Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  There was something peacefully exhilarating in the thought of rising from the red dead level of that awful plain, littered with the bones of camels and the slaves whom men pinned into the yokes to perish or survive in twos.* As we mounted foot by foot we fell asleep. Later, as we mounted higher, we shivered under blankets. There is a spirit and a spell of Africa that grip men even in sleep. The curt engine blasts became in my dreams the panting of enormous beasts that fought. A dream-continent waged war on itself, and bled. I saw the caravans go, thousands long, the horsed and white-robed Arab in the lead — the paid, fat, insolent askaris, flattering and flogging — slaves burdened with ivory and other, naked, new ones, two in a yoke, shivering under the askari’s lash, the very last dogged by vultures and hyenas, lean as they, ill-nourished on such poor picking.

  —— —— — * It was the cheerful Arab rule never to release one slave from the yoke if the other failed on the journey, on the principle that then the stronger would be more likely to care for, encourage, and drive the weaker. —— —— —

  Then I saw elephants in herds five thousand strong that screamed and stormed and crashed, flattening out villages in rage that man should interfere with them — in fear of the ruthless few armed men with rifles in their rear. Whole herds crashed pell-mell through artfully staged undergrowth into thirty-foot-deep pits, where they lingered and died of thirst, that Arabs (who sat smoking within hail until they died) might have the ivory.

  And all I saw in my dream was nothing to the things I really was to see. None of the cruelty of man, none of the rage and fear of animal have vanished yet from Africa. Some of the cruelty is more refined; some of the herds are smaller; some good is making headway but Africa is unchanged on the whole. It is a land of nightmares, with lovely oases and rare knights errant; a land whose past is gloom, whose present is twilight and uncertainty, but whose future under the rule of humane men is immeasurable, unimaginable.

  In my dream din followed crash and confusion until the engine’s screaming at last awoke me. My blanket had fallen to the floor and I was shivering from cold. I jumped down to recover it and realized it was dawn already. We were bowling along at a fine pace past green trees and undulating veld, and I wondered why the engine should keep on screaming like a thing demented. I knelt on Fred’s berth to lean from the window and look ahead. We were going round a slight curve and I could see the track ahead for miles.

  Three hundred yards away a full-grown rhinoceros stood planted on the track, his flank toward us and his interest fixed on anything but trains. He was sniffing the cool morning, looking the other way.

  “Wake up, you fellows!” I yelled, and Fred and Will put their heads through the window beside me just in time to see the rhino take notice of the train at last. When the engine was fifty yards from him he wheeled, took a short-sighted squint at it, sniffed, decided on war, and charged. The engineer crowded on steam.

  “He’s a game enough sport!” chuckled Fred.

  “He’s a fool!” grinned Will.

  He was both, but he never flinched. He struck the cow-catcher head-on and tried to lift it sky-high. The speed and weight of the engine sent him rolling over and over off the track, and the shock of the blow came backward along the train in thunderclaps as each car felt the check. The engineer whistled him a requiem and a cheer went up from fifty heads thrust out of windows. But he was not nearly done for.

  He got up, spun around like a polo pony to face the train, deliberately picked out level going, and charged again. This time he hit the car we were in, and screams from the compartment behind us gave notice that Lady Saffren Waldon’s maid was awake and looking through a window too. He hit the running-board beside the car, crumpled it to matchwood, lifted the car an inch off the track, but failed to disrail us. The car fell back on the metal with a clang, and the rhino recoiled sidewise, to roll over and over again. This time the impetus sent him over the edge of a gully and we did not doubt he was dead at the bottom of it.

  The guard stopped the train and came running to see what the damage amounted to.

  “Any gent got his rifle handy?” he shouted. “The train’s ahead o’ time. There’s twenty minutes for sport!”

  We dived for our rifles, but Coutlass had his and was on the track ahead of us, his eye a ghastly sight from the guard’s overnight attentions, his face the gruesome color of the man who has eaten and drunk too much, but his undamaged eye ablaze, and nothing whatever the matter with his enthusiasm.

  “Give me a cartridge — a cartridge, somebody!” he yelled. “Gassharamminy!

  He’s not dead! I saw him kick as he went over the edge legs upwards!

  Give me one cartridge and I’ll finish him!”

  By that time every male passenger was out on the track, some in night-shirts, some in shirts and pants, some with next-to-nothing at all on, but nearly all with guns. Somebody gave Coutlass a handful of cartridges that fitted his Mauser rifle and he was off in the lead like a hero leading a forlorn hope, we after him. We searched high and low but lost all trace of the rhino, and at the end of half an hour the engine’s whistle called us back. There were blood and hair all over the engine — blood and hair on our car, but the rhino had been as determined in defeat as in attack, and if he died of his wounds he contrived to do it alone and in dignity.

  “That leaves Coutlass with six cartridges,” said I, overtaking Fred.

  “Let’s hope their owner asks for them back.”

  The owner did ask for them. He stood with his hand out by the door of the Greek’s compartment.

  “You didn’t use those cartridges,” he said.

  “But I will!” sneered Coutlass. “Out of my way!”

  He sprang for his door and slammed it in the man’s face, and the other

  Greek and the Goanese jeered through the window. I caught sight of

  Hassan beside them looking gray, as unhappy black men usually do. Will

  saw him too.

  “The cannibal’s ours,” he said, “supposing we want him and play our cards kind o’ careful.”

  The next thing to delay the train was an elephant, who walked the track ahead of us and when the engine whistled only put on speed. Hypnotized by the tracks that reached in parallel lines to the horizon, with trunk outstretched, ears up, and silly tail held horizontally he set himself the impossible task of leaving us behind. The more we cheered, the more the engine screamed, the fiercer and less dignified became his efforts; he reached a speed at times of fourteen or fifteen miles an hour, and it was not until, after many miles, he reached a culvert he dared not cross that he switched off at right angles. Realizing then at last that the train could not follow him to one side he stood and watched us pass, red-eyed, blown and angry. He had only one tusk, but that a big one, and the weight of it caused him to hold his head at a drunken-looking angle.

  “Stop the train!” yelled Coutlass, brandishing his rifle as he climbed to the seat on the roof. But the guard, likewise on the roof at his end of the train, gave no signal and we speeded on. We were already in the world’s greatest game reserve, where no man might shoot elephant or any other living thing.

  We began to pass herds of zebra, gnu, and lesser antelope — more than a thousand zebra in one herd — ostriches in ones and twos — giraffes in scared half-dozens — rhinoceros — and here and there lone lions. Scarcely an animal troubled to look up at us, and only the giraffes ran.

  Watching them, counting them, distinguishing the various breeds we three grew enormously contented, even Will Yerkes banishing depression. Obviously we were in a land of good hunting, for the strictly policed reserve had its limits beyond which undoubtedly the game would roam. The climate seemed perfect. There was a steady wind, not too cold or hot, and the rains were recent enough to make all the world look green and bounteous.

  To right and left of us — to north and south that is — was wild mountain country, lonely and savage enough to arouse that unaccountable desire to go and see that lurks in the breast of younge
r sons and all true-blue adventurers. We got out a map and were presently tracing on it with fingers that trembled from excitement routes marked with tiny vague dots leading toward lands marked “unexplored.” There were vast plateaus on which not more than two or three white men had trodden, and mountain ranges almost utterly unknown — some of them within sight of the line we traveled on. If the map was anything to go by we could reach Mount Elgon from Nairobi by any of three wild roads. Fred and I underscored the names of several places with a fountain pen.

  “And say!” said Will. “Look out of the window! If we once got away into country like that, who could follow us!”

  “But you can’t get away!” said a. weary voice from the upper berth. “I’m Brown of Lumbwa. That’s my name, gents, and I know, because I tried! Thought I was sound asleep, didn’t you! Well, I weren’t! Listen to me, what happens. You start off. They get wind of it. They send the police helter-skelter hot-foot after you — native police — no officer — Masai they are, an’ I tell you those Masai can make their sixty miles a day when they’re minded an’ no bones about it either! Maybe the Masai catches you and maybe not. S’posing they do they can’t do much. They’ve merely a letter with ’em commanding you to return at once and report at the gov’ment office. And o’ course — bein’ ignorant, same as me, an’ hot-headed, an’ eager — you treat that contumelious an’ tip the Masai the office to go to hell. Which they do forthwith. They’re so used to bein’ told to go to hell by wishful wanderers that they scarcely trouble to wait for the words. Presently they draw a long breath an’ go away again like smoke being blowed downwind. An’ you proceed onward, dreamin’ dreams o’ gold an’ frankincense an’ freedom.”

  “Well, what next?” said I, for he made a long pause, either for reminiscence or because of headache.

  “Whisky next!” he answered. “I left a little for the morning, didn’t I? I almost always do. Hold the bottle up to the light — no, no, you’ll spill it! — pass it here! Ah-h-h — gug-gug!”

  He finished what was left and tried to hurl the empty bottle through the window, but missed and smashed it against the woodwork.

  “‘Sapity!” he murmured. “Means bad luck, that does! Poor ole Brown o’ Lumbwa — poor ole fella’. Pick up the pieces, boys! Pick ’em up quick — might get some o’ poor ole Brown’s bad luck — cut yourselves or what not. Pick ’em up careful now!”

  We did, and it took ten minutes, for the splinters were scattered everywhere.

  “Next time you do a thing like that you shall get out an’ walk!” announced Fred.

  “That ‘ud be only my usual luck!” he answered mournfully. “But I was tellin’ how you notify the Masai police to go to hell, an’ they oblige. It’s the last obligin’ anybody does for you. Every native’s a bush telegraph — every sleepy-seemin’ one of ’em! They know tracks in an’ out through the scrub that ain’t on maps, an’ they get past you day or night wi’out you knowin’ it, an’ word goes on ahead o’ you — precedes you as the sayin’ is. You come to a village. You need milk, food, Porters maybe, an’ certainly inf’mation about the trail ahead. You ask. Nobody answers. They let on not to sling your kind o’ lingo. Milk — never heard o’ such stuff — cows in them parts don’t give milk! Food? They’re starving. It isn’t overeating makes their bellies big, it’s wind. Porters? All the young men are lame, an’ old ‘uns too old, an’ the middle ‘uns too middle-aged — an’ who ever heard of a native woman workin’ anyhow. Who tills the mtama patch, then? It don’t get tilled, or else the women only ‘tend to it at tillin’ time. Nobody works at anythin’ about the time you come on the scene, for work ain’t moral, pleasin’ nor profitable, an’ there you are! As for the trail ahead, lions an’ cannibals are the two mildest kind of calamities they guarantee you’ll meet.”

  “You don’t have to believe them,” I argued. “No man in his senses would start without porters of his own—”

  “Who never run away, an’ never, oh never go lame o’ course!” said Brown.

  “Porters enough and to spare,” I continued. “And food for a month or two—”

  “How are you going to get away right under their noses with food for a month or two?” demanded Brown. “You’ve got to live off the country after a certain distance. The further you go, the worse for you, for they’ll sell you nothing and give you less. By and by your porters get tipped off by the natives of some village you spend a night at. You look for ’em next mornin’ and where are they? Gone! There are their loads, an’ no one to carry ’em! You’ve got to leave your loads an’ return, an’ the police you told so stric’ly to go to hell meet you with broad grins and lead you to the gov’ment office. There the collector, or, what’s worse, the ‘sistant collector, gives you a lecture on infamy an’ the law of doin’ as you’d be done by. You ask for your loads back, an’ he laughs at you. An’ that’s all about it, excep’ that next time you happen to want a favor done you by gov’ment you get a lecture instead! No, you can’t get away, an’ it’s no use tryin’! If you was Greeks maybe, or Arabs, yes. Bein’ English, the Indian Penal Code, which is white man’s law in these parts, ‘ll get you sure!”

  Brown of Lumbwa sighed at recollection of his wrongs, turned over, and went to sleep again. The train bowled along over high veld, cutting in half magnificent distances and stopping now and then at stations whose excuse for existence was unimaginable. We stopped at a station at last where the Hindu clerk sold tea and biscuits. The train disgorged its passengers and there was a scramble in the tiny ticket office like the rush to get through turnstiles at a football game at home, only that the crowd was more polyglot and less good-natured.

  Coutlass, his Greek friend and the Goanese being old travelers on that route were out of the train first, first into the room, and first supplied with breakfast. Fred and I were nearly last. Brown of Lumbwa refused to leave his berth but lay moaning of his wrongs, and the iniquity of drink not based on whisky. I missed Will in the scramble, and although it was nearly half an hour before I got served I did not catch sight of him in all that time.

  I counted eleven nations taking tea in that tiny room and there were members of yet other tribes strolling the platform, holding themselves aloof with the strange pride of the pariah the wide world over.

  When Will came in he was grinning, and his ears seemed to stick out more than usual, as they do when he is pleased with himself.

  “Didn’t I say fat Johnson was ours if we’d play our cards right?” he demanded.

  “You mean Hassan?”

  “He’d had no breakfast. He’d had no supper. He had no money. The Greeks took away what little money he did have on the pretext that he might buy a return ticket and desert them. They seem to think that a day or two’s starvation might make him good and amenable. I found him trying to beg a bite from a full-blooded Arab, and say! they’re a loving lot. The Arab spat in his eye! I offered to buy him eats but he didn’t dare come in here for fear the Greeks ‘ud thrash him, so I slipped him ten rupees for himself and he’s the gratefulest fat black man you ever set eyes on. You bet it takes food and lots of it to keep that belly of his in shape. There’s a back door to this joint. He slipped round behind and bribed the babu to feed him on the rear step, me standing guard at the corner to keep Greeks at bay. He’s back in the car now, playing possum.”

  “Let’s trade him for Brown of Lumbwa,” suggested Fred genially. “Call him into our car and kick Brown out!”

  “Trade nothing! I tell you the man is ours! Call him, and he’ll bargain. Let him be, and the next time the Greeks ill-treat him he’ll come straight to us in hope we’ll show him kindness.”

  “Swallow your tea quickly, Solomon!” Fred advised him. “There goes the whistle!”

  It was fresh tea, just that minute made for him. Will gulped down the scalding stuff and had to be thumped on the back according to Fred. With eyes filled with water he did not see what I did, and Fred was too busy guarding against counter-blows. The most public place and the very
last minute always suited those two best for playing horse.

  “Thought you said Johnson was asleep,” said I.

  “Possuming,” coughed Will. “Shamming sleep to fool the Greeks.”

  “Possuming, no doubt,” I answered, “but the Greeks are on. He has just come scurrying out of Lady Saffren Waldon’s compartment. The Greeks watched him and made no comment!”

  We piled into our own appointed place and sat for a while in silence.

  “All right,” said Will at last, lighting his pipe. “I own I felt like quitting once. I’ll see it through now if there’s no ivory and nothing but trouble! That dame can’t thimblerig me!”

  “We’re supposed to know where the ivory is,” grinned Fred. “Keep it up! They’ll hunt us so carefully that they’ll save us the trouble of watching them!”

  “I’m beginning to think we do know where the ivory is,” said I. “I believe it’s on Mount Elgon and they mean to prevent our getting it.”

  “If that turns out true, we’ll have to give them the slip, that’s all,” said Fred, and got out his concertina. Just as Monty always played chess when his brain was busy, Fred likes to think to the strains of his infernal instrument. One could not guess what he was thinking about, but the wide world knew he was perplexed, and Lady Saffren Waldon in the next compartment must have suffered.

  After a while he commenced picking out the tunes of comic songs, and before long chanced on one that somebody in the front part of the train recognized and began to sing. In ten minutes after that he was playing accompaniments for a full train chorus and the scared zebra and impala bolted to right and left, pursued by Tarara-boom-de-ay, Ting-a-ling-a-ling, and other non-Homeric dirges that in those days were dying an all-too-lingering death.