by Talbot Mundy
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE SONG OF THE DARK-LORDS
Turn in! Turn in! The jungle lords come forth Cat-footed, blazing-eyed--the owners of the dark, What though ye steal the day! We know the worth Of vain tubes spitting at a phantom mark With only human eyes to guide the fire! Tremble, ye hairless ones, who only see by day, The night is ours! Who challenges our ire? Urrumph! Urrarrgh! Turn in there! Way!
Ye come with iron lines and dare to camp Where we were lords when Daniel stood a test! Where once the tired safaris used to tramp On noisy wheels ye loll along at rest! Tremble, ye long-range lovers of the day, 'Twas we who shook the circus walls of ancient Rome! The dark is ours! Take cover! Way there! Way! Urmmph! Urrarrgh! Take cover! Home!
The man who tries to explain away coincidences to men who were thevictims of them is likely to need more sympathy than he will get. Thedictionary defines them clumsily as instances of coinciding, apparentlyaccidental, but which suggest a casual connection.
Lions paid us a visit that first night after Schillingschen'sescape--the first lions we had seen or heard since landing on the northshore of the lake. We prayed they might get Schillingschen, yet theyand he persisted until morning--they roaring and circling never nearenough for the man on guard to get a shot--he also circling the camp,calling to his ten men, whom we had transferred from the native villageto the second tent under guard of Kazimoto and our own men as aprecaution.
Our boys slept as if drugged, but not his. He called to them in alanguage that even Kazimoto did not understand, and they kept answeringat intervals. Once, when I was listening to locate Schillingschen if Icould, the lions came sniffing and snuffing to the back side of thetent. I tried to stalk them--a rash, reprehensible, tenderfoot trick.Luck was with me; they slunk away in the shadows, and I lived tosummon Fred and Will. We tried to save the donkeys, but the lions tookthree of them at their leisure, and scared the rest so that they brokeout of the thorn-bush boma we had made the boys build (as a precautionagainst leopards, not lions). Next morning out of forty we recoveredtwenty-five, and wondered how many of them Schillingschen got.
Remembering how we ourselves had managed, without ammunition orsupplies, we did not fool ourselves with the belief thatSchillingschen, with his brutal personal magnetism and profoundknowledge of natives, would not do better. The probability was hewould stir up the countryside against us.
He had been doing missionary work; it might be the natives of thatpart were already sufficiently schooled to do murder at his bidding.
We decided to leave at once for a district where he had not yet doneany of his infernal preaching.
"You should set a trap and shoot the swine!" Coutlass insisted. Willwas inclined to agree with him, but Fred and I demurred. The Britishwrit had never really run as far as the slopes of Elgon, and we couldsee them ahead of us not very many marches away. If Schillingschenintended to dog us and watch chances we preferred to have him do thatin a remote wilderness, where our prospect of influencing natives wouldlikely be as good as his, that was all.
Part of our strategy was to make an early start and march swiftly,taking advantage of his physical weariness after a night in the open onthe prowl; but after a few days in camp it is the most difficult thingimaginable to get a crowd of porters started on the march. It was moreparticularly difficult on that occasion because none of our men werefamiliar with Schillingschen's loads, and the captured ten, even whenwe loosed their hands and treated them friendly, showed no dispositionto be useful. We gave them a load apiece to carry, but to every one wehad to assign two of our own as guards, so that, what with having lostthe fifteen donkeys, we had not a man to spare.
It was after midday when we got off at last. We had not left the campmore than half a mile behind when I looked back and saw Schillingschenwhere his great tent had stood, cavorting on hands and feet like anenormous dog-baboon, searching every inch of the ground for anything wemight have left. We three stood and watched him for half an hour,sweating with fear lest he chance on the place where his diary layburied in the tin box. We began to wish we had brought it with us. Isaid we had done foolishly to leave it, although I had approved ofFred's burying it at the time.
"Suppose," I argued, "he sets the natives of that village to searching!What's to prevent him? You know the kind of job they'd make ofit--blade by blade of grass--pebble by pebble. Where they found atrace of loosened dirt they'd dig."
"Did you bury something, then?" inquired a voice we knew too well. "Bythe ace of stinks, those natives can smell out anything a white manever touched!"
We turned and faced Coutlass, whom we had imagined on ahead with thesafari. If he noticed our sour looks, he saw fit to ignore them; buthe took an upperhanded, new, insolent way with us, no doubt due to ourrefusal to shoot Schillingschen. He ascribed that to a yellow streak.
"I was right. Gassharamminy! I could have sworn I saw two of you onwatch while the third man dug among the stones! What did you bury? Icame back to talk about Brown. The poor drunkard wants to head more tothe east. I say straight on. What do you say?"
We told him to go forward. Then we looked in one another's eyes, andsaid nothing. Whether or not the original decision had been wise,there was no question now what was the proper course.
Instead of tiring out Schillingschen we made an early camp by awatercourse, and built a very big protection for the donkeys againstlions--a high thorn enclosure, and an outer one not so high, with aspace between them wide enough for the two tents and half a dozen bigfires. Before dark we had enough fuel stacked up to keep the firesblazing well all night long.
Neither Coutlass nor Brown had had a drink of whisky that day, so itwas all the more remarkable that Coutlass lay down early in a corner ofthe tent and fell into a sound sleep almost at once. We werethoroughly glad of it. Our plan was for two of us to creep out of campwhen it was dark enough, and recover the contents of that tin boxbefore Schillingschen or the blacks could forestall us.
The lions began roaring again at about sundown, but they lovedonkey-meat more than almost any except giraffe, and it was not likelythey would trouble us. We were so sure the task was not particularlyrisky that Fred, who would have insisted on the place of greater dangerfor himself, consented willingly enough to stay in camp while Will andI went back. Our original intention was to take Schillingschen'spatent, wind-proof, non-upsettable camp lantern to find the way withand keep wild beasts at bay; but just as Will went toward the tent tofetch it (Fred's back was turned, over on the far side where he wasseeing to the camp-fires) we both at once caught sight of Coutlasscreeping on hands and knees along a shadow. We had closed the gap inthe outer wall of thorn, but he dragged aside enough to make an openingand slipped through, thinking himself unobserved.
To have followed him with a lantern would have been worse than my crimeof stalking lions in the dark. Will ran to tell Fred what had happenedwhile I followed the Greek through the gap, and presently Will and Iwere both hot on his trail, as close to him as we could keep withoutletting him hear us.
"Fred says," Will whispered, "if we catch him talking withSchillingschen, shoot 'em both! Fred won't let him into camp againunless we bring back proof he's not a traitor!"
We were pursuing a practised hunter, who at first kept stopping to makesure he was not followed. He took a line across that wild country inthe dark with such assurance, and so swiftly that it was unbelievablyhard to follow him quietly. It was not long before we lost sound ofhim. Then we ran more freely, trusting to luck as much as anything tokeep him thinking he had the darkness to himself.
Our short day's journey seemed to have trebled itself! We wereleg-weary and tired-eyed when at last we reached, and nearly fell intoa hollow we recognized. Will went down and struck a match to get alook at his watch.
"There ought to be a moon in about ten minutes," he whispered. "We'rewithin sight of the place. Suppose we climb a tree and scout abou
t abit."
It was not a very big tree that we selected, but it was the biggest;it had low branches, and the merit of being easy to climb.
When the pale latter half of the moon announced itself we could dimlymake out from the upper branches all of the flat ground where the camphad been. There was no sign of Coutlass. None of Schillingschen. Alioness and two enormous lions stood facing one another in a triangle,almost exactly on the spot where the larger tent had stood, not fiftyyards from us.
"Gee!"' whispered Will excitedly. "We nearly stumbled on 'em!"
"Shoot!" I whispered. My own position on the branch was so insecurethat I could not have brought my rifle into use without making aprodigious noise. Will shook his head.
"I can see Coutlass now! Look at that rock--he's hiding behindit--see, he's climbing! And look, there's Schillingschen!"
Neither man was aware of the other's presence, or of ours. They wereout of sight of each other, Coutlass on the very rocks against which wehad leaned to watch the tent the afternoon before, and neither manreally out of reach of anything with claws that cared to go after themin earnest.
The arrival of the dim moon seemed to give the lions their cue foraction. The lioness turned half away, as if weary of waiting, and thenlay down full-length to watch as one lion sprang at the other with aroar like the wrath of warring worlds. They met in mid-air, claw toclaw, and went down together--a roaring, snarling, eight-legged,two-tailed catastrophe--never apart--not still an instant--tearing,beating--rolling over and over--emitting bellows of mingled rage andagony whenever the teeth of one or other brute went home.
Even as shadows fighting in the shadows they were terrible to watch.They shook the very earth and air, as if they owned all the primevalbestial force of all the animals. And the she-lion lay watching them,her eyes like burning yellow coals, not moving a muscle that we couldsee.
Iron could not have withstood the blows; the thunder of them reachedus in the tree! Steel ropes could not have endured the strain as clawswent home, and the brutes wrenched, ripped, and yelled in titanicagony. Their fury increased. Wounds did not seem to enfeeble them.Nothing checked the speed of the fighting an instant, until suddenlythe lioness stood erect, gave a long loud call like a cat's, and turnedand vanished.
She had seen. She knew. Like a spring loosed from its containing boxone of the lions freed himself in mid-air and hurtled clear, landing onall-fours and hurrying away after the lioness with a bad limp. Theother lion fell on his side and lay groaning, then roaredhalf-heartedly and dragged himself away.
The second lion had hardly gone when Coutlass descended gingerly fromthe rock, peering about him, and listening. He evidently had nosuspicion of our presence, for he never once looked in our direction.It was Schillingschen, not lions, he feared; and Schillingschen,clambering over the top of another rock, watched him as a night-beasteyes its prey. Another one-act drama was staged, and it was not timefor us to come down from the tree yet.
Satisfied he was not followed and that Schillingschen was elsewhere,Coutlass crept from rock to rock toward the little cluster of smallones where, by his own confession, he had seen Fred bury the box.Schillingschen stalked him through the shadows as actively as a greatape, making no sound, as clearly visible to us as he was invisible toCoutlass.
There was not a trace of mist--nothing to obscure the dim pale light,and as the moon swung higher into space we could see both men's everymovement, like the play of marionettes.
Down on his knees at last among the small loose rocks, Coutlass begandigging with his fingers--grew weary of that very soon, and drew outthe long knife from his boot--dug with that like a frenzied man untilfrom our tree we heard the hard point strike on metal. ThenSchillingschen began to close in, and it was time for us to drop downfrom the tree.
We made an abominable lot of noise about it, for the tree creaked, andour clothing tore on the thorny projections of limbs that seemed tohave grown there since we climbed. To make matters worse, I steppedoff the lowest branch, imagining there was another branch beneath it,and fell headlong, rifle and all, with a clatter and thump that shouldhave alarmed the village half a mile away. And Will, not knowing whatI had done but alarmed by the noise I made, jumped down on top of me.
We picked ourselves up and listened. We could hear the short quickstabs of the knife as Coutlass loosed and scooped the earth out. Amongthe myriad noises of the African night our own, that seemed appallingto us, had passed unnoticed--or perhaps Schillingschen heard, andthought it was the injured lion dragging himself away. (Nobody neededworry about the chance of attack from that particular lion for many anight to come; he would ask nothing better than to be left to eat miceand carrion until his awful wounds were healed.)
Reassured by the sound of digging we crept forward, knowing pretty wellthe best path to take from having seen Schillingschen stalking. But itwas more by dint of their obsession than by any skill of ours that wecrept up near without giving them alarm. Coutlass was still on hisknees, throwing out the last few handfuls of loose dirt.Schillingschen stood almost over him, so close that the thrown dirtstruck against his legs.
We took up positions in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraidto breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands likethe proverbial aspen leaf. The prospect of shooting a white man--evensuch a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen--made me asnervous as a school-girl at a grown-up party.
At last Coutlass groped down shoulder-deep and drew the box out.
"Give that to me!" Schillingschen shouted like a thunder-clap, makingme jump as if I were the one intended.
The moonlight gleamed on the tin box. Coutlass did not drop it butturned his head to look behind him. Schillingschen swung for his facewith a clenched fist and the whole weight and strength of his ungainlybody. He would have broken the jaw he aimed at had the blow landed;but the Greek's wit was too swift.
He kicked like a mule, hard and suddenly, ducking his head, and thendiving backward between the German's legs that were outspread to givehim balance and leverage for the fist-blow. Schillingschen pitchedover him head-forward, landing on both hands with one shoulder in thehole out of which the box had come. With the other arm he reached forthe knife that Coutlass had laid on the loose earth. Coutlass reachedfor it, too, too late, and there followed a fight not at all inferiorin fury to the battle of the lions. Humans are only feebler than thebeasts, not less malicious.
Will reached for the tin box, opened it, took out the diary, closed itagain, put the diary in his own inner pocket, and returned the box;but they never saw or heard him. The German, with an arm as strong asan ape's, thrust again and again at Coutlass, missing his skin by abait's breadth as the Greek held off the blows with the utmost strengthof both hands.
Suddenly Coutlass sprang to his feet, broke loose for a second, landeda terrific kick in the German's stomach, and closed again. He twistedSchillingschen's great splay beard into a wisp and wrenched it, forcinghis head back, holding the knife-hand in his own left, and spittingbetween the German's parted teeth; then threw all his weight on himsuddenly, and they went down together, Coutlass on top andSchillingschen stabbing violently in the direction of his ribs.
Letting go the beard, Coutlass rained blows on the German's face withhis free fist. Made frantic by that assault Schillingschen squirmedand upset the Greek's balance, rolled him partly over and, blinded by avery rain of blows, slashed and stabbed half a dozen times. Coutlassscreamed once, and swore twice as the knife got in between his bones.The German could not wrench it out again. With both hands free now,the Greek seized him by the throat and began to throttle him, beatingwith his forehead on the purple face the while his steel fingerskneaded, as if the throat were dough.
We were not at all inclined to stop Coutlass from killing the man. Wecame closer, to see the end, and Coutlass caught sight of us at last.
"Shoot him!" he screamed. "Gassharamminy! Shoot him, can't you, whileI hold him!"
As
he made that appeal the German convulsed his whole body like anearthquake, wrenched the knife loose at last, and as Coutlass changedposition to guard against a new terrific stab rolled him over, freedhimself and stood with upraised hand to give the finishing blow. Thensuddenly he saw us and his jaw dropped, the beastly mess that had beenhis well-kept beard dropping an inch and showing where the Greeks fisthad broken the front teeth. But that was only for a second--a secondthat gave Coutlass time to rise to his knees, and dodge the descendingblow.
I made up my mind then it was time to shoot the German, whatever thecrimes of the Greek might be; but Coutlass had not grown slower of witfrom loss of blood. As he dodged he rolled sidewise and seized myrifle, jerking it from my hand. He jerked too quickly. The German sawthe move and kicked it, sending it spinning several yards away. We allmade a sudden scramble for it, Schillingschen leading, when the Germanturned as suddenly as one of the great apes he so resembled, trippedWill by the heel, wrenched the rifle from his right hand, pounced onthe empty tin box, and was gone!
Too late, I remembered my own rifle and fired after him, emptying themagazine at shadows.
Will's rage and self-contempt were more distressing than the Greek'sspouting knife-wounds.
"By blood and knuckle-bones! Give me that gun of yours, will you! Igo after the swine! I cut his liver out! Where is my knife? Ah,there it is! Stoop and give it me, for my ribs hurt! So! Now I goafter him!"
We held Coutlass back, making him be still while we tore his shirt instrips, and then our own, and tried to staunch the blood, Will almostblubbering with rage while his fingers worked, and the Greek cursing usboth for wasting time.
"He has the box!" he screamed. "He has the rifle!"
"He has no ammunition but what's in the magazine," said I; and thatstarted Will off swearing at himself all over again from the beginning.
"You damned yegg!" he complained as he knotted two strips of shirt."This would never have happened if you hadn't sneaked out to steal thecontents of the box!"
Suddenly Coutlass screamed again, like a mad stallion smelling battle.
"There he is! There the swine is! I see him! I hear him! Give methat--"
He reached for my rifle, but I was too quick that time and steppedback out of range of his arm. As I did that the blood burst anew fromhis wounds. He put his left hand to his side and scattered the hotblood up in the air in a sort of votive offering to the gods of Greekrevenge, and, brandishing the long knife, tore away into the dark.
"I see him!" he yelled. "I see the swine! By Gassharamminy! To-nighthis naked feet'll blister on the floor of hell!"
We followed him, enthralled by mixed motives made of desire and a sortof half-genuine respect for the courage of this man, who claimed threecountries and disgraced each one at intervals in turn. We did not goso fast as he. We were not so enamored of the risks the dark contained.
Suddenly there came out of the blackness just ahead a marrow-curdlingcry--agony, rage, and desperation--that surely no human everuttered--roar, yelp of pain, and battle-cry in one.
"Help!" yelled Coutlass. "Help! Oh-ah! Ah!"
We raced forward then, I leading with my rifle thrust forward. Asecond later I fired; and that was the only time in my life I evertouched a lion's face with a rifle muzzle before I pulled the trigger!The brute fell all in a heap, with Coutlass underneath him and theGreek's long knife stuck in his shoulder to the hilt. The lion musthave died within the minute without my shot to finish him.
Coutlass lay dead under the defeated beast that had crawled away tohide and lick his wounds. We dragged his body out from under, and inproof that Schillingschen, the common enemy, lived, a bullet camewhistling between us. The flash of my shot had given him direction.Perhaps he could see us, too, against the moon. We ducked, and laystill, but no more shots came.
"He's only got four left," Will whispered. "Maybe he'll husband those!"
"Maybe he knows by now that box is empty!" said I. "He'll stalk us onthe way back!"
"Us for the tree, then, until morning!" said Will.
"Sure!" I answered. "And be shot out of it like crows out of a nest!"
But Will had the right idea for all that. He was merely getting at itin his own way. After a little whispering we went to work with feveredfingers, stripping off the bloody bandages we had tied on the Greek'sribs--stripping off more of his clothes--then more of ours--tying themall into one--then skinning the mangled lion with the long knife thathad really ended his career, tearing the hide into strips and knottingthem each to each. In twenty minutes we had a slippery, smeary, smellyrope of sorts. In five more we had dragged the Greek's dead bodyunderneath the tree.
Then I went back to the vantage point among the rocks and waited untilWill had thrown the rope with a stone tied to its end over an upperbranch. Presently I saw Coutlass' dead body go clambering ungracefullyup among the branches, looking so much less dead than alive that Ithought at first Will must have tangled the rope in the crotch of thetree and be clambering up to release it.
The ruse worked. Georges Coutlass served us dead as well as living.Out of the darkness to my left there came a flash and a report. I didnot look to see whether the corpse in the tree jerked as the bulletstruck. Before the flash had died--almost before the crack of thereport bad reached my ear-drums I answered with three shots in quicksuccession.
"Did you get him?" called Will.
"I don't know," I answered. "If I didn't, he's only got threecartridges left!"
We left the Greek's body in the tree for Schillingschen to shoot atfurther if he saw fit; it was safer there from marauding animals thanif we had laid it on the ground, and as for the rites of the dead, itwas a toss-up which was better, kites and vultures, or jackals and theants. We saw no sense that night in laboring with a knife and ourhands to bury a body that the brutes would dig up again within fiveminutes of our leaving it.
"Schillingschen has three cartridges,"' sad Will. "One each for you, meand Fred Oakes! I'll stay and trick him some more. I'll think up anew plan. I don't care if he gets me. I'd hate to face Fred withoutmy rifle, and have to tell him the enemy is laying for him with itthrough my carelessness."
It was my first experience of Will with hysteria, for it amounted tothat. I remembered that to cure a bevy of school-girls of it oneshould rap out something sharply, with a cane if need be. Yet Will wasnot like a school-girl, and his hysteria took the pseudo-manly form ofrefusal to retreat. I yearned for Fred's camp-fires, and Fred's laugh,hot supper, or breakfast, or whatever the meal would be, and blankets.Will, with a ruthless murderer stalking him in the dark, yearned onlyfor self-contentment. All at once I saw the thing to do, and thrust myrifle in his hands.
"Take it," I said. "Hunt Schillingschen all night if you want to. I'mgoing back to tell Fred I've lost my rifle, and was afraid to face youfor fear you'd laugh at me. Go on--take it! No, you've got to takeit!"
I let the rifle fall at his feet, and he was forced to pick it up. Bythat time I was on my way, and he had to hurry if he hoped to catch me.I kept him hurrying--cursing, and calling out to wait. And so, hourslater, we arrived in sight of Fred's fires and answered his cheerychallenge:
"Halt there, or I'll shoot your bally head off!"
Lions had kept him busy making the boys pile thornwood on the fires.He had shot two--one inside the enclosure, where the brute had jumpedin a vain effort to reach the frantic donkeys. We stumbled over thecarcass of the other as we made our way toward the gate-gap, anddragged it in ignominiously by the tail (not such an easy task as theuninitiated might imagine).
Once within the enclosure I left Will to tell Fred his story as bestsuited him, Fred roaring with laughter as he watched Will's ruefulface, yet turning suddenly on Brown to curse him like a criminal forlaughing, too!
"Go and fetch that Mauser of yours, Brown, and give it to Mr. Yerkes inplace of what he's lost! Hurry, please!"
It was touch and go whether Brown would obey. But he happene
d to besober, and realized that he had committed tho unpermissible offense.Fred might laugh at Will all he chose; so might I; either of us mightlaugh Fred out of countenance; or they might howl derisively at me.But Brown, camp-fellow though he was, and not bad fellow though he was,was not of our inner-guard. He might laugh with, never at, especiallywhen catastrophe brought inner feelings to the surface.
"Take the shot-gun if you care to," Fred told him, as he passed Willthe rifle. "I'll unlock the chop-box presently, and let you have somewhisky!"
This last was the cruellest cut, but it did Brown good. When Fred kepthis promise and produced a whole bottle from the locked-up store Brownrefused to touch it, instead insulting him like a good man, cursinghim--whisky, whiskers, whims and all, using language that Fredgood-naturedly assured him was very unladylike.
Before dawn the boys, peering through the gaps between the camp-fires,to distinguish lions if they could and give the alarm before anothercould jump in and do damage, swore they saw Schillingschen, rifle inhand, stalking among the shadows. Nothing could convince them they hadnot seen him. They said he stooped like a man in a dream--that bigbeard was matted, and his shirt torn--that he strode out of darknessinto darkness like a man whose mind was gone. We purposely laughed attheir story, to see if we could shake them in it. But they laughed atour incredulity.
"My eyes are good eyes" answered Kazimoto. "What I see I see! Whyshould I invent lies?"
It was not pleasant to imagine Schillingschen, mind gone or not, withor without three cartridges and a rifle, prowling about our campawaiting opportunity to do murder.
"Come to think of it," said Fred, "we've no proof he hasn't a lot morethan three cartridges. It's hardly likely, but he might have cachedsome in reserve near where we found his camp pitched. More unlikelythings have happened. But the bally man must go to sleep some time.He seems to have been awake ever since he escaped. We'll be off atdawn, and either tire him out or leave him!"
"I'll bet he's got one or more of those donkeys," I answered. "He'llnot be so easy to tire."
"Suppose you and Will go and sleep," suggested Fred. "Otherwise we'llall go crazy, and all get left behind!"
There did not remain much time for sleeping. The porters, being usedto the tents and their loads now, got away to a good start, headingstraight toward the frowning pile of Elgon that hove its great humpagainst a blue sky and domineered over the world to the northward.
There were plenty of villages, well filled with timid spear-men andhard-working naked wives. Now that we had trade goods in plenty therewas no difficulty at all about making friends with them. They had twoobsessing fears: that it might not rain in proper season, and "thepeople" as they called themselves would "have too much hunger"; andthat the men from the mountain might come and take their babies.
"Which men, from what mountain?"
"Bad men, from very high up on that mountain!" They pointed towardElgon, shuddered, and looked away.
"Why should they take your babies?"
"They eat them!"
"What makes you think that?"
"We know it! They come! Once in so often they come and fight with us,and take away, and kill and eat our fat babies!"
All the inhabitants of all the villages agreed. None of them had everventured on the mountain; but all agreed that very bad black men cameraiding from the upper slopes at uncertain intervals. There was novariation of the tale.
One thing puzzled us much more than the cannibal story. We heardshooting a long way off behind us to our right--two shots, followed bythe unmistakable ringing echo among growing trees. Had Schillingschendecided to desert us? And if so, how did he dare squander two of histhree cartridges at once--supposing he were not now mad, as our boys,and his, all vowed he was? His own ten men began to beg to beprotected from him, and the captured Baganda recommended in bestmissionary English that we seek the services of the first witch doctorwe could find.