Before Chuma could come back with the others, Mabruki and Chirango came to report a most shocking discovery. They had gone down to the stream to fetch water. There they found a man lying on a rock, his back to the heavens and his face in the stream. They called to him, but there was no response. Worried, they moved to turn him over. It was Amoda. He had fallen to the rocks and broken his skull.
Farjallah Christie and Carus Farrar consulted each other in whispers and looked troubled. “The way he lay would indicate that he fell forward, on his stomach, but he cannot have died from that fall because there was a large gash behind his head.”
I could not take in what they said, for it made no sense at all. “You cannot surely be saying he fell forward and still managed to crack his head from behind?”
“That is exactly what it looks like,” Farjallah said. “And that is why it makes no sense. He cracked his head so hard that it would have been impossible for him to turn himself in this way.”
The meaning of this hit us all at the same time as Farjallah put into words what we were all thinking.
“His head was bashed from behind.”
It was more troubling still when Carus Farrar said, “And so it means that one of us has killed this man.”
“We will have to establish where everyone was at dawn, for this is when it happened.”
“Perhaps it was a stranger,” said Mabruki.
“A stranger from where?” said Farjallah.
“It is not possible that this is the work of one of us,” I pleaded. “Surely, it is more likely that he fell to his death?”
I felt hot and cold at once at the thought of revealing where I had been. For I had been with Ntaoéka. As though he was reading my mind, Chirango came to my side and in a low voice said, “Not to worry, Mwalimu. I was praying with you both. We all prayed together, then after some time elapsed, we all parted, is that not so?”
I looked at him, and there was a look in his eye I could not understand. A thought came to me that I was putting myself into his power, but I brushed it away.
“You need not worry,” he said. “I have a small hare of my own that I was chasing. You are not the only man satisfying a woman unsatisfied by her man.”
I felt cold to my bones, and as though I had done the dirtiest thing, but I did not want to know what he meant. I knew only that he had saved me from the ignominy of revealing where I had been.
As soon as the news spread throughout the camp, we became eager to leave this place. Halima is splitting the heavens with her wails, for though Amoda was not the best of companions, it was still a shocking way to go.
Just before we could bury Amoda, Chuma and the others returned with the news that we were to bring the Doctor’s body to Unyanyembe.
While the men dug the grave, and made sure that it was at right angles to the direction of the Mecca, Laede and Ntaoéka heated water so that the Mohammedans among the pagazi could bathe Amoda’s body. Halima was too prostrated to do anything of assistance.
Susi, Toufiki Ali, and Wadi Saféné led the Mohammedans as they gathered around Amoda’s body and rubbed the water over his body three times.
“It should be the family of the deceased who do this,” Susi said, “but we are good enough, for he has been like a brother to us.”
They did what they could with his poor wounded head, but it was clearly beyond cleaning. Then they wrapped him in the whitest cloth that we could find, a dust-colored Americano bolt. It was meant to be for trade, but no one could begrudge poor Amoda. They wound it twice around his body to make a simple burial raiment, for there was no more cloth left after the first wrapping. They then laid him out on a bed made of grass, and the whole company trooped by to pay him homage.
Now, I have made clear throughout this account that I do not hold with Mohammedan beliefs, but even I must admit that I could not but be moved, for the ceremony, short and simple as it was, had its own dignity and solemnity.
Wadi Saféné led the prayers. In a voice of trembling beauty, he called out: “Allāhu akbar! In the name of God, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. It is You we worship and You we ask for help. Guide us to the straight path. Allāhu akbar! Pour Blessings upon Mohammed Your Prophet. Allāhu akbar! O God, O God, forgive our brother Amoda and have mercy on him, keep him safe and forgive him, honor his rest and ease his entrance; wash him with water and cleanse him of sin. O God, admit Amoda to Paradise and protect him from the torment of the grave; make his grave spacious and fill it with light. Allāhu akbar!”
His voice trembled on the air as the men raised his body and carried it to the open grave. Gently, they placed him in the hole, laying him on his right side, so that he faced Mecca. They placed soil under his head, under his chin, and under his shoulder. Then they sprinkled earth over him as Wadi Saféné said, “We created you from it, and return you into it, and from it we will raise you a second time.” All the pagazi then placed soil over his body.
It is certainly clear why the Mohammedans are not keen to convert, for there is a simple beauty to their rituals. Even where one does not understand it, the words have a raw eloquence that goes straight to the heart. I shudder to think how the party will bear up without this most able of commanders.
As soon as Amoda was buried came another complication: John Wainwright was missing. Mabruki and Munyasere put together a small detachment of men to try to locate him. It was no secret that he had been unhappy for some time, and indeed, Toufiki Ali said he had heard that he purposely went off rather than carry a load any farther.
It seemed to me that this was most unlike him. True, he always was a lazy sort of fellow, and completely lacking in the Nassick spirit, but for him to simply take off in this manner without a word to anyone was most surprising. It seemed to me that this was also entirely out of character. If he had gone, it would not have been in this secretive, furtive manner but it would have been in a manner that sought to make as much of his going as possible.
The men were divided into small parties to inquire into his whereabouts, but they all came back to say there was no further news of him.
“Is it not clear,” Chirango said, “that it was this John who killed Amoda?”
I had not thought that this was possible, but looking back to the fractious relationship of these two men, it seemed all too likely. Another fear followed as I remembered our strange conversation just outside Chungu’s country: that he might have not only taken a man’s life, but also committed the ultimate sin of despair and taken his own life. My heart grew heavy as, in my mind, I saw him a few months before we reached this place, standing by the Lovu, looking into its waters, and wishing that he could follow it to its end.
We did all we could to find him, of that I am certain. Not only were small groups sent in different directions to trace him, we also set fire to the grass around us, that he might see the smoke, and, as a final measure, Munyasere ordered that the guns were to be fired twice a day so that he could hear them if he was close.
None of this was sufficient to gain intelligence of him, and so, with regret, and after five days’ search in all directions, with no tidings to be gained, we gave him up as lost, and made our way to Unyanyembe. By the time we were ready to set off, the whole party had become convinced that John Wainwright had killed Amoda and vanished into the vastness of Africa. And not a single person spoke up in his defense.
18
16 October 1873
Eighteenth Entry from the Journal of Jacob Wainwright, entered in Kazeh; in which the Livingstone Expedition Meets Lt. Verney Cameron’s Expedition and the Doctor’s Body is mourned in State.
The pall of grief hangs over the party. Amoda has truly been our Great-Heart, slaying the giants of Despair and Sloth, the center of our expedition, the large man with his laugh and voice, his strength. The night of his burial, the party sat around a large single fire.
Even those pagazi who had suffered the most under his yoke, the men he had upbraided for their slowness and laziness, expres
sed their deepest sorrow. Halima found comfort only in Majwara. Together they sat in silence while he polished his drum.
Amoda’s death almost made us forget that Chuma had arrived with news of the Englishmen, but once we buried Amoda, we turned our minds to that matter. Chuma and his three companions had reached the Arab settlement without let or hindrance. There they had found that the white men were indeed on an Expedition to relieve the Doctor. But instead of Oswell Livingstone, the Doctor’s son, they found that the party was led by a Lieutenant Cameron, whom Chuma put in possession of the main facts of Doctor Livingstone’s death by showing him the letter that I had written.
There are three white men in his party, Chuma said. Lieutenant Cameron is traveling with another lieutenant, a man called Murphy, and a medical doctor called Dillon. Chuma reported to us that all three men questioned him extremely closely, and in fact, with great suspicion. Thinking that his knowledge of their language was not equal to theirs, they had explained in his company that we should “all be d—— to the D——” with our “d—— fool” mission of an expedition, and I hope I have not offended the delicacy of my future Readers by implying these words, for they are the very words used by them. Chuma is not sanguine as to whether they will accompany us to the coast. In addition, they also cast severe aspersions as to whether it really was the corpse of Dr. Livingstone that we carried.
At this intelligence, Carus and Farjallah immediately said they had thought there would be such doubts, even if we reached the coast, but they were certain that any proper postmortem examination of the Doctor would reveal beyond all doubt that it was indeed the Doctor: particularly remarkable would be the injuries he had received in his lifetime, and most especially the broken arm that had been occasioned by a lion attack when he had been a younger man in the Barotseland. Such an examination, however, could not be carried out in the wild, so we were all in suspense as to what course of action the white men would recommend.
All the party felt a keen disappointment on learning that the reported arrival of Mr. Oswell Livingstone was entirely erroneous. Still, we had received our orders: we were to march on with the body to Kazeh.
And now the greater part of our task was over. We wound our way into the old well-known settlement of Kazeh, where a host of Arabs and their attendant slaves met us. If she still retained any fears of what awaited her in Kazeh, Halima was silent. I know little about matters of love between men and women, and I doubt that she felt love toward Amoda. But even her heathen heart will have been shocked by such a death. I was pleased to see Ntaoéka was being her usual helpful self and supporting her.
Here, indeed, we felt the power of the white man, for it was no longer necessary to conceal what we carried. In Kazeh, the expedition leaders and I faced the three men. Cameron was a large man with much hair about his face and small serious eyes.
I could see that Doctor Dillon, a small round man who was red in the face, was not going to make much progress on this expedition. Murphy was a quiet man who deferred in everything to Cameron, who was clearly the leader of the party. Lieutenant Cameron expressed doubt about whether the risk of taking the body through the Ugogo country ought to be run. It was most likely, he suggested, that the Doctor had felt a wish during his life to be buried in the same land in which the remains of his wife also lay. Was it not better that he be buried in Africa than that we continue with our mission to the coast?
We could have handed over the body right there and then, and left them to do what they wished with it, but we were all, when we consulted each other, actuated by the thoughts of our fallen companions.
Was their sacrifice to be rewarded by our burying the Doctor here in Kazeh, by our taking an action that we could have undertaken at the very beginning of the journey? I thought of all the men who had died, the women too, and John Wainwright, who had simply disappeared without a trace; of Nchise and Ntaru, shot with arrows at Chawende. Most of all, I thought of Amoda, our strong, fallen comrade, whose wisdom had guided us this far.
I am pleased to say that the others saw the matter as I did. A few of the men still talked of the reward that awaited us in Zanzibar, but it was clear to most that reward or no reward, this was no longer just the last journey of the Doctor, but our journey too. It was no longer just about the Doctor, about the wrongs and rights of bearing him home, or burying him here or burying him there, but about all that we had endured. It was about our fallen comrades. In their honor, for their sakes, for all our sakes, we vowed to remain committed to our first conviction, that it was right at all risk to attempt to bear the Doctor home.
Lieutenant Cameron was angered considerably by this decision and fully expressed himself on the matter.
“D—— your stubbornness,” he said. “Do as you will. I will have no further part in the whole business. I wash my hands of it.”
Having no further need to concern himself with Doctor Livingstone, he decided that he would continue into the interior. We were importuned further by their desire to examine the boxes. As I have narrated, we had carefully packed up everything at Chitambo’s—books, instruments, clothes, and all which would bear special interest in time to come from having been associated with the Doctor in his last hours.
He then insisted on opening the boxes of instruments. I had the duty of asking the Nassickers to unpack for him the chief part of the Doctor’s instruments for him to appropriate.
Chuma in particular was most aggrieved to see them go: the aneroid barometers, compasses, thermometers, and sextants, for he had been the Doctor’s apprentice for so long that he had come to know each one and treat them as his own, for these were the instruments with which the Doctor had made observations extending over seven years.
The plunder, though most regrettable, did have the effect of lightening the load considerably. Susi and Chowpereh were more alarmed when Cameron turned his attention to the guns carried by our askari. He wanted ten of them, and five muskets, as well as most of our ammunition. We were not able to persuade him otherwise. It was our choice to continue with the journey, he said, and that was no reason to take the guns.
We then asked if we could, in exchange for the weapons, have some goods to trade our way to the east, for we were severely low on resources.
He said he had nothing at all to give us, for he needed our supplies for himself. To leave us unprotected, unprovisioned in this way! Readers of this account will make of the man’s character what they will, for I will say no more on this subject. I leave his punishment to Him above, for Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, and I will repay.
Dejected and discouraged, we gathered to plot the way forward. As we huddled together, an Arab with the bronzest teeth and the yellowest eyes known to man came to pluck the sleeve of Susi. “I have something to show you,” he said.
Curious, Susi, Chuma, and I followed him to a small house at the end of the row. From a large chest, he extracted four large bales of fine Americano cloth.
They had been left by the Doctor on his way down, as a reserve stock, he said. Lieutenant Cameron, he said, had been most insulting to him, and he did not wish him to have it. Susi laughed as he shook hands most cordially with the Arab.
This was treasure indeed, and very glad we were to receive it too. Our spirits somewhat revived, we arranged that we would collect the cloth the day on which Cameron left for the interior, lest he claim it as he had the Doctor’s instruments and guns. The next morning, we parted company with Cameron’s party. But we found that though Cameron had lightened our load, he had further burdened us with a most unexpected charge: he had left Doctor Dillon behind with instructions that we were to take him with us to the coast.
As the news of our new travel companion spread through the party, I could read on every face the one emotion that gripped them all, which was complete and abject dismay at the prospect of this man’s joining us as a travel companion. Indeed, I could almost feel every heart sink along with mine.
Though God has made man in His general image, He has
in His infinite wisdom chosen to give each man his own particular shape. But there was no question at all that the shape that He had given Doctor Dillon made him entirely unsuitable to an expedition such as this.
On a ship on the high seas, which is how he had got here, he might perhaps have been perfectly at home, particularly if such a journey brought with it a fine stateroom and nightly dining at the Captain’s table, but everything about his figure, from his red face, his rotund stomach, and his small plump hands to his sweaty swollen neck, suggested that he was not one made to wander the African wilderness. But Cameron had left early for the interior, and had, just as he had in the matter of the guns and the doctor’s instruments, left us no choice in this matter. And thus it was that Doctor Dillon joined us that morning as we departed Kazeh.
19
22 October 1873
Nineteenth Entry from the Journal of Jacob Wainwright, written outside Unyanyembe; in which Doctor Dillon proves Himself a Travel Companion even More Burdensome than the Most Petulant Child.
If our progress was slow before Doctor Dillon joined us, then we are moving at a snail’s pace now. I am sorry to report that the entire party’s misgivings about Doctor Dillon’s suitability as a traveling companion have been proved to have foundation. He is now become such a burden that I would that we could, like Christian and Hopeful in The Pilgrim’s Progress, have let him go at the Place of the Unburdening.
It is now clear why Lieutenant Cameron had no wish to travel farther with him, for Doctor Dillon is a most difficult man. We have lost John Wainwright, true, but we have replaced him with Doctor Dillon, who is by far the more unpleasant companion, for while poor John only sniveled, complained, and malingered, Doctor Dillon is actively disruptive.
When he is not lagging back, or refusing to move, he is raining on our ears ceaseless complaints about the food and the weather, about the insects and the noise of animals in the night, about the children’s laughter during the day, about the men’s singing on the march. Most of all, he can’t bear the sound of Majwara’s drum or Chirango’s njari.
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 20