let her out of the hollow of my arm.
“All right, touch that tiller again and I’ll kill you!” Fred warned him.
“Touch my girl, and you kill me or get out and swim!” Coutlass retorted.
Will was up forward with Brown, looking out for breakers through the spray that swept over us continually. I watched the glow that rode above the launch’s funnel, marveling, when I found time for it, at the mystery of why the cotton sail should hold. The firm, somewhere in Connecticut, who made that export calico, should be praised by name, only that the dye they used was much less perfect than the stuff and workmanship; their trade-mark was all washed out.
Suddenly Will dodged under the bellying sail, throwing up both hands, and he and Brown screamed at me: “To your left! Go to your left! Rocks to the right!”
The Germans had passed us, but not by much, for the short steep seas were tossing their propeller out of the water half the time. Because of the course I had taken the wind was setting slightly from us toward them, and I could have sworn they heard Will’s voice. Yet there was nothing for it but to put the helm over, and as I laid her nearly broadside to the wind a great wave swept us. At that the Greek, the Goanese, and all the natives in the hold set up a yell together that ought to have announced our presence to the Seven Sleepers.
I held the helm up, and let her reel and wallow in the trough. Now I could see the fangs of rock myself and the white waves raging around them. See? I could have spat on them! There was a current there that set strongly toward the rocks, for a backwash of some sort helped the helm and we won clear, about a third full of water, with the crew too panicky to bail.
“Hold her so!” yelled Fred in my ear. “Don’t ease up yet! If we get too close and they see us, I’ve the rifle! They haven’t seen us yet!”
“Rocks ahead again!” yelled Will. “To the left again!” We were in the gaping jaws of a sort of pocket, and it was too late to steer clear.
“Throw the anchor over!” I roared, “and let go everything.
Will attended to the anchor. Fred was too anxious for the safety of the only rifle to trust it out of hand, and he hesitated. Georges Coutlass saved the day by letting go the shivering Syrian maid and slashing at the halyard with his knife. Down came the great spar with a crash, and as the dhow swung round in answer to anchor and helm, Fred, Will and Brown, between them, contrived to save the sail, Brown complaining that we were the first sailors he ever heard of who did not have rum served them for working overtime in dirty weather.
So we lay, then, wallowing in the jaws of a crescent granite reef, and watched the red glow above the German launch move farther and farther away from us. We waited there, wet and hungry, until dawn dimmed the flame from the burning roofs of Muanza, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon loudly accusing us all at intervals of being rank incompetents unfit to be trusted with the lives of fish, and Coutlass afraid of nothing but interruption. The things he said to the maid, in English—the only language that they had apparently in common—would have scandalized a Goanese harbor “guide” or a Rock Scorpion from the lower streets of Gib. He did not mention marriage to her, beyond admitting that he had half a dozen wives already, and had been too bored by convention ever to submit to the yoke again. The maid seemed enraptured—delirious in the bight of his lawless arm, forgetful of her wetting, and only afraid when he left her for a minute.
We dared not try to cook anything, even supposing that had been possible. Forward was a box full of sand to serve as hearthstone, but the little scraps of fuel we had brought with us were drenched and unburnable, even if the risk of being seen were not too great. Lady Saffren Waldon told us we were “toe-rag contrivers.” In fact, now that she was out of reach of the men she feared and hated most, she reverted to type and tried to domineer over us all by the simple old recipe—audacious arrogance. Luckily, she slept for an hour or two.
A little before dawn, when it began to be light enough to let us see the outline of the shore, we sent Kazimoto aloft to reeve our hemp rope through the hole that did duty for block, and by the time the sun had pushed the uppermost arc of his rim above the sky-line we once more had the sail set.
The wind was still blowing a gale; the seamanlike precaution would have been to lie where we were at anchor until fairer weather; but daring is forced on the fearfullest, and there was nothing for it but to study out the method by which the unwieldy spar should be made to pass the mast when tacking, drill Fred, Will, Brown and Kazimoto, and then haul up the anchor and sail away before people on shore could see us.
We had to tack toward Muanza for a quarter of a mile with fear in our arms to make them clumsy before I dared believe we were clear of the reefs; but when I put the helm down at last there was neither launch in sight nor any other boat that might contain an enemy. The southern spur of Ukerewe stuck out like a wedge into boiling water not many miles ahead, and once around that we should be sheltered. The only fly in the ointment then was the probability that the launch would be waiting for us just around the spur, or else under the lee of another smaller island in the offing to our left, but what we could not see in that hour could not upset us much.
Every one clamored for food. The porters, already forgetful of the chain that had galled them, and the whips that had flayed them day and night, demanded to be set ashore to build a fire and eat. Lady Saffren Waldon awoke to fresh bad temper, and Coutlass, too, grew villainously impatient. His Greek friend, from under the shelter of the leaky reed-and-tarpaulin deck, offered him Greek advice, and was cursed for his trouble. One curse led to another, and then they both had to be beaten into subjection with the first thing handy, because when they fought Lady Saffren Waldon egged them on and the maid tried to savage the other Greek with a brooch-pin, which brought out the Goanese to the rescue. That crowded dhow was no place for pitched battles, plunging and rolling between the frying-pan of Muanza and the fire of unknown things ahead.
“One more outbreak from you, and I shoot!” Fred announced, patting the rifle. But, he did not mean it, and Coutlass knew he did not. The English temperament does not turn readily on even the most rascally fellow beings in distress. Besides, it was an indubitable fact that we all much preferred Coutlass, with his daring record, and now a most outrageous love-affair on hand, to the other Greek or the Goanese, who were now disposed to bid for our friendship by abusing him. Georges Coutlass was no drawing-room darling, or worthy citizen of any land, but he had courage of a kind, and a sort of splendid fire that made men forget his turpitude.
We were a seasick, cold and sorry company that rounded the point at last and came to anchor in a calm shallow bay where fuel grew close down to the water’s edge. Having no small boat, we had to wade ashore and carry the women, Coutlass attending to his own inamorata. Lady Saffren Waldon’s picric acid rage exploded by being dropped between two porters waist-deep into the water. It was her fault. She insisted one was not enough, yet refused to explain how two should do the work of one. Sitting on their two shoulders, holding on by their hair, she frightened the left-hand man by losing her balance and clutching his nose and eyes. She insisted on having both men flogged for having dropped her, and Fred’s refusal was the signal for new war, our rescue of her being flung at once on to the scrap heap of her memory.
She counted with cold cynicism on our unwillingness to leave her again at the mercy of the Germans, and had no more consideration of our rights or feelings than the cuckoo has for the owner of the nest in which she lays her eggs.
“Beat those fools!” she ordered. “Beat them blue and give them no breakfast!”
“Do you see that rock over there, Lady Waldon?” Fred answered. “Go and spread your clothes to dry. When we’ve cooked food we’ll send Rebecca to you with your share.”
“If you send that slut to me I will kill her!” she answered, flying into a new fury.
“Whom do you call slut?” demanded Coutlass (and he had no compunctions of any kind—particularly none about women, and calling names. He was simply feeling gallant after his own fashion, and alert for a chance to show off.) Lady Waldon backed away from him.
“Of course,” she sneered, “if you loose your bully at me, I am no match at all!”
Fred promptly kicked Coutlass until he ran limping out of range, to sit and nurse his bruises with polyglot profanity. The Syrian Rebecca went over to comfort him, and eying the two of them with either malice or else calculation (it was impossible to judge which) Lady Waldon retreated toward the rock that Fred had pointed out.
We cooked a miserable meal, neither daring to make too great inroad into our stores before making sure we could replenish them, nor caring to make more smoke than we could help. We hoped to escape being seen even by natives, but Lady Waldon upset that part of our plan by setting up such a scream when she saw three islanders crossing a ridge three hundred yards away, that they could not help hearing her, and came to investigate. She was forced to dress faster than ever in her life before, and came running to demand that we flog all three “to teach them manners.” She had perfectly absorbed the German attitude toward all black men.
From the natives we learned that there was no telegraph wire along that coast, and that the only German settlements were semi-permanent camps where they were cutting wood, for fuel for their own launch and for the steamers the British were building to serve the lake ports, Muanza included.
With that good news for encouragement we made the three natives a small present in the vain hope that they might be induced not to talk about us, and put to sea again. The weather was fairer and growing intolerably hot. Even before the sun grew high the dhow was a comfortless indecent thing, more crowded than anything Noah can have had to tolerate: and we lacked Noah’s faith in omniscient guidance, in addition to sailing in a hotter latitude, and having more fleas on board than the pair he is reported to have carried.
As we crept up-coast, leaning to this or that side when the gusts of wind varied, the only enviable ones were the three in the bow, posted there to keep a look-out for the launch or any other enemy. They had room enough to sit without touching one another, and air to breathe that mostly had not been tasted half a dozen times. Fred, Will and Brown took turns commanding the foredeck look-out, keeping it awake and its units from quarreling. The rest of us found no joy in life, and not too much hope even when Fred’s concertina lifted the refrain of missionary hymn-tunes that even the porters knew, and most of us sang, the porters humming wordless melancholy through their noses. (When that happened Lady Saffren Waldon’s scorn was something the arch-priests of Babylon would have paid to see.)
There was never room on the tiny after-deck for more than six people sitting elbow to elbow and back to back or knee to knee. Lady Waldon simply refused to yield her corner seat on any account at any time to any one. Coutlass refused to leave his new sweetheart, for the freely-voiced reason that then Brown might make love to her; and we did not care to send both of them below for obvious reasons. That reduced open-air accommodation to a minimum, because the reed-and-tarpaulin deck was scarcely strong enough to bear the weight of two men at a time, and we did not care to throw the whole deck overboard for fear of rain.
And by-and-by the rain came—out of season, but no less violent because of that. It rained three days and nights on end—three windless days and starless nights, during which we had to linger alongshore close to the papyrus. In order to keep mosquitoes out we had to light a smudge in the sand-box below. The smudge added to the heat, and the heat drove men to the open air to gasp a few minutes in the rain for breath and go down again to make room for the next in turn.
Sleep on shore was impossible, for thereabouts were crocodile and snake swamps, fuller of insect life than dictionaries are of letters. Poling was next to impossible, because the soft mud bottom gave no purchase. And the oars we made out of poles were clumsy affairs; there was not room for more than two boys to try to use them at a time, even if the deck would have stood the strain of more feet, which it certainly would not have done.
Lady Waldon slept seated in her corner, with her head wrapped in a veil over which the mosquitoes prospected in gangs. Coutlass and his lady-love endured rain and insects in the open, too, but suffered less, because of mutual distraction. The rest of us took turns with the natives below, lying packed between them, much as sardines nestle in a can, wondering whether the famous Black Hole of Calcutta was really such a record-breaker as they say. Brown was of the opinion that the Black Hole was a nosegay compared to our lot—“Besides which, they probably had rum with ’em!” he added.
Some of the porters grew sick under the strain of heat, fear, excitement and inactivity. The native suffers as much from unaccustomed inconvenience as the white man, and more from close confinement. The third night out the man next me began coughing, shaking my frame as much as his own as he racked himself, for we were wedged together with only the thickness of his blanket and mine between us, and I was jammed tight against the ship’s side. Toward morning he grew quiet—grew colder, too. When dawn came we found that he had coughed up the most of his lungs on my white English blanket.
I gave them the blanket to bury him in, and we poled the Queen of Sheba inshore to find a place to dig a hole, leaving the body stretched on some tree-roots while we prospected. We should have known enough by that time to leave four or five men on guard close by; as it was, when the men still on board the dhow began kicking up a Babel, Fred and I came running and jumping back through the marsh just in time to see a crocodile wriggle off into the water, with the corpse in his jaws feet first. Fred fired a shotted salute, but missed, and that ended that funeral.
By day we passed villages on higher ground, where we might have procured more food if we had dared run the risk of meeting Germans. It was likely enough the villagers were so used to dhows that they would not trouble to report having seen us in the distance; but it was perfectly certain that if we paid them a visit they would pass word along from mouth to mouth with that astonishing, undiscoverable ease that is at once the blessing and bane of governments.
So Fred wasted hot hours with the only rifle, trying to hunt meat on a shore where all the four-legged game had been run down by the natives, or butchered by the German machine-guns long ago (for to teach Sudanese mercenaries the art of rapid fire in action their officers marched them out to practise on herds of antelope. There was game in plenty away from the lake, but none where the German officer could conveniently practise his profession.)
We tried to shoot ducks and geese; but a rifle at long range is not the best weapon for that sport. We shot very few, and then only to discover the invincible repugnance natives have to eating “dagi” as they call all birds. We kept ourselves alive, but did not solve the problem of the ever-diminishing supplies of rice for our men.
Somebody thought of fishing. We found hooks in a crevice in the Queen of Sheba’s bow, and made lines from a frayed rope. But although the shore was lined with traps in which the inhabitants no doubt took fish in proper season, all that we caught was one miserable finny specimen, all head and mouth and tail, that the natives said would poison any one who ate it.
The truth was, of course, that they preferred rice to anything, and, African native-like, would eat nothing else as long as rice was to be had, having no earthly notions of economy. When the rice was all gone on the fifth day out of Muanza they raided a banana plantation before we knew what they were up to, and came back gorged, with bunches enough to feed them for two or three more days.
The fat was in the fire then, of course. We paid the owners handsomely, giving them their choice of money or blankets when they bore down on us in long canoes demanding vengeance. They voted for blankets and money, but vowed they would far rather have the bananas, because now their own people would be on short commons to make up for the surfeit of ours.
We left them never doubting that they would send word to the nearest German officer. (They told us there was a wood-cutting station within a “few hours,” and we prayed he might be only a non-commissioned man in charge of it, but knew that prayer was too sweetly reasonable to be answered where the German Gott makes war on foreigners.) Kazimoto assured us he heard them telling one another they would make complaint against us within the day.
It remained, then, only to guess where that steam launch might be. We were approaching the northern end of Ukerewe, not a day’s sail, if the light wind held, from the narrow mouth of the channel between Ukerewe and the mainland. That was the likeliest place for the launch to lie in wait; it was where we would have waited had we been pursuers and they the pursued. So we decided after a council of war to put the helm over and sail almost due westward, hoping to meet with an island where we might stop for a few days, catch fish and dry them, and caulk the leaky dhow, without the risk of letting the Germans know our whereabouts. (It is a peculiar fact that whatever the native secret system of transferring messages may be, it does not work across water.)
Not all the little gods of Africa were fighting for the Germans, although it began to seem so. An hour after putting up the helm we sighted a school of hippopotami—fifty at least, and for half a day we chased them, Fred trying to shoot one until Will and I objected to further waste of ammunition. A dead hippo would have provided us with meat enough for a month for the whole ship’s company. We could have towed the carcass ashore somewhere and dried the meat in slabs. But the glare on the water made shooting very nearly impossible (Fred’s eyes were sore from it); and if we should meet the Germans those remaining cartridges would be our only hope. But the diversion took us out of sight of land, and that stood us in better stead presently than tons of fresh meat.
Whether the Germans heard us, or were merely quartering that part of the lake in wait, we never knew. Probably they heard the shooting in the distance and gave chase. At any rate, within ten minutes of Fred’s last wasted shot Coutlass caught sight of smoke and announced the fact with his favorite oath.
“Gassharamminy! The launch!”
At first we were all in a stew because there was no land near, where we might have beached the dhow and scattered. It was an hour before our advantage of position dawned on us, and all the while the launch approached us leisurely. She had plenty of fuel; the wood was piled high above her gunwale in a stack toward the stern; but those on board her seemed to take more pleasure in contemplation of our defenselessness than in speed. She steamed twice around us slowly before closing in; and then we made out Schillingschen’s hairy shape, leaning against the cord-wood with a rifle between his hands.
“Shoot him! Shoot him, by Jiminy!” urged Coutlass, but Fred was not so previous as that. We were not yet on the defensive. We counted five rifles, in addition to Schillingschen’s protruding above the launch’s side, and we all took cover in the hope either that they might decide we were not the dhow they waited for, or else that they might come very close out of curiosity. For Fred had a plan of his own. Rifle in hand, he crawled under the hot tarpaulin and lay flat on the reed deck, Will crawling after him to snatch the rifle in case Fred should be hit.
“Steer straight toward ’em!” Fred called to me, as soon as it was evident that the launch did not intend to pass us by. “Keep headed toward them!”
That was not easy in the light wind, until Schillingschen tired of staring at us and gave an order to the engineer. Then they laid the launch broadside on to our bow at about two hundred yards’ range, and without a word of warning opened fire on us from all six rifles, Schillingschen devoting his first attention to myself at the helm.
Our lone rifle cracked in reply, but they could not see Fred and did not guess where to shoot in order to search him out. They came no nearer, but circled slowly around us, only Schillingschen’s bullets appearing to come anywhere near the target, until a yell from below showed what their real plan was and I understood why the sail was not ripped and no bullets whistled overhead. They were shooting through the planking of the dhow, endeavoring to massacre the helpless crowd below, and no doubt to sink her and drown us as soon as she was full enough of holes.
A wounded Nyamwezi came scrambling on deck, spouting blood from his neck and crazed with fear. He jumped overboard and tried to swim toward the launch, but one of the Germans hit him in the head at the third shot and he disappeared. Then one of Schillingschen’s elephant bullets slit my sleeve, and the next one pierced my helmet.
“Put one into Schillingschen, Fred!” I shouted, but Fred did not answer. He kept up a very steady succession of shots that were doing no good at all that I could see.
Another German bullet found its mark below deck in the thigh of the Goanese. He might have known enough to lie quiet, having some alleged white blood in him, but instead he, too, came struggling to the after-deck, bellowing like a mad-man. Coutlass knocked him back below with a blow on the chin, and he there and then threw the whole crowd into a panic by screaming and kicking. They all began to try to swarm together through the narrow opening, and those in the rear tore at the reed deck.
Into that pandemonium went Coutlass, armed with nothing but Hellenic fury, thoughtful of nothing but his lady-love—surely reckless of his own skin. He beat, kicked, bit, scragged, banged their foolish heads together, cursed, spat, gouged, and strangled as surely no catamount ever did. Brown leaped in to lend a hand, and into the midst of that inferno three more bullets penetrated, each wounding a man. Lady Waldon, mad with some idiotic strategy of her own sudden devising, seized the tiller and tried to wrench it from my hand. The Syrian Rebecca, imagining new treachery and fearful for her Greek lover, tried to prevent her with teeth and nails. The Germans raised a war-whoop of wild enjoyment. And just at the height of all that, Fred’s three-and-twentieth shot went home.
There was a loud report, followed by instant nothing except stampede on the part of the Germans to get out of reach of something. Then the something grew denser; invisible hot vapor became a pall of steam that bid the launch from view, three more shots from Fred’s rifle finding the proper mark by sheer accident, for there was another explosion; the cloud increased and the launch stopped dead.
“That gray sheet of metal wasn’t her boiler at all!” Fred shouted back to me. “The first shot pierced the boiler when I found out where to aim! I think three of them are scalded badly—hope so!—high pressure steam—superheated—did you see? Now leave ’em to find their own way home!”
“See if you can’t get Schillingschen!” said I.
But Schillingschen was invisible in the white cloud, and Fred refused to waste one of the half-dozen cartridges remaining. The light wind that bore us away from the launch also spread the screen of steam between us and them. A shot or two from Schillingschen’s rifle proved him to be still alive, and still determined, but missed us by so much that we began to dare to sit upright. Then Fred went below to sort out wounded men, plug holes in the dhow, and stop the panic, and we all prayed for wind with a fervor they never exceeded in Nelson’s fleet.
When Will had gone below to help Fred, the panic had ceased, two dead men had been thrown overboard, and six of the crew had been set to work bailing in deadly earnest to keep ahead of the new leaks, there was time to consider the position and to realize how hugely better off we were than if the launch had caught us somewhere close inshore. Now we could sail safely northward, every puff of wind carrying us nearer to British water and safety, whereas unless they could mend that high-pressure boiler, they would have to lie there for a week, or a month—die unless some one came in search of them. Had we holed their boiler near the shore they would have been able to take to the land until they found canoes. Good canoes, well manned, could have overhauled us hand over fist like terriers after a rat.
It was fifteen minutes yet before we were out of rifle range, and Schillingschen tried to make the most of them when the steam thinned, exposing his beefy carcass recklessly. But by the time it had thinned down sufficiently to let him really see us we were too far away to make sure shooting. He slit the sail, giving us half a night’s work to mend it, and made three more holes in our planking, but hurt nobody.
That was the only launch the German government had on the lake in those days, an almost perfect toy with an aluminum hull and more up-to-date gadgets on her machinery than a battleship’s engineer could have explained the purpose of in a watch. They had lavished a whole appropriation on one show. From the minute we were out of range of Schillingschen’s big-bore elephant gun we ran risk of starvation, and perhaps surprise, but no longer of pursuit, and we headed the Queen of Sheba as nearly as we could guess for British East with feelings that even Lady Waldon shared, for she grew distantly polite again, and complimented Fred on his cool nerve and accurate shooting.
We should have suspected treachery, for she made no attempt to retaliate on Rebecca for scratching her face. Unnatural inaction should have put us on our guard. She even went so far as to compliment the maid on “finding such a great, strong, brave man as Coutlass to cherish her.” The Greek simply cooed at that—threw out his great chest and rearranged with his fingers the whiskers that had almost totally disguised him.
(There was not one of us but looked like a pirate by that time. The natives of that part of Africa shave every particle of hair from their bodies whenever they get the chance, and prefer their heads as shiny and naked as any other part of them. But the German prison system, devised to break the spirit of whoever came within its clutches, included prohibition of shaving, so that we had the wooliest crowd of passengers imaginable.)
We found it impossible to help being sorry for Lady Waldon, or even for the maid, who suffered in spite of Coutlass’s kisses and strong arms. The obvious fact that the dhow was no place for a woman made us overlook the conduct of both of them over and over again, shutting eyes and ears to Lady Waldon’s meanness and the maid’s increasing impudence.
Lady Waldon actually began to set her own cap at Coutlass, encouraging him to boast to the porters, and pretending to admire the gift with which he told them tales in Kiswahili that would have made even her blush if she had understood the half of them. At intervals the maid grew jealous, and had to be kissed back to serenity by Coutlass, who was no less in love with her because of any mere addition to the number of his interests. He could have made hot love to six women, and have enjoyed it. There were times when he really flattered himself that Lady Waldon admired his looks and fine physique.
Food was now the chief concern. We trailed a fishing line behind us, but caught nothing. Brown said there were too many crocodiles for fish to be plentiful, but on the other hand, Kazimoto, who surely should have known, swore that the water was full of big fish, and that the islanders lived on little else. Whatever the truth of it, we caught nothing; and when we reached an island whose shore was lined with fish-traps made of stakes and basket-work we searched all the traps in vain. The natives we saw in the distance all ran away from us, and there were no crops that we could see of any kind, which rather bore out Kazimoto’s story.
“Crocks’ eggs are what those savages eat, I tell you!” Brown insisted. “They’re wholesome and don’t taste worse than a rotten hen’s egg.” We offered him his own price if he would eat one himself in the presence of us all; but hungry though we were all beginning to be, he refused, and we needed his example.
After that first island we began to sail among a regular archipelago, most of them scarcely better than granite rocks on which the crocodiles could crawl to sun themselves, but some of them a half-mile long, or longer. Nearly all of them were barren, but at last, when we judged ourselves well inside the British portion of the lake, we came on a very large one that had a mountain in the middle of it, and contained a fair-sized village hidden among trees.
It was dark, and we were all famished when we reached it, so when we had poled the dhow into a little bay between granite boulders big enough to hide her, mast and all, we went ashore, made fires, and served out the last handfuls of rice, skimping our own allowance to increase those of the porters, whose larger stomachs afforded vaster yearning power. They were pitiably meager rations—a mere jest—an insult to hungry men; but we found before we had cooked and finished them that we had witnesses who thought us fortunate.
They came so silently that even the porters did not notice them at first—gaunt black shadows flitting in the deeper shadows, and coming presently to squat outside the edge of the circle of firelight, until a tribe, men, women and little children, were all gathered around us burning up the darkness with their eyes.
They were hungrier than we! Our food, that looked so scant to us, to them was a very feast of the gods! They all had pieces of leather or plaited grass drawn tight around their middles to lessen the pangs of hunger, and the chief, who sat rather apart from the rest, gnawed at a piece of bark.
None of them wore any clothes. Those that had goat-skin aprons had them on behind, and they were as free from self-consciousness as the trees in winter. Some of them had spears, and they all had knives, yet none offered violence, or as much as begged. There were three or four hundred of them, at the lowest reckoning, yet they allowed us to finish our meal in the dark in peace.
There was nothing to say when we had finished. We knew what the matter was, and they knew we knew. We had nothing to share with them, and they knew that, for they could see the empty rice bags that the porters had shaken and beaten to get out the very dust. We did not know their language; even Kazimoto professed himself ignorant of any dozen words that could unlock their understanding.
Presently, under the eyes of all of them, Fred got out the rifle from its wrappings and proceeded to clean and oil it carefully, as every genuine hunter should before he sleeps.
Then it was evident at once that new hope for some reason had been born among that silent crowd. The chief, uninvited, drew nearer and watched every detail of Fred’s husbandry with glittering eye.
“Give him the oily rag to suck!” suggested Brown, but that proved not to be the key to his interest, for he thrust the rag back into Fred’s hand and motioned to him to continue cleaning.
Finally Fred examined the last handful of cartridges carefully one by one, and filled the magazine. Then, after making sure the sights were in order, he began to wrap the rifle again.
But at that the chief held out a lean long arm and stopped him. Coutlass sprang to his feet in a hurry, imagining that was a signal to attack at last, but Fred ordered him to sit down, and Lady Waldon, who seemed possessed for the once by uncanny calmness, asked him to give her an arm to the dhow, where she proposed to try to sleep. Coutlass felt flattered, and obeyed. The maid got up and followed them both in a fury of jealousy, and they three were lost to view in a moment among the shadows cast by our four flickering fires. The other Greek got up and followed them, leaving the Goanese already snoozing by the fire.
Then, just as the half of a brilliantly pale moon rose above the papyrus, the chief came a pace nearer and touched Fred’s hand. Then he beckoned. Then he touched the hand again and retreated backward. Glancing around I saw the shadows that were his tribe leaning toward us in strained attention, with eyes for nothing but their chief and Fred. Understanding there was something that the chief desired him to go and do, Fred passed the rifle to Will and rose to his feet.
With patience that was simply pathetic the chief shook his head and tried to explain something in weary-motioned pantomime. Fred took the rifle back from Will. The chief nodded. Fred started to follow him, and then the whole tribe sighed, with a sound like the evening wind rustling through the papyrus.
It being clear now that he was to shoot something, Fred took the wrappings off the rifle, threw them to me, and walked into the dark, the chief trotting ahead like a phantom and glancing back to beckon about once a minute. Not caring to miss the play, we followed in Indian file, I bringing up the rear.
The whole tribe rose at once and flitted along beside us on our landward side. We could not hear a footfall, or a breath. They passed through dry grass without rustling, neither stumbling nor crowding one another, but all so governed by one all-absorbing thought that they acted in absolute unison. That the thought was food did not, even in their starving state, make them forget the crowning need for silence. We with our leather boots made more noise than all they together.
We passed along the lake shore for half a mile, until suddenly the chief, looking tall as a stripped tree in the pale uncertain light, threw up an arm and waved it in a circle. Instantly the whole tribe vanished. It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly switched off at the performer’s whim. Then the chief continued forward, we marching more carefully.
Now he turned to the half-right and followed a narrow track across a neck of land that jutted out into the lake. We approached a low rise, and as he drew near the top of that he went down on hands and knees, crawling up the last few yards so cautiously that I had to stare hard to be sure he was there at all.
As soon as Fred came near he made frantic signals to him to get down and crawl too; so we all knelt down and crawled behind Fred, striving to make no noise and filling the unhappy chief so full of fury at the noise we did make that he writhed in nervous torment.
On top of the rise Fred stopped and in imitation of the chief thrust his head forward very gradually. One by one we followed suit until, lying prone in line along the ridge within thirty paces of the water, we saw at last what we were after.
Bathed in the moonlight, head and shoulders clear of the mirror-like water, a great bull hippopotamus surveyed the scenery, drinking in contentment through his little placid eyes. Out there nothing troubled him, as for instance the mosquitoes troubled us. He had eaten his fill, for some sort of green stuff hung from his jaws; and he was beginning to feel sleepy, for he opened his enormous mouth and yawned straight toward us—three tons of meat on the hoof, less than a hundred yards away, stock-still, and unsuspicious!
The chief began whispering unintelligible warnings in a voice so low that it sounded like the drone of insects. Fred thrust the rifle forward inch by inch and, taking his time about it, settled himself comfortably for the shot. It was no easy shot in that uncertain light at a downward angle. The glare of the sun on the lake had troubled his eyes during the last few days. The shimmer of the moonlight was deceptive now. I wished he would pass the rifle to Will, or even to Brown of Lumbwa, who was digging his fingers into the earth beside me in almost uncontrollable excitement. But Fred was unperturbed, and the chief, who was nervous enough to detect the slightest sign of nervousness in Fred, did not seem to mistrust him for one second.
Three times I saw Fred breathe deeply, as if about to squeeze the trigger, but each time he was only “makkin’ sikkar,” and eased his lungs again. The target a hippo offers to a Mauser rifle bullet is not much more than half the size of a man’s hand, including only the ear and eye and the narrow space between them. By daylight at a hundred yards that is nothing for a cool shot to complain about, but in half-moonlight, at that angle, it is none too much. I swore silently, wishing again and again that Fred would pass the rifle to Will, or to Brown—or to me! Yet if he had passed it to me I should have trembled worse than any one.
Visions began to haunt me of what would happen if Fred should miss! What would the effect be on wild folk tortured by hunger and keyed to the pitch of frenzy by suspense? Then, even while we watched, another problem added itself. Over on the water there began to come a wind, driving ripples and little waves in front of it. The moment those came near the hippo be would vanish from view, for they only care for moonlight when they can see it mirrored on a perfectly still surface.
I cursed Fred between set teeth, almost loud enough for him to hear me; for the hippo did move. His head was a foot nearer water-level; he had seen or heard something that alarmed him. He was in the act of sinking under water when Fred made sure of the sights at last and the rifle spoke, ringing out into the still night like the crack of Judgment Day, more startling because we had waited so long for it in such suspense.
Instantly the amazing happened. A yell burst out behind us that split the night apart. Where stilly blackness had been, now four or five hundred crazy shadows leaped and danced, murdering the silence with marrow-curdling noises intended to express joy.
Out on the water the stricken hippo pitched head downward and plunged like a mountain of meat gone mad, thrashing up great waves that were darkened with his life-blood. A whole herd, several hundred strong, emerged shoulder-high from the water to take one swift look at him and flee. The arriving wind overswept the little whirlpools they all made in the moonlight, as they dived to seek seclusion somewhere and no doubt to choose themselves a new bully after terrific fighting.
Our quarry plunged a last time, and stayed under. Now was new anxiety. In twenty minutes or half an hour he should rise to the surface again, but no man could guess where, and the wind and currents would very swiftly hide his great carcass somewhere amid the acres of papyrus unless sharp eyes were alert.
But the papyrus was friend as well as foe. In a space of time to be measured by seconds the yelling young men of the tribe had uncovered three canoes, hidden from marauding enemies among the more-than-man-high reeds, and the rest of the tribe—men, women and young ones—scattered along the shore to watch from between the stalks.
In less than fifteen minutes some one yelled, and even the very old men, who had stayed beside us to gape at Fred’s rifle and our clothes and boots, began running like hares toward the sound. In twenty minutes after that, with the aid of grass ropes and leather thongs, they had hauled the huge carcass to the shore and rolled it out of the water, where it lay glistening in moonlight, stumpy, foolish, legs uppermost.
The butcher’s work—the feast—did not begin yet. There was time-honored custom to obey, which Kazimoto knew all about even if those ignorant wachenzie[1] would have fallen to without ceremony. He drove them off. A white man had slain that animal; therefore the white man’s choice of meat was first, and he very leisurely and skillfully cut out the enormous tongue for us and fifty pounds of meat for our following before he would let them as much as touch the carcass with a dagger.
Then, though, the tribe fell to, naked, with little naked knives—tearing off the thick hide in foot-wide strips, and hacking the red flesh into lumps that they ate, raw and quivering, while they worked. The little bits of children, each chewing raw bloody meat, brought baskets for the overflow, dragging them to wherever they could find a space between the legs of struggling men, the women emptying the baskets almost as fast as the children filled them, and chewing until their jaws ran blood.
Nothing was wasted. The blood was caught in pools in part of the hide, spread like an apron on the earth, and lapped up by whoever could get to it. The very guts were gathered up in baskets to be cooked. And where the last little soft iron dagger had done its work, the blood had been drunk, and the last scrap of hide bad been cut into strips, to be chewed when the meat and its memory were things of the past, the enormous ribs lay glistening in the moonlight like those of an abandoned wreck, picked as clean as if the kites had done it. “Have we done a commendable thing?” laughed Fred, looking at the crowd’s distended paunches. “There’s a good bull hippo the less. We’ve saved the lives for a time of several hundred gluttons. They know neither grace nor gratitude.”
But he was wrong. They did. They brought Fred a woman—their fattest, ugliest; which means she was skin and bone and uglier than Want, also she was more afraid of Fred than Satan is said to be of shriving. The chief led her by the hand, she hanging back and hiding her face under one arm (which left the rest of her nakedness unprotected). He seized Fred’s hand and put the woman’s in it.
“Now you’re spliced!” Brown explained. “Married to the gal forever in presence of legal witnesses!”
Kazimoto confirmed the fearful news.
“Married in regular form an’ accord with tribal custom!” Brown continued, nodding solemnly.
“Divorce me—soon and swiftly, somebody!” Fred demanded.
We appealed to Kazimoto for information, but only threw him into a quandary, and he proceeded to add to ours. The usual price for a woman, it seemed, was cows—many or few according as she was lovely or her father rich. In case of divorce, custom decreed that the cows with their offspring should be given back. The objection to any other property than cows changing hands to bind or loose in wedlock was that food, for instance, when eaten was not returnable.
“Married to the gal for good an! all!” Brown grinned, nudging Will and me to note Fred’s consternation. “You’d better stay here an’ take the chief’s job when he kicks the bucket—possibly you can speed the day by overfeedin’ him!”
“Some men’s luck,” Will murmured, but stopped in mid-sentence, for interruption came in the form of a weird figure, gesticulating like a windmill, stumbling and careening through the gloom, shouting as it came. Not until it was thirty yards away did an intelligible sound explain at least who the apparition was.
“Gassharamminy! Give me that gun!”
Coutlass burst in among us so out of breath that he could not force through his teeth another rational syllable, but he made his intentions partly clear by snatching at Fred’s rifle, persisting until Will and I pulled him off.
“The dhow’s gone!” he panted at last. “Give me that rifle, or come yourself! Hurry! There’s a wind! You’ll be too late!”
“You’re dreaming or drunk!” Fred answered, but Coutlass refused to be disbelieved, and in another moment we were all running as fast as we dared through the darkness toward the camp-fires, where we had left the Goanese snoozing and the dhow snugly moored among the rocks.
The chief and his followers far outdistanced us in spite of their gorged condition—all except the woman, who jogged dutifully, although unhappily, behind Fred. When we reached the campfires they were standing gazing out on the lake, where we could just make out the bellying sail of the Queen of Sheba leaning like a phantom away from the gaining wind. The distance was not to be judged in that weak uncertain light. We all shouted together, but there came no answer and we could not tell whether the sound carried as far as the dhow or not.
“Gassharamminy!—why don’t you shoot!” shouted Coutlass, dancing up and down the bank in frenzy. “Give me that rifle! I’ll show you! I’ll teach them!”
I believe I would have fired if the rifle had been in my hands. Brown, last to arrive and most out of breath, joined with Coutlass in angry shouts for vengeance. Will offered no argument against sending them a parting shot. Fred set the butt of the rifle down with a determined snort, walked over toward the fire, stirred the embers, threw on more fuel, and looked about him when the dry wood blazed.
“If she has left as much as one blanket among the lot of us, I don’t see it anywhere!” he said, taking his seat on a rock.
“A blanket?” sneered Coutlass. “She has even your money! Worse than that—she has my woman! You were a gum-gasted galoot not to shoot at her!”
Fred patted the bulging pocket of his shooting jacket.
“Most of the money is here” he said quietly, and we all sighed with relief.
“Take canoes and chase them!” shouted Coutlass, beginning to dance up and down again.
“There’s time enough” Fred answered. “We know the winds of these parts well enough by this time. This will blow until midnight. Then calm until dawn. After dawn a little more wind for an hour or two, then doldrums again until late afternoon. They’ll run on a rock in all likelihood. If they do we can catch them at our leisure, supposing we can get these islanders to paddle. If it should blow hard, then we can’t catch them anyhow. Sit down and tell us what happened, Coutlass!”
The Greek cursed and swore and pranced, but all in vain. Fred was inexorable. We others grew calmer when the problem of who should paddle the canoes solved itself suddenly with the arrival of fourteen of our own men. Discovering themselves left behind, they had run along the bank in vain hope of catching the dhow somehow—perchance of swimming through the crocodile-infested water, and returned now disconsolate, to leap and laugh with new hope at sight of us and of the red meat that Kazimoto had thrown on the ground near the fire. They came near in a cluster. Will hacked off a lump of meat for them, and they forthwith forgot their troubles, as instantly as the birds forget when a sparrow-hawk has done murder down a hedge-row and swooped away.
Not everything was gone after all. Kazimoto found the pots we had cooked the rice in, and started to boil the hippo’s tongue for us.
“Come, Coutlass—sit down before we eat and tell us what happened,” Fred suggested.
The Greek paced up and down another time or two, and at last calmed himself sufficiently to laugh at Fred’s woman, who had squatted down patiently in the shadow behind him.
“Easy for you!” he grinned savagely, squatting on the far side of the fire. “You have a woman! Mine is God knows where! She said to me—that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said to me—we sat all three together in the stern of the dhow, I with my arm around Rebecca, and she said to me—”
“I’ll see if I can’t make a dicker for the chief’s canoes,” Will interrupted. “We can hear the Greek’s tale any old time.”
“Trade my woman for them!” Fred suggested cheerfully. “Go on, Coutlass!”
The Greek gritted his teeth savagely. “She said—that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said, as we sat there in the dhow, ‘How about the kicking Fred Oakes gave you on the island, Mr. Coutlass? Where is your Greek honor?’—Do you see? She worked on my bodily bruises and my spiritual courage at the same time—the cunning hussy! ‘That Fred Oakes will win this Rebecca away from you very soon!’ she went on. ‘I have watched him.’”
Fred smiled about as comfortably as a martyr on the grid. The presence of the dusky damsel, confirmed by her smell behind him, made him touchy on the subject of sex.
“Presently she said to me, ‘I have my own affairs that will adjust themselves all the better for their absence when I get to British East. As for you, they will simply report you to the authorities for raiding those cattle of Brown’s. Can you imagine that creature Brown forgiving you? He will have you thrown in jail! Why wait? But we must not leave the Goanese or the other porters, and we must hurry! You go,’ she said, ‘and send the Goanese and the rest of the porters on board!’
“So I did go. I kicked de Sousa awake, and he cursed me, because my toe landed once or twice on his thigh where the bullet wounded him. I drove him on board, and she put him to work with Kamarajes getting up the sail. Then I went off to get those cursed porters. I could not find them! The dogs had gone to the village, to find women I don’t doubt! I tell you what I would do to them if they were mine!”
“Never mind that!” Fred cut in. We could all guess what form the punishment would take. “Get on with the tale! You couldn’t find the porters. What next?”
“I decided to leave the dogs behind, and serve them right! I went back to the dhow in a great hurry. She was gone! Vanished! Disappeared as if the lake had opened up and swallowed her! I could just see the sail in the distance. I shouted! No answer! I shouted again. I heard Rebecca call to me! Then I heard laughter—Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon’s laughter! Gassharamminy! I will run red-hot skewers into that woman when I catch her! Do you see how she has vengeance on Rebecca? Do you see now why she took sides between me and Kamarajes and de Sousa? Do you see how she has plotted? What will she do now? What Will she do?”
He began to pace up and down again furiously, shaking both fists at the unresponsive stars.
“She will do Rebecca an injury! She will give that girl to de Sousa or to that old Kamarajes! We shall never catch them! Gassharamminy! Oh, Absalom! You should have fired when I told you! That she-dog has a trick of some kind up her sleeve yet! How shall we catch her? Why do we wait? Give me that rifle! I will take a canoe and go after them alone! You do not know what Greek spirit is! I am American sometimes—English when it suits me—always Greek when I am wronged!”
“You certainly have been put upon” Fred answered. “Tell us how your Greek spirit justified deserting us.”
“Why not?” snarled Coutlass. “Do you love me? What would you do to me if you could get me to British East in your power? You would hand me over as a cattle thief!”
“You bet I will!” admitted Brown of Lumbwa. “You dog, you’ve ruined me!”
“What did I tell you?” demanded Coutlass. “Why, then, should I not look out for myself?”
“I think we’d better leave you on this island,” Fred told him quietly. “We can’t trust you out of sight. The only way to prevent you from stealing this rifle and murdering us all would be to lie awake in turns.”
“Bah!” grinned the Greek, striding back toward the fire. “How many cartridges have you left? Five, eh? After I had murdered all of you, how many would remain?”
“You’ll have to think of a better argument than that,” smiled Fred, and for the first time I suspected he was speaking in deadly earnest. Coutlass suspected it, too, and grew still. The sweat burst out on his face, and his eyes bulged from their sockets.
“You will leave me here?” he stammered.
Fred nodded, smiling up at him.
“You see, you’re such on all-in scoundrel!” Brown assured him.
“You! You poor drunkard!” Coutlass turned his back on Brown, and faced Fred squarely. “You are a man, Mr. Oakes! I can speak to you as to my brother.”
Fred smiled blandly.
“I will speak to you God’s truth!”
Fred grinned.
“I will tell you where the ivory is!”
Fred threw his head back and laughed outright.
“I speak to you on my honor! That mother of misery, Lady Saffren Waldon, stole a map from Schillingschen. Before I would agree to set the town on fire I made her give me that for a hostage, lest she should prove treacherous and leave me behind after all! I have it now! It is marked with a circle to show where Schillingschen believes the stuff must be, because he has searched everywhere else!”
“If that map is worth anything,” Fred countered, “how did Lady Saffren Waldon care to leave you behind with it?”
“The harridan forgot it!” answered Coutlass. “She was so delighted to get vengeance on Rebecca by taking her away from me that she did not care for anything else! She hates you! She hates me! She hates Rebecca! Those who hate—as I can hate!—would rather have revenge than all the riches of Africa! Do you think I would hesitate between money and revenge on her?”
“All right,” Fred answered. “The map, then—what about it?”
“Take me with you and the map is yours!”
“Show it to me, then!”
“I must have a share of the ivory!”
“Show me the map first!”
Coutlass searched inside his flannel shirt—swiftly—more swiftly—angrily. His jaw dropped. Even between the fire-light and the moonlight one could judge that his color changed—and changed again.
“Show me the map before we bargain!” Fred insisted. “Hurry, man! There’s Mr. Yerkes with the canoe. We can’t wait here all night!”
“It is gone!” admitted Coutlass. “Some one stole it!”
“I could have told you that in the first place,” Fred informed him, rising to his feet. “I have the map in my pocket.”
“You stole it?” Coutlass gasped.
“Certainly not. Rebecca stole it while she was supposed to be sleeping in your arms!”
“Gassharamminy! I might have known it! Those Syrians—she meant to give us all the slip and find the ivory herself!”
“Nothing of the Sort!” said Fred. “She stole it from you, to give it to Lady Saffren Waldon! Kazimoto saw her do it—saw where Lady Waldon hid it—and stole it from her while she slept to give to me, believing it to be something of mine. Here it is!”
Fred let the end of a folded map protrude from his inner pocket just far enough for Coutlass to recognize it by the fire-light. The Greek turned on his heel.
“All right!” he said ruefully, swinging suddenly round again. “If you were alone I would fight you, my knife against your rifle! I can not fight all four of you! Go away then, and be damned! I have nothing to offer. There is nothing I can do. Leave me, and I will look after myself!”
“Now you’re talking like a man.” said Fred.
“Leave me that woman of yours, and go to hell, all of you!” laughed the Greek.
Fred seemed suddenly possessed of a bright idea. He turned to the woman and beckoned her to rise. Then in unmistakable pantomime he went through the motions of presenting her to Coutlass. The woman gasped—stammered something that was positively not consent—stared with frightened eyes at Coutlass—shook her shaven head violently—and ran away into the darkness, pursued by roars of laughter that speeded her on her way.
“A clear case of desertion!” announced Fred judicially. “You men are witnesses!” Then he turned once more to Coutlass. “I don’t think we’ll leave you to raise Cain on this island. It depends on you whether we find you a lonelier island—turn you loose or hand you over to the authorities in British East!”
“Good!” Coutlass shouted. “By Jingo, you are a gentleman! You are the best man in the world! I will treat you as my brother!”
“Thanks!” said Fred dryly.
“Aren’t you men ever coming?” asked Will, striding out of the shadows. “I’ve made the dicker—found a man who’d been on the mainland and knows Swahili. The chief’s agreeable to loan us two canoes in place of deeding you the woman. I took your name in vain, Fred, and consented to that while your back was turned—kick all you like—the deed is done! Four of his savages come with us as far as we want to go, we feeding ’em meat and paying ’em money. It’s agreed they’re to eat just as often as we do. They paddle the canoes back home when we’re through with them. Are you all ready? Then all aboard! Let’s hurry!”
- ↑ Plural of machenzie, man from ‘way back,’ “rube,” “simp.”