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

our arrival at the village, Kazimoto wrapped an enormous mound of cold mtama pudding in a cloth and went his way, prophesying darkly of murder and sudden death lurking behind rocks and trees, as unwishful to be alone as a terrier without a master, but much too faithful to refuse duty.

The chief saw a side of the medal that we had not guessed existed. He came and sat beside us like an evil-smelling shadow, satisfied that now we could not dismiss him, he being under no obligation to understand gestures. Curiosity was the impelling motive, but he was not without suspicion. Fred said he reminded him of a Bloomsbury landlady whose lodgers had not paid their board and rooming in advance.

Will solved that problem by taking the rifle, and one cartridge that Fred doled out grudgingly, and after a long day's stalking among mosquitoes in the papyrus at the edge of the lake five miles away, at imminent risk of crocodiles and an even worse horror we had not yet suspected, shooting a hippopotamus. Forthwith the whole village, chief included, went to cut up and carry off the meat, and there followed revelry by night, the chiefs wives brewing beer from the mtama, and all getting drunk as well as gorged. Coutlass and Brown got more drunk than any one.

Will came back with flies on his coat—three large things like horse-flies, that crossed their wings in repose, resembling in all other respects the common tetse fly. He said the reeds by the lake-side were full of them.

Remembering tales about sleeping sickness, and suspicion of conveying it said to rest on a tetse fly that crossed its wings, I went out the following day and walked many miles east-ward, taking with me the only two sober villagers I could find. They came willingly enough for five miles, thinking, I suppose, that I intended to follow Will's example and kill some more meat (although, as I did not take the rifle with me, they were not guilty of much dead-weight reasoning).

At the bank of the fifth stream we came to they stopped, and refused to go another yard. Thinking they were merely lusting after the meat and beer in the village, I took a stick to drive them across the stream in front of me, but they dodged in terror and ran back home as if the devil had been after them.

I crossed the stream and continued forward alone about another mile toward a fairly large village visible between great blue boulders with cactus dotted all about. There was the usual herd of cattle grazing near at hand, but the place had an unaccountable forlorn look, and the small boy standing on an ant-hill to watch the cattle seemed too listless to be curious, and too indifferent to run away. The big brown tetse flies, that crossed their wings when resting, were everywhere, making no noise at all, but announcing themselves every once in a while by a bite on the back of the hand that stung like a whip-lash. They seemed to have special liking for coat-sleeves, and a dozen of them were generally riding on each side of me. One could drive them off, but they came back at once, as horse-flies do when poked off with a whip.

When I drew near the village nobody came out to look at me, which was suspicious in itself. Nobody shouted. Nobody blocked the way, or dragged thorn-bushes across the gateway. There were black men and women there, sitting in the shadows of the eaves, who looked up and stared at me—men and women too intent on sitting still to care whether their skins were glossy—unoiled, unwashed, unfed, by the look of them—skeletons clothed in leather and dust, desiring death, but cruelly denied it.

One man, thin as a wisp of smoke, rushed at me from the shadow of a hut door and tried to bite my leg. The merest push sent him rolling over, and there he lay, too overcome by inertia to move another inch, his arm uplifted in the act of self-defense. Nobody else in the village stirred. There were more huts than people, more kites on the roofs than huts. Some of the littlest children played in the hut doors, but nearly all of them were listless like the grown folk. The only sign of normal activity was the big black earthen jars that witnessed that the women performed part at least of their daily round by bringing water from the lake.

I returned late that afternoon, walking, as it were, out of a belt of tetse flies. On one side of a narrow stream they were thick together; to the west of it there were scarcely any, although the wind blew from east to west.

"There's no fear of news about us reaching any government official," I announced. "There's a curtain of death between us and the government that even suspicion couldn't penetrate!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE SLEEP THAT IS NO SLEEP*

  Ten were the plagues that Israel fled, and leaving left no cure,
        Whose progeny self-multiplied a million-fold remain,
  The cloak of each one ignorance, idolatry its lure,
        And death the goal till, clarion-called, lost Israel come again.
  Till then that loaded lash that bade the tale of bricks increase
        (Eye for an eye, and limb for limb!) shall fail not though
            ye weep;
  The conqueror's heel for Africa!—The fear that shall not cease!—
        Desire, distrust, the alien law!—The sleep that is no sleep!

————————— * It is a characteristic of the so-called Sleeping Sickness that is decimating the tribes around Victoria Nyanza that the victim, although he goes into a coma, never actually sleeps from the time of taking the disease until the end, usually more than a year later. The natives, a tribe that came originally down from Egypt, themselves say that the dreaded sickness is a "visitation" by way of revenge on them for former sins, although what sins, and whose vengeance, they are at a total loss to explain. —————————

Kazimoto was gone five days, and then came preceded by proof of the news he brought. He came in the evening. In the morning, unaccountably from the northward, instead of from the westward where Uganda lay,—avoiding the regular safari route and the belt of sleeping sickness villages, came a genial, sleek, shiny Baganda, arrayed in khaki coat, red fez, and bordered loin-cloth, gifted with tongues, and self-confident beyond belief.

He knew nothing of us at first, for we sat in our hut with a smudge going, nervous about flies, even Coutlass, reckless as a rule of anything he could not see, and perfectly indifferent to death for others, now fidgety and afraid to swagger forth.

One of our Nyamwezi porters suddenly made a great shout of "Hodi!"* and came stooping through the low door, standing erect again inside to await our pleasure. We could hear others outside, listening under the eaves. When we had kept him waiting sufficiently long to prevent his getting too much notion of his own importance, Fred nodded to him to speak. [* Hodi! Equivalent to "May I come In!"]

"Is it true, bwana," he asked, "that the Germans will come soon and conquer this part of Africa?"

"Certainly not!" said Fred.

"There is one out here, a Baganda, who says they will surely come. He says the religion of Islam will be preached from end to end of everywhere, and that the Germans are the true priests of Islam. They will come, says he, when the time is ripe, and call on all the converts of Islam to rise and slay all other people, including all white folk, like the English, who do not accept that creed. If that is true, bwana, whither shall we go, and whither shall you go, to escape such terrible things?"

"Does the Baganda know there are white men in this village?" Fred asked.

"Not yet, bwana."

"Don't tell him, then, but bring him in here. Tell him there are folk in here who say he is a liar."

The Nyamwezi backed out, and we heard whispering outside. There is precious little performance in Africa without a deal of talk. At the end of about ten minutes the porter again shouted "Hodi!" and this time was followed in by the stranger, seven other of our own men, uninvited, bringing up the rear.

"Jambo!"* said the Baganda, with a great effort at bravado, when his eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom and the first severe surprise of seeing white men had worn off. He was a very cool customer indeed. [* Jambo! Kiswahili equivalent of "How d'you do?"]

"Whose pimp are you?" demanded Fred, without answering the salutation.

The man fell back on insolence at once. There is no native in Africa who takes more keenly to that weapon than the mission-schooled Baganda.

"I am employed by a gentleman of superior position," he answered in perfectly good English.

"In what capacity?" demanded Fred.

"I am not employed to tell his secrets to the first strangers who ask me!"

"Do you obey him implicitly?"

"I do. I am honorable person. I receive his pay and do his bidding."

"Is his name Schillingschen?"

The Baganda hesitated.

"All right," said Fred. "I know his name is Schillingschen. You have boasted that you do what he orders you. These men tell me you have said that the Germans are coming to conquer the country and destroy all people, including the English, who have not accepted Islam!"

The man hesitated again, glancing over his shoulder to discover his retreat cut off by our porters, and eying Fred with malignity that reminded one of a cornered beast of prey. He could control his face, but not his eyes.

"Oh, no, sir!" he answered after swallowing a time or two. "How could they tell such lies against me! I am a person born in Uganda, now a British protectorate and enjoying all blessings of British rule. I am educated at the mission college at Entebbe. How should I tell such a tale against my benefactors?"

"That is what you are here to explain!" Fred answered. "No! You can't escape, you hellion! Squat down and answer!"

"All this stuff is pretty familiar," Will interrupted. "In the States there are always people going the rounds among our darkies preaching some form of treason. Over there we can afford to treat it as a joke—now and then an ugly one, and on the darkies!"

"This is an ugly joke on a darkie, too!" grinned Fred.

The Baganda made a sudden dive and a determined struggle to get through the door, but our porters were too quick and strong for him.

"Confession is your one chance!" said Fred.

"Put hot irons to his feet!" advised Coutlass. (The native beer had left him villainously evil-tempered.) "Gassharamminy! Leave me alone with that fat Baganda for half an hour, and I will make him tell me what is on the far side of the moon, as well as what his mother said and did before she bore him!"

"Shall I hand you over to this Greek gentleman?" suggested Fred.

"Oh, my God, no!" the Baganda answered, trembling. "Hand me over to the bwana collector! He will put me in jail. I am not afraid of British jail! It will not be for long! The English do not punish as the Germans do! You dare not assault me! You dare not torture me! You must hand me over to the bwana collector to be tried in court of law. Nothing else is permissible! I shall receive short sentence, that is all, with reprieve after two-thirds time on account of good conduct!"

"Make him prisoner in the sleeping sickness village you told us about!" advised Coutlass, lolling at ease on his elbow to watch the man's increasing fear.

"Oh, no, no! Oh, gentlemen! That is not how white Englishmen behave!
You must either let me go, or—"

He made another terrific dive for liberty, biting and kicking at his captors, and finally lying on his back to scream as if the hot irons Coutlass had recommended were being applied in earnest.

"What shall we do with the beast?" asked Fred. The hut was so full of his infernal screaming that we could talk without his hearing us.

"Tie him up," I said. "If we let