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

a dozen other languages better than the natives do themselves. Has money—outfit like a prince's—everything imaginable—Rifles—microscopes—cigars—wine. He didn't make himself agreeable here—except to the Arabs. Didn't call at the Residency. Some of us asked him to dinner one evening, but he pleaded a headache. We were glad, because afterward we saw him eat at the hotel—has ways of using his fingers at table, picked up I suppose from the people he has lived among."

"Are you nearly ready to let us out of here?" asked Monty.

"Your quarantine's up," said the doctor. "I'm only waiting for word from the office."

We drank three rounds of cocktails with him, after which he grew darkly friendly and proposed we should all set out together in search of the hoard.

"I've no money," he assured us. "Nothing but a knowledge of the natives and a priceless thirst. I'd have to throw up my practise here. Of course I'd need some sort of guarantee from you chaps."

The proposal falling flat, he gathered the nearly empty bottles into one place and shouted for his boy to come and carry them away.

"Think it over!" he urged as he got up to leave us. "You might take a bigger fool than me with you. You'd need a doctor on a trip like that. I'm an expert on some of these tropical diseases. Think it over!"

"Fred!" said Monty, as soon as the doctor had left the room, "I'm tempted by this ivory of yours."

But Fred, in the new blue dressing-gown the doctor had brought, was in another world—a land of trope and key and metaphor. For the last ten minutes he had kept a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper working, and now the strident tones of his too long neglected concertina stirred the heavy air and shocked the birds outside to silence. The instrument was wheezy, for in addition to the sacrilege the port authorities had done by way of disinfection, the bellows had been wetted when Fred plunged from the sinking Bundesrath and swam. But he is not what you could call particular, as long as a good loud noise comes forth that can be jerked and broken into anything resembling tune.

"Tempted, are you?" he laughed. He looked like a drunken troubadour en deshabille, with those up-brushed mustaches and his usually neat brown beard all spread awry. "Temptation's more fun than plunder!"

Yerkes threw an orange at him, more by way of recognition than remonstrance. We had not heard Fred sing since he tried to charm cholera victims in the Bundesrath's fo'castle, and, like the rest of us, he had his rights. He sang with legs spread wide in front of him, and head thrown back, and, each time he came to the chorus, kept on repeating it until we joined in.

        There's a prize that's full familiar from Zanzibar to France;
        From Tokio to Boston; we are paid it in advance.
        It's the wages of adventure, and the wide world knows the feel
        Of the stuff that stirs good huntsmen all and brings the
          hounds to heel!
        It's the one reward that's gratis and precedes the toilsome task—
        It's the one thing always better than an optimist can ask!
        It's amusing, it's amazing, and it's never twice the same;
        It's the salt of true adventure and the glamour of the game!

        CHORUS
        It is tem-tem-pitation!
        The one sublime sensation!
        You may doubt it, but without it
        There would be no derring-do!
        The reward the temptee cashes
        Is too often dust and ashes,
        But you'll need no spurs or lashes
        When temptation beckons you!

        Oh, it drew the Roman legions to old Britain's distant isle,
        And it beckoned H. M. Stanley to the sources of the Nile;
        It's the one and only reason for the bristling guns at Gib,
        For the skeletons at Khartoum, and the crimes of Tippoo Tib.
        The gentlemen adventurers braved torture for its sake,
        It beckoned out the galleons, and filled the hulls of Drake!
        Oh, it sets the sails of commerce, and it whets the edge of war,
        It's the sole excuse for churches, and the only cause of law!

        CHORUS
        It is tem-tem-pitation! etc., etc.
        No note is there of failure (that's a tune the croakers sing!)
        This song's of youth, and strength, and health, and time
            that's on the wing!
        Of wealth beyond the hazy blue of far horizons flung—
        But never of the folk returning, disillusioned, stung!
        It's a tale of gold and ivory, of plunder out of reach,
        Of luck that fell to other men, of treasure on the beach—
        A compound, cross-reciprocating two-way double spell,
        The low, sweet lure to Heaven, and the tallyho to hell!

        CHORUS
        It is tem-tem-pitation!
        The one sublime sensation!
        You may doubt it, but without it
        There would be no derring-do!
        It's the siren of to-morrow
        That knows naught of lack or sorrow,
        So you'll sell your bonds and borrow,
        When temptation beckons you!

Once Fred starts there is no stopping him, short of personal violence, and he ran through his ever lengthening list of songs, not all quite printable, until the very coral walls ached with the concertina's wailing, and our throats were hoarse from ridiculous choruses. As Yerkes put it:

"When pa says sing, the rest of us sing too or go crazy!"

I went to the window and tried to get a view of shipping through the mango branches. Masts and sails—lateen spars particularly—always get me by the throat and make me happy for a while. But all I could see was a low wall beyond the little compound, and over the top of it headgear of nearly all the kinds there are. (Zanzibar is a wonderful market for second-hand clothes. There was even a tall silk hat of not very ancient pattern.)

"Come and look, Monty!" said I, and he and Yerkes came and stood beside me. Seeing his troubadour charm was broken, Fred snapped the catch on the concertina and came too.

"Arabian Nights!" he exclaimed, thumping Monty on the back.

"Didums, you drunkard, we're dead and in another world! Juma is the one-eyed Calender! Look—fishermen—houris—how many houris?—seen 'em grin!—soldiers of fortune—merchants—sailors—by gad, there's Sindbad himself!—and say! If that isn't the Sultan Haroun-al-Raschid in disguise I'm willing to eat beans and pie for breakfast to oblige Yerkes! Look—look at the fat ruffian's stomach and swagger, will you?"

Yerkes sized up the situation quickest.

"Sing him another song, Fred. If we want to strike up acquaintance with half Zanzibar, here's our chance!"

"Oh, Richard, oh, my king!" hummed Monty. "It's Coeur de Lion and
Blondell over again with the harp reversed."

If Zanzibar may be said to possess main thoroughfares, that window of ours commanded as much of one as the tree and wall permitted; and music—even of a concertina—is the key to the heart of all people whose hair is crisp and kinky. Perhaps rather owing to the generosity of their slave law, and Koran teachings, more than to racial depravity, there are not very many Arabs left in that part of the world with true semitic features and straight hair, nor many woolly-headed folk who are quite all-Bantu. There is enough Arab blood in all of them to make them bold; Bantu enough for syncopated, rag-time music to take them by the toes and stir them. The crowd in the street grew, and gathered until a policeman in red fez and khaki knickerbockers came and started trouble. He had a three-cornered fight on his hands, and no sympathy from any one, within two minutes. Then the man with the stomach and swagger—he whom Fred called Haroun-al-Raschid—took a hand in masterly style. He seized the police-man from behind, flung him out of the crowd, and nobody was troubled any more by that official.

"That him Tippoo Tib's nephew!" said a voice, and we all jumped. We had not noticed Juma come and stand beside us.

"I suspect nephew is a vague relationship in these parts," said Monty.
"Do you mean Tippoo's brother was that man's father, Juma?"

"No, bwana.* Tippoo Tib bringing slave long ago f'm Bagamoyo. Him she-slave having chile. She becoming concubine Tippoo Tib his wife's brother. That chile Tippoo Tib's nephew. Tea ready, bwana."

————————- * Bwana, Swahili word meaning master. ————————-

"What does that man do for a living?"

"Do for a living?" Juma was bewildered.

"What does he work at?"

"Not working."

"Never?"

"No.

"Has he private means, then?"

"I not understand. Tea ready, bwana!"

"Has he got mali*?" Fred demanded.

"Mali? No. Him poor man."

——————— *Mali, Swahili word meaning possession, property. ———————

"Then how does he exist, if he has no mali and doesn't work?"

"Oh, one wife here, one there, one other place, an'
Tippoo Tib byumby him giving food."

"How many wives has he?"

"Tea ready, bwana!"

"How do they come to be spread all over the place?" (We were shooting questions at him one after the other, and Juma began to look as if he would have preferred a repetition of the toe-nail incident.)

"Oh, he travel much, an' byumby lose all money, then stay here. Tea, him growing cold."

There is no persuading the native servant who has lived under the Union Jack that an Englishman does not need hot tea at frequent intervals, even after three cocktails in an afternoon. So we trooped to the table to oblige him, and went through the form of being much refreshed.

"What is that man's name?" demanded Monty.

"Hassan."

"Do you know him?"

"Everybody know him!"

"Can you get a message to him?"

"Yes, bwana."

"Tell him to come and talk with us at the hotel as soon as he hears we are out of this."

We did not know it at the time (for I don't think that Monty guessed it either) that we had taken the surest way of setting all Zanzibar by the ears. In that last lingering stronghold of legal slavery,* where the only stories judged worth listening to are the very sources of the Thousand Nights and a Night, intrigue is not perhaps the breath of life, but it is the salt and savory. There is a woolly-headed sultan who draws a guaranteed, fixed income and has nothing better to do than regale himself and a harem with western alleged amusement. There are police, and lights, and municipal regulations. In fact, Zanzibar has come on miserable times from certain points of view. But there remains the fun of listening to all the rumors borne by sea. "Play on the flute in Zanzibar and Africa as far as the lakes will dance!" the Arabs say, and the gentry who once drove slaves or traded ivory refuse to believe that the day of lawlessness is gone forever. One rumor then is worth ten facts. Four white men singing behind the bars of the lazaretto, desiring to speak with Hassan, "'nephew" of Tippoo Tib, and offering money for the introduction, were enough to send whispers sizzling up and down all the mazy streets.

———————— * Slavery was not absolutely and finally abolished in Zanzibar until 1906, during which year even the old slaves, hitherto unwilling to be set free, had to be pensioned off. ————————

Our release from quarantine took place next day, and we went to the hotel, where we were besieged at once by tradesmen, each proclaiming himself the only honest outfitter and "agent for all good export firms." Monty departed to call on British officialdom (one advantage of traveling with a nobleman being that he has to do the stilted social stuff). Yerkes went to call on the United States Consul, the same being presumably a part of his religion, for he always does it, and almost always abuses his government afterward. So Fred and I were left to repel boarders, and it came about that we two received Hassan.

He entered our room with a great shout of "Hodi!" (and Fred knew enough to say "Karibu!")—a smart red fez set at an angle on his shaven head, his henna-stained beard all newly-combed—a garment like a night-shirt reaching nearly to his heels, a sort of vest of silk embroidery restraining his stomach's tendency to wobble at will, and a fat smile decorating the least ashamed, most obviously opportunist face I ever saw, even on a black man.

"Jambo, jambo;"* he announced, striding in and observing our lack of worldly goods with one sweep of the eye. (We had not stocked up yet with new things, and probably he did not know our old ones were at the bottom of the sea.)