Murray Leinster

“ Evan slumped into a chair, though it was noticeable that he kept his rifle in his hands. Through the window came the menacing rumble of the drums from all sides.
"I think," said Alicia, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "I think a fit of hysterics would be a relief."
She looked as if she meant it. All of us looked thoroughly on edge. To have hostile drums beating all about you and to realize that a hundred and fifty miles of jungle lie between you and the nearest help is bad enough in itself. ”

“ Evan's gun was booming from the rear of the house. Arthur's spoke with a shattering roar. My own barked angrily. The drums in the bush were pounding in a mad rhythm that made the universe a place of unbearable sound. The yells, the shots, the cries, and the thunderous drumming created an uproar in which I loaded my weapon and emptied it with a sense of curious detachment. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore were behind the breastwork we had made for them. I cannot speak for Mrs. Braymore, but I glanced once at Alicia and saw her grimly holding her light rifle in readiness.
The blacks came on. ”

“ Behind us, the busy, secretive life of the bush went on—all the feedings and drinkings and matings and killings, all the comedies and all the tragedies of the jungle. Things went on, sublimely indifferent to our petty frights and fancies. The jungle attended to its business, ignoring alike our strained attitudes as we sat in the moonlight and waited for the sun to rise that we might slay a malignant ape, and the yelling of self-hypnotism of the blacks as they danced about their juju fires, working themselves into a frenzy of hatred against the white man. ”

“ It was lifelike to a surprising degree. The disgustingly human, and yet unhuman ears stuck out against the skull. The jaw protruded in truly simian fashion, and the caked, black lips were drawn back from discolored fangs in a grimace of almost unimaginable ferocity. The broad, flat nostrils were distended in rage, and the eyeholes of the mask sank deep back below the low and beetling forehead. If small, glittering eyes had shone evilly from those now blank holes, I would have been tempted to believe that a live beast was before me.
"Good work, isn't it?" asked Evan. ”

“ I glanced across to where Evan Graham sat smoking. We were on the veranda of the casa on his plantation, four weeks' march from the city of Ticao, in the province of Ticao, Portuguese West Africa. From the veranda we could see through the cleared way to the village, a half mile away, and the whole scene of the juju procession had been spread before our eyes like a play.
It puzzled me. I knew Evan made no faintest attempt to Christianize his slaves—and the villagers were surely his slaves—and yet, white men do not often allow witch doctors to flourish in their slave quarters. ”

“ Every white man on the West Coast would be rushed by the nearest blacks, and the dominance of the white race made a thing of the past, in Africa any rate.
I felt cold at the thought that the attempt—which I had thought dead these many years—might have been secretly and insidiously winning converts all this time, and that all the blacks between us and the coast might be risen and only waiting for courage to attack us. We were the only whites in a hundred and fifty miles anyway, and if the strange behavior of the natives meant mischief, we were probably doomed as it was. ”

“ Far off in the bush, where we could never reach them, we knew juju councils were going on. Weirdly painted and tattooed witch doctors whirled in their mystic dances and inflamed the minds of the blacks against us.
Men beat upon the drums and yelled and yelled, closing their eyes and surrendering themselves to the ecstasy of the rhythm until they became all but unconscious of the words they reiterated. Slowly and surely the blacks were nerving themselves to lift their hands against their masters. ”

“ It does not do for a white man to admit himself in any degree dependent on a black. I told him that he need never come to me again and resumed my stare into the bush. He may have had some idea of trying to bargain with me, but my attitude put him back. He hesitatingly and humbly told me what I already knew quite well, that he and the others had been forced to accompany Evan's natives off into the bush. ”

“ The great white African moon was silvering the whole earth with its pale rays. From the village came negro voices, singing the native words to an old, old devotional melody. From within the house came the rustle of papers. The padre and Mrs. Braymore were going over the details of the small hospital she proposed to erect for the mission. The padre is an old man, and more than forty years of his life have been spent at his little mission station, trying to help the natives despite the Portuguese and the servaçal. ”

“ What a monster he is!"
"We must get the women out of the house," said Arthur sharply. "He may tear up the roof and come inside. Alicia!"
She had heard and came quickly out, Mrs. Braymore following her. We built a small fire to keep insects away from them, and sat them on chairs while we patroled the area about the house. The drums still beat on all sides of us, but they had been relegated to a minor position now. We subconsciously counted on their remaining a potential menace only, until they stopped or drew nearer. The moon made the whole world bright and shining. ”

“ The pertinacity of the beast was appalling. To think of a colossal anthropoid with the cunning of the devil himself, the strength of seven men, and all the malignant hatred that possessed this one, to think of such an animal lurking about seeking an opportunity to wreak vengeance on one of our number was horrible. And it would not stop with one of us if more than one were within its reach. Once in a killing rage, a gorilla goes mad with blood lust. ”

“ I told them of how the Padre Silvestre sacrificed his very soul to keep his villagers from being sold again as servaçaes, how the blacks rose on Da Vega's plantation and sacked it, and all I knew of the whole disgusting system. I had no intention of making myself a hero—and my conscience still hurts me when I think of some of the things I grew absolutely accustomed to—but I did allow myself to show my feelings on the subject of Portuguese government. ”

“ Evan went on easily, "because they could smell the fur of the mask I kept in a small box in there. When I told that wild tale of a hairy arm reaching in at the window and dragging the dog out, to fling it with a broken neck into the courtyard, I need not say that I had done the killing. And my 'seeing' the gorilla on the roof was more fiction. Of course he wasn't there at dawn. I was laughing in my sleeve at you people all night long, while we patrolled the courtyard. The silhouette of the gorilla's head you two saw on the window curtain was the shadow of your humble servant. ”

“ Evan stopped and drew up a chair. He sat down comfortably. "I had learned the secret of controlling natives. As you know, that secret is fear. I knew that if I could get, say, a village full of them thoroughly afraid of me, they would be to all practical purposes my slaves. Normal means of frightening them would have the disadvantage of not frightening them too much to invoke juju to get rid of me. And juju, invoked against a white man, means poison. The obvious solution was to frighten them by means of the very juju they would use against me." ”

“ I blew a cloud of smoke over the railing of the veranda and said nothing. Through the moonlit night the throbbing of the drums came clearly to us sitting there. They beat on steadily, monotonously, hypnotically. There was something strangely menacing in the rhythmic, pulsing rumble. The cries of night birds and insects, and occasionally an animal sound, seemed natural and normal, but the muttering of those drums with that indescribable hollow tone they possess, seemed to portend a strange event.
"Juju," said Graham abruptly, "is the key to the African mind. I don't give a damn for the natives. ”

“ Queerly enough, in our absorption in the threat of the gorilla, we had almost forgotten the drums that resounded on every side of us from the bush. It was Mrs. Braymore who called our attention to them.
"I wonder what's the matter with the drums?" she said wearily. "I've been noticing them for the last ten minutes."
We listened. The monotonous rhythm was still going on, rolling through the hot midday air in muffled waves of sound. The drums seemed louder than they had been.
"They're beating more rapidly," Evan remarked in a puzzled tone. "They were going along slowly. Now they're quite fast." ”

“ Arthur seemed to pick up his rifle.
"Well, I'm going indoors to get some beauty sleep," said Evan with a yawn. "Cheer up, Arthur. There's a damn good chance that the natives will just yell themselves hoarse and come peaceably back to work. As long as the drums stay at a distance, we're all right. But wake all of us if they stop." ”

“ Pigs will feed upon us, and our bones will be scattered among the juju priests of a thousand villages to tell them to rise and slay all white men."
The drums came up to the very edge of the clearing, and their thunderous voices boomed with a full-throated bellow across the open space in a deafening volume of sound. In the moonlight, we became conscious of darker bodies moving among the bush. Evan sighted from an open window and with compressed lips fired. ”

“ To call it slave traffic is highly insulting to the Portuguese, but to call it the servaçal system is inadequate. They are servaçaes, or contrahidos, which means contract laborers, in theory, but in practice they are slaves. They never see their native villages again. The slave trail from the interior is littered with the manacles used to confine them, and there are gruesome relics all along the way, of those natives who were unable to bear the hardships of the journey. ”

“ When I thought of it, however, it was no less odd that Evan's overseers had vanished. From the nature of their position, they would be hated by the other and full-blooded natives, and it was singular in the extreme that they had gone with them.
Then I remembered a tale I had once heard, of a mystic voodoo worship that was spreading secretly over the whole of West Africa. The story ran that an attempt was being made to band all the natives possible together in this voodoo worship, and then at a given signal they were all to rise. The Indian Mutiny would be repeated. ”

“ It crept forward, and when Evan derisively uttered the challenge cry of the monster anthropoids, it had leaped to the attack.
Limited as is the intelligence of the creatures, it would never distinguish between white men. A white man had killed its mate. It had killed a white man. With the blood lust sated, by now the shaggy brute was doubtless swinging rapidly through the treetops toward its Kongo hunting grounds.
That is my explanation. I know I never saw any other sign of the huge gorilla either then or at any later time. ”

“ Evan shook his head. "The blacks had crept up to and filled the servants' quarters during the night. I suppose that's why the dogs were restless. When they made a rush, they dashed out from there and I couldn't stop them. They were inside, and I was just about gone when the gorilla appeared from nowhere. I dare say I shouted, and then the beast made for the blacks. I suppose it was as frightened as they were, but it charged them, screaming with rage, and they ran. It got one of them. The poor devil is out there now. ”

“ As Evan pointed out, they may simply exhaust themselves in yelling and dancing. I do not think it would be wise to count on that, however."
"Wouldn't it be the wisest thing to do, to simply try to make our way secretly through the jungle to the nearest fort?"
"It would be impossible," I told her frankly. "You don't know African undergrowth. We might make four or five miles a day, with luck. And at any moment in the twenty-four the natives might trail us. We'd have to make a new trail, or use the native ones. ”

“ You know they carry off native women sometimes. We've got to protect Alicia. If it kills me, it doesn't matter. Evan won't believe it's around. He's going armed to humor me, but the beast is near; it's somewhere about."
I felt myself growing pale. A monstrous ape, lingering about the place with malignant intent, and Alicia laughing unconsciously inside the house, was enough to make me feel squeamish. I unconsciously tightened my grasp on my rifle. Alicia came out on the porch at that moment and beckoned to us.
"We'll not mention this—yet," said Arthur, as we went up. ”

“ I'll walk in on their council, and we'll see what happens."
"I'll go," said Arthur, quickly sensing the psychology of the move Evan proposed to make. "I'd better go."
"It would be suicide!" Alicia exclaimed again. "One white man among all those blacks. They could kill you in an instant."
"That is precisely why they would be afraid to," I interposed. "The mere fact that a white man dared walk into their palaver and order them about, would frighten them. No negro would dare do it, and they would not understand how a white man could. It's quite possible that a sheer bluff may win out. ”

“ And the beast has learned cunning! We must look out for Alicia."
I nodded. Evan was waiting for us.
"Find anything?" he called down. "What did you shoot at?"
"The gorilla," said Arthur in a low tone. "It's there and it's determined. We'd better warn Alicia and Mrs. Braymore."
Evan looked dubious. "Did Murray see it?"
I shook my head.
Evan frowned thoughtfully. "Arthur, old chap, it may be just nerves. The women have enough to worry them with the way the natives are acting, anyway. We'll keep a sharp lookout, of course. I'm going to hunt up those natives, though." ”

“ True, it was in clear view of the sky, but a beast cunning enough to creep about the casa at midnight as he had done, might possess the intelligence to reason that there was the ideal hiding place for him.
"Do you think there is any real danger from the natives?" Alicia inquired hesitatingly.
"When natives do inexplicable things, it is usually juju," I said grimly. "And where there is juju there is usually danger. There is one thing that can be said, though. While a native is making a noise, he is rarely dangerous in bulk. ”

“ Given time, a drum and a rhythmic phrase, a native can convince himself of anything simply by pounding on the drum and yelling over and over the phrase that contains the idea. He will luxuriate in the rhythm, he will hypnotize himself by the monotony of the drum beats. He will go into an ecstasy, simply yelling over and over the one phrase. ”

“ From time to time along the great slave trail from the interior, you will find big inclosures made of tree trunks and filled with grass huts. They were originally built for halting places for the caravans that go up and down from beyond the Hungry Country. Of course they are in ill repair because of the attacks of insects and rot upon dead timber in that climate, but the carriers feel safer in them after nightfall, and the slave traders find them convenient to avoid possible attempts to escape off the part of the "voluntary labor recruits" they are escorting to the coast. ”

“ Away from Ticao, Evan Graham would have been shunned for the sort of man he was. In Ticao, one is not particular. There are few enough Anglo-Saxon white men of any sort—the two consuls, half a dozen missionaries, and about three men like myself, who take chances in the interior. The rest of the population is either Portuguese or black, preponderatingly black, with a blending layer of half- and quarter-breeds. ”