CHAPTER VI.
KIGAMBO.[1]
The rainy season was over. The moving wall of water was down. The travellers were no longer kept awake at night by the ceaseless roar of the rain. The lake lay stretched before them, sapphire dark under the milky blueness of the tropical sky. Kingfisher and fish-eagle, and all the birds that haunt those waters, hovered, or perched on the trees or along the bank, or skimmed the shining surface of the great fresh-water sea. And now the canoes were manned, and the three white men and their followers were setting their faces towards Manyema, the cannibal country, dreaded by Wangana and Wanyamwesis, and even by the bolder Makololos.
For this stage of their journey they were travelling in a stronger company, having accepted the fellowship of an Arab caravan faring towards the Congo; and this larger troop gave an air of new gaiety to their train. They had been forced to buy new stores of cloth and beads at Ujiji, Geoffrey's recklessness in rewarding his men, after every successful hunting expedition, having considerably reduced their stock. The cloth bought at Ujiji was dear and bad, and Cecil Patrington took Geoffrey to task with some severity; but his reproaches fell lightly upon that volatile nature.
"Remember that the measure of the goods we carry is the measure of our lives," said the experienced traveller gravely.
"Oh, Providence will take care of us when our goods are gone," argued Geoffrey. "We shall fall in with some civilized Arabs who know the value of hard cash. I cannot believe in a country where a cheque-book is useless. We shall be within touch of the mercantile world when we get to Stanley Pool."
"When!" echoed Patrington. "Hill and jungle, and desert and river, mutiny or desertion, pestilence and tempest, have to be accounted with before you see steamers and civilization. There's no use in glib talk of what can be done at Brazzaville or at Stanley Pool. Luckily we are going into a region where food is cheap—such as it is. But then, on the other hand, we may run out of quinine—and quinine sometimes means life."
Summer was in the land when they crossed the great lake, stopping for a night or two on one of the principal islands, under the hospitable roof of a missionary station, where it was a new sensation to sit upon a chair, and taste a cup of coffee made in the European manner, and to see an Englishwoman's pleasant face and neat raiment. There was an English child also, "a real human child," as Geoffrey exclaimed, delighted at the phenomenon—a round-limbed, fat-cheeked rosy baby, who sat and watched the landing of the party from her perambulator, and patronized them, waving a welcome with chubby hands, as they scrambled out of the canoes—a child who had entered upon a world of black faces, and who may have fancied her mother and father monstrosities in a place where everybody else was black.
What a contrast was this blue-eyed two-year-old to such infancy as they had seen in villages along their road, the brown naked creatures rolling and grovelling in the dirt, and looking more like pug-dogs than children!
When they had bidden good-bye to the friendly missionary and his domestic circle, they were not without childish life upon their way, for the Arabs with whom they had joined company had some women in their train, one a slave with a couple of children; and as the Arab law does not recognize slavery under adult age, these brats of six and seven were free, and not being goods and chattels, no provision was allowed for them, and the mother had to feed them out of her own scanty rations.
Geoffrey was on more familiar terms with the Arabs than either Patrington or Allan, and, on discovering the state of things with the native mother and her sons, he took these two morsels of dusky humanity into his service, and set them to clean pots and pans, and treated them as a kind of lap-dogs, and let them dance to his wild fiddle music in the firelight in front of the tents, and would not allow them to be punished for their depredations among the pannikins of rice or the baskets of bananas.
They crossed the swift and turbid Luama river, and encamped for a night upon its shores. And then came the harassing march in single file through the dense jungle—a hopeless monotony of rank foliage taller than the tallest of the travellers, a coarse and monstrous vegetation which lashed their faces and rent their clothing and caught their feet like wire snares set for poachers. Vain was it to put the porters with their loads in the forefront of the procession. The rank inexorable jungle closed behind them as they passed; and a four-hours' march through this pitiless scrub was worse than a ten-hours' tramp in the open.
The days were sultry. The travellers deemed themselves lucky if the evening closed without a thunderstorm; and the storms in those regions were deadly. A fired roof and a blackened corpse in a hut next that occupied by the three friends testified to the awfulness of an African thunderstorm. The thatch blazed, the neighbours looked on, and the husband of the victim sat beside the disfigured form in a curious indifference, which might mean either bewilderment or want of feeling.
"Twenty years ago the catastrophe next door would have been assuredly put down to our account," said Patrington, as they sat at supper after the storm, "and we should have had to pay for that poor lady with our persons or our goods—our goods, for choice, so much merikani, or so many strings of sami sami. But since the advent of the Arabs, reason has begun to prevail over unreason. The influence of Islam makes for civilization."
They found the people of Manyema, the reputed man-eaters, friendly, and willing to deal. Provisions were cheap. Fowls, eggs, maize, and sweet potatoes were to be had in abundance. The natives were civil, but curious and intrusive; and the sound of Geoffrey's amati was the signal for a crowd round the camping-place, a crowd that could only be dispersed by the sight of a revolver, the nature of which weapon seemed very clearly understood by these warriors of the lance and the knife. When the admiring throng waxed intrusive, and the black faces and filthy figures crowded the verandah, Cecil Patrington took out his pistols, and gave them a little lecture in their native tongue, with the promise of an illustration or two if they should refuse to depart.
Or, were Geoffrey in the humour, he would push his way, playing, through that savage throng, and, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, would lead those human rats away towards hill or stream, jungle or plain, playing, playing some diabolical strain of Tartini's, or some still wilder war-song of the new Sclavonic school—Stojowski, Moszkowski, Wienianwowski—something thrilling, plaintive, frightening, appealing, which set those savage breasts on fire, and turned those savage heads like strong drink.
"One shall be taken and the other left." That text would flash across Geoffrey Wornock's thoughts at the unlikeliest moments. It might have been a fiery scroll projected on the dark cloud-line of the thunderous eventide. It might have been the sharp shrill cry of some bird crossing the blue above his head, so unexpectedly, so strangely did the words recur to him. So far, in all the vicissitudes of the journey, the little band had held firmly on, with less than the average amount of suffering and inconvenience. There had been desertion, there had been death among their men; but on the Unyamwesi route it had been easy to repair all such losses, and their Wanyamwesis were in most respects the superiors of the Wangana they had lost by the way.
So far, despite of some baddish bouts of fever, the dark, inexorable Shadow had held aloof. The dread of death had not been beside their camp-fires or about their bed.
But now, in this region of tropical fertility, amidst a paradise of luxuriant verdure, sheltered by the vast mountain citadel that rises like a titanic wall above the western border of the Tanganyika, they came upon a spot where the fever-fiend, the impalpable, invisible, inexorable enemy reigned supreme. Geoffrey was the first to feel the poisonous influence of the atmosphere. He laid down his fiddle, and flung himself upon his bed, with aching back and weary limbs, one evening, after a day of casual roaming along the banks of a tributary stream.
"I've been walking about too long," he said. "That's all that there is the matter with me."
"That's all!" But when daylight came he was in the unknown fever-country, the dreadful topsy-turvy world of delirium. He had two heads, and he wanted to shoot one of them. He tried to stand up and go across the hut to fetch the rifle that hung against the opposite wall, but his limbs refused to obey him. He lay groaning, helpless as an infant, muttering that the other head wouldn't let him sleep. The pain was all in that other head. In the long agony that followed all things were blank and dark; until, after five days of raging fever, the pulse grew regular again, the scorching body cooled down to the temperature of healthy life, and weak and wan, but rejoicing in freedom from pain, the patient came back to everyday life, and looked into the faces of his companions with eyes that saw the things that were, and not the spectral forms that people delirious dreams.
"'One shall be taken,'" he muttered to himself, as he looked from Allan to Cecil, and back again. "I thought it was I. Then we are all three of us alive?" he said, with a catch in his voice that was almost a sob.
"Very much alive, and we hope to remain so," answered Patrington, cheeriest of travellers. "You've had a bad spell of the cursed mukurungu, which I suppose must have its fling for the next decade or two, until railroads, and hotels, and scientific drainage, and Swiss innkeepers have altered the climate for the better. You've been pretty bad, and you've kept us in a very unhealthy district, so as soon as ever you've picked up your strength, we'll move on."
"I can start to-morrow morning. I feel as strong as a lion."
"Does a lion's paw shake as your hand is shaking now? My dear Geoff, you are as weak as water. We'll give you three days to recruit. I am too hardened a subject for the mukurungu, which is a fever of acclimatization, for the most part, and I've been dosing Allan with quinine, and I've been doing a good deal of ambulance surgery among the natives, and we're a very popular party. They have seldom seen three white men in a bunch. Your fiddling, my medicine-chest and sticking-plaster, and Allan's good manners have made a great effect. The blackies are assured that we are all three sultans in our own country."
"And our Arab friends?"
"Oh, they have gone on. We have only our own men with us now. Your Makololos have been miserable about you."
They spent a jovial night, Geoffrey's spirits rising to wild gaiety, with that lightness which comes when a fever-patient has struggled through the thick cloud of strange fancies, the agony of throbbing brain and aching back.
He tuned the fiddle that had been lying mute in its velvet nest. He tucked it lovingly under his chin, and laid his bow along the strings with light fingers that trembled a little in the rapture of that familiar touch.
"Shall I bore you very much if I play?" he asked, looking at his elder companion.
"Bore us! Not a jot. I have sadly missed your wild strains. There has been a voice wanting—a voice that is almost human, and which seems so much a part of you that whilethatwas dumb you seemed to be dead. Begin your spells. Play us something by one of your 'Owskis,—Jimowski, Bilowski, Bobowski—whichever you please."
Geoffrey drew his bow across the strings with a swelling chord, a burst of bass music like the sudden pealing of an organ, and began a Walachian dirge.
"Does that give you the scene?" he asked, pausing and looking round at them, after a tremendous presto movement. "Does it conjure up the funeral train, the wild wailing of the mourners, the groaning men, the shrieking women, even the whining and whimpering of the little children, the stormy sky, the thick darkness, the flare of the torches, the trampling of iron-shod hoofs? I can hear and see it all as I play." And then he began the slow movement, the awful ghostly adagio with its suggestion of all things horrible, its eccentric phrasing, and dissonant chords, shaping a vision of strange unearthly forms.
"It's a very jolly kind of music," Cecil Patrington said thoughtfully; "I mean jolly difficult, don't you know. But if you want my candid opinion as to what it suggests, I am free to confess it sounds to me like your improvised notion of the mukurungu—all fever and pain and confusion."
"The mukurungu! Not half a bad name for a descriptive sonata!" laughed Geoffrey, putting his fiddle to bed.
And then they brought out the cards, and played poker for cowries, Cecil Patrington, as usual, the winner, by reason of that inscrutable countenance of his, which had hardened itself in all the hazards of an adventurous career. They were particularly jovial that evening, and flung care to the winds that sobbed and muttered along the shore. Geoffrey's gaiety communicated itself to the other two. They drank their moderate potations; they smoked their pipes; and Patrington discoursed of an ideal settlement where the surplus population of Whitechapel and Bermondsey were to come and work in a new Arcadia, a place of flocks and herds and coffee-fields, under a smokeless heaven.
"For my own satisfaction, I would have Africa untrodden and unknown, a world of wonder and mystery," he said; "but the beginning has been made, and the coming century will see every missionary settlement of to-day develop into a populous centre of enterprise and labour. Crowded-out England will come here, and thrive here, as it has thriven in less fertile lands. Englishmen will flock here for sport and pleasure and profit."
"And these native sultans—these little kings and their peoples?"
"Ah, that is the problem! God grant there may be a bloodless solution!"
That was the last night these three travellers ever sat together over their cards and pipes, ever laughed and talked together with hearts at ease. They were to resume their journey next morning; but when all was ready for the start, Allan discovered that Cecil Patrington was too ill to walk.
"I've had a bad night," he confessed; "the kind of night that lets one know one has a head belonging to one. But the men can carry me in a litter. I shall be all right to-morrow. I'd much rather we jogged along. This is a vile, feverish hole."
There was no question of jogging along for this hardy traveller. The oppressive drowsiness, which is sometimes the first stage of malarial fever, held him like a spell. He looked at his companions dimly, with eyes that sparkled and yet were cloudy with involuntary tears. He could hardly see their anxious faces.
"I'm afraid I'm in for it," he faltered. "I thought I was fever-proof."
He sank upon the narrow camp-bed in a shivering fit, and Geoffrey and Allan spread their blankets over him. They heaped every woollen covering they possessed over those shaking limbs, but could not quiet the ague fit or bring warmth to the icecold form.
Dreary days, dreadful nights, followed the sad waking of that sultry morning. The two young men nursed their guide and captain with unceasing watchfulness and devotion. Geoffrey developed a feminine tenderness and carefulness which was touching in so wild and fitful a nature. But they could do so little! And he whom they watched and cared for knew not, or only knew in rare brief intervals, of their loving care.
They tried to sustain each other's courage. They told each other that malarial fever was only a phase of African travel; an unpleasant phase, but not to be avoided. They knew all about the fever from bitter experience; and here was Geoffrey but just recovered, and doubtless Patrington would mend in a day or two, as he had mended.
"I don't suppose he's any worse than I was," said Geoffrey.
Allan shook his head sadly.
"I don't know that he's worse, but the symptoms seem different somehow. He doesn't answer to the medicines as you did."
The symptoms developed unmistakably after this, and the fever showed itself as typhus in the most deadly form. Swift on this revelation came the end; and in the solemn stillness of the forest midnight they knelt beside the unconscious form, and watched the parched, quivering lips from which the breath was faintly ebbing. One last sobbing sigh, and between them and the captain of their little company there stretched a distance wider than the breadth of Africa, further than from the Zambesi to the Congo. A land more mysterious than the Dark Continent parted them from him who was last week their jovial, hardy comrade, sharing the fortunes of the day, thinking of death as of a shadowy something waiting for him far off, at the end of innumerable journeys and long years of adventurous activity—a quiet haven, into which his bark would drift when the timbers were worn thin with long usage, and the arms of the rower were weary of plying the oar.
And death was close beside them all the time, lying in wait for that gallant spirit, like a beast of prey.
"O God, is there another Africa, where we shall meet that brave, good man again?" cried Allan. "Which of our modern teachers is right?—Liddon, who tells us that Christ rose from the dead; or Clifford, who tells us there is nothing—nothing: no Great Companion, no Master or Guide: only ourselves and our faithful service for one another—only this poor humanity?"
He looked up appealingly, expecting to see Geoffrey's face on the other side of the bed; but he was alone. Geoffrey had fled from the presence of death. He had rushed out into the wilderness. It was late in the following afternoon when he came back. The men had dug a grave under a great sycamore, and Allan was about to read the funeral service, when his fellow-traveller reappeared.
White, haggard, with wild eyes, and clothes stained with mire and sedge, the red clay of the forest paths, the green slime of swamp and bog, Allan could only look at him in pitying wonder.
"Where in Heaven's name have you been?" he asked, looking up from the rough basket-work coffin—bamboo and bulrush—interwoven by native hands.
"I don't know. Out yonder, between the plain and the river. I was a craven to fly from the face of death—I, a soldier," with a short, ironical laugh. "I don't know how it was with me last night. I couldn't bear it. I had been thinking of that verse in the gospel—'One shall be taken,' but I didn't think it would be that one—the hardy, experienced traveller. It might have been you or I. Not he, Allan. It was a blow, wasn't it?—a blow that might shake a strong man's nerves!"
Allan stretched out his hand to his comrade in silence, and they clasped hands, heartily on Allan's part; and his grip was so earnest that he did not know it clasped a nerveless hand.
"It was a crushing blow," he said gravely. "I don't blame you for being scared. You have come back in time to see him laid in his grave, and to say a prayer with me."
Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, with a hopeless look.
"Where do our prayers go, I wonder? We know no more than the natives, when they sacrifice to their gods. Isn't it rather feeble to go on praying when there never comes any answer? I saw you praying last night—wrestling with God in prayer, as pious people call it. I saw your forehead damp with agony, your lips writhing—every vein in your clasped hands standing out like whipcord. I watched you, and was sorry, and would have given ten years of my life to save his; but I couldn't pray with you. And, you see, there came no answer. Inexorable Nature worked out her own problem in her own way. Your prayers—my silence; one was as much use as the other. Nobody heeded us; nobody cared for us. The blow fell."
"Ah, we know not, we know not! There is compensation, perhaps. We shall see and know our friends in heaven, and look back and know that we were children groping in the dark. Try to believe, Geoffrey. Belief is best."
"Belief. The pious mourner's anodyne, the Christian's patent pain-killer. Yes, belief is best; but, you see, some people can't believe. I can't. And I see only the hideous side of death—the dull horror of annihilation. A week ago we had a man with us, the manliest of men—all nerve, and fire, and brain-power, brave as a lion, ready to do and endure—and now we have only—that," with a look of heart-sickness, "which we are impatient to put out of sight for ever. Put it in the ground, Allan; fill in the grave; trample it down; let us forget that there was ever such a man."
He flung himself upon the ground and sobbed out his grief. There had been something in the blunt, dogged straightforwardness of Cecil Patrington's character which had attached this wayward nature to him with hooks of steel.
"I loved him," he muttered, getting up, calm and grave even to sullenness. "And now you and I are alone."
He stood beside the grave where native hands had gently lowered the rough coffin, and where Allan had scattered flowers and herbs, whose aromatic odours hung heavy on the still sultriness of the atmosphere. He looked at Allan, and not with looks of love.
"Only we two," he muttered, "and these black beasts of burden."