The Ivory Trail/Chapter 12
"MANY THAT ARE FIRST SHALL BE LAST; AND THE LAST FIRST"
When the last of the luck has deserted and the least of the chances has waned,
When there’s nowhere to run to and even the pluck in the smile that you carry is feigned;
When grimmer than yesterday’s horror to-morrow dawns hungry and cold,
And your faith in the coming unknown is denied in regret for the known and the old,
Then you’re facing, my son, what the Fathers from Abraham down to to-day
Have looked on alone, and stood up to alone, and each in his several way
O’ercame (or he shouldn’t be Father). So ye shall o’ercome: while ye live,
Though ye’ve nothing but breath and good-will to your name ye must stand to it naked, and give!
Ye shall learn in that hour that the plunder ye won by profession is naught—
And false was the aim ye aspired with—and dross was the glamour ye sought—
The codes and the creeds that ye cherished were shadows of clouds in the wind,
(And ye can not recall for their counsel lost leaders ye dallied behind!)
Ye shall stand in that hour and discover by agony’s guttering flame
How the fruits of self-will, and the lees of ambition and bitterness all are the same,
Until, stripped of desire, ye shall know that was death. Then the proof that ye live
Shall be knowledge new-born that the naked—the fools and the felons, can give!
Then the suns and the stars in their courses shall speedily swing to your aid,
And nothing shall hinder you further, and nothing shall make you afraid,
For the veriest edges of evil shall challenge your joy, and no more,
And room for the right shall shine clear in your vision where wrong was before.
Then the stones in the road shall be restful that used to be traps for your feet,
Then the crowd shall be kind that was cruel before, and your solitude sweet
That was want to be gloomy aforetime and gray—when the proof that ye live
Is no longer the pain of desire, but the will—and the wit—and the vision, to give!
CHAPTER TWELVE
The canoes were the usual crazy affairs, longer and rather wider than the average. The bottom portion of each was made from a tree-trunk, hollowed out by burning, and chipped very roughly into shape. The sides were laboriously hewn planks, stitched into place with thread made from papyrus.
Some of the men left behind were our personal servants. Counting them and Kazimoto, there were twenty natives remaining with us, making, with the four men lent us by the chief, an allowance of twelve to each canoe. If we had had loads as well it would have been a problem how to get the whole party away; but as Lady Saffren Waldon had left us nothing but three cooking-pots, we just contrived to crowd the last man in without passing the danger point, Fred taking charge of the first canoe with Brown of Lumbwa and Kazimoto, and leaving Coutlass with the other canoe to Will and me. We agreed it was most convenient to keep the Greek and the rifle separated by a stretch of water.
There is one inevitable, invariable way of starting on a journey by canoe in Africa. Somebody pushes off. The naked paddlers, seated at intervals down either side, strain their toes against a thwart or a rib. The leading paddler yells, and off you go with a swing and a rhythmic thunder as they all bring their paddles hard against the boat’s side at the end of each stroke. Fifty—sixty—seventy—perhaps a hundred strokes they take at top speed, and the passenger settles down to enjoy himself, for there is no more captivating motion in the world. Then suddenly they stop, and all begin arguing at top of their lungs. Unless the passenger is a man of swift decision and firm purpose there is frequently a fight at that stage, likely to end in overturned canoes and an adventure among the crocodiles.
Our voyage broke no precedents. We started off in fine style, feeling like old-time emperors traveling in state; and within ten minutes we were using paddles ourselves to poke and beat our men into understanding of the laws of balance, they abusing one another while the canoes rocked and took in water through the loosely laid on planks.
The fiber stitching began to give out very soon after that, because when not in use the canoes were always hauled out somewhere and the dried-out fiber cracked and broke. We had all to sit to one side while some one restitched the planking. Later, when a wind came up and the quick short sea arose peculiar to lakes, we were very glad we had done that job so early.
It was only the first mile that as much as suggested enjoyment. Never accustomed to much paddling in any case, our own men had suffered from hunger and confinement in the reeking hot dhow. Then, hippo meat needs hours of cooking to be wholesome (our own share of it was still in the pot, waiting to be boiled more thoroughly at the next halting place). They had merely toasted their tough lumps in the camp-fire embers and gobbled it. The result was a craving for sleep, noisily seconded by the chief’s four men, who had eaten the stuff without cooking at all, and in enormous quantities.
We began with a keen determination to overhaul the dhow, that dwindled as we had time to think the matter over; wondering what we should do with two such women in case we should capture them, and how we should prevent Coutlass in that case from acting like a savage.
“Why don’t we leave ’em to make their own explanations?” I proposed at last. “We can claim our few belongings at any time if we see fit.” But the suggestion took time to recommend itself.
That night until nearly morning we fretted at every rest the paddlers took—drove them unmercifully—ran risks of overturning on the slippery shoulders of partly submerged rocks—took long turns ourselves to relieve the weary men, Coutlass working harder than the rest of us. It would have been a bad night’s work if we had overhauled the dhow and loosed him to do his will.
“Think of the baggage!” he kept shouting to the night at large. “Lying in the arms of Georges Coutlass, kissing and being kissed, simply to rob him—Coutlass—me! Think of it! Only think of it. She lay in the hook of my right arm and only thought of how to win back the favor of the other she-hellion! And I was deceived by such a cabbage! Wait though! Nobody ever turned a trick on Georges Coutlass more than once! Wait till we catch them! See what I do to them! I don’t forget Kamarajes either, or that bastard de Sousa, also pretending they were friends of mine! Heiah! Hurry! Drive the paddles in, you lazy black men!”
It was more his hunger for revenge than any other one thing that tipped the scales of indecision and called us off the chase. A little before morning, at about that darkest hour, when the stars have seen the coming sun but the world is not yet aware of it, Fred called to us to turn in toward a barren-looking hill of granite that rose almost sheer out of the water but at one corner offered a shelving landing place. There we all clambered out to stretch cramped muscles and make a fire to cook the hippo’s tongue, Coutlass cursing us for letting what he called idleness come between us and revenge.
Kazimoto had scarcely more than gathered an armful of wood, thrown it down, and gone to hunt for more; one of the other boys had struck a match, and the first little flicker of crimson fire and purple smoke was starting to curl skyward, when Fred jumped on it and stamped it out.
“Silence!” he ordered. “Keep still every one!” and repeated it twice in Kiswahili for the natives’ benefit.
We could not see at first which way he was staring through the darkness. It was more than two minutes before I knew what had alarmed him, and then it was sound, not sight that gave me the first clue. There came a purring from the lake; and when I had searched for a minute for the source of it I saw the glow we had watched from the dhow in the storm the first night out—the telltale crimson stain on the dark that rides above a steamer’s funnel, and at intervals a stream of sparks to prove they were burning wood and driving her at top speed.
“It can’t be the German launch,” said I.
“Why not?” demanded Fred irritably. He knew I knew it was the German launch as certainly as he did.
“How can they have patched her boiler?” I asked.
“How many beans make five? They’ve done it, and there she goes! No other launch on the lake can make that speed! I’ve heard the British railway people have a launch or two, but they’re small enough to have traveled down the line on ordinary trucks. That’s the German launch and Schillingschen as surely as we stand here!”
We waited there until dawn, arguing at intervals, not daring to light a fire, nor caring to sleep, Coutlass sitting apart and laughing every now and then like a hyena.
“If the men weren’t so dead beat I’d be for carrying on, said Fred.
“What’s the use?” argued Brown. “We can’t catch the bally launch, can we? Soon as it’s daylight they’d see us, like as not. I hope to get drunk once more before I die! Schillingschen ’ud run us down, an’ good-bye us!”
“I’d say follow them if the men could make it,” Will agreed. “But what’s the odds? It’s us they’re after. They’ll dare do nothing to the women on the dhow—in British waters.”
“That’s so,” I agreed, not believing a word of it, any more than they. One had to calm one’s feelings somehow; the men were too weary to drive the canoes another mile at anything like speed. Coutlass, who had heard every word of the argument, burst out into such yells of laughter that Fred threw a rock at him. “Curse you, you ghoul!”
Coutlass changed his tone from demoniacal delight to quieter, grim amusement.
“They will do nothing, eh? It is I, Georges Coutlass, who need do nothing! I have my revenge by proxy! Wait and see!”
Fred threw a second rock, and hit him squarely.
“Gassharamminy!” swore the Greek. “Do you know that rock is harder than a man’s head?”
Fred let the boys light a fire when the sun had risen high enough to make the little blaze not noticeable. Most of the men were asleep, but though our eyes ached with the long vigil we could not have copied them. About three hours after daylight we breakfasted off slices of hot boiled hippo tongue and cold lake water, without salt or condiments of any kind, and with discontent increased by that unpleasing feast we aroused the boys and drove them into the canoes.
We forced the pace again, and picked up smoke on the sky-line an hour before noon, but it was not from a steamer’s funnel. It was lazy, flat-flowing, spreading smoke with a look of iniquity about it that sent our hearts to our mouths. We paddled toward it with frenzied energy, and long before any of us could make out details Coutlass, standing balancing himself amidships, told us what we knew was true and flatly refused to believe.
“It’s the Queen of Sheba burning to the water-line!”
“Sit down, you fool, or you’ll upset us!”
“She’s gutted already—the flame is about finished! nothing now but smoke!”
“Sit down, you lying idiot, and hold your tongue!”
“I can see the smoke of the German launch now! Don’t you all see it? Straight ahead beyond the smoke of the dhow! They’ve burned the dhow and steamed away! I’ll bet you a million pounds they’ve killed everybody—shot ’em, or burned ’em alive, or drowned ’em!”
“Did you hear me tell you to sit down? I’ll tip you overboard and make you swim for shore—d’ye see those crocodiles? Ugh! Look at the brutes! In you go among the crocks if you don’t sit down at once!”
Coutlass took no notice of the threat, but rocked the canoe recklessly as he stood on tiptoe.
“Think of their gall! By Bacchus, they’re steaming for British East! I bet you five million pounds to a kick they think they’ve drowned the lot of us! They’re going to steam in and report the accident!”
We got him to sit down at last by ordering the paddlers nearest him to throw him overboard, but nothing would stop his evil croaking any more than flat refusal to admit the truth of what he gloated over lessened our real conviction.
Long before we reached the dhow there was no room left for unbelief. The stern planks were charred, but stood erect, unburned yet, and the blue and white paint smeared on them was surely that of the Queen of Sheba. When we came within fifty yards the water was full of loathsome reptiles; our paddles actually struck them as they swarmed after the prey, snapping at one another and at our canoes—long, slimy-looking monsters, as able to smell carrion in the distance as kites are to see.
There were garments on the water—blankets—and one soaked, torn, lacy thing that certainly had been a woman’s. More than a dozen crocodiles fought around that. We tried to go close enough to see whether there were dead bodies in the dhow’s charred hull, but as if the very ripple from our paddles were the last straw, the wreck dipped suddenly ten feet from us and plunged, the crocodiles following it down into deep water with lashing tails—swifter than fish.
We paddled about for an hour in the blistering sun, searching stupidly for what we knew we could never find; crocodiles remove traces of identity more swiftly than kites and crows.
“I’ll bet you they thought we were on board!” gleed Coutlass. “I’ll bet you they opened fire, and when we didn’t answer came to the conclusion we had no ammunition. Then they steamed close enough to throw kerosene on board and light it! I bet you they steamed round and round and watched the people jump as the flames drove them overboard! Or d’you think they shot them all, and then threw them overboard and fired the dhow? No—then they’d have known we weren’t on the dhow; they’d have steamed back then to find us; they thought we were in the dhow!” They thought we were hiding below deck! They’re going to British East to take their Bible oaths they saw us burn and drown! Isn’t that a joke! Isn’t that a good one! Gassharamminy! But I’d give my hope of heaven to know whether they shot the women first or watched them jump among the crocodiles when the heat grew fierce!”
We paddled to another rocky island—one that had trees on it, and rested through the heat of the day when we had killed all the snakes that had forestalled us in the shade. There, after again eating hippo-tongue unseasoned and ungarnished, we held a council of war, and Fred produced the map that Rebecca stole from Coutlass.
“If we make for a township now—Kisumu is the nearest—about five and twenty miles away,” said Fred, “we can give ourselves the pleasure of surprising Schillingschen, and of course we can get a square meal and some clothes and soap and so on—incidentally perhaps some rifles and ammunition. But we can’t prove a thing against Schillingschen, and he has enough pull with British officials to make things deuced unpleasant for us, for a time at least. Consider the other side of it. Suppose we don’t make for a station. Schillingschen reports us dead. Nobody looks for us—unless perhaps out on the lake for a hat or some scrap of clothing by way of corroborative evidence. Suppose we paddle out of this gulf and take to shore somewhere along the north end of the lake. We’ve no food, no tents, only one gun, next to no ammunition, nothing but money and a purpose. We don’t know what chance we have of getting supplies, and particularly rifles, without letting any one know where we are, but we do know we’ve a clear field and a straight mark for Elgon, where rumor says—and Courtney said—and Schillingschen thinks—and this map says the ivory ought to be! The odds are against us—climate—starvation—wild beasts—savages—last and not least, the government, if they ever get wind of our being beyond bounds. Are we willing to take the chance, or are we not?”
We talked it over for an hour, Coutlass listening all ears to most of what we said, although we drove him to the farthest limit of the shade trees. We were in two minds whether or not it mattered if he listened, and made the usual two-minds hash of it. Finally we put it to a vote, letting Brown have a voice with the rest of us. He was in favor of anything that offered prospect of a gamble; and we remembered the letter in code we had given the missionary to mail to Monty. We had told him in that that we should make tracks for Elgon, and we all voted the same way.
“In other words” grinned Fred, “we’re perfect idiots, and ready and willing to prove it! Good! If you fellows had voted the other way I’d have gone forward to Elgon alone!”
It was then that Georges Coutlass took a hand in the game again. He came striding through the trees with something of his old swagger, and sat down among us with an air.
“Count me in!” he demanded.
“D’you mean in the lake?” suggested Fred.
“In on the trip to Mount Elgon!”
“We’ve had nearly enough of you!” Fred answered. “I know what’s coming! If you don’t come with us you’ll tell tales? Blackmail, eh? Well, it won’t work! We’ll set you ashore on the mainland, and if you dare show yourself to Schillingschen or any British official, we’ll run that risk cheerfully!”
But Coutlass was imperturbable for once. He laid a hand on Fred’s knee, and changed his tone to one of gentle persuasion between friend and friend.
“Ah! Mr. Oakes, I know you now too well! You are not the man to leave me in the lurch! These others perhaps! You never! You know me, too. You have seen me under all conditions. You are able to judge my character. You know how firm a friend I can be, as well as how savage an enemy! You know I would never be false to a friend such as you—to a man whom I admire as I do you!”
Will Yerkes, who had tried to keep a straight face, now went off into peals of laughter, rolling over on his back and rocking his legs in the air—a performance that did not appear to discourage Coutlass in the least. Brown was far from amused. He advised throwing the Greek into the lake.
“Remember those cattle o’ mine!” he insisted.
“Yes!” agreed Coutlass. “Remember those cattle! Consider what a man of quick decision and courage I am! How useful I can be! What a forager! What a guide! What a fighting man! What a hunter! What a liar on behalf of my friends! What a danger for my friends’ enemies! What are the cattle of a drunkard like Brown—the poor unhappy sot!—compared to the momentary needs of a gentleman! Ah! By the ordeal! I am a gentleman, and that is the secret of it all! You, Mr. Oakes, as one brave gentleman, can not despise the right hand of friendship of Georges Coutlass, another gentleman! I know you can not! You haven’t it in you! You were born under another star than that! I have confidence! I sit contented!”
“You good-for-nothing villain!” Fred grinned. “I’ll take you at your word!” and Brown of Lumbwa gasped, the very hairs of his red beard bristling.
“I knew you would!” said Coutlass calmly. “These others are not gentlemen. They do not understand.”
“If your word is good for anything,” Fred continued.
“My word is my bond!” said the Greek.
“And you really want to prove yourself my friend—”
“I would go to hell for you and bring you back the devil’s favorite wife!”
“I will set you on the mainland, to go and recover those cattle of Mr. Brown’s from the Masai who raided them! Return them to Lumbwa, and I’ll guarantee Brown shall shake hands with you!”
“Pah! Brown! That drunkard!”
“See here!” said Brown, getting up and peeling off his coat. “I’ve had enough of being called drunkard by you. Put up your dukes!”
But a fight between Brown and the Greek with bare fists would have been little short of murder. Brown was in no condition to thrash that wiry customer, and we in no mood to see Coutlass get the better of him.
“Don’t be a fool, Brown! Sit down!” ordered Fred, and having saved his face Brown condescended readily enough.
“What you said’s right,” he admitted. “Let him get my cattle back afore he’s fit to fight a gentleman!”
And so the matter was left for the present, with Georges Coutlass under sentence of abandonment to his own devices as soon as we could do that without entailing his starvation. We had no right to have pity for the rascal; he had no claim whatever on our generosity; yet I think even Brown would not have consented to deserting him on any of those barren islands, whatever the risk of his spoiling our plans as soon as we should let him out of sight.
From then until we beached the canoes at last in a gap in the papyrus on the lake’s northern shore, we pressed forward like hunted men. For one thing, the very thought of boiled meat without bread, salt, or vegetables grew detestable even to the natives after the second or third meal, although hippo tongue is good food. We tried green stuff gathered on the islands, but it proved either bitter or else nauseating, and although our boys gathered bark and roots that they said were fit for food, it was noticeable that they did not eat much of it themselves. The simplest course was to race for the shore with as little rest and as little sleep as the men could do with.
However, we were not noticeably better off when we first set foot on shore. There was nothing but short grass growing on the thin soil that only partly hid the volcanic rock and manganese iron ore. Victoria Nyanza is the crater of a once enormous, long ago extinct volcano, and we stood on a shelf of rock about a thousand feet below what had been the upper rim—a chain of mountains leading away toward the north higher and higher, until they culminated in Mount Elgon, another extinct volcano fourteen thousand feet above sea level.
It was not unexplored land where we stood, but it was so little known that the existence of white men was said to be a matter of some doubt among natives a mile or two to either side of the old safari route that passed from east to west. We could see no villages, although we marched for hours, the loaned canoe-men tagging along behind us, hungrier than we, until at last over the back of a long low spur we spied the tops of growing kaffir corn.
At sight of that we broke into a run and burst on the field of grain like a pack of the dog-baboons that swoop from the hills and make havoc. We seized the heads of grain, rubbed them between our hands, and had munched our fill before we were seen by the jealous owners. A small boy herding hump-backed cattle down in the valley watched us for a minute, and then deserted his charge to report to the village hidden behind a clump of trees. Ten minutes after that we were surrounded by naked black giants, all armed with spears and a personal smell that outstank one’s notions of Gehenna.
We had nothing to offer them, except money, for which they obviously had not the slightest use. None of us knew their language. From their point of view we were thieves taken in the act, all but one of us unarmed as far as they knew, to be judged by the tribal standard that for more centuries than men remember has decreed that the thief shall die. They were most incensed at the four unhappy islanders, probably on the same principle that dogs pick on the weakest, and fight most readily with dogs of a more or less similar breed.
It was Coutlass who saved that situation. He instantly went crazy, or the next thing to it, wrinkling up his black-whiskered face into a caricature, yelling a Greek monologue in a refrain consisting of five notes repeated over and over, and dancing around in a wide ring with one leg shorter than the other and his arms executing symbols of witchcraft.
The chief was the biggest man—not an inch less than seven feet—black as ebony, from the curly hair, into which his patient wives had plaited fiber to hang in a greasy lump over his neck, all down his naked body to the soles of his enormous feet. Each time he came in front of that individual Coutlass paused and executed special finger movements, like the trills of a super-pianist, ending invariably in a punctuation point that made the savage shiver.
The fifth time round, to avoid the accusing fingers, the giant dodged behind a smaller man, who dodged behind a woman, who promptly turned and ran, swinging in the wind behind her a bustle like a horse’s tail that was her only garment. Her flight was the touch that settled the decision in our favor. We all began to do a mumbo-jumbo dance around Coutlass, and in five seconds more the whole armed party was in full retreat, holding their spears behind them as some sort of protection against magic.
“After that,” said Coutlass proudly, “will you still dismiss me from your party, gentlemen?”
“You’ve got to go and find Brown’s cattle and return them to him!” Fred answered firmly. But we none of us felt like sending him packing until he was better fed and some provision could be made for his safety on the road. It was wonderful, the number of excuses that flocked through my mind for befriending the ruffian, and later on I found it was the same with Fred and Will. Brown, on the other hand, affected indignation at his being allowed to go with us another yard.
“Make a rope o’ grass an’ hang the swine!” he grumbled.
We decided to march on the village, retreat being obviously far too dangerous, and the only likely safe course being to follow up the chance success. Sleep another night in the open among the mosquitoes and wild beasts, besides making us wretched at the mere suggestion, was likely to bring us all down with fever. We preferred the thought of fever to the loneliness; for man is unlike all other nomads, and that is why the dog takes kindly to him; he must have a home of his own—a portable one, if you will—a tub like Diogenes—a Bedouin’s tent—a cave, or a hole in the ground—something, so be he may rent it or own it or know for a fact he may sleep there when night comes. Life in the open is only good fun when there is cover to take to at will.
All the way along the winding foot-track leading in every imaginable direction except toward the village, and only turning suddenly toward it when we had grown disgusted and decided to leave it and try to find another, Brown kept pointing out trees with suitable overhanging arms to which we might hang Coutlass. The Greek, with eyes for nothing but the fat, hump-backed village cattle in the distance, seemed to think only of them, until Will commented on the fact, and Fred saw fit to drop a hint.
“Steal as much as a young calf, Coutlass, and we’ll let Brown choose the tree! Try it on if you don’t believe me!”
The villagers closed their gate against us by dragging great piles of thorn across the gap in the rough palisade, but, as Coutlass pointed out, they would have to open it up again to let the cattle in before dark, so we sat down and ate the remaining fragments of the hippo tongue—no ambrosia by that time; it had to be eaten, to save it from utter waste!
Then Coutlass once more did a first-class devil dance backward and forward this time before the gate, putting genius into it and fear into the hearts of the defenders. Kazimoto helped even more than he by discovering a native within the palisade who could speak a common tongue.
Their villagers held a very noisy council on their side of the thorn obstruction, under the apparent impression that it was sound- and bullet-proof. It was beginning to be pretty obvious that a man who advised volleying through the crevices with spears was winning the argument when Kazimoto detected familiar accents and raised his voice. After that the barricade was dragged aside within ten minutes and we entered, if not in honor, at least in temporary safety.
Luxury is a question of contrast. That evening in a hut assigned to us by the chief, squatting on the trodden cow-dung floor, leaning against the dried-mud sides, with a little fire of sticks in the midst to give us light and keep mosquitoes at a distance at the expense of almost unbearable heat, we ate porridge made from mtama, as they call their kaffir corn, and washed it down with milk—good rich cows’ milk, milked by Kazimoto into our own metal pot instead of their unwashed gourds. Lucullus never dined better.
The feast was only rather spoiled by two things: we all had chiggers in our feet—the minute fleas that haunt the dust of native villages and insert themselves under toe-nails to grow great and lay their eggs. (Nearly every native in the village had more than one toe missing.) And the chief felt obliged to insert his smelly presence among us and ask innumerable idiotic questions through the medium of his interpreter and Kazimoto. He received some astonishing answers, but would not have been satisfied with anything more reasonable. We wanted him satisfied, and gave our interpreter free rein.
The main trouble was we had nothing of value to offer him. Money was something he had no knowledge of. He wanted beads of a certain size and color; for two handfuls of them he expressed himself willing to be our friend for life. We had to educate him about money, and Kazimoto assured him that the silver rupees Fred produced from a bag were so precious that governments went to war to get them away from other governments.
But the impression still prevailed that we were wasikini—poor men; and that is a fatal qualification in the savage mind.
“Why have you only one gun?”
In vain Kazimoto assured him that we had dozens of guns “at home”—that Fred’s landed possessions were so vast that two hundred strong men walking for a month would be unable to march across them—that Fred’s wives (Fred seemed to live under a cloud of sexual scandal in those days) were so many in number they had to be counted twice a day to make sure none was missing.
The chief had eighteen wives of his own to show. He could prove his matrimonial felicity. Why had Fred left his behind? How did he dare? Who looked after them? Had he left the guns behind to guard the women? Why did such a rich man travel without food for his men? The chief had seen us with his own eyes devour porridge as if we were starving.
To have told him the truth would have been worse than useless. To have mentioned such a thing as shipwreck would only have stirred the savage instinct to prey off all unfortunates. Failing evidence of wealth in our possession, the only feasible plan was to claim so much that he might believe some of it, and it was Coutlass, drawing a bow at a venture, who ordered Kazimoto to tell him that we expected a party in a few days bringing tents, provisions and more guns.
“There will be blue-and-white beads of the sort you long for among those loads,” added Kazimoto on his own account; and that eased the chief’s mind for the night. Fred gave him a half-rupee, and promised him to exchange it when the loads should come for as many of the beads as he could seize in his two fists. The chief went out to brag to the village, opening and closing his fists to see how huge their compass was; and later that night his wives had to be beaten for fighting. They were jealous because the fattest and the youngest new one had both been promised double shares.
There was another fight because our porters emerged from their hut and demanded that a barren cow out of the village herd be butchered. They made their meaning perfectly clear by taking the cow by the horns and tail and throwing her on her back. Fred decided that argument with a thick stick about four feet long.
The unusual spectacle of some one taking sides against his own men, whatever the rights or wrongs of it, so affected the chief that he entered our hut next morning disposed to hold us up for double promises of beads. It was evident we had to deal with a born extortioner. He would increase his demands with every fresh concession.
“Oh, what’s the odds!” laughed Coutlass. “Promise him anything! The only loads likely to come along this way for a year or two are Schillingschen’s!”
Fred told the chief he would think the matter over, and chased him out of the hut. Coutlass had given us all a new idea in an instant, and he was the only one who did not see its point—he, the only one who did not give a snap of the fingers for the laws of any land!
“D’you suppose—”
“Too good to hope for!”
“If he thinks we’re dead—?”
“And if he believes in that map—”
“He’ll not need the map. He’ll have memorized it. There’s only a circle drawn on it to mark the Elgon district. All the old pencil marks have been rubbed out as he searched the other likely places and drew them all blank.”
“He’ll travel without military escort?”
“Sure! He won’t want witnesses! He’ll make believe it’s a scientific trip. Remember, he’s a professor of ethnology. That’s how he puts it all over the British and goes where he pleases without as much as by-your-leave.”
“Say, fellows! It’s a moral cinch that when we broke away from Muanza he made up his mind in a flash to return to British East and destroy us on the way. He thinks he made a clean job of that. I’ll bet he loaded the launch down with stuff for a long safari, and thinks now he has a clear run and can take his time!”
“If that’s how the cards lie, the game’s ours!”
Coutlass saw the point at last and offered himself on the altar of forgiveness and friendship.
“Make me your partner, gentlemen, and if he travels within a hundred miles of this I will crawl into that Schillingschen’s tent in the night and slit his throat! I would murder him as willingly as I eat when I am hungry!”
“Your job has been assigned you!” answered Fred. “When Mr. Brown’s cattle are back in Lumbwa perhaps we’ll give you something else to do!”
Nevertheless, Coutlass had outlined in a flash the limits of the plan. We would draw the line at murdering even Schillingschen, but must help ourselves to his outfit as our only chance of re-outfitting without betraying our presence in British East. But the plan was not without rat-holes in it that a fool could see.
“Schillingschen’s boys will escape and run to the nearest British official with the story!”
“And the British official will be so full of the importance of Schillingschen and the need of protecting his beastly carcass—to say nothing of the everlasting disgrace of letting him be scoughed on British territory—and the official reprimand from home that’s sure to follow—that he’ll come hot-foot to investigate!”
“We’ll have to provide against that,” said Fred, and we all laughed, including Coutlass. Talk of provisions is easy when you have no means out of which to provide. It did not occur to include Coutlass in the calculations, or to dismiss him from them; but without exchanging any remarks on the subject it was clear enough to all of us that no such plan could hope to succeed with the Greek at large, at liberty to spoil it. We saw we should have to keep him in our party for the present.
“Don’t forget,” said Coutlass, more accustomed than we to seizing the strategic points of desperate situations, “that Schillingschen will have his own boys with him from German East.”
“I didn’t see any with him on the launch,” I objected.
“He would never have come without them” Coutlass insisted. “He made them lie below the water-line out of reach of bullets at the only time when you might have seen them! He wouldn’t trust himself to British porters. My word, no! That devil knows natives! He knows some of them might be British government spies! He’ll have his own boys—if they can’t carry all his loads he’ll buy donkeys at Mumias; there are always donkeys to be bought at that place, brought down from Turkana by the Arab ivory traders. Do donkeys talk?”
At any rate, we talked, and made no bones at all about including Georges Coutlass in the conversation. It was his suggestion that we should send natives to look out for Schillingschen, and Fred’s amendment that reduced the messengers to one, and that one Kazimoto. Any of the others might decide to desert, once out of sight, and we could scarcely have blamed them, for their path had not lain among roses in our company.
Kazimoto had a million objections to offer against going alone on that errand, as, for instance, that the chigger fleas would invade our toe-nails disastrously without his cunning fingers to hunt them out again. He also prophesied that without him to interpret there would swiftly be trouble between us and the chief; but we saw the other side of that medal and rather looked forward to an interval when the chief should not be able to talk to us at all.
At last, on the second morning after our arrival at the village, Kazimoto wrapped an enormous mound of cold mtama pudding in a cloth and went his way, prophesying darkly of murder and sudden death lurking behind rocks and trees, as unwishful to be alone as a terrier without a master, but much too faithful to refuse duty.
The chief saw a side of the medal that we had not guessed existed. He came and sat beside us like an evil-smelling shadow, satisfied that now we could not dismiss him, he being under no obligation to understand gestures. Curiosity was the impelling motive, but he was not without suspicion. Fred said he reminded him of a Bloomsbury landlady whose lodgers had not paid their board and rooming in advance.
Will solved that problem by taking the rifle, and one cartridge that Fred doled out grudgingly, and after a long day’s stalking among mosquitoes in the papyrus at the edge of the lake five miles away, at imminent risk of crocodiles and an even worse horror we had not yet suspected, shooting a hippopotamus. Forthwith the whole village, chief included, went to cut up and carry off the meat, and there followed revelry by night, the chiefs wives brewing beer from the mtama, and all getting drunk as well as gorged. Coutlass and Brown got more drunk than any one.
Will came back with flies on his coat—three large things like horse-flies, that crossed their wings in repose, resembling in all other respects the common tsetse fly. He said the reeds by the lake-side were full of them.
Remembering tales about sleeping sickness, and suspicion of conveying it said to rest on a tsetse fly that crossed its wings, I went out the following day and walked many miles eastward, taking with me the only two sober villagers I could find. They came willingly enough for five miles, thinking, I suppose, that I intended to follow Will’s example and kill some more meat (although, as I did not take the rifle with me, they were not guilty of much dead-weight reasoning).
At the bank of the fifth stream we came to they stopped, and refused to go another yard. Thinking they were merely lusting after the meat and beer in the village, I took a stick to drive them across the stream in front of me, but they dodged in terror and ran back home as if the devil had been after them.
I crossed the stream and continued forward alone about another mile toward a fairly large village visible between great blue boulders with cactus dotted all about. There was the usual herd of cattle grazing near at hand, but the place had an unaccountable forlorn look, and the small boy standing on an ant-hill to watch the cattle seemed too listless to be curious, and too indifferent to run away. The big brown tsetse flies, that crossed their wings when resting, were everywhere, making no noise at all, but announcing themselves every once in a while by a bite on the back of the hand that stung like a whip-lash. They seemed to have special liking for coat-sleeves, and a dozen of them were generally riding on each side of me. One could drive them off, but they came back at once, as horse-flies do when poked off with a whip.
When I drew near the village nobody came out to look at me, which was suspicious in itself. Nobody shouted. Nobody blocked the way, or dragged thorn-bushes across the gateway. There were black men and women there, sitting in the shadows of the eaves, who looked up and stared at me—men and women too intent on sitting still to care whether their skins were glossy—unoiled, unwashed, unfed, by the look of them—skeletons clothed in leather and dust, desiring death, but cruelly denied it.
One man, thin as a wisp of smoke, rushed at me from the shadow of a hut door and tried to bite my leg. The merest push sent him rolling over, and there he lay, too overcome by inertia to move another inch, his arm uplifted in the act of self-defense. Nobody else in the village stirred. There were more huts than people, more kites on the roofs than huts. Some of the littlest children played in the hut doors, but nearly all of them were listless like the grown folk. The only sign of normal activity was the big black earthen jars that witnessed that the women performed part at least of their daily round by bringing water from the lake.
I returned late that afternoon, walking, as it were, out of a belt of tsetse flies. On one side of a narrow stream they were thick together; to the west of it there were scarcely any, although the wind blew from east to west.
“There’s no fear of news about us reaching any government official,” I announced. “There’s a curtain of death between us and the government that even suspicion couldn’t penetrate!”