Talbot Mundy

“ We buried our newly won ivory under a tree, locating the spot exactly with the aid of Monty’s compass, and broke camp, starting sleepless up the mountain. As Monty said:
“No use meandering around the mountain. Hassan might be higher up or lower down. If he is there you may depend on it he’s tired of waiting. He’s looking for a safari. Let’s climb where we can be seen from miles away.”
So climb we did, thousand after thousand feet, until the night air grew so cold that the porters’ teeth chattered and they threatened to desert us. ”

“ Fred took him by the arm and raised him. “Tell us what’s the matter.”
“Men who eat men! Men who eat men! I had three porters to carry my tent and food. Now I have none. They have eaten them! Now they hunt me!”
“Well, you’re safe,” said Monty. “Calm yourself.”
“But you are not bwana Schillingschen! I am here to wait for him. Have you seen him? Where is he?”
Fred answered him. “Dead!”
Hassan threw himself on the ground again at Monty’s feet.
“Oh, what shall I do?” he blubbered. “I am an old man. Who shall take my people out of jail? Who shall go to Dar es Salaam and make Germans give them up?” ”

“ It seemed that in expectation of Schillingschen’s early arrival he had camped within a mile of the place where the stuff was hidden, taking unreasoning courage from the bare fact of having the redoubtable Schillingschen for friend. But the cannibals (who must have been a hungry folk, for there were no plantations, and almost no animals on all those upper slopes) had pounced on his three lean porters, missing himself by a hair’s breadth.
In hiding, he had watched his three men killed, toasted before a fire in a cavern-mouth, and eaten. ”

“ No man but a German can make these Germans cease from punishing!”
Monty beckoned to the Baganda who had once done Schillingschen’s dirty work.
“D’you see this man? This is a German spy. The German will be willing to hand over your relations in exchange for a promise not to make a fuss about this man. Wait a minute, though! Are your relations criminals?” ”

“ Not long ago Tippoo Tib sending me with bwana Coutlass second time, making bad threats against me if I not lead him wrong. Then Schillingschen he send for me and making worse threats! Oh, what shall do! Oh, what shall do!”
“You shall show us where that ivory is!” Monty answered him. “Stop blubbering! Get up! Look here! See this! (Get me that diary, Will.) If the Germans won’t release your relations from jail on account of this Baganda, this is a written book that will make them do it! In this book are the names of men who have broken treaties and the law of nations. ”

“ The earth, too, all over the mountain and the range to eastward of it was warm in spite of the wind. In places there were warm springs bubbling from the rock, and at night and early morning a blanket of white mist that was remarkably like steam covered everything. ”

“ I must have been marching nearly parallel with you chaps for about a week!”
“If coincidence of evidence means anything,” said Will “we’re all on a red-hot scent! That Baganda we have in our outfit is our prisoner. One of Schillingschen’s pet pimps. He swears Hassan—or rather some old native whose name he doesn’t know—was to meet Schillingschen in these parts and lead him to where he actually helped bury the ivory, years ago!”
“We may have difficulty finding him,” said I. “Mount Elgon’s big!”
“What about Brown?” asked Monty. “I hope you haven’t made him partner? ”

“ Will threw it to Monty, who caught it.
“He told me this Schillingschen had searched the whole country over for the stuff—had it straight from Schillingschen’s boys—I dare say you know how Courtney can make a native tell him all he knows. Schillingschen, he said, had eliminated pretty nearly all the likely places until Mount Elgon was about all there is left. Courtney said, too, that there were always so many thousands of elephants near Elgon that Tippoo Tib probably gathered a harvest there. ”