by Talbot Mundy
“Kommen Sie nun!”
“Let’s go!” I said. “My leg hurts like hell. If I stay here I can’t sleep. Anything to keep from thinking about it! Besides, some one must go and look after Brown!”
“Who’ll watch those Greeks?” Fred demanded. “They’d as soon steal as eat!”
“We’d better all stay here together,” said Will, “and take turns keeping watch till morning.” He said it with a straight face, but I did not think he was in earnest.
“Ach!” exclaimed Schubert. “That is all ganz einfach! You shall have askaris!”
He turned and shouted an order. A non-commissioned officer went running back up-street.
“You shall have three askaris to guard your camp. So nothing whatever shall be stolen! Then come along and make music — seien Sie gemuthlich! Yah?”
Brown had already gone, jingling money in his pocket. We waited until the Nubian soldiers came — saw them posted — and then walked up-street behind the sergeants, Schubert leading us all, and I limping between Fred and Will. They as good as carried me the last half of the way.
The sergeants marched with the air peculiar to military Germans, of men who are going to be amused. They said nothing — did not smile — but strode straight forward, three abreast, swinging their kibokos with a sort of elephantine sporty air. They were men of all heights and thicknesses, but each alike impressed me with the Prussian military mold that leaves a man no imagination of his own, and no virtue, but only an animal respect for whatever can make to suffer, or appease an appetite.
The D.O.A.G. proved a mournful enough lounging place in which to spend convivial evenings. However, it seemed that when the sergeant-major had decreed amusement the non-commissioned officers’ mess overlooked all trifles in brave determination to obey. They marched in, humming tunes (each a different one, and nearly all high tenor) and took seats in a room at the rear of the building with their backs against a mud-brick wall that was shiny from much rubbing by drill tunics.
Down the center was a narrow table, loaded with drinks of all sorts. A case of bottled beer occupied the place of pride at one end; as Schubert had boasted, nothing was lacking that East Africa could show in the way of imported alcohol. Under the table was an unopened case of sweet German champagne, and on a little table against one wall were such things as absinth, chartreuse, peppermint, and benedictine. Soda-water was slung outside the window in a basket full of wet grass where the evening breeze would keep it cool.
“Now for Gesang!” shouted Schubert, knocking the neck off a bottle of beer, and beginning to sing like a drunken pirate.
A man whom he introduced as “a genuine Jew from Jerusalem” came out from a gloomy recess filled with tusks and sacks of dried red pepper, and watched everything from now on with an eye like a gimlet, writing down in a book against each sergeant’s name whatever he took to drink. They appeared to have no check on him. Nobody signed anything. Nobody as much as glanced at his account.
“What is the use?” said Schubert, noticing my glance and interpreting the unspoken question. “There is just so much drink in the whole place. We shall drink every drop of it! All that matters is, who is to pay for the champagne? That stuff is costly.”
They all took beer to begin with, knocking the necks from the bottles as if that act alone lent the necessary air of deviltry to the whole proceedings. A small, very black Nyamwesi came with brush and pan and groped on the floor all night for the splinters of glass, sleeping between times in a corner until a fresh volley of breaking bottle necks awoke him to work again.
“Die Wacht am Rhein!” yelled Schubert. “Start it up! Sing that first!” He began to sing it himself, all out of tune.
Fred cut the noise short by standing up to play something nobody could sing to a jangling clamor of chords and runs on which he prides himself, that he swears is classical, but of which neither he nor anybody knows the name. Then he drank some beer and sang a comic song or two in English, we joining in the choruses.
Meanwhile, Brown was soaking away steadily, taking whatever drink came first to hand, and having no interest whatever in anything but the task of assuaging the thirst he had accumulated in the course of all that long marching since he left home. He had forgotten his cattle already — the Greeks who stole them — the Masai who stole from the Greeks. He paid for all he took, to the Jew’s extreme surprise and satisfaction, and grumbled at the price of everything, to the Jew’s supremest unconcern.
“An’ my name’s Brown o’ Lumbwa, just in proof of all I say!” he informed the room at large at intervals.
When Will had exhausted all the American songs he knew, and Fred had run through his own long list there was nothing left for it but to make up accompaniments to the songs the sergeants had been raised on. Fred made the happy discovery that none of them knew The Marseillaise, so he played that as an antidote each time after they had made the hard-wood rafters ring and the smoke-filled air vibrate with Teutonic jingoism. The Jew, who probably knew more than he cared to admit, grew more and more beady-eyed each time The Marseillaise was played.
There was a pause in the proceedings at about ten o’clock, by which time all the sergeants except Schubert were sufficiently drunk to feel thoroughly at ease. Schubert was cold-eyed sober, although scarcely any longer thirsty.
A native was brought in by two askaris and charged before Schubert with hanging about the boma gate after dark. He was asked the reason. The Jew, sitting beside me with his book of names and charges, poured cool water over my bandages and translated to me what they all said. He spoke English very well indeed, but in such low tones that I could scarcely catch the words, drawing in his breath and not moving his lips at all.
The native explained that he had waited to see the bwana makubwa — the commandant. He had nowhere to go and no money with which to pay for lodging, so he proposed to wait outside the gate and watch for the coming of the commandant next morning. He would intercept him on his way down from the white house on the hill.
He was asked why. To beg a favor. What favor? Satisfaction. For what? For his daughter. He was the father of the girl whom the commandant had favored with attentions. She had been a virgin. Now she was to have a child. It would be a half-black, half-white child. Who would now marry a woman with such a child as that? Yet nothing bad been given her. She had been simply sent back home to be a charge on her parents and an already poverty-stricken village. Therefore he had come to ask that justice be done, and the girl be given at least a present of money.
The sergeants roared with laughter, all except Schubert, who seemed only appalled by the impudence of the request. He sat back and ordered the story repeated.
“And you dare ask for money from the bwana makubwa!” he demanded. “You dog of a Nyamwesi! Is the honor not sufficient that your black brute of a daughter should have a baby by such a great person? You cattle have no sense of honor! You must learn! Put him down! Beat him till I say stop!”
There was no need to put him down, however. The motion of the hand, voice inflection, order were all too well understood. The man lay face-downward on the floor without so much as a murmur of objection, and buried his face in both hands. The askaris promptly stripped him of the thin cotton loin-cloth that constituted his only garment, tearing it in pieces as they dragged it from him.
“Go on!” ordered Schubert. “Beat him!”
Both the askaris had kibokos. The longest of the two was split at the nether end into four fingers. The shortest was more than a yard long, tapering from an inch and a half where the man’s fist gripped it to half an inch thick at the tip. They stood one each side of their victim and brought the whips down on his naked skin alternately.
“Slowly!” ordered Schubert. “Slowly, and with all your strength! The brute doesn’t feel it when you beat so fast! Let him wait for the blow! Don’t let him know when it’s coming! So — so is better!”
Not every blow drew blood, for a native’s skin is thick and tough, especially where he sits. But
the blows that fell on the back and thighs all cut the skin, and within two minutes the native’s back was a bloody mass, and there was blood running on the floor, and splashes of blood on the whitewashed wall cast by the whips as they ascended.
I made up my mind the man was going to be killed, for Schubert gave no order and the askaris did not dare stop without one. The victim writhed, but did not cry out, and the writhing grew less. Even Brown sobered up for a time at the sight of it. He came and sat between me and the Jew.
“It’s a shame!” he grumbled. “Up in our country twenty-five lashes is the masshimum, an’ only to be laid on in the presence of a massishtrate. You beat a black man an’ they’ll fine you first offense, jail you second offense, an’ third offense God knows what they’ll do! Poor ole Brown o’ Lumbwa! They fined me once a’ready. Nessht time they’ll put me in jail! Better get quite drunk an’ be blowed to it!”
He staggered back to his chair by the farther wall, leering at Schubert as he passed.
“You’re no gentleman!” he asserted aggressively. “You’re no better ‘n a black man yourself! You ought-to-be-on-floor ‘stead o’ him! Dunno-how-behave-yourself! Take your coat off, an’ come outside, an’ fight like a man!”
Schubert gave the order to stop at last. The askaris stood aside, panting from the effort.
“Get up!” ordered Schubert.
The miserable Nyamwesi struggled to his feet and stood limply before
Schubert, his back running blood and his face drawn with torture.
“Don’t you know how to behave!” demanded Schubert.
The native made no answer.
“If you don’t salute properly I’ll order you thrown down and thrashed again!”
The native saluted in a sort of imitation of the German military manner.
“Now, will you lie in wait for the bwana makubwa to trouble him with your pig’s affairs again?”
“No.”
“Will you go back home?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve learned a lesson, eh?”
“Yes.
“Then say thank you!”
“Thank you!”
“Rrruksa!”* [*Ruksa, you have leave to go.]
The poor wretch turned and went, staggering rather than walking, to the door and disappearing into outer darkness without a backward glance.
“Now for some more songs and a round of drinks!” Schubert shouted.
But Fred was no longer in mood to make music, or even to be civil. He shut the concertina up, and asked the Jew how much he owed. The sergeants went on singing without music, and while we waited for the Jew to reckon up Fred’s score Schubert came over to us, sat down between me and Fred, and proceeded to deal with the new situation in proper German military manner, by direct assault.
“Always you English criticize!” he began. “Can you never travel without applying your cursed standards to everything you behold? I tell you, we Germans know how to rule these black people! We understand! We employ no sickly sentiment! We give orders — they obey, or else suffer terribly and swiftly! In that manner we arrive at knowing where we are!”
“Are you well loved by the people?” Fred asked him politely.
“Bah! Sie wollen wohl beliebt werden!* Not I! Not we! Of what value is the love of such people? Their fear is what we cultivate! Having made them afraid of us, we successfully make them work our will! But why should I trouble to explain? In a few years there will only be one government of Africa! One, I tell you, and that German! You English are not fit to govern colonies! You are mawkishly sentimental! You think more of the feelings of a black man and of the rights of his women than of progress — advancement — kultur! Bah! I tell you they have no feelings a real man need consider! They are only fit for furthering the aims of us Germans! And their women have no rights! None whatever! You know, I suppose, that it is the policy of the German government to encourage the spread of Muhammedanism in Africa? Well, under the Muhammedan law as given in the Koran women have no souls! That is good! That is as it should be! No women have souls!”
—— —— —— *You want to be popular, don’t you! —— —— ——
“How about your own mother?” Fred suggested.
“She was a good Prussian! She was a super-woman! Not to be mentioned in the same breath with women of any other race! Yet even she — the good Prussian mother — could not hold a candle to a man! Her business was to raise sons for Prussia, and she did it! I have eight brothers, all in the army, and only one sister; she has four sons already!”
“Strange that your nation should breed like that!” said Fred.
“Not strange at all!” answered Schubert. “We are needed to conquer the world! Think, for instance, when we have conquered the Congo Free State, and taken away East and South Africa from England — to say nothing of Egypt and India! — how many Prussian sergeant-majors we shall want! Donnerwetter! Do you think we Germans will long be satisfied with this miserable section of East Africa that was all the English left to us on this coast? We use this for a foothold, that is all! We use this to gain time and get ready! You think perhaps I do not know, eh? I am only feldwebel — non-commissioned officer, you call it. Well and good. I tell you our officers talk all the time of nothing else! And they don’t care who hears them!”
The Jew gave Fred his bill, scrawled on a piece of wrapping paper.
Schubert snatched it away and crumpled it into a ball.
“Kreutzblitzen! You are my guests to-night! I invited you!”
“Thanks” Fred answered, “but we don’t care to be your guests. Here,” he said, turning to the Jew, “take your money!”
Schubert said nothing, but eyed the Jew with a perfectly blank face, as if he watched to see whether the man would damn himself or not.
“Take your money!” repeated Fred. But the Jew turned his back and busied himself with bottles at the side-table.
“He knows better!” Schubert laughed. “He understands by this time our
German hospitality!”
“All right,” answered Fred. “We’ll go out without paying!”
“Not at all,” retorted Schubert. “The mess shall pay bill in full! You stay here until I have said what I have to say to you! The rest of your party may go, but you stay! You can explain to the others afterward.”
He leaned forward, reached a bottle of beer off the table, knocked off the neck, and emptied the contents down his throat at a draught. Behind his back we exchanged glances.
“I’ll listen,” said Fred.
“You alone?”
“No, we all stay. All or none!”
Schubert made a contemptuous gesture with his thumb toward Brown, who had fallen dead drunk on the floor.
“Will that one stay, too?”
“He is not of our party really,” Fred answered. “He knows nothing of our affairs.”
“You men are in trouble — worse trouble than you guess!”
Schubert looked with his cruel blue eyes into each of ours in turn, then stared straight in front of him and waited.
“I don’t believe it,” Fred answered. “We have done nothing to merit trouble.”
“Merit in this world is another name for chance!” said Schubert.
“What are we supposed to have done?” demanded Fred.
Schubert at once assumed what was intended to be a sly look, of uncommunicable knowledge.
“None of my business to tell what my officers know,” he answered. “As for that, time will no doubt disclose much. The point is — trouble can be forestalled.”
“Aw — show your hand!” cut in Will, leaning in front of Fred. “I’ve seen you Heinies fishing for graft too often in the States not to recognize symptoms! Spill the bait can! There’s no other way to tell if we’ll bite! Tell us what you’re driving at!”
“Ivory!” said Schubert savagely and simply, shutting his jaws after the word like a snap with a steel spring. It would have broken the teeth of an ordinary human.
> “What ivory?”
We all did our best to look blank.
“You know! Tippoo Tib’s ivory! It belongs to the German government! Emin Pasha, whom that adventurer Stanley rescued against his will, agreed to sell the secret to us, but we never agreed on a price and he died without telling. Gott! He would have told had I had the interviewing of him! It was known in Zanzibar that you and a certain English lord shared the secret. You have been watched. You are known to be in search of the stuff.”
“The deuce you say!” Fred murmured, with a glance to left and right at us.
“If you were to go to the office to-morrow, and tell our commandant what you know,” said Schubert, “you might be suitably compensated. You would certainly be given facilities for leaving the country in comfort at your leisure.”
“Who told you to promise us that?” Fred demanded, turning on him.
The feldwebel did not answer, but sat with his legs straight out in front of him, his heels together, and the palms of his hands touching between his knees. The sergeants were all singing, smoking and drinking. The Jew was back at his old post, watching every one with gimlet eyes.
“Think it over!” said Schubert, getting up. “There is time until morning. There is time until you leave this building. After that—” He shrugged his square shoulders brutally.
There was no sense in going out at once, as we had intended, with that combination of threat and promise hanging over us.
“Why not do what we said — admit that we know what we don’t know — and put ’em on the wrong scent?” Will whispered.
“I wish to God Monty were here!” groaned Fred.
“Rot!” Will answered. “Monty is all you ever said of him and then some; but we’re able to handle this ourselves all right without him. Tell ’em a bull yarn, I say!”