‘It’s a whale!’
‘It does look like a ship,’ admitted Miss Chance.
So there was something else Killigrew was no good at: drawing. Eulalia would be delighted when he told her.
Food was brought in wooden bowls, rice with a sauce of fish, cassava and sweet potatoes. It was pleasantly spicy and none of the Europeans would have had trouble finishing it, had not Miss Chance warned them to leave just a tiny morsel in their bowls. ‘In many African cultures it’s considered bad manners to eat all the food that’s put before one. It suggests that one’s host has not provided one with enough.’
The meal was washed down with some kind of palm wine served in wooden cups, and all that was lacking in Killigrew’s opinion was a cheroot to round off the meal.
A thought occurred to him. ‘Ask him what he knows about the leopard people.’
Miss Chance nodded, and at once passed on the question to Momolu. The chief’s reaction was astonishing, both angry and fearful, and he raised his voice for the first time since Killigrew had met him. ‘What’s wrong?’
Miss Chance had knitted her brows as if struggling to follow what Momolu was saying. ‘I’m not sure, but I think you’ve said something improper. Something that isn’t supposed to be discussed in front of the women and children.’
Killigrew was not satisfied, but did not want to be a bad guest by pressing the issue. ‘You’d better give him my apologies. Tell him I’m an ignorant white man, that I didn’t know any better.’
Miss Chance managed to mollify Momolu somewhat, but the chief did not recover his earlier good grace and sat there glowering. After that the atmosphere in the hut was unbearable and Killigrew made his excuses – through Miss Chance, of course – and went outside. He sat on the low clay wall which surrounded the village well, sipping his palm wine and trying to ignore the women who peered at him out of the doors of their huts, giggling. It was a beautiful evening and he gazed across the savannah, enjoying the sunset. Knowing that for now there was nothing he could do to help the slaves in Salazar’s barracoon, he tried to put them from his mind.
Certainly his surroundings were pleasant enough, and he would have enjoyed a slightly longer visit, although he knew he would soon grow bored in such a place. He had always preferred the hustle and bustle of cities to idyllic rural villages, and the noisier and more crowded, the more he preferred them.
After a while Miss Chance emerged and joined him at the well. ‘Our sleeping accommodation has been arranged,’ she explained. ‘We’ll each be sleeping in separate huts to avoid overcrowding; several people have offered us places, I’ve left it to Momolu to worry about who has the dubious honour of being our respective hosts. The chief seemed to think that I was your wife and suggested that if we wanted he could arrange for us to have a hut to ourselves, but I soon put him straight on that score.’
‘Good,’ said Killigrew, thinking: pity.
She fanned herself with her hand. ‘I can’t say I blame you for coming outside. It really was getting rather stuffy in there. I was beginning to feel quite faint.’
He smiled and said nothing. He was lost in his own thoughts, and while he was happy to listen to her prattling on, he did not feel inclined to say much himself. ‘It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?’ she ventured.
‘A beautiful night, a beautiful country,’ he told her.
‘And the people are so kind! I wonder how many Africans would get the same kind of welcome in our countries as we have in theirs?’
‘You know how your country treats Africans,’ said Killigrew.
She lowered her eyes. ‘That’s not fair. You know I don’t approve of slavery any more than you do.’
‘I’m sorry. I just can’t help thinking that the only way we’re going to stop the slave trade for good is to abolish slavery in the Americas.’
‘You’re right, of course. Perhaps instead of dedicating my life to converting these people to Christianity I should instead try to convert my own countrymen. These people seem less in need of moral guidance than we Americans do.’
Killigrew shrugged. ‘You can’t blame yourself for being American. People are people. Some are good, some are bad. It’s got nothing to do with where they were born or what colour their skin is. The one thing I’ve noticed, from Falmouth to Nanking, is that nearly every culture seems to arrive independently at some system of morals which allows them to live in peace with one another. The real problems only start when those cultures clash head to head.’
‘You’re certainly right there. You know, I asked Chief Momolu what the names of the gods were in his religion. The books I’ve read about Africa always say that the natives are simply heathens, so I’d always assumed they were pantheists. It turns out the Mende have only one God, the same as Christians and Moslems.’
‘There you are, then. God is God in any language.’
She pressed an arm to her forehead. ‘Oh! This heat!’
Killigrew frowned. It did not seem that hot to him, and he wondered if he had a chill. He glanced across to where Molineaux was talking to Momolu’s daughter. ‘He’s not going to get us in trouble, is he?’ he asked Miss Chance.
‘The chief seemed to be quite pleased at Mr Molineaux’s evident interest in Abena.’
‘In what?’
‘Abena. That’s her name. Seems he wants to marry her off.’
‘To a British sailor? You must be joking!’
‘The chief seems to think Mr Molineaux has come a long way in the world. He thinks that Mr Molineaux has come to Africa to settle in the land of his ancestors.’
‘I doubt it. I’ve known Englishmen – white Englishmen, I mean – who were less proud of their British heritage than Molineaux seems to be. I don’t know him that well, but he doesn’t seem to be the kind who’d want to give up all the luxuries of European life to live in Africa.’
‘You might be wrong about him.’
‘I might be, but I don’t think so. I’ve known plenty of seamen his age, miss, and apart from the colour of his skin he’s no different from the rest of them. At least, no different than they are from each other.’
‘Supposing he did want to settle down in Africa? Would you stop him?’
‘He’s a rating of the Royal Navy. Settling down here would be desertion,’ Killigrew said firmly, but then smiled. ‘Of course, since I’m not currently a commissioned officer of the navy, I’m not under any obligation to try to stop him from deserting. Just so long as he doesn’t stop me from getting to Monrovia.’
‘And what then?’
‘I’ll get passage to Freetown, make a report to the senior naval officer present, and press for an expedition to the Owodunni Barracoon to see that vile place wiped off the face of the earth.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’ A look of panic suddenly appeared on her face and she bit her lip. ‘You… you’ll have to excuse me for a moment.’ She hurried back towards the huts and accosted one of the women. The woman nodded and led her away, smiling. Gone to pump ship, thought Killigrew with a smile.
Killigrew spent the night on a rush mat in Momolu’s hut. The hut was more than big enough for the chief, his wife and daughter, and their guest. Miss Chance was the guest of Ndawa and his wife, while Molineaux was put up in the hut of one of the other village headmen. The African night was cooler than the day – to the extent that the villagers put on long, lightweight gowns of fine country cloth – but it did not trouble Killigrew. In spite of all his worries, he had no difficulty getting to sleep.
He was awoken in the small hours of the morning and found Ndawa shaking him by the shoulders. The African said something in Mande, the language of the Mende, his face concerned but his words unintelligible to Killigrew.
‘What is it? What’s wrong? It’s no good, I don’t understand. You’ll have to get Miss Chance. Me no hear, you fetchee Missy Chance for to jam heads talkee Mande,’ he said at last, lapsing into the pidgin English of the coast in frustration.
But Ndawa no more understo
od that than Killigrew understood Mande. He spoke again, and this time Killigrew caught Miss Chance’s name amongst all the unfamiliar words. A trickle of cold sweat ran down his spine. Perhaps the reason Ndawa had not brought Miss Chance was because he could not bring her. Perhaps the problem had something to do with her.
A small oil lamp, such as the Arabs used, provided light in Ndawa’s hut, and by its warm glow Killigrew could see that Miss Chance looked ghastly. Her face was ashen and beaded with sweat, and while Ndawa’s wife had covered her with blankets and the night was still warm, she was shivering uncontrollably and her teeth chattered. Ndawa’s wife now knelt beside her, mopping her brow with a damp cloth.
Ndawa spoke some more. Killigrew did not understand the words, but the meaning was plain to see. Miss Chance was seriously ill.
He knelt down beside her. ‘Miss Chance?’
‘Mr Killigrew?’ she reached feebly for his hand and he took it at once, squeezing it affectionately. ‘I think it might have been something I ate.’
‘It’s just a fever,’ he told her. ‘It’ll pass.’
She smiled, but he could see in her eyes that she knew he was lying.
‘Ask them if they’ve got any cinchona bark,’ he said.
‘I don’t know how to say that in Mande. Will it help?’
‘I’ve heard it can often help in cases like this,’ he said. ‘Try Jesuit’s powder.’
She spoke to Ndawa’s wife, and Killigrew recognised the words ‘cinchona’ and ‘Jesuits’, but neither seemed to elicit any understanding from the woman. ‘She says they’ve already sent for the witch doctor, but he lives in a village a day’s journey from here so it will be two days before he gets here.’
Killigrew did not argue. It was an African sickness, so perhaps it needed an African cure. If she had been in Europe a doctor would probably have prescribed leeches, and nothing an African witch doctor could prescribe would be much worse than that, in Killigrew’s opinion. ‘Just hang on. You’ll be all right.’
Ndawa’s wife said something to her husband, and he gently took Killigrew by the arm, lifted him to his feet and dragged him away. Probably telling him that she needed rest, which Killigrew agreed with.
As he emerged from the hut Molineaux arrived with a small boy. ‘What’s wrong?’
Killigrew led him some distance away from the hut, so there was no danger of Miss Chance hearing them speak. ‘It’s Miss Chance. She’s contracted yellow fever.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ groaned Molineaux. ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she? I mean, people get yellow fever and survive, don’t they?’
‘Sometimes. If they’re strong.’
There was no question of Killigrew leaving the village while Miss Chance was too ill to be moved. He spent the rest of the day moping around, worrying. Without her to translate there was no one he could speak to but Molineaux, and he felt strangely excluded. The people of the village were clearly sympathetic, but the language barrier was all but insurmountable.
He felt so impotent. He wanted to do something for Miss Chance, but the only thing he could think of was going to Monrovia to see if any apothecaries there could sell him some cinchona bark. That was three days’ journey away, and there was no guarantee that there would be any cinchona when he got there, or that she would still be alive when he got back six days later. But at least he would be doing something.
Her condition deteriorated during the course of the day, and that night Killigrew slept fitfully.
The witch doctor arrived late the next morning by dint of travelling all through the night. If Killigrew had expected some outlandishly dressed man with a demonic homed mask, he was disappointed: the doctor dressed little different from any of the other Mende, except for the bag of charms and talismans he carried.
Rather more remarkable was the witch doctor’s travelling companion, an individual Killigrew immediately recognised as a member of the Kru race, a people renowned throughout the world as expert sailors and equally skilled linguists, these talents making their services as pilots, casual labourers, interpreters and boatmen much in demand from European vessels which operated along the Guinea Coast. If most of the Krumen Killigrew had met spoke pidgin rather than English proper, it was because they had been given the impression that pidgin was the only language British sailors spoke and understood.
The witch doctor’s companion was recognisable as a Kruman from the tribal markings on his face, a line of blue cuts from his forehead to the tip of his nose and arrows on his temples, and the sharpened teeth he revealed whenever he grinned, which, like most Krumen, he seemed to do a great deal. He wore a white top hat, a size too large for him so that it rested on his ears rather than the top of his head, a white cravat, and a white-and-pink chequered loin cloth; he was otherwise quite naked but for an ivory bracelet and arm- and ankle-bands of leopards’ teeth and cowrie shells threaded on string. He carried a notched fighting-stick over one shoulder as a young Englishman might carry a cricket bat as he sauntered to the crease.
‘Speakee English?’ this apparition enquired of Killigrew, who nodded. ‘Me Tip-Top, me speakee man.’ Killigrew guessed that like most Africans, Tip-Top had two names, a real name and the name given to him by white sailors who were too lazy to try to remember African names. The Kru in particular seemed to revel in the ridiculous names with which white sailors christened them, in a way which suggested to Killigrew that somehow they were having the last laugh on the white men who sought to mock them, as if it was hilarious that these ignorant foreigners could not cope with Kru names, but the least the Kru could do was to tolerate their stupidity. ‘You speakee what bad for white puss, Tip-Top speakee medicine feller.’
Killigrew related Miss Chance’s symptoms to Tip-Top, who relayed them to the witch doctor. ‘Me thinkee yellow jack,’ concluded Killigrew. ‘Savvy yellow jack?’
Tip-Top nodded, his top hat jiggling on his head. ‘Medicine feller hear, him savvy yellow jack good. White feller’s sickness. White puss live, doan’ live, who savvy, can?’ He went into Ndawa’s hut with the witch doctor, who did not look optimistic. Killigrew realised it was too much to hope that the doctor would know a cure. He stood outside the hut and waited, pouring himself his third cup of palm wine of the morning.
Molineaux approached. He had ‘gone native’ – sensibly, considering the heat of the day – and was wearing only his undershorts. Killigrew wiped sweat from his own brow and held out the gourd to him. ‘Drink?’
‘It’s a little early in the day for me,’ said Molineaux, eyeing the gourd dubiously. ‘Sun not over the foreyard, and all that. Are you sure you haven’t had enough?’
‘Yes.’ Killigrew drained his cup in one draught, and refilled it. ‘This is my fault. I should have listened to you. This would never have happened if we’d stayed on the coast.’
‘If we’d stayed on the coast we’d’ve been nabbed by Salazar’s patrols. You can’t blame yourself.’
‘Then who else am I going to blame?’ Killigrew demanded savagely.
They heard shouting from the far end of the village, and looked up in time to see a boy running between the huts, his feet muddy from the rice fields where he had been working. He was shouting something.
‘What’s the palaver, d’you think?’ asked Molineaux.
‘I don’t know, but I’ve got a bad feeling,’ said Killigrew, throwing away his cup and gourd.
The two of them ran towards the entrance of the village in time to see a large group of strangers approaching, some of them mounted on small but sturdy horses, the rest following on foot. Killigrew still had his pocket telescope on him and he took it out to study these new arrivals more closely.
They were warriors, bearing muskets and spears and wearing an odd mixture of African clothing and European uniforms, but all of them wore leopard skins in one form or another. Focusing on the lead horseman, Killigrew at once recognised Prince Khari.
‘Slavers!’ he roared to the villagers. ‘Slavers!’
They did not
need to be told. Some of them ran to fetch their spears and bows, others readied the farming implements they held to use them as weapons. Killigrew wished he had a pistol or a cutlass, anything he could use as a weapon. The villagers gathered at the entrance to the village and formed a defensive line. They at once began to loose their bows, sending their long arrows whipping through the air towards the leopard men.
The horsemen reined in and the men on foot spread out on either side of them, bringing their muskets up to their shoulders. Prince Khari bellowed an order and the muskets crackled, a cloud of pale grey smoke rolling across in front of each fusillade as the villagers fell dead and wounded on all sides. As unreliable a weapon as the musket was, it had nonetheless achieved and maintained its place in the soldier’s armoury for hundreds of years thanks to its ability to wreak havoc amongst closely packed bodies of men.
Those villagers who survived the initial onslaught continued shooting their bows, but the effect was negligible. The horsemen goaded their horses on, hoofs pounding the earth, and levelled their spears while the musketeers dropped their weapons and charged forwards with swords and war-clubs. A moment later the two sides slammed into one another.
Killigrew had found himself caught in mêlées before, and he did not much care for them. There was too much going on: no opportunity for skill or intelligence to keep a man alive. All one could do was lash out at the bodies that pressed close around one, and hope that one only hit the enemy. A man could be killed as easily by a blow aimed at another as by a blow aimed at himself, a blow from a friend as from an enemy. A man who walked away after such skirmish might simply be lucky, rather than a good fighter.
And that was just a fight between Europeans, where the colour of a man’s coat might at least give you some indication as to where you should direct your blows. Here the best Killigrew could do was to lash out at any leopard skins he saw. Mêlées were confused enough at the best of times, but at least in the battles he had known in Syria and China he had caught the occasional command shouted in English or French to guide him. Here, where all commands were given in unknown tongues, he was completely lost. The only thing he could judge was that whichever way he turned, the leopard men seemed to be gaining the upper hand.
Killigrew of the Royal Navy Page 33