Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Some of the men left behind were our personal servants. Counting them and Kazimoto, there were twenty natives remaining with us, making, with the four men lent us by the chief, an allowance of twelve to each canoe. If we had had loads as well it would have been a problem how to get the whole party away; but as Lady Saffren Waldon had left us nothing but three cooking-pots, we just contrived to crowd the last man in without passing the danger point, Fred taking charge of the first canoe with Brown of Lumbwa and Kazimoto, and leaving Coutlass with the other canoe to Will and me. We agreed it was most convenient to keep the Greek and the rifle separated by a stretch of water.

  There is one inevitable, invariable way of starting on a journey by canoe in Africa. Somebody pushes off. The naked paddlers, seated at intervals down either side, strain their toes against a thwart or a rib. The leading paddler yells, and off you go with a swing and a rhythmic thunder as they all bring their paddles hard against the boat’s side at the end of each stroke. Fifty — sixty — seventy — perhaps a hundred strokes they take at top speed, and the passenger settles down to enjoy himself, for there is no more captivating motion in the world. Then suddenly they stop, and all begin arguing at top of their lungs. Unless the passenger is a man of swift decision and firm purpose there is frequently a fight at that stage, likely to end in overturned canoes and an adventure among the crocodiles.

  Our voyage broke no precedents. We started off in fine style, feeling like old-time emperors traveling in state; and within ten minutes we were using paddles ourselves to poke and beat our men into understanding of the laws of balance, they abusing one another while the canoes rocked and took in water through the loosely laid on planks.

  The fiber stitching began to give out very soon after that, because when not in use the canoes were always hauled out somewhere and the dried-out fiber cracked and broke. We had all to sit to one side while some one restitched the planking. Later, when a wind came up and the quick short sea arose peculiar to lakes, we were very glad we had done that job so early.

  It was only the first mile that as much as suggested enjoyment. Never accustomed to much paddling in any case, our own men had suffered from hunger and confinement in the reeking hot dhow. Then, hippo meat needs hours of cooking to be wholesome (our own share of it was still in the pot, waiting to be boiled more thoroughly at the next halting place). They had merely toasted their tough lumps in the camp-fire embers and gobbled it. The result was a craving for sleep, noisily seconded by the chief’s four men, who had eaten the stuff without cooking at all, and in enormous quantities.

  We began with a keen determination to overhaul the dhow, that dwindled as we had time to think the matter over; wondering what we should do with two such women in case we should capture them, and how we should prevent Coutlass in that case from acting like a savage.

  “Why don’t we leave ’em to make their own explanations?” I proposed at last. “We can claim our few belongings at any time if we see fit.” But the suggestion took time to recommend itself.

  That night until nearly morning we fretted at every rest the paddlers took — drove them unmercifully — ran risks of overturning on the slippery shoulders of partly submerged rocks — took long turns ourselves to relieve the weary men, Coutlass working harder than the rest of us. It would have been a bad night’s work if we had overhauled the dhow and loosed him to do his will.

  “Think of the baggage!” he kept shouting to the night at large. “Lying in the arms of Georges Coutlass, kissing and being kissed, simply to rob him — Coutlass — me! Think of it! Only think of it. She lay in the hook of my right arm and only thought of how to win back the favor of the other she-hellion! And I was deceived by such a cabbage! Wait though! Nobody ever turned a trick on Georges Coutlass more than once! Wait till we catch them! See what I do to them! I don’t forget Kamarajes either, or that bastard de Sousa, also pretending they were friends of mine! Heiah! Hurry! Drive the paddles in, you lazy black men!”

  It was more his hunger for revenge than any other one thing that tipped the scales of indecision and called us off the chase. A little before morning, at about that darkest hour, when the stars have seen the coming sun but the world is not yet aware of it, Fred called to us to turn in toward a barren-looking hill of granite that rose almost sheer out of the water but at one corner offered a shelving landing place. There we all clambered out to stretch cramped muscles and make a fire to cook the hippo’s tongue, Coutlass cursing us for letting what he called idleness come between us and revenge.

  Kazimoto had scarcely more than gathered an armful of wood, thrown it down, and gone to hunt for more; one of the other boys had struck a match, and the first little flicker of crimson fire and purple smoke was starting to curl skyward, when Fred jumped on it and stamped it out.

  “Silence!” he ordered. “Keep still every one!” and repeated it twice in Kiswahili for the natives’ benefit.

  We could not see at first which way he was staring through the darkness. It was more than two minutes before I knew what had alarmed him, and then it was sound, not sight that gave me the first clue. There came a purring from the lake; and when I had searched for a minute for the source of it I saw the glow we had watched from the dhow in the storm the first night out — the telltale crimson stain on the dark that rides above a steamer’s funnel, and at intervals a stream of sparks to prove they were burning wood and driving her at top speed.

  “It can’t be the German launch,” said I.

  “Why not?” demanded Fred irritably. He knew I knew it was the German launch as certainly as he did.

  “How can they have patched her boiler?” I asked.

  “How many beans make five? They’ve done it, and there she goes! No other launch on the lake can make that speed! I’ve heard the British railway people have a launch or two, but they’re small enough to have traveled down the line on ordinary trucks. That’s the German launch and Schillingschen as surely as we stand here!”

  We waited there until dawn, arguing at intervals, not daring to light a fire, nor caring to sleep, Coutlass sitting apart and laughing every now and then like a hyena.

  “If the men weren’t so dead beat I’d be for carrying on, said Fred.

  “What’s the use?” argued Brown. “We can’t catch the bally launch, can we? Soon as it’s daylight they’d see us, like as not. I hope to get drunk once more before I die! Schillingschen ‘ud run us down, an’ good-by us!”

  “I’d say follow them if the men could make it,” Will agreed. “But what’s the odds? It’s us they’re after. They’ll dare do nothing to the women on the dhow — in British waters.”

  “That’s so,” I agreed, not believing a word of it, any more than they. One had to calm one’s feelings somehow; the men were too weary to drive the canoes another mile at anything like speed. Coutlass, who had heard every word of the argument, burst out into such yells of laughter that Fred threw a rock at him. “Curse you, you ghoul!”

  Coutlass changed his tone from demoniacal delight to quieter, grim amusement.

  “They will do nothing, eh? It is I, Georges Coutlass, who need do nothing! I have my revenge by proxy! Wait and see!”

  Fred threw a second rock, and hit him squarely.

  “Gassharamminy!” swore the Greek. “Do you know that rock is harder than a man’s head?”

  Fred let the boys light a fire when the sun had risen high enough to make the little blaze not noticeable. Most of the men were asleep, but though our eyes ached with the long vigil we could not have copied them. About three hours after daylight we breakfasted off slices of hot boiled hippo tongue and cold lake water, without salt or condiments of any kind, and with discontent increased by that unpleasing feast we aroused the boys and drove them into the canoes.

  We forced the pace again, and picked up smoke on the sky-line an hour before noon, but it was not from a steamer’s funnel. It was lazy, flat-flowing, spreading smoke with a look of iniquity about it that sent our hearts to our mouths. We paddled toward it
with frenzied energy, and long before any of us could make out details Coutlass, standing balancing himself amidships, told us what we knew was true and flatly refused to believe.

  “It’s the Queen of Sheba burning to the water-line!”

  “Sit down, you fool, or you’ll upset us!”

  “She’s gutted already — the flame is about finished! nothing now but smoke!”

  “Sit down, you lying idiot, and hold your tongue!”

  “I can see the smoke of the German launch now! Don’t you all see it? Straight ahead beyond the smoke of the dhow! They’ve burned the dhow and steamed away! I’ll bet you a million pounds they’ve killed everybody — shot ’em, or burned ’em alive, or drowned ’em!”

  “Did you hear me tell you to sit down? I’ll tip you overboard and make you swim for shore — d’ye see those crocodiles? Ugh! Look at the brutes! In you go among the crocks if you don’t sit down at once!”

  Coutlass took no notice of the threat, but rocked the canoe recklessly as he stood on tiptoe.

  “Think of their gall! By Bacchus, they’re steaming for British East! I bet you five million pounds to a kick they think they’ve drowned the lot of us! They’re going to steam in and report the accident!”

  We got him to sit down at last by ordering the paddlers nearest him to throw him overboard, but nothing would stop his evil croaking any more than flat refusal to admit the truth of what he gloated over lessened our real conviction.

  Long before we reached the dhow there was no room left for unbelief. The stern planks were charred, but stood erect, unburned yet, and the blue and white paint smeared on them was surely that of the Queen of Sheba. When we came within fifty yards the water was full of loathsome reptiles; our paddles actually struck them as they swarmed after the prey, snapping at one another and at our canoes — long, slimy-looking monsters, as able to smell carrion in the distance as kites are to see.

  There were garments on the water — blankets — and one soaked, torn, lacy thing that certainly had been a woman’s. More than a dozen crocodiles fought around that. We tried to go close enough to see whether there were dead bodies in the dhow’s charred hull, but as if the very ripple from our paddles were the last straw, the wreck dipped suddenly ten feet from us and plunged, the crocodiles following it down into deep water with lashing tails — swifter than fish.

  We paddled about for an hour in the blistering sun, searching stupidly for what we knew we could never find; crocodiles remove traces of identity more swiftly than kites and crows.

  “I’ll bet you they thought we were on board!” gleed Coutlass. “I’ll bet you they opened fire, and when we didn’t answer came to the conclusion we had no ammunition. Then they steamed close enough to throw kerosene on board and light it! I bet you they steamed round and round and watched the people jump as the flames drove them overboard! Or d’you think they shot them all, and then threw them overboard and fired the dhow? No — then they’d have known we weren’t on the dhow; they’d have steamed back then to find us; they thought we were in the dhow! They thought we were hiding below deck! They’re going to British East to take their Bible oaths they saw us burn and drown! Isn’t that a joke! Isn’t that a good one! Gassharamminy! But I’d give my hope of heaven to know whether they shot the women first or watched them jump among the crocodiles when the heat grew fierce!”

  We paddled to another rocky island — one that had trees on it, and rested through the heat of the day when we had killed all the snakes that had forestalled us in the shade. There, after again eating hippo-tongue unseasoned and ungarnished, we held a council of war, and Fred produced the map that Rebecca stole from Coutlass.

  “If we make for a township now — Kisumu is the nearest — about five and twenty miles away,” said Fred, “we can give ourselves the pleasure of surprising Schillingschen, and of course we can get a square meal and some clothes and soap and so on — incidentally perhaps some rifles and ammunition. But we can’t prove a thing against Schillingschen, and he has enough pull with British officials to make things deuced unpleasant for us, for a time at least. Consider the other side of it. Suppose we don’t make for a station. Schillingschen reports us dead. Nobody looks for us — unless perhaps out on the lake for a hat or some scrap of clothing by way of corroborative evidence. Suppose we paddle out of this gulf and take to shore somewhere along the north end of the lake. We’ve no food, no tents, only one gun, next to no ammunition, nothing but money and a purpose. We don’t know what chance we have of getting supplies, and particularly rifles, without letting any one know where we are, but we do know we’ve a clear field and a straight mark for Elgon, where rumor says — and Courtney said — and Schillingschen thinks — and this map says the ivory ought to be! The odds are against us — climate — starvation — wild beasts — savages — last and not least, the government, if they ever get wind of our being beyond bounds. Are we willing to take the chance, or are we not?”

  We talked it over for an hour, Coutlass listening all ears to most of what we said, although we drove him to the farthest limit of the shade trees. We were in two minds whether or not it mattered if he listened, and made the usual two-minds hash of it. Finally we put it to a vote, letting Brown have a voice with the rest of us. He was in favor of anything that offered prospect of a gamble; and we remembered the letter in code we had given the missionary to mail to Monty. We had told him in that that we should make tracks for Elgon, and we all voted the same way.

  “In other words” grinned Fred, “we’re perfect idiots, and ready and willing to prove it! Good! If you fellows had voted the other way I’d have gone forward to Elgon alone!”

  It was then that Georges Coutlass took a hand in the game again. He came striding through the trees with something of his old swagger, and sat down among us with an air.

  “Count me in!” he demanded.

  “D’you mean in the lake?” suggested Fred.

  “In on the trip to Mount Elgon!”

  “We’ve had nearly enough of you!” Fred answered. “I know what’s coming! If you don’t come with us you’ll tell tales? Blackmail, eh? Well, it won’t work! We’ll set you ashore on the mainland, and if you dare show yourself to Schillingschen or any British official, we’ll run that risk cheerfully!”

  But Coutlass was imperturbable for once. He laid a hand on Fred’s knee, and changed his tone to one of gentle persuasion between friend and friend.

  “Ah! Mr. Oakes, I know you now too well! You are not the man to leave me in the lurch! These others perhaps! You never! You know me, too. You have seen me under all conditions. You are able to judge my character. You know how firm a friend I can be, as well as how savage an enemy! You know I would never be false to a friend such as you — to a man whom I admire as I do you!”

  Will Yerkes, who had tried to keep a straight face, now went off into peals of laughter, rolling over on his back and rocking his legs in the air — a performance that did not appear to discourage Coutlass in the least. Brown was far from amused. He advised throwing the Greek into the lake.

  “Remember those cattle o’ mine!” he insisted.

  “Yes!” agreed Coutlass. “Remember those cattle! Consider what a man of quick decision and courage I am! How useful I can be! What a forager! What a guide! What a fighting man! What a hunter! What a liar on behalf of my friends! What a danger for my friends’ enemies! What are the cattle of a drunkard like Brown — the poor unhappy sot! — compared to the momentary needs of a gentleman! Ah! By the ordeal! I am a gentleman, and that is the secret of it all! You, Mr. Oakes, as one brave gentleman, can not despise the right hand of friendship of Georges Coutlass, another gentleman! I know you can not! You haven’t it in you! You were born under another star than that! I have confidence! I sit contented!”

  “You good-for-nothing villain!” Fred grinned. “I’ll take you at your word!” and Brown of Lumbwa gasped, the very hairs of his red beard bristling.

  “I knew you would!” said Coutlass calmly. “These others ar
e not gentlemen. They do not understand.”

  “If your word is good for anything,” Fred continued.

  “My word is my bond!” said the Greek.

  “And you really want to prove yourself my friend—”

  “I would go to hell for you and bring you back the devil’s favorite wife!”

  “I will set you on the mainland, to go and recover those cattle of Mr.

  Brown’s from the Masai who raided them! Return them to Lumbwa, and

  I’ll guarantee Brown shall shake hands with you!”

  “Pah! Brown! That drunkard!”

  “See here!” said Brown, getting up and peeling off his coat. “I’ve had enough of being called drunkard by you. Put up your dukes!”

  But a fight between Brown and the Greek with bare fists would have been little short of murder. Brown was in no condition to thrash that wiry customer, and we in no mood to see Coutlass get the better of him.

  “Don’t be a fool, Brown! Sit down!” ordered Fred, and having saved his face Brown condescended readily enough.

  “What you said’s right,” he admitted. “Let him get my cattle back afore he’s fit to fight a gentleman!”

  And so the matter was left for the present, with Georges Coutlass under sentence of abandonment to his own devices as soon as we could do that without entailing his starvation. We had no right to have pity for the rascal; he had no claim whatever on our generosity; yet I think even Brown would not have consented to deserting him on any of those barren islands, whatever the risk of his spoiling our plans as soon as we should let him out of sight.

  From then until we beached the canoes at last in a gap in the papyrus on the lake’s northern shore, we pressed forward like hunted men. For one thing, the very thought of boiled meat without bread, salt, or vegetables grew detestable even to the natives after the second or third meal, although hippo tongue is good food. We tried green stuff gathered on the islands, but it proved either bitter or else nauseating, and although our boys gathered bark and roots that they said were fit for food, it was noticeable that they did not eat much of it themselves. The simplest course was to race for the shore with as little rest and as little sleep as the men could do with.