"Steer straight toward 'em!" Fred called to me, as soon as it was evident that the launch did not intend to pass us by. "Keep headed toward them!"
That was not easy in the light wind, until Schillingschen tired of staring at us and gave an order to the engineer. Then they laid the launch broadside on to our bow at about two hundred yards' range, and without a word of warning opened fire on us from all six rifles, Schillingschen devoting his first attention to myself at the helm.
Our lone rifle cracked in reply, but they could not see Fred and did not guess where to shoot in order to search him out. They came no nearer, but circled slowly around us, only Schillingschen's bullets appearing to come anywhere near the target, until a yell from below showed what their real plan was and I understood why the sail was not ripped and no bullets whistled overhead. They were shooting through the planking of the dhow, endeavoring to massacre the helpless crowd below, and no doubt to sink her and drown us as soon as she was full enough of holes.
A wounded Nyamwezi came scrambling on deck, spouting blood from his neck and crazed with fear. He jumped overboard and tried to swim toward the launch, but one of the Germans hit him in the head at the third shot and he disappeared. Then one of Schillingschen's elephant bullets slit my sleeve, and the next one pierced my helmet.
"Put one into Schillingschen, Fred!" I shouted, but Fred did not answer. He kept up a very steady succession of shots that were doing no good at all that I could see.
Another German bullet found its mark below deck in the thigh of the Goanese. He might have known enough to lie quiet, having some alleged white blood in him, but instead he, too, came struggling to the after-deck, bellowing like a mad-man. Coutlass knocked him back below with a blow on the chin, and he there and then threw the whole crowd into a panic by screaming and kicking. They all began to try to swarm together through the narrow opening, and those in the rear tore at the reed deck.
Into that pandemonium went Coutlass, armed with nothing but Hellenic fury, thoughtful of nothing but his lady-love—surely reckless of his own skin. He beat, kicked, bit, scragged, banged their foolish heads together, cursed, spat, gouged, and strangled as surely no catamount ever did. Brown leaped in to lend a hand, and into the midst of that inferno three more bullets penetrated, each wounding a man. Lady Waldon, mad with some idiotic strategy of her own sudden devising, seized the tiller and tried to wrench it from my hand. The Syrian Rebecca, imagining new treachery and fearful for her Greek lover, tried to prevent her with teeth and nails. The Germans raised a war-whoop of wild enjoyment. And just at the height of all that, Fred's three-and-twentieth shot went home.
There was a loud report, followed by instant nothing except stampede on the part of the Germans to get out of reach of something. Then the something grew denser; invisible hot vapor became a pall of steam that bid the launch from view, three more shots from Fred's rifle finding the proper mark by sheer accident, for there was another explosion; the cloud increased and the launch stopped dead.
"That gray sheet of metal wasn't her boiler at all!" Fred shouted back to me. "The first shot pierced the boiler when I found out where to aim! I think three of them are scalded badly—hope so!—high pressure steam—superheated—did you see? Now leave 'em to find their own way home!"
"See if you can't get Schillingschen!" said I.
But Schillingschen was invisible in the white cloud, and Fred refused to waste one of the half-dozen cartridges remaining. The light wind that bore us away from the launch also spread the screen of steam between us and them. A shot or two from Schillingschens rifle proved him to be still alive, and still determined, but missed us by so much that we began to dare to sit upright. Then Fred went below to sort out wounded men, plug holes in the dhow, and stop the panic, and we all prayed for wind with a fervor they never exceeded in Nelson's fleet.
When Will had gone below to help Fred, the panic had ceased, two dead men had been thrown overboard, and six of the crew had been set to work bailing in deadly earnest to keep ahead of the new leaks, there was time to consider the position and to realize how hugely better off we were than if the launch had caught us somewhere close inshore. Now we could sail safely northward, every puff of wind carrying us nearer to British water and safety, whereas unless they could mend that high-pressure boiler, they would have to lie there for a week, or a month—die unless some one came in search of them. Had we holed their boiler near the shore they would have been able to take to the land until they found canoes. Good canoes, well manned, could have overhauled us hand over fist like terriers after a rat.
It was fifteen minutes yet before we were out of rifle range, and Schillingschen tried to make the most of them when the steam thinned, exposing his beefy carcass recklessly. But by the time it had thinned down sufficiently to let him really see us we were too far away to make sure shooting. He slit the sail, giving us half a night's work to mend it, and made three more holes in our planking, but hurt nobody.
That was the only launch the German government had on the lake in those days, an almost perfect toy with an aluminum hull and more up-to-date gadgets on her machinery than a battleship's engineer could have explained the purpose of in a watch. They had lavished a whole appropriation on one show. From the minute we were out of range of Schillingschen's big-bore elephant gun we ran risk of starvation, and perhaps surprise, but no longer of pursuit, and we headed the Queen of Sheba as nearly as we could guess for British East with feelings that even Lady Waldon shared, for she grew distantly polite again, and complimented Fred on his cool nerve and accurate shooting.
We should have suspected treachery, for she made no attempt to retaliate on Rebecca for scratching her face. Unnatural inaction should have put us on our guard. She even went so far as to compliment the maid on "finding such a great, strong, brave man as Coutlass to cherish her." The Greek simply cooed at that—threw out his great chest and rearranged with his fingers the whiskers that had almost totally disguised him.
(There was not one of us but looked like a pirate by that time. The natives of that part of Africa shave every particle of hair from their bodies whenever they get the chance, and prefer their heads as shiny and naked as any other part of them. But the German prison system, devised to break the spirit of whoever came within its clutches, included prohibition of shaving, so that we had the woolliest crowd of passengers imaginable.)
We found it impossible to help being sorry for Lady Waldon, or even for the maid, who suffered in spite of Coutlass's kisses and strong arms. The obvious fact that the dhow was no place for a woman made us overlook the conduct of both of them over and over again, shutting eyes and ears to Lady Waldon's meanness and the maid's increasing impudence.
Lady Waldon actually began to set her own cap at Coutlass, encouraging him to boast to the porters, and pretending to admire the gift with which he told them tales in Kiswahili that would have made even her blush if she had understood the half of them. At intervals the maid grew jealous, and had to be kissed back to serenity by Coutlass, who was no less in love with her because of any mere addition to the number of his interests. He could have made hot love to six women, and have enjoyed it. There were times when he really flattered himself that Lady Waldon admired his looks and fine physique.
Food was now the chief concern. We trailed a fishing line behind us, but caught nothing. Brown said there were too many crocodiles for fish to be plentiful, but on the other hand, Kazimoto, who surely should have known, swore that the water was full of big fish, and that the islanders lived on little else. Whatever the truth of it, we caught nothing; and when we reached an island whose shore was lined with fish-traps made of stakes and basket-work we searched all the traps in vain. The natives we saw in the distance all ran away from us, and there were no crops that we could see of any kind, which rather bore out Kazimoto's story.
"Crocks' eggs are what those savages eat, I tell you!" Brown insisted. "They're wholesome and don't taste worse than a rotten hen's egg." We offered him his own price if he would eat one himself in the presence of us all; but hungry though we were all beginning to be, he refused, and we needed his example.
After that first island we began to sail among a regular archipelago, most of them scarcely better than granite rocks on which the crocodiles could crawl to sun themselves, but some of them a half-mile long, or longer. Nearly all of them were barren, but at last, when we judged ourselves well inside the British portion of the lake, we came on a very large one that had a mountain in the middle of it, and contained a fair-sized village hidden among trees.
It was dark, and we were all famished when we reached it, so when we had poled the dhow into a little bay between granite boulders big enough to hide her, mast and all, we went ashore, made fires, and served out the last handfuls of rice, skimping our own allowance to increase those of the porters, whose larger stomachs afforded vaster yearning power. They were pitiably meager rations—a mere jest—an insult to hungry men; but we found before we had cooked and finished them that we had witnesses who thought us fortunate.
They came so silently that even the porters did not notice them at first—gaunt black shadows flitting in the deeper shadows, and coming presently to squat outside the edge of the circle of firelight, until a tribe, men, women and little children, were all gathered around us burning up the darkness with their eyes.
They were hungrier than we! Our food, that looked so scant to us, to them was a very feast of the gods! They all had pieces of leather or plaited grass drawn tight around their middles to lessen the pangs of hunger, and the chief, who sat rather apart from the rest, gnawed at a piece of bark.
None of them wore any clothes. Those that had goat-skin aprons had them on behind, and they were as free from self-consciousness as the trees in winter. Some of them had spears, and they all had knives, yet none offered violence, or as much as begged. There were three or four hundred of them, at the lowest reckoning, yet they allowed us to finish our meal in the dark in peace.
There was nothing to say when we had finished. We knew what the matter was, and they knew we knew. We had nothing to share with them, and they knew that, for they could see the empty rice bags that the porters had shaken and beaten to get out the very dust. We did not know their language; even Kazimoto professed himself ignorant of any dozen words that could unlock their understanding.
Presently, under the eyes of all of them, Fred got out the rifle from its wrappings and proceeded to clean and oil it carefully, as every genuine hunter should before he sleeps.
Then it was evident at once that new hope for some reason had been born among that silent crowd. The chief, uninvited, drew nearer and watched every detail of Fred's husbandry with glittering eye.
"Give him the oily rag to suck!" suggested Brown, but that proved not to be the key to his interest, for he thrust the rag back into Fred's hand and motioned to him to continue cleaning.
Finally Fred examined the last handful of cartridges carefully one by one, and filled the magazine. Then, after making sure the sights were in order, he began to wrap the rifle again.
But at that the chief held out a lean long arm and stopped him. Coutlass sprang to his feet in a hurry, imagining that was a signal to attack at last, but Fred ordered him to sit down, and Lady Waldon, who seemed possessed for the once by uncanny calmness, asked him to give her an arm to the dhow, where she proposed to try to sleep. Coutlass felt flattered, and obeyed. The maid got up and followed them both in a fury of jealousy, and they three were lost to view in a moment among the shadows cast by our four flickering fires. The other Greek got up and followed them, leaving the Goanese already snoozing by the fire.
Then, just as the half of a brilliantly pale moon rose above the papyrus, the chief came a pace nearer and touched Fred's hand. Then he beckoned. Then he touched the hand again and retreated backward. Glancing around I saw the shadows that were his tribe leaning toward us in strained attention, with eyes for nothing but their chief and Fred. Understanding there was something that the chief desired him to go and do, Fred passed the rifle to Will and rose to his feet.
With patience that was simply pathetic the chief shook his head and tried to explain something in weary-motioned pantomime. Fred took the rifle back from Will. The chief nodded. Fred started to follow him, and then the whole tribe sighed, with a sound like the evening wind rustling through the papyrus.
It being clear now that he was to shoot something, Fred took the wrappings off the rifle, threw them to me, and walked into the dark, the chief trotting ahead like a phantom and glancing back to beckon about once a minute. Not caring to miss the play, we followed in Indian file, I bringing up the rear.
The whole tribe rose at once and flitted along beside us on our landward side. We could not hear a footfall, or a breath. They passed through dry grass without rustling, neither stumbling nor crowding one another, but all so governed by one all-absorbing thought that they acted in absolute unison. That the thought was food did not, even in their starving state, make them forget the crowning need for silence. We with our leather boots made more noise than all they together.
We passed along the lake shore for half a mile, until suddenly the chief, looking tall as a stripped tree in the pale uncertain light, threw up an arm and waved it in a circle. Instantly the whole tribe vanished. It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly switched off at the performer's whim. Then the chief continued forward, we marching more carefully.
Now he turned to the half-right and followed a narrow track across a neck of land that jutted out into the lake. We approached a low rise, and as he drew near the top of that he went down on hands and knees, crawling up the last few yards so cautiously that I had to stare hard to be sure he was there at all.
As soon as Fred came near he made frantic signals to him to get down and crawl too; so we all knelt down and crawled behind Fred, striving to make no noise and filling the unhappy chief so full of fury at the noise we did make that he writhed in nervous torment.
On top of the rise Fred stopped and in imitation of the chief thrust his head forward very gradually. One by one we followed suit until, lying prone in line along the ridge within thirty paces of the water, we saw at last what we were after.
Bathed in the moonlight, head and shoulders clear of the mirror-like water, a great bull hippopotamus surveyed the scenery, drinking in contentment through his little placid eyes. Out there nothing troubled him, as for instance the mosquitoes troubled us. He had eaten his fill, for some sort of green stuff hung from his jaws; and he was beginning to feel sleepy, for he opened his enormous mouth and yawned straight toward us—three tons of meat on the hoof, less than a hundred yards away, stock-still, and unsuspicious!
The chief began whispering unintelligible warnings in a voice so low that it sounded like the drone of insects. Fred thrust the rifle forward inch by inch and, taking his time about it, settled himself comfortably for the shot. It was no easy shot in that uncertain light at a downward angle. The glare of the sun on the lake had troubled his eyes during the last few days. The shimmer of the moonlight was deceptive now. I wished he would pass the rifle to Will, or even to Brown of Lumbwa, who was digging his fingers into the earth beside me in almost uncontrollable excitement. But Fred was unperturbed, and the chief, who was nervous enough to detect the slightest sign of nervousness in Fred, did not seem to mistrust him for one second.
Three times I saw Fred breathe deeply, as if about to squeeze the trigger, but each time he was only "makkin' sikkar," and eased his lungs again. The target a hippo offers to a Mauser rifle bullet is not much more than half the size of a man's hand, including only the ear and eye and the narrow space between them. By daylight at a hundred yards that is nothing for a cool shot to complain about, but in half-moonlight, at that angle, it is none too much. I swore silently, wishing again and again that Fred would pass the rifle to Will, or to Brown—or to me! Yet if he had passed it to me I should have trembled worse than any one.
Visions began to haunt me of what would happen if Fred should miss! What would the effect be on wild folk tortured by hunger and keyed to the pitch of frenzy by suspense? Then, even while we watched, another problem added itself. Over on the water there began to come a wind, driving ripples and little waves in front of it. The moment those came near the hippo he would vanish from view, for they only care for moonlight when they can see it mirrored on a perfectly still surface.
I cursed Fred between set teeth, almost loud enough for him to hear me; for the hippo did move. His head was a foot nearer water-level; he had seen or heard something that alarmed him. He was in the act of sinking under water when Fred made sure of the sights at last and the rifle spoke, ringing out into the still night like the crack of Judgment Day, more startling because we had waited so long for it in such suspense.
Instantly the amazing happened. A yell burst out behind us that split the night apart. Where stilly blackness had been, now four or five hundred crazy shadows leaped and danced, murdering the silence with marrow-curdling noises intended to express joy.
Out on the water the stricken hippo pitched head downward and plunged like a mountain of meat gone mad, thrashing up great waves that were darkened with his life-blood. A whole herd, several hundred strong, emerged shoulder-high from the water to take one swift look at him and flee. The arriving wind overswept the little whirlpools they all made in the moonlight, as they dived to seek seclusion somewhere and no doubt to choose themselves a new bully after terrific fighting.
Our quarry plunged a last time, and stayed under. Now was new anxiety. In twenty minutes or half an hour he should rise to the surface again, but no man could guess where, and the wind and currents would very swiftly hide his great carcass somewhere amid the acres of papyrus unless sharp eyes were alert.
But the papyrus was friend as well as foe. In a space of time to be measured by seconds the yelling young men of the tribe had uncovered three canoes, hidden from marauding enemies among the more-than-man-high reeds, and the rest of the tribe—men, women and young ones—scattered along the shore to watch from between the stalks.
In less than fifteen minutes some one yelled, and even the very old men, who had stayed beside us to gape at Fred's rifle and our clothes and boots, began running like hares toward the sound. In twenty minutes after that, with the aid of grass ropes and leather thongs, they had hauled the huge carcass to the shore and rolled it out of the water, where it lay glistening in moonlight, stumpy, foolish, legs uppermost.
The butcher's work——the feast—did not begin yet. There was time-honored custom to obey, which Kazimoto knew all about even if those ignorant wachenzie* would have fallen to without ceremony. He drove them off. A white man had slain that animal; therefore the white man's choice of meat was first, and he very leisurely and skillfully cut out the enormous tongue for us and fifty pounds of meat for our following before he would let them as much as touch the carcass with a dagger. [* Plural of machenzie, "man from 'way back,'" "rube," "simp."]
Then, though, the tribe fell to, naked, with little naked knives—tearing off the thick hide in foot-wide strips, and hacking the red flesh into lumps that they ate, raw and quivering, while they worked. The little bits of children, each chewing raw bloody meat, brought baskets for the overflow, dragging them to wherever they could find a space between the legs of struggling men, the women emptying the baskets almost as fast as the children filled them, and chewing until their jaws ran blood.
Nothing was wasted. The blood was caught in pools in part of the hide, spread like an apron on the earth, and lapped up by whoever could get to it. The very guts were gathered up in baskets to be cooked. And where the last little soft iron dagger had done its work, the blood had been drunk, and the last scrap of hide bad been cut into strips, to be chewed when the meat and its memory were things of the past, the enormous ribs lay glistening in the moonlight like those of an abandoned wreck, picked as clean as if the kites had done it.
"Have we done a commendable thing?" laughed Fred, looking at the crowd's distended paunches. "There's a good bull hippo the less. We've saved the lives for a time of several hundred gluttons. They know neither grace nor gratitude."
But he was wrong. They did. They brought Fred a woman—their fattest, ugliest; which means she was skin and bone and uglier than Want, also she was more afraid of Fred than Satan is said to be of shriving. The chief led her by the hand, she hanging back and hiding her face under one arm (which left the rest of her nakedness unprotected). He seized Fred's hand and put the woman's in it.
"Now you're spliced!" Brown explained. "Married to the gal forever in presence of legal witnesses!"
Kazimoto confirmed the fearful news.
"Married in regular form an' accord with tribal custom!" Brown continued, nodding solemnly.
"Divorce me—soon and swiftly, somebody!" Fred demanded.
We appealed to Kazimoto for information, but only threw him into a quandary, and he proceeded to add to ours. The usual price for a woman, it seemed, was cows—many or few according as she was lovely or her father rich. In case of divorce, custom decreed that the cows with their offspring should be given back. The objection to any other property than cows changing hands to bind or loose in wedlock was that food, for instance, when eaten was not returnable.
"Married to the gal for good an! all!"' Brown grinned, nudging Will and me to note Fred's consternation. "You'd better stay here an' take the chief's job when he kicks the bucket—possibly you can speed the day by overfeedin' him!"
"Some men's luck," Will murmured, but stopped in mid-sentence, for interruption came in the form of a weird figure, gesticulating like a windmill, stumbling and careening through the gloom, shouting as it came. Not until it was thirty yards away did an intelligible sound explain at least who the apparition was.
"Gassharamminy! Give me that gun!"
Coutlass burst in among us so out of breath that he could not force through his teeth another rational syllable, but he made his intentions partly clear by snatching at Fred's rifle, persisting until Will and I pulled him off.
"The dhow's gone!" he panted at last. "Give me that rifle, or come yourself! Hurry! There's a wind! You'll be too late!"
"You're dreaming or drunk!" Fred answered, but Coutlass refused to be disbelieved, and in another moment we were all running as fast as we dared through the darkness toward the camp-fires, where we had left the Goanese snoozing and the dhow snugly moored among the rocks.
The chief and his followers far outdistanced us in spite of their gorged condition—all except the woman, who jogged dutifully, although unhappily, behind Fred. When we reached the campfires they were standing gazing out on the lake, where we could just make out the bellying sail of the Queen of Sheba leaning like a phantom away from the gaining wind. The distance was not to be judged in that weak uncertain light. We all shouted together, but there came no answer and we could not tell whether the sound carried as far as the dhow or not.
"Gassharamminy!—why don't you shoot!" shouted Coutlass, dancing up and down the bank in frenzy. "Give me that rifle! I'll show you! I'll teach them!"
I believe I would have fired if the rifle had been in my hands. Brown, last to arrive and most out of breath, joined with Coutlass in angry shouts for vengeance. Will offered no argument against sending them a parting shot. Fred set the butt of the rifle down with a determined snort, walked over toward the fire, stirred the embers, threw on more fuel, and looked about him when the dry wood blazed.
"If she has left as much as one blanket among the lot of us, I don't see it anywhere!" he said, taking his seat on a rock.
"A blanket?" sneered Coutlass. "She has even your money! Worse than that—she has my woman! You were a gum-gasted galoot not to shoot at her!"
Fred patted the bulging pocket of his shooting jacket.
"Most of the money is here," he said quietly, and we all sighed with relief.
"Take canoes and chase them!" shouted Coutlass, beginning to dance up and down again.
"There's time enough" Fred answered. "We know the winds of these parts well enough by this time. This will blow until midnight. Then calm until dawn. After dawn a little more wind for an hour or two, then doldrums again until late afternoon. They'll run on a rock in all likelihood. If they do we can catch them at our leisure, supposing we can get these islanders to paddle. If it should blow hard, then we can't catch them anyhow. Sit down and tell us what happened, Coutlass!"
The Greek cursed and swore and pranced, but all in vain. Fred was inexorable. We others grew calmer when the problem of who should paddle the canoes solved itself suddenly with the arrival of fourteen of our own men. Discovering themselves left behind, they had run along the bank in vain hope of catching the dhow somehow—perchance of swimming through the crocodile-infested water, and returned now disconsolate, to leap and laugh with new hope at sight of us and of the red meat that Kazimoto had thrown on the ground near the fire. They came near in a cluster. Will hacked off a lump of meat for them, and they forthwith forgot their troubles, as instantly as the birds forget when a sparrow-hawk has done murder down a hedge-row and swooped away.
Not everything was gone after all. Kazimoto found the pots we had cooked the rice in, and started to boil the hippo's tongue for us.
"Come, Coutlass—sit down before we eat and tell us what happened,"Fred suggested.
The Greek paced up and down another time or two, and at last calmed himself sufficiently to laugh at Fred's woman, who had squatted down patiently in the shadow behind him.
"Easy for you!" he grinned savagely, squatting on the far side of the fire. "You have a woman! Mine is God knows where! She said to me—that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said to me—we sat all three together in the stern of the dhow, I with my arm around Rebecca, and she said to me—"
"I'll see if I can't make a dicker for the chief's canoes," Will interrupted. "We can hear the Greek's tale any old time."
"Trade my woman for them!" Fred suggested cheerfully. "Go on,Coutlass!"
The Greek gritted his teeth savagely. "She said—that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said, as we sat there in the dhow, 'How about the kicking Fred Oakes gave you on the island, Mr. Coutlass? Where is your Greek honor?'—Do you see? She worked on my bodily bruises and my spiritual courage at the same time—the cunning hussy! 'That Fred Oakes will win this Rebecca away from you very soon!' she went on. 'I have watched him."'
Fred smiled about as comfortably as a martyr on the grid. The presence of the dusky damsel, confirmed by her smell behind him, made him touchy on the subject of sex.
"Presently she said to me, 'I have my own affairs that will adjust themselves all the better for their absence when I get to British East. As for you, they will simply report you to the authorities for raiding those cattle of Brown's. Can you imagine that creature Brown forgiving you? He will have you thrown in jail! Why wait? But we must not leave the Goanese or the other porters, and we must hurry! You go,' she said, 'and send the Goanese and the rest of the porters on board!'
"So I did go. I kicked de Sousa awake, and he cursed me, because my toe landed once or twice on his thigh where the bullet wounded him. I drove him on board, and she put him to work with Kamarajes getting up the sail. Then I went off to get those cursed porters. I could not find them! The dogs had gone to the village, to find women I don't doubt! I tell you what I would do to them if they were mine!"
"Never mind that!" Fred cut in. We could all guess what form the punishment would take. "Get on with the tale! You couldn't find the porters. What next?"
"I decided to leave the dogs behind, and serve them right! I went back to the dhow in a great hurry. She was gone! Vanished! Disappeared as if the lake had opened up and swallowed her! I could just see the sail in the distance. I shouted! No answer! I shouted again. I heard Rebecca call to me! Then I heard laughter—Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon's laughter! Gassharamminy! I will run red-hot skewers into that woman when I catch her! Do you see how she has vengeance on Rebecca? Do you see now why she took sides between me and Kamarajes and de Sousa? Do you see how she has plotted? What will she do now? What Will she do?"
He began to pace up and down again furiously, shaking both fists at the unresponsive stars.
"She will do Rebecca an injury! She will give that girl to de Sousa or to that old Kamarajes! We shall never catch them! Gassharamminy! Oh, Absalom! You should have fired when I told you! That she-dog has a trick of some kind up her sleeve yet! How shall we catch her? Why do we wait? Give me that rifle! I will take a canoe and go after them alone! You do not know what Greek spirit is! I am American sometimes—English when it suits me—always Greek when I am wronged!"
"You certainly have been put upon" Fred answered. "Tell us how yourGreek spirit justified deserting us."
"Why not?" snarled Coutlass. "Do you love me? What would you do to me if you could get me to British East in your power? You would hand me over as a cattle thief!"
"You bet I will!" admitted Brown of Lumbwa. "You dog, you've ruined me!"
"What did I tell you?" demanded Coutlass. "Why, then, should I not look out for myself?"
"I think we'd better leave you on this island," Fred told him quietly. "We can't trust you out of sight. The only way to prevent you from stealing this rifle and murdering us all would be to lie awake in turns."
"Bah!" grinned the Greek, striding back toward the fire. "How many cartridges have you left? Five, eh? After I had murdered all of you, how many would remain?"
"You'll have to think of a better argument than that," smiled Fred, and for the first time I suspected he was speaking in deadly earnest. Coutlass suspected it, too, and grew still. The sweat burst out on his face, and his eyes bulged from their sockets.
"You will leave me here?" he stammered.
Fred nodded, smiling up at him.
"You see, you're such on all-in scoundrel!" Brown assured him.
"You! You poor drunkard!" Coutlass turned his back on Brown, and faced Fred squarely. "You are a man, Mr. Oakes! I can speak to you as to my brother."
Fred smiled blandly.
"I will speak to you God's truth!"
Fred grinned.
"I will tell you where the ivory is!"
Fred threw his head back and laughed outright.
"I speak to you on my honor! That mother of misery, Lady Saffren Waldon, stole a map from Shillingschen. Before I would agree to set the town on fire I made her give me that for a hostage, lest she should prove treacherous and leave me behind after all! I have it now! It is marked with a circle to show where Schillingschen believes the stuff must be, because he has searched everywhere else!"
"If that map is worth anything," Fred countered, "how did Lady SaffrenWaldon care to leave you behind with it?"
"The harridan forgot it!" answered Coutlass. "She was so delighted to get vengeance on Rebecca by taking her away from me that she did not care for anything else! She hates you! She hates me! She hates Rebecca! Those who hate—as I can hate!—would rather have revenge than all the riches of Africa! Do you think I would hesitate between money and revenge on her?"
"All right," Fred answered. "The map, then—what about it?"
"Take me with you and the map is yours!"
"Show it to me, then!"
"I must have a share of the ivory!"
"Show me the map first!"
Coutlass searched inside his flannel shirt—swiftly—more swiftly—angrily. His jaw dropped. Even between the fire-light and the moonlight one could judge that his color changed—and changed again.
"Show me the map before we bargain!" Fred insisted. "Hurry, man!There's Mr. Yerkes with the canoe. We can't wait here all night!"
"It is gone!" admitted Coutlass. "Some one stole it!"
"I could have told you that in the first place," Fred informed him, rising to his feet. "I have the map in my pocket."
"You stole it?" Coutlass gasped.
"Certainly not. Rebecca stole it while she was supposed to be sleeping in your arms!"
"Gassharamminy! I might have known it! Those Syrians—she meant to give us all the slip and find the ivory herself!"
"Nothing of the Sort!" said Fred. "She stole it from you, to give it to Lady Saffren Waldon! Kazimoto saw her do it—saw where Lady Waldon hid it—and stole it from her while she slept to give to me, believing it to be something of mine. Here it is!"
Fred let the end of a folded map protrude from his inner pocket just far enough for Coutlass to recognize it by the fire-light. The Greek turned on his heel.
"All right!" he said ruefully, swinging suddenly round again. "If you were alone I would fight you, my knife against your rifle! I can not fight all four of you! Go away then, and be damned! I have nothing to offer. There is nothing I can do. Leave me, and I will look after myself!"
"Now you're talking like a man." said Fred.
"Leave me that woman of yours, and go to hell, all of you!" laughed theGreek.
Fred seemed suddenly possessed of a bright idea. He turned to the woman and beckoned her to rise. Then in unmistakable pantomime he went through the motions of presenting her to Coutlass. The woman gasped—stammered something that was positively not consent—stared with frightened eyes at Coutlass—shook her shaven head violently—and ran away into the darkness, pursued by roars of laughter that speeded her on her way.
"A clear case of desertion!" announced Fred judicially. "You men are witnesses!" Then he turned once more to Coutlass. "I don't think we'll leave you to raise Cain on this island. It depends on you whether we find you a lonelier island—turn you loose or hand you over to the authorities in British East!"
"Good!" Coutlass shouted. "By Jingo, you are a gentleman! You are the best man in the world! I will treat you as my brother!"
"Thanks!" said Fred dryly.
"Aren't you men ever coming?" asked Will, striding out of the shadows. "I've made the dicker—found a man who'd been on the mainland and knows Swahili. The chief's agreeable to loan us two canoes in place of deeding you the woman. I took your name in vain, Fred, and consented to that while your back was turned—kick all you like—the deed is done! Four of his savages come with us as far as we want to go, we feeding 'em meat and paying 'em money. It's agreed they're to eat just as often as we do. They paddle the canoes back home when we're through with them. Are you all ready? Then all aboard! Let's hurry!"
When the last of the luck has deserted and the least of the chanceshas waned,When there's nowhere to run to and even the pluck in the smilethat 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 theknown and the old,Then you're facing, my son, what the Fathers from Abraham down to to-dayHave looked on alone, and stood up to alone, and each in his several wayO'ercame (or he shouldn't be Father). So ye shall o'ercome: whileye live,Though ye've nothing but breath and good-will to your name ye muststand to it naked, and give!
Ye shall learn in that hour that the plunder ye won by profession isnought—And false was the aim ye aspired with—and dross was the glamourye sought—The codes and the creeds that ye cherished were shadows of cloudsin the wind,(And ye can not recall for their counsel lost leaders ye dalliedbehind!)Ye shall stand in that hour and discover by agony's guttering flameHow the fruits of self-will, and the lees of ambition andbitterness all are the same,Until, stripped of desire, ye shall know that was death. Then theproof that ye liveShall 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 swingto 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 wrongwas before.Then the stones in the road shall be restful that used to be trapsfor your feet,Then the crowd shall be kind that was cruel before, and yoursolitude sweetThat was want to be gloomy aforetime and gray—when the proof that yeliveIs no longer the pain of desire, but the will—and the wit—andthe vision, to give!
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-by 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, andI'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.