Then some dance or ceremony seemed to begin. What it was, I do not know. I was very tired and presently I went to sleep. But the drums beat steadily, all night long. They entered the fabric of my dreams and made my rest uneasy. It could not have been long before morning when I awoke with a start and found myself sitting up with every nerve tense. There was no sound, but I had a feeling as if I had been awakened by a scream, somewhere about the house.
CHAPTER II
THE SEEKER OF VENGEANCE.
The consul listened gravely while I told him about it. He had asked me to give all the information I could about Graham. We were on the porch of the consulate and the whole city of Ticao was spread out before us. The sea pounded restlessly against the low bluffs upon which the city was built, and surged angrily about the peninsula on which the fort is situated.
“I woke in the middle of the night,” I concluded, “feeling that there had been a scream somewhere in the house, but not another sound came. I couldn’t get to sleep again, and in the morning I noticed that the girl who had seemed to be the center of interest in the juju procession had been installed as a servant at the house. Another one of the servants had vanished. The new girl looked pitifully scared, perpetually panic-stricken, though the rest of the servants look frightened enough, in all conscience. That’s all I know.”
The consul tugged thoughtfully at his mustache.
“Now why—” he began, and stopped. “The mail boat dropped two Englishwomen here on her last trip, a Mrs. Braymore and a Miss Dalforth. Charming women, both of them. They are calling on the governor’s wife this afternoon. They came to me and asked me to assist them in getting up to Graham’s plantation. They told me he was Miss Dalforth’s cousin.”
I nodded, frowning. “He said that his cousin—second cousin—would possibly turn up. His brother is up in the Kongo somewhere trying to bag gorillas and is going to come from there on through and stop at his place. Miss Dalforth is probably the second cousin and is engaged to the brother who is hunting.”
“Hm.” The consul looked somewhat relieved. “I see. But why on earth should two women want to go up there? Do you think they’d be safe?”
“I don’t know,” I said dubiously. “There’s no fort anywhere near, and the natives are scared stiff. They might bolt, but Graham seems to have them thoroughly in hand. If the ladies once reached the plantation, they’d probably be safe enough, and Graham’s brother could bring them down to the coast again. The plantation is a queer place, though. I think there’s juju in the air. I’d discourage them from going, if I could.”
“I’ve tried,” said the consul. “I’ve informed them what sort the Portuguese traders are, and told them I simply wouldn’t let them go up alone, or with one of those chaps as escort. I didn’t know anything about Graham. They inquired around for an escort, and one of the missionaries mentioned you.”
“As a respectable person?” I asked with a smile.
The consul nodded, matching my smile. “They have quite decided that you are to escort them to Graham’s plantation. I don’t think you’ll refuse,” he added, when I shook my head. “Miss Dalforth impressed me as a young woman accustomed to having her way. She saw the governor and smiled at him, and he agreed that you would be the best possible person. In fact, he said he would ask you himself.”
“I’m not leaving for a month,” I told him. “I’ve had enough of the back country for at least that long, and my carriers need a rest.”
“We’ll see,” said the consul ruefully. “I’ll wager she has you setting out in a week.”
He was nearly right at that. I was introduced to the two of them, and Miss Dalforth was all that he had said. I had to give my bearers a rest, however, and it was two weeks before we set out.
It was a hindrance, having women with me. They traveled in an ox cart, and at nearly every stream the wheels had to be taken off and a tarpaulin fixed about the body of the wagon to make it into a raftlike float, in which they were ferried across. Had Miss Dalforth—or Alicia, as I heard Mrs. Braymore call her—had Alicia been less charming, or less anxious to cause as little trouble as possible, I would have cursed them nearly the entire time. As it was, I bore the delays with equanimity.
They were delighted the first day when we went up the trail to Venghela. I showed them the street lamp at which the great slave trail from the interior ended, and they looked dubious. When I showed them the Padre Silvestre’s mission, with its three villages of redeemed slaves, they grew a little bit white and quiet.
The padre tried to persuade them not to go on, but as luck would have it, a runner came in on his way to Ticao with a message from Graham. His brother had arrived from the interior. That strengthened their resolution. We continued the journey.
While on the trail I could not speak to them, being busily engaged in the supervision of my caravan. At night, however, we conversed. It was good to hear cultivated white women talk again and talk about something besides the slave traffic, the missionary women’s sole topic when they find a listener who can be trusted not to repeat their views to the governor.
The natives are kidnaped or captured far in the interior, brought down to the coast, and frankly sold. Then they are interviewed and, after making a mark upon a bit of printed paper, are considered to have made a contract to serve a white man for four years at one milreis—about a dollar—a month.
To call it slave traffic is highly insulting to the Portuguese, but to call it the servaçal system is inadequate. They are servaçaes, or contrahidos, which means contract laborers, in theory, but in practice they are slaves. They never see their native villages again. The slave trail from the interior is littered with the manacles used to confine them, and there are gruesome relics all along the way, of those natives who were unable to bear the hardships of the journey.
I told them of these things. I told them of how the Padre Silvestre sacrificed his very soul to keep his villagers from being sold again as servaçaes, how the blacks rose on Da Vega’s plantation and sacked it, and all I knew of the whole disgusting system. I had no intention of making myself a hero—and my conscience still hurts me when I think of some of the things I grew absolutely accustomed to—but I did allow myself to show my feelings on the subject of Portuguese government.
Alicia listened, and one night when I had explained to them precisely what it means for a black to be sent to the island of San Felipe or Gomé, she held out her hand to me very gravely.
“I think it is very brave of you,” she said, “to stay here and do what you can to help the poor blacks.”
I stared at her, tempted to laugh. “My dear young lady,” I told her, “I am an outlaw, practically, who trades with the Kongo natives and attempts to elude the Belgian officials as much as possible. I’m tolerated here in Ticao because I bribe the Portuguese. I’m no hero. To the Belgians I am practically what an I. D. B. is in the Transvaal. And you know what an illicit diamond buyer is considered.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said firmly. “I think you stay here to help the poor natives.”
She was so beautifully sincere in attributing the noblest motives to me that I could not laugh at her. Her blessed incomprehension made me forbear to kick Mboka, who is my official gun bearer and lieutenant, when he lost the bolt of my best rifle and threw away the weapon to conceal his misdoing. I had to kick him twice over the day following for the lapse, when he took advantage of my lenience and stole half of my jam.
She was a charming girl. Mrs. Braymore was suffering in the journeying and stoically relapsed into silence to conceal her emotion, but Alicia was perpetually lively and eager for new things of interest.
She soon grew to adopt a tone of frank friendliness with me, and I had to remind myself more than once that she was engaged to Graham’s brother, and that it would not do for me to fall in love with her. It was odd about her engagement, though. She spoke of her fiancé quite simply,
but without any excess of affection. In fact, she confessed that she thought of him more as a brother than anything else. All three of them, Graham, his brother and Alicia, had been raised together and were very much like brothers and sister.
I told myself sternly that, no matter how she felt about her fiancé, she was engaged to him, and I had better forget that she was delightful to look upon and an amazingly good companion. I could not manage it, however, and the last week of the trip was not easy for me. I had to be friendly and no more.
In a way I was very glad when we saw two khaki sun helmets coming toward us, though I was much depressed at the thought of parting from Alicia. I had sent a runner on ahead, and Graham and his brother met us some four miles down the trail. I was pleasantly surprised at the sight of Graham’s brother. Years before he had been at a little English seaside resort where I was spending the summer and we had grown very friendly. He kissed Alicia in a brotherly fashion and shook hands with me.
“I perpetrate a bromide,” he said quizzically. “The world is a small place.”
“Arthur Graham!” I exclaimed. “I knew you in Clovelly six years ago.”
“You’re right,” he said cheerfully. “How are you now? Then you were flirting mildly with a buxom Devon lassie.”
“And now we meet in darkest Africa,” I said, smiling. “Let’s move on.”
We went forward again, Alicia, in the ox cart, gayly retailing to the two brothers our adventures on the trip up. I was rather surprised to notice that both of them were heavily armed, and it bothered me a little. It looked as if there were trouble with the natives. Each of the two brothers carried a heavy repeating rifle besides an automatic pistol in his belt, and Arthur looked decidedly worn, though I saw that he was trying to conceal it from Alicia.
My suspicion was confirmed when I observed that, though he tried not to let Alicia see it, he was keenly searching the way ahead of us with his eyes. He seemed particularly worried when we passed near a tree and his grasp on his rifle tightened. Even after we were well away from it, he looked back nervously.
We passed around the village and reached the casa by another route, Alicia chatting cheerfully with all of us from her seat in the cart. Evan Graham seemed quite at ease and entered into her talk with real interest, but Arthur—who as her fiancé should have been overjoyed to see her—was nervous and preoccupied. His rifle was never far from a position in readiness to fling it to his shoulder, and his eyes roved restlessly about with a species of dread in them. I walked close to him.
“Arthur,” I said in a low tone that Alicia would not catch. “You’re nervous. Natives?”
“They’re acting queerly, but it’s worse than that,” he said in the same low tone, glancing at Alicia to make sure her attention was elsewhere. “I’d give anything I possess to have Alicia somewhere else. I’ll tell you later. Just keep your eyes open and, if you see anything, shoot quickly.”
Evan did not seem to be worried. He was strolling leisurely along, using his rifle as a walking stick, talking casually to Alicia. His manners were very good and his voice was soft, very unlike the rasping snarl I had heard him use to his servants. Looking closely at him, I could see unmistakable signs that he had been drinking heavily of late. He seemed quite sober today, though. The contrast between his careless attitude and Arthur’s worried air was striking. We saw one or two natives on our way to the house, and they promptly hid themselves in the bush. Arthur paid no attention to them. Whatever the trouble might be, it was not the blacks that he feared, though he had said they were acting queerly.
He led me aside almost as soon as we reached the casa. I told Mboka to pile and count the loads, and sent the carriers to the quarters they would find ready for them. Evan was inside the house, installing Alicia and Mrs. Braymore in their rooms, and showing them the servants who would wait on them. Arthur came over to me with a worried frown.
“I say, Murray,” he told me nervously. “I’d ask you to take Alicia back to the coast tomorrow if I dared, but she’s here now, and it would be just as dangerous for her to go back.”
“What’s the matter?” I demanded. “It isn’t the natives. What is the matter?”
He looked about anxiously. “I shot a female gorilla up in the Kongo,” he said jerkily, “and her mate got away. He’s followed my caravan ever since, up to two weeks ago. Then I hit him with a lucky shot, but he escaped. You know they will try to kill the slayer of their mate.”
“I know,” I replied. “One of them followed me for three weeks once, until I bushwhacked and killed him.”
“I shot this female,” said Arthur quickly. “I shot her through the hip and she screamed for her mate. She couldn’t get away. He came crashing through the trees, and I fired at him. I thought he’d vanished and went up to the female. I finished her off, and then the male came for me. I shot him through the arm and he made off. All that night he moaned and shrieked around my camp. My boys were badly frightened. Next morning he dropped from a tree inside the camp, knocked the heads of two of my carriers together, and crushed in their skulls. I rushed out with a gun and he disappeared. Three days later he dropped straight out of a tree almost over my head and made for me. One of my boys was cleaning a spear, directly in the path of the gorilla. He tried to run the beast through, but it stopped long enough to break his neck and by that time I’d got a gun. The gorilla disappeared again. From that time on it haunted me. If one or two of my boys strayed from the camp, they didn’t come back. The beast has killed six of my best carriers and my gun bearer. And I never got a fair shot at it! I fired at it two weeks ago and I found blood where it had been, but no sign of the beast itself. Since then I’ve been left in peace.”
“The animal may have dropped the trail, or it may be dead,” I commented thoughtfully, “but I don’t blame you for wanting to be careful.”
“The thought of that huge ape perhaps lurking outside, perhaps about to drop down at any moment, with Alicia here,” said Arthur desperately, “it’s enough to drive a man insane. You know they carry off native women sometimes. We’ve got to protect Alicia. If it kills me, it doesn’t matter. Evan won’t believe it’s around. He’s going armed to humor me, but the beast is near; it’s somewhere about.”
I felt myself growing pale. A monstrous ape, lingering about the place with malignant intent, and Alicia laughing unconsciously inside the house, was enough to make me feel squeamish. I unconsciously tightened my grasp on my rifle. Alicia came out on the porch at that moment and beckoned to us.
“We’ll not mention this—yet,” said Arthur, as we went up.
I nodded. Alicia was all enthusiasm about the comforts Evan had managed to put into his house so far inland, and when we sat down to dinner, the bright silver and white tablecloth did give an effect of civilization. When one looked at the black faces of the servants who waited on us, and at the tattooing and nose rings that disfigured them, however, the illusion vanished at once.
I was a long time getting to sleep that night. The next morning would see me going on my way into the interior, and I would in all likelihood never see Alicia again. When I at last fell asleep, I was uneasy, and when I woke, it was in a strangely silent house. Evan Graham’s voice aroused me. He was calling me to get up. His ease of manner and absence of worry had vanished. Arthur, over his shoulder, looked even more apprehensive than before.
“Get up,” said Evan briefly. “The servants skipped out during the night. Your boys have gone, too. There’s juju business going on. And the oxen that pulled Alicia’s cart have been clubbed to death in their stalls.”
The servants had fled from the house. There was not another white man within a hundred and fifty miles. All about us were natives who might fear Evan Graham but certainly hated him, and somewhere in the woods, we had reason to believe, a monstrous ape lurked, awaiting an opportunity to wreak his bestial vengeance upon the slayer of his mate.
CHAPTER III
EVAN’S SORTIE.
We explored the house first and came upon a surprise. The native girl I had seen conducted to the house by the juju procession two months before crouched in one corner. She was too much frightened to give any coherent account of the other servants’ leaving.
They had simply gone, she said. No one had said anything to her, and she had been left behind. The oxen lay in their stalls, their heads beaten in with blows from a heavy iron bar that lay bent on the ground beside them. Even my own boys had vanished. That struck me most forcibly of all, because I had treated them well and had thought I could count on as much loyalty from them as any white man can expect from the average native.
Mboka’s defection really bothered me. I had believed well of him and was in a way genuinely fond of him. He had gone with the rest, though. The loads of the carriers lay in a huge pile. Small and precious possessions of my boys lay about them. That was perhaps the queerest part of the whole affair. In leaving secretly in the middle of the night, the servants had not stopped to steal, or even to take with them what was their own. They had apparently risen and stolen away in shivering fear.
We went back to the house from the servants’ quarters full of rather uneasy speculations. Juju was obviously at the bottom of whatever was happening, and there is no telling what may enter the head of a juju doctor. Passing through the rear rooms, Evan paused to order the solitary native girl to prepare food for us. We went on to find Alicia and Mrs. Braymore up and curious. They were on the front porch when they heard us, and Alicia came inside to smile at all of us and ask questions.
“Where are all the servants, Evan?” she demanded. “We had not a drop of water this morning. And what’s happened to the native village? On the way up here we saw lots of villages, but none of them were quite like yours.”
We looked down at the squalid huts of the village. Not a sign of life could be seen. Not one of the usually innumerable tiny fires of a native village was burning, and the single street was absolutely deserted.
The Third Murray Leinster Page 30