Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Old as the moonlit silences, to-night’s loves are the same

  As when for ivory from far, and cloves and gems of Zanzibar

  King Solomon’s men came.

  “Sinful and still the same roofs lie that knew da Gama’s heel,

  Those beams that light these sleepy waves looked on when

  men threw murdered slaves

  To make the sharks a meal.

  And I think that beam on the silvered swell

  That spreads, and splashes, and gleams, and dips,

  That has shone on the cruel and brave as well,

  On the trail o’ the slaves and the ivory ships,

  Is the lane down which the memories run

  Of all that’s wild beneath the sun.”

  The concertina wailed into a sort of minor dirge and ceased. Fred fastened the catch, and put the instrument away.

  “Why don’t you applaud?” he asked.

  “Oh, bravo, bravo!” said Will and I together.

  Monty looked hard at both of us.

  “Strange!” he remarked. “You’re both distracted, and you’ve each got a slight cut over the jugular!”

  “Been trying out razors,” said Yerkes.

  “Um-m-m!” remarked Monty. “Well — I’m glad it’s no worse. How about bed, eh? Better lock your door — that lady up-stairs is what the Germans call gefaehrlich!* Goo’night!”

  —— —— — * Gefaehrlich, dangerous. —— —— —

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE NJO HAPA SONG

  Tongues! Oh, music of eastern tongues, harmonied murmur

  of streets ahum!

  Trade! Oh, frasila weights of clove — ivory — copra — copal

  gum —

  Rubber — vanilla and tortoise-shell! The methods change.

  The captains come.

  I was old when the clamor o’ Babel’s end

  (All seas were chartless then!)

  Drove forth the brood, and Solitude

  Was the newest quest of men.

  I lay like a gem in a silken sea

  Unseen, uncoveted, unguessed

  Till scented winds that waft afar

  Bore word o’ the warm delights there are

  Where ground-swells sing by Zanzibar

  Long rhapsodies of rest.

  Wild, oh wilder than winter blasts my wet skies shriek when

  the winds are freed.

  Mild, oh milder than virgin mirth is the laugh o’ the reefs

  where sea-birds feed,

  Screaming and skirling and down again. (Though the sea-birds

  warn do captains heed?)

  There is no public landing wharf at Zanzibar. Passengers have to submit their persons into the arms of loud-lunged Swahili longshoremen, who recognize one sole and only point of honor: neither passenger nor luggage shall be dropped into the surf.

  Their invariable habit, the instant the view-halloa is raised, is to scamper headlong, pounce on the victim and pull him apart (or so it feels) until fortune, superior strength, or some such element decides the point; and then more often than not it is the victim’s fate to be carried between two men, each hold of a thigh, each determined to get ashore or to the boat first, and each grimly resolved not to let go until three times the proper fee shall have been paid. Of only these two things let the passenger assure himself — fight how he may, he will neither escape their clutches nor get wet. Rather they will hold him upside-down until the contents of his pockets fall into the surf. Dry on the beach or into the boat they will dump him. And whatever he shall pay them will surely be insufficient.

  But we had a privy councilor of England of our party, and favors were shown us that never fall to the lot of ordinary travelers. Opposite the Sultan’s palace is the Sultan’s private wharf, so royal and private that it is a prison offense to trespass on it without written permission. Because of his official call at the Residency, and of his card left on the Sultan, wires had been pulled, and a pompous individual whose black face sweated greasily, and whose palm itched for unearned increment, called on Monty very shortly after breakfast with intimation that the wharf had been placed at our disposal, since His Highness the Sultan desired to do us honor.

  So when the B. I. steamer dropped anchor in the great roadstead shortly after noon we were taken to the wharf by one of the Sultan’s household — a very civil-spoken Arab gentleman — and three English officers met us there who made a fuss over Monty and were at pains to be agreeable to the rest of us. While we stood chatting and waiting for the boat that should row us and belongings the mile-and-a-half or so to the steamer, I saw something that made me start. Fred gazed presently in the same direction.

  “Johnson is number one!” he said, as if checking off my mental processes. He meant Hassan. “Number two is Georges Coutlass, our friend the Greek. Number three is — am I drunk this early in the day? — what do you see? — doesn’t she look to you like? — by the big blind god of men’s mistakes it’s — Monty! Didums, you deaf idiot, look! See!”

  At that everybody naturally looked the same way. Everybody nodded. Coutlass the Greek, and Hassan, reputed nephew of Tippoo Tib, were headed in one boat toward the steamer, the worse for the handling, but right side up and no angrier than the usual passenger. Following them was another boat containing a motley assortment of Arabs and part-Arabs, who might, or might not be associated with them.

  On the beach still, surrounded yet by a swarm of longshoremen who yelled and fought, Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon and her Syrian maid stood at bay. Her two Swahili men-servants were overwhelmed and already being carried to a boat. Her luggage was being borne helter-skelter after them, and another boat waited for her just beyond the belt of surf, the rowers standing up to yell encouragement at the sweating pack that dared not close in on its victims. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon appeared to have no other weapon than a parasol, but she had plainly the upper hand.

  “She has a way with her with natives,” said the senior officer present.

  “It’s a pity,” said Monty. “I mean, one scarcely likes to use this wharf and watch that.”

  “Quite so. Yet we daren’t accord her official recognition. She’d be certain to make capital out of it. We’re awfully glad she’s going. The Residency atmosphere is one huge sigh of relief. We would like to speed the parting guest, but it mayn’t be done. However, you’ll know there are others not so particular. I imagine her friends are late for the appointment.”

  “Where’s she going?” asked Monty.

  “British East Africa.”

  “Mombasa?”

  “And then on. She has drafts on a German merchant in Nairobi.”

  From that moment until we were safely in our quarters on the steamer Monty’s attitude became one of rigid indifference toward her or anything to do with her. The British officers went out to the steamer with us, but all the way Monty only talked of the climate, trade conditions, and the other subjects to which polite conversation of Africa’s east coast is limited. Fred kept nudging him, but Monty took no notice. Yerkes whispered to Fred. Then I heard Fred whisper to Monty in one of those raucous asides that he perfectly well knows can be heard by everybody.

  “Why don’t you ask ’em about her, you ass?”

  But Monty refused to rise. He talked of the bowed and ancient slaves of Zanzibar, who refused in those days to be set free and afforded prolific ground for attack on British public morals by people whose business it is to abuse England for her peccadillos and forget her virtues.*

  —— —— —— — * In 1914 there were still thousands of slaves in German East, although the German press and public were ever loudest in their condemnation of British conditions. —— —— —— —

  We reached the ship, and were watching our piles of luggage arrive up the accommodation ladder when the solution of Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon’s problem appeared. She arrived alongside in the official boat of the German consulate, a German officer in white uniform on either hand, and the German ensign at the
stern.

  “Pretty fair impudence, paying official honors to our undesirables, yet

  I don’t see what we can do,” said the senior from the Residency.

  Yerkes drew me aside.

  “Did you ever see anything more stupidly British?” he demanded.

  “It’s as obvious as the nose on your face that she’s up to some game.

  It’s as plain as twice two that the Germans are backing her whether the

  British like it or not. Look at those two Heinies now!”

  We faced about and watched them. After bowing Lady Waldon to her cabin, they approached our party with brazen claim to recognition — and received it. They were met, and spoken to apparently as cordially as if their friendship had been indisputable.

  “Did you ever see anything to beat it? Why not kick ’em into the sea? Either that woman’s a crook or she isn’t. If she isn’t, then the British have treated her shamefully, turning their backs on her. But we know she is a crook! And so do they. The Germans know it, too, and they’re flaunting her under official British noses! They’re using her to start something the British won’t like, and the British know it! Yet she’s going to be allowed to travel to British territory on a British ship, and the Heinies are shaken hands with! If you complained to Monty I bet he’d say, ‘Don’t talk fight unless you mean fight!’”

  “Monty might also add, ‘Don’t talk-fight!’” said I.

  “Oh, rot!” Will answered. “British individuals may bridle a bit, but their government’ll shut its eyes until too late, whatever happens! You mark my words!”

  We strolled back toward our party in great discontent, I as much as he, never supposing there was another country in the world that could so deliberately shut its eyes to dog’s work until absolutely forced to interfere, by a hair not quite too late.

  Coutlass and Hassan traveled second-class — the Arab and half-Arab contingent third — and none of them troubled us, at present, except that Will swore at sight of Coutlass swaggering as if the ship and her contents were all his.

  “To hear him brag you’d believe the British government afraid of him!” he grumbled.

  But an immediate problem drove Coutlass out of mind. Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon had been given a cabin in line with ours, at the end of our corridor. Her maid, and her two Swahili servants were obliged to pass our doors to get to her cabin at all. As nearly all ships’ cabins on those hot routes do, ours intercommunicated by a metal grill for ventilating purposes, and a word spoken in one cabin above a whisper could be heard in the next.

  Fred was the first to realize conditions. He opened his door in his usual abrupt way to visit Monty’s cabin and almost fell over the Syrian maid, her eye at Monty’s key-hole — a little too early in the game to pass for sound judgment, as Fred was at pains to assure her.

  The alarm being given, we locked our cabin doors, repaired to the smoking-room, and ordered drinks at a center table where no eavesdropper could overhear.

  “It’s one of two things,” said Monty. He had his folding board out, and we did not doubt he would play chess from there to London. “Either they know exactly where that ivory is, or they haven’t the slightest idea.”

  “My, but you’re wise!” said Will.

  Monty ignored him. “They suspect us of knowing. They mean to prevent our getting any of it. If they do know, they’ve some reason of their own for not getting it themselves at present. If they don’t know, they suspect we know and intend to claim what we find.”

  “How should they think we know?” objected Will. “The first we ever heard of the stuff was in the lazaretto in Zanzibar.”

  “True. Juma told us. Juma probably told them that we told him. Natives often put the cart before the horse without the slightest intention of lying.”

  “All the same, why should they believe him?”

  “Why not? Zanzibar’s agog with the story — after all these years. The ivory must have been buried more than a quarter of a century ago. Some one’s been stirring the mud. We arrive, unexpectedly from nowhere, ask questions about the ivory, make plans for British East Africa — and there you are! The people who were merely determined to get the stuff jump to the false conclusion that we really know where it is.’’

  “Q. E. D.!” said Fred, finishing his drink.

  “Not at all,” said Monty. “There are two things yet to be demonstrated. They’re true, but not proven. The German government is after the stuff. And the German government has very special reasons for secrecy and tricks.”

  “We four against the German government looks like longish odds,” said

  I.

  “Remains to be seen,” said Monty. “If the German government’s very special reasons were legal or righteous they’d be announced with a fanfare of trumpets.”

  “Where’s all this leading us?” demanded Fred.

  “To a slight change of plan,” said Monty.

  “Thank the lord! That means you don’t go to Brussels — stay with us!”

  “Nothing of the sort, Fred. But you three keep together. They’re going to watch you. You watch them. Watch Schillingschen particularly closely, if you find him. The closer they watch you, the more likely they are to lose sight of me. I’ll take care to have several red herrings drawn across my trail after I reach London. Perhaps I’ll return down the west coast and travel up the Congo River. At any rate, when I do come, and whichever way I come, I’ll have everything legal, in writing. Let your game be to seem mysterious. Seem to know more than you do, but don’t tell anybody anything. Above all, listen!”

  Fred leaned back in his chair and laughed.

  “Didums!” he said. “This is the idioticest wild goose chase we ever started on! I admit I nosed it. I gave tongue first. But think of it — here we are — four sensible men — hitherto sensible — off after ivory that nobody can really prove exists, said to be buried somewhere in a tract of half-explored country more than a thousand miles each way — and the German government, and half the criminals in Africa already on our idiotic heels!”

  “Yet the German government and the crooks seem convinced, too, that there’s something worth looking for!” laughed Monty. And none of us could answer that.

  For that matter, none of us would have been willing to withdraw from the search, however dim the prospect of success might seem in the intervals when cold reason shed its comfortless rays on us. Intuition, or whatever it is that has proved superior so often to worldly wisdom (temptation, Fred calls it!) outweighed reason, and Fred himself would have been last to agree to forego the search.

  The voyage is short between Zanzibar and Mombasa, but there was incident. We were spied on after very thorough fashion, Lady Saffren Waldon’s title and gracious bearing (when that suited her) being practical weapons. The purser was Goanese — beside himself with the fumes of flattery. He had a pass-key, so the Syrian maid went through our cabins and searched thoroughly everything except the wallet of important papers that Monty kept under his shirt. The first and second officers were rather young, unmarried men possessed of limitless ignorance of the wiles of such as Lady Waldon. It was they who signed a paper recommending Coutlass to the B. I. agents and a lot of other reputable people in Mombasa and elsewhere, thus offsetting the possibility that the authorities might not let him land. (Had we known all that at the time, Monty’s word against him might have caused him to be shipped back whence he came, but we did not find it out until afterward; nor did we know the law.)

  And at Mombasa we made our first united, serious mistake. It was put to the vote. We all agreed.

  “I can come ashore,” said Monty, “introduce you to officialdom, get you put up for the club, and be useful generally. That, though, ‘ll lend color to the theory that you’re in league with me — whereas, if I leave you to your own resources, that may help lose my scent. When they pick it up again we’ll be knowing better where we stand.”

  “If you came ashore for a few hours we’d have the benefit of your prestige,” s
aid I.

  “I admit it.”

  “I suspect a title’s mighty near as useful on British territory as in

  N’York or Boston,” said Will. “We’d bask in smiles.”

  “Not wholly,” said Monty. “There’s another side to that. There’s an English official element that would rather be rude to some poor devil with a title than draw pay (and it loves its pay, you may believe me!). You’d have friends in high places, but make enemies, too, if I go ashore with you.”

  “What’s your own proposal?” Fred demanded.

  “I’ve stated it. I want you fellows to choose. There’s no need of me ashore — that’s to say, I’ve a draft to bearer for the amount you three have in the common fund — here, take it. If you think you’ll need more than that, then I’ll have to go to the bank with you and cash some of my own draft. I think you’ll have enough.”

  “Plenty,” said Will.

  “Let’s send him home!” proposed Fred.

  “How about communications?” We had contrived a code already with the aid of a pocket Portuguese-English dictionary, of which Fred and Monty each possessed a similar edition.

  “The Mombasa Bank, Will. You keep them posted as to your whereabouts.

  When I write the bank manager I’ll ask him to keep my address a secret.”

  So we said good-by to Monty and left him on board, and wished we hadn’t a dozen times before noon next day, and a hundred times within the week. The last sight we had of him was as the shore boat came alongside the wharf and the half-breed customs officials pounced smiling on us. My eyes were keenest. I could see Monty pacing the upper deck, too rapidly for evidence of peace of mind — a straight-standing, handsome figure of a man. I pointed him out to the others, and we joked about him. Then the gloom of the customs shed swallowed us, and there was a new earth and, for the present, no more sea.

  The island of Mombasa is so close to the cocoanut-fringed mainland that a railway bridge connects them. Like Zanzibar, it is a place of strange delights, and bridled lawlessness controlled by the veriest handful of Englishmen. There are strange hotels — strange dwellings — streets — stores — tongues and faces. The great grim fort that brave da Gama built, and held against all comers, dominates the sea front and the lower town. The brass-lunged boys who pounce on baggage, fight for it, and tout for the grandly named hotels are of as many tribes as sizes, as many tongues as tribes.