And there Kwa started to tell them of some of the things he had seen in that other We-Country of his—over there and beyond where the sun went down.
But gradually he was as if lifted on the wings of his story and he began to dance. The old ritual dance—a slow stepping around the sacred fire to some secret rhythm.
The timid breathing of the watchers became a music.
"Wah!" he intoned. "I am Kwa, and it is I who am the Missing Link. For I am brother to all animals. And yet, who will deny that I am also man?"
CHAPTER XVII
FULL MOON
FAR OVER on the western edge of the Devil Bush where a Nathaniel Rahan, Jr., had once started a plantation and which was now nothing but a Memory Plantation for Nathaniel Rahan, Sr., the old man had watched two new moons come and go. It seemed more like two eternities to this lonely grandfather of him who was known to the jungle-world as Kwa.
After all, he had been brought up in a different world—in one where parents, especially grandparents, are given to worry. The elder Rahan wished that he hadn't let young Nat go away like that, into the jungle, alone.
Once the jungle had been cruel. It had taken an only son, Nat's father. Was it going to be cruel again—refuse now to give back this other and even dearer son?
The old man spent desolate days in and about the brick bungalow on the edge of the jungle.
Then one night, in response to a scratching at the door, he got up and opened to find a chimpanzee there—a little old chimp-woman who looked up at him and as if announced herself with a faint whistling sound, modest and charming.
The elder Rahan was enough of an animal man by this time to understand that, in some way, she was a messenger, that she had brought him news of some sort from young Nat. He took her hand and made her welcome. He offered her fruit and milk, which she accepted gladly, for she'd been traveling far and fast and hadn't been paying much attention to either fatigue or hunger.
About all that Mr. Rahan could get out of her that night was that she trusted him and that she had come, in fact, from Kwa.
"Kwa!" she said.
She took the old man's hand again and led him through the bungalow until she found Kwa's bedroom—found his cot. She jumped on this. And, since she was tired, the elder Rahan gave her a blanket. And finally she pulled this over her head and went to sleep.
But the old man spent a haunted night, remembering the sympathy he had seen in the chimp-lady's wrinkled face.
He never did quite get the message that she tried to give him. But she was sad and so was he. About that there was no doubt. For almost a week. And the old millionaire was beginning to think that he would end his days here in Africa with no other intimate companion than this when the chimp—who'd been off on one of her endless scouting tours into the neighboring jungle—came scampering back to the bungalow at her tumbling run.
Good news, this time.
She danced. She chattered.
OLD RAHAN danced with her, hopping about and holding her hands. If— when!—Nat did come back, the old man swore he'd make the boy teach him jungle-talk.
There were a dozen servants about the place, white and black. All of them were trained men, carefully selected as trustworthy where animals were concerned. It was just as well. Their services were needed. For now the plantation began to take on the appearance of a zoological park. Only this was a zoo where the animals came and went. Strange animal guests every day—pythons and leopards, yet who showed no disposition to evil—as if they were there under a flag of truce; elephants treading far out into the open and "whispering" there for maybe an hour; other chimps, in family groups, remaining a day or longer and manifesting friendship but never abusing the privilege; swarms of lesser monkeys, flocks of strange birds.
And gradually, almost imperceptibly, this excitement grew.
Until one night it grew to such a pitch that the old man couldn't sleep. And as the wind was unfavorable to mosquitoes he was able to sit out on the broad veranda without discomfort. He sat there smoking his pipe.
A night of full moon, and the jungle now pulsing with a rhythm of life primeval—a rhythm that might have been time to the beating of a drum, the original jazz, as the old man reflected.
When suddenly there was a silence. And the old chimp-woman, who'd been huddled at the old man's side trying to tell him things that he couldn't understand, let out the equivalent of a shout.
"Kwa!" was what she said. "Kwa!"
And not the heart of a mother—a white-woman mother, and a grandmother, at that—could have thrown more feeling into the cry.
Old Mr. Rahan had started up.
AWAY across the clearing through the misty moonlight Mr. Rahan saw a white figure emerge from the jungle. Ghostly! He had a moment of chill. But it was for a moment only.
It was Kwa—Nathaniel Rahan, 2nd, to his American friends. He came on the run, dressed in nothing but a twist of vine.
"I had to come at night," said Kwa. "I didn't want to shock the natives."
THE END
--
KWA AND THE BEAST MEN
CHAPTER 1
HORN AND HOOF
WHEN Kwa followed the leopard into the clearing and found the strange monster standing there his first instinct was to turn and run. Here was something that he didn't want to see, something that sent a chill of horror through his veins.
Animals he could understand and men he could understand. But the thing that stood before him now was neither. He recognized it at once. This was a Beast Man. Every now and then the Beast Men made their way into the Devil Bush-that great jungle that covered all this part of Equatorial Africa. Arid, as for that, the Devil Bush had come by its name honestly.
This was haunted jungle. It killed.
There were creatures in it that killed white men and black. Few had ever penetrated to the heart of it and lived to tell about it afterward.
That was why it was called the Devil Bush. It was fetish, greegree, taboo.
Kwa felt a gust of anger, and this drove away his fear.
The leopard had lured him here by a lie. The leopard had come to him with the story of a man lost in the woods.
This was no man.
The Beast Man stood about six feet tall, bulking huge. There was nothing about him to suggest the big ape-the chimpanzee or the gorilla. Head, neck and shoulders shining black-these suggested the goat or the bull rather than the ape. On the top of the low-browed head was a tangled thatch of wool through which emerged a pair of knob-like horns.
The head was low and thrust forward. There were widest eyes, gray, staring and wild. The arms and body were magnificent. They were like a statue of Hercules in oily black marble.
But, with an inner shiver Kwa let his eyes flick down. There was mudcaked wool on the thighs. The shanks were like those of an uncurried horse. The feet were cleft, enormous, split and splayed like those of a moose.
"Ho!" said Kwa. But he was ready to jump.
KWA himself stood there naked and white. He'd been disporting himself with hippos and elephants in a clear green river far over on the other side of the Devil Bush when the leopard had found he didn't even have his knife with him. He'd left the knife where he'd dropped it somewhere along the bank of the river. He hadn't even stopped to twist about him the girdle of vines he usually wore.
Since his return to Africa from his grandfather's home in Florida he'd let his hair grow. It hung now about his shoulders tawny and long. And there was a down on his face, almost as if he'd been actually a member of that Furry Tribe, the Not Yet Men, the Mu, who had reared him.
But his body gleamed smooth and white.
"Ho!" he said again. "I am Kwa, Kwa of the jungle!"
And now, for the first time, he was aware that others of his animal friends had followed him here.
It was as if that declaration of his had been taken up by a thousand voices. But all of them together made no more sound than a breeze.
"Yea, this is Kwa! Kwa the Golden One! Kwa of the jungle!"
Sun-time, the heat of the day, he'd lain in cool shadows and listened to birds and beasts, all manner of things, talking as if in their sleep. A radio that was never silent-elephant whispers running the length and breadth of Africa, the twitter of birds and the minute notes of squirrels and monkeys no bigger than a gorilla's thumb.
But-mostly silence. In what the White World called silence, you could hear more voices and get more information than at any other time, It was a silence, so Kwa had learned, like that of the ether through which uncounted broadcasting stations send their unending programs.
At least some of the elephants must have followed him from the river. Bush-deer and buffalo, troops of mboyo-the shy wolf-dogs of the deeper jungles; leopards, of course.
He might have known that the leopard who had lured him here was tricking him. The only interest that a leopard could have had in a man-a real man-lost in the woods would be to kill him.
Leopards hated men-all men. And, often enough, Kwa had suspected that leopards had extended this hatred to include himself-he who drew no clear frontier between the peoples who were "men" and they that were "animals."
Leopards, unlike the other jungle tribes, appeared to be jealous of men. Leopards were brave. No animal was braver. But there was also always something ghostly about them-running after strange gods.
"A Beast Man!" came the chorus from the jungle. "Kwa! Kwa! Be on your guard! Kwa, Kwa, he will try to kill you!"
This was in the universal language of the jungle, which was almost a manner of thought rather than any articulate speech. It was a means of communication that all animals used, on and off, even when, as many of them did, they possessed a tribal speech of their own. It was the ancient speech, one that Kwa had used instinctively ever since his earliest childhood. But, since then, he'd learned most of the jungle calls as well.
Everywhere, to declare yourself, state, who you were and stand your ground, was in the nature of a challenge.
From the Man Beast there came a long-sustained and rumbling breath. It was something that at first Kwa couldn't understand except that this was an answer to his challenge.
Kwa, with every nerve and sinew on the trigger, flicked a look about him. He was amazed by the number of leopards he saw about him. Leopards were glinting everywhere in the foreground, running, belly-flat; pausing to stare; sliding and slinking. They gave an impression that the jungle-glade was surrounded by the coil of an enormous black and yellow snake-never still-with a hundred heads.
RECOLLECTION and some further measure of understanding came to Kwa. Of all the animals of the jungle the leopards were the only ones who'd ever been reported to have been on terms of intimacy with the Beast Men.
The Sapadi-meaning, "the Cloven Footed"-as all the Negroes of the Guinea Coast call the Beast Men. Time was when the Negroes had talked to the Utangani, the White Men, about the existence of Sapadi in Africa's great Equatorial forests. But the White Men had laughed, and so the Negroes no longer talked about the Sapadi except among themselves.
The Utangani were like that. They laughed at everything they couldn't see or understand-animals and men and trees that were aniemba, possessed by a spirit; the nibuiri, the ghosts of animals or men who roamed about in the dusk and dark; the power of the ougangas, the witchdoctors-not all of them, but some-to trap the souls of things, of men included, and keep them imprisoned in a box.
Kwa laughed at nothing he couldn't understand. The world was filled with such things-both the Great White World, which was his by inheritance through his parents; and the Great Black World, the world of the Devil Bush to which he'd been born and in which he'd been reared.
THERE came a momentary diversion.
Ancheri, a little bush-deer, no larger than a slight Italian greyhound, had leaped a fallen, mosscovered tree, and stood there in the clearing. Evidently it had been taken by panic and it stood there quivering, its soft eyes bright with alarm. At sight of it that revolving wheel of leopards had instantly stopped. But even quicker than the pause and hover of the leopards was the action of the Beast Men.
Maybe this was his final answer to that challenge of Kwa's-also a warning to those other jungle tribesmen he saw assembling. One of his great arms as if uncoiled and struck.
It was a movement faster, almost, than that of the jungle-eyes that followed him. On the instant, it seemed, he'd broken the ncheri's neck. He'd brought its throat to his mouth. He stood there drawing at the little creature's blood.
From where he stood Kwa sprang. "Hah!" he grunted.
And he'd struck the Cloven Footed with his fist.
CHAPTER 2
BLOOD CALL
IT WAS a blow that might have felled a man-a jab, something of an uppercut-with all the Force of that plunging rush behind it. But the Sapadi was merely shaken. It was surprise that had shaken him as much as the blow. He was a Beast Man, hence something of a god-god of the leopards. This white whelp of the Utangani had struck him. The Sapadi was about to get another shock. He'd dropped the body of the dead and bleeding deer to the ground between his splayed and cloven feet. The smell of blood and the spectacle of the raw red wound was too much for one of the leopards. In an instant, it had flashed in and seized the prey, had started off with it. Without delay, two other leopards came in. They were there with the flashing speed of hungry snakes.
There was a whine and the beginning of a fight.
Kwa was in the midst of the tangle at once, striking with his bare hands right and left.
Now Kwa heard something that the Sapadi said-and understood it, although it was in an inverted form of thought, like the secret language of some murderous lodge.
"Strike him! Tear him!"
Kwa saw a quick change in the leopards.
One of the brutes he seized by the neck and flung aside. At another that had dared face him with a yawning mouth he aimed a chopping blow that quelled it on the instant.
These were murderous moments-a scent of blood in the air from the slaughtered deer, a voice commanding the leopards to kill him. It was as if, suddenly, here in the Devil Bush, the Devil himself had appeared. There flashed through Kwa's mind even now old stories that he'd heard-long night, in the great Fire Cave of the Mu, when the people of the Furry Tribe sat about their sacred fire and the jungle tribes, from mice to elephants, from birds to pythons, gathered in the shadows to watch the mystery of fire and hear the stories of the world.
In all of these stories, the Devil came and came again-as wolf, as snake, as man,
Kwa backed from the bloody wreck of the little deer. He'd kicked the last leopard away. His eyes were on the Beast Man, ready for attack, ready for flight. He'd have little enough chance, he knew, unarmed against an enemy like this.
THERE were a hundred voices screaming warning. Then, from a corner of his eye, he saw an elephant plunge into the clearing from the green screen of the jungle. That was Golef, a young elephant bull, with whom he'd struck up a close friendship.
"Golef!" Kwa called. "No killing!"
"He would kill you from behind," came Golef's whisper.
Just as the Beast Man rushed at him, head down, Kwa sprang aside. He saw what had happened. He understood now those cries of warning. One of the largest leopards-an old man-eater, as Kwa could tell at a glance-had been creeping up on him from behind.
Golef, the elephant, had not only seen the danger in time. He'd acted on it. With a sweep of his trunk, he'd tripped the leopard and brushed it aside.
The leopard joined the others. They were bunched, but restless, circling among themselves. The eyes of all of them were on the Beast Man, then on Kwa. It was as if they were appraising two gods. One they would elect, one they would kill.
"Ho," cried Kwa. "I'm a Man!"
This wasn't a beast. Like most jungle speech
it was merely the statement of a truth. But the truth conveyed the challenge.
From branch and ground-bush and from the green maze beyond the clearing-from all directions, from above and all around, it seemed-the voices were telling Kwa to be careful, to save himself, that this was a Sapadi who faced him, and that Sapadis were killers.
"Even as the Utangani!" came a rasping breath, and Kwa knew that he was hearing again the voice of the Beast Man.
Once more Kwa had a glint of fear. But the fear was not for himself precisely. It was fear that the situation would get out of hand. There was that taint of blood in the air. There'd been that revolt of the leopards. He knew that now should the situation escape from his hands he would be doubly lost. His life would not only forfeit but his hope-the hope that had become the purpose of his life-to restore the Great Truce among animals and men.
The leopards were whining a chorus to that statement of the Sapadi.
"Even as the Utangani! The Utangani kill!"
The Sapadi rushed him,
The rush of the Sapadi was like nothing that Kwa had ever seen before-swift, silent. It was like the charge of three animals in one. The hands and arms were snakes. The open mouth had become the mouth of a fighting leopard.
Kwa, jungle-trained, crouched and went far to one side.
As he did so, there was a roaring whisper that reached his brain.
"Kwa! Kwa! We'll fight for you!" These were the elephants and buffalo who spoke.
There came another rush of speech, mingled with it, but as clear as the voice of horns in an orchestra.
"Kwa! Kwa! We'll fight for you!"
NOW Kwa could scarcely believe the evidence of his brain. This last offer had reached him in the voices of lions; and lions were almost as rare in the Devil Bush as men themselves were.
Yet there were the lions-a dozen or more. Males, all of them. Kwa, with a rush of gratitude, knew that now, at any rate, the leopards would be held in check. Leopards were brave; they were cunning; they possessed, perhaps, certain forms of evil magic which lions either ignored or disdained. But in the presence of a lion no leopard dared assert itself.
Adventures of Kwa, Man of the Jungle (Two jungle adventure classics in one volume!) Page 7
