All this, like the breaking up of light in a prism-instantaneous.
The Sapadi had rushed. Kwa had dodged. The voices had reached him. Kwa found time to stand straight and-raise both arms.
"No, no!" he shouted. "I am Kwa! Kwa fights! Kwa will slay this thing!"
He, could imagine the sort of slaughter that might begin should he himself be slain, The jungle now surrounding this fated battle-ground was packed with life. Grass-eaters and blood-drinkers were there together, birds and squirrels and snakes. An old man gorilla stood with his knuckles on the fallen tree and back of him were other gorillas. They stared at the leopards, stared at the lions. But it was at Kwa they stared the oftenest. On him the present truce depended.
There should be no killing in Kwa's presence. There should be no killing within sound of his voice. But Kwa himself could kill. Kwa came from the terrible race that killed even when it was without hunger.
Kwa and the Sapadi were advancing again. There was a great silence.
The Sapadi snorted and breathed with a rasping sound.
"I am Bele," he said; "god of the blood-drinkers. I am thirsty again. Tonight I and my brethren will drink the blood of this young white goat."
CHAPTER 3
NOOSE AND CLAW
THERE'D come a sort of chorus to that statement of the Sapadi's. It came from the direction of the slinking, watchful leopards.
"Yo, yo! He is god of the blooddrinkers!"
But a lion coughed, and the sound struck silence even to the sort of silent speech that was running about.
Kwa thought. He thought in English. To him English had always been, in some sort, a sacred language. This, he never could forget, had been the language that the unknown golden-haired woman had used, his mother, she who had passed her life on to him.
Sometimes English sentences formed in his brain, even here in the depths of the Devil Bush, and it would curiously seem as if it was his mother-her "mbuiri," her soul that whispered to him.
"Use your brain! Look up!"
He looked up. And now, just as the Beast Man of the cloven feet made another lightning dash in his direction he jumped into the air instead of to one side, and seized the loop of a swinging rubber vine. Almost too late. The Sapadi had struck at him with clutching fingers and scored such a scratch down one of Kwa's legs as a leopard might have made.'
"He runs away," the leopards whined.
And Bele, the so-called god of the blood-drinkers, braked his charge and pivoted on his horned feet. With him, at any rate, there could be no side-stepping. Nor could he climb. Both of which thoughts came to Kwa in that swinging moment.
BUT he had no intention of running away, and those who knew him best divined that this was so.
"Ho," roared Bele. "He joins the other umkago!"
The "umkago" were a tribe of small red-headed monkeys. They were there in force, swarming overhead. The Beast Man had meant this as a taunt, and the leopards were ready to take it up. Monkeys and apes had always been a favorite food for leopards, perhaps because they were so much like the children of men; then, dogs, because these were the friends of man; then man himself.
But the lions also had taken to serpenting about, and in the sudden silence caused by their movement the forest tribes heard Kwa shrill out something in the very language of the umkago, the red-headed monkey pilgrims.
Then: "Wah!" Kwa shouted in the universal speech. "Wah! I am brother to them all!"
He stood in his loop of vine and started it to swing. For the first time now since he'd first stood in the presence of the Beast Man he began to feel an assurance of victory.
The feeling made him laugh aloud. It made him shout a song.
"Wah!" he laughed. "Come catch me, Bele. Come catch Kwa. Bele drinks the blood of a little deer. Bele now talks of drinking the blood of a Man!"
This was the turn of the treedwellers-birds and ribbon-snakes, monkeys and squirrels. Some of the squirrels were so small that they might have been taken for mice if it wasn't for their silken, never-quiet tails.
"Wah!" they chorused. "Kwa is the brother of us all! Come catch us, Bele! Come catch Kwa!"
Bele, at a momentary loss, charged over toward the leopards. They cowered at his approach and looked their reverence. Bele charged back-huge and black, shining-if not a god at least a devil to most of these other animals. Half man. Perhaps with the mbuiri of a man at his command to help him with his evil magic.
The buffalo showed signs of stampede. They rolled their eyes and snorted at those cleft feet of his feet almost like their own. Golef, the young elephant-bull, Kwa's particular friend, threw out his barns door ears and extended his trunk in a rigid slant-it was a fighting stance-but it took all his nerve and all his memory of his talks with Kwa to maintain it.
ONLY the lions and the old gorilla stood firm and apparently at ease, as if there was some ancient, settled wisdom back of them that couldn't be shaken even by a devil.
"Ho," Kwa. suddenly shouted. "I am Kwa-Kwa the Golden-and my mother came from the Golden West!"
The meaning of this was obscure to all who heard it-except to Golef, perhaps; but none who heard Kwa could believe other than that the battle was but now begun.
Down from the heights of the trees where the red-headed monkeys ran there came a length of tie-tie vine, soft and supple, strong as copper wire. There seemed to be no end of it. It was with vine like this that the big-game hunters of the Gaboon used to weave their elephant and buffalo-nets, back in the days before the White Man came to exchange powder and rum for slaves.
"Ho! Tie-tie vine!" Kwa chanted. "With tie-tie vine my mother's people conquered the Golden West!"
SUDDENLY, Bele, who'd again come to the side of the snaking leopards, caught one of them up in his powerful hands. There was a squirming spasm as the leopard let out a snarling scream of protest.
"Kill!" shrilled the Beast Man.
He'd turned and with one of those lightning-swift charges of his had hurled the leopard to where Kwa had been standing out of reach.
It was as if he'd hurled a living buzz-saw. The leopard caught and clung-cursing heaven and earth in the leopard tribal speech.
But Kwa was no longer there. Kwa had leaped. He'd landed on the ground. He hadn't lost a moment. He was coiling his tie-tie vine. Then there followed something that struck all those who saw it as a bit of beautiful and terrible magic.
A treble breath-a shrill whine swept the jungle. .
While the lightning-footed but slower witted Sapadi, Bele the Beast Man of the Cloven Feet, still gazed up to where he'd hurled his living missile, Kwa dashed in close, and as if lashed him with his slender vine.
It looked like suicide to those who watched him. But instantly their keen eyes saw that a noose had fallen over Bele's head and shoulders. Bele reacted to this as swiftly as if the vine had been red-hot iron. He jerked around and plunged at Kwa. As he did so, Kwa stepped aside and made another lashing movement at his feet.
Kwa gave a double-handed jerk and Bele fell.
Now, instead of retreating, as Kwa's friends hoped and expected, Kwa flung himself flat on Bele and started to throw loop after loop about his head and shoulders-four, five-while Bele in his confusion heaved and struggled like a harpooned whale.
All would have gone well for Kwa just then if it hadn't been for the leopard swinging on the vine just overhead.
Physically, the leopard could not have been more easy in the position in which it now found itself than if it had been safe in its own home den. But here was a chance to ease the ache in its pride-to rid itself of a little of its stored-up venom. It didn't dare attack openly either of these two fighting gods on the ground, but it could fall. Fall it did or pretended to; swinging under, dropping, turning in the air.
One of its hooked and scimitared paws caught in Kwa's bright mane and held.
CHAPTER 4
KEEPERS OF THE PEACE
KWA, struggling with all he had of both brain and muscle to bring his battle to a close, fel
t that dragging rake of pointed talons across his scalp, the swift suffocation of the leopard's fur as the big cat let its full weight down upon him.
In spite of himself, or to save his life, Kwa flung up a hand to shake himself free.
Swift as the reflex was, one of the lions had been swifter. It had reached the group on the ground with a single spring, it had struck with a massive paw. The leopard rolled.
It didn't rise again.
Almost as swift as the lion-he might have been as swift if it hadn't been for some order Kwa had given-Golef, the elephant, planted one of his feet on the leopard's head.
He held it there while the spotted fur quivered to a stillness. Then Golef raised his trunk and screamed.
"Ho!" was what he said. "While Kwa is occupied, the lions and we shall see that peace is kept!"
Swift moments, all of these. Things happening all at once. Life in the jungle like a river, flowing slowly, day after day, night after night, then taking some mighty jump into a cataract of action.
For Kwa, a brush with death, just now when the leopard clawed his head. Bele gouging with his own mouth of a fighting leopard had got a strand of the tie-tie in his mouth and snapped it. A hand and arms came free.
WITH his free hand he clapped a blow at the side of Kwa's head that staggered him-a curious blow, not with the fist, but with the hand half-open and the fingers rigid, a leopard blow.
The Beast Man fought like a leopard and with the strength of a bull.
Kwa, wavering, caught the hot blast of Bele's breath—breath smelling of blood and carrion. Kwa saw Bele's yellow fangs within an inch of his face.
Kwa flung his strength and concentrated purpose on that free hand of Bele's and forced it around. It was like trying to twist a live branch, big as his thigh, from a mulmberry tree.
Bele heaved and was on top of him. But Kwa had brought the free arm of Bele with him. Little by little, he was dragging the arm into the position where he wanted it to go.
MEANTIME Bele had worked his other hand partly free, and his fingers were merciless as they prodded and tore wherever they could reach Kwa's body. Kwa felt as if bush-pigs were tearing him up alive.
But he wouldn't let go of Bele's arm. He had the arm now against Bele's back and was pressing it up. The great hand of the Beast Man was now almost between his shoulder blades, and there Kwa held it-held it even when Bele once more surged and rolled.
Now Kwa came up and was no longer underneath. He gulped the air. He filled his eyes with one wide glance of all that lay about him. After all, he was Kwa, and Kwa had friends. For these friends he was fighting now. The thought somehow nerved him for the final effort, when he gave a sudden heave and knew that he had dislocated Bele's shoulder.
He didn't pause to rest on that much of a triumph.
Bele, with a dislocated shoulder, could still be as dangerous and as deadly as a gored rhino, as a wounded lion. That also was part of the jungle law-never to stop simply because of pain, simply because you thought you might be beaten. Pain that was merely the whip of the invisible master, to each man and beast his own "mbuiri," forcing him to go on until the mbuiri, the soul or the ghost, itself skips out.
In his own heart Kwa said, "God bless the umkago!" The little redheaded monkeys had thrown down enough tic-tie vine to tether six elephants.
Kwa noosed the dislocated arm and threw the same loop for a dozen turns about Bele's throat.
He noosed the second hand, then cast a hitch about one of Bele's hocks and drew the two together, This wasn't for the sake of torture. This was all for the sake of absolute mastery, absolute security.
Kwa got to his feet. There was a tremor in his knees. He was streaming with blood. He felt befouled. He raised his face and shook out his name of tawny hair. He felt as if he'd been scalped. He felt as if he had-a nest of hot coals in his thighs-there where Bele had prodded and torn at his flesh.
But all this would pass.
"Wah!" he cried. "You see me? I am Kwa."
THERE was a singing in the air. It was made up of a hundred-or a hundred thousand-voices. For there has never been a census of the jungle-world. There has never been even an attempt to chart the zones and the countries of jungle thought and speech, of common understandings.
The answer came:
"Wah! We see thee, brother! Thou art Kwa!"
That was the general run of the chorus, and there may have been even the voices of insects in it as well as the voices of birds and elephants, of lizards, snakes and pigs.
Kwa bent a knee and took a slow step, bringing his foot flat down to the trampled earth.
"There lies Bele," Kwa said; "bound and mastered."
The warm breeze of a thousand or ten thousand breaths repeated the affirmation.
Kwa took two steps, thinking deeply, inviting his mbuiri to express itself.
"Shall I kill him?" Kwa asked; but those who heard him knew that the question was not for them. There was a great silence. "Killing him would do no good," said Kwa. "We shall doctor him and let him go."
BELE himself meditated this strangest part of his adventure when he found himself free. It was early night. It was the night of a new moon-always a night of some solemnity in Black Africa-for animals as well as men.
The thing that impressed Bele most was that he'd been turned out free and sound on a new-moon night. The new moon must have had something to do with it. This moon liked him. It was his moon.
As a matter of fact, the strange white Thing he had fought had been worse hurt than he himself had been hurt. The Kwa Thing. Kwa, who spoke the speech of the Bush, This was no Utangani whelp. Nor yet was it an "Ovengua"-one of those powerful spirits that roam the Devil Bush. For an Ovengua would never have allowed itself to be taken in so simply by a leopard.
He'd said it. Kwa was a white ghost who happened to have taken on the shape of a man and who'd picked up something of Utangani-White man-magic.
But, in any case, white. Moon color. His blood would make strong medicine. He'd almost had it.
"O Moon!" said Bele in his thought.
And he didn't know it-it wouldn't have made any difference even if he had-but when he said this he was joining his voice to a chorus that went all up and down the coasts of West Africa this night-and far back into forests and grasslands, up dim rivers, out across the Kalahari desert where half-starved Bushmen also stared at the silver crescent and said, "O Moon!"
"O Moon!" said Bele. "Help me make to thee this White Sacrifice!"
CHAPTER 5
THE GREEGREE CAVE
BELE, the Cloven Footed, traveled smoothly and swiftly through the darkening jungle of the Devil Bush. A few leopards had caught up with him shortly after Kwa and his friends had turned him loose. But these Bele had driven away. He felt that a virtue had gone out of him by having been beaten and bound.
It wasn't good f or a Bush god to allow himself to be seen by his followers when his virtue was departed.
Especially when these followers were leopards. Leopards were keen; they, knew too much. Leopards had risen to a point where they were no longer afraid of fire. Leopards even had ideas of fetish. For example, leopards would often take the skull of a victim and put it up in a tree. When you asked them why they did this, they'd simply grin.
In spite of those great horned feet of his, Bele traveled as silently as any leopard could have traveled. As a matter of fact, he often ran with leopards. All the Beast Men did. The Beast Men. The Sapadi.
And they let the leopards do their killing for them, which the leopards were glad to do.
This reminded Bele of past banquets, and he began to take close notice of the air. It wasn't long before he scented something that whetted his already sharpened appetite.
Niaray!'
The niaray were a bush-buffalo almost as dainty as certain of the deer.
And shortly, Bele, silent as a shadow, had the herd located. In less than a minute he'd made his kill-a monthold calf that had been sleeping close up against its mother's flank.
Before the mother herself had discovered what had happened he was on his way again, taking the calf along. H-e was getting his virtue back. Neither he nor the calf had made a sound.
He sated himself as he traveled, then cast the drained body aside. The blood of a calf was sweet. It was nourishing. But there was no medicine in it.
There were many creatures in the Bush whose blood was medicine. Man came first, of course; and of men the whiter they were the stronger the medicine. But, after man, lions and the big apes-both troublesome and hard to kill. But there were those who believed that leopards, after all, were even better.
And, strangely enough, leopards were the standby of the Sapadi Lodge-a secret that not even the shrewdest leopard had ever learned. For the Sapadi were the gods of the leopards. And gods-so ran the old wisdom of Black Africa-of men as well as beasts-always fed on those who worshiped them.
Bele, in the dark, had pressed on through queer passages and ascending trails to a place somewhere on the steamy flanks of Sango Lobango, that huge and ragged, snow and jungle covered mountain of the Devil Bush whose native name meant the Father of Lies.
It might have been called that for a number of reasons. Sometimes it had been seen from some point, perhaps ninety or a hundred miles away-the fingers of its snow-peaks pointing to the sky. Yet no explorer had ever been able to find it. Or, if he had, he'd never, at any rate, returned.
First the Devil Bush, that vast and haunted jungle into which no West Coast native nor jungle Black could be bribed to go. Then, the broken flanks of Sango Lobango himself a chaos of pits and flinty needles, craters and caverns, hot streams and cold, all jungle clotted, as if in a stupendous hot-house, almost on up to the point where the snows began.
But all as simple as a village street to Bele.
He found a crooked corridor-jet dark to ordinary eyes-but where he saw plainly enough everything he might have cared to see. The floor of the corridor was a tepid stream that ran a smooth carpet of water over tilted slate. The jungle closed this in with a solidity like that of solid rock. There was, in fact, no telling, so far as appearances went, where the jungle left off and the solid rock began. .
Adventures of Kwa, Man of the Jungle (Two jungle adventure classics in one volume!) Page 8
