The Ivory Trail by Talbot Mundy (top fiction books of all time TXT) 📗

a boy whose fight has been broken off without his seeking or consent. Like me, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped blood from his neck. The sight of his own blood—even such a little trickle as that—has peculiar effect an a man.

"By Jiminy, she has scratched the wrong dog's ear!" he growled to me as we went to the door together.

"They're all in there!" I said excitedly, when the door slammed shut behind us. "Hurry down and get me a gun! I'll hold the door while you run for police and have 'em arrested!"

"Piffle!" he said. "Come on! Three Sultan's witnesses and two lone white women against us two—come away! Come away!"

Monty and Fred were still out, so we went to our own room.

"I'm wondering," I said, "what Monty will say."

"I'm not!" said Will. "I'm not troubling, either! I'm not going to tell Monty a blessed word! See here—she thinks she knows where some o' that ivory is. Maybe the government of German East Africa is in on the deal, and maybe not; that makes no present difference. She thinks she's wise. And she has fixed up with the Sultan to have him claim it when found, so's she'll get a fat slice of the melon. There's a scheme on to get the stuff, when who should come on the scene but our little party, and that makes 'em all nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that dame herself. I'll not tell Monty a thing!"

"How about Coutlass the Greek?" said I. "D'you suppose he's her accomplice?"

"Maybe! One of her dupes perhaps! I suspect she'll suck him dry of information and cast him off like a lemon rind. I dare bet she's using him. She can't use me! Shall you tell Monty?"

"No," I said. "Not unless we both agreed."

He nodded. "You and I weren't born to what they call the purple.
We're no diplomatists; but we get each other's meaning."

"Here come Monty and Fred," said I. "Is my neck still bloody? No, yours doesn't show."

We met them at the stairhead, and Monty did not seem to notice anything.

"Fred has composed a song to the moonlight on Zanzibar roadstead while you fellows were merely after-dinner mundane. D'you suppose the landlord 'ud make trouble if we let him sing it?"

"Let's hope so!" said Will. "I'm itching for a row like they say drovers in Monty's country itch for mile-stones! Let Fred warble. I'll fight whoever comes!"

Monty eyed him and me swiftly, but made no comment.

"Bill's homesick!" said Fred. "The U. S. eagle wants its Bowery! We'll soothe the fowl with thoughts of other things—where's the concertina?"

"No, no, Fred, that'll be too much din!"

Monty made a grab for the instrument, but Fred raised it above his head and brought it down between his knees with chords that crashed like wedding bells. Then he changed to softer, languorous music, and when he had picked out an air to suit his mood, sat down and turned art loose to do her worst.

He has a good voice. If he would only not pull such faces, or make so sure that folk within a dozen blocks can hear him, he might pass for a professional.

"Music suggestive of moonlight!" he said, and began:

        "The sentry palms stand motionless. Masts move against the sky.
        With measured creak of curving spars dhows gently to the
                jeweled stars
        Rock out a lullaby.

        "Silver and black sleeps Zanzibar. The moonlit ripples croon
        Soft songs of loves that perfect are, long tales of
                red-lipped spoils of war,
        And you—you smile, you moon!
        For I think that beam on the placid sea
        That splashes, and spreads, and dips, and gleams,
        That dances and glides till it comes to me
        Out of infinite sky, is the path of dreams,
        And down that lane the memories run
        Of all that's wild beneath the sun!"

"You fellows like that one? Anybody coming? Nobody for Will to fight yet? Too bad! Well—we'll try a-gain! There's no chorus. It's all poetic stuff, too gentle to be yowled by three such cannibals as you! Listen!

        "Old as the moonlit silences, to-night's loves are the same
        As when for ivory from far, and cloves and gems of Zanzibar
        King Solomon's men came.

        "Sinful and still the same roofs lie that knew da Gama's heel,
        Those beams that light these sleepy waves looked on when
              men threw murdered slaves
        To make the sharks a meal.
        And I think that beam on the silvered swell
        That spreads, and splashes, and gleams, and dips,
        That has shone on the cruel and brave as well,
        On the trail o' the slaves and the ivory ships,
        Is the lane down which the memories run
        Of all that's wild beneath the sun."

The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased. Fred fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.

"Why don't you applaud?" he asked.

"Oh, bravo, bravo!" said Will and I together.

Monty looked hard at both of us.

"Strange!" he remarked. "You're both distracted, and you've each got a slight cut over the jugular!"

"Been trying out razors," said Yerkes.

"Um-m-m!" remarked Monty. "Well—I'm glad it's no worse. How about bed, eh? Better lock your door—that lady up-stairs is what the Germans call gefaehrlich!* Goo'night!"

—————- * Gefaehrlich, dangerous. —————-

CHAPTER THREE THE NJO HAPA SONG

  Tongues! Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur
        of streets ahum!
  Trade! Oh, frasila weights of clove—ivory—copra—copal
        gum—
  Rubber—vanilla and tortoise-shell! The methods change.
        The captains come.

        I was old when the clamor o' Babel's end
        (All seas were chartless then!)
        Drove forth the brood, and Solitude
        Was the newest quest of men.
        I lay like a gem in a silken sea
        Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed
        Till scented winds that waft afar
        Bore word o' the warm delights there are
        Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar
        Long rhapsodies of rest.

  Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when
        the winds are freed.
  Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o' the reefs
        where sea-birds feed,
  Screaming and skirling and down again. (Though the sea-birds
        warn do captains heed?)

There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar. Passengers have to submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longshoremen, who recognize one sole and only point of honor: neither passenger nor luggage shall be dropped into the surf.

Their invariable habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides the point; and then more often than not it is the victim's fate to be carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself—fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he shall pay them will surely be insufficient.

But we had a privy councilor of England of our party, and favors were shown us that never fall to the lot of ordinary travelers. Opposite the Sultan's palace is the Sultan's private wharf, so royal and private that it is a prison offense to trespass on it without written permission. Because of his official call at the Residency, and of his card left on the Sultan, wires had been pulled, and a pompous individual whose black face sweated greasily, and whose palm itched for unearned increment, called on Monty very shortly after breakfast with intimation that the wharf had been placed at our disposal, since His Highness the Sultan desired to do us honor.

So when the B. I. steamer dropped anchor in the great roadstead shortly after noon we were taken to the wharf by one of the Sultan's household—a very civil-spoken Arab gentleman—and three English officers met us there who made a fuss over Monty and were at pains to be agreeable to the rest of us. While we stood chatting and waiting for the boat that should row us and belongings the mile-and-a-half or so to the steamer, I saw something that made me start. Fred gazed presently in the same direction.

"Johnson is number one!" he said, as if checking off my mental processes. He meant Hassan. "Number two is Georges Coutlass, our friend the Greek. Number three is—am I drunk this early in the day?—what do you see?—doesn't she look to you like?—by the big blind god of men's mistakes it's—Monty! Didums, you deaf idiot, look! See!"

At that everybody naturally looked the same way. Everybody nodded. Coutlass the Greek, and Hassan, reputed nephew of Tippoo Tib, were headed in one boat toward the steamer, the worse for the handling, but right side up and no angrier than the usual passenger. Following them was another boat containing a motley assortment of Arabs and part-Arabs, who might, or might not be associated with them.

On the beach still, surrounded yet by a swarm of longshoremen who yelled and fought, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon and her Syrian maid stood at bay. Her two Swahili men-servants were overwhelmed and already being carried to a boat. Her luggage was being borne helter-skelter after them, and another boat waited for her just beyond the belt of surf, the rowers standing up to yell encouragement at the sweating pack that dared not close in on its victims. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon appeared to have no other weapon than a parasol, but she had plainly the upper hand.

"She has a way with her with natives," said the senior officer present.

"It's a pity," said Monty. "I mean, one scarcely likes to use this wharf and watch that."

"Quite so. Yet we daren't accord her official recognition. She'd be certain to make capital out of it. We're awfully glad she's going. The Residency atmosphere is one huge sigh of relief. We would like to speed the parting guest, but it mayn't be done. However, you'll know there are others not so particular. I imagine her friends are late for the appointment."

"Where's she going?" asked Monty.

"British East Africa."

"Mombasa?"

"And then on. She has drafts on a German merchant in Nairobi."

From that moment until we were safely in our quarters on the steamer Monty's attitude became one of rigid indifference toward her or anything to do with her. The British officers went out to the steamer with us, but all the way Monty only talked of the climate, trade conditions, and the other subjects to which polite conversation of Africa's east coast is limited. Fred kept nudging him, but Monty took no notice. Yerkes whispered to Fred. Then I heard Fred whisper to Monty in one of those raucous asides that he perfectly well knows can be heard by everybody.

"Why don't you ask 'em about her, you ass?"

But Monty refused to rise. He talked of the bowed and ancient slaves of Zanzibar, who refused in those days to be set free and afforded prolific ground for attack on British public morals by people whose business it is to abuse England for her peccadillos and forget her virtues.*

———————- * In 1914 there were still thousands of slaves in German East, although the German press and public were ever loudest in their condemnation of British conditions. ———————-

We reached the ship, and were watching our piles of luggage arrive up the accommodation ladder when the solution of Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon's problem appeared. She arrived alongside in the official boat of the German consulate, a German officer in white uniform on either hand, and the German ensign at the stern.

"Pretty