Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Six months!” said I. “Splendid advice! How many of us will be alive or at liberty six months from now? Not I, at any rate!”

  “How d’you suppose they discipline the chain-gang?” Fred asked, ignoring my growing hopelessness.

  “With the lash,” said I. “I’ve seen!”

  “That’s by day,” said Fred. “They’ve better ways at night. One plan is no supper or breakfast; but the champion scheme is the doctor’s. On complaint by the askaris that a man on the chain has shirked his work, or answered back, or been obstreperous, the doctor serves him out a handful of strong pills and sees him swallow them. They don’t unchain them at night. D’you get the idea?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Every time the man has to go outside he must wake the whole gang and take them with him! They’re weary after working twelve hours at a stretch. After the second or third time up they begin to object pretty strenuously. After the third or fourth time he’s so unpopular that he’d almost rather die than wake them. Imagine the result, and what he suffers!”

  Despondency began to have hold of me, and I no longer wished to live. The doctor’s momentary daily visits increased my loathing for the crew who tyrannized there in the name of Progress, and I could see no way of retaliating. I became seized with a sort of delirious conviction that if only I could die and be out of the way my friends would be far better able to contrive without me. There is no convalescence in a mood of that sort, and each morning found me nearer death than the last. Then malaria developed, to give me the finishing touch, and although strangely enough I grew less instead of more delirious, Fred and Will at last made no secret of their belief that I was doomed.

  I myself was as sure of death as they were of dinner, and had better appetite for my fate than they for the meal, when one morning the doctor came earlier than usual. He had Schubert with him, and they both peered through the tent door. I was alone, for Fred and Will were in the other tent. The doctor stepped inside and examined me closely, drawing up the mosquito net to see my face. I did not trouble to speak to him, or even to open my eyes after the first glimpse. He spoke to Schubert in German, let the net fall again, and went away. Schubert spat and rubbed his hands, and swung along after him.

  Then I heard Will and Fred arguing.

  “Don’t be a fool!” That was Fred’s voice.

  “I tell you I’ll tell him!”

  “Fine thing to tell a poor devil that’s dying! Let him die in peace!”

  “No. He has guts, for I’ve seen him use ’em. I shall tell him. You wait here!”

  But they both came in, and sat one on either side of my bed.

  “Did you hear what that doctor person said to the sergeant-major?” asked Will.

  “I don’t talk his beastly language,” I answered.

  “He said you’ll be dead by this evening! He told Schubert to go and get the chain-gang and have them dig your grave at noon instead of laying off for dinner. He added they’ll have you buried and out of the way by four or five o’clock. Then Schubert asked him—”

  “No need to tell him that!” Fred objected. But Will was watching my face keenly, and went on.

  “Schubert asked him who was to say whether you are dead or not. What d’you suppose the answer was?”

  Fred objected again, but Will waved him aside.

  “The answer he gave Schubert was: ‘Once he is covered with two meters of earth, I shall not hesitate to sign a certificate!’ — So now you know what to expect!”

  Will smiled as he watched me. His face was as keen and calm as Fred’s was troubled.

  “Take more than his guesswork to put you where he’d like to have you — eh?” he laughed. And I sat up.

  Fred began to grin too. “You were right, Will!” he admitted.

  It was not anger that swept over me and gave me new strength. Anger, I think, would have hastened the end. It was sudden recognition of my own superiority to the devils who knew so little mercy. It was simple inability in the last recourse to admit myself able to be their victim. Even my leg felt better. I demanded food; and by the time they returned from their morning march around the township I had made my boy dress me and was sitting up.

  We dated the turn of the tide of our fortunes from that hour.

  Certainly from that day we began to prosper — at first gradually, but

  after a while in the old swift way that had made all our ventures with

  Monty such amazingly amusing work.

  We saw the chain-gang — Kazimoto last, with a shovel over his shoulder — march away at noon to dig me a grave in the sand close to where they burned the township refuse. Fred and Will went and watched them a while, contriving to slip a paper of snuff into Kazimoto’s hand while he rested and let the pick-men labor. (Snuff to a Nyamwezi is as comforting as an old sweet pipe to nine white men out of ten.)

  When Schubert came that evening at five with an old sack to put my body in, and plenty of askaris to help decide disputes, I was standing up. He could not very well make even himself believe that a man who could speak and walk was dead, but he could be immensely enraged by what he was pleased to call my schweinspiel.* He cursed me in every language he knew, including several native ones, and ended by threatening to make sure of me before going to so much trouble a second time. [*Literally, pig-play.]

  We enraged him still further by laughing at him, and Fred got out his concertina that for many days past had lain idle. The first few notes of it made me realize more than any other thing could have done what depths of despondency we must have plumbed, for hitherto, for as long as I had known Fred, he had always been able with that weird instrument of his to rouse his own spirits and so stir the rest of us. He resumed old habits now, and gloom departed.

  That evening I went to bed like a new man, and for the first night for long weeks slept until dawn, awaking hungry. My leg began to mend. We all saw the absurdity, if nothing else, of the treatment meted out to us, based on no better grounds than our supposed possession of a secret. Laughter brought good hope. Hope gave us courage, and courage set Fred and Will hunting for a means of escape. We decided there and then that to wait for this Major Schunck to come from the coast and pass judgment on us was a ridiculous waste of time as well as highly dangerous.

  The first discovery Fred and Will made was that there were footholds cut in the great granite rock in which the Bismarck medallion was set. They climbed it, and discovered that from the summit they could see all Muanza harbor from the shore line to the island in the distance. Sitting up there, they presently spotted a native dhow drawn up with bow to the beach with the indefinable, yet unescapable air of rather long disuse.

  Resisting the first temptation to hurry along the shore and examine it, they returned to camp to tell me of the find, and sent Simba, Kazimoto’s understudy, to find out whose the dhow was and why it lay there. They explained it was a fairly big dhow, and might be laid up there on account of leakiness.

  But Simba came back grinning with the news that the dhow belonged to an Indian from British East who had been jailed for smuggling. The dhow had been sold to pay his court fine, and was now owned by a Punjabi who had bought it as a speculation and repented already of his bargain, because the Germans would grant him no license to use it and nobody else would buy.

  They went off again to have another distant view of it and to try and invent some means of inspecting it closely without betraying their purpose. I was already able to walk with the aid of a stick, although not fast enough to keep up with them, and curiosity taking hold of me I called two of our servants to give me a supporting arm and limped off to see the grave the chain-gang had recently dug for me.

  It was a struggle to get there, but it seemed to me the trip was worth it. I found the grave about a foot too short, but otherwise commensurate, and sat down on a stone beside it to consider a number of things. A convalescent man sitting beside his own grave may be forgiven for amusing himself with a lot of near-philosophy, and if I trespassed over
the borders of common sense on that occasion I claim it was not without excuse.

  My meditations were disturbed by the arrival on the scene of the very last man I expected. We had been told that Professor Schillingschen had gone out on a journey, leaving his “wife” in the care of the commandant; yet I looked up suddenly to see him standing on the other side of the grave with both hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers and a grin of malevolent amusement showing through the tangled mass of hair that hid his lower face.

  “Yours?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “A close call! I have seen closer! I have stood so close to the brink of death that the width of an eyelash would have damned me!”

  “Piffle!” I answered rudely. “How can the already damned be damned again?”

  He laughed.

  “You are sick still. You are petulant. Never mind. I was coming to call on you. I watched you leave the camp from the top of that hill behind you, and followed. It is better. We can talk here without being overheard. Send those natives away!”

  “Certainly not!” I answered, but I reckoned without the professor and the fear his hairy presence instilled in them.

  “Go!” he said simply in the native tongue; and although I ordered them at once to stay by me they ran back to the camp as fast as their legs could carry them.

  “How do you feel now?” the professor asked.

  I stared at him, wondering just what he meant.

  “I mean, without a pistol!”

  I saw the point. The rest-camp was not far away, but as far as I could judge we were quite out of sight from it, and unless there should happen to be some one hiding among the rocks at the foot of the hill behind me we were quite alone, unless, as was probable, he had placed one or two of his own hangers-on in hiding within call.

  “This grave should be a lesson to you!” he grinned.

  “It has been,” I answered.

  “An illustration,” he suggested.

  “A period,” said I.

  “To your youth?” he asked maliciously. “To the age of folly?”

  “To the time,” I said, “when any man could blackmail me. I would go into that grave ten times rather than tell you what you want to know!”

  “There are worse places than the grave!” he said, beginning to leer savagely. His eyes glittered. He could scarcely find patience for argument. The thin veneer of his first mock-friendliness was gone utterly.

  “I imagine that German colonial life is far worse than death,” said I.

  “German will be the only rule in Africa,” he answered. “You fools of English have set your hopes on the Christian missionary. No weaker-backed camel could exist! The German Michael is wiser! Islam is the key to the native mind — Islam and the lash — they understand that! In a few years there will be nothing in Africa that is not German from core to epidermis! As to whether you shall live to see that day or not depends on yourself, my young friend!”

  Being quite sure that he had a plan in mind that nothing would prevent him from unfolding, I did not waste effort or words on prompting him, but sat still. My silence and apparent lack of curiosity disturbed him; there is nothing your bully likes better than to force his victim into a war of words.

  “I will be short and blunt with you!” he began again. “I know your history! You were in Portuguese Africa with Lord Montdidier. There he came in possession of the secret of Tippoo Tib’s ivory; how, I do not yet know, but you shall tell me that presently! You and your friends came with him to Zanzibar, where you made certain inquiries — sufficient to set the Sultan of Zanzibar by the ears. You left Zanzibar for Mombasa, and for some reason that you shall also tell me presently, Lord Montdidier did not leave the ship at Mombasa but continued the voyage toward London. Certain individuals decided that it would be better not to permit Lord Montdidier to reach Europe alive. There were agents charged with the duty of attending to that. It was considered safest to throw him overboard into the Mediterranean; men were ordered by cable to board the ship at Suez. Yet when the ship reached Suez nobody knew anything about him! Tell me where he left the ship, and why!”

  He glared with eyes accustomed to extorting facts from savages, depending on physical weakness so to undermine my will that I would give my secret away, perhaps without knowing it.

  I lowered my eyes, not being minded to match the strength of my eye-muscles against his. The news that Monty had not reached Suez as a matter of fact made me feel physically sick. If it were true, it meant most likely that he had been the victim of foul play, for that steamer was not scheduled to stop anywhere before reaching the Suez Canal. As for the people on the ship knowing nothing about him they no doubt preferred not to talk to strangers. That sort of news is easily kept under cover for a while. Schillingschen grew angry at my silence, and changed his tactics.

  “Where did he leave the ship?” he shouted — suddenly — savagely.

  I did not answer. He came round to my side of the grave, and laid a heavy clenched fist on my shoulder. It seemed to weigh like lead in the weak condition I was in.

  “You shall tell me what Lord Montdidier is doing now, or that grave shall resemble in your imagination a bed of roses!”

  He seized my neck in a grasp like iron, and squeezed it. I rose suddenly and struck him in the stomach with my elbow. Strength had returned more swiftly than I had guessed, or perhaps it was indignation at the touch of his fingers. At any rate he staggered clear of me, and I thought he would assault me now in real earnest; but perhaps he suspected me of having weapons concealed somewhere. Instead of rushing at me like an angry bull he calmed himself and laughed.

  “You are strong for a man they thought of burying!”’ he said. “Never mind! You shall see reason presently! It is well understood that you and your friends know where Tippoo Tib’s ivory is hidden. You imagine you can keep the secret. If you keep it, you shall never make use of it, my young friend! If you choose to tell, you shall be suitably rewarded! Come now — I thought you were going to look for it down in these parts. I admit you fooled me. You simply made a false move to draw attention off from Lord Montdidier. Tell me where he is and what he does — and — or—”

  “And what? Or what?” I demanded, as insolently as I knew how. I saw no sense in answering him gently.

  “I will show you!”

  I had begun to feel weak again, but he offered me an arm, and since he seemed in no hurry I was able to struggle along beside him. We took to the main road and when we reached the D.O.A.G. he called for a hammock and some porters. Being carried in that way was sheer luxury after the walk in my weak state, and I lay back feeling like a tripper on vacation. I saw Fred and Will climbing down from their observation post on top of the Bismarck monument, but he did not notice them.

  Every German sergeant, and every askari we passed saluted us with about twice as much respect as I had ever seen them show the commandant; and Schillingschen returned salutes much less carefully than he, merely by a curt nod, or one raised finger. Apparently the military feared him, for when we passed the commandant, who was personally superintending the flogging of two natives in the market-place for not saluting himself, he took several paces forward to make sure Schillingschen should see his act of homage. The professor merely nodded in return, and I began to I wonder whether there was a rift in the lute of Muanza’s official good relations. Surely I hoped so. Anything calculated to set the Germans’ garrison life at odds looked to me like the gift of heaven!

  Schillingschen, striding beside the hammock, directed our course along the shore-front under palm-trees, planted in stately rows with meticulous precision. He kept far enough to one side to avoid the charge of being seen walking with me, but from time to time tossed me remarks calculated to keep my nerves on edge.

  “What I shall show you is by way of warning!” was a remark he repeated two or three times. Then: “A native can always be made to talk by flogging him. Some white men need sterner measures!”

  We left the commandant�
��s house on the hill far behind and followed the curve of the lake shore, toward a rocky promontory with a clump of thick jungle behind it. Fear began to get its work in, until the thought came that what he most desired was to make me afraid; then I managed to summon sufficient contempt for him and his tribe to regain my nerve and once more almost enjoy the promenade.

  He halted the hammock bearers at a spot about three hundred yards away from the promontory and, leaving them standing there, turned inland with a hand on my arm to give me support and direction. We followed a path that was fairly well marked out and trodden, but rough, and several times I should have fallen but for his help. My legs still refused any sort of strenuous duty.

  “The staff surgeon at this station is a man of ideas,” he announced as we rounded a big rock and passed down a narrow glade in the jungle. “He is original. He is not like some of our official fools. He studies.”

  I refused to seem curious, and walked beside him in silence.

  “He studies sleeping sickness. If he can find the key to the solution of that scourge it will mean promotion for him. He has noticed that the sleeping sickness is always at its worst beside the lake, and putting two and two together like a sensible man has reached the conclusion that the disease may be propagated in some way in the blood of these things.”

  We emerged into a clearing in which a pool more than a hundred yards long and nearly as many wide was formed naturally by a hollow in the surface of a great sheet of granite. The pool was fed by a trickle of water from a jumble of rocks at one end. At the other end the bottom of the pond sloped upward gradually, so that a ramp of smooth rock was formed, emerging out of shallow water. A stone wall had been built about three feet high to enclose that end of the pond, and all the way along both sides the granite had been broken and chipped until the edges were sheer and unclimbable.

  “Look!” he said, pointing.

  I looked and grew sick. On the ramp, half in the water and half out lay about a hundred crocodiles basking in the sun, their yellow eyes all open. They were aware of us, for they began to move slowly higher out of water as if they expected something.