The Adventure Megapack
Page 27
I had no answer. In silence we sat and stared out across the tumbling ruins. Suddenly Macklin startled me with a question.
“Staying in Sbeïtla tonight? If you are, you might see something. It’s a feast night with a full moon, and there’s going to be a sacrificial search.”
I was intrigued. “Why a night search?” I asked.
“Well, Africa breeds a desire to do most things at night,” he answered. “Possibly the sun is too damn’ watchful. Dances, witch-hunting, sacrifices, smellings-out, and all the hocus-pocus of the continent is carried on at night. Queer. You never see anything out of the way during the daytime, but when the night comes down, all the deviltry of the world starts. If you’re staying on, you can have a glimpse of a moonlight search after a sacrifice.”
“Of what?” I questioned.
“Black goat or something,” he said, laughing. “They sprinkle the blood, and if the blood strikes a spot where gold is buried, it sort of glows like fire. Where are you sleeping? Café de la Gare? I’ll call for you about nine.”
* * * *
Moons are no bigger in Africa than in the other continents, but one thinks so. African moons have so much desert space to shine on that they look bigger. And whiter. It was under a moon of this kind that John Macklin led me back to the ruins. With him was a Negro from the south, a Buzu. A queer, laughing type—a sort of black Pan who leaped from one fallen stone to another, making grimaces and gestures at his shadow, as black as himself on the barren ground.
We reached a point above the main aqueduct, and there we crouched behind a mass of fallen pillars. Macklin whispered to me. The natives would come from a gorge to the north of the ruins and move down to the arches of the aqueduct.
Presently the Negro touched my arm with a finger and pointed. For a moment I saw only the inky shadow made by the party; their white garments blending with the sky and landscape. The compact mass of moving figures was hardly visible, but the pool of intense black that moved around them as they surged forward was plain to the eye.
They moved silently. Not a sound. A queer hurrying stride, the leaders straining toward the entrance to the aqueduct. There were two score, at least.
Macklin whispered to me. “We mustn’t move till they go underground,” he said, “They’d bolt if they saw us.”
The line had lengthened when the leaders reached the stone arches. Eager were the leaders. They dived into the vault, and the swirling human tail slid in, serpent-like, behind them. The landscape was empty.
Macklin pulled me to my feet. The Buzu was scampering toward the dark opening that had swallowed the searchers. Now from the vault came a sort of nasal chant, thin and piercing. It went out over the deserted landscape, a queer probing stiletto of sound, unnerving and disagreeable.
My courage failed me at the black entrance of the aqueduct. Way back in the thick, century-old darkness were pinpoints of yellow light. The nasal chant was louder now.
“Come on!” cried Macklin. “They’ll make the sacrifice soon.”
“I’m stopping here,” I muttered.
“But you won’t see anything!” he protested.
“I’ll see enough,” I said.
Macklin laughed softly and ran ahead on the tracks of the Buzu. I was left alone at the opening. I was, I must confess, too scared to follow him. The whole business seemed evil. There was something foul, something satanic about the affair; I had seen nothing to make me afraid, but I sensed something diabolic.
Head thrust forward, I saw the lights flare up so that the fallen masses of stone and the arched roof were visible at odd moments. Skinny arms were thrust upward. Tattered garments were tossed to and fro in the torchlight. The nasal, wasplike chant became unbearable.
It ceased at the moment when I turned with the notion of running out; ceased with a frightening suddenness. It was then I heard the sound which I have never been able to classify.
It stays with me. Puzzling, mystifying, disturbing. Cry, scream, screech, bleat? I cannot say. Human or animal? I don’t know. But it has made a record of its own upon the complicated cells of my brain. At any moment I can start that disk. I hear it distinctly, and with the resurrected cry comes the memory picture of the uplifted arms, the sputtering torches, the wild scurrying of treasure-hunters who followed the sound.
It was an hour before Macklin returned, the Buzu running on his heels. Together we hurried up the slope and hid behind the fallen columns till the outpouring natives moved back across the sand to disappear in the gorge.
“Nothing doing,” said Macklin. “The thing was a failure. The blood didn’t glow.”
“Whose blood?” I questioned.
“Why, the blood of the black goat.”
The Buzu chuckled and started to leap from stone to stone as we made our way back to the village.
Well, whether it was a goat or not that helped out that performance in the aqueduct, I was the “goat,” the following day.
Macklin came to the little railway station to say good-by to me. He chatted quietly during the short halt of the train from Tozeur; then, as it was pulling out, he thrust a small package into my hands. “Deliver that at Sousse!” he cried. “Don’t fail me! Please!”
I shouted protests. I tried to push the little packet back into his hands. He refused to accept it. The train gathered speed. He stood on the platform making motions to me, imploring motions.
He had tricked me. I dropped back on the seat. Macklin had picked me as a simple fool he could use to transport something he was afraid to send by post!
I guessed, of course, that the packet contained a lump of gold that might be seized as contraband by the authorities. They might pounce on me if they had reason to suspect Macklin and had glimpsed him pushing the packet into my hands! Possibly they had noted the clumsy transfer!
Sweating profusely, I read the address. “Madame Macklin, Rue El Keha-oui, next door to the Caré Maure, El Koubba, Sousse.”
Softly I cursed Macklin. I am careful when wandering to observe closely the laws of the country in which I am voyaging. Now, I’d become an accomplice of a man who was breaking the law by searching clandestinely in the Roman ruins, and furthermore, refusing to report to the authorities the treasure that he had found!
I realized then that Macklin had nursed me along so that he might use me as a messenger. He had found out my name, my usual address, the magazines I contributed to, everything that had a bearing on my honesty, and he had taken a chance. Angrily I told myself that he had summed me up as a milksop who, lacking the courage to keep the packet, would, on the contrary, rush hotfoot to deliver it the moment I reached Sousse.
“I hope he breaks his neck!” I growled, as the train rushed north toward Sousse.
The Rue El Kehaoui is not an elegant street. It adjoins the souks, and it is the meeting place of a thousand objectionable odors. I wondered if Madame Macklin had chosen the address so that she might be close to the sly dealers who would purchase anything her husband sent her through the medium of fools like myself. I was still angry with Macklin, but frightfully desirous of getting rid of the packet.
I found El Koubba, made inquiries at the shuttered house next door. I was told that Madame Macklin occupied an apartment in the rear. I went through a dark passage and knocked at the door.
For some reason or other I had, when reading the address on the packet, pictured an American woman. Macklin had not spoken of his wife during the hours I spent with him at Sbeïtla, and I had no knowledge that he was married till the packet was thrust into my hands. Now the lady who opened the door to my knock startled me.
She was tall and slight, with a figure whose suppleness was strangely evident in repose. Her body in its slightest movement showed a serpentlike pliancy. It was a little startling. The face was remarkable too. It was foxlike, framed in close-pressing plaits of blue-black hair. Nose and mouth were well shaped, the latter resembling a red butterfly at rest on the extremely pale skin; but it was the enormous eyes that startled me.
I muttered an introduction. Said I had met her husband at Sbeïtla, and he had given me a commission. I put the packet into her hand, a slim, graceful hand.
In a husky voice she bade me enter. I obeyed. Now that I had got rid of the packet, curiosity returned to me. This Madame Macklin was something out of the way. Extremely so.
The shutters were closed to keep out the glaring sun; so for a moment my eyes found it difficult to take in the furnishings. I stumbled over the inevitable tambour-cushions upon the floor, clutched the side of a chair and seated myself.
Gradually things took shape. A low divan, native rugs, a few chairs. Then I saw the tanned bull’s hide.
It was tacked to the wall, stretched horizontally; and as I gazed at it in wonder, it sort of revealed itself. Quietly, like a slow-born revelation, I realized what it was. Upon the tanned inner side was a map! A fascinating map of North Africa!
The map brought me to my feet. Mouth open, I stared at it. I heard my own croaking demand to look at it closer. She must have made a reply in the affirmative, but I didn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear it. The power of all my senses had gone to my eyes.
The background of that map was rose-madder. The routes were purple—a glowing Tyrian purple; surely, judging from its intensity, made from the shellfish, pur pura murex, which yielded in ancient days the priceless dye. The cities were tinted green, prophet’s green, and the wastes between were made wonderful with drawings of animals no one had ever seen. And it was centuries old. It was Arabic work. Crouched before it, devouring the indications of age, I came to the conclusion that it was drawn in Bagdad sometime in the Fourteenth Century!
That it was not earlier was proved in a way by the broad purple line that marked the route of that great Arab wanderer Ibn Batuta, who had traveled as far as Timbuctoo in 1352-1353. And the manner in which that line had been put in, blotting out several imaginary animals, proved that the news of Batuta’s trip had come to the map-maker while he was at work on the magic hide. For the line was his line, purple and finely drawn.
Wow, what a map! There was the Mediterranean under its Arabic name. Bahr er Rûm, the country of the Mamelukes, of the Barbarians, of the Caliphs! The Isle of Djerba, the land of the Lotus-eaters! The pays des Lotophages of Flaubert!
Purple routes to dead cities! Routes beaten by the sandals of Romans, Arabs, Berbers, Moors, Garamantes, Phoenicians and scores of other tribes that had braved the unknown!
The unknown and the dangers. The desert, the thirst, the animals that the imaginative map-maker had tried to show! In those empty places he had cleverly drawn heraldic beasts that brought to my mind Swift’s satiric verse:
Geographers, in Afric’s maps,
With savage pictures filled their gaps,
And o’er unhabitable downs
Placed elephants for want of towns.
The husky voice of the woman brought me back from the dreamland into which the hide of the bull had taken me. She was telling me it had been in the possession of her family for countless years.
The father, with the wonder hide as his guide, had explored many ruins, dying finally at Tébessa-Khalia—old Tébessa—from the paludienne fever which he had contracted in the ruins. Later I found that the father was a Frenchman, the mother a Greek.
“The skin of the ox drove my father,” she said softly.
“It would drive an army!” I cried. “It is a dream map.”
She told me then that the thing had been the means of bringing Macklin and herself together. Someone had told Macklin about the pelt of fantasy. He had begged to see it. He and its owner were drawn together.
Then I knew what Macklin had meant when he said: “I get tips.” The woman explained. “Sometimes I stare at the map for hours,” she whispered, “and I find that my thoughts are drawn to one particular spot. I tell all this to John, and he visits the place. Often he has found valuable things at those spots which have attracted me. Coins and jewelry.”
I was a little beside myself as I stood staring at the Hide of Bagdad. Some wise writer has written that life’s best gift is the ability to dream of a better life. That may be so; but to me, at that moment, life’s best gift would be the possession of that hide.
I had seen a hundred ancient maps. A thousand. The study of cartography has been a passion. But there was no papyrus in any museum of the world that had the power to stir me like this bull’s hide. It had the quality of the magic carpet of Prince Housain. On it one floated over the world.
Reverently I touched it. I peered at the network of finely-drawn lines intersecting each other at right angles. The isbas, and zams that told of the altitude of the Pole Star, of the height of the Calves of the Little Bear and the Barrow of the Great Bear above the horizon. Ah, me! How slowly we have crept toward knowledge!
* * * *
There are times when physical movements are not recorded. I have an impression that the woman pushed me away from the map. I don’t know. I think she put my hat into my hand and gently directed me to the door. Hours later when I really came to my proper senses, I found that I had taken a room in the Hôtel du Sahel on the Place Colonel Vincent.
I couldn’t leave Sousse. Not without the hide. Would Madame Macklin sell it? Imagination pictured it, a bulky roll beneath my arm. I would, I told myself, carry it with me wherever I went. On days when I was sad and depressed, I would unroll it on the floors of cheap hotel rooms, and sprawling beside it, follow with my finger those lines of Tyrian purple that led to the cities cunningly tinted with prophet’s green.
I had dreams of exhibiting it on Fifth Avenue. I shut my eyes and saw it stretched in a large window somewhere close to Forty-second Street, with a milling crowd on the sidewalk “oh-ing” and “ah-ing” as they got glimpses of it. Forgetting everything as they stared! For there was, I knew, no talisman, charm, or potion that possessed the magic of the hide. Not one.
I counted my scanty funds. I would make the woman an offer. Who could tell? She might part with it.
* * * *
I went the following morning to the Rue El Kehaoui. Excitedly I rapped at the door. More like a pythoness than ever was the woman. She was wrapped in a pagne of orange-colored silk; her blue-black hair was unplaited, falling on her shoulders.
I begged another glance at the map. A little startled, so I thought, she admitted me. With the stiff gait of a sleepwalker I stepped across the room.
Now a shutter was open, and the hide exulted in the light. The beasts that surely were seen in visions by the cartographer became alive. The green-tinted cities beckoned to me, and the routes glowed, so I thought, with the blood from the sandaled feet of warriors who had tramped them.…
I heard myself making an offer. A ridiculous offer. The woman received it with a smile. “I couldn’t sell it,” she murmured.
I doubled the sum. She shook her head. Then, seeing that I was unduly excited, she became slightly confidential, in the manner that women have of ridding themselves of unwelcome male visitors.
At the moment, so she said, she was in one of those staring moods that she had spoken of at my first visit. It would last for hours, perhaps days. It concerned a spot where great treasure might be found. When the location became plain to her, she would telegraph Macklin. Of course she could not be disturbed at the moment with offers for the hide. That was unthinkable. Once again she eased me out of the apartment.
A frightful thing is covetousness. It is the one great and deadly sin because it embodies all the other sins. It is their origin.…
I walked around Sousse, seeing nothing but the Hide of Bagdad. I wondered why a pelt ha
d been chosen for the map. Was there a queer magic in the bull’s hide before the cartographer commenced his design? Possibly my mind was a little unhinged. Sousse itself, being the ancient Carthaginian town of Hadrumetum, has an atmosphere conducive to mental dislocation.
It might, I thought, have been the pelt of a bull that was not of this world! There are a thousand legends regarding bulls. I recalled them: Zeus as a white bull taking Europa! The Minotaur; the bull-cult of Minos!
Sitting in the shade of the grand mosque of Ksar Er Ribat, I remembered the epic of Gilgamesh and the divine bull who was sent to wage a contest on behalf of the goddess. That bull was slain in Babylon. He must have had a magic hide! And there was the sacred bull of Memphis, the most important of all the sacred animals of Egypt. The Memphis bull had a palace of his own and was buried in state when he died. Perhaps the hide of the original Apis, the black bull of Memphis, or his successor bull, had been stripped and taken to Bagdad!
Who could say? Yes, looking back now on those hot hours in Sousse, I think I was a long way off my mental base. But then I couldn’t believe that an artist could make such a map without a magic canvas. And even now, I am not convinced. If it pleases you who read this story to think I am mad, your thoughts are excused by the fact that you did not see that hide.… And you never will.
That evening I thought of ways and means of raising money so that I could make a better offer to the woman. I would borrow small sums from friends; I would pledge my work for a year ahead. Into my mind came a startling thought, possibly thrust forward by an Irish rapparee ancestor. “If she won’t sell the hide,” whispered the spirit of the long-dead kinsman, “why not steal it? In the days of ‘Cairbre of the Cat’s Head,’ the Dwyers took what they wanted.”