by Desmond Cory
He rattled contentedly on; his bedside manner was obviously based on a mastery of small talk. Johnny watched him nervously as he charged a gigantic hypodermic syringe from a lemon-coloured ampoule, flicked the needle casually across the flame of a cigarette-lighter, dabbed at his victim’s forearm with a small piece of cotton wool. His fingers were brown and hairy, spatulate at the tips. “… This is nothing to alarm you, old chap. Just something to make you sleep. You drop off for a few hours now, and you’ll wake up ready to fight a buffalo. Your man tells me you’ve bagged a few good heads, by the way. I’m quite a keen shot myself …”
“Ow,” said Johnny.
“… and there’s plenty of game round here, I should think. Though you’re after gorilla, I understand. Sooner you than me.” Raikes’ eyes were focused intently on their work; his hands moved gently, delicately on the handle of the syringe, and finally withdrew. “There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now – close your eyes. That’s right, close your eyes. Relax and get a really good sleep …”
Johnny’s eyes were obediently shut. The green flecks were still there; but they were moving now, swinging in circles, forming geometrical patterns. Raikes’ voice came to him through a thick, muzzy haze; the camp bed seemed to be rocking slightly. The boat must be on the move again, thought Johnny; once again they were headed up-river, churning their way through the muddy brown waters. It was a long trip and a long river … a long, long, snaky river … moving always under the noonday sun, under the African sun … into darkness …
Raikes’ treatment proved to be quite effective; he returned to inspect his patient just before sundown and found considerable improvement. Fedora’s headache had almost disappeared, and his limbs had stopped their disconcerting involuntary twitching. He was able to prop himself up on one elbow to eat the food Demetrius had prepared for him, and to examine without undue effort both Raikes and his other visitor.
“This,” said Raikes, “is Mr. van Kuyp, the leader of the Expedition. He’s just dropped in to see how we’re getting on.”
“Well, hi,” said Mr. van Kuyp.
He did not answer very closely to Johnny’s preconceptions of a distinguished archaeologist; which had been of somebody old, bent and bearded. He certainly wore a beard, but of a trim black variety that incommoded only his chin and upper lip; he was certainly bent, but this to accommodate his bulky six foot three to the narrow confines of Johnny’s tent. As for his age, Johnny put him unhesitantly into the lower forties. He was aquiline-nosed and tanned to a rich, mahogany colour; the sleeves of his bush shirt were rolled down against the attacks of evening mosquitoes, but they did not altogether conceal the smooth movement of the immense biceps beneath them. Mr. van Kuyp was, in two words, a tough nut.
Johnny registered all these details casually enough and acknowledged the greeting with a polite nod. If any argument was going to take place with this hefty character, then Johnny didn’t intend to begin it.
Not that van Kuyp’s intentions appeared to be at all aggressive. “They tell me,” he said with a disarming smile, “you’ve had quite a load of trouble on your back, lately. I’m real sorry to hear it.”
Johnny offered him whisky.
“Thank you, no. I don’t indulge. I’m Prohibitionist myself.” Johnny hurriedly withdrew the bottle. “That stuff can do you a lot of harm, sir, a whole lot of harm. I know what I’m talking ’bout. Though I guess you’ll soon be as right as rain with Doctor Raikes here in charge of you.”
Raikes made a sound expressive of polite disassociation. “No, no. Nothing of the kind. On the mend before I even saw him. An iron constitution, this feller.”
“Been here long, Mr. Fedora?”
Johnny pushed his plate away and rolled back on the bed. “I don’t even know yet where here is,” he admitted. “I went down with fever when we were still pushing along the river. This is some native village or other, I suppose?”
“Just exactly that, sir. A native encampment; they look like Bushmen to me. I don’t imagine it’s got any sort of a name.”
“I see. Well, my boy tells me I’ve been on my back for five days now, so he must have brought me here.”
“Uh-huh.” Van Kuyp took a wash-leather pouch from his inside pocket, and began to roll himself a cigarette; swiftly and efficiently, but with a faint touch of self-consciousness. “May I ask which way you’re heading?”
“Up-river. Into the Kob’ei.”
“You’re after gorilla, I hear.” A match flared unexpectedly across the gathering dimness. “Good country?”
“It’s the only country, for the kind of gorilla I want.”
Van Kuyp’s brows wrinkled, only partly against the cigarette smoke. “I’ve only heard of one kind of gorilla, at that. Or do you mean—?”
“White gorilla,” said Johnny briefly.
Van Kuyp removed the cigarette from his mouth and looked down at it. He looked at it for several seconds. Then he shook ash from it and said, “Interesting. Very interesting. You believe these old stories then?”
“I think there’s something in them.”
“Very possibly, ye-es. Anyway, it’s a most exciting pur-soot. I believe du Chaillu had a theory about them, didn’t he? – though of course, he never got this far east.” He glanced briefly at Raikes, and dismissed the subject. “Matter of fact, we’re headed that way ourselves. We’re bound for the Kob’ei.”
“That’s fine,” said Johnny. “We may run into each other again. You’ll be pushing on fairly soon, I suppose?”
“Well now,” said van Kuyp. He paused, and for an even longer time than before. “In a way, Mr. Fedora, I might say that that depends on you.”
“On me?”
“Sure, on you. I’ll be frank with you, sir. Running into you right here on the Ubangi is just about the biggest stroke of luck I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s a miracle, that’s what it is. It’s beyond all coincidence.”
Johnny was somewhat taken aback at this unsolicited testimonial. While he privately considered himself an altogether charming and affable fellow, it was certainly unusual for fresh acquaintances to express their delight at meeting him quite so unreservedly. He had a suspicion, in fact, that something other than his personal character was involved; and said so.
“Well, ha ha! Now that I’ll readily admit. The fact is that our boat sustained a pretty nasty accident some twenty miles upriver. We ran aground, strained the seams and had to caulk her up gosh-darned quickly. As it is, she’s not good for more than another fifty miles or so; we were reckoning on making camp right here at this village, and wasting two or three weeks trying to fit her up again. Well, we just couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw your little launch lying just off the bank. We didn’t think there was another useable boat this side of Storeyville.”
“Oh, I see,” said Johnny. “You’re hoping to use my boat.”
“Exactly, sir. We’re hoping you’ll let us charter her. On this sort of an expedition, Mr. Fedora, time is money – or rather, we’ve got money, it’s only time we’re short of. We can’t afford to waste a whole fortnight sitting on our backsides. I can say this, sir; we’ll pay you any reasonable sum for the loan of that launch. Or to put it another way – we’ll pay our fares up to the Kob’ei and back again.”
“We wouldn’t ask you,” said Raikes, who had apparently decided he had been silent long enough, “only you seem to be headed in exactly the same direction. So you see—”
“I don’t say we wouldn’t ask,” said van Kuyp, with a voluminous chuckle. “No great harm in asking. But it certainly makes us hope you’ll be agreeable to our plan.”
Johnny moved uneasily; the canvas complained beneath him. Raikes shot a swift professional glance towards him. “We’ll leave you to think it over, shall we? It’ll wait till the morning.”
“Sure, sure. It’ll wait till the morning. I don’t want to put myself upon you, Mr. Fedora, seeing you must be still feeling pretty much under the odds.”
“It’s no
t that,” said Johnny. “I feel fine. What puzzles me is … How many of you are there?”
“Why, there’s six of us, Mr. Fedora. Six of us whites and twelve boys. Then there’s round about nine hundredweight of stores, though we might be able to cut down on that a little.”
Johnny shook his head. “My boat isn’t a very big one. It couldn’t carry anything like that much weight.”
“But see here. The way I was figuring it, we could get the stores aboard and maybe four of us whites. The rest of us and the native boys can travel behind in canoes. I’ve taken the liberty of looking over your boat, and that way I think we might manage it.”
The evening was now well advanced, and the ground beyond the tent was dark in the long shadows cast by the trees; inside, it was becoming difficult to see clearly at all. Johnny clapped his hands, weakly but authoritatively, and told Demetrius to light the oil lamp.
“Maybe we can do it that way. Can your boys paddle?”
“Sure, if they have to. They’re Masai, most of them. We can bring ’em up to strength with a few of the locals from this encampment.”
“Um,” said Johnny. He was wanting a cigarette badly; he had found the red glow of van Kuyp’s dog-end in the gloom unbearable to watch, but he was not sure that the light of the oil lamp made things any better. “Well, I like to be helpful. I’ll think it over.”
“That’s all we ask,” said van Kuyp cheerfully. “I’ll look in on you tomorrow morning, if I may. And I hope I’ll find you a good deal better yet.” He rose to his feet, crouched against the low roof of the tent; silhouetted in the lamplight, he seemed gigantic. “You’re not a fellow American, by any chance?”
“I’ve spent some years in the States.”
“Is that so? Is that really so? Well, I did kind of notice your accent – Chicago, I don’t mind betting?”
Johnny smiled. “In the bad old days.”
“Ah, you’re not that old, surely? Still, I look forward to some interesting talks with you, Mr. Fedora. Yes, indeed. I’ll see you tomorrow, sir.”
His shadow swayed grotesquely across the green canvas, then was gone. Johnny heard his voice in conversation with Raikes retreating towards the river, until it was lost in the rising hum of the mosquitoes; he relaxed on the pillow with a sigh of exhaustion and said:
“Roll me a cigarette, Demetrius.”
Demetrius, who had been sitting silently in the corner of the tent giving the Rigby its nightly wipe, shifted his position and fumbled in the pocket of the haversack behind. him. “Tobacco does not agree with the fever, Sir,” he suggested deferentially.
“I know. All the same, I want a smoke.”
Demetrius rolled the cigarette, and another for himself; struck a match. The flame, caught in his hollowed hands, showed Johnny’s face as he stooped towards it; thin, gaunt, almost ascetic beneath its coat of greasy stubble, the skin drawn tight and smooth at the temples, finely wrinkled at the corners of the narrowed eyes. In the wells of the eye-sockets there still showed that improbable sky-blue gleam, undimmed by five long days of fever, shining as it withdrew into the comparative dimness beyond the arch of the flame.
Johnny lay on his back, his lips clenched firmly about the loosely packed tobacco; and he thought about the question that he had somehow forgotten to ask. It was in essentials that same question which had stumped Demetrius; for, while they now knew that the arrivals represented some archaeological expedition or other, it was still far from obvious what they were doing in the upper reaches of the Ubangi, and why they were headed for the Kob’ei. Johnny wiped shreds of tobacco from his mouth, and meditated further.
He knew that the Kob’ei River flowed – or was supposed to flow – into the Ubangi; and that the Ubangi definitely did flow into the Congo, some six hundred miles to the west. He knew that the latter fact was true, for he had travelled everyone of those six hundred miles himself. But he knew very little of the Kob’ei; he had next to no idea of what the country looked like, and he had always supposed that no more than four or five white men had ever seen it – from ground level. No black man had seen it at all. No native tribe lived there, and no one of the local tribesmen, Bushman or Masai or Kikuyu or Entebi – not one of them would approach the place closely. It had a bad reputation. Perhaps the Little People went there; nobody knew where the Little People of the jungle would or would not go, when the spirit moved them; but most experts believed that even the Pigmies held the Kob’ei in awe. In any case, it seemed a peculiar place to send an archaeological expedition.
Johnny turned his head and looked at Demetrius. Demetrius was not afraid of the Kob’ei; or said that he was not. But then Demetrius was a Mohammedan, and held the religious beliefs of Central Africa in considerable scorn. Johnny did not put much stock in them, either; but for all that … he too was afraid of the Kob’ei.
He was going there, all the same. And so was van Kuyp.
“Demetrius,” he said. “Do you know what an archaeologist is?”
“O yes, Sir. I have seen many.”
Johnny knew that this was untrue; that Demetrius was merely trying to be polite.
“Then you know that an archaeologist is a man who looks unceasingly for … for old bones and for old cities and for the weapons of men who lived cala-cala. What I ask myself is this; are any such things to be found in the Kob’ei country?”
“That is indeed possible, Sir. Surely there will be the bones of those who have died there, and their weapons also.”
This was hardly a cheering thought.
“Well, you may be right. It’s been suggested, Demetrius, that the white men should come to the Kob’ei with us, in our steamer. Do you think this a good idea?”
Demetrius scratched the top of his shaven head and wriggled his toes. “What of the white woman, Sir?”
“The white … Good Lord. I thought I’d dreamt that part of it. I’d certainly forgotten all about it.”
“White women bring trouble in the Congo. You know I mean no disrespect.”
“It’s true enough, Demetrius. But you know – I rather think this will be a special archaeological woman, not likely to cause much trouble to anyone.” Johnny thought about this for a moment; he had, after all, been wrong in his preconceptions of van Kuyp, but van Kuyp was probably exceptional. “I don’t think the Spear Dance will be danced in her honour.”
“Perhaps,” said Demetrius, brightening, perhaps she wears spectacles over her eyes.”
“Very probably, I should say.”
“And be that as it may – this Expedition is well supplied. Much tobacco, much posho, much whisky.”
“No. Not much whisky,” said Johnny sadly.
“Indeed? But many good things, nevertheless. And good drugs for your fever.”
“You’re a mercenary blighter, Demetrius,” said Johnny. “But you’re perfectly right, of course.” He reached up tiredly towards his mosquito-net. “We will talk more of this in the morning. Put the light out, there’s a good chap.”
2
THE CIRCE lay moored to the rough wooding, where heavy tree trunks had been cut down and stacked against the thrust of the river. As Fedora had said, it was a small boat; also an extremely ugly one. Its brass fittings, fresh and shining at the time of the first World War, had grown quickly tarnished in the moist air of the Tropics and had later been stolen by an avaricious Krooboy; the gaping screw-holes made black mouths in the warped brown wood of the bulkheads. A green deck chair, Fedora’s personal property, stood on the afterdeck just clear of the steering wheel; while the great paddles clambered from the beer-coloured water to either side of the battered hull.
At the moment, the boat offered a scene of great activity; under van Kuyp’s direction, a team of sweating oily-skinned Masai were transhipping the stores of the Ubangi Expedition. Van Kuyp stood splay-legged beside the green deck chair, indicating with frantic gesticulations whereabouts in the cabin and on the fore-deck the stores might best be placed; the natives obeyed him or did not obey him, accordin
g to their individual whims. The sound of fluent American cursings drifted faintly across the river.
On the bank, his plump little back towards the huts of his people, the village headman stood; he was watching proceedings with interest. Most of the Circe’s potential cargo he found of mysterious import; it was magical paraphernalia, perhaps, impossible to comprehend. But some things he recognised easily; the sacks of flour, for instance, were unmistakeable; fine white posho sewn up in bags of extremely valuable cloth. As for the many strange round tins, he had seen with his own eyes that they contained rich foods of a rare and palatable variety. Yes, there was much food; much metal; much cloth; and probably vast supplies of salt, since these devils were rich. The headman pulled thoughtfully at his protruding lower lip, and did complicated sums of arithmetic in his head. He was sure that the menfolk of his village many times outnumbered the white men and their supporters; but was it or was it not advisable to bring in the warriors of the neighbouring village to make assurance doubly certain? It would mean a double distribution of the spoil, there was the rub …
He looked contemplatively back towards his thingira, where his wicker war-shield and broad-bladed spears were kept. He found himself gazing sheepishly into the mercilessly bright blue eyes of a lean young man, dressed in olive-green. The white devil’s face was still yellowed with the beri-beri, but his eyes were bright and reckless and infinitely sardonic. Moreover, his fingers were playing with the canvas holster in which reposed a long-barrelled Colt .45 automatic: the headman did not recognise it as such, of course, but he knew it for a Great and Powerful Ju-Ju to be treated with all respect. Accordingly, he cleared his throat and twiddled his toes and studiously rendered his mind a blank.
Beside the white man stood the thin-lipped Demetrius, the black man of alien breed whom the headman greatly feared. “Peace be on your head, O K’Fali,” said this Demetrius, without much enthusiasm. “And on your father’s also.”
