The Ivory Trail
by Talbot Mundy · English · Gutenberg #5194 · 813,488 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Ivory Trail
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Ivory Trail
Author: Talbot Mundy
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5194]
Most recently updated: December 28, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5194
Credits: Produced by Jake Jaqua
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IVORY TRAIL ***
Produced by Jake Jaqua
THE IVORY TRAIL
By Talbot Mundy
Author of
King--of the Khyber Rifles
The Winds of the World
Hira Singh
etc.
Chapter One
THE NJO HAPA* SONG
Green, ah greener than emeralds are, tree-tops beckon the
dhows to land,
White, oh whiter than diamonds are, blue waves burst on the
amber sand,
And nothing is fairer than Zanzibar from the Isles o' the West
to the Marquesand.
I was old when the world was wild with youth
(All love was lawless then!)
Since 'Venture's birth from ends of earth
I ha' called the sons of men,
And their women have wept the ages out
In travail sore to know
What lure of opiate art can leach
Along bare seas from reef to beach
Until from port and river reach
The fever'd captains go.
Red, oh redder than red lips are, my flowers nod in the blazing
noon,
Blue, oh bluer than maidens' eyes, are the breasts o' my waves
in the young monsoon,
And there are cloves to smell, and musk, and lemon trees, and
cinnamon.
---------
*The words "Njo hapa" in the Kiswahili tongue are the equivalent of
"come hither!"
---------
Estimates of ease and affluence vary with the point of view. While his
older brother lived, Monty had continued in his element, a cavalry
officer, his combined income and pay ample for all that the Bombay side
of India might require of an English gentleman. They say that a finer
polo player, a steadier shot on foot at a tiger, or a bolder squadron
leader never lived.
But to Monty's infinite disgust his brother died childless. It is
divulging no secret that the income that passed with the title varied
between five and seven thousand pounds a year, according as coal was
high, and tenants prosperous or not--a mere miserable pittance, of
course, for the Earl of Montdidier and Kirkudbrightshire; so that all
his ventures, and therefore ours, had one avowed end--shekels enough to
lift the mortgages from his estates.
Five generations of soldiers had blazed the Montdidier fame on
battle-grounds, to a nation's (and why not the whole earth's) benefit,
without replenishing the family funds, and Monty (himself a confirmed
and convinced bachelor) was minded when his own time should come to
pass the title along to the next in line together with sufficient funds
to support its dignity.
To us--even to Yerkes, familiar with United States merchant kings--he
seemed with his thirty thousand dollars a year already a gilded
Croesus. He had ample to travel on, and finance prospecting trips. We
never lacked for working capital, but the quest (and, including Yerkes,
we were as keen as he) led us into strange places.
So behold him--a privy councilor of England if you please--lounging in
the lazaretto of Zanzibar, clothed only in slippers, underwear and a
long blue dressing-gown. We three others were dressed the same, and
because it smacked of official restraint we objected noisily; but
Monty did not seem to mind much. He was rather bored, but unresentful.
A French steamer had put us ashore in quarantine, with the grim word
cholera against us, and although our tale of suffering and Monty's
rank, insured us a friendly reception, the port health authorities
elected to be strict and we were given a nice long lazy time in which
to cool our heels and order new clothes. (Guns, kit, tents, and all
but what we stood in had gone to the bottom with the German cholera
ship from whose life-boat the French had rescued us.)
"Keeping us all this time in this place, is sheer tyranny!" grumbled
Yerkes. "If any one wants my opinion, they're afraid we'd talk if they
let us out--more afraid of offending Germans than they are of cholera!
Besides--any fool could know by now we're not sick!"
"There might be something in that," admitted Monty.
"I'd send for the U. S. Consul and sing the song out loud, but for
you!" Yerkes added.
Monty nodded sympathetically.
"Dashed good of you, Will, and all that sort of thing."
"You English are so everlastingly afraid of seeming to start trouble,
you'll swallow anything rather than talk!"
"As a government, perhaps yes," admitted Monty. "As a people, I fancy
not. As a people we vary."
"You vary in that respect as much as sardines in a can! I traveled
once all the way from London to Glasgow alone in one compartment with
an Englishman. Talk? My, we were garrulous! I offered him a
newspaper, cigarettes, matches, remarks on the weather suited to his
brand of intelligence--(that's your sole national topic of talk between
strangers!)--and all he ever said to me was 'Haw-ah!' I'll bet he was
afraid of seeming to start trouble!"
"He didn't start any, did he?" asked Monty.
"Pretty nearly he did! I all but bashed him over the bean with the
newspaper the third time he said 'haw-ah!'"
Monty laughed. Fred Oakes was busy across the room with his most
amazing gift of tongues, splicing together half-a-dozen of them in
order to talk with the old lazaretto attendant, so he heard nothing;
otherwise there would have been argument.
"Then it would have been you, not he who started trouble,"' said I, and
Yerkes threw both hands up in a gesture of despair.
"Even you're afraid of starting something!" He stared at both of us
with an almost startled expression, as if he could not believe his own
verdict, yet could not get away from it. "Else you'd give the
Bundesrath story to the papers! That German skipper's conduct ought to
be bruited round the world! You said you'd do it. You promised us!
You told the man to his face you would!"
"Now," said Monty, "you've touched on another national habit."
"Which one?" Yerkes demanded.
"Dislike of telling tales out of school. The man's dead. His ship's
at the bottom. The tale's ended. What's the use? Besides--?"
"Ah! You've another reason! Spill it!"
"As a privy councilor, y'know, and all that sort of thing--?"
"Same story! Afraid of starting something!"
"The Germans--'specially their navy men--drink to what they call Der
Tag y'know--the day when they shall dare try to tackle England. We all
know that. They're planning war, twenty years from now perhaps, that
shall give them all our colonies as well as India and Egypt. They're
so keen on it they can't keep from bragging. Great Britain, on the
other hand, hasn't the slightest intention of fighting if war can be
avoided; so why do anything meanwhile to increase the tension? Why
send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred?
That's their method. Ours--I mean our government's--is to give hatred
a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story
they'd make a deuce of a noise, of course."
"If your government's so sure Germany is planning war," objected
Yerkes, "why on earth not force war, and feed them full of it before
they're ready?"
"Counsel of perfection," laughed Monty. "Government's responsible to
the Common--Commons to the people--people want peace and plenty. No.
Your guess was good. We are in here while the government at home
squares the newspaper men."
"You don't mean to tell me your British government controls the press?"
"Hardly. Seeing 'em--putting it up to 'em straight--asking 'em
politely. They're public-spirited, y'know. Hitting 'em with a club
would be another thing. It's an easy-going nation, but kings have been
sorry they tried force. Did you never hear of a king who used force
against American colonies?"
"Good God! So they keep you--an earl--a privy councilor--a retired
colonel of regulars in good standing--under lock and key in this
pest-house while they bribe the press not to tell the truth about some
Germans and start trouble?"
"Not exactly" said Monty.
"But here you are!"
"I preferred to remain with my party."
"You moan they'd have let you out and kept us in?"
"They'd have phrased it differently, but that's about what it would
have amounted to. I have privileges."
"Well, I'm jiggered!"
"I rather suspect it's not so bad as that," said Monty. "You're with
friends in quarantine, Will!"
For a quarantine station in the tropics it was after all not such a bad
place. We could hear the crooning of lazy rollers on the beach, and
what little sea-breeze moved at all came in to us through iron-barred
windows. The walls were of coral, three feet thick. So was the roof.
The wet red-tiled floor made at least an impression of coolness, and
the fresh green foliage of an enormous mango tree, while it obstructed
most of the view, suggested anything but durance vile. From not very
far away the aromatic smell of a clove warehouse located us, not
disagreeably, at the farther end of one of Sindbad's journeys, and the
birds in the mango branches cried and were colorful with hues and notes
of merry extravagance. Zanzibar is no parson's paradise--nor the
center of much high society. It reeks of unsavory history as well as
of spices. But it has its charms, and the Arabs love it.
It had Fred Oakes so interested that he had forgotten his
concertina--his one possession saved from shipwreck, for which he had
offered to fight the whole of Zanzibar one-handed rather than have it
burned.
("Damnation! it has silver reeds--it's an English top-hole one--a
wonder!")
So the doctors who are kind men in the main disinfected it twice, once
on the French liner that picked us out of the Bundesrath's boat, and
again in Zanzibar; and with the stench of lord-knew-what zealous
chemical upon it he had let it lie unused while he picked up Kiswahili
and talked by the hour to a toothless, wrinkled very black man with a
touch of Arab in his breeding, and a deal of it in his brimstone
vocabulary.
Presently Fred came over and joined us, dancing across the wide red
floor with the skirts of his gown outspread like a ballet
dancer's--ridiculous and perfectly aware of it.
"Monty, you're rich! We're all made men! We're all rich! Let's spend
money! Let's send for catalogues and order things!"
Monty declined to take fire. It was I, latest to join the partnership
and much the least affluent, who bit.
"If you love the Lord, explain!" said I.
"This old one-eyed lazaretto attendant is an ex-slave, ex-accomplice of
Tippoo Tib!"
"And Tippoo Tib?" I asked.
"Ignorant fo'castle outcast!" (All that because I had made one voyage
as foremast hand, and deserted rather than submit to more of it.)
"Tippoo Tib is the Arab--is, mind you, my son, not was--the Arab who
was made governor of half the Congo by H. M. Stanley and the rest of
'em. Tippoo Tib is the expert who used to bring the slave caravans to
Zanzibar--bring 'em, send 'em, send for 'em--he owned 'em anyway.
Tippoo Tib was the biggest ivory hunter and trader lived since old King
Solomon! Tippoo Tib is here--in Zanzibar--to all intents and purposes
a prisoner on parole--old as the hills--getting ready to die--and proud
as the very ace of hell. So says One-eye!"
"So we're all rich?" suggested Monty.
"Of course we are! Listen! The British government took Tippoo's
slaves away and busted his business. Made him come and live in this
place, go to church on Sundays, and be good. Then they asked him what
he'd done with his ivory. Asked him politely after putting him through
that mill! One-eye here says Tippoo had a million tusks--a
million!--safely buried! Government offered him ten per cent. of their
cash value if he'd tell 'em where, and the old sport spat in their
faces! Swears he'll die with the secret! One-eye vows Tippoo is the
only one who knows. There were others, but Tippoo shot or poisoned
'em."
"So we're rich," smiled Yerkes.
"Of course we are! Consider this, America, and tell me if Standard Oil
can beat it! One million tusks! I'm told--"
"By whom?"
"One-eye says--"
"You'll say 'Oh!' at me to a different tune, before I've done! One-eye
says it never paid to carry a tusk weighing less than sixty pounds.
Some tusks weigh two hundred--some even more--took four men to carry
some of 'em! Call it an average weight of one hundred pounds and be on
the safe side."
"Yes, let's play safe," agreed Monty seriously.
"One hundred million pounds of ivory!" said Fred, with a smack of his
lips and the air of a man who could see the whole of it. "The present
market price of new ivory is over ten shillings a pound on the spot.
That'll all be very old stuff, worth at least double. But let's say
ten shillings a pound and be on the safe side."
"Yes, let's!" laughed Yerkes.
"One thousand million--a billion shillings!" Fred announced. "Fifty
million pounds!"
"Two hundred and fifty million dollars!" Yerkes calculated, beginning
to take serious notice.
"But how are we to find it?" I objected.
"That's the point. Government 'ud hog the lot, but has hunted high and
low and can't find it. So the offer stands ten per cent. to any one
who does--ten per cent. of fifty million--lowest reckoning, mind
you!--five million pounds! Half for Monty--two and a half million. A
million for Yerkes, a million for me, and a half a million for you all
according to contract! How d'you like it?"
"Well enough," I answered. "If its only the hundredth part true, I'm
enthusiastic!"
"So now suit yourselves!" said Fred, collapsing with a sweep of his
skirts into the nearest chair. "I've told you what One-eye says.
These dusky gents sometimes exaggerate of course--"
"Now and then," admitted Monty.
"But where there's smoke you mean there's prob'ly some one smoking
hams?" suggested Yerkes.
"I mean, let's find that ivory!" said Fred.
"We might do worse than make an inquiry or two," Monty assented
cautiously.
"Didums, you damned fool, you're growing old! You're wasting time!
You're trying to damp enthusiasm! You're--you're--"
"Interested, Fred. I'm interested. Let's--"
"Let's find that ivory and to hell with caution! Why, man alive, it's
the chance of a million lifetimes!"
"Well, then," said Monty, "admitting the story's true for the sake of
argument, how do you propose to get on the track of the secret?"
"Get on it? I am on it! Didn't One-eye say Tippoo Tib is alive and in
Zanzibar? The old rascal! Many a slave he's done to death! Many a
man he's tortured! I propose we catch Tippoo Tib, hide him, and pull
out his toe-nails one by one until be blows the gaff!"
(To hear Fred talk when there is nothing to do but talk a stranger
might arrive at many false conclusions.)
"If there's any truth in the story at all," said Monty, "government
will have done everything within the bounds of decency to coax the
facts from Tippoo Tib. I suspect we'd have to take our chance and
simply hunt. But let's hear Juma's story."
So the old attendant left off sprinkling water from a yellow jar, and
came and stood before us. Fred's proposal of tweaking toe-nails would
not have been practical in his case, for he had none left. His black
legs, visible because he had tucked his one long garment up about his
waist, were a mass of scars. He was lean, angular, yet peculiarly
straight considering his years. As he stood before us he let his
shirt-like garment drop, and the change from scarecrow to deferential
servant was instantaneous. He was so wrinkled, and the wrinkles were
so deep, that one scarcely noticed his sightless eye, almost hidden
among a nest of creases; and in spite of the wrinkles, his polished,
shaven head made him look ridiculously youthful because one expected
gray hair and there was none.
"Ask him how he lost his toe-nails, Fred," said I.
But the old man knew enough English to answer for himself. He made a
wry grimace and showed his hands. The finger-nails were gone too.
"Tell us your story, Juma," said Monty.
"Tell 'em about the pembe--the ivory--the much ivory--the meengi
pembe," echoed Fred.
"Let's hear about those nails of his first," said I.
"One thing'll prob'ly lead to another," Yerkes agreed. "Start him on
the toe-nail story."
But it did not lead very far. Fred, who had picked up Kiswahili enough
to piece out the old man's broken English, drew him out and clarified
the tale. But it only went to prove that others besides ourselves had
heard of Tippoo Tib's hoard. Some white man--we could not make head or
tail of the name, but it sounded rather like Somebody belonging to a
man named Carpets--had trapped him a few years before and put him to
torture in the belief that he knew the secret.
"But me not knowing nothing!" he assured us solemnly, shaking his head
again and again.
But he was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib
had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain
afterward every one who shared the secret.
"How long ago?" asked Monty. But natives of that part of the earth are
poor hands at reckoning time.
"Long time," he assured us. He might have meant six years, or sixty.
It would have been all the same to him.
"No. Me not liking Tippoo Tib. One time his slave. That bad. Byumby
set free. That good. Now working here. This very good."
"Where do you think the ivory is?" (This from Yerkes.)
But the old man shook his head.
"As I understand it," said Monty, "slaves came mostly from the Congo
side of Lake Victoria Nyanza. Slave and elephant country were
approximately the same as regards general direction, and there were two
routes from the Congo--the southern by way of Ujiji on Tanganyika to
Bagamoyo on what is now the German coast, and the other to the north of
Victoria Nyanza ending at Mombasa. Ask him, Fred, which way the ivory
used to come."
"Both ways," announced Juma without waiting for Fred to interpret. He
had an uncanny trick of following conversation, his intelligence
seeming to work by fits and starts.
"That gives us about half Africa for hunting-ground, and a job for
life!" laughed Yerkes.
"Might have a worse!" Fred answered, resentful of cold water thrown on
his discovery.
"Were you Tippoo Tib's slave when he buried the ivory?" demanded Monty,
and the old man nodded.
"Where were you at the time?"
Juma made a gesture intended to suggest immeasurable distances toward
the West, and the name of the place he mentioned was one we had never
heard of.
"Can you take us to Tippoo Tib when we leave this place?" I asked, and
he nodded again.
"How much ivory do you suppose there was?" asked Yerkes.
"Teli, teli!" he answered, shaking his head.
"Too much!" Fred translated.
"Pretty fair to middling vague," said Yerkes,
"but"--judicially--"almost worth investigating!"
"Investigating?" Fred sprang from his chair. "It's better than all
King Solomon's mines, El Dorado, Golconda, and Sindbad the Sailor's
treasure lands--rolled in one! It's an obviously good thing! All we
need is a bit of luck and the ivory's ours!"
"I'll sell you my share now for a thousand dollars--come--come across!"
grinned Yerkes.
There was a rough-house after that. He and Fred nearly pulled the old
attendant in two, each claiming the right to torture him first and
learn the secret. They ended up without a whole rag between them, and
had to send Juma to head-quarters for new blue dressing-gowns. The
doctor came himself--a fat good-natured party with an eye-glass and a
cocktail appetite, acting locum-tenens for the real official who was
home on leave. He brought the ingredients for cocktails with him.
"Yes," he said, shaking the mixer with a sort of deft solicitude.
"There's more than something in the tale. I've had a try myself to get
details. Tippoo Tib believes in up-to-date physic, and when the old
rascal's sick he sends for me. I offered to mix him an elixir of life
that would make him out-live Methuselah if he'd give me as much as a
hint of the general direction of his cache."
"He ought to have fallen for that," said Yerkes, but the doctor shook
his head.
"He's an Arab. They're Shiah Muhammedans. Their Paradise is a
pleasant place from all accounts. He advised me to drink my own
elixir, and have lots and lots of years in which to find the ivory,
without being beholden to him for help. Wily old scaramouch! But I
had a better card up my sleeve. He has taken to discarding ancient
prejudices--doesn't drink or anything like that, but treats his harem
almost humanly. Lets 'em have anything that costs him nothing. Even
sends for a medico when they're sick! Getting lax in his old age!
Sent for me a while ago to attend his favorite wife--sixty years old if
she's a day, and as proud of him as if he were the king of Jerusalem.
Well--I looked her over, judged she was likely to keep her bed, and did
some thinking."
"You know their religious law? A woman can't go to Paradise without
special intercession, mainly vicarious. I found a mullah--that's a
Muhammedan priest--who'd do anything for half of nothing. They most of
them will. I gave him fifty dibs, and promised him more if the trick
worked. Then I told the old woman she was going to die, but that if
she'd tell me the secret of Tippoo Tib's ivory I had a mullah handy who
would pass her into Paradise ahead of her old man. What did she do?
She called Tippoo Tib, and he turned me out of the house. So I'm fifty
out of pocket, and what's worse, the old girl didn't die--got right up
out of bed and stayed up! My rep's all smashed to pieces among the
Arabs!"
"D'you suppose the old woman knew the secret?" I asked.
"Not she! If she'd known it she'd have split! The one ambition she
has left is to be with Tippoo Tib in Paradise. But he can intercede
for her and get her in--provided he feels that way; so she rounded on
me in the hope of winning his special favor! But the old ruffian knows
better! He'll no more pray for her than tell me where the ivory is!
The Koran tells him there are much better houris in Paradise, so why
trouble to take along a toothless favorite from this world?"
"Has the government any official information?" asked Monty.
"Quite a bit, I'm told. Official records of vain searches. Between
you and me and these four walls, about the only reason why they didn't
hang the old slave-driving murderer was that they've always hoped he'd
divulge the secret some day. But he hates the men who broke him far
too bitterly to enrich them on any terms! If any man wins the secret
from him it'll be a foreigner. They tell me a German had a hard try
once. One of Karl Peters' men."
"That'll be Carpets!" said Monty. "Somebody belonging to Carpets--Karl
Peters."
"The man's serving a life sentence in the jail for torturing our friend
Juma here."
"Then Juma knows the secret?"
"So they say. But Juma, too, hopes to go to Paradise and wait on
Tippoo Tib."
"He told us just now that he dislikes Tippoo Tib," I objected.
"So he does, but that makes no difference. Tippoo Tib is a big
chief--sultani kubwa--take any one he fancies to Heaven with him!"
We all looked at Juma with a new respect.
"I got Juma his job in here," said the doctor. "I've rather the notion
of getting my ten per cent. on the value of that ivory some day!"
"Are there any people after it just now?" asked Monty.
"I don't know, I'm sure. There was a German named Schillingschen, who
spent a month in Zanzibar and talked a lot with Tippoo Tib. The old
rascal might tell his secret to any one he thought was England's really
dangerous enemy. Schillingschen crossed over to British East if I
remember rightly. He might be on the track of it."
"Tell us more about Schillingschen," said Monty.
"He's one of those orientalists, who profess to know more about Islam
than Christianity--more about Africa and Arabia than Europe--more about
the occult than what's in the open. A man with a shovel
beard--stout--thick-set--talks Kiswahili and Arabic and half a dozen
other languages better than the natives do themselves. Has
money--outfit like a prince's--everything
imaginable--Rifles--microscopes--cigars--wine. He didn't make himself
agreeable here--except to the Arabs. Didn't call at the Residency.
Some of us asked him to dinner one evening, but he pleaded a headache.
We were glad, because afterward we saw him eat at the hotel--has ways
of using his fingers at table, picked up I suppose from the people he
has lived among."
"Are you nearly ready to let us out of here?" asked Monty.
"Your quarantine's up," said the doctor. "I'm only waiting for word
from the office."
We drank three rounds of cocktails with him, after which he grew darkly
friendly and proposed we should all set out together in search of the
hoard.
"I've no money," he assured us. "Nothing but a knowledge of the
natives and a priceless thirst. I'd have to throw up my practise here.
Of course I'd need some sort of guarantee from you chaps."
The proposal falling flat, he gathered the nearly empty bottles into
one place and shouted for his boy to come and carry them away.
"Think it over!" he urged as he got up to leave us. "You might take a
bigger fool than me with you. You'd need a doctor on a trip like that.
I'm an expert on some of these tropical diseases. Think it over!"
"Fred!" said Monty, as soon as the doctor had left the room, "I'm
tempted by this ivory of yours."
But Fred, in the new blue dressing-gown the doctor had brought, was in
another world--a land of trope and key and metaphor. For the last ten
minutes he had kept a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper working, and
now the strident tones of his too long neglected concertina stirred the
heavy air and shocked the birds outside to silence. The instrument was
wheezy, for in addition to the sacrilege the port authorities had done
by way of disinfection, the bellows had been wetted when Fred plunged
from the sinking Bundesrath and swam. But he is not what you could
call particular, as long as a good loud noise comes forth that can be
jerked and broken into anything resembling tune.
"Tempted, are you?" he laughed. He looked like a drunken troubadour en
deshabille, with those up-brushed mustaches and his usually neat brown
beard all spread awry. "Temptation's more fun than plunder!"
Yerkes threw an orange at him, more by way of recognition than
remonstrance. We had not heard Fred sing since he tried to charm
cholera victims in the Bundesrath's fo'castle, and, like the rest of
us, he had his rights. He sang with legs spread wide in front of him,
and head thrown back, and, each time he came to the chorus, kept on
repeating it until we joined in.
There's a prize that's full familiar from Zanzibar to France;
From Tokio to Boston; we are paid it in advance.
It's the wages of adventure, and the wide world knows the feel
Of the stuff that stirs good huntsmen all and brings the
hounds to heel!
It's the one reward that's gratis and precedes the toilsome task--
It's the one thing always better than an optimist can ask!
It's amusing, it's amazing, and it's never twice the same;
It's the salt of true adventure and the glamour of the game!
CHORUS
It is tem-tem-pitation!
The one sublime sensation!
You may doubt it, but without it
There would be no derring-do!
The reward the temptee cashes
Is too often dust and ashes,
But you'll need no spurs or lashes
When temptation beckons you!
Oh, it drew the Roman legions to old Britain's distant isle,
And it beckoned H. M. Stanley to the sources of the Nile;
It's the one and only reason for the bristling guns at Gib,
For the skeletons at Khartoum, and the crimes of Tippoo Tib.
The gentlemen adventurers braved torture for its sake,
It beckoned out the galleons, and filled the hulls of Drake!
Oh, it sets the sails of commerce, and it whets the edge of war,
It's the sole excuse for churches, and the only cause of law!
CHORUS
It is tem-tem-pitation! etc., etc.
No note is there of failure (that's a tune the croakers sing!)
This song's of youth, and strength, and health, and time
that's on the wing!
Of wealth beyond the hazy blue of far horizons flung--
But never of the folk returning, disillusioned, stung!
It's a tale of gold and ivory, of plunder out of reach,
Of luck that fell to other men, of treasure on the beach--
A compound, cross-reciprocating two-way double spell,
The low, sweet lure to Heaven, and the tallyho to hell!
CHORUS
It is tem-tem-pitation!
The one sublime sensation!
You may doubt it, but without it
There would be no derring-do!
It's the siren of to-morrow
That knows naught of lack or sorrow,
So you'll sell your bonds and borrow,
When temptation beckons you!
Once Fred starts there is no stopping him, short of personal violence,
and he ran through his ever lengthening list of songs, not all quite
printable, until the very coral walls ached with the concertina's
wailing, and our throats were hoarse from ridiculous choruses. As
Yerkes put it:
"When pa says sing, the rest of us sing too or go crazy!"
I went to the window and tried to get a view of shipping through the
mango branches. Masts and sails--lateen spars particularly--always get
me by the throat and make me happy for a while. But all I could see
was a low wall beyond the little compound, and over the top of it
headgear of nearly all the kinds there are. (Zanzibar is a wonderful
market for second-hand clothes. There was even a tall silk hat of not
very ancient pattern.)
"Come and look, Monty!" said I, and he and Yerkes came and stood beside
me. Seeing his troubadour charm was broken, Fred snapped the catch on
the concertina and came too.
"Arabian Nights!" he exclaimed, thumping Monty on the back.
"Didums, you drunkard, we're dead and in another world! Juma is the
one-eyed Calender! Look--fishermen--houris--how many houris?--seen 'em
grin!--soldiers of fortune--merchants--sailors--by gad, there's Sindbad
himself!--and say! If that isn't the Sultan Haroun-al-Raschid in
disguise I'm willing to eat beans and pie for breakfast to oblige
Yerkes! Look--look at the fat ruffian's stomach and swagger, will you?"
Yerkes sized up the situation quickest.
"Sing him another song, Fred. If we want to strike up acquaintance
with half Zanzibar, here's our chance!"
"Oh, Richard, oh, my king!" hummed Monty. "It's Coeur de Lion and
Blondell over again with the harp reversed."
If Zanzibar may be said to possess main thoroughfares, that window of
ours commanded as much of one as the tree and wall permitted; and
music--even of a concertina--is the key to the heart of all people
whose hair is crisp and kinky. Perhaps rather owing to the generosity
of their slave law, and Koran teachings, more than to racial depravity,
there are not very many Arabs left in that part of the world with true
semitic features and straight hair, nor many woolly-headed folk who are
quite all-Bantu. There is enough Arab blood in all of them to make
them bold; Bantu enough for syncopated, rag-time music to take them by
the toes and stir them. The crowd in the street grew, and gathered
until a policeman in red fez and khaki knickerbockers came and started
trouble. He had a three-cornered fight on his hands, and no sympathy
from any one, within two minutes. Then the man with the stomach and
swagger--he whom Fred called Haroun-al-Raschid--took a hand in masterly
style. He seized the police-man from behind, flung him out of the
crowd, and nobody was troubled any more by that official.
"That him Tippoo Tib's nephew!" said a voice, and we all jumped. We
had not noticed Juma come and stand beside us.
"I suspect nephew is a vague relationship in these parts," said Monty.
"Do you mean Tippoo's brother was that man's father, Juma?"
"No, bwana.* Tippoo Tib bringing slave long ago f'm Bagamoyo. Him
she-slave having chile. She becoming concubine Tippoo Tib his wife's
brother. That chile Tippoo Tib's nephew. Tea ready, bwana."
-----------------
* Bwana, Swahili word meaning master.
-----------------
"What does that man do for a living?"
"Do for a living?" Juma was bewildered.
"What does he work at?"
"Not working."
"Never?"
"No.
"Has he private means, then?"
"I not understand. Tea ready, bwana!"
"Has he got mali*?" Fred demanded.
"Mali? No. Him poor man."
--------------
*Mali, Swahili word meaning possession, property.
--------------
"Then how does he exist, if he has no mali and doesn't work?"
"Oh, one wife here, one there, one other place, an'
Tippoo Tib byumby him giving food."
"How many wives has he?"
"Tea ready, bwana!"
"How do they come to be spread all over the place?" (We were shooting
questions at him one after the other, and Juma began to look as if he
would have preferred a repetition of the toe-nail incident.)
"Oh, he travel much, an' byumby lose all money, then stay here. Tea,
him growing cold."
There is no persuading the native servant who has lived under the Union
Jack that an Englishman does not need hot tea at frequent intervals,
even after three cocktails in an afternoon. So we trooped to the table
to oblige him, and went through the form of being much refreshed.
"What is that man's name?" demanded Monty.
"Hassan."
"Do you know him?"
"Everybody know him!"
"Can you get a message to him?"
"Yes, bwana."
"Tell him to come and talk with us at the hotel as soon as he hears we
are out of this."
We did not know it at the time (for I don't think that Monty guessed it
either) that we had taken the surest way of setting all Zanzibar by the
ears. In that last lingering stronghold of legal slavery,* where the
only stories judged worth listening to are the very sources of the
Thousand Nights and a Night, intrigue is not perhaps the breath of
life, but it is the salt and savory. There is a woolly-headed sultan
who draws a guaranteed, fixed income and has nothing better to do than
regale himself and a harem with western alleged amusement. There are
police, and lights, and municipal regulations. In fact, Zanzibar has
come on miserable times from certain points of view. But there remains
the fun of listening to all the rumors borne by sea. "Play on the
flute in Zanzibar and Africa as far as the lakes will dance!" the Arabs
say, and the gentry who once drove slaves or traded ivory refuse to
believe that the day of lawlessness is gone forever. One rumor then is
worth ten facts. Four white men singing behind the bars of the
lazaretto, desiring to speak with Hassan, "'nephew" of Tippoo Tib, and
offering money for the introduction, were enough to send whispers
sizzling up and down all the mazy streets.
----------------
* Slavery was not absolutely and finally abolished in Zanzibar until
1906, during which year even the old slaves, hitherto unwilling to be
set free, had to be pensioned off.
----------------
Our release from quarantine took place next day, and we went to the
hotel, where we were besieged at once by tradesmen, each proclaiming
himself the only honest outfitter and "agent for all good export
firms." Monty departed to call on British officialdom (one advantage
of traveling with a nobleman being that he has to do the stilted social
stuff). Yerkes went to call on the United States Consul, the same being
presumably a part of his religion, for he always does it, and almost
always abuses his government afterward. So Fred and I were left to
repel boarders, and it came about that we two received Hassan.
He entered our room with a great shout of "Hodi!" (and Fred knew enough
to say "Karibu!")--a smart red fez set at an angle on his shaven head,
his henna-stained beard all newly-combed--a garment like a night-shirt
reaching nearly to his heels, a sort of vest of silk embroidery
restraining his stomach's tendency to wobble at will, and a fat smile
decorating the least ashamed, most obviously opportunist face I ever
saw, even on a black man.
"Jambo, jambo;"* he announced, striding in and observing our lack of
worldly goods with one sweep of the eye. (We had not stocked up yet
with new things, and probably he did not know our old ones were at the
bottom of the sea.) He was a lion-hearted rascal though, at all events
at the first rush, for poverty on the surface did not trouble him.
---------------
* Jambo, good day.
---------------
"You send for me? You want a good guide?"
The Haroun-al-Raschid look had disappeared. Now he was the
jack-of-all-trades, wondering which end of the jack to push in first.
"When I need a guide I'll get a licensed one," said Fred, sitting down
and turning partly away from him. (It never pays to let those gentry
think they have impressed you.) "What is your business, Johnson?"
"My name Hassan, sah. You send for me? You want a headman. I'm
formerly headman for Tippoo Tib, knowing all roads, and how to manage
wapagazi,* safari,** all things!"
---------------
* Wapagazi, plural of pagazi, porter.
** Safari, journey, and, by inference, outfit for a journey.
---------------
"Any papers to prove it?" asked Fred.
"No, sir. Reference to Tippoo Tib himself sufficient! He my
part-uncle."
"Ready to tell any kind of a lie for you, eh?"
"No, sir, always telling truth! You got a cook yet?"
"Can you cook?" Fred answered guardedly.
"Yes, sah. Was cook formerly for Master Stanley, go with him on
expedition. Later his boy. Later his headman. You want to go on
expedition, I getting you good cook. Where you want to go?"
"Are you looking for a job?" asked Fred.
"What you after? Ivory?"
"Maybe."
"I know all about ivory--I shoot, trade ivory along o' Tippoo Tib an'
Stanley. You engage my services, all very well."
"Go and tell Tippoo Tib we want to see him. If he confirms what you
say, perhaps we'll take you on," said Fred.
"Tell Tippoo Tib? Ha-ha! You want to find his buried ivory--that it?
All white men wanting that! All right, I go tell him! I come again!"
"Come back here, you fat rascal!" ordered Fred. "What do you mean
about buried ivory? What buried ivory?"
Hassan's face lost some of its transcendent cheek. Even the dyed beard
seemed to wilt.
"What you wanting?" he asked. "Hunt, trade, travel--what your
business?"
"Fish!" Fred answered genially.
"Samaki?"
"Yes--samaki--fish!"
Having no experience of Arabs, and part-Arabs, I wondered what on earth
Fred could be driving at. But Hassan wondered still more, and that was
the whole point. He stood agape, looking from one to the other of us,
his fat good-natured face an interrogation mark.
"I go an' tell bwana Tippoo Tib!" he announced, and departed swiftly.
"What's the idea of fish, Fred?" I asked.
"Oh, just curiosity. The way of getting information out of colored
folk is to get them so frantically curious they've no time to think up
lies. Tobacco would have done as well--anything unexpected. A bird
flying, and a black man lying,--are both of 'em easy to catch or
confuse unless they know which way they're heading. Let's go and look
at the bazaar."
But in order to look one had to reach. We left the great heavy-beamed
hotel that had once been Tippoo Tib's residence, but were stopped in
the outer doorway by a crowd of native boys, each with a brass plate on
his arm.
"Guide, sah!--Guide, sah!--My name 'McPhairson, sah!--My name Jones,
sah!--My name Johnson, sah! Guide to all the sights, sah!"
They were as persistent and evilly intentioned as a swarm of flies, and
bold enough to strike back when anybody kicked them. While we wrestled
and swore, but made no headway, we were accosted by a Greek, who seemed
from long experience able to pass through them without striking or
being struck. We were not left in doubt another second as to whether
our friend Hassan had dallied on the way, and held his tongue or not.
"Good day, gentlemen! I hear you are after fish! Hah! That is a good
story to tell to Arabs! You mean fishing for information, eh? Ha-hah!"
He turned on the swarm of boys, who still yelled and struggled about
our legs.
"Imshi!* Voetsak!** Enenda zako!*** Kuma nina, wewe!****" In a minute
he had them all scattering, for only innocence and inexperience attract
the preying youth of Zanzibar. "Now, gentlemen, my name is
Coutlass--Georges Coutlass. Have a drink with me, and let me tell you
something."
-----------------
* Imshi (Arabic), get to hell out of here!
** Voetsak (Cape Dutch), ditto.
*** Enenda zako (Kiswahill), ditto.
**** Kuma nina (Kiswahill). An opprobrious, and perhaps the commonest
expletive In the language, amounting to a request for details of the
objurgee's female ancestry. By no means for use in drawing-rooms.
------------------
He was tall, dark skinned, athletic, and roguish-looking even for the
brand of Greek one meets with south of the Levant--dressed in khaki,
with an American cowboy hat--his fingers nearly black with cigarette
juice--his hands unusually horny for that climate--and his hair
clipped so short that it showed the bumps of avarice and other things,
said to reside below the hat-band to the rear. Yet a plausible,
companionable-seeming man. And Zanzibar confers democratic privilege,
as well as fevers; impartiality hovers in the atmosphere as well as
smells, and we neither of us dreamed of hesitating, but followed him
back into the bar--a wide, low-ceilinged room whose beams were two feet
thick of blackened, polished hard wood. There we sat one each side of
him in cane armchairs. He ordered the drinks, and paid for them.
"First I will tell you who I am," he said, when he had swallowed a
foot-long whisky peg and wiped his lips with his coat sleeve. "I never
boast. I don't need to! I am Georges Coutlass! I learned that you
have an English lord among your party, and said I to myself 'Aha!
There is a man who will appreciate me, who am a citizen of three
lands!' Which of you gentlemen is the lord?"
"How can you be a citizen of three countries?" Fred countered.
"Of Greece, for I was born in Greece. I have fought Turks. Ah! I
have bled for Greece. I have spilt my blood in many lands, but the
best was for my motherland!--Of England, for I became naturalized. By
bloody-hell-and-Waterloo, but I admire the English! They have guts,
those English, and I am one of them! By the great horn spoon, yes, I
became an Englishman at Bow Street one Monday morning, price Five
Pounds. I was lined up with the drunks and pick-pockets, and by Jumbo
the magistrate mistook me for a thief! He would have given me six
months without the option in another minute, but I had the good luck to
remember how much money I had paid my witnesses. The thought of paying
that for nothing--worse than nothing, for six months in jail!--in an
English jail!--pick oakum!--eat skilly!--that thought brought me to my
senses. 'By Gassharamminy,' I said, 'I may be mad, but I'm sober! If
it's a crime to desire to be English, then punish me, but let me first
commit the offense!' So he laughed, and didn't question my witnesses
very carefully--one was a Jew, the other an ex-German, and either of
them would swear to anything at half price for a quantity--and they
kissed the Book and committed perjury--and lo and behold, I was English
as you are--English without troubling a midwife or the parson! Five
pounds for the 'beak' at Bow Street--fifty for the
witnesses--fifty-five all told--and cheap at the price! I had money in
those days. It was after our short war with Turkey. We Greeks got
beaten, but the Turks did not get all the loot! By prison and gallows,
no! When our men ran before a battle, I did not run--not I! I
remained, and by Croesus I grew richer in an hour than I have ever been
since!"
"That's two countries," said I. "Which is the third that has the honor
to claim your allegiance?"
"Honor is right!" he answered with a proud smile. "I, Georges Coutlass,
have honored three flags! I am a credit to all three countries! The
third is America--the U. S. A. You might say that is the corollary of
being English--the natural, logical, correct sequence! The U. S. laws
are strict, but their politics were devised for--what is it the
preachers call it--ah, yes, for straining out gnats and swallowing
camels. By George Washington they would swallow a house on fire!
There was a federal election shortly due. One of the
parties--Democratic--Republican--I forget which--maybe both!--needed
new voters. The law says it takes five years to become a citizen.
Politics said fifteen minutes! The politicians paid the fees too! I
was a citizen--a voter--an elector of presidents before I had been
ashore three months, and I had sold my vote three times over within a
month of that! They had me registered under three names in three
separate wards! I didn't need the money--I had plenty in those days--I
gave the six dollars I received for my votes to the Holy Church, and
voted the other way to save my conscience; but the fun of the thing
appealed! By Gassharamminy! I can't take life the way the copy-books
lay down! I have to break laws or else break heads! But I love
America! I fought and bled for America! By Abraham Lincoln, I fought
those Spaniards until I don't doubt they wished I had stayed in Greece!
Yes, I left that middle finger in Cuba--shot through the left hand by
a Don, think of it, a Don! When I came out of hospital--and I never
saw anything worse than that hot hell!--I got myself attached to the
commissariat, and the pickings were none so bad. Had to hand over too
much, though. That is the worst of America, there is no genuine
liberty. You have to steal for the man higher up. If you keep more
than ten per cent., he squeals. He has to pass most of it on again to
some one else, and so on, and they all land in jail in course of time!
Give me a country where a man can keep what he finds! There was talk
about congressional inquiries. Then a friend of mine--a Greek--who had
been out here told me of Tippoo Tib's ivory, and it looked all right to
me to change scenes for a while. I had citizenship papers--U. S., and
English, and a Greek passport in case of accident. Traveling looked
good to me."
"If you traveled on a Greek passport you couldn't use citizenship
papers of any other country," Fred objected.
"Who said I traveled on a Greek passport? Do you take me for such a
fool? Who listens to a Greek consul? He may protest, and accept fees,
but Greece is a little country and no one listens to her consuls. I
carry a Greek passport in case I should find somewhere someday a Greek
consul with influence or a Greek whom I wish to convince. I traveled
to South Africa as an American. I went to Cape Town with the idea of
going to Salisbury, and working my way up from there as a trader into
the Congo. I reached Johannesburg, and there I did a little I. D. B.
and one thing and another until the Boer War came. Then I fought for
the Boers. Yes, I have bled for the Boer cause. It was a damned bad
cause! They robbed me of nearly all my money! They left me to die
when I was wounded! It was only by the grace of God, and the intrigues
of a woman that I made my way to Lourenco Marquez. No, the war was not
over, but what did I care? I, Georges Coutlass, had had enough of it!
I recompensed myself en route. I do not fight for a bunch of thieves
for nothing! I sailed from Lourenco Marquez to Mombasa. I hunted
elephant in British East Africa until they posted a reward for me on
the telegraph poles. The law says not more than two elephants in one
year. I shot two hundred! I sold the ivory to an Indian, bought
cattle, and went down into German East Africa. The Masai attacked me,
stole some of the cattle, and killed others. The Germans, damn and
blast them, took the rest! They accused me of crimes--me, Georges
Coutlass!--and imposed fines calculated carefully to skin me of all I
had! Roup and rotten livers! but I will knock them head-over-halleluja
one fine day! Not for nothing shall they flim-flam Georges Coutlass!
Which of you gentlemen is the lord?"
We bought him another drink, and watched it disappear with one
uninterrupted gurgle down its appointed course.
"What did you do next?" Fred asked him before he had recovered breath
enough to question us. "I suppose the Germans had you at a loose end?"
"Do you think that? Sacred history of hell! It takes more than a
lousy military German to get Georges Coutlass at a loose end! They
must get me dead before that can happen! And then, by Blitzen, as
those devils say, a dead Georges Coutlass will be better than a
thousand dead Germans! In hell I will use them to clean my boots on!
At a loose end, was I? I met this bloody rogue Hassan--the fat
blackguard who told me you have come to Zanzibar for fish--and made an
agreement with him to look for Tippoo Tib's buried ivory. Yes, sir! I
showed him papers. He thought they were money drafts. He thought me a
man of means whom he could bleed. I had guns and ammunition, he none.
He pretended to know where some of Tippoo Tib's ivory is buried."
"Some of it, eh?" said Fred.
"Some of it, d'you say?" said I.
"Some of it, yes. A million tusks. Some say two million! Some say
three! Thunder!--you take a hundred good tusks and bury them; you'll
see the hill you've made from five miles off! A hundred thousand tusks
would make a mountain! If any one buried a million tusks in one spot
they'd mark the place on maps as a watershed! They must be buried
here, there, everywhere along the trail of Tippoo Tib--perhaps a
thousand in one place at the most. Which of you two gentlemen is the
lord?"
"Did Hassan lead you to any of it?" Fred inquired.
"Not he! The jelly-belly! The Arab pig! He led me to Ujiji--that's
on Lake Tanganika--the old slave market where he himself was once sold
for ten cents. I don't doubt a piece of betel nut and a pair of
worn-out shoes had to be thrown in with him at the price! There he
tried to make me pay the expenses in advance of a trip to Usumbora at
the head of the lake. God knows what it would have cost, the way he
wanted me to do it! Are you the lord, sir?"
"What did you do?" asked Fred.
"Do? I parted company! I had made him drunk once. (The Arabs aren't
supposed to drink, so when they do they get talkative and lively!) And
I knew Arabic before ever I crossed the Atlantic--learned it in
Egypt--ran away from a sponge-fishing boat when I was a boy. No, they
don't fish sponges off the Nile Delta, but you can smuggle in a sponge
boat better than in most ships. Anyhow, I learned Arabic. So I
understood what that pig Hassan said when he talked in the dark with
his brother swine. He knew no more than I where the ivory was! He
suspected most of it was in a country called Ruanda that runs pretty
much parallel with the Congo border to the west of Victoria Nyanza in
German East Africa, and he was counting on finding natives who could
tell him this and that that might put him on the trail of it! I could
beat that game! I could cross-examine fool natives twice as well as
any fat rascal of an ex-slave! Seeing he had paid all expenses so far,
however, I was not much to the bad, so I picked a quarrel with him and
we parted company. Wouldn't you have done the same, my lord?"
But Fred did not walk into the trap. "What did you do next?" he asked.
"Next? I got a job with the agent of an Italian firm to go north and
buy skins. He made me a good advance of trade goods--melikani,* beads,
iron and brass wire, kangas,** and all that sort of thing, and I did
well. Made money on that trip. Traveled north until I reached
Ruanda--went on until I could see the Fire Mountains in the distance,
and the country all smothered in lava. Reached a cannibal country,
where the devils had eaten all the surrounding tribes until they had to
take to vegetarianism at last."
-----------------
* Melikani, the unbleached calico made in America that is the most
useful trade goods from sea to sea of Central Africa.
** Kanga, cotton piece goods.
-----------------
"But did you find the ivory?" Fred insisted.
"No, or by Jiminy, I wouldn't be here! If I'd found it I'd have
settled down with a wife in Greece long ago. I'd be keeping an inn,
and growing wine, and living like a gentleman! But I found out enough
to know there's a system that goes with the ivory Tippoo Tib buried.
If you found one lot, that would lead you to the next, and so on. I
got a suspicion where one lot is, although I couldn't prove it. And I
made up my mind that the German government knows darned well where a
lot of it is!"
"Then why don't the Germans dig it up?" demanded Fred.
"Aha!" laughed Coutlass. "If I know, why should I tell! If they know,
why should they tell? Suppose that some of it were in Congo territory,
and some in British East Africa? Suppose they should want to get the
lot? What then? If they uncovered their bit in German East Africa
mightn't that put the Congo and the British on the trail?"
"If they know where it is," said I, "they'll certainly guard it."
"Which of you is the lord?" demanded Coutlass earnestly.
"What do you suppose Hassan is doing, then, here in Zanzibar?" asked
Fred.
"Rum and eggs! I know what he is doing! When I snapped my thumb under
his fat nose and told him about the habits of his female ancestors be
went to the Germans and informed against me! The sneak-thief! The
turn-coat! The maggot! I shall not forget! I, Georges Coutlass,
forget nothing! He informed against me, and they set askaris* on my
trail who prevented me from making further search. I had to sit idle
in Usumbura or Ujiji, or else come away; and idleness ill suits my
blood! I came here, and Hassan followed me. The Germans made a
regular, salaried spy of him--the semi-Arab rat! The one-tenth Arab,
nine-tenths mud-rat! Here he stays in Zanzibar and spies on Tippoo
Tib, on me, on the British government, and on every stranger who comes
here. His information goes to the Germans. I know, for I intercepted
some of it! He writes it out in Arabic, and provided no woman goes
through the folds of his clothes or feels under that silken belly-piece
be wears, the Germans get it. But if a woman does, and she's a friend
of mine, that's different! Are you the lord, sir?"
------------------
* Askari, native soldier.
------------------
"What do you propose?" asked Fred.
"Help me find that ivory!" said Coutlass. "I have very little money
left, but I have guns, and courage! I know where to look, and I am not
afraid! No German can scare me! I am English-American-Greek!--better
than any hundred Germans! Let us find the ivory, and share it! Let us
get it out through British territory, or the Congo, so that no German
sausage can interfere with us or take away one tusk! Gee-rusalem, how
I hate the swine. Let us put one over on them! Let us get the ivory
to Europe, and then flaunt the deed under their noses! Let us send one
little tip of a female tusk to the Kaiser for a souvenir--female in
proof it is all illegitimate, illegal, outlawed! Let us send him a
piece of ivory and a letter telling him all about it, and what we think
of him and his swine-officials! His lieutenants and his captains! Let
us smuggle the ivory out through the Congo--it can be done! It can be
done! I, Georges Coutlass, will find the ivory, and find the way!"
"No need to smuggle it out," said Fred. "The British government will
give us ten per cent., or so I understand, of the value of all of it we
find in British East."
Georges Coutlass threw back his head and roared with laughter, slapped
his thighs, held his sides--then coughed for two or three minutes, and
spat blood.
"You are the lord, all right!" he gasped as soon as he could get
breath. "No need to smuggle it! Ha-ha! May I be damned! Ten per
cent. they'll give us! Ha-ha! Generous! By whip and wheel! they're
lucky if we give them five per cent.! I'd like to see any government
take away from Georges Coutlass ninety per cent. of anything without a
fight! No, gentlemen! No, my Lord! The Belgian Congo government is
corrupt. Let us spend twenty-five per cent.--even thirty-forty-fifty
per cent. of the value of it to bribe the Congo officials. Hand over
ninety per cent. to the Germans or the British without a fight?--Never!
Never while my name is Georges Coutlass! I have fought too often! I
have been robbed by governments too often! This last time I will put
it over all the governments, and be rich at last, and go home to Greece
to live like a gentleman! Believe me!"
He patted himself on the breast, and if flashing eye and frothing lip
went for anything, then all the governments were as good as defeated
already.
"You are the lord, are you not?" he demanded, looking straight at Fred.
"My name is Oakes," Fred answered.
"Oh, then you? I beg pardon!" He looked at me with surprise that he
made no attempt to conceal. Fred could pass for a king with that
pointed beard of his (provided he were behaving himself seemly at the
time) but for all my staid demeanor I have never been mistaken for any
kind of personage. I disillusioned Coutlass promptly.
"Then you are neither of you lords?"
"Pish! We're obviously ladies!" answered Fred.
"Then you have fooled me?" The Greek rose to his feet. "You have
deceived me? You have accepted my hospitality and confidence under
false pretense?"
I think there would have been a fight, for Fred was never the man to
accept brow-beating from chance-met strangers, and the Greek's fiery
eye was rolling in fine frenzy; but just at that moment Yerkes
strolled in, cheerful and brisk.
"Hullo, fellers! This is some thirsty burg. Do they sell soft drinks
in this joint?" he inquired.
"By Brooklyn Bridge!" exclaimed Coutlass. "An American! I, too, am an
American! Fellow-citizen, these men have treated me badly! They have
tricked me!"
"You must be dead easy!" said Yerkes genially. "If those two wanted to
live at the con game, they'd have to practise on the junior
kindergarten grades. They're the mildest men I know. I let that one
with the beard hold my shirt and pants when I go swimming! Tricked
you, have they? Say--have you got any money left?"
"Oh, have a drink!" laughed the Greek. "Have one on me! It's good to
hear you talk!"
"What have my friends done to you?" asked Yerkes.
"I was looking for a lord. They pretended to be lords."
"What? Both of 'em?"
"No, it is one lord I am looking for."
"One lord, one faith, one baptism!" said Yerkes profanely.
"And you found two? What's your worry? I'll pretend to be a third if
that'll help you any!"
"Gentlemen," said the Greek, rising to his full height and letting his
rage begin to gather again, "you play with me. That is not well! You
waste my time. That is not wise! I come in all innocence, looking for
a certain lord--a real genuine lord--the Earl of Montdidier and
Kirscrubbrightshaw--my God, what a name!"
"I'm Mundidier," said a level voice, and the Greek faced about like a
man attacked. Monty had entered the barroom and stood listening with
calm amusement, that for some strange reason exasperated the Greek less
than our attitude had done, at least for the moment. When the first
flush of surprise had died he grinned and grew gallant.
"My own name is Georges Coutlass, my Lord!" He made a sweeping bow,
almost touching the floor with the brim of his cowboy hat, and then
crossing his breast with it.
"What can I do for you?" asked Monty.
"Listen to me!"
"Very well. I can spare fifteen minutes."
We all took seats together in a far corner of the dingy room, where the
Syrian barkeeper could not overhear us.
"My Lord, I am an Englishman!" Coutlass began. "I am a God-fearing,
law-abiding gentleman! I know where to look for the ivory that the
Arab villain Tippoo Tib has buried! I know how to smuggle it out of
Africa without paying a penny of duty--"
"Did you say law-abiding?" Monty asked.
"Surely! Always! I never break the law! As for instance--in Greece,
where I had the honor to be born, the law says no man shall carry a
knife or wear one in his belt. So, since I was a little boy I carry
none! I have none in my hand--none at my belt. I keep it here!"
He stooped, raised his right trousers leg, and drew from his Wellington
boot a two-edged, pointed thing almost long enough to merit the name of
rapier. He tossed it in the air, let it spin six or seven times end
over end, caught it deftly by the point, and returned it to its
hiding-place.
"I am a law-abiding man," he said, "but where the law leaves off, I
know where to begin! I am no fool!"
Monty made up his mind there and then that this man's game would not be
worth the candle.
"No, Mr. Coutlass, I can't oblige you," he said.
The Greek half-arose and then sat down again.
"You can not find it without my assistance!" he said, wrinkling his
face for emphasis.
"I'm not looking for assistance," said Monty.
"Aha! You play with words! You are not--but you will! I am no fool,
my Lord! I understand! Not for nothing did I make a friend again of
that pig Hassan! 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. (He
hates to "lord it" as thoroughly as he loves to risk his neck.) "I
would not rob you if you owned the earth! If you have valuable
information I'll pay for it cheerfully after it's tested."
"Ah! Now you talk!"
"Observe--I said after it's tested!"
"I don't think he knows anything," said Fred. "I think he guessed a
lot, and wants to look, and can't afford to pay his own expenses.
Isn't that it?"
"What do you mean?" demanded Coutlass.
"I can't talk Greek," said Fred. "Shall I say it again in English?"
"You may name any reasonable price," said Monty, "for real information.
Put it in writing. When we're agreed on the price, put that in
writing too. Then, if we find the information is even approximately
right, why, we'll pay for it."
"Ah-h-h! You intend to play a trick on me! You use my information!
You find the ivory! You go out by the Congo River and the other coast,
and I kiss myself good-by to you and ivory and money! I am to be what
d'you call it?--a milk-pigeon!"
"Being that must be some sensation!" nodded Yerkes.
"I warn you I can not be tampered with!" snarled the Greek, putting on
his hat with a flourish. "I leave you, for you to think it over! But
I tell you this--I promise you--I swear! Any expedition in search of
that ivory that does not include Georges Coutlass on his own terms is a
delusion--a busted flush--smashed--exploded--pfff!--so--evanesced
before the start! My address is Zanzibar! Every street child knows
me! When you wish to know my terms, tell the first man or child you
meet to lead you to the house where Georges Coutlass lives! Good
morning, Lord Skirtsshubrish! We will no doubt meet again!"
He turned his back on us and strode from the room--a man out of the
middle ages, soldierly of bearing, unquestionably bold, and not one bit
more venial or lawless than ninety per cent. of history's gallants, if
the truth were told.
"Let's hope that's the last of him!" said Monty. "Can't say I like
him, but I'd hate to have to spoil his chances."
"Last of him be sugared!" said Yerkes. "That's only the first of him!
He'll find seven devils worse than himself and camp on our trail, if I
know anything of Greeks--that's to say, if our trail leads after that
ivory. Does it?"
"Depends," said Monty. "Let's talk upstairs. That Syrian has long
ears."
So we trooped to Monty's room, where the very cobwebs reeked of Arab
history and lawless plans. He sat on the black iron bed, and we
grouped ourselves about on chairs that had very likely covered the
known world between them. One was obviously jetsam from a steamship;
one was a Chinese thing, carved with staggering dragons; the other was
made of iron-hard wood that Yerkes swore came from South America.
"Shoot when you're ready!" grinned Yerkes.
I was too excited to sit still. So was Fred.
"Get a move on, Didums, for God's sake!" he growled.
"Well," said Monty, "there seems something in this ivory business. Our
chance ought to be as good as anybody's. But there are one or two
stiff hurdles. In the first place, the story is common property.
Every one knows it--Arabs--Swahili--Greeks--Germans--English. To be
suspected of looking for it would spell failure, for the simple reason
that every adventurer on the coast would trail us, and if we did find
it we shouldn't be able to keep the secret for five minutes. If we
found it anywhere except on British territory it 'ud be taken away from
us before we'd time to turn round. And it isn't buried on British
territory! I've found out that much."
"Good God, Didums! D'you mean you know where the stuff is?"
Fred sat forward like a man at a play.
"I know where it isn't," said Monty. "They told me at the Residency
that in all human probability it's buried part in German East, and by
far the greater part in the Congo."
"Then that ten per cent. offer by the British is a bluff?" asked Yerkes.
"Out of date," said Monty. "The other governments offer nothing. The
German government might make terms with a German or a Greek--not with
an Englishman. The Congo government is an unknown quantity, but would
probably see reason if approached the proper way."
"The U. S. Consul tells me," said Yerkes, "that the Congo government is
the rottenest aggregate of cutthroats, horse-thieves, thugs, yeggs,
common-or-ordinary hold-ups, and sleight-of-hand professors that the
world ever saw in one God-forsaken country. He says they're of every
nationality, but without squeam of any kind--hang or shoot you as soon
as look at you! He says if there's any ivory buried in those parts
they've either got it and sold it, or else they buried it themselves
and spread the story for a trap to fetch greenhorns over the border!"
"That man's after the stuff himself!" said Fred. "All he wanted to do
was stall you off!"
"That man Schillingschen the doctor told us about," said Monty, "is
suspected of knowing where to look for some of the Congo hoard. He'll
bear watching. He's in British East Africa at present--said to be
combing Nairobi and other places for a certain native. He is known to
stand high in the favor of the German government, but poses as a
professor of ethnology."
"He shall study deathnology," said Fred, "if he gets in my way!"
"The Congo people," said Monty, "would have dug up the stuff, of
course, if they'd known where to look for it. Our people believe that
the Germans do know whereabouts to look for it, but dread putting the
Congo crowd on the scent. If we're after it we've got to do two things
besides agreeing between ourselves."
"Deal me in, Monty!" said Yerkes.
"Nil desperandum, Didums duce, then!" said Fred. "I propose Monty for
leader. Those against the motion take their shirts off, and see if
they can lick me! Nobody pugnacious? The ayes have it! Talk along,
Didums!"
For all Fred's playfulness, Yerkes and I came in of our free and
considered will, and Monty understood that.
"We've got to separate," he said, "and I've got to interview the King
of Belgium."
"If that were my job," grinned Yerkes, "I'd prob'ly tell him things!"
"I don't pretend to like him," said Monty. "But it seems to me I can
serve our best interests by going to Brussels. He can't very well
refuse me a private audience. I should get a contract with the Congo
government satisfactory to all concerned. He's rapacious--but I think
not ninety per cent. rapacious."
"Good," said I, "but why separate?"
"If we traveled toward the Congo from this place in a bunch," said
Monty, "we should give the game away completely and have all the
rag-tag and bob-tail on our heels. As it is, our only chance of
shaking all of them would be to go round by sea and enter the Congo
from the other side; but that would destroy our chance of picking up
the trail in German East Africa. So I'll go to Brussels, and get back
to British East as fast as possible. Fred must go to British East and
watch Schillingschen. You two fellows may as well go by way of British
East Africa to Muanza on Victoria Nyanza, and on from there to the
Congo border by way of Ujiji. Yerkes is an American, and they'll
suspect him less than any of us (they'd nail me, of course, in a
minute!) So let Yerkes make a great show of looking for land to settle
on. We'll all four meet on the Congo border, at some other place to be
decided later. We'll have to agree on a code, and keep in touch by
telegraph as often as possible. Now, is all that clear?"
"We two'll have all the Greeks of Zanzibar trailing us all the way!"
objected Yerkes.
"That'll be better than having them trail the lot of us," said Monty.
"You'll be able to shake them somewhere on the way. We'll count on
your ingenuity, Will."
"But what am I to do to Schillingschen?" asked Fred.
"Keep an eye on him."
"Do you see me Sherlock-Holmesing him across the high veld? Piffle!
Give America that job! I'll go through German East and keep ahead of
the Greeks!"
But Monty was firm. "Yerkes has a plausible excuse, Fred. They may
wonder why an American should look for land in German East Africa, but
they'll let him do it, and perhaps not spy on him to any extent. It's
me they've their eye on. I'll try to keep 'em dazzled. You go to
British East and dazzle Schillingschen! Now, are we agreed?"
We were. But we talked, nevertheless, long into the afternoon, and in
the end there was not one of us really satisfied. Over and over we
tried to persuade Monty to omit the Brussels part of the plan. We
wanted him with us. But he stuck to his point, and had his way, as he
always did when we were quite sure he really wanted it.
CHAPTER TWO
THE NJO HAPA SONG
Gleam, oh brighter than jewels! gleam my swinging stars in
the opal dark,
Mirrored along wi' the fire-fly dance of 'longshore light and
off-shore mark,
The roof-lamps and the riding lights, and phosphor wake of
ship and shark.
I was old when the fires of Arab ships
(All seas were lawless then!)
Abode the tide where liners ride
To-day, and Malays then,--
Old when the bold da Gama came
With culverin and creed
To trade where Solomon's men fought,
And plunder where the banyans bought,
I sighed when the first o' the slaves were brought,
And laughed when the last were freed.
Deep, oh deeper than anchors drop, the bones o' the outbound
sailors lie,
Far, oh farther than breath o' wind the rumors o' fabled
fortune fly,
And the 'venturers yearn from the ends of earth, for none o'
the isles is as fair as I!
The enormous map of Africa loses no lure or mystery from the fact of
nearness to the continent itself. Rather it increases. In the hot
upper room that night, between the wreathing smoke of oil lamps, we
pored over the large scale map Monty had saved from the wreck along
with our money drafts and papers.
The atmosphere was one of bygone piracy. The great black ceiling
beams, heavy-legged table of two-inch planks, floor laid like a dhow's
deck--making utmost use of odd lengths of timber, but strong enough to
stand up under hurricanes and overloads of plunder, or to batten down
rebellious slaves--murmurings from rooms below, where men of every race
that haunts those shark-infested seas were drinking and telling tales
that would make Munchhausen's reputation--steaminess, outer darkness,
spicy equatorial smells and, above all, knowledge of the nature of the
coming quest united to veil the map in fascination.
No man gifted with imagination better than a hot-cross bun's could be
in Zanzibar and not be conscious of the lure that made adventurers of
men before the first tales were written. Old King Solomon's traders
must have made it their headquarters, just as it was Sindbad the
Sailor's rendezvous and that of pirates before he or Solomon were born
or thought of. Vasco da Gama, stout Portuguese gentleman adventurer,
conquered it, and no doubt looted the godowns to a lively tune. Wave
after wave of Arabs sailed to it (as they do today) from that other
land of mystery, Arabia; and there isn't a yard of coral beach,
cocoanut-fringed shore, clove orchard, or vanilla patch--not a lemon
tree nor a thousand-year-old baobab but could tell of battle and
intrigue; not a creek where the dhows lie peacefully today but could
whisper of cargoes run by night--black cargoes, groaning fretfully and
smelling of the 'tween-deck lawlessness.
"There are two things that have stuck in my memory that Lord Salisbury
used to say when I was an Eton boy, spending a holiday at Hatfield
House," said Monty. "One was, Never talk fight unless you mean fight;
then fight, don't talk. The other was, Always study the largest maps."
"Who's talking fight?" demanded Fred.
Monty ignored him. "Even this map isn't big enough to give a real idea
of distances, but it helps. You see, there's no railway beyond
Victoria Nyanza. Anything at all might happen in those great spaces
beyond Uganda. Borderlands are quarrel-grounds. I should say the
junction of British, Belgian, and German territory where Arab loot lies
buried is the last place to dally in unarmed. You fellows 'ud better
scour Zanzibar in the morning for the best guns to be had here."
So I went to bed at midnight with that added stuff for building dreams.
He who has bought guns remembers with a thrill; he who has not, has
in store for him the most delightful hours of life. May he fall, as
our lot was, on a gunsmith who has mended hammerlocks for Arabs, and
who loves rifles as some greater rascals love a woman or a horse.
We all four strolled next morning, clad in the khaki reachmedowns that
a Goanese "universal provider" told us were the "latest thing," into a
den between a camel stable and an even mustier-smelling home of gloom,
where oxen tied nose-to-tail went round and round, grinding out semsem
everlastingly while a lean Swahili sang to them. When he ceased, they
stopped. When he sang, they all began again.
In a bottle-shaped room at the end of a passage squeezed between those
two centers of commerce sat the owner of the gun-store, part Arab, part
Italian, part Englishman, apparently older than sin itself, toothless,
except for one yellow fang that lay like an ornament over his lower
lip, and able to smile more winningly than any siren of the sidewalk.
Evidently he shaved at intervals, for white stubble stood out a third
of an inch all over his wrinkled face. The upper part of his head was
utterly bald, slippery, shiny, smooth, and adorned by an absurd, round
Indian cap, too small, that would not stay in place and had to be
hitched at intervals.
He said his name was Captain Thomas Cook, and the license to sell
firearms framed on the mud-brick wall bore him witness. (May he live
forever under any name he chooses!)
"Goons?" he said. "Goons? You gentlemen want goons? I have the goon
what settled the hash of Sayed bin Mohammed--here it be. This other
one's the rifle--see the nicks on her butt!--that Kamarajes the Greek
used. See 'em--Arab goons--slaver goons--smooth-bore elephant
goons--fours, eights, twelves--Martinis--them's the lot that was
reekin' red-hot, days on end, in the last Arab war on the Congo,
considerable used up but goin' cheap;--then here's Mausers (he
pronounced it "Morsers")--old-style, same as used in 1870--good goons
they be, long o' barrel and strong, but too high trajectory for some
folks;--some's new style, magazines an' all--fine till a grain o' sand
jams 'em oop;--an' Lee-Enfields, souvenirs o' the Boer War, some o'
them bought from folks what plundered a battle-field or two--mostly all
in good condition. Look at this one--see it--hold it--take a squint
along it! Nineteen elephants shot wi' that Lee-Enfield, an' the man's
in jail for shootin' of 'em! Sold at auction by the gov'ment, that one
was. See, here's an Express--a beauty--owned by an officer fr'm
Indy--took by a shark 'e was, in swimmin' against all advice, him what
had hunted tigers! There's no goon store a quarter as good as mine
'tween Cairo an' the Cape or Bombay an-' Boma! Captain Cook's the boy
to sell ye goons all right! Sit down. Look 'em over. Ask anything ye
want to know. I'll tell ye. No obligation to buy."
There is no need to fit out with guns and tents in London. Until both
good and bad, both cowardly and brave give up the habit of dying in
bed, or getting killed, or going broke, or ending up in jail for one
cause and the other, there will surely always be fine pickings for men
on the spot with a little money and a lot of patience--guns, tents,
cooking pots, and all the other things.
We spent a morning with Captain Thomas Cook, and left the store--Fred,
Yerkes and I--with a battery of weapons, including a pistol
apiece--that any expedition might be proud of. (Monty, since he had to
go home in any case, preferred to look over the family gun-room before
committing himself.)
Then, since the first leg of the journey would be the same for all of
us we bought other kit, packed it, and booked passages for British East
Africa. Between then and the next afternoon when the British India
steamboat sailed we were fairly bombarded by inquisitiveness, but
contrived not to tell much. And with patience beyond belief Monty
restrained us from paying court to Tippoo Tib.
"The U. S. Consul says he's better worth a visit than most of the
world's museums," Yerkes assured us two or three times. "He says
Tippoo Tib's a fine old sport--damned rogue--slave-hunter, but white
somewhere near the middle. What's the harm in our having a chin with
him?"
But Monty was adamant.
"A call on him would prove nothing, but he and his friends would
suspect. Spies would inform the German government. No. Let's act as
if Tippoo Tib were out of mind."
We grumbled, but we yielded. Hassan came again, shiny with sweat and
voluble with offers of information and assistance.
"Where you gentlemen going?" he kept asking.
"England," said Monty, and showed his own steamer ticket in proof of
it.
That settled Hassan for the time but Georges Coutlass was not so easy.
He came swaggering upstairs and thumped on Monty's door with the air of
a bearer of king's messages.
"What do you intend to do?" he asked. (We were all sitting on Monty's
bed, and it was Yerkes who opened the door.)
"Do you an injury," said Yerkes, "unless you take your foot away!" The
Greek had placed it deftly to keep the door open pending his
convenience.
"Let him have his say" advised Monty from the bed.
"Where are you going? Hassan told me England. Are you all going to
England? If so, why have you bought guns? What will you do with six
rifles, three shot-guns, and three pistols on the London streets? What
will you do with tents in London? Will you make campfires in Regent
Circus, that you take with you all those cooking pots? And all that
rice, is that for the English to eat? Bah! No tenderfoot can fool me!
You go to find my ivory, d'you hear! You think to get away with it
unknown to me! I tell you I have sharp ears! By Jingo; there is
nothing I can not find out that goes on in Africa! You think to cheat
me? Then you are as good as dead men! You shall die like dogs! I
will smithereen the whole damned lot of you before you touch a tusk!"
"Get out of here!" growled Yerkes.
"Give him a chance to go quietly, Will," urged Monty, and Coutlass
heard him. Peaceful advice seemed the last spark needed to explode his
crowded magazines of fury. He clenched his fists--spat because the
words would not flow fast enough--and screamed.
"Give me a chance, eh? A chance, eh?" Other doors began opening, and
the appearance of an audience stimulated him to further peaks of rage.
"The only chance I need is a sight of your carcasses within range, and
a long range will do for Georges Coutlass!" He glared past Yerkes at
Monty who had risen leisurely. "You call yourself a lord? I call you
a thief! A jackal!"
"Here, get out!" growled Yerkes, self-constituted Cerberus.
"I will go when I damned please, you Yankee jackanapes!" the Greek
retorted through set teeth. Yerkes is a free man, able and willing to
shoulder his own end of any argument. He closed, and the Greek's ribs
cracked under a vastly stronger hug than he had dreamed of expecting.
But Coutlass was no weakling either, and though he gasped he gathered
himself for a terrific effort.
"Come on!" said Monty, and went past me through the door like a bolt
from a catapult. Fred followed me, and when he saw us both out on the
landing Monty started down the stairs.
"Come on!" he called again.
We followed, for there is no use in choosing a leader if you don't
intend to obey him, even on occasions when you fail at once to
understand. There was one turn on the wide stairs, and Monty stood
there, back to the wall.
"Go below, you fellows, and catch!" he laughed. "We don't want Will
jailed for homicide!"
The struggle was fierce and swift. Coutlass searched with a thumb for
Will's eye, and stamped on his instep with an iron-shod heel. But he
was a dissolute brute, and for all his strength Yerkes' cleaner living
very soon told. Presently Will spared a hand to wrench at the
ambitious thumb, and Coutlass screamed with agony. Then he began to
sway this way and that without volition of his own, yielding his
balance, and losing it again and again. In another minute Yerkes had
him off his feet, cursing and kicking.
"Steady, Will!" called Monty from below; but it was altogether too
late for advice. Will gathered himself like a spring, and hurled the
Greek downstairs backward.
Then the point of Monty's strategy appeared. He caught him, saved him
from being stunned against the wall, and, before the Greek could
recover sufficiently to use heels and teeth or whisk out the knife he
kept groping for, hurled him a stage farther on his journey--face
forward this time down to where Fred and I were waiting. We kicked him
out into the street too dazed to do anything but wander home.
"Are you hurt, Will?" laughed Monty. "This isn't the States, you know;
by gad, they'll jail you here if you do your own police work! Instead
of Brussels I'd have had to stay and hire lawyers to defend you!"
"Aw--quit preaching!" Yerkes answered. "If I hadn't seen you there on
the stairs with your mouth open I'd have been satisfied to put him down
and spank him!"
It was then that the much more unexpected struck us speechless--even
Monty for the moment, who is not much given to social indecision. We
had not known there was a woman guest in that hotel. One does not look
in Zanzibar for ladies with a Mayfair accent unaccompanied by menfolk
able to protect them. Yet an indubitable Englishwoman, expensively if
carelessly dressed, came to the head of the stairs and stood beside
Yerkes looking down at the rest of us with a sort of well bred, rather
tolerant scorn.
"Am I right in believing this is Lord Montdidier?" she asked,
pronouncing the word as it should be--Mundidger.
She had been very beautiful. She still was handsome in a hard-lipped,
bold way, with abundant raven hair and a complexion that would have
been no worse for a touch of rouge. She seemed to scorn all the
conventional refinements, though. Her lacy white dress, open at the
neck, was creased and not too clean, but she wore in her bosom one
great jewel like a ruby, set in brilliants, that gave the lie to
poverty provided the gems were real. And the amber tube through which
she smoked a cigarette was seven or eight inches long and had diamonds
set in a gold band round its middle. She wore no wedding ring that I
could see; and she took no more notice of Will Yerkes beside her than
if he had been a part of the furniture.
"Why do you ask?" asked Monty, starting upstairs. She had to make way
for him, for Will Yerkes stood his ground.
"A fair question!" she laughed. Her voice had a hard ring, but was
very well trained and under absolute control. I received the
impression that she had been a singer at some time. "I am Lady Saffren
Waldon--Isobel Saffren Waldon."
Fred and I had followed Monty up and were close behind him. I heard
him mutter, "Oh, lord!" under his breath.
"I knew your brother," she added.
"I know you did."
"You think that gives me no claim on your acquaintance? Perhaps it
doesn't. But as an unprotected woman--"
"There is the Residency," objected Monty, "and the law."
She laughed bitterly. "Thank you, I am in need of no passage home! I
overheard that ruffian say, and I think I heard you say too that you
are going to England. I want you to take a message for me."
"There is a post-office here," said Monty without turning a hair. He
looked straight into her iron eyes. "There is a cable station. I will
lend you money to cable with."
"Thank you, my Lord!" she sneered. "I have money. I am so used to
being snubbed that my skin would not feel a whip! I want you to take a
verbal message!"
It was perfectly evident that Monty would rather have met the devil in
person than this untidy dame; yet he was only afraid apparently of
conceding her too much claim on his attention. (If she had asked
favors of me I don't doubt I would have scrambled to be useful. I
began mentally taking her part, wondering why Monty should treat her so
cavalierly; and I fancy Yerkes did the same.)
"Tell me the message, and I'll tell you whether I'll take it," said
Monty.
She laughed again, even more bitterly.
"If I could tell it on these stairs," she answered, "I could cable it.
They censor cablegrams, and open letters in this place."
"I suspect that isn't true," said Monty. "But if you object to
witnesses, how do you propose to deliver your message to me?" he asked
pointedly.
"You mean you refuse to speak with me alone?"
"My friends would draw out of earshot," he answered.
"Your friends? Your gang, you mean!" She drew herself up very
finely--very stately. Very lovely she was to look at in that
half-light, with the shadows of Tippoo Tib's* old stairway hiding her
tale of years. But I felt my regard for her slipping downhill (and so,
I rather think did Yerkes). "You look well, Lord Montdidier, trapesing
about the earth with a leash of mongrels at your heel! Falstaff never
picked up a more sordid-looking pack! What do you feed them--bones?
Are there no young bloods left of your own class, that you need travel
with tradesmen?"
-------------
* The principal hotel In Zanzibar was formerly Tippoo Tib's residence,
quite a magnificent mansion for that period and place.
-------------
Monty stood with both hands behind him and never turned a hair. Fred
Oakes brushed up the ends of that troubadour mustache of his and struck
more or less of an attitude. Will reddened to the ears, and I never
felt more uncomfortable in all my life.
"So this is your gang, is it?" she went on. "It looks sober at
present! I suppose I must trust you to control them! I dare say even
tavern brawlers respect you sufficiently to keep a lady's secret if you
order them. I will hope they have manhood enough to hold their
tongues!"
Of course, dressed in the best that Zanzibar stores had to offer we
scarcely looked like fashion plates. My shirt was torn where Coutlass
had seized it to resist being thrown out, but I failed to see what she
hoped to gain by that tongue lashing, even supposing we had been the
lackeys she pretended to believe we were.
"The message is to my brother," she went on.
"I don't know him!" put in Monty promptly.
"You mean you don't like him! Your brother had him expelled from two
or three clubs, and you prefer not to meet him! Nevertheless, I give
you this message to take to him! Please tell him--you will find him at
his old address--that I, his sister, Lady Saffren Waldon, know now the
secret of Tippoo Tib's ivory. He is to join me here at once, and we
will get it, and sell it, and have money, and revenge! Will you tell
him that!"
"No!" answered Monty.
I looked at Yerkes, Yerkes looked at Fred, and Fred at me.
There was nothing to do but feel astonished.
"Why not, if you please?"
"I prefer not to meet Captain McCauley," said Monty.
"Then you will give the message to somebody else?" she insisted.
"No" said Monty. "I will carry no message for you."
"Why do you say that? How dare you say that? In front of your
following--your gang!"
I should have been inclined to continue the argument myself--to try to
find out what she did know, and to uncover her game. It was obvious
she must have some reason for her extraordinary request, and her more
extraordinary way of making it. But Monty saw fit to stride past her
through his open bedroom door, and shut it behind him firmly. We stood
looking at her and at one another stupidly until she turned her back
and went to her own room on the floor above. Then we followed Monty.
"Did she say anything else?" he asked as soon as we were inside. I
noticed he was sweating pretty freely now.
"Didums, you're too polite!" Fred answered. "You ought to have told
her to keep her tongue housed or be civil!"
"I don't hold with hitting back at a lone woman," said Yerkes, "but
what was she driving at? What did she mean by calling us a pack of
mongrels?"
"Merely her way," said Monty offhandedly. "Those particular McCauleys
never amounted to much. She married a baronet, and he divorced her.
Bad scandal. Saffren Waldon was at the War Office. She stole papers,
or something of that sort--delivered them to a German paramour--von
Duvitz was his name, I think. She and her brother were lucky to keep
out of jail. Ever since then she has been--some say a spy, some say
one thing, some another. My brother fell foul of her, and lived to
regret it. She's on her last legs I don't doubt, or she wouldn't be in
Zanzibar."
"Then why the obvious nervous sweat you're in?" demanded Fred.
"And that doesn't account for the abuse she handed out to us," said
Yerkes.
"Why not tip off the authorities that she's a notorious spy?" I asked.
"I suspect they know all about her," he answered.
"But why your alarm?" insisted Fred.
"I'm scarcely alarmed, old thing. But it's pretty obvious, isn't it,
that she wants us to believe she knows what we're after. She's
vindictive. She imagines she owes me a grudge on my brother's account.
It might soothe her to think she had made me nervous. And by gad--it
sounds like lunacy, and mind you I'm not propounding it for
fact!--there's just one chance that she really does know where the
ivory is!"
"But where's the sense of abusing us?" repeated Yerkes.
"That's the poor thing's way of claiming class superiority," said
Monty. "She was born into one class, married into another, and divorced
into a third. She'd likely to forget she said an unkind word the next
time she meets you. Give her one chance and she'll pretend she
believes you were born to the purple--flatter you until you half
believe it yourself. Later on, when it suits her at the moment, she'll
denounce you as a social impostor! It's just habit--bad habit, I
admit--comes of the life she leads. Lots of 'em like her. Few of 'em
quite so well informed, though, and dangerous if you give 'em a chance."
"I still don't see why you're sweating," said Fred.
"It's hot. There's a chance she knows where the ivory is! She has
money, but how? She'd have begged if she were short of cash! It's my
impression she has been in German government employ for a number of
years. Possibly they have paid her to do some spy-work--in the
Zanzibar court, perhaps--the Sultan's a mere boy--"
"Isn't he woolly-headed?" objected Yerkes.
"Mainly Arab. It's a French game to send a white woman to intrigue at
colored courts, but the Germans are good imitators."
"Isn't she English?" asked Yerkes.
"Her trade's international," said Monty dryly. "My guess is that
Coutlass or Hassan told her what we're supposed to be doing here, and
she pretends to know where the ivory is in order to trap us all in some
way. The net's spread for me, but there's no objection to catching you
fellows as well."
"She'll need to use sweeter bait than I've seen yet!" laughed Yerkes.
"She'll probably be sweetness itself next time she sees you. She'll
argue she's created an impression and can afford to be gracious."
"Impression is good!" said Yerkes. "I mean it's bad! She has created
one, all right! What's the likelihood of her having double-crossed the
Germans? Mightn't she have got a clue to where the stuff is, and be
holding for a better market than they offer?"
"I was coming to that," said Monty. "Yes, it's possible. But whatever
her game is, don't let us play it for her. Let her do the leading. If
she gets hold of you fellows, one at a time or all together, for the
love of heaven tell her nothing! Let her tell all she likes, but admit
nothing--tell nothing--ask no questions! That's an old rule in
diplomacy (and remember, she's a diplomat, whatever else she may be!)
Old-stagers can divine the Young ones' secrets from the nature of the
questions they ask! So if you got the chance, ask her nothing! Don't
lie, either! It would take a very old hand to lie to her in such way
that she couldn't see through it!"
"Why not be simply rude and turn our backs?" said I.
"Best of all--provided you can do it! Remember, she's an old hand!"
"D'you mean," said Yerkes, "that if she were to offer proof that she
knows where that ivory is, and proposed terms, you wouldn't talk it
over?"
"I mean let her alone!" said Monty.
But it turned out she would not be let alone. We dine in the public
room, but she had her meals sent up to her and we flattered ourselves
(or I did) that her net had been laid in vain. Folk dine late in the
tropics, and we dallied over coffee and cigars, so that it was going on
for ten o'clock when Yerkes and I started upstairs again. Monty and
Fred went out to see the waterfront by moonlight.
We had reached our door (he and I shared one great room) when we heard
terrific screams from the floor above--a woman's--one after another,
piercing, fearful, hair-raising, and so suggestive in that gloomy, grim
building that a man's very blood stood still.
Yerkes was the first upstairs. He went like an arrow from a bow, and I
after him. The screams had stopped before we reached the stairhead,
but there was no doubting which her room was; the door was partly
open, permitting a view of armchairs and feminine garments in some
disorder. We heard a man talking loud quick Arabic, and a
woman--pleading, I thought. Yerkes rapped on the door.
"Come in!" said a voice, and I followed Yerkes in.
We were met by her Syrian maid, a creature with gazelle eyes and timid
manner, who came through the doorway leading to an inner room.
"What's the trouble?" demanded Yerkes, and the woman signed to us to go
on in. Yerkes led the way again impulsively as any knight-errant
rescuing beleaguered dames, but I looked back and saw that the Syrian
woman had locked the outer door. Before I could tell Will that, he was
in the next room, so I followed, and, like him, stood rather bewildered.
Lady Saffren Waldon sat facing us, rather triumphant, in no apparent
trouble, not alone. There were four very well-dressed Arabs standing
to one side. She sat in a basket chair by a door that pretty obviously
led into her bedroom; and kept one foot on a pillow, although I
suspected there was not much the matter with it.
"We heard screams. Thought you were being murdered!" said Yerkes, out
of breath.
"Oh, indeed, no! Nothing of the kind! I fell and twisted my
ankle--very painful, but not serious. Since you are here, sit down,
won't you?"
"No, thanks," said he, turning to go.
"The maid locked the door on us!" said I, and before the words were out
of my mouth three of the Arabs slipped into the outer room. There was
no hint or display of weapons of any kind, but they were big men, and
the folds of their garments were sufficiently voluminous to have hidden
a dozen guns apiece.
"She'll open it!" said Will, with inflection that a fool could
understand.
"One minute, please!" said Lady Saffren Waldon. (It was no poor
imitation of Queen Elizabeth ordering courtiers about.)
"We didn't come to talk," said Will. "Heard screams. Made a mistake.
Sorry. We're off!"
"No mistake!" she said; and the sweetness Monty prophesied began to
show itself. The change in her voice was too swift and pronounced to
be convincing. "I did scream. I was, in pain. It was kind of you to
come. Since you are here I would like you to talk to this gentleman."
She glanced at the Arab, an able-looking man, with nose and eyes
expressive of keen thought, and the groomed gray beard that makes an
Arab always dignified.
"Some other time," said Will. "I've an engagement!" And he turned to
go again.
"No--now!" she said. "It's no use--you can't get out! You may as well
be sensible and listen!"
We glanced at each other and both remembered Monty's warning. Will
laughed.
"Take seats," she said, with a very regal gesture. She was not
carelessly dressed, as she had been earlier in the day. From hair to
silken hose and white kid shoes she was immaculate, and she wore rouge
and powder now. In that yellow lamplight (carefully placed, no doubt)
she was certainly good-looking. In fact, she was good-looking at any
time, and only no longer able to face daylight with the tale of youth.
Her eyes were weapons, nothing less. We remained standing.
"This gentleman will speak to you," she said, motioning to the Arab to
commence, and he bowed--from the shoulders upward.
"I am from His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar" he announced, a little
pompously. "A minister from His Highness." (In announcing their own
importance Arabs very seldom err in the direction of under-estimate.)
"I speak about the ivory, which I am informed you propose to set out on
a journey to discover."
"Where did you get your information?" Yerkes countered.
"Don't be absurd!" ordered Lady Safrren Waldon. "I gave it to him!
Where else need he go to get it?"
"Where did you get it, then?" he retorted.
"Never mind! Listen to what Hamed Ibrahim has to say!"
The Arab bowed his head slightly a second time.
"The ivory you seek," he said, "is said to be Tippoo Tib's own, and he
will not tell the hiding-places. It does not belong to him. Such
little part of it as ever was his was long ago swallowed by the
interest on claims against him. The whole is now in truth the property
of His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar, and whoever discovers it shall
receive reward from the owner. His Highness is willing, through me his
minister, to make treaty in advance in writing with suitable parties
intending to make search."
"You mean the Sultan wants to hire me to hunt for ivory for him?" Will
asked, and the Arab made a gesture of impatience. At that Lady Saffren
Waldon cut in, very vinegary once more.
"You two men are prisoners! Show much more sense! Come to terms or
take the consequences! Listen! Tippoo Tib buried the ivory. The
Sultan of Zanzibar claims it. The German government, for reasons of
its own, backs the Sultan's claim; ivory found in German East Africa
will be handed over to him in support of his claim to all the rest of
it. If you--Lord Montdidier and the rest of you--care to sign an
agreement with the Sultan of Zanzibar you can have facilities. You
shall be supplied with guides who can lead you to the right place to
start your search from--"
"Thought you wanted Lord Montdidier to say in London that you know
where it all is," Will objected.
She colored slightly, and glared.
"Perhaps I am one of the guides," she said darkly. "I know more than I
need tell for the sake of this argument! The point is, you can have
facilities if you sign an agreement with the Sultan. Otherwise, you
will be dogged wherever you go! Whatever you should find would be
claimed! Every difficulty will be made for you--every treachery
conceivable practised on you. Lord Montdidier can get influential
backing, but not influence among the natives! He can not get good men
and true information by pulling wires in London. The British
government once offered ten per cent. of the value of the ivory found.
The Sultan of Zanzibar offers twenty per cent.--"
"Twenty-five per cent.," corrected Hamed Ibrahim.
"Yes, but I should want five per cent. for my commission!"
"This sounds like a different yarn to the one you told on the stairs
this afternoon," said Will. "See Monty and tell it to him."
"It is for you to tell Lord Montdidier. He runs away from me!"
"I refuse to tell him a word!" said Will, with a laugh like that of a
boy about to plunge into a swimming pool--sort of "Here goes!"
"You are extremely ill advised!"
"Do your worst! Monty'll be hunting for us two in about a minute.
We're prisoners, are we? Suit yourself!"
"You are prisoners while I choose! You could be killed in this room,
removed in sacks, thrown to the sharks in the roadstead, and nobody the
wiser! But I have no intention of killing you. As it happens, that
would not suit my purpose!"
We both glanced behind us involuntarily. It may be that we both heard
a footstep, but it is always difficult to say certainly after the
event. At any rate, while in the act of turning our heads, two of the
three Arabs, who had previously left the room, threw nooses over them
and bound our arms to our sides with the jiffy-swiftness only sailors
know. The third man put the finishing touches, and presently adjusted
gags with a neatness and solicitude worthy of the Inquisition.
"Throw them!" she ordered, and in a second our heels were struck from
under us and I was half stunned by the impact of my head against the
solid floor (for all the floors of that great place were built to
resist eternity).
"Now!" she said. "Show them knives!"
We were shown forthwith the ugliest, most suggestive weapons I have
ever seen--long sliver-thin blades sharper than razors. The Arabs
knelt on our chests (their knees were harder and more merciless than
wooden clubs) and laid the blades, edge-upward, on the skin of our
throats.
"Let them feel!" she ordered.
I felt a sharp cut, and the warm blood trickled down over my jugular to
the floor. I knew it was only a skin-cut, but did not pretend to
myself I was enjoying the ordeal.
"Now!" she said.
The Arabs stepped away and she came and stood between us, looking down
at one and then the other.
"There isn't a place in Africa," she said, "that you can hide in where
the Sultan's men can't find you! There isn't a British officer in
Africa who would believe you if you told what has happened in this room
tonight! Yet Lord Montdidier will believe you--he knows you
presumably, and certainly he knows me! So tell Lord Montdidier exactly
what has happened! Assure him with my compliments that his throat and
yours shall be cut as surely as you dare set out after that ivory
without signing my agreement first. Tell Lord Montdidier he may be
friends with me if he cares to. As his friend I will help make him
rich for life! As his enemy, I will make Africa too hot and dangerous
to hold him! Let him choose!"
She stepped back and, without troubling to turn away, put powder on her
nose and chin.
"Now let them up!" she said.
The Arabs lifted us to our feet.
"Loose them!"
The expert of the three slipped the knots like a wizard doing parlor
tricks; but I noticed that the other two held their knives extremely
cautiously. We should have been dead men if we had made a pugnacious
motion.
"Now you may go! Unless Lord Montdidier agrees with me, the only
safety for any of you is away from Africa! Go and tell him! Go!"
"I'll give you your answer now!" said Will.
"No, you don't!" said I, remembering Monty's urgent admonition to tell
her nothing and ask no questions. "Come away, Will! There's nothing
to be gained by talking back!"
"Right you are!" he said, laughing like a boy again--this time like a
boy whose fight has been broken off without his seeking or consent.
Like me, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped blood from his neck.
The sight of his own blood--even such a little trickle as that--has
peculiar effect an a man.
"By Jiminy, she has scratched the wrong dog's ear!" he growled to me as
we went to the door together.
"They're all in there!" I said excitedly, when the door slammed shut
behind us. "Hurry down and get me a gun! I'll hold the door while you
run for police and have 'em arrested!"
"Piffle!" he said. "Come on! Three Sultan's witnesses and two lone
white women against us two--come away! Come away!"
Monty and Fred were still out, so we went to our own room.
"I'm wondering," I said, "what Monty will say."
"I'm not!" said Will. "I'm not troubling, either! I'm not going to
tell Monty a blessed word! See here--she thinks she knows where some
o' that ivory is. Maybe the government of German East Africa is in on
the deal, and maybe not; that makes no present difference. She thinks
she's wise. And she has fixed up with the Sultan to have him claim it
when found, so's she'll get a fat slice of the melon. There's a scheme
on to get the stuff, when who should come on the scene but our little
party, and that makes 'em all nervous, 'cause Monty's a bad man to be
up against. Remember: she claimed that she knows Monty and he knows
her. She means by that that he knows she's a desperado, and she thinks
he'll draw the line at a trip that promises murder and blackmail and
such like dirty work. So she puts a scare into us with a view to our
throwing a scare into him. If I scare any one, it's going to be that
dame herself. I'll not tell Monty a thing!"
"How about Coutlass the Greek?" said I. "D'you suppose he's her
accomplice?"
"Maybe! One of her dupes perhaps! I suspect she'll suck him dry of
information and cast him off like a lemon rind. I dare bet she's using
him. She can't use me! Shall you tell Monty?"
"No," I said. "Not unless we both agreed."
He nodded. "You and I weren't born to what they call the purple.
We're no diplomatists; but we get each other's meaning."
"Here come Monty and Fred," said I. "Is my neck still bloody? No,
yours doesn't show."
We met them at the stairhead, and Monty did not seem to notice anything.
"Fred has composed a song to the moonlight on Zanzibar roadstead while
you fellows were merely after-dinner mundane. D'you suppose the
landlord 'ud make trouble if we let him sing it?"
"Let's hope so!" said Will. "I'm itching for a row like they say
drovers in Monty's country itch for mile-stones! Let Fred warble.
I'll fight whoever comes!"
Monty eyed him and me swiftly, but made no comment.
"Bill's homesick!" said Fred. "The U. S. eagle wants its Bowery!
We'll soothe the fowl with thoughts of other things--where's the
concertina?"
"No, no, Fred, that'll be too much din!"
Monty made a grab for the instrument, but Fred raised it above his head
and brought it down between his knees with chords that crashed like
wedding bells. Then he changed to softer, languorous music, and when
he had picked out an air to suit his mood, sat down and turned art
loose to do her worst.
He has a good voice. If he would only not pull such faces, or make so
sure that folk within a dozen blocks can hear him, he might pass for a
professional.
"Music suggestive of moonlight!" he said, and began:
"The sentry palms stand motionless. Masts move against the sky.
With measured creak of curving spars dhows gently to the
jeweled stars
Rock out a lullaby.
"Silver and black sleeps Zanzibar. The moonlit ripples croon
Soft songs of loves that perfect are, long tales of
red-lipped spoils of war,
And you--you smile, you moon!
For I think that beam on the placid sea
That splashes, and spreads, and dips, and gleams,
That dances and glides till it comes to me
Out of infinite sky, is the path of dreams,
And down that lane the memories run
Of all that's wild beneath the sun!"
"You fellows like that one? Anybody coming? Nobody for Will to fight
yet? Too bad! Well--we'll try a-gain! There's no chorus. It's all
poetic stuff, too gentle to be yowled by three such cannibals as you!
Listen!
"Old as the moonlit silences, to-night's loves are the same
As when for ivory from far, and cloves and gems of Zanzibar
King Solomon's men came.
"Sinful and still the same roofs lie that knew da Gama's heel,
Those beams that light these sleepy waves looked on when
men threw murdered slaves
To make the sharks a meal.
And I think that beam on the silvered swell
That spreads, and splashes, and gleams, and dips,
That has shone on the cruel and brave as well,
On the trail o' the slaves and the ivory ships,
Is the lane down which the memories run
Of all that's wild beneath the sun."
The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased. Fred
fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.
"Why don't you applaud?" he asked.
"Oh, bravo, bravo!" said Will and I together.
Monty looked hard at both of us.
"Strange!" he remarked. "You're both distracted, and you've each got a
slight cut over the jugular!"
"Been trying out razors," said Yerkes.
"Um-m-m!" remarked Monty. "Well--I'm glad it's no worse. How about
bed, eh? Better lock your door--that lady up-stairs is what the
Germans call gefaehrlich!* Goo'night!"
-----------
* Gefaehrlich, dangerous.
-----------
CHAPTER THREE
THE NJO HAPA SONG
Tongues! Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur
of streets ahum!
Trade! Oh, frasila weights of clove--ivory--copra--copal
gum--
Rubber--vanilla and tortoise-shell! The methods change.
The captains come.
I was old when the clamor o' Babel's end
(All seas were chartless then!)
Drove forth the brood, and Solitude
Was the newest quest of men.
I lay like a gem in a silken sea
Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed
Till scented winds that waft afar
Bore word o' the warm delights there are
Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar
Long rhapsodies of rest.
Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when
the winds are freed.
Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o' the reefs
where sea-birds feed,
Screaming and skirling and down again. (Though the sea-birds
warn do captains heed?)
There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar. Passengers have to
submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longshoremen,
who recognize one sole and only point of honor: neither passenger nor
luggage shall be dropped into the surf.
Their invariable habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to
scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it
feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides
the point; and then more often than not it is the victim's fate to be
carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get
ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go
until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these
two things let the passenger assure himself--fight how he may, he will
neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him
upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry
on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he
shall pay them will surely be insufficient.
But we had a privy councilor of England of our party, and favors were
shown us that never fall to the lot of ordinary travelers. Opposite
the Sultan's palace is the Sultan's private wharf, so royal and private
that it is a prison offense to trespass on it without written
permission. Because of his official call at the Residency, and of his
card left on the Sultan, wires had been pulled, and a pompous
individual whose black face sweated greasily, and whose palm itched for
unearned increment, called on Monty very shortly after breakfast with
intimation that the wharf had been placed at our disposal, since His
Highness the Sultan desired to do us honor.
So when the B. I. steamer dropped anchor in the great roadstead shortly
after noon we were taken to the wharf by one of the Sultan's
household--a very civil-spoken Arab gentleman--and three English
officers met us there who made a fuss over Monty and were at pains to
be agreeable to the rest of us. While we stood chatting and waiting
for the boat that should row us and belongings the mile-and-a-half or
so to the steamer, I saw something that made me start. Fred gazed
presently in the same direction.
"Johnson is number one!" he said, as if checking off my mental
processes. He meant Hassan. "Number two is Georges Coutlass, our
friend the Greek. Number three is--am I drunk this early in the
day?--what do you see?--doesn't she look to you like?--by the big blind
god of men's mistakes it's--Monty! Didums, you deaf idiot, look! See!"
At that everybody naturally looked the same way. Everybody nodded.
Coutlass the Greek, and Hassan, reputed nephew of Tippoo Tib, were
headed in one boat toward the steamer, the worse for the handling, but
right side up and no angrier than the usual passenger. Following them
was another boat containing a motley assortment of Arabs and
part-Arabs, who might, or might not be associated with them.
On the beach still, surrounded yet by a swarm of longshoremen who
yelled and fought, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon and her Syrian maid stood
at bay. Her two Swahili men-servants were overwhelmed and already
being carried to a boat. Her luggage was being borne helter-skelter
after them, and another boat waited for her just beyond the belt of
surf, the rowers standing up to yell encouragement at the sweating pack
that dared not close in on its victims. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon
appeared to have no other weapon than a parasol, but she had plainly
the upper hand.
"She has a way with her with natives," said the senior officer present.
"It's a pity," said Monty. "I mean, one scarcely likes to use this
wharf and watch that."
"Quite so. Yet we daren't accord her official recognition. She'd be
certain to make capital out of it. We're awfully glad she's going.
The Residency atmosphere is one huge sigh of relief. We would like to
speed the parting guest, but it mayn't be done. However, you'll know
there are others not so particular. I imagine her friends are late for
the appointment."
"Where's she going?" asked Monty.
"British East Africa."
"Mombasa?"
"And then on. She has drafts on a German merchant in Nairobi."
From that moment until we were safely in our quarters on the steamer
Monty's attitude became one of rigid indifference toward her or
anything to do with her. The British officers went out to the steamer
with us, but all the way Monty only talked of the climate, trade
conditions, and the other subjects to which polite conversation of
Africa's east coast is limited. Fred kept nudging him, but Monty took
no notice. Yerkes whispered to Fred. Then I heard Fred whisper to
Monty in one of those raucous asides that he perfectly well knows can
be heard by everybody.
"Why don't you ask 'em about her, you ass?"
But Monty refused to rise. He talked of the bowed and ancient slaves
of Zanzibar, who refused in those days to be set free and afforded
prolific ground for attack on British public morals by people whose
business it is to abuse England for her peccadillos and forget her
virtues.*
---------------
* In 1914 there were still thousands of slaves in German East, although
the German press and public were ever loudest in their condemnation of
British conditions.
---------------
We reached the ship, and were watching our piles of luggage arrive up
the accommodation ladder when the solution of Lady Isobel Saffren
Waldon's problem appeared. She arrived alongside in the official boat
of the German consulate, a German officer in white uniform on either
hand, and the German ensign at the stern.
"Pretty fair impudence, paying official honors to our undesirables, yet
I don't see what we can do," said the senior from the Residency.
Yerkes drew me aside.
"Did you ever see anything more stupidly British?" he demanded.
"It's as obvious as the nose on your face that she's up to some game.
It's as plain as twice two that the Germans are backing her whether the
British like it or not. Look at those two Heinies now!"
We faced about and watched them. After bowing Lady Waldon to her
cabin, they approached our party with brazen claim to recognition--and
received it. They were met, and spoken to apparently as cordially as
if their friendship had been indisputable.
"Did you ever see anything to beat it? Why not kick 'em into the sea?
Either that woman's a crook or she isn't. If she isn't, then the
British have treated her shamefully, turning their backs on her. But
we know she is a crook! And so do they. The Germans know it, too, and
they're flaunting her under official British noses! They're using her
to start something the British won't like, and the British know it!
Yet she's going to be allowed to travel to British territory on a
British ship, and the Heinies are shaken hands with! If you complained
to Monty I bet he'd say, 'Don't talk fight unless you mean fight!'"
"Monty might also add, 'Don't talk-fight!'" said I.
"Oh, rot!" Will answered. "British individuals may bridle a bit, but
their government'll shut its eyes until too late, whatever happens!
You mark my words!"
We strolled back toward our party in great discontent, I as much as he,
never supposing there was another country in the world that could so
deliberately shut its eyes to dog's work until absolutely forced to
interfere, by a hair not quite too late.
Coutlass and Hassan traveled second-class--the Arab and half-Arab
contingent third--and none of them troubled us, at present, except that
Will swore at sight of Coutlass swaggering as if the ship and her
contents were all his.
"To hear him brag you'd believe the British government afraid of him!"
he grumbled.
But an immediate problem drove Coutlass out of mind. Lady Isobel
Saffren Waldon had been given a cabin in line with ours, at the end of
our corridor. Her maid, and her two Swahili servants were obliged to
pass our doors to get to her cabin at all. As nearly all ships' cabins
on those hot routes do, ours intercommunicated by a metal grill for
ventilating purposes, and a word spoken in one cabin above a whisper
could be heard in the next.
Fred was the first to realize conditions. He opened his door in his
usual abrupt way to visit Monty's cabin and almost fell over the Syrian
maid, her eye at Monty's key-hole--a little too early in the game to
pass for sound judgment, as Fred was at pains to assure her.
The alarm being given, we locked our cabin doors, repaired to the
smoking-room, and ordered drinks at a center table where no
eavesdropper could overhear.
"It's one of two things," said Monty. He had his folding board out,
and we did not doubt he would play chess from there to London. "Either
they know exactly where that ivory is, or they haven't the slightest
idea."
"My, but you're wise!" said Will.
Monty ignored him. "They suspect us of knowing. They mean to prevent
our getting any of it. If they do know, they've some reason of their
own for not getting it themselves at present. If they don't know, they
suspect we know and intend to claim what we find."
"How should they think we know?" objected Will. "The first we ever
heard of the stuff was in the lazaretto in Zanzibar."
"True. Juma told us. Juma probably told them that we told him.
Natives often put the cart before the horse without the slightest
intention of lying."
"All the same, why should they believe him?"
"Why not? Zanzibar's agog with the story--after all these years. The
ivory must have been buried more than a quarter of a century ago. Some
one's been stirring the mud. We arrive, unexpectedly from nowhere, ask
questions about the ivory, make plans for British East Africa--and
there you are! The people who were merely determined to get the stuff
jump to the false conclusion that we really know where it is.''
"Q. E. D.!" said Fred, finishing his drink.
"Not at all," said Monty. "There are two things yet to be
demonstrated. They're true, but not proven. The German government is
after the stuff. And the German government has very special reasons
for secrecy and tricks."
"We four against the German government looks like longish odds," said
I.
"Remains to be seen," said Monty. "If the German government's very
special reasons were legal or righteous they'd be announced with a
fanfare of trumpets."
"Where's all this leading us?" demanded Fred.
"To a slight change of plan," said Monty.
"Thank the lord! That means you don't go to Brussels--stay with us!"
"Nothing of the sort, Fred. But you three keep together. They're
going to watch you. You watch them. Watch Schillingschen particularly
closely, if you find him. The closer they watch you, the more likely
they are to lose sight of me. I'll take care to have several red
herrings drawn across my trail after I reach London. Perhaps I'll
return down the west coast and travel up the Congo River. At any rate,
when I do come, and whichever way I come, I'll have everything legal,
in writing. Let your game be to seem mysterious. Seem to know more
than you do, but don't tell anybody anything. Above all, listen!"
Fred leaned back in his chair and laughed.
"Didums!" he said. "This is the idioticest wild goose chase we ever
started on! I admit I nosed it. I gave tongue first. But think of
it--here we are--four sensible men--hitherto sensible--off after ivory
that nobody can really prove exists, said to be buried somewhere in a
tract of half-explored country more than a thousand miles each way--and
the German government, and half the criminals in Africa already on our
idiotic heels!"
"Yet the German government and the crooks seem convinced, too, that
there's something worth looking for!" laughed Monty. And none of us
could answer that.
For that matter, none of us would have been willing to withdraw from
the search, however dim the prospect of success might seem in the
intervals when cold reason shed its comfortless rays on us. Intuition,
or whatever it is that has proved superior so often to worldly wisdom
(temptation, Fred calls it!) outweighed reason, and Fred himself would
have been last to agree to forego the search.
The voyage is short between Zanzibar and Mombasa, but there was
incident. We were spied on after very thorough fashion, Lady Saffren
Waldon's title and gracious bearing (when that suited her) being
practical weapons. The purser was Goanese--beside himself with the
fumes of flattery. He had a pass-key, so the Syrian maid went through
our cabins and searched thoroughly everything except the wallet of
important papers that Monty kept under his shirt. The first and second
officers were rather young, unmarried men possessed of limitless
ignorance of the wiles of such as Lady Waldon. It was they who signed
a paper recommending Coutlass to the B. I. agents and a lot of other
reputable people in Mombasa and elsewhere, thus offsetting the
possibility that the authorities might not let him land. (Had we known
all that at the time, Monty's word against him might have caused him to
be shipped back whence he came, but we did not find it out until
afterward; nor did we know the law.)
And at Mombasa we made our first united, serious mistake. It was put
to the vote. We all agreed.
"I can come ashore," said Monty, "introduce you to officialdom, get you
put up for the club, and be useful generally. That, though, 'll lend
color to the theory that you're in league with me--whereas, if I leave
you to your own resources, that may help lose my scent. When they pick
it up again we'll be knowing better where we stand."
"If you came ashore for a few hours we'd have the benefit of your
prestige," said I.
"I admit it."
"I suspect a title's mighty near as useful on British territory as in
N'York or Boston," said Will. "We'd bask in smiles."
"Not wholly," said Monty. "There's another side to that. There's an
English official element that would rather be rude to some poor devil
with a title than draw pay (and it loves its pay, you may believe me!).
You'd have friends in high places, but make enemies, too, if I go
ashore with you."
"What's your own proposal?" Fred demanded.
"I've stated it. I want you fellows to choose. There's no need of me
ashore--that's to say, I've a draft to bearer for the amount you three
have in the common fund--here, take it. If you think you'll need more
than that, then I'll have to go to the bank with you and cash some of
my own draft. I think you'll have enough."
"Plenty," said Will.
"Let's send him home!" proposed Fred.
"How about communications?" We had contrived a code already with the
aid of a pocket Portuguese-English dictionary, of which Fred and Monty
each possessed a similar edition.
"The Mombasa Bank, Will. You keep them posted as to your whereabouts.
When I write the bank manager I'll ask him to keep my address a secret."
So we said good-by to Monty and left him on board, and wished we hadn't
a dozen times before noon next day, and a hundred times within the
week. The last sight we had of him was as the shore boat came
alongside the wharf and the half-breed customs officials pounced
smiling on us. My eyes were keenest. I could see Monty pacing the
upper deck, too rapidly for evidence of peace of mind--a
straight-standing, handsome figure of a man. I pointed him out to the
others, and we joked about him. Then the gloom of the customs shed
swallowed us, and there was a new earth and, for the present, no more
sea.
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.
Everything is different--everything strange--everything, except the
heat, delightful. And as Fred said, "some folk would grumble in hell!"
Trees, flowers, birds, costumes of the women, sheen of the sea, glint
of sun on bare skins of every shade from ivory to ebony, dazzling coral
roadway and colored coral walls, babel of tongues, sack-saddled donkeys
sleepily bearing loads of coral for new buildings, and--winding in and
out among it all--the narrow-gauge tramway on which trolleys pushed by
stocky little black men carry officialdom gratis, and the rest of the
world and his wife according to tariff; all those things are the
alphabet of Mombasa's charm. Arranged, and rearranged--by chance, by
individual perspective, and by point of view--they spell fascination,
attractiveness, glamour, mystery. 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; death in the scrub
(all green and beautiful) where the tiny streets leave off and snakes
claim heritage; death in the grim red desert beyond the coast-line,
where lean, hopeless jackals crack today men's dry bones left fifty
years ago by the slave caravans--marrowless bones long since stripped
clean by the ants. But we are not all cynics.
Last to be cynic or pessimist was Louis McGregor Abraham, proprietor of
the Imperial Hotel--Syrian by birth, Jew by creed, Englishman by
nationality, and admirer first, last and all the time of all things
prosperous and promising, except his rival, the Hotel Royal.
"You came to the right place," he assured us when the last hot porter
had dumped the last of our belongings on the porch, had ceased from
chattering to watch Fred's financial methods, had been paid double the
customary price, and had gone away grumbling (to laugh at us behind our
backs). "They'd have rooked you at the other hole--underfed you,
overcharged you, and filled you full of lies. I tell the truth to folk
who come to my hotel."
And he did, some of it. He was inexhaustible, unconquerable, tireless,
an optimist always. He had a store that was part of the hotel, in
which he claimed to sell "everything the mind of man could wish for in
East Africa"; and the boast was true. He even sold American dime
novels.
"East Africa's a great country!" he kept assuring us. "Some day we'll
all be rich! Have to get ready for it! Have to be prepared! Have to
stock everything the mind of man can want, to encourage new arrivals
and make the old ones feel at home. Lose a little money, but why
grumble? Get it back when the boom comes. As it will, mind you. As
it will. Can't help it. Richest country in the world--grow
anything--find anything--game--climate--elevation--scenery--natives by
the million to do the work--all good! Only waiting for white men with
energy, and capital to start things really moving!"
But there were other points of view. We went to the bank, and found
its manager conservative. The amount of the draft we placed to our
credit insured politeness.
"Be cautious," he advised us. "Take a good look round before you
commit yourselves!"
He agreed to manage the interchange of messages between us and Monty,
and invited us all to dinner that evening at the club; so we left the
bank feeling friendly and more confident. Later, a chance-met English
official showed us over the old fort (now jail) where men of more
breeds and sorts than Noah knew, better clothed and fed than ever in
their lives, drew endless supplies of water in buckets from da Gama's
well.
"Some of them have to be kicked out when their sentences expire!" he
told us. "See you at the club tonight. Glad to help welcome you."
But there was a shock in store, and as time passed the shocks increased
in number and intensity. Our guns had not been surrendered to us by
the customs people. We had paid duty on them second-hand at the rate
for new ones, and had then been told to apply for them at the
collector's office, where our names and the guns' numbers would be
entered on the register--for a fee.
We now went to claim them, and on the way down inquired at a store
about ammunition. We were told that before we could buy cartridges we
would need a permit from the collector specifying how many, and of what
bore we might buy. There was an Arab in the store ahead of us. He was
buying Martini Henry cartridges. I asked whether he had a permit, and
was told he did not need one.
"Being an Arab?" I asked.
"Being well known to the government," was the answer.
We left the store feeling neither quite so confident nor friendly. And
the collector's Goanese assistant did the rest of the disillusioning.
No, we could not have our guns. No, we could have no permit for
ammunition. No, the collector was not in the office. No, he would not
be there that afternoon. It was provided in regulations that we could
have neither guns, sporting licenses, nor permits for ammunition. The
guns were perfectly safe in the government godown--would not be
tampered with--would be returned to us when we chose to leave the
country.
"But, good God, we've paid duty on them!" Oakes protested.
"You should not have brought the guns with you unless you desired to
pay duty," said the Goanese.
"But where's the collector?" Yerkes demanded.
"I am only assistant," was the answer. "How should I know?"
The man's insolence, of demeanor and words, was unveiled, and the more
we argued with him the more sullen and evasive he grew, until at last
he ordered us out of the office. At that we took chairs and announced
our intention of staying until the collector should come or be fetched.
We were informed that the collector was the most important government
official in Mombasa--information that so delighted Fred that he grew
almost good tempered again.
"I'd rather twist a big tail than a little one!" he announced. "Shall
we sing to pass the time?"
The Goanese called for the askari,* half-soldier, half-police-man, who
drowsed in meek solitude outside the office door.
----------------
* Askari, soldier.
----------------
"Remove these people, please!" he said in English, and then repeated it
in Kiswahili.
The askari eyed us, shifted his bare feet uncomfortably, screwed up his
courage, tried to look stern, and said something in his own tongue.
"Put them out, I said!" said the Goanese.
"He orders you to put us out!" grinned Fred.
"The office closes at three," said the Goanese, glancing at the clock
in a half-hearted effort to moderate his own daring.
"Not unless the collector comes and closes it himself, it doesn't!"
Fred announced with folded arms.
Will pulled out two rupees and offered them to the sentry.
"Go and bring us some food," he said. "We intend to stay in here until
your bwana makubwa* comes."
--------------
* Bwana makubwa, lit. big master, senior government officer.
--------------
The sentry refused the money, waving it aside with the air of a Caesar
declining a crown.
"Gee!" exclaimed Will. "You've got to hand it to the British if they
train colored police to refuse money."
The askari, it seemed, was a man of more than one kind of discretion.
Without another word to the Goanese he saluted the lot of us with a
sweep of his arm, turned on his heel and vanished--not stopping in his
hurry to put on the sandals that lay on the door-step. We amused
ourselves while he was gone by flying questions at the Goanese,
calculated to disturb what might be left of his equanimity without
giving him ground for lawsuits.
"How old are you?"--"How much pay do you get?"--"How long have you held
your job?"--"Do you ever get drunk?"--"Are you married?"--"Does your
wife love you?"--"Do you keep white mice?"--"Is your life
insured?"--"How often have you been in jail?"--"Are you honest?"--"Are
you vaccinated against the jim-jams?"--"Why is your name Fernandez and
not Braganza?"
The man was about distracted, for he had been unwise enough to try to
answer, when suddenly the collector came in great haste and stalked
through the office into the inner room.
"Fernandez!" he called as he passed, and the Goanese hurried after him,
hugely relieved. There was five minute's consultation behind the
partition in tones too low for us to catch more than a word or two, and
then Fernandez came out again with a "Now wait and see, my hearties!"
smile on his face. He was actually rubbing his palms together, sure of
a swift revenge.
"He says you are to go in there," he announced.
So we filed in, Fred Oakes first, and it seemed to me the moment I saw
the collector's face that the outlook was not so depressing. He looked
neither young nor incompetent. His jaw was neither receding nor too
prominent. His neck sat on his shoulders with the air of full
responsibility, unsought but not refused. And his eyes looked straight
into those of each of us in turn with a frank challenge no honest
fellow could resent.
"Take seats, won't you," he said. "Your names, please?"
We told him, and he wrote them down.
"My clerk tells me you tried to bribe the askari. You shouldn't do
that. We are at great pains to keep the police dependable. It's too
bad to put temptation in their way."
Will, with cold precision, told him the exact facts. He listened to
the end, and then laughed.
"One more Goanese mistake!" he said. "We have to employ them. They
mean well. The country has no money to spend on European office
assistants. Well--what can I do for you?"
At that Fred cut loose.
"We want our guns before dark!" he said. "It's the first time my
character has been questioned by any government, and I say the same for
my friends!"
"Oh?" said the collector, eying us strangely.
"Yes!" said Fred.
"That is so," said I.
"Entirely so," said Will.
"I have information," said the collector, tapping with a pencil on his
blotter, "that you men are ivory hunters. That you left Portuguese
territory because the German consul there had to request the Portuguese
government to expel you."
"All easily disproved," said Fred. "Confront us, please, with our
accusers."
"And that Lord Montdidier, with whom you have been traveling, became so
disgusted with your conduct that he refused to land with you at this
port as he at first intended!"
We all three gasped. The first thing that occurred to me, and I
suppose to all of us, was to send for Monty. His steamer was not
supposed to sail for an hour yet. But the thought had hardly flashed
in mind when we heard the roar of steam and clanking as the anchor
chain came home. The sound traveled over water and across roofs like
the knell of good luck--the clanking of the fetters of ill fate.
"Where's her next stop?" said I.
"Suez," Fred answered.
Simultaneously then to all three the thought came too that this
interpretation of Monty's remaining on board was exactly what we
wanted. The more people suspected us of acting independently of him
the better.
"Confront us with our accusers!" Fred insisted.
"You are not accused--at least not legally," said the collector. "You
are refused rifle and ammunition permits, that is all."
"On the ground of being ivory hunters?"
"Suspected persons--not known to the government--something rather
stronger than rumor to your discredit, and nothing known in your favor."
"What recourse have we?" Fred demanded.
"Well--what proof can you offer that you are bona fide travelers or
intending settlers? Are you ivory hunters or not?"
"I'll answer that," said Fred--dexterously I thought, "when I've seen a
copy of the game laws. We're law-abiding men."
The collector handed us a well thumbed copy of the Red Book.
"They're all in that," he said. "I'll lend it to you, or you can buy
one almost anywhere in town. If you decide after reading that to go
farther up country I'm willing to issue provisional game licenses,
subject to confirmation after I've looked into any evidence you care to
submit on your own behalf. You can have your guns against a cash
deposit--"
"How big?"
"Two hundred rupees for each gun!"
Fred laughed. The demand was intended to be away over our heads. The
collector bridled.
"But no ammunition," he went on, "until your claim to respectability
has been confirmed. By the way, the only claim you've made to me is
for the guns. You've told me nothing about yourselves."
"Two hundred a gun?" said Fred. "Counting a pistol or revolver as
one? Three guns apiece--nine guns--eighteen hundred rupees' deposit?"
The collector nodded with a sort of grim pleasure in his own
unreasonableness. Fred drew out our new check book.
"You fellows agreeable?" he asked, and we nodded.
"Here's a check on the Mombasa Bank for ten thousand, and your
government can have as much more again if it wants it," he said. "Make
me out a receipt please, and write on it what it's for."
The collector wrote. He was confused, for he had to tear up more than
one blank.
"I suppose we get interest on the money at the legal local rate?" asked
Fred maliciously.
"I'll inquire about that," said the collector.
"Excuse me," said Fred, "but I'm going to give you some advice. While
you're inquiring, look into the antecedents of Lady Isobel Saffren
Waldon! It's she who gave out the tip against us. Her tip's a bad
one. So is she."
"She hasn't applied for guns or a license," the collector answered
tartly. "It's people who want to carry firearms--people able
and likely to make trouble whom we keep an eye on."
"She's more likely to make trouble for you than a burning house!" put
in Will Yerkes. "If my partner hadn't paid you that check I'd be all
for having this business out! I'm going to let them know in the States
what sort of welcome people receive at this port!"
"You came of your own accord. You weren't invited," the collector
answered.
"That's a straight-out lie!" snapped Will. "You know it's a lie! Why,
there isn't a newspaper in South Africa that hasn't been carrying ads
of this country for months past. Even papers I've had sent me from the
States have carried press-agent dope about it. Why, you've been
yelling for settlers like a kid squalling for milk--and you say we're
not invited now we've come here! I'm going to write and tell the U. S.
papers what that dope is worth!"
"Ivory hunters are not settlers," the collector interjected.
"Who said we're ivory hunters?" Will was in a fine rage, and Fred and
I leaned back to enjoy the official's discomfort. "Besides, your ads
bragged about the big game as one of the chief attractions! All the
information you can possibly have against us must have come from a
female crook in the pay of the German government! You're not behaving
the way gentlemen do where I was raised!"
"There is no intention to offend," said the collector.
"Intention is good!" said Will, laughing in spite of himself. "There's
another thing I want to know. What about ammunition? We're to have
our guns. They're useless without cartridges. What about it?"
"The guns shall be sent to your hotel tonight. The provisional
sporting licenses--if you want them--will be ready tomorrow
morning--seven hundred and fifty rupees apiece--I'll charge them
against your deposit. If the licenses should be confirmed after
inquiry, I will send you permits through the post for fifty rounds of
ammunition each."
Will snorted. Fred Oakes yelled with laughter, and I gaped with
indignation.
"I'm going into this to the hilt!" spluttered Fred. "I wouldn't have
missed it for a fortune! We three are going to constitute ourselves a
committee of inspection. We're going to wander the country over and
report home to the newspapers--South African--British--U. S. A.--and
any other part of the world that's interested! We won't worry about
ammunition. Send us permits for whatever quantity seems to you proper,
and we'll note it all down in our diaries!"
We all stood up, the collector obviously uncomfortable and we, if not
at ease, at least happier than we had been.
Fred nodded to the collector genially, and we all walked out.
Mombasa is a fairly large island, but the built-over part of it is
small, so it was not surprising that we should emerge from the office
face to face with Lady Saffren Waldon. She was the one surprised, not
we. She probably thought she had spiked our guns in that part of the
world forever, and the sight of us coming laughing from the very office
where we should have been made glum must have been disconcerting.
She was riding on one of the little trolley-cars, pushed by two boys in
white official uniform, dressed in her flimsiest best, a lace parasol
across her knee, and beside her an obvious member of the
government--young, and so recently from home as not to have lost his
pink cheeks yet.
Had there not been an awning over the trolley-car she might have used
the parasol to make believe she had not seen us. But the awning
precluded that, and we were not more than two or three yards away.
"Laugh!" whispered Fred.
So we crossed the track laughing and the trolley had to pause to let us
by. We laughed as we raised our helmets to her--laughed both at her
and at the pink and white puppy she had taken in leash. And then the
sort of thing happened that nearly always does when men with a
reasonable faith in their own integrity make up their minds to see
opprobrium through. Fate stepped hard on our arm of the balance.
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!" he exclaimed, in a
squeaky, worn-out voice that is as well known as his face, and
quickened his pace down-hill.
"Courtney!" said Fred. "There's only one man I'd rather meet!"
The little man laughed. "Oh, you and your Montdidier are still
inseparable, I suppose! How are you, Fred? I'm glad to see you. Who
are your friends?"
At that minute out came the collector from his office--stood on the
step, and stared. Fred introduced us to Courtney, and I experienced
the thrill of shaking hands with the man accounts of whose exploits had
fired my schoolboy imagination and made stay-at-home life forever after
an impossibility.
"I missed the steamer, Fred. Not another for a week. Going down now
to see about a passage to Somaliland. I suppose you'll be at the club
after dinner?"
"No" said Fred. "We've an invitation, but I think we'll send a note
and say we can't come. We'll dine at our hotel and sit on the veranda
afterward."
I wondered what Fred was driving at, and so did the collector who was
headed across the street and listening with all ears.
"That so? Not a bad idea. They've very kindly made me an honorary
member of the club, but I rather expect there's a string to that--eh,
Fred, don't you? They'll expect stories,--stories. I get tired of
telling the same tales so many times over. Suppose I join you fellows,
eh? I'm at the Royal. You at the other place? Suppose I join you
after dinner, and we have a pipe together on the veranda?"
"Nothing I'd like better," said Fred, and I felt too pleased with the
prospect to say anything at all. Growing old is a foolish and
unnecessary business, but there is no need to forego while young the
thrills of unashamed hero-worship; in fact, that is one of the ways of
continuing young. It is only the disillusioned (poor deceived ones)
and the cynics, who grow old ungracefully.
We went upstreet, through the shadow of the great grim fort. The
trolley-car trundled down among the din, smells and colors of the
business-end of town. Looking over my shoulder I saw Courtney talking
to the collector.
"We're getting absolution, Fred!" said I.
"I'm not sure we need it," Fred answered. "I hope Courtney won't tell
too much!" So quickly does a man jump from praying for friends at
court to fearing them!
"Courtney looked to me," said Will, "like a man who would give no games
away."
"Glad you think that of him," said Fred.
"Why?"
"Tell you later, maybe."
But he did not tell until after dinner. (It was a good dinner for East
Africa. Shark steak figured in it, under a more respectable name; and
there was zebu hump, guinea-fowl, and more different kinds of fruit
than a man could well remember.) When it was over we sat in deep
armchairs on the long wide veranda that fronts the whole hotel. The
evening sea-breeze came and wafted in on us the very scents of Araby;
the night sounds that whisper of wilderness gave the lie to a tinkling
guitar that somewhere in the distance spoke of civilized delights. The
surf crooned on coral half a mile away, and very good cigar smoke (from
a box that Monty had sent ashore with our belongings) supplemented
coffee and the other aids to physical contentment. Then, limping
between the armchairs, and ashamed that we should rise to greet
him--motioning us down again with a little nervous laugh--Courtney came
to us. Within five minutes of his coming the world, and the clock, and
the laws of men might have all reversed themselves for aught we cared.
Without really being conscious he was doing it Courtney plunged into
our problem, grasped it, sized it up, advised us, flooded us with
priceless, wonderful advice, and did it with such almost feminine
sympathy that I believe we would have been telling him our love-affairs
at last, if a glance at the watch he wore in a case at his belt had not
told him it was three A. M.
"There's trouble" he began when he had filled his pipe. "You boys are
in trouble. What is it?" he asked, shifting and twitching in his
seat--refusing an armchair--refusing a drink.
"Tell us first what's the matter with you," said Fred.
"Oh, nothing. An old wound. A lion once dragged me by this shoulder
half a mile or so. At this time of year I get pains. They last a day
or two, then pass--Go on, tell me!"
He never sat really still once that whole evening, yet never once
complained or made a gesture of impatience.
"I propose," said Fred, with a glance at Yerkes and me, "to tell
Courtney everything without reserve."
The little old hunter nodded, watching us with bright blue eyes. I
received the impression that he knew more secrets than he could tell
should he talk down all the years that might be left him. He was the
sort of man in whom nearly every one confides.
"We're after Tippoo Tib's ivory!" said Fred, plunging into the middle
of things. "Monty has gone to drive a bargain with the King of
Belgium. Do you think it's a wild goose chase?"
Courtney chuckled. "No," he said. "I wouldn't call it that. They've
been killing elephants in Africa ever since the flood. Ivory must have
accumulated. It's somewhere. Some of it must be so old and well
seasoned as to be practically priceless, unless rats have spoiled it.
Rats play old Harry with ivory, you know."
"Have you a notion where it is?" demanded Fred.
Courtney laughed. "Behold me leaving the country!" he said.
"If I knew I'd look. If I saw I'd take!"
"Can you give us a hint?"
"There are caves near the summit of Mount Elgon that would hold the
world's revenues. None of them have ever been thoroughly explored.
Cannibals live in some of them. Cannibals and caverns is a combination
that might appeal to Tippoo Tib, but there's no likelihood that he
buried all that ivory in one place, you know. I suspect the greater
part is in the Congo, and that the Germans know its whereabouts within
a mile or two."
"How did they discover it?"
"Why don't they dig it out?"
"What keeps 'em from turning their knowledge into money?"
We had forgotten our own troubles. Courtney, too, seemed to forget for
the moment that he had began by asking us a question.
"Remember Emin Pasha? When was it--'87--'88--'89 that Stanley went and
rescued him? Perhaps you recall what was then described as Emin's
ingratitude after the event? British government offered him a billet.
Khedive of Egypt cabled him the promise of a job, all on Stanley's
recommendation. Emin turned 'em all down and accepted a job from the
Germans. Nobody understood it at the time. My own idea is that Emin
thought he knew more or less where that hoard is. He didn't really
want to come away with Stanley, you know. Being a German, I suppose he
preferred to share his secret with his own crowd. I dare say he
thought of telling Stanley but judged that the 'Rock breaker' might
demand a too large share. The value of the stuff must be so enormous
that it's almost worth going to war about, from the point of view of a
nation hungry for new colonies. Emin is dead, and it's likely he left
no exact particulars behind him. To my personal knowledge the Germans
have had a swarm of spies for a long time operating beyond the Congo
border."
"Were you looking for the stuff yourself?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he laughed. "But when I'm hunting I look about me. I'll
tell you where the stuff may possibly be. There's a section of country
called the Bahr el Gazal that the Congo people claim, but that I
believe will eventually prove to lie on the British side of the
boundary. It was good elephant country--which is to say bad living and
traveling for man--since the earth took shape out of ooze. Awful
swampy, malarious, densely wooded, dangerous country, sparsely
inhabited by savages not averse to cannibalism when they've
opportunity. The ivory may be there. If the Germans know it's there
they're naturally afraid the British government would claim the whole
district the minute the secret was out. Their plan may possibly be to
wait until a boundary dispute arises in the ordinary course of time
(keeping a cautious eye on the cache meanwhile, of course) and then
take the Congo government side. If they can contrive to have it
acknowledged as Congo territory, they might then pick a quarrel with
the Congo government--or come to some sort of terms with them."
"They've patience," I said, "if they're playing that game!"
Courtney raised his eyebrows until his forehead was a mass of deep
wrinkles. Then he blew a dozen smoke rings.
"Patient--perhaps. It's my impression they're as remorseless and
persistent as white ants--undermining, digging, devouring everywhere
while the rest of the world sleeps. Do you remember there was a mutiny
of native troops in Uganda not many years ago? Some said that was
because the troops were being paid in truck instead of money, and like
most current excuses that one had some truth in it. But the men
themselves vowed they were going to set up an African Muhammedan
empire."
"What had that to do with Germans?" asked Fred.
"Nothing that I can personally prove" said Courtney. "But I've a broad
acquaintance among natives, and considerable knowledge of their
tongues. Muhammedanism is spreading among them very rapidly. Over and
over again, beside camp-fires, and in the dark when they thought I was
not listening, I have heard them talk of missionaries from German
territory who spread a doctrine of what you might call pan-Islam for
lack of a better name. I said at the time of the Uganda mutiny that I
believed Germans were behind it. I've seen no reason to change my
opinion since. It's obvious that if the mutiny had by some ill chance
succeeded Uganda would have been an easy prey for Karl Peters and his
Germans. If that ivory of Tippoo Tib's is really in the Bahr el Gazal
at the back of Uganda, then the German motive for stirring up the
Uganda mutiny would be obvious."
"But doesn't our government know all this?" demanded Fred.
"That depends on what you mean by the word know," answered Courtney.
"I've made no secret of my own opinion!"
"But they wouldn't listen?"
"Some did, some didn't. The Home government--which was the India
Office in those days--took no notice whatever. One or two men out here
believed, but I think they're dead. When the Foreign Office took the
country over I don't suppose they overhauled old reports very
carefully. I dare say my letters on the subject lie inches deep in
dust."
"England doesn't deserve to keep her colonies!" vowed Fred, caught in a
sudden flood of indignation.
Courtney laughed.
"When you've seen as many of the other nations' colonies as I have
you'll qualify that verdict! We do our best. God gave us our work to
do, and the devil came and made us stupid! Take this country, for
instance."
"Yes!" agreed Fred. "Take this country! We came ashore today--left
Monty on board ship on his way to Europe. Nobody knew a thing about
us. A female woman, known to the police in Zanzibar and so notorious
in Europe that she's in no hurry to go home--said, too, on every hand
to be in the pay of the German government--chose to tell lies about us
to the chuckle-headed puppies in charge of Mombasa. Net result--what
do you suppose?"
"I know," said Courtney. "I've been told this evening." His eyes
changed, and his voice took on the almost feminine note of appeal that
came strangely from a big game hunter. "You boys must overlook things.
These boys you're angry with are younger than you, Fred. That
collector you've contrived to pick a quarrel with has fought Arabs and
cannibal troops--odds against him of fifty or a hundred to one, mind
you--all across the Congo and back again. He fought in the Uganda
mutiny. He's a man. He's a merchant, though, with a merchant's
education. He was taken over with the rest of the clerks when the
British government superseded the British East Africa Trading Company.
He has never had the advantage of legal training. Went to a common
school. No advantages of any kind. Poorly paid and overworked.
There's no money in the country yet. Nobody to tax.
Salaries--expenses and so on come from home, voted by Parliament. As
long as that condition lasts they're all going to feel nervous. They
know they'll get the blame for everything that goes wrong, and precious
little credit in any case. Parliament advertised the country in answer
to their complaints of no revenue. Parliament called for settlers.
But they're not ready for settlers. They don't know how to handle
them. They've no troops--nothing but a handful of black police. How
shall they keep in order colonials armed with repeating rifles?
They're not ready. The Uganda Railway isn't finished yet; trains get
through to Victoria Nyanza once a week, but there's endless work to be
done yet on the line, and Parliament grudges them every penny they
spend on it. Yet the railway was rushed through by order of Parliament
to prevent Doctor Karl Peters and the Germans from claiming occupation
of the head-waters of the Nile and so dominating Upper Egypt. You boys
must be considerate."
"All right," said Fred. "I'll grant all that."
"But what gets me" Will interrupted, "is that they should condemn us
out-of-hand--on sight--untried--on the say-so of this Lady Saffren
Waldon. She carries German letters of credit. She's so notoriously in
league with Germans that you'd think even these little Napoleons 'ud
know it. I'm American myself, thank God, but these two men are their
own kith and kin. Why should they judge their own countrymen unheard
on the say-so of a woman like that? That's what rattles me!"
Courtney blew six smoke rings.
"You'll have to forgive them, lad. Too many of the Englishmen who have
come here were bad bats from the South, so hot-footed that they burned
the grass. Then--don't forget that the Germans have a military
government to the south of us--all experienced men--a great many of
them unmitigated rascals, but nearly all of them clever--students of
strategy and psychology and tactics--some of them brilliant men who
have had to apply for colonial service because of debt or scandal.
They're overmanned where we are under-manned--backed up from home where
our boys are only blamed and neglected--well supplied with troops and
ammunition, where our police are kept down to the danger point and now
and then even without cartridges. The Germans have no railway yet, but
they've a policy and they keep it secret. We have a railway, and no
policy except retrenchment and economy. I'm convinced the German
government has no scruples. We have. So you must sympathize with our
young men, not quarrel with them."
"Believe me," I said, "we didn't start out to quarrel with anybody.
That woman lied about us. There's no excuse for believing her without
giving us a hearing."
"Oh, yes there is. I spoke with her myself this evening," said
Courtney. "She's staying at my hotel, you know. She's a match for
much more experienced men than our young officials. They've been
fighting Arabs, not flirting. She had the impudence to try to flatter
me. I don't doubt she's telling a crowd of men tonight that I'm in
love with her--perhaps not exactly telling them that, but giving them
to understand it. Why don't I stroll down to the club and deny it?
For the same reason that you don't openly denounce her! It's semi- or
wholly-sentimental chivalry--rank stupidity, if you like to call it
that, but it's national, I'm glad to say, and I'm as proud of it as any
one."
"Doesn't it look to you," said Fred, "that if she and the German
government are so infernally anxious to spoil our chances--and they
suspect what we're after, you know--doesn't it look to you as if there
may really be something in this quest of ours?"
"Undoubtedly," said Courtney. "There's ivory in it, tons and tons and
tons of ivory. Somebody will find it some day."
"Join us then!" said Fred. "Cancel your trip to Somaliland and come
with us! I can speak for Monty. I know he'll welcome you into the
partnership!"
"I believe I could almost speak for Monty, too," laughed Courtney. "He
and I were at Eton together, and we've never ceased being friends. But
I can't come with you. No. I'm making a sort of semi-official trip.
I shall hunt, of course, but there are observations to be made. The
pan-Islamic theory is said to be making headway also in Somaliland."
"Do you feel you have any lien on the Elgon Caves and Bahr el Gazal
clues?" Fred asked.
"No. I make you a present of those ideas. I'm sure I hope you find
the stuff. I'm wondering, though--I'm wondering."
"I'll bet you a dollar I'm thinking of the same thing," said Will.
"Out with it, then."
"What's to prevent the Germans from making their own dicker with the
King of the Belgians or with the Congo government, and rifling the
hoard on a fifty-fifty or some such basis?"
"Correct," said Courtney. "I confess myself puzzled about that. But I
know no European politics. There may be a thousand reasons. And then,
you know, the King of the Belgians has the name of being a grasping
dealer. The management of his private zone on the Congo is
unspeakable. It's possible the Germans may prefer not to risk putting
His Majesty on the scent."
"Well, we've our work cut out," said Fred, laughing and yawning. "That
woman has started us off with a bad name."
"That is one thing I can really do for you," Courtney answered. "I've
no official standing, but the boys all listen to me. I'll tell them--"
"For the love of God don't tell them too much!" Fred exclaimed.
"I'll tell them you're friends of mine," he went on. "I believe that
will solve the sporting license and ammunition problem. As for the
woman--if I were in your shoes I would steal a march on her. I
wouldn't be surprised if your licenses and ammunition permits were here
at the hotel by ten tomorrow morning. I see they've sent your guns
already. Well, there's a train for Nairobi tomorrow noon, and not
another for three days. I'd take tomorrow's train if I were you. I
always find in going anywhere the start's the principal thing. You'll
go?"
"We will," we answered, one after the other.
"Good night, then, boys; I'll be going."
But we walked with him down to his hotel--I, and I think the others,
full to the teeth with the pleasure of knowing him, as well as of envy
of his scars, his five or six South African campaigns, his adventures,
and (by no means least) his unblemished record as a gentleman. Merely
a little bit of a man with a limp, but better than a thousand men who
lacked his gentleness.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NJO HAPA SONG
Delights--ah, Ten are the dear delights (and the Book
forbids them, one by one)--
The broad old roads of a thousand loves--back turned to the
Law--the lawless fun--
Old Arts for new--old hours reborn--and who shall mourn
when the sands have run?
I was old when they told the Syren Tales
(All ears were open then!)
And the harps were afire with plucked desire
For the white ash oars again--
For oars and sail, and the open sea,
High prow against pure blue,
The good sea spray on eye and lip,
The thrumming hemp, the rise and dip,
The plunge and the roll of a driven ship
As the old course boils anew!
Sweetly I call, the captains come. The home ties draw at
hearts in vain.
Potent the spell of Africa! Who East and South the course
has ta'en
By Guardafui to Zanzibar may go, but he, shall come again.
Courtney proved better than his word. Our Big Game Licenses arrived
after breakfast, and permits for five hundred rounds of rifle
ammunition each. In an envelope in addition was Fred's check with the
collector's compliments and the request that we kindly call and pay for
the licenses. In other words we now had absolution.
We called, and were received as fellow men, such was the genius of
Courtney's friendship. A railway man looked in. The collector's dim
office became awake with jokes and laughter.
"Going up today?" he asked. "I'll see you get berths on the train."
We little realized at the moment the extent of that consideration; but
understanding dawned fifteen minutes before high noon when we strolled
to the station behind a string of porters carrying our luggage.
Courtney was there to see us off, and he looked worried.
"I'm wondering whether you'll ever get your luggage through," he said
with a sort of feminine solicitude. It was strange to hear the hero of
one's school-days, mighty hunter and fearless leader of forlorn
campaigns, actually troubled about whether we could catch our train.
But so the man was, gentle always and considerate of everybody but
himself.
There was law in this new land, at all events along the railway line.
Not even handbags or rifles could pass by the barrier until weighed and
paid for. Crammed in the vestibule in front of us were fifty people
fretfully marshalling in line their strings of porters lest any later
comer get by ahead of them; foremost, with his breast against the
ticket window, was Georges Coutlass. Things seemed not to be
proceeding as he wished.
There was one babu behind the window--a mild, unhappy-looking Punjabi,
or Dekkani Mussulman. There was another at the scales, who knew almost
no English: his duty was to weigh--do sums--write the result on a
slip, and then justify his arithmetic to office babu and passenger,
before any sort of progress could be made. The fact that all
passengers shouted at him to hurry or be reported to big superiors
complicated the process enormously; and the equally discordant fact
that no passenger--and especially not Georges Coutlass--desired or
intended to pay one anna more than he could avoid by hook, crook, or
argument, made the game amusing to the casual looker-on, but hastened
nothing (except tempers). The temperature within the vestibule was
112' by the official thermometer.
"You pair of black murderers!" yelled Coutlass as we took our place in
line. "You bloody robbers! You pickpockets! You train-thieves! Go
out and dig your graves! I will make an end of you!"
"You should not use abusive language" the babu retorted mildly,
stopping to speak, and then again to wipe his spectacles, and his
forehead, and his hands, and to glance at the clock, and to mutter what
may or may not have been a prayer.
Coutlass exploded.
"Shouldn't, eh? Who the hell are you to tell me what I shouldn't do?
Sell me a ticket, you black plunderer, d'you hear! Look! Listen!"
He snatched a piece of paper from the babu's hand and turned to face
the impatient crowd.
"This hell-cat--" (the unhappy babu looked less like a hell-cat than
any vision of the animal I ever imagined) "wants to make out that
seventy-one times seven annas and three pice is forty-nine rupees,
eleven annae! Oh, you charlatan! You mountebank! You black-blooded
robber! You miscreant! Cut your throat, I order you!"
The babu expostulated, stammered, quailed. Coutlass drew in his breath
for the gods of Greece alone knew what heights of fury next. But
interruption entered.
"There, that's enough of you! Get to the back of the line!"
The man who had promised us berths came abruptly through the barrier,
and unlike the babu did not appear afraid of any one. The Greek let
out his gathered breath with a bark of fury, like a seal coming up to
breathe. Taking that for a symptom of opposition the newcomer, very
cool in snow-white uniform and helmet, seized Coutlass by the neck and
hustled him, arguing like a boiler under pressure, through the crowd.
The Greek was three inches taller, and six or eight inches bigger round
the chest, but too astonished to fight back, and perhaps, too, aware of
the neighborhood of old da Gama's fort, where more than one Greek was
pining for the grape and olive fields of Hellas. With a final shove
the railway official thrust him well out into the road.
"If you miss the train, serve you right!" he said. "Babus are willing
servants, to be treated gently!"
Then he saw us.
"You're late! Where's your luggage? These your porters? All
right--put you on your honor. Go on through. Save time. Have your
stuff weighed, and settle the bill at Nairobi. All of it, mind! Babu,
let these people through!"
Followed by Courtney, who seemed to have right of way wherever it
suited him to wander, we filed through the gate, crossed the blazing
hot platform, and boarded a compartment labeled "Reserved." The
railway man nodded and left us, to hurry and help sell tickets.
It was an Indian type railway carriage be left us in, a contraption not
ill-suited to Africa--nor yet so comfortable as to diminish the
sensation of travel toward new frontiers.
Each car was divided into two compartments, entirely separate and
entered from opposite ends; facing ours was the rear end of a
second-class car, into which we could look if the doors were open and
we lay feet-foremost on the berths. The berths were arranged
lengthwise, two each side, and one above the other.
It was what they called a mixed train, mixed that is of freight and
passengers--third-class in front, second next, then first, and a dozen
little iron freight cars of two kinds in front. In those days there
were neither tunnels nor bridges on that railway, and there was a
single seat on the roof at each end of first- and second-class
compartments reached by a ladder, for any passenger enamored of the
view. Even the third-class compartments (and they were otherwise as
deliberately bare and comfortless as wood and iron could make them) had
lattice-work shades over the upper half of the windows.
For the babu's encouragement, and to increase the panic of the
ticketless, the engineer was blowing the whistle at short intervals.
Passengers, released in quicker order now that a white official was
lending the two babus a hand, began coming through the barrier in
sudden spurts, baggage in either hand and followed hot-foot by natives
with their heavier stuff. They took headers into the train, and the
porters generally came back grinning.
"I see through the whistling stunt," Will announced. "My, but that
fellow on the engine has faith; or else the system's down real fine in
these parts! He won't be back for a week. Those woolly-headed porters
are going to save up his commission and hand it to him when he brings
the down-train in! The game's good: he whistles--passenger
runs--can't make change--pays two, three, four, ten times what the
job's worth--and the porters divvy up with the engineer. But good
lord, the porters must be honest!"
Presently a pale white man in khaki with a red beard entered our
compartment, and Courtney had to make room for him on the seat. He
apologized with less conviction of real regret than I ever remember
noticing, although the pouches under his eyes gave him a rather
world-weary look.
"Not another first-class berth on the train--every last one engaged.
Might be worse. Might have had to ride with Indians. Curse of this
country, Indians are. I'd rid the land of 'em double-quick if
government 'ud pay me a rupee a head--an' I'd provide cartridges! But
government likes 'em! Ugh! Ever travel in one compartment with a
dozen of 'em? Sleep in a tent with a score of 'em? Share blankets
with a couple of 'em on a cold night? No? You be glad I'm not an
Indian. One's enough!"
We made room for his belongings, and leaned from the window all on one
seat together. The time to start arrived and passed; hot passengers
continued spurting for the train at intervals--all sorts of
passengers--English, Mauritius--French, Arab, Goanese, German, Swahili,
Indian, Biluchi, one Japanese, two Chinamen, half-breeds,
quarter-breeds of all the hues from ivory to dull red, guinea-yellow,
and bleached out black; but the second-class compartment facing our
door remained empty. There was a name on the card in the little metal
reservation frame, and every passenger who could read English glanced
at it, but nobody came to claim it even when the engine's extra shrill
screaming and at last the ringing of a bell warned Courtney that time
was really up, and he got out on the platform.
"Good-by," he said through the window. "I've done what I could to bring
you luck. Don't be tempted to engage the first servants who apply to
you at Nairobi. If you wait there a week I'll send my Kazimoto to you;
he's a very good gun-bearer. He'll be out of a job when I'm gone. I
shall give him his fare to Nairobi. Engage him if you want a
dependable boy, but remember the rule about dogs: a good one has one
master! I don't mean Kazimoto is a dog--far from it. I mean, treat
him as reasonably as you would a dog, and he'll serve you well. He's a
first-class Nyamwezi, from German East. Oh, and one more scrap of
advice--":
He came close to the window, but at that moment the engine gave a final
scream and really started. Passengers yelled farewells. The engine's
apoplectic coughs divided the din into spasms, and there came a great
bellowing from the ticket office. He could not speak softly and be
heard at all. Louder he had to speak, and then louder, ending almost
with a shout.
"The best way to Elgon is by way of Kisumu and Mumias, whatever anybody
else may tell you. And if you find the stuff, or any of it," (he was
running beside the train now)--"be in no hurry to advertise the fact!
Go and make terms first with government--then--after you've made
terms--tell 'em you've found it! Find the stuff--make terms--then
produce what you've found! Get my meaning? Good-by, all. Good luck!"
We left him behind then, wiping the sweat from his wrinkled, freckled
forehead, gazing after us as if we had all been lifelong friends of
his. He made no distinction between us and Fred, but was equally
anxious to serve us all.
"If that man isn't white, who is?" demanded Will, and then there was
new interest.
We had left the ticket office far behind, but the train was moving
slowly and there was still a good length of platform before our car
would be clear of the station altogether. We heard a roar like a
bull's from behind, and a dozen men--white, black and yellow--came
careering down the platform carrying guns, baggage, bedding, and all
the paraphernalia that travelers in Africa affect.
First in the van was Georges Coutlass, showing a fine turn of speed but
tripping on a bed-sheet at every other step, with his uncased rifle in
one hand, his hat in the other, an empty bandolier over one shoulder
and a bag slung by a strap swinging out behind him. He made a leap for
the second-class compartment in front of us, and landed on all fours on
the platform. We opened the door of our compartment to watch him
better.
Once on the platform he threw his rifle into the compartment and braced
himself to catch the things his stampeding followers hurled after
him--caught them deftly and tossed them in, yelling instructions in
Greek, Kiswahili, Arabic, English, and two or three other languages.
It may be that the engineer looked back and saw what was happening (or
perhaps the guard signaled with the cord that passed through eyeholes
the whole length of the train) for though we did not slow down we
gained no speed until all his belongings had been hurled, and caught,
and flung inside. Then came his traveling companions--caught by one
hand and dragged on their knees up the steps. They were heavy men, but
he snatched all three in like a boy pulling chestnuts from the fire.
The first was a Greek--evil-looking, and without the spirit that in the
case of Coutlass made a stranger prone to over-look
shortcomings--dressed in khaki, with rifle and empty bandolier. 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.
"Johnson!" shouted Fred with almost the joy of greeting an old
acquaintance.
It was Hassan, sure enough, short-winded and afraid, but more afraid of
being left behind than of the manhandling. Coutlass took hold of his
outstretched arm, hoisted him, cracked his shins for him against the
top step, and hurled him rump-over-shoulders into the compartment,
where the other Greek and the Goanese grabbed him by the arms and legs
and hove him to an upper berth, on which he lay gasping like a fish out
of water and moaning miserably. Their compartment was a mess of
luggage, blankets, odds-and-ends, and angry men. Coutlass found a
whisky bottle out of the confusion, and swallowed the stuff neat while
the other Greek and the Goanese waited their turn greedily. There was
nothing much in that compartment to make a man like Hassan feel at home.
"Those Greeks," said our red-bearded traveling companion as we shut the
door again, "are only one degree better than Indians--a shade less
depraved perhaps--a sight more dangerous. I sure do hate a Punjabi,
but I don't love Greeks! The natives call 'em bwana masikini to their
faces--that means Mister Mean White y'know. They're a lawless lot, the
Greeks you'll run across in these parts. My advice is, shoot first!
Walk behind 'em! If they ain't armed, hoof 'em till they cut an' run!
Greeks are no good!"
We introduced ourselves. He told us his name was Brown.
"There's three Browns in this country: Hell-fire Brown of Elementaita,
Joseph Henry Brown of Gilgil, and Brown of Lumbwa. Brown of Lumbwa's
me. Don't believe a word either of the other two Browns tell you!
Yes, we're all settlers. Country good to settle in? Depends what you
call good. If you like lots of room, an' hunting, natives to wait an'
your own house on your own square mile--comfortable climate--no
conventions--nor no ten commandments, why, it's pretty hard to beat.
But if you want to wear a white shirt, and be moral, and get rich, it's
rotten! You've a chance to make money if you're not over law-abiding,
for there's elephants. But if you're moral, and obey the laws, you
haven't but one chance, an' she's a slim one."
"Well," said Fred, genially, "tell us about the only one. We're men to
whom the ten commandments are--"
"You look it!" Brown interrupted. "Well, what's the odds? You'll
never find it, and anyhow, everybody knows it's Tippoo Tib's ivory. I
mean to have a crack at spotting it myself, soon as I get my farm
fenced an' one or two other matters attended to. Gov'ment offers ten
per cent. to whoever leads 'em to it, but they can't believe any one's
as soft as that surely! They'll be lucky if they get ten per cent. of
it themselves! Man alive, but they say there's a whale of a hoard of
it! Hundreds o' tons of ivory, all waiting to be found, and fossicked
out, an' took! Say--if I was some o' those Greeks for instance, tell
you what I'd do: I'd off to Zanzibar, an' kidnap Tippoo Tib. The old
card's still living. I'd apply a red-hot poker to his silver-side an'
the under-parts o' his tripe-casings. He'd tell me where the stuff is
quicker'n winking! Supposin' I was a Greek without morals or no
compunctions or nothin', that's what I'd do! I don't hold with
allowin' any man to play dog in the manger with all that plunder!"
"Have you a notion where the stuff might be?" Fred wondered guilelessly.
"Ah! That 'ud be tellin'!"
We had crossed the water that divides Mombasa from the mainland.
Behind us lay the prettiest and safest harbor on all that
thousand-league-long coast; before us was the narrow territory that
still paid revenue and owed nominal allegiance to the Sultan of
Zanzibar, although really like the rest of those parts under British
rule. We were bowling along beside plantations of cocoanut, peanut,
plantain and pineapple, with here and there a thicket of strange trees
to show what the aboriginal jungle had once looked like. When we
stopped at wayside stations the heat increased insufferably, until we
entered the great red desert that divides the coast-land from the
hills, and after that all seemed death and dust, and haziness, and hell.
At first we passed occasional baobabs, with trunks fifteen or twenty
feet thick and offshoots covering a quarter of an acre. Then the trees
thinned out to the sparse and shriveled all-but-dead things that
struggle for existence on the border-lines between man's land and
desolation. At last we drew down the smoked panes over the window to
escape the glare and sight of the depressing desolation.
The sun beat down on the iron roof. The heat beat up from the tracks.
Red dust polluted the drinking water in the little upright tank. Dust
filled eyes, nostrils, hair. Dust caked and grew stiff in the sweat
that streamed down us. Yet we stopped once at a station, and humans
lived there and a man got off the train. A lone lean babu and his
leaner, more miserable native crew came out and eyed the train like
vultures waiting for a beast to die. But we did not die, and the train
passed on into illimitable dusty redness, leaving them to watch the hot
rails ribbon out behind our grumbling caboose.
There began to be carousing in the second-class compartment next ahead
of us. Our own Brown of Lumbwa produced a stone crock of Irish whisky
from a basket, imbibed copiously, offered us in turn the glistening
neck, looked relieved at our refusal, and grew voluble.
"Hear them Greeks an' that Goa. You'd think they were gentlemen o'
breeding to hear 'em carryin' on! Truth is we've no government worth a
moment's consid'ration, an' everybody knows it, Greeks included! You
men lookin' for farms? Take your time! Once you get a farm, an' get
your house built, an' stock bought, an' stuff planted--once you've got
your capital invested so to speak, they've got you! Till then you're
free! Till then they'll maybe treat you with consideration! Till then
you leave the country when you like an' kiss yourselves good-by to them
an' Africa. Till then they've got no hold! The courts can fine you,
maybe, but can they make you pay? It's none so easy if you're half
awake! But take me: Suppose I break a reggylation. What happens?
They know where to find me--how much I've got--where it is--an' if I
don't pay the fine, they come an' collar my cattle an' sticks! D'you
notice any Greeks applyin' for farms? Not no crowds of 'em you don't!
I don't know one single Greek who has a farm in all East Africa! Any
Goas? Not a bit of it! Any Indians? Not one! So when a few extry
elephants get shot, I get the blame--down at Lumbwa, where there ain't
no elephants; an' the Greeks, Goas, Arabs an' Indians get fat on the
swag! It's easy to keep track of a white man; the natives all know
him, an' his name, an' where he lives, an' report everything he does to
the nearest gov'ment officer. But Greeks an' Goas an' Indians an'
Arabs ain't white, so the natives make no mention of 'em. They do the
lootin'; we settlers get the blame; an' the whole perishing country's
going to blazes as fast as a lump of ice melting in hell--but not so
fast as I'd like to see it go. Have some o' this whisky, won't you?"
I was scarcely listening to him, but he seemed to get drunk just "so
far and no further," and Fred found him worth attention. It happened
that Fred, Will and I were all thinking of the same thing. Will put a
hand to his neck and stroked the little scar the Arab knife had made in
Zanzibar.
"What sort of a country's this for women?" Fred demanded.
"Which women?" Brown asked in sort of mild amazement.
"White women?"
"Rotten! Leastwise, there aren't any. Yes, there's three. Two
officials' wives, an' Pioneer Jane French. Heard o' her? Walked from
South Africa, Jane did--hoofed it along o' French, bossed his boys,
drove the cattle, shot the meat, ran the whole shootin' match, an' runs
him, too, when he's sober an' she's drunk. When they're both drunk
everybody ducks. She's scarcely a woman, she's sort of
three-men-rolled-into-one. Give her a horsewhip ae she'll manage the
unruliest crowd o' savages ever you or she set eyes on! Countin' her
as one, an' the two officials wives, an' her on this train, there's
four!"
Our eyes met. I awoke to sudden interest that startled our informant
and made him curious in turn.
"On this train?"
"On this train. Didn't you see her? She was watching you chaps through
the window slits like the Queen o' Sheba keepin' tabs on Solomon. Say,
what's she doing in this country anyhow? I made a try to get a seat in
her carriage, but she ordered me out like Aunt Jemima puttin' out the
cat the last thing. She's got a maid in with her, but the maid ain't
white--Jew--Syrian--Levantine--Dago--some such breed. She's in this
compartment next behind."
Our eyes met again. Fred laughed, and Will leaned forward to whisper
to me: "She heard what Courtney said to us about the way to Mount
Elgon!"
"D'you know her name?" asked Brown.
"No!" we all three lied together with one voice.
"I do! I seen it on the reservation card. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon!
Pretty high-soundin' patronymic, what? Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon!"
He repeated the name over and over, crescendo, with growing fervor.
"What's a woman with a title doin' d'you suppose? The title's no fake.
She's got the blood all right, all right! You ought to ha' heard her
shoo me out! Lummy! A nestin' hen giving the office to a snake
weren't in it to her an' me! Good looker, too! What's she doin' in
East Africa?"
We made no shift to answer.
"The officials' wives," he went on, "are keen after Tippoo's ivory,
but, bein' obliged to stay in the station except when their husbands go
on safari, an' then only go where their husbands go, they've no show to
speak of. Pioneer Jane's nuts on it, an' she's dangerous. Jane's as
likely to find the stuff as any one. She's independent--go where she
blooming well pleases--game as a lioness--looks like one, too, only a
lioness is kind o' softer an' not so quick in the uptake. My money's
on Jane for a place. But d'you suppose this Lady Saffren
Whatshername's another one? Them Greeks ahead of us I'm sure of; all
the Greeks in Africa are huntin' for nothin' else. But what about the
dame?"
"Going to join her husband, perhaps," suggested Fred to put him off.
"There's no man o' that name in British East or Uganda. I know 'em
all--every one."
"Father--brother--uncle--nephew--oh, perhaps she's just traveling,"
said Fred.
"Just traveling my eye! Titled ladies don't come 'just traveling' in
these parts--not by a sight, they don't--not alone!"
He helped himself to more whisky, but had reached the stage where it
had no further visible effect on him.
"Anyhow," he said, wiping the neck of the jar with his hand, "if she
kids herself she'll be let go where she pleases--why, she kids herself!
It takes Pioneer Jane to trespass where writs don't run! Jane goes
where her husband don't dare follow. The officials don't say a word.
Y'see there's no jail where they could stow a white woman and observe
the decencies. So she goes over the borderline whenever she sees fit.
The king's writ runs maybe for thirty miles north o' this railway.
Once over that they can't catch you. But unless you're a black man, or
Pioneer Jane, the natives tip the gov'ment off an' gov'ment rounds you
up afore you get two-thirds the way. They'll take less than half a
chance with her ladyship or I'm a Dutchman. Why! How would it look to
have to bring her back between two native policemen? She'll not be
allowed five miles outside Nairobi township!"
He up-ended his whisky again, consumed about a pint of it, and settled
down to sleep. We took him by the legs and arms and threw him on the
upper berth to stew in the cabined heat under the roof.
"It's good Monty's not with us," said Fred. He sat down and laughed at
our surprise that he should state such heresy. "Monty mustn't break
laws, but who cares if we do?"
"Laws?" said Will disgustedly. "I don't care who makes, or breaks the
laws of this land! Let's beat it! Let's join Monty in London and make
plans for some other trip. Everybody's after this ivory. We haven't a
look-in. Even if we knew where to look for it we'd be followed. Let's
take the next train back from Nairobi, and the next boat for Europe!"
Fred rubbed his hands delightedly, and stroked his beard into the neat
point it refuses to keep for long at a time in very hot weather.
"Let's stay in Nairobi" he said, "at least until Courtney sends that
boy he promised us. We can put in the time asking questions, and
then--"
"What then?" grumbled Will.
"There may be truth in what Brown of Lumbwa says about a dead-line."
"Dead-line?"
"Beyond which the king's writ doesn't run."
"Betcherlife there's truth in it!" Brown mumbled from the upper berth.
Will exploded silently, going through the motions of reeling off all
the bad language he knew--not an insignificant performance.
"He's really asleep now," I said, standing on the lower berth and
lifting the man's eyelid to make sure.
"Who cares?" said Will. "He's heard. We've given the game away. The
woman heard Courtney shout about how to reach Mount Elgon. So did this
sharp. Now he hears Fred talk about dead-lines and the king's writ and
breaking laws! The game's up! Me for the down-train and a steamer!"
We smoked in silence, rendered more depressing by the deepening gloom
outside. With the evening it grew no cooler. What little wind there
was followed the train, so that we traveled in stagnation. Utter
darkness brought no respite, but the fascination of flitting shadows
and the ever-new mystery of African night. The train drew up at last
in a station in the shadow of great overleaning mountains, and the heat
shut down on us like hairy coverings. We seemed to breathe through
thicknesses of cloth, and the very trees that cast black shadow on the
platform ends were stifling for lack of air.
"One hour for dinner!" called the guard, walking limply along the train.
"Just an hour for dinner! Dinner waiting!"
He was not at all a usual-looking guard. He was dressed in riding
breeches and puttee leggings, and wore a worn-out horsey air as if in
protest against the obligation to work in a black man's land. In
countries where the half-breed and the black man live for and almost
monopolize government employment few white men take kindly to braid and
brass buttons. That fellow's contempt for his job was equaled only by
the babu station master's scorn of him and his own for the station
master. Yet both men did their jobs efficiently.
"Only an hour for dinner, gents--train starts on time!"
"Guard!" called a female voice we all three recognized--"Guard! Come
here at once, I want you!"
We left Brown of Lumbwa snoring a good imitation of the Battle of
Waterloo on the upper berth, and filed out to the dimly-lighted
platform. A space in the center was roofed with corrugated iron and
under that the yellow lamplight cast a maze of moving shadows as the
passengers swarmed toward the dining-room. The smell of greasy cooking
blended with the reek of axle and lamp oil. At the platform's forward
end shadowy figures were throwing cord-wood into the tender, and the
thump-thump-thump of that sounded like impatience; everything else
suggested lethargy.
"Guard!" called the voice again. "Come here, guard!"
He stopped in passing to close our windows and lock our compartment
door against railway thieves.
"There's a man asleep in there," I said.
"The 'eat 'll sober 'im!" he grinned, slamming the last window down.
"What'll you bet 'er 'ighness don't want me to fetch dinner to 'er?
She was in the train in Mombasa two hours afore startin' time, an' the
things she ordered me to do 'ud have made a 'alf-breed think 'e was
demeaning of 'imself! I 'aven't seen the color of 'er money yet. If
she wants dinner she gets out and walks or 'er maid fetches it--you
watch!"
Coutlass, the other Greek and the Goanese staggered out beside us on to
the platform, drunk enough not to know whether Hassan was with them or
not. He came out and stood beside them in a sort of alert defensive
attitude.
"Guard!" called the voice again. "Where is the man?"
We followed the last of the crowd through the screened doors, and took
seats at a table marked "First Class Only!" There were four men there
ahead of us, two government officials disinclined to talk; a
missionary in a gray flannel shirt, suffering from fever and too
suspicious to say good evening; and a man in charge of that section of
the line, who checked the station master's accounts and counted money
in a tray between mouthfuls. Between us and the second-class tables
was a wooden screen on short legs, and beyond that arose babel.
Second-class is democratic always, and talks with its mouth full. In
addition to our privilege of paying more for exactly the same food, we
enjoyed exclusiveness, a dirty table-cloth, and the extra smell from
the kitchen door. (The table-cloth was dirty because the barefoot
Goanese waiters invariably stubbed their feet against a break in the
floor and spilt soup exactly in the same place.)
We had scarcely taken our seats when Coutlass swaggered in, closely
followed by his gang. Inside the door he turned on Hassan.
"Black men eat outside!" he snarled, and shoved him out again backward.
Then he came over to us and stood leering at the framed sign, "First
Class Only," avoiding our eyes, but plainly at war with us.
"Gassharamminy!" he growled. "You think you're popes or something!
You three would want a special private piece of earth to spit on!" He
raised his voice to a sort of scream. "I proclaim one class only!"
At that he lifted his foot about level with his chest and kicked the
screen over. The crash brought everybody to his feet except the two
officials and the railway man. They continued eating, and the railway
man continued counting copper coins as if life depended on that alone.
"Sit down all!" yelled Coutlass. "You will eat with better appetite
now that you can behold the blushes of these virgins!" Then he
swaggered over to the long table, thrust the other Greek and the
Goanese into chairs on either side of him, and yelled for food. It was
the first time we had been referred to publicly as virgins, and I think
we all three felt the strain.
The Goanese manager--a wizened old black man with perfectly white
hair--came running from the kitchen in a state of near-collapse, the
sweat streaming off him and his hands trembling.
"What shall I do?" he asked, almost upsetting the railway man's tray of
money. "That man is crazy! He came in once before and broke the
dishes! Twice he has come in here and eaten and refused to pay! What
shall I do?"
"Nothing," said the railway man. "Go on serving dinner. Serve him
too."
The manager hurried out again and the running to and fro resumed. Then
in came the guard.
"First-class for two on trays!" he shouted.
The railway man beckoned to him and he winked as he passed by us.
"When you've seen to that, and had your own meal, I want you," said the
railway man.
"Thought you said the lady's maid would have to come and fetch the
food?" I said maliciously as the guard passed my chair a second time.
"So I did. But if you know how to refuse her, just teach me! I told
her flat to have the maid fetch it. She let on they're both too
frightened to cross the platform in the dark! Never saw anything like
'em! Tears! An' dignified! When I climbed down they was too afraid
next to be left alone. Swore train-thieves 'ud murder 'em! I had to
leave 'em my key to lock 'emselves in with until I come back with the
grub! What d'you think of that?"
But our soup came, and one could not think and eat that stuff
simultaneously. The railway man looked up for a moment, saw my face,
and explained in a moment of expansiveness that meat would not keep in
that climate but was "perfectly good" when cooked.
"Besides," he added, "you'll get nothing more until you reach Nairobi
tomorrow noon!"
That turned out to be not quite true, but as an argument it worked. We
swallowed, like the lined-up merchant seamen taking lime-juice under
the skipper's eye.
The guard grew impatient and went into the kitchen, but had scarcely
got through the door when a scream came from the direction of the train
that brought him back on the run. No black woman ever screams in just
that way, and in a land of black and worse-than-black men imagination
leaps at a white woman's call for help.
There was a stampede for the door by every one except the Greeks and
Goanese and the railway man. (He had to guard the money.) We poured
through the screen doors, the guard fighting to burst between us, and,
because with a self-preserving instinct that I have never thought quite
creditable to the human race, everybody ran toward his own compartment,
it happened that we three and the two officials and the guard came
first on the scene of trouble.
Brown of Lumbwa was still drunk-affectionate, it seemed, by that time.
"You've no call to be 'fraid of me, li'l sweetheart!" The door was
open. Within the compartment all was dark, but every sound emerged.
There came a stifled scream.
"Li'l stoopid! What d'you come in for,
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/5194