Talbot Mundy

“ There is a spirit and a spell of Africa that grip men even in sleep. The curt engine blasts became in my dreams the panting of enormous beasts that fought. A dream-continent waged war on itself, and bled. I saw the caravans go, thousands long, the horsed and white-robed Arab in the lead—the paid, fat, insolent askaris, flattering and flogging—slaves burdened with ivory and other, naked, new ones, two in a yoke, shivering under the askari's lash, the very last dogged by vultures and hyenas, lean as they, ill-nourished on such poor picking. ”

“ But never a human being did we see until we rounded the northeastern hump of the mountain in a bitter wind, and spied half a hundred naked men and women, thinner than wraiths, who scampered off at sight of us and volleyed ridiculous arrows from a cave-mouth. The arrows fell about midway between us and them, but threw Hassan into a paroxysm of fear, out of which it was difficult to shake him.
"Those are the people who ate my men! That is the cavern where Tippoo Tib hid the ivory! That is where my men's bones are! See—they have torn my tent for clothing for their naked women!" ”

“ Do you understand?"
"No," said Kazimoto in the most melancholy tone I ever heard from him.
"Are you a Nyamwezi? Now don't dare to lie to me!"
"Yes."
"You were born in this country?"
"Yes."
"Then you belong in this country!"
"I belong where my master takes me. My spirit is good. I am a true man," Kazimoto answered.
"Your spirit is rotten! You are a traitor! What do you mean by talking to me of your master, you reptile! Your master is the German government, of which His Majesty the Kaiser is supreme overlord! There is a picture of your master!" ”

“ Not for nothing have I waited all these months in this stinking Zanzibar until a man should come in search of that ivory whom I could trust! Not for nothing did Juma, the lazaretto attendant tell Hassan you desired to see him! You seek the ivory, but you wish to keep it all! To share none of it with me!" He stood up, and made another bow, much curter than his former one. "I am Georges Coutlass! My courage is known! No man can rob me and get away with it!"
"My good man," drawled Monty, raising his eyebrows in the comfortless way he has when there seems need of facing an inferior antagonist. ”

“ It was the glow that rides above hot steamer funnels in the night.
"Fred!" I shouted, for fear took hold of the very roots of my heart, "for the love of God make every one keep silence! Show no lights! Don't speak above a whisper! Keep all heads below the gunwale! That cursed German launch is after us!"
We were in double danger. I could hear surf pounding on rocks to starboard. I did not dare to come up into the wind because nobody but I knew how the spar would have to be passed around the mast, and in any case the noise and the fluttering sail might attract attention. ”

“ If built-over Mombasa is a small place, so is Africa. So is the world. Striding down the hill from the other hotel, the rival one, the Royal, came a man so well known in so many lands that they talk of naming a tenth of a continent after him—the mightiest hunter since Nimrod, and very likely mightier than he; surely more looked-up to and respected—a little, wiry-looking, freckled, wizened man whose beard had once been red, who walked with a decided limp and blinked genially from under the brim of a very neat khaki helmet.
"Why, bless my soul if it isn't Fred Oakes!" ”

“ The island of Mombasa is so close to the cocoanut-fringed mainland that a railway bridge connects them. Like Zanzibar, it is a place of strange delights, and bridled lawlessness controlled by the veriest handful of Englishmen. There are strange hotels—strange dwellings—streets—stores—tongues and faces. The great grim fort that brave da Gama built, and held against all comers, dominates the sea front and the lower town. The brass-lunged boys who pounce on baggage, fight for it, and tout for the grandly named hotels are of as many tribes as sizes, as many tongues as tribes. ”

“ Goad, nor whip, nor wheel, nor yoke
Have lessened the rage of the Ivory Folk!
Still we are monarchs of field and stream!
None is as strong or as heavy as we!
We scent—we swerve—we come—we scream—
And the men are as mud 'neath tusk and knee!
But we go no more to the Place to die,
For the blacks head off and the guns pursue;
Bleaching our scattered rib-bones lie,
And men be many, and we be few.
Nevertheless:
(All together, trunks up-thrown, ears extended, and stamping in slow time with the fore-feet.) ”

“ No human being could have guessed their number. The forest awoke with a battle-din of falling trees and crashing undergrowth, split apart by the trumpeting of angry bulls and the screams of cows summoning their young ones. The earth shook under the weight of their tremendous rout. I heard Fred's rifle ring out three times far to my left—then Will's a rifle nearer to me; and at that the herd swung toward its own left, and the whole lot of them came full-pelt, blind, screaming, frantic, straight for me. ”

“ Everybody rose, although there were men in the room in no mind to be told their duty by a Greek. Lady Saffren Waldon walked to a place near the head of the table with a chilling bow. As usual when night and the yellow lamplight modified merciless outlines, she looked lovely enough. But she lacked the royal gift of seeming at home with the vulgar herd. She could make men notice her—serve her, up to a certain point—and feel that she was the center of interest wherever she might choose to be; but because she was everlastingly on guard, she lacked the power to put mixed company at ease. ”

“ And where the last little soft iron dagger had done its work, the blood had been drunk, and the last scrap of hide bad been cut into strips, to be chewed when the meat and its memory were things of the past, the enormous ribs lay glistening in the moonlight like those of an abandoned wreck, picked as clean as if the kites had done it.
"Have we done a commendable thing?" laughed Fred, looking at the crowd's distended paunches. "There's a good bull hippo the less. We've saved the lives for a time of several hundred gluttons. They know neither grace nor gratitude." ”

“ And no acquaintance with Mombasa, however intimate or old, dispels the charm to the man not guilty of cynicism. To the cynic (and for him) there are sin—as Africa alone knows how to sin—disease, of the dread zymotic types—and death; death peering through the doors of godowns, where the ivory tusks are piled; death in the dark back-streets of the bazaar, where tired policemen wage lop-sided warfare against insanitary habits and a quite impracticable legal code; death on the beach, where cannibal crabs parade in thousands and devour all helpless things ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whole herds crashed pell-mell through artfully staged undergrowth into thirty-foot-deep pits, where they lingered and died of thirst, that Arabs (who sat smoking within hail until they died) might have the ivory.
And all I saw in my dream was nothing to the things I really was to see. None of the cruelty of man, none of the rage and fear of animal have vanished yet from Africa. Some of the cruelty is more refined; some of the herds are smaller; some good is making headway but Africa is unchanged on the whole. ”

“ Next, chin, elbow, hand and knee up the steps came a fat, tough-looking Goanese, dressed anyhow at all in pink-colored dirty shirt, dark pants, and a helmet, also with rifle and empty bandolier. I judged he weighed about two hundred and eighty pounds, but Coutlass yanked him in like a fish coming overside. Last came a man who might be Arab, or part-Arab, part-Swahili, whom I did not recognize at first, fat, black, dressed in the white cotton garments and red fez of the more or less well-to-do native, and voluble with rare profanity. ”

“ Natives must be taught that the very name of all that is German must be reverenced, and that German punishment is as terrible and sure as the German arm is long! And be sure of this!" he continued. "The ear of the German government is as far-reaching as its arm! In your villages—in your homes—in your families—there is always an agent of the government listening! Your own brother—your wife—your child may be that agent of the government! Now, watch carefully and see what happens to men with bad hearts—aye, and to women with bad hearts, who conspire against German rule!" ”

“ When the pale latter half of the moon announced itself we could dimly make out from the upper branches all of the flat ground where the camp had been. There was no sign of Coutlass. None of Schillingschen. A lioness and two enormous lions stood facing one another in a triangle, almost exactly on the spot where the larger tent had stood, not fifty yards from us.
"Gee!"' whispered Will excitedly. "We nearly stumbled on 'em!"
"Shoot!" I whispered. My own position on the branch was so insecure that I could not have brought my rifle into use without making a prodigious noise. Will shook his head. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Against the blaze stood out the lakeward boma wall. I stood due east away from it, and discovered presently that by easing on the halyard so as to lower the long spar I could obtain something the effect of reefing.
I set Fred and Will to making a sea-anchor of buckets and spars in case the sail or rotten rigging should carry away, leaving us at the mercy of the short steep waves that fresh-water lakes and the North Sea only know. The big curved spar, now that it was hanging low, bucked and swung and the dhow steered like an omnibus on slippery pavement. ”

“ So Brown, Will Yerkes and I, with Kazimoto, our two personal servants, and six boys to carry one tent for the lot of us and food and cooking pots, started off just as the moon rose over the nearest cedars, and laughed at Fred marshaling the sleepy porters by lamplight in the open space between the house and barn. He was to follow as fast as the loaded porters could be made to travel, and with that concertina of his to spur them on there was little likelihood of losing touch. But the rear-guard, when it comes to pursuing a retreating enemy, is ever the least alluring place. ”

“ Civilization is prudery—sham—false pride—veneer! Only the Germans are truly civilized, because they alone are not afraid to face naked animalism without its mask! The British dare not! They hide from it—shut their eyes! The fools! If you could tell them their story they would never listen!
"Second: You will never tell the story! Being English, you were such dull-witted fools that you did not even hide the cartridge cases, or the bones of the Masai you shot! Bah-ha-ha-ha-hah! You can escape hanging yet by telling your secret. Jail you can not escape! ”

“ Schillingschen started as if shot.
"One of your men is an eavesdropper," Fred assured him with a cheerful nod. "That plug has been pulled already, Professor!"
"Let's play the cards face up!" Will interrupted impatiently. "Listen, Schillingschen. You're an all-in scoundrel. You're a spy. You're a bloody murderer of women and defenseless natives. If we could prove that we wouldn't argue with you. We know you burned that dhow with the women in it, but we've got no evidence, that's all. We know the German government wants that ivory, and we know why. We also want it. ”

“ I forget now for how many days we traveled across that sad and saddening land, Fred always cheerful in spite of everything, Will more angry at each village with its dirt and sores, Brown moaning always about his lovely herd of cows, and I groaning oftener than not.
My leg grew no better, what with jolting and our ignorance of how to treat it. Sometimes, in efforts to obtain relief, I borrowed a cow at one village and rode it to the next; but a cow is a poor mount and takes as a rule unkindly to the business. Now and then I tried to walk for a while, on crutches that Fred made for me ”

“ In front of us the rolling hills, broken out here and there into rocky knolls, piled up on one another toward the hump of Elgon, on which the blue sky rested. In every direction were villages of folk who knew so little of white men that they paid no taxes yet and did no work—marrying and giving in marriage—fighting and running away—eating and drinking and watching their women cultivate the corn and beans and sweet potatoes—without as much as foreboding of the taxes, work for wages, missionaries, law and commerce soon to come. ”

“ Fred demanded.
"About our business. Why are we here. What will we do. What do we know. What do I know about you. What do you know about me. Why do I serve you. How did I come to take service with you. To what place will we travel next, and when. How much money have we with us. Have we friends or acquaintances in Muanza. Do you, bwana, carry any letters in your pockets. Of what do you speak when you suppose no man is listening. Bwana, my heart is very sad in me! Those Greeks tell lies, and the Germans stir trouble in a big pot like the witches! I know the Germans! I am Nyamwezi. ”

“ Coutlass was still on his knees, throwing out the last few handfuls of loose dirt. Schillingschen stood almost over him, so close that the thrown dirt struck against his legs.
We took up positions in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraid to breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands like the proverbial aspen leaf. The prospect of shooting a white man—even such a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen—made me as nervous as a school-girl at a grown-up party. ”

“ We've no food, no tents, only one gun, next to no ammunition, nothing but money and a purpose. We don't know what chance we have of getting supplies, and particularly rifles, without letting any one know where we are, but we do know we've a clear field and a straight mark for Elgon, where rumor says—and Courtney said—and Schillingschen thinks—and this map says the ivory ought to be! The odds are against us—climate—starvation—wild beasts—savages—last and not least, the government, if they ever get wind of our being beyond bounds. Are we willing to take the chance, or are we not? ”