The Ivory Trail, Talbot Mundy [life books to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Talbot Mundy
Book online «The Ivory Trail, Talbot Mundy [life books to read .TXT] 📗». Author Talbot Mundy
At one place we passed a rifle, lying all rusted by the track. At the next village we asked about it. They told us that a German native soldier had deserted six months before and had thrown his rifle away. Since that day no one had dared touch it, and they begged us to send back and lay it where we found it, lest the Germans come and punish them for touching it. So we did that, to oblige them, and they were grateful to the extent of offering us one of their only two male sheep.
I forget now for how many days we traveled across that sad and saddening land, Fred always cheerful in spite of everything, Will more angry at each village with its dirt and sores, Brown moaning always about his lovely herd of cows, and I groaning oftener than not.
My leg grew no better, what with jolting and our ignorance of how to treat it. Sometimes, in efforts to obtain relief, I borrowed a cow at one village and rode it to the next; but a cow is a poor mount and takes as a rule unkindly to the business. Now and then I tried to walk for a while, on crutches that Fred made for me; but most of the time I was carried in a blanket that grew hotter and more comfortless as day dragged after day.
At last, however, we topped a low rise and saw Muanza lying on the lake-shore, with the great island of Ukereweto to northward in the distance. From where we first glimpsed it it was a tidy, tree-shaded, pleasant-looking place, with a square fort, and a big house for the commandant on a rise overlooking the town.
"Now we'll wire Monty at last!" said Fred.
"Now we'll shave and wash and write letters!" said Will.
"Now at last for a doctor!" said I.
But Brown said nothing, and Kazimoto wore a look of anxious discontent.
CHAPTER SEVEN THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT When Kenia's peak glows gold and rose
A dawn breeze whispers to the plain
With breath cooled sweet by mountain snows—
"The darkness soon shall come again!"
Stirs then the sleepless, lean Masai
And stands o'er plain and peak at gaze
Resentful of the bright'ning sky,
Impatient of the white man's days.
Oh dark nights, when the charcoal glowed and falling hammers rang!
When fundis* forged the spear-blades, and the warriors danced and sang!
When the marriageable spearmen gathered, calling each to each
Telling over proverbs that the tribal wisemen teach,
Brother promising blood-brother partnership in weal and woe—
Nightlong stories of the runners come from spying on the foe—
Nights of boasting by the thorn-fire of the coming tale of slain—
Oh the times before the English! When will those times come again!
Oh the days and nights of raiding, when the feathered spearmen strode
With the hide shields on their forearms, and the wild Nyanza road
Grew blue with smoking villages, grew red with flaring roofs,
Grew noisy with the shouting and the thunder of the hoofs
As we drove the plundered cattle—when we burned the night with haste—
When we leapt at dawn from ambush—when we laid the shambas waste!
———————— *Fundis—skilled workman. ————————
Oh the new spears dipped in life-blood as the women shrieked in vain!
Oh the days before the English! When will those days come again!
Oh the homeward road in triumph with the plunder borne along
On the heads of taken women! Oh the daughter and the song!
Oh the tusks of yellow ivory—the frasilas of beads—
And, best of all, the heifers that the marriageable needs!
The yells when village eyes at last our sky-line feathers see
And the maidens run to count how many marriages shall be—
Ten heifers to a maiden (and the chief's girl stands for twain)—
Oh the days before the English! When will those days come again!
Now the fat herds grow in number, and the old are rich in trade,
Now the grass grows green and heavy where the six-foot spears were made.
Now the young men walk to market, and the wives have beads and wire—
Brass and iron—glass and cowrie—past the limit of desire.
There is peace from lake to mountain, and the very zebra breed
Where a law says none may hurt them (and the wise are they who heed!)
Yea—the peace lies on the country as our herds oerspread the plain—
But the days before the English—when shall those days come again!
When Kenia's peak glows gold and rose
A dawn breeze whispers to the plain
With breath cooled sweet by mountain snows—
"The darkness soon shall come again!"
Stirs then the sleepless, lean Masai
And stands o'er plain and peak at gaze
Resentful of the bright'ning sky,
Impatient of the white man's days.
What first looked like a pleasant place dwindled into charmlessness and insignificance as we approached. There was neatness—of a kind. The round huts were confined to certain streets, and all inhabited by natives. Arabs, Swahili, Indians, Goanese, Syrians, Greeks and so on had to live in rectangular huts and keep to other streets. On one street, chiefly of stores, all the roofs were of corrugated iron. And all the streets were straight, with shade trees planted down both sides at exactly equal intervals.
But the German blight was there, instantly recognizable by any one not mentally perverted by German teaching. The place was governed—existed for and by leave of government. The inhabitants were there on suffrance, and aware of it—not in the very least degree enthusiastic over German rule, but awfully appreciative.
The first thing we met of interest on entering the township was a chain-gang, fifty long, marching at top speed in step, led by a Nubian soldier with a loaded rifle, flanked by two others, and pursued by a fourth armed only with the hippo-hide whip, called kiboko by the natives, that can cut and bruise at one stroke. He plied it liberally whenever the gang betrayed symptoms of intending to slow down.
Those Nubiains, we learned later, were deserters from British Sudanese regiments, and runaways from British jails, afraid to take the thousand-mile journey northward home again, scornful of all foreign black men, fanatic Muhammedans, and therefore fine tools in the German hand. They worked harder than the chain-gang, for they had to march with it step for step and into the bargain force it to do its appointed labor. The chain-gang kept the township clean—very clean indeed, as far as outward appearance went.
The boma, or fort, was down by the water-front and its high eastern wall, pierced by only one gate, formed one boundary of the drill-ground that was also township square. Facing the wall on the eastern side of the square was a row of Indian and Arab stores. At the north end was the market building—an enormous structure of round stucco pillars supporting a great grass roof; and facing that at the southern end were the court-house, the hospital, and a store owned by the Deutch Oest Africa Gesellschaft, known far and wide by its initials—a concern that owned the practical monopoly of wholesale import and export trade, and did a retail business, too.
We went first to the hospital. Fred and Will lifted me out of the hammock, for my wound had grown much worse during the last few days, and the door being shut they set me down on the step. Then we sent Kazimoto into the fort with a note to the senior officer informing him that a European waited at the hospital in need of prompt medical treatment.
The sentry admitted Kazimoto readily enough, but he did not come out again for half-an-hour, and then looked glum.
"Habanah!" he said simply, using the all-embracing native negative.
"Isn't any one in there?" we demanded all together.
"Surely."
"How many?"
"Very many."
"Officers?"
He nodded.
"Is a doctor there?"
He told us he had asked for the doctor. A soldier had pointed him out.
He had placed the note in the doctor's hand.
"Did he read it?" we asked.
"Surely. He read it, and then showed it to the other officers."
"What did they say?"
"They laughed and said nothing."
It seemed pretty obvious that Kazimoto had made a mistake in some way.
Perhaps he had visited the non-commissioned officers' mess.
"I'll go myself," announced Will. "I can sling the German language like a barkeep. Bet you I'm back here with a doctor inside of three minutes!"
He strode off like Sir Galahad in football shorts, and was passed through the gate by the sentry almost unchallenged. But he was gone more than fifteen minutes, and came back at last with his ears crimson. Nor would he answer our questions.
"Shall I go?" suggested Fred.
"Not unless you like insolence! We passed the camping-ground, it seems, on our way in. We've leave to pitch tents there. We'd better be moving."
So we trailed back the way we had come to a triangular sandy space enclosed by a cactus hedge at the junction of three roads. There were several small grass-roofed shelters with open sides in there, and two tents already pitched, but we were not sufficiently interested just then to see who owned the other tents. We pitched our own—stowed the loads in one of the shelters—gave our porters money for board and rations—and sent them to find quarters in the town. Another of the shelters we took over for a kitchen, and while our servants were cooking a meal we four gathered in Fred's tent and began to question Will again.
"They've got a fine place in there," he said. "Neat as a new pin.
Officers' mess. Non-commissioned officers' quarters. Stores.
Vegetable garden. Jail—looks like a fine jail—hold a couple of
hundred. Government offices. Two-story buildings. Everything fine.
The officers were all sitting smoking on a veranda.
"'Is one of you the doctor?' I asked in German, and a tall lean one with a mighty mean face turned his head to squint at me: but he didn't take his feet off the rail. He looked inquisitive, that's all.
"'Are you the doctor?' I asked him.
"'I am staff surgeon,' he answered. 'What do you want?'
"I told him about your wound, and how we'd marched about two hundred miles on purpose to get medical assistance. He listened without asking a question, and when I'd done he said curtly that the hospital opens for out-patients at eight in the morning.
"Well, I piled it on then. I told him your leg was so rotten that you might not be alive to-morrow morning. He didn't even look interested. I piled it on thicker and told him about the poisoned spear. He didn't bat an eyelid or make a move. So I started in to coax him.
"I did some coaxing. Believe me, I swallowed more pride in five minutes than I guessed I owned! A ward-heeler cadging votes for a Milwaukee alderman never wheedled more gingerly. I called him 'Herr Staff Surgeon' and mentioned the well-known skill of German medicos, and the keen sense of duty of the German army, and a whole lot of other stuff.
"'Tomorrow morning at eight!' was all the answer I got from him.
"I reckon it was somewhere about that time I began to get rattled. I pulled out money and showed it. He looked the other way, and when I went on talking he turned his back. I suspect he didn't dare keep on lookin' at money almost within reach. Anyhow, then I opened on him, firin' both bow guns. I dared him to sit there, with a patient in need of prompt attention less than two hundred yards away. I called him names. I guaranteed to write to the German government and the United States papers about him. I told him I'd have his job if it cost me all my money and a lifetime's trouble. He was just about ready to shoot—I'd just about got the red blood rising on his neck and ears—when along came the commandant—der Herr Capitain—the officer commanding Muanza—a swag-bellied ruffian with a beard and a beery look in his eye, but a voice like a man falling down three stories with all the fire-irons.
"'What do you want?' he demanded in English, and I thanked him first for not having mistaken
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