Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  However, we were not noticeably better off when we first set foot on shore. There was nothing but short grass growing on the thin soil that only partly hid the volcanic rock and manganese iron ore. Victoria Nyanza is the crater of a once enormous, long ago extinct volcano, and we stood on a shelf of rock about a thousand feet below what had been the upper rim — a chain of mountains leading away toward the north higher and higher, until they culminated in Mount Elgon, another extinct volcano fourteen thousand feet above sea level.

  It was not unexplored land where we stood, but it was so little known that the existence of white men was said to be a matter of some doubt among natives a mile or two to either side of the old safari route that passed from east to west. We could see no villages, although we marched for hours, the loaned canoe-men tagging along behind us, hungrier than we, until at last over the back of a long low spur we spied the tops of growing kaffir corn.

  At sight of that we broke into a run and burst on the field of grain like a pack of the dog-baboons that swoop from the hills and make havoc. We seized the heads of grain, rubbed them between our hands, and had munched our fill before we were seen by the jealous owners. A small boy herding hump-backed cattle down in the valley watched us for a minute, and then deserted his charge to report to the village hidden behind a clump of trees. Ten minutes after that we were surrounded by naked black giants, all armed with spears and a personal smell that outstank one’s notions of Gehenna.

  We had nothing to offer them, except money, for which they obviously had not the slightest use. None of us knew their language. From their point of view we were thieves taken in the act, all but one of us unarmed as far as they knew, to be judged by the tribal standard that for more centuries than men remember has decreed that the thief shall die. They were most incensed at the four unhappy islanders, probably on the same principle that dogs pick on the weakest, and fight most readily with dogs of a more or less similar breed.

  It was Coutlass who saved that situation. He instantly went crazy, or the next thing to it, wrinkling up his black-whiskered face into a caricature, yelling a Greek monologue in a refrain consisting of five notes repeated over and over, and dancing around in a wide ring with one leg shorter than the other and his arms executing symbols of witchcraft.

  The chief was the biggest man — not an inch less than seven feet — black as ebony, from the curly hair, into which his patient wives had plaited fiber to hang in a greasy lump over his neck, all down his naked body to the soles of his enormous feet. Each time he came in front of that individual Coutlass paused and executed special finger movements, like the trills of a super-pianist, ending invariably in a punctuation point that made the savage shiver.

  The fifth time round, to avoid the accusing fingers, the giant dodged behind a smaller man, who dodged behind a woman, who promptly turned and ran, swinging in the wind behind her a bustle like a horse’s tail that was her only garment. Her flight was the touch that settled the decision in our favor. We all began to do a mumbo-jumbo dance around Coutlass, and in five seconds more the whole armed party was in full retreat, holding their spears behind them as some sort of protection against magic.

  “After that,” said Coutlass proudly, “will you still dismiss me from your party, gentlemen?”

  “You’ve got to go and find Brown’s cattle and return them to him!” Fred answered firmly. But we none of us felt like sending him packing until he was better fed and some provision could be made for his safety on the road. It was wonderful, the number of excuses that flocked through my mind for befriending the ruffian, and later on I found it was the same with Fred and Will. Brown, on the other hand, affected indignation at his being allowed to go with us another yard.

  “Make a rope o’ grass an’ hang the swine!” he grumbled.

  We decided to march on the village, retreat being obviously far too dangerous, and the only likely safe course being to follow up the chance success. Sleep another night in the open among the mosquitoes and wild beasts, besides making us wretched at the mere suggestion, was likely to bring us all down with fever. We preferred the thought of fever to the loneliness; for man is unlike all other nomads, and that is why the dog takes kindly to him; he must have a home of his own — a portable one, if you will — a tub like Diogenes — a Bedouin’s tent — a cave, or a hole in the ground — something, so be he may rent it or own it or know for a fact he may sleep there when night comes. Life in the open is only good fun when there is cover to take to at will.

  All the way along the winding foot-track leading in every imaginable direction except toward the village, and only turning suddenly toward it when we had grown disgusted and decided to leave it and try to find another, Brown kept pointing out trees with suitable overhanging arms to which we might hang Coutlass. The Greek, with eyes for nothing but the fat, hump-backed village cattle in the distance, seemed to think only of them, until Will commented on the fact, and Fred saw fit to drop a hint.

  “Steal as much as a young calf, Coutlass, and we’ll let Brown choose the tree! Try it on if you don’t believe me!”

  The villagers closed their gate against us by dragging great piles of thorn across the gap in the rough palisade, but, as Coutlass pointed out, they would have to open it up again to let the cattle in before dark, so we sat down and ate the remaining fragments of the hippo tongue — no ambrosia by that time; it had to be eaten, to save it from utter waste!

  Then Coutlass once more did a first-class devil dance backward and forward this time before the gate, putting genius into it and fear into the hearts of the defenders. Kazimoto helped even more than he by discovering a native within the palisade who could speak a common tongue.

  Their villagers held a very noisy council on their side of the thorn obstruction, under the apparent impression that it was sound- and bullet-proof. It was beginning to be pretty obvious that a man who advised volleying through the crevices with spears was winning the argument when Kazimoto detected familiar accents and raised his voice. After that the barricade was dragged aside within ten minutes and we entered, if not in honor, at least in temporary safety.

  Luxury is a question of contrast. That evening in a hut assigned to us by the chief, squatting on the trodden cow-dung floor, leaning against the dried-mud sides, with a little fire of sticks in the midst to give us light and keep mosquitoes at a distance at the expense of almost unbearable heat, we ate porridge made from mtama as they call their kaffir corn, and washed it down with milk — good rich cows’ milk, milked by Kazimoto into our own metal pot instead of their unwashed gourds. Lucullus never dined better.

  The feast was only rather spoiled by two things: we all had chiggers in our feet — the minute fleas that haunt the dust of native villages and insert themselves under toe-nails to grow great and lay their eggs. (Nearly every native in the village had more than one toe missing.) And the chief felt obliged to insert his smelly presence among us and ask innumerable idiotic questions through the medium of his interpreter and Kazimoto. He received some astonishing answers, but would not have been satisfied with anything more reasonable. We wanted him satisfied, and gave our interpreter free rein.

  The main trouble was we had nothing of value to offer him. Money was something he had no knowledge of. He wanted beads of a certain size and color; for two handfuls of them he expressed himself willing to be our friend for life. We had to educate him about money, and Kazimoto assured him that the silver rupees Fred produced from a bag were so precious that governments went to war to get them away from other governments.

  But the impression still prevailed that we were wasikini — poor men; and that is a fatal qualification in the savage mind.

  “Why have you only one gun?”

  In vain Kazimoto assured him that we had dozens of guns “at home” — that Fred’s landed possessions were so vast that two hundred strong men walking for a month would be unable to march across them — that Fred’s wives (Fred seemed to live under a cloud of sexual scandal in those days) were so
many in number they had to be counted twice a day to make sure none was missing.

  The chief had eighteen wives of his own to show. He could prove his matrimonial felicity. Why had Fred left his behind? How did he dare? Who looked after them? Had he left the guns behind to guard the women? Why did such a rich man travel without food for his men? The chief had seen us with his own eyes devour porridge as if we were starving.

  To have told him the truth would have been worse than useless. To have mentioned such a thing as shipwreck would only have stirred the savage instinct to prey off all unfortunates. Failing evidence of wealth in our possession, the only feasible plan was to claim so much that he might believe some of it, and it was Coutlass, drawing a bow at a venture, who ordered Kazimoto to tell him that we expected a party in a few days bringing tents, provisions and more guns.

  “There will be blue-and-white beads of the sort you long for among those loads,” added Kazimoto on his own account; and that eased the chief’s mind for the night. Fred gave him a half-rupee, and promised him to exchange it when the loads should come for as many of the beads as he could seize in his two fists. The chief went out to brag to the village, opening and closing his fists to see how huge their compass was; and later that night his wives had to be beaten for fighting. They were jealous because the fattest and the youngest new one had both been promised double shares.

  There was another fight because our porters emerged from their hut and demanded that a barren cow out of the village herd be butchered. They made their meaning perfectly clear by taking the cow by the horns and tail and throwing her on her back. Fred decided that argument with a thick stick about four feet long.

  The unusual spectacle of some one taking sides against his own men, whatever the rights or wrongs of it, so affected the chief that he entered our hut next morning disposed to hold us up for double promises of beads. It was evident we had to deal with a born extortioner. He would increase his demands with every fresh concession.

  “Oh, what’s the odds!” laughed Coutlass. “Promise him anything! The only loads likely to come along this way for a year or two are Schillingschen’s!”

  Fred told the chief he would think the matter over, and chased him out of the hut. Coutlass had given us all a new idea in an instant, and he was the only one who did not see its point — he, the only one who did not give a snap of the fingers for the laws of any land!

  “D’you suppose—”

  “Too good to hope for!”

  “If he thinks we’re dead — ?”

  “And if he believes in that map—”

  “He’ll not need the map. He’ll have memorized it. There’s only a circle drawn on it to mark the Elgon district. All the old pencil marks have been rubbed out as he searched the other likely places and drew them all blank.”

  “He’ll travel without military escort?”

  “Sure! He won’t want witnesses! He’ll make believe it’s a scientific trip. Remember, he’s a professor of ethnology. That’s how he puts it all over the British and goes where he pleases without as much as by-your-leave.”

  “Say, fellows! It’s a moral cinch that when we broke away from Muanza he made up his mind in a flash to return to British East and destroy us on the way. He thinks he made a clean job of that. I’ll bet he loaded the launch down with stuff for a long safari, and thinks now he has a clear run and can take his time!”

  “If that’s how the cards lie, the game’s ours!”

  Coutlass saw the point at last and offered himself on the altar of forgiveness and friendship.

  “Make me your partner, gentlemen, and if he travels within a hundred miles of this I will crawl into that Schillingschen’s tent in the night and slit his throat! I would murder him as willingly as I eat when I am hungry!”

  “Your job has been assigned you!” answered Fred. “When Mr. Brown’s cattle are back in Lumbwa perhaps we’ll give you something else to do!”

  Nevertheless, Coutlass had outlined in a flash the limits of the plan. We would draw the line at murdering even Schillingschen, but must help ourselves to his outfit as our only chance of re-outfitting without betraying our presence in British East. But the plan was not without rat-holes in it that a fool could see.

  “Schillingschen’s boys will escape and run to the nearest British official with the story!”

  “And the British official will be so full of the importance of Schillingschen and the need of protecting his beastly carcass — to say nothing of the everlasting disgrace of letting him be scoughed on British territory — and the official reprimand from home that’s sure to follow — that he’ll come hot-foot to investigate!”

  “We’ll have to provide against that,” said Fred, and we all laughed, including Coutlass. Talk of provisions is easy when you have no means out of which to provide. It did not occur to include Coutlass in the calculations, or to dismiss him from them; but without exchanging any remarks on the subject it was clear enough to all of us that no such plan could hope to succeed with the Greek at large, at liberty to spoil it. We saw we should have to keep him in our party for the present.

  “Don’t forget,” said Coutlass, more accustomed than we to seizing the strategic points of desperate situations, “that Schillingschen will have his own boys with him from German East.”

  “I didn’t see any with him on the launch,” I objected.

  “He would never have come without them” Coutlass insisted. “He made them lie below the water-line out of reach of bullets at the only time when you might have seen them! He wouldn’t trust himself to British porters. My word, no! That devil knows natives! He knows some of them might be British government spies! He’ll have his own boys, — if they can’t carry all his loads he’ll buy donkeys at Mumias; there are always donkeys to be bought at that place, brought down from Turkana by the Arab ivory traders. Do donkeys talk?”

  At any rate, we talked, and made no bones at all about including Georges Coutlass in the conversation. It was his suggestion that we should send natives to look out for Schillingschen, and Fred’s amendment that reduced the messengers to one, and that one Kazimoto. Any of the others might decide to desert, once out of sight, and we could scarcely have blamed them, for their path had not lain among roses in our company.

  Kazimoto had a million objections to offer against going alone on that errand, as, for instance, that the chigger fleas would invade our toe-nails disastrously without his cunning fingers to hunt them out again. He also prophesied that without him to interpret there would swiftly be trouble between us and the chief; but we saw the other side of that medal and rather looked forward to an interval when the chief should not be able to talk to us at all.

  At last, on the second morning after 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, r
esembling 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.