The Ivory Trail/Chapter 9
"SPEAK YE, AND SO DO"
Oh Thou, who gavest English speech
To both our Anglo-Saxon breeds,
And didst adown all ages teach
That Art of crowning words with deeds,
May we, who use the speech, be blest
With bravery, that when shall come
In thy full time our hour of test—
That promised hour of Christendom,
We may be found, whate’er our need,
How grim soe’er our circumstance,
Unwilling to be fed or freed,
Or fame or fortune to enhance
By flinching from the good begun,
By broken word or serpent plan,
Or cruelty in malice done
To helpless beast or subject man.
Amen
CHAPTER NINE
There was method, of course, behind the difference in treatment extended to us and to the Greeks. The motive for making Coutlass sell his mules and stay within the miserable confines of the rest-camp was to make sure he had money enough to feed himself, and to cut off all opportunity for swift escape. Not for a second were the Germans sufficiently unwary to admit collusion with him.
The real ownership of the three mules was left in little doubt when they were sold at public auction and bought in by Schillingschen. Fred and Will attended the auction the day following our scene in court, and extracted a lot of amusement from bidding against Schillingschen, compelling him finally to pay a good sum more than the mules were worth.
Coutlass was in a strange predicament. The looting of Brown’s cattle had been a bid for fortune on his own account. Yet by causing us to give chase he had brought us into the German net more handily than ever they had hoped. So it was reasonable on his part to suppose that if he could betray us more completely still, he might get rewarded instead of treated as a broken tool.
Yet he did not dare to approach our camp, for fear lest Fred should carry out his threat and fight. The fight would certainly be reported by the askari on watch at the crossroads, and that would destroy his chance of making believe to be in our confidence. So he kept sending notes to me when the others were absent, even the native boy who brought them—not daring to enter our camp, but fastening the message to a stone and throwing it in through the tent door.
They were strange, illiterate messages, childishly conceived, varying between straight-out offers to help us escape and dark insinuations that he knew of something it would pay us well to investigate.
It was an English missionary spending three days in Muanza on his way to Lake Tanganyika, who came to see what he could do for my wound and cleared up the mystery quite a little by reporting what he had heard in the non-commissioned mess, where he had been invited to eat a meal.
“The Greek,” he said, “is trying to curry favor by pretending he knows your plans. If he succeeds in worming into your confidence and persuading you to make plans to escape with him, they will feel justified in putting you in jail—and that, I understand, is where they want you.”
“Will you do me a favor?” I asked.
He hesitated. It was kindness that had sent him down to ease my pain, if possible, not anti-Germanism; it was part of German policy to pose as the friend of all missionaries, and if anything he was prejudiced against us—particularly against Brown, whom he had visited in jail, and who assured him the only hymn he ever sang was “Beer, glorious beer!”
“That depends,” he answered.
“We are quite sure any letters we write will be opened,” I said.
He answered that he could hardly believe that.
“If we could send a letter unopened to British East it would solve our worst problem,” I told him. “If you know of a dependable messenger who would carry our letter, I would contribute fifty pounds out of my own pocket to the funds of your mission.”
I made a mistake there, and realized it the next moment.
“What kind of letter is worth fifty pounds?” he asked me. “Isn’t it something illegal that you fear might get you into worse trouble if opened and read?”
I argued in vain, and only made my case worse by citing as an instance of German official turpitude the staff surgeon’s neglect of me.
“But he tells me you refuse to be treated by him!” he answered. “He says you enter his hospital and are insolent if he happens to be too busy to attend to you at once. He says you refuse to let a native orderly dress your wound!”
He had been entertained to one meal at the commandant’s house on the bill, and regaled by awful accounts of our ferocity. I did not succeed in inserting as much as the thin end of a different view until he asked me how a man’s name could be professor Schillingschen and his wife’s Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon.
“I don’t understand about titles,” he said. “Shouldn’t she take his name, or else he hers, or something?”
I assured him that marriage had never as much as entered the head of either of them.
“They’re simply living together,” I said. “He’s a cynical brute. She’s a designing female!”
The missionary mind recoiled and refused to believe me. But after he had thought the matter over and seen the probability, he swung over to a sort of lame admission that a few more of my statements might perhaps be true.
“I will take your letter and guarantee its delivery in British East, provided I may read it and do not disapprove of its contents.” he volunteered.
“That’s not unreasonable,” I said, “but the letter is in code.”
“I should have to see it decoded.”
I told him to find Fred and Will. He came on them sitting smoking under the great rock near the waterfront that bad been inset with a bronze medallion of Bismarck, and startled them almost into committing an assault on him, by saying that he wanted our secret code at once. They had been trying to get tobacco to Brown, and sweetmeats to Kazimoto, had failed in both efforts and were short-tempered. He explained after they had insulted him sufficiently, and they walked down to the camp one on either hand, apologizing all the way. I imagine they had criticized missions of all denominations pretty thoroughly.
In the end he decided not to read the letter at all.
“I have reached the conclusion you three men are gentlemen,” he said, “and would not take advantage of me. I will take your letter to Ujiji, and send it to the south end of Lake Tanganyika, to be put in the British mail bag for Mombasa by way of Durban. It will take a long time to reach its destination—perhaps two months; but I will have it registered, and it will undoubtedly get there.”
That he kept his word and better we had ample proof later on, but I did not bless him particularly fervidly at the time, for he went straight to the doctor and repeated my complaints. He left for Ujiji the next day, and the net result of his friendly interference was that the doctor refused me any sort of attention at all—even a change of bandages.
Fred and Will did their best for me, but it was little. I read in their faces, and in their studied cheerfulness when speaking in my presence, that they had made up their minds I was going to lose the number of my mess. They went to the commandant and the lieutenant besides the doctor in efforts to secure for me some sort of consideration, but without result; and they wrote at least six letters to the British East African Protectorate government that we ascertained afterward never reached their destination. They tried to register one letter, but registration was refused.
“Why don’t they jail us simply, and have done with it?” Will kept wondering aloud.
“They will when it suits their books,” said I. “For the present they scarcely dare. Word might reach the British government. They’re breaking no international law by holding us here and keeping tabs on us.”
Before many days I grew unable to leave the hard cork mattress on the camp-bed in Fred’s tent. They went again to the commandant, this time determined to force the issue.
“I will send some one,” he told them, and they came away delighted that strong language should succeed where politeness formerly had failed.
But all the commandant did send was an askari twice a day, to lean on his rifle in the tent door, leer at me, and march away again.
“He comes to see if I’m dead,” said I. “It would be inconvenient to have me die in jail; there might be inquiries afterward from British East. After I’m dead and buried they’ll jail you two healthy ones, and keep you until you ‘blab’!”
“Why don’t we straight out tell ’em we don’t know a thing about the ivory?” wondered Will.
“Because they wouldn’t believe us!” Fred answered.
Seven days after the sentry’s first call the doctor took to coming in person to look at me. He never except once stepped inside the tent, but was satisfied to give me a glance of contempt and go away again, once or twice taking pains to inspect the Greeks’ camp before leaving. He usually had Schubert trailing in his wake, and gave him stern orders about sanitation which nobody ever carried out. The sanitary conditions of that rest-camp were simply non-existent until we came there, and we had gone to no pains on the Greeks’ account.
But the Greeks did us an unexpected good turn, though it looked like making more trouble for us at the time. They began to complain of lack of exercise, and to grow actually sick for want of it. Because of that, and jealousy, they raised a clamor about our freedom to go anywhere within township limits as against their strict confinement to the camp. The commandant came down to the camp in person to hear what they had to say, and being in a good humor saw fit to yield a point. Being a military German, though, he could not do it without attaching ignominious conditions.
There was a band attached to the local company of Sudanese—an affair consisting of four native war-drums and two fifes. They knew eight bars of one tune, and were proud of it, the fifers blowing with beef and pluck and the drummers thundering native fashion, which means that the only difference between their noise and a thunder-storm was in the tempo.
Day after day, twice a day, whether it rained or shone, it seemed to be the law that this “band” should patrol the whole township limits, playing its only tune, lifting the tops of men’s heads with its infernal drumming, and delighting nobody except the players and the township urchins, who marched in its wake rejoicing.
The Greeks and the Goanese were given leave to march with the band twice a day for the sake of exercise. They refused indignantly. The commandant flew into the rage that is the birthright of all German officials, but suddenly checked himself; he had a brilliant idea.
He withdrew the permission and changed it to an order that Coutlass and his two friends should march with the band twice daily for the sake of their health, on pain of imprisonment should they refuse.
“And I will prove to you,” he said, “that the good German rule is impartial. All aliens awaiting trial and confined within the township limits shall march with the band if they are able!” As an afterthought he added magnanimously: “Those in the jail, too, provided they have not been sentenced for serious crimes!”
So Coutlass, his Greek friend, the Goanese, Fred, Will, and Brown of Lumbwa marched about the town twice daily, at seven in the morning and three in the afternoon, a journey of five miles, Fred and Will making no objection because it gave them a chance to talk with Brown. There were strict orders against talking, and four askaris armed with rifles marched behind to enforce the rule as well as keep guard over Brown. But the drums were so thunderous and the shrill fifes so lusty that the askaris could not hear conversation pitched in low tones.
“Brown says,” said Fred, returning from the first march, “that he sleeps with only a sheet of corrugated iron between him and the ward where the chain-gang lies. He can talk with Kazimoto when he happens to be at that end of the chain. They’ve nothing but planks to lie on, any of them. He says Kazimoto seems determined to kill the lieutenant who sentenced him, and as soon as he’s off the chain we’d better grab him and hurry him out of the country.”
“Six months!” said I. “Splendid advice! How many of us will be alive or at liberty six months from now? Not I, at any rate!”
“How d’you suppose they discipline the chain-gang?” Fred asked, ignoring my growing hopelessness.
“With the lash,” said I. “I’ve seen!”
“That’s by day,” said Fred. “They’ve better ways at night. One plan is no supper or breakfast; but the champion scheme is the doctor’s. On complaint by the askaris that a man on the chain has shirked his work, or answered back, or been obstreperous, the doctor serves him out a handful of strong pills and sees him swallow them. They don’t unchain them at night. D’you get the idea?”
“Not yet.”
“Every time the man has to go outside he must wake the whole gang and take them with him! They’re weary after working twelve hours at a stretch. After the second or third time up they begin to object pretty strenuously. After the third or fourth time he’s so unpopular that he’d almost rather die than wake them. Imagine the result, and what he suffers!”
Despondency began to have hold of me, and I no longer wished to live. The doctor’s momentary daily visits increased my loathing for the crew who tyrannized there in the name of Progress, and I could see no way of retaliating. I became seized with a sort of delirious conviction that if only I could die and be out of the way my friends would be far better able to contrive without me. There is no convalescence in a mood of that sort, and each morning found me nearer death than the last. Then malaria developed, to give me the finishing touch, and although strangely enough I grew less instead of more delirious, Fred and Will at last made no secret of their belief that I was doomed.
I myself was as sure of death as they were of dinner, and had better appetite for my fate than they for the meal, when one morning the doctor came earlier than usual. He had Schubert with him, and they both peered through the tent door. I was alone, for Fred and Will were in the other tent. The doctor stepped inside and examined me closely, drawing up the mosquito net to see my face. I did not trouble to speak to him, or even to open my eyes after the first glimpse. He spoke to Schubert in German, let the net fall again, and went away. Schubert spat and rubbed his hands, and swung along after him.
Then I heard Will and Fred arguing.
“Don’t be a fool!” That was Fred’s voice.
“I tell you I’ll tell him!”
“Fine thing to tell a poor devil that’s dying! Let him die in peace!”
“No. He has guts, for I’ve seen him use ’em. I shall tell him. You wait here!”
But they both came in, and sat one on either side of my bed.
“Did you hear what that doctor person said to the sergeant-major?” asked Will.
“I don’t talk his beastly language,” I answered.
“He said you’ll be dead by this evening! He told Schubert to go and get the chain-gang and have them dig your grave at noon instead of laying off for dinner. He added they’ll have you buried and out of the way by four or five o’clock. Then Schubert asked him—”
“No need to tell him that!” Fred objected. But Will was watching my face keenly, and went on.
“Schubert asked him who was to say whether you are dead or not. What d’you suppose the answer was?”
Fred objected again, but Will waved him aside.
“The answer he gave Schubert was: ‘Once he is covered with two meters of earth, I shall not hesitate to sign a certificate!’—So now you know what to expect!”
Will smiled as he watched me. His face was as keen and calm as Fred’s was troubled.
“Take more than his guesswork to put you where he’d like to have you—eh?” he laughed. And I sat up.
Fred began to grin too. “You were right, Will!” he admitted.
It was not anger that swept over me and gave me new strength. Anger, I think, would have hastened the end. It was sudden recognition of my own superiority to the devils who knew so little mercy. It was simple inability in the last recourse to admit myself able to be their victim. Even my leg felt better. I demanded food; and by the time they returned from their morning march around the township I had made my boy dress me and was sitting up.
We dated the turn of the tide of our fortunes from that hour. Certainly from that day we began to prosper—at first gradually, but after a while in the old swift way that had made all our ventures with Monty such amazingly amusing work.
We saw the chain-gang—Kazimoto last, with a shovel over his shoulder—march away at noon to dig me a grave in the sand close to where they burned the township refuse. Fred and Will went and watched them a while, contriving to slip a paper of snuff into Kazimoto’s hand while he rested and let the pick-men labor. (Snuff to a Nyamwezi is as comforting as an old sweet pipe to nine white men out of ten.)
When Schubert came that evening at five with an old sack to put my body in, and plenty of askaris to help decide disputes, I was standing up. He could not very well make even himself believe that a man who could speak and walk was dead, but he could be immensely enraged by what he was pleased to call my schweinespiel.[1] He cursed me in every language he knew, including several native ones, and ended by threatening to make sure of me before going to so much trouble a second time.
We enraged him still further by laughing at him, and Fred got out his concertina that for many days past had lain idle. The first few notes of it made me realize more than any other thing could have done what depths of despondency we must have plumbed, for hitherto, for as long as I had known Fred, he had always been able with that weird instrument of his to rouse his own spirits and so stir the rest of us. He resumed old habits now, and gloom departed.
That evening I went to bed like a new man, and for the first night for long weeks slept until dawn, awaking hungry. My leg began to mend. We all saw the absurdity, if nothing else, of the treatment meted out to us, based on no better grounds than our supposed possession of a secret. Laughter brought good hope. Hope gave us courage, and courage set Fred and Will hunting for a means of escape. We decided there and then that to wait for this Major Schunck to come from the coast and pass judgment on us was a ridiculous waste of time as well as highly dangerous.
The first discovery Fred and Will made was that there were footholds cut in the great granite rock in which the Bismarck medallion was set. They climbed it, and discovered that from the summit they could see all Muanza harbor from the shore line to the island in the distance. Sitting up there, they presently spotted a native dhow drawn up with bow to the beach with the indefinable, yet unescapable air of rather long disuse.
Resisting the first temptation to hurry along the shore and examine it, they returned to camp to tell me of the find, and sent Simba, Kazimoto’s understudy, to find out whose the dhow was and why it lay there. They explained it was a fairly big dhow, and might be laid up there on account of leakiness.
But Simba came back grinning with the news that the dhow belonged to an Indian from British East who had been jailed for smuggling. The dhow had been sold to pay his court fine, and was now owned by a Punjabi who had bought it as a speculation and repented already of his bargain, because the Germans would grant him no license to use it and nobody else would buy.
They went off again to have another distant view of it and to try and invent some means of inspecting it closely without betraying their purpose. I was already able to walk with the aid of a stick, although not fast enough to keep up with them, and curiosity taking hold of me I called two of our servants to give me a supporting arm and limped off to see the grave the chain-gang had recently dug for me.
It was a struggle to get there, but it seemed to me the trip was worth it. I found the grave about a foot too short, but otherwise commensurate, and sat down on a stone beside it to consider a number of things. A convalescent man sitting beside his own grave may be forgiven for amusing himself with a lot of near-philosophy, and if I trespassed over the borders of common sense on that occasion I claim it was not without excuse.
My meditations were disturbed by the arrival on the scene of the very last man I expected. We had been told that Professor Schillingschen had gone out on a journey, leaving his “wife” in the care of the commandant; yet I looked up suddenly to see him standing on the other side of the grave with both hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and a grin of malevolent amusement showing through the tangled mass of hair that hid his lower face.
“Yours?” he asked.
I nodded.
“A close call! I have seen closer! I have stood so close to the brink of death that the width of an eyelash would have damned me!”
“Piffle!” I answered rudely. “How can the already damned be damned again?”
He laughed.
“You are sick still. You are petulant. Never mind. I was coming to call on you. I watched you leave the camp from the top of that hill behind you, and followed. It is better. We can talk here without being overheard. Send those natives away!”
“Certainly not!” I answered, but I reckoned without the professor and the fear his hairy presence instilled in them.
“Go!” he said simply in the native tongue; and although I ordered them at once to stay by me they ran back to the camp as fast as their legs could carry them.
“How do you feel now?” the professor asked.
I stared at him, wondering just what he meant.
“I mean, without a pistol!”
I saw the point. The rest-camp was not far away, but as far as I could judge we were quite out of sight from it, and unless there should happen to be some one hiding among the rocks at the foot of the hill behind me we were quite alone, unless, as was probable, he had placed one or two of his own hangers-on in hiding within call.
“This grave should be a lesson to you!” he grinned.
“It has been,” I answered.
“An illustration,” he suggested.
“A period,” said I.
“To your youth?” he asked maliciously. “To the age of folly?”
“To the time,” I said, “when any man could blackmail me. I would go into that grave ten times rather than tell you what you want to know!”
“There are worse places than the grave!” he said, beginning to leer savagely. His eyes glittered. He could scarcely find patience for argument. The thin veneer of his first mock-friendliness was gone utterly.
“I imagine that German colonial life is far worse than death,” said I.
“German will be the only rule in Africa,” he answered. “You fools of English have set your hopes on the Christian missionary. No weaker-backed camel could exist! The German Michael is wiser! Islam is the key to the native mind—Islam and the lash—they understand that! In a few years there will be nothing in Africa that is not German from core to epidermis! As to whether you shall live to see that day or not depends on yourself, my young friend!”
Being quite sure that he had a plan in mind that nothing would prevent him from unfolding, I did not waste effort or words on prompting him, but sat still. My silence and apparent lack of curiosity disturbed him; there is nothing your bully likes better than to force his victim into a war of words.
“I will be short and blunt with you!” he began again. “I know your history! You were in Portuguese Africa with Lord Montdidier. There he came in possession of the secret of Tippoo Tib’s ivory; how, I do not yet know, but you shall tell me that presently! You and your friends came with him to Zanzibar, where you made certain inquiries—sufficient to set the Sultan of Zanzibar by the ears. You left Zanzibar for Mombasa, and for some reason that you shall also tell me presently, Lord Montdidier did not leave the ship at Mombasa but continued the voyage toward London. Certain individuals decided that it would be better not to permit Lord Montdidier to reach Europe alive. There were agents charged with the duty of attending to that. It was considered safest to throw him overboard into the Mediterranean; men were ordered by cable to board the ship at Suez. Yet when the ship reached Suez nobody knew anything about him! Tell me where he left the ship, and why!”
He glared with eyes accustomed to extorting facts from savages, depending on physical weakness so to undermine my will that I would give my secret away, perhaps without knowing it.
I lowered my eyes, not being minded to match the strength of my eye-muscles against his. The news that Monty had not reached Suez as a matter of fact made me feel physically sick. If it were true, it meant most likely that he had been the victim of foul play, for that steamer was not scheduled to stop anywhere before reaching the Suez Canal. As for the people on the ship knowing nothing about him they no doubt preferred not to talk to strangers. That sort of news is easily kept under cover for a while. Schillingschen grew angry at my silence, and changed his tactics.
“Where did he leave the ship?” he shouted—suddenly—savagely.
I did not answer. He came round to my side of the grave, and laid a heavy clenched fist on my shoulder. It seemed to weigh like lead in the weak condition I was in.
“You shall tell me what Lord Montdidier is doing now, or that grave shall resemble in your imagination a bed of roses!”
He seized my neck in a grasp like iron, and squeezed it. I rose suddenly and struck him in the stomach with my elbow. Strength had returned more swiftly than I had guessed, or perhaps it was indignation at the touch of his fingers. At any rate he staggered clear of me, and I thought he would assault me now in real earnest; but perhaps he suspected me of having weapons concealed somewhere. Instead of rushing at me like an angry bull he calmed himself and laughed.
“You are strong for a man they thought of burying!” he said. “Never mind! You shall see reason presently! It is well understood that you and your friends know where Tippoo Tib’s ivory is hidden. You imagine you can keep the secret. If you keep it, you shall never make use of it, my young friend! If you choose to tell, you shall be suitably rewarded! Come now—I thought you were going to look for it down in these parts. I admit you fooled me. You simply made a false move to draw attention off from Lord Montdidier. Tell me where he is and what he does—and—or—”
“And what? Or what?” I demanded, as insolently as I knew how. I saw no sense in answering him gently.
“I will show you!”
I had begun to feel weak again, but he offered me an arm, and since he seemed in no hurry I was able to struggle along beside him. We took to the main road and when we reached the D.O.A.G. he called for a hammock and some porters. Being carried in that way was sheer luxury after the walk in my weak state, and I lay back feeling like a tripper on vacation. I saw Fred and Will climbing down from their observation post on top of the Bismarck monument, but he did not notice them.
Every German sergeant, and every askari we passed saluted us with about twice as much respect as I had ever seen them show the commandant; and Schillingschen returned salutes much less carefully than he, merely by a curt nod, or one raised finger. Apparently the military feared him, for when we passed the commandant, who was personally superintending the flogging of two natives in the market-place for not saluting himself, he took several paces forward to make sure Schillingschen should see his act of homage. The professor merely nodded in return, and I began to I wonder whether there was a rift in the lute of Muanza’s official good relations. Surely I hoped so. Anything calculated to set the Germans’ garrison life at odds looked to me like the gift of heaven!
Schillingschen, striding beside the hammock, directed our course along the shore-front under palm-trees, planted in stately rows with meticulous precision. He kept far enough to one side to avoid the charge of being seen walking with me, but from time to time tossed me remarks calculated to keep my nerves on edge.
“What I shall show you is by way of warning!” was a remark he repeated two or three times. Then: “A native can always be made to talk by flogging him. Some white men need sterner measures!”
We left the commandant’s house on the hill far behind and followed the curve of the lake shore, toward a rocky promontory with a clump of thick jungle behind it. Fear began to get its work in, until the thought came that what he most desired was to make me afraid; then I managed to summon sufficient contempt for him and his tribe to regain my nerve and once more almost enjoy the promenade.
He halted the hammock bearers at a spot about three hundred yards away from the promontory and, leaving them standing there, turned inland with a hand on my arm to give me support and direction. We followed a path that was fairly well marked out and trodden, but rough, and several times I should have fallen but for his help. My legs still refused any sort of strenuous duty.
“The staff surgeon at this station is a man of ideas,” he announced as we rounded a big rock and passed down a narrow glade in the jungle. “He is original. He is not like some of our official fools. He studies.”
I refused to seem curious, and walked beside him in silence.
“He studies sleeping sickness. If he can find the key to the solution of that scourge it will mean promotion for him. He has noticed that the sleeping sickness is always at its worst beside the lake, and putting two and two together like a sensible man has reached the conclusion that the disease may be propagated in some way in the blood of these things.”
We emerged into a clearing in which a pool more than a hundred yards long and nearly as many wide was formed naturally by a hollow in the surface of a great sheet of granite. The pool was fed by a trickle of water from a jumble of rocks at one end. At the other end the bottom of the pond sloped upward gradually, so that a ramp of smooth rock was formed, emerging out of shallow water. A stone wall had been built about three feet high to enclose that end of the pond, and all the way along both sides the granite had been broken and chipped until the edges were sheer and unclimbable.
“Look!” he said, pointing.
I looked and grew sick. On the ramp, half in the water and half out lay about a hundred crocodiles basking in the sun, their yellow eyes all open. They were aware of us, for they began to move slowly higher out of water as if they expected something.
“You see that post?” asked Schillingschen.
The stump of a dead tree that he referred to stood up nearly straight out of a crack in the rock, and a few yards above water level. The crocodiles all lay nose toward it, some of them twelve or fourteen feet long, some smaller, and some very small indeed, all interested to distraction in the dead tree-trunk.
“That is where he feeds them,” Schillingschen announced. “He has tested them for hearing, smell, and eyesight. By making fast a living animal to that post he has been able to convince himself that from about nine in the morning until five in the afternoon their senses are limited. Only occasionally do they come and take the bait between those hours. They are hungriest in the early morning just before daylight. Recently a large ape tied to the post at midday was not killed and eaten until four next morning, and that is about the usual thing, although not the rule. Now my proposal is—”
He stepped back and eyed me with the coldest look of appraisal I ever sickened under. I blenched at last—visibly suffered under his eye, and he liked it.
“—that you tell your secret or be fastened to that post from noon, say, until the crocodiles make an end of you!”
He stepped back a pace farther, perhaps to gloat over my discomfort, perhaps from fear of some concealed weapon.
“You have not much time to arrive at your decision!”
He took another pace backward. It occurred to me then that he was looking for some one he expected. Nobody turning up, he began to gather loose stones and throw them at the reptiles, driving them down into deep water, first in ones and twos and then by dozens. Most of them swam away to the far side of the pool, and hid themselves where it was deep.
Then, panting with having run, there came a native who looked like a Zulu, for he had enormous thighs and the straight up and down carriage, as well as facial characteristics.
“You are late!” shouted Schillingschen in German “Warum? What d’ye mean by it?”
The man opened his mouth wide and made grimaces. He had no tongue. Schillingschen laughed.
“This is a servant who does no tattling in the market-place!” he said, turning again toward me. “He and I can tie you to that post easily. What do you say?”
There was nothing whatever to say, or to do except wonder how to circumvent him, and nothing in sight that could possibly turn into a friend—except a little tuft of faded brown that out of the corner of my eye I detected zigzagging toward me in the direction from which we had come. A moment later I knew it really was a friend. “Crinkle,” a mongrel dog that Fred bad adopted the day after our arrival, breasted the low rise, saw me, gave a yelp of delight and came scampering.
The dog sniffed my knee to make sure of me, and then trotted over to sniff Schillingschen. The professor stooped down to pat him, rubbed his ear a moment to get the dog’s confidence, and then seized him suddenly by both hind legs. I saw what he intended too late.
“Stop, or I’ll kill you!” I shouted, and made a rush at him. But he swung the yelping dog and hurled him far out into the pool.
A second later my fist crashed into his face and he staggered backward. A second later yet the dumb Zulu pinned my elbows from behind and set his knee into the small of my back with such terrific force that I yelled with pain. Then Schillingschen approached me and began to try to drive my teeth in with unaccustomed fists. He loosened my front teeth, but cut his own knuckles, so began looking about for a stick.
Strangely enough my own attention was less fixed on Schillingschen than on the wretched “Crinkle” swimming frantically for shore. Dog-like he was making straight for me, and there was no possibility whatever of his being able to scramble up the steep side. I shouted to call his attention, and tried to motion to him to swim toward shallow water, but the Zulu would not let my arms free, and the dog only thought I was urging him to hurry.
Schillingschen found a stick and came back to give me a hammering with it just at the moment when a crocodile saw “Crinkle.” A blow landed on my head, cut my forehead, and sent the blood down into my eyes at the same moment that I heard the dog’s yelp of agony; and next time I looked at the pond there was a tiny whirlpool on the surface, slightly tinged with red.
“You swine!” I shouted at Schillingschen, trying to break loose and attack him. For answer he raised his cudgel in both hands and stood on tiptoe to get leverage. If that blow had landed it must have broken something, for he was strong as a gorilla; but somebody shouted—I recognized Fred’s voice, and in another second he and Will charged down on us. Schillingschen turned about to strike Fred instead of me, but Will’s fist hit him on the ear and split it. The professor staggered backward, and a moment later Fred had felled the Zulu. I reeled from weakness and excitement, and nearly fell down.
“Throw him to the crocks, you men!” I urged madly. “He threw Crinkle in. Throw him! Nobody’ll ever know! He’d have dared throw me in! Nobody comes here! Throw him in and trust the crocks to leave no trace!”
“Shut up, you fool!” growled Fred.
“Did you see him throw that dog in?” I retorted.
“No,” ” he answered, “but I saw him strike you. That’s enough! I’ll deal with him!”
I suppose Fred intended to knock the professor down and belabor him with the same stick he had used on me, but the plan died stillborn. Schillingschen bethought him of his hip-pocket, produced a repeating pistol, and leveled it.
“Any nonsense, and I shoot you all!” he announced.
That ended the battle as far as we were concerned. We had no firearms. Schillingschen wasted no time on explanations, but beckoned his Zulu and walked off, striding at a great pace and only looking back over his shoulder once or twice to make sure we were not in pursuit.
Fred and Will lent me an arm apiece and we followed slowly, I recounting as fast as I could all that had happened, and they trying to chaff me back into a sensible frame of mind.
“That was a decent dog!” I insisted. “He slept on my bed those nights when I had fever!”
“I know it,” Fred answered. “Will and I lay and scratched, while you rested, with proper flea-food for protection! Don’t worry, we’ll find you another dog!”
Schillingschen’s consideration for my wound had vanished with the chance of making use of me. As we emerged into the open we saw him in the distance lolling in the hammock he had brought me in.
“Never mind!” grinned Will. “I’ll bet the brute has an earache!”
“And teeth-ache!” added Fred.
“And I’ll bet he has gone to prepare us a hot reception!” said I. “He owns this town!”
But nothing happened immediately on our return into the town. Actually Fred and Will had been outside township limits and could be arrested; suspecting foul play as soon as they saw me with Schillingschen, they had followed at once. They were as mystified as I when no swift vengeance lit on them. We saw Schillingschen carried in the hammock up the steep path leading to the commandant’s house; but no one came down again. After we got back to camp we spent all the rest of the day waiting for the vengeance we felt sure was overdue, but none came. Toward evening we even began to grow hopeful again and to talk about the dhow. Fred and Will had examined it through field-glasses from the top of the rock, and were optimistic ‘regarding its size and general condition.
“Even if it leaks rather badly,” said Will, “we could reach some island, and beach it there, and caulk it.”
“How about that launch, that brought the professor and Lady Saffren Waldon?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“Couldn’t they follow us with that?”
“You bet they could!” said Will. “We’ve either got to spike the launch’s boilers, or give them the complete slip on a dark night!”
“We might steal the launch!” suggested Fred, but that was too wild a proposal to be taken seriously. The launch was the apple of the German governmental eye, and the engine crew slept on it always.
The prospect was unpromising as ever, yet I went to bed and listened to the strains of Fred’s concertina in the next tent with less foreboding than at any time since reaching Muanza, and fell asleep to the tune of Silver Hairs among the Gold, a melancholy piece that Will liked to sing when hope or courage stirred him.
I was awakened near midnight of a moonless black night by a hand on my bedclothes and the light of a lantern in my eyes.
“Hus-s-s-h!” said some one. “Don’t speak yet! Listen!”
It was a woman’s voice, and it puzzled me indescribably, for a sick man’s wits don’t work swiftly as a rule when he lies between sleeping and waking.
“Listen!” said the voice again. “I must come to terms with you three men! You are the only hope left me! I have no friends in Muanza—and none whom I trust! Those Greeks and that Goanese would sell me to the first bidder, and these Germans are worse than dogs!”
“But who are you?” I asked stupidly.
For answer she held the lantern so that I could see her face. Her hand trembled, and the unsteady light threw baffling shadows, but even so I could see she looked drawn and aged.
“Where is your maid, then, Lady Waldon?” I asked, for it seemed to me that was one friend who had served her through thick and thin.
“Ask the commandant!” she answered. “The poor fool thinks he will marry her! Little she knows of the German method! I am alone! I have not even a servant any longer! I have walked through the shadows from the commandant’s house, only lighting this lantern after I was inside the hedge. Nobody knows I am here. One watchman was asleep; the others did not see me. All you need fear is those Greeks. As long as they don’t suspect I am here we can talk safely.”
I tumbled out of bed on the far side, and went to waken the other two. After a hurried consultation we decided my tent was the best for the interview, because of the light that had burned in it nearly always while I was so deathly ill. We wrapped ourselves in blankets, and Fred went and shook Simba awake.
“Watch those Greeks!” he ordered him. “If they show signs of life, come and give the alarm!”
Then we set Lady Waldon’s lantern on the ground in the back of my tent, closed the tent up, and foregathered. There was one chair. We three sat on the bed.
“Before we begin,” said Fred, “we’d like some kind of proof, Lady Waldon, that your overture is honest! I’ve no need to labor the point. Until now you have been our implacable enemy. Why should we believe you are our friend to-night?”
She sighed. “I don’t expect friendship,” she answered. “You and I are in deep water, and must find a straw that may float us all! If I can help you to escape out of the country I will. If you can help me, you must! If you don’t escape there are worse things in store for you than you imagine! If you tell your secret now, they intend to prevent your telling it to any one else afterward! And unless you tell they intend to take terrible steps to compel you! As for me—they have discovered that after all I know nothing, and am of no further use to them! They have not said so, but it is very clear to me how the land lies. Professor Schillingschen is drunk to-night; he came home with his car and mouth bleeding, and has plied the whisky bottle freely ever since until he fell asleep an hour and a half ago. He boasted over his cups. They are simply using this long wait for Major Schunck, who is supposed to be coming from the coast, to gather additional evidence against you. They have men out following your trail back by the way you came, and if they can find no genuine evidence they will invent what they need; the purpose is to get you legally behind the bars; and if you ever come out again alive that would not be their fault!”
“What do you propose?” asked Fred.
“Escape!” she answered excitedly. Then another thought made her clench her fists. “Is it possible you told Professor Schillingschen your secret to-day? Did one of you tell him? Is that why he is drunk?”
She saw by our faces that that fear was groundless, but a greater one, that she might not be able to convince us, seized her next and she made such an excited gesture that the shawl she wore over her head and shoulders fell away and her long hair came tumbling down like a witch’s.
“Listen! There is nothing that you men from your point of view could say too bad about me! I know! I have been in the pay of Germany for many years, but what you don’t know is how they got me in the toils and kept me in, dragging me down from one degradation to another! They have dragged me down so far at last that I am not much more use to them. If we were in British territory they would simply expose me to the British government and save themselves the trouble of ending my career. They did that to Mrs. Winstin Willoughby, and Lord James Rait, and fifty others; it was so easy to put incriminating evidence against them in the hands of the public prosecutor. Lord James Rait died in Dartmoor Prison—a common felon. I shall not! But believe me—I am certain as I sit here that they only wait for my return to British East! To have me murdered here might start inconvenient rumors that would lead to unanswerable questions! It was proposed to me to-day that I should return to British East on the launch!”
“Then why talk about escaping?” Fred wondered. “Why not go?”
“Because,” she hissed emphatically, “don’t you see, you stupid!—if they send me back it will be to my doom! My one chance is to escape from their clutches—get into touch with British officials—and save the situation by telling my own tale first!”
Fred was in no hurry to be convinced. I was already for accepting her story and helping her out; but that was perhaps because I was a sick man, too recently recovered from the gates of death to care to be hard on any one.
“I still don’t see your danger,” Fred told her. “In all my life I fail to recall a single instance of the British courts passing a severe sentence on a spy. If you’ll excuse my saying so, your story about Lord James Rait is incorrect. I recall the case well. He got a twenty-year sentence for forgery.”
“True!” she answered. “And Mrs. Winstin Willoughby was sentenced to fifteen years for theft! Lord James did forge—in the way of business for the German government! Jane Winstin Willoughby did steal—for the same blackguard masters! Do you think they will expose me as a spy? That would be too clumsy, even for such bullies as they are! Do you suppose they could have dragged me down to this without some sword held over me? They can prove that I committed a crime in England several years ago. Oh, yes, I am a criminal! I raised a check. It was a check on a German bank, given to me by a German on behalf of a countryman of his. I needed money desperately, and the man who brought the check to me suggested I should raise it! Since then I have tried to repay that money with interest a dozen times, but they have always laughed and told me they preferred to leave matters as they are.”
“What would be the use of returning to British territory, then?” asked Fred. “If they hold that over you, they can denounce you at any time.”
“Not they!” she answered. “Not if I get there first! I know too much! I can tell too much! I can prove too much! If I were once arrested on the charge of raising that check, no government in the world would listen to me. But if I can tell my story first, and confess about the check, and explain why the charge is likely to be brought against me, then there will be Downing Street officials who know how to whisper to the German Embassy words that will frighten them into silence! I can prove too much against the German government, if only I can tell my tale before they crush me!”
“Why not write it?” asked Fred, and it seemed to me there was humor in his eye, but she only detected stubbornness, and laughed scornfully.
“My own maid even gave them the letters written to me by my sister! If I should be suspected of writing they would never rest until they had the letter!”
“Give me your letter to mail!” suggested Fred maliciously.
“Deluded man!” she sneered. “All the letters you have written since you came to Muanza lie in a drawer in the commandant’s desk! I myself have read them!”
In the dark, with shifting shadows thrown by the cheap trade lantern, it was difficult to judge what was going on behind that beard of Fred’s. I had begun to suspect he was coming over to my way of thinking and would yield to her presently, but he returned to the attack—very directly and abruptly.
“What is it you know against the German government?” he demanded, and sat with his jaw in the palm of his hand waiting for her answer.
“Why should I tell you? Why should I put myself completely in your power?”
“Why not?” asked Fred.
“What would prevent you from stealing my thunder, and telling my story as your own—leaving me at the Germans’ mercy?”
“Something very potent that I think you would not understand if I talked of it,” Fred answered. “Listen to me now a minute. I haven’t conferred with my friends here, as you know. Whatever I tell you is subject to their agreeing with me. The only condition on which I, for one, would consent to taking part with you in anything—after all our experience of you!—would be that you should put yourself so completely in our power that we could feel we had your safekeeping. On those terms I would be willing to do my best to help you out.”
“I agree to that like a shot!” said Will; and I nodded.
“You mean—?”
“All or nothing!” Fred insisted.
“You mean that you also, just like these Germans, must have a sword to hold over me?”
“I thought you wouldn’t understand!” Fred answered. “What we demand, Lady Saffren Walden, is proof that you really do give us your confidence. Without that we have nothing to say to you, and nothing to do with you!”
She broke down then and cried a little, tearing herself with sobs she hated to release. Suddenly she raised her head and glared at us wildly, dry-eyed; not a tear had accompanied the sobbing.
“If I tell you—if you fail me after that—I shall kill myself in such way that you shall know—my blood is on your heads!”
Fred laughed. It was no doubt the best thing to do, but I wondered how he managed it.
“Suppose you begin by telling us,” he said. “We can discuss the blood-stains afterward!”
Then she suddenly burst into her tale, as if she had rehearsed it a hundred times in readiness to pour into the ears of the first British official who had power enough to shield her. She told it dramatically, in few words, wasting no breath on side-issues, and without once pausing to explain, letting her words smash down the barriers of unbelief and pave their own way for explanations afterward.
“Germany is planning to conquer the world!—not now, but ten or a dozen years from now! She is getting ready ceaselessly! Part of the plan is to undermine British rule in Africa by means of a religious influence among the natives. That is the special duty of Professor Schillingschen. As soon as possible a great native army is to be trained, and thoroughly schooled in the fanatical precepts of Islam. But the German people are too heavily taxed already, and refuse to vote money for this miserable colony, where the great beginning must be made because it is only here that they can work unsuspected. So funds must be found in some other way!”
She paused for breath. No woman pleading at the bar of justice could have seemed more in earnest. Of one thing I was quite sure: she had found it worth her while to convince us if that were possible. She was playing no half-hearted game.
“Do you begin to see now why the Germans are so set on finding Tippoo Tib’s hoard of ivory? Do you begin to understand why they are determined, not only to prevent your finding it, but to learn your secret? If rumor is one-half true, the Arab buried somewhere enough ivory to finance this plan of theirs! They have been going about the search systematically, and sooner or later they feel they must stumble on it. They will not let you forestall them!”
She paused again. Her very earnestness exhausted her more than the walk through the dark in danger had done.
“Take your time,” Fred advised her. “We’re all listening!”
“When I told you in Nairobi that Lord Montdidier had been murdered, I believed I was so near the truth that you would never know the difference. I knew the order had been given to have him killed on board ship—given by men who are accustomed to be obeyed—who do not excuse failure on any ground. They feared he might be going to divulge the secret of the ivory to his government in London. Oh, I tell you they stop at nothing! To-day London is the ivory market of the world, but they have their arrangements made for transferring that center of trade to Hamburg! They mean first to crush competitors, and then monopolize! They hope the ivory is in this country. In that case their task will be easy. But if it should be found in British East, they are all ready with the necessary men of influence to apply for a mining or agricultural concession, and they will fence that place off so thoroughly that no one will ever be the wiser until they have carried the ivory out of the country!”
“They could never get it out of British East without the government knowing,” objected Fred; but she laughed at him.
“If worse came to the worst, they are ready with an offer to exchange ten times the territory elsewhere for just that small section of the country. They would give up German New Guinea, or Southwest Africa—anything! They have fooled the French and Russian governments until they are ready to bring pressure to bear on England diplomatically to induce her to make almost any bargain of that kind that the Germans want. They are even willing to concede to England the whole of Abyssinia, which nobody owns yet, and to back her up against the claims of France and Italy! Why should they not be willing to make temporary concessions, when all Africa is to be theirs in ten years’ time! They will give to-day, and with the help of the money that ivory will bring they will create an army that shall take away to-morrow!”
“But how can you prove all this?” Fred asked her.
“How? I know the names of the men who are preaching Germany’s sermons all through British East! I know all Schillingschen’s secrets! Why should I not? I have suffered enough! He is a drunken brute nearly always after the sun goes down, and his caresses are disgusting; I have endured them until I know all he knows! Now he realizes that I know his secrets and have none of my own to tell, so he hopes to send me to my doom at the hands of the government I have betrayed too many times! What is the use of my pretending to be better than I am? I am a spy—a traitress—a divorced woman with worse than no reputation! I am not a person likely to be shown much mercy! I never would have recanted unless the end of my rope had come! Now I know I must buy my pardon—I must earn it—I must pay for it with solid value! Luckily I can do that! I do not ask you men for mercy. I know what is in store for you if you do not escape! I offer to help you to escape, in exchange for helping me!”
“Better be more precise!” suggested Fred. “Exactly what is in store for us?”
She pointed her finger at me. “You went out of bounds to-day with Schillingschen! Well and good; he was with you. But you, and you—” She pointed at Fred and Will. “—went without permission. Why do you suppose they overlooked such a splendid chance of jailing you legally? Schillingschen came up to the commandant’s house in a towering passion, demanding the immediate arrest and close confinement of all three of you. He was only persuaded to wait a few days longer because a runner has come in with word that the bodies of several Masai whom you shot on this side of the German border have been found! The bones—the bullets found among the bones—and cartridge cases that will fit your rifles are being brought to Muanza! After that—the deluge, my friends! That is why Professor Schillingschen gets drunk and sings himself to sleep in spite of your being still at liberty! Either escape before that evidence reaches Muanza, or make up your minds for the worst! It is growing late—answer me—do you agree?”
Fred glanced once at each of us. We both nodded.
“We agree with reservations,” he said.
“What are they? Man—don’t be a fool! Don’t fritter the lives of all of us away!”
“They’re simple. We’ve a friend in the jail here. His name’s Brown.”
“That drunkard? Leave him! He’s worthless!”
“We’ve a servant on the chain-gang. His name is Kazimoto.”
“A nigger? You’d risk another day in this place for a nigger? How absurd! They’re never grateful. They don’t see things from the white man’s standpoint. They don’t expect ideal treatment. Leave him his wages and tell him to follow when they let him off the chain!”
“And we have a string of porters,” Fred continued. “We will not leave Muanza without the porters, our man Kazimoto, and Mr. Brown of Lumbwa!”
“You are mad! You are crazy!”
“We are the men you have invited to trust you,” Fred answered kindly. “Those are our conditions. We will not ’bate one iota! Take ’em or leave ’em, Lady Waldon!”
- ↑ Literally: pig-play.