Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Fred relapsed into a sort of black gloom intended to attract the Muse of Strategy. He was always better at swift action in the open and optimism in the face of visible danger, than at matching wits against something he could not see beginning or end of.

  “Tell ’em it’s in German East!” urged Will. “Offer to lead them to it on certain conditions. Think up controversial proposals! Play for time!”

  Fred shook his head.

  “What if it turns out true? Monty’s in Europe. Suppose he should learn while he’s there that the stuff is really in German East — we’d have spoiled his game!”

  “If the stuff should really be in German East,” Will argued, “we’ve no chance in the world of getting even a broker’s share of it, Monty or no Monty! Take my advice and tell ’em what they want to know!”

  Meanwhile an argument of another kind had started across the room. Schubert had related with grim amusement to Sergeant Sachse, who was sitting next him, our disapproval of the flogging of the father of the commandant’s abandoned woman.

  “At what were they shocked?” wondered Sachse. “At the flogging, or the intercourse, or because he sent the female packing when she proposed to have a child? Do they not know that to have children about the premises would be subversive of military excellence?”

  “They were shocked at all three things,” grinned Schubert, “but chiefly, I think, at the flogging.”

  “Bah! Such a tickling of a native’s hide doesn’t hurt him to speak of!

  Wait until they see our court in the morning!”

  It was that that raised the clamor. Even Schubert, who might be supposed to have won promotion because he could stay sober longer than the others, was beginning to grow noisy in his speech and to laugh without apparent reason. The rest were all already frankly drunk, and any excuse for dispute was a good one. They one and all, including Schubert, denied Sachse’s contention that a flogging did not hurt enough to matter.

  “I bet I could take one without winking!” Sachse announced.

  Schubert’s little bright pig-eyes gleamed through the smoke at that.

  “Kurtz und gut!” he laughed. “There is a case of champagne unopened. I bet you that case of champagne that you lie! That you can not take a flogging!”

  There was an united yelp of delight. The sergeants rose and gathered round Sachse. Schubert cursed them and drove them to the chairs again.

  “Open that case of champagne!” he roared, and the Jew obeyed, setting the bottles on the table in two rows.

  “I bet you those twelve bottles you dare not take a regular flogging, and that you can not endure it if you dare try!”

  “I can stand as much as you!” hedged Sachse.

  “Good! We will see! We will both take a flogging — stroke for stroke!

  Whoever squeals first shall pay for the champagne!”

  Sachse could not back out. His cheeks grew whiter, but he staggered to his feet, swearing.

  “I will show you of what material a German sergeant is made!” he boasted. “It is not only Prussians who are men of metal! How shall it be arranged?”

  The arrangement was easy enough. Schubert shouted for an askari, and the corporal who was doing police duty outside in the street came running. He had a kiboko in his hand almost a yard and a half long, and Schubert examined it with approval.

  “How would you like to flog white men?” he demanded.

  “I would not dare!” grinned the corporal.

  “Not dare, eh? Would you not obey an order?”

  “Always I obey!” the man answered, saluting.

  “Good. I shall lie here. This other bwana shall lie there beside me. You shall stand between. First you shall strike one, then the other — turn and turn about until I give the order to cease! And listen! If you fail once — just one little time! — to flog with all your might, you shall have two hundred lashes yourself; and they shall be good ones, because I will lay them on! Is it understood?”

  “Yes,” said the corporal, the whites of his eyes betraying doubt, fear and wonder. But he grinned with his lips, lest the feldwebel should suspect him of unwillingness.

  “Are the terms understood?” demanded Schubert, and the sergeants yelped in the affirmative.

  “Then choose a referee!”

  One of the sergeants volunteered for the post. Schubert lay down on the floor, and Sachse beside him about four feet away. The corporal took his stand between. He was an enormous Nubian, broad of chest, with the big sloping shoulder muscles that betray double the strength that tailors try to suggest with jackets padded to look square.

  “Nun — recht feste schlagen!”* ordered Schubert. Then he took the sleeve of his tunic between his teeth and hid his face. [*Now, hit good and hard!]

  “One!” said the referee. Down came the heavy black whip with a crack like a gun going off. Schubert neither winced nor murmured, but the blood welled into the seat of his pants and spread like red ink on blotting-paper.

  “‘One!” said the referee again. The corporal faced about, and raised his weapon, standing on tiptoe to get more swing. Sachse flinched at the sound of the whip going up, and the other sergeants roared delight. But he was still when it descended, and the crack of the blow drew neither murmur nor movement from him either. Like the feldwebel, he had his sleeve between his teeth.

  “Two!” said the referee, and the black whip rose again. It descended with a crack and a splash on the very spot whence the blood flowed, this time cutting the pants open, but Schubert took no more notice of it than if a fly had settled on him. There was a chorus of applause.

  “Two!” said the referee. Again the corporal faced about and balanced himself on tiptoe. Sachse was much the more nervous of the two. He flinched again while waiting for the blow, but met it when it did come without a tremor of any kind. He was much the softer. Blood flowed from him more freely, but his pants seemed to be of sterner stuff, for they did not split until the eight-and-twentieth lash, or thereabouts.

  From first to last, although the raw flesh lay open to the lash, and the corporal, urged to it by the united threats and praise of all the other sergeants, wrought his utmost, Schubert lay like a man asleep. He might have been dead, except for the even rise and fall of his breathing, that never checked or quickened once. Nine-and-forty strokes he took without a sign of yielding. At the eight-and-fortieth Sachse moaned a little, and the referee gave the match against him. Schubert rose to his feet unaided, grinning, red in the face, but without any tortured look.

  “Now you can say forever that you have flogged two white men!” he told the askari.

  “Who will believe me?” the man answered.

  Sachse had to be helped to his feet. He was pale and demanded brandy.

  “What did I tell you?” laughed Schubert. “A Prussian is better than any man! Look at him, and then at me!”

  He shouted for his servant, who had to be fetched from the boma — a smug-faced little rascal, obviously in love with the glory reflected on the sergeant-major’s servant. He was made to produce a basin and cold water — he discovered them somewhere in the dim recesses of the store — and sponge his master’s raw posterior before us all. Then he was sent for clean white pants and presently Schubert, only refusing to sit down, was quite himself again.

  Sachse on the other hand refused the ministrations of the boy — was annoyed by the chaff of the other sergeants — refused to drink any of the sweet champagne he would now have to pay for — and went away in great dudgeon, murmuring about the madness that takes hold of men in Africa.

  Meanwhile, while Schubert strutted and swaggered, making jokes more raw and beastly than his own flogged hide, the Jew came and poured more cool water on my hot bandages, touching them with deft fingers that looked like the hairy legs of a huge spider — his touch more gentle — more fugitive than any woman’s.

  “You should not tell zat dam feldwebel nozink!” he advised in nasal English. “Nefer mind vat you tell heem he is all ze same not your frien.
He only obey hees officers. Zey say to cut your troat — he cut it! Zey say to tell you a lot o’ lies — he tell! He iss not a t’inker, but a doer: and hees faforite spectacle iss ze blood of innocence! Do not effer say I did not tell you! On ze ozzer hand, tell no one zat I did tell! Zese are dangerous people!”

  He resumed business with his account book, and I whispered to Fred and Will what advice he had given. Seeing us with our heads together, Schubert crossed the room, beginning to get very drunk now that the shock of the flogging had had time to reinforce the alcohol. (The blows had sobered him at first.)

  “What have you decided?” he asked, standing before us with his legs apart and his hands behind him in his favorite attitude — swaying gently back and forward because of the drink, and showing all his teeth in a grin.

  “Nothing,” Fred answered. “We’ll think it over.”

  “Too late in the morning!” he answered, continuing to sway. “I can do nothing for you in the morning.”

  “What can you do to-night?” Fred asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I can report. The report will go in at dawn.”

  “You may tell your superiors,” Fred answered, rising, “that if they care to make us a reasonable offer, I don’t say we won’t do business!”

  Schubert leered.

  “To-morrow will be too late!” he repeated.

  It was Fred’s turn to shrug shoulders, and he did it inimitably, turning his back on Schubert and helping Will support me to the door. The feldwebel stood grinning while I held to the doorpost and they dragged Brown to his feet. He made no offer to help us in any way at all, nor did any of the sergeants.

  There was no getting action from Brown. He was as dead to the world as a piece of wood, and there being no other obvious solution of the problem, Will hoisted him upon his back and carried him, he snoring, all the way home to camp. Fred hoisted and carried me, for the pain of my wound when I tried to walk was unbearable.

  We reached camp abreast and were challenged by the sentries, who made a great show of standing guard. They took Brown and threw him on the bed in his own tent — accepted Fred’s offer of silver money — and departed, marching up-street in their heavy, iron-bound military boots with the swing and swagger only the Nubian in all the world knows just how to get away with.

  I lay on the bed in Fred’s tent, and then Kazimoto came to us, hugely troubled about something, stirring the embers of the fire before the tent and arranging the lantern so that its rays would betray any eavesdropper. He searched all the shadows thoroughly, prodding into them with a stick, before he unburdened his mind.

  “Those askaris were not put here to guard our tents,” he told us. (The really good native servant when speaking of his master’s property always says our, and never your.) “As soon as you were gone the Greeks and the Goa came. They and the askaris questioned me. It was a trick! You were drawn away on purpose! One by one — two by two — they questioned us all, but particularly me.”

  “What about?” Fred demanded.

  “About our business. Why are we here. What will we do. What do we know. What do I know about you. What do you know about me. Why do I serve you. How did I come to take service with you. To what place will we travel next, and when. How much money have we with us. Have we friends or acquaintances in Muanza. Do you, bwana, carry any letters in your pockets. Of what do you speak when you suppose no man is listening. Bwana, my heart is very sad in me! Those Greeks tell lies, and the Germans stir trouble in a big pot like the witches! I know the Germans! I am Nyamwezi. I was born not far from here, and ran away as soon as I was old enough because the Germans shot my father and let my mother and brothers starve to death. I did not starve, because one of them took me for a servant; but I ran away from him. My heart is very sad to be in this place! They ask what of a hoard of ivory. I tell them I do not know, and they threaten to beat me! This place is bad! Let us go away to-night!”

  There was no sleep that night for any of us. My wound hurt too much.

  The others were too worried. By the light of the lantern in Fred’s

  tent we cooked up a story to tell that we hoped would induce the

  Germans to let us wander where we chose.

  “Sure, they’ll watch us!” Will admitted. “But as our only real reason for coming down here — leaving Brown’s cattle out of the reckoning — was to throw people off the scent, in what way are we worse off? The lake is big enough to lose ourselves in! What is it — two hundred and fifty miles long by as many broad? D’you mean we can’t give their sleuths the slip? We can’t beat that for a plan: let ’em keep on thinking we know where Tippoo hid the stuff. If we succeed in losing ’em they’ll think we’re at large in German East and keep on hunting for us — whereas we’ll really be up in British East. Let’s send a telegram in code to Monty!”

  Then Fred thought of an idea that in the end solved our biggest problem, although we did not think much of it at the time.

  “They may refuse to take a telegram in code,” he said. “It’s likely they’ll open letters. (We can try the code, of course. They’ll probably take our money, and put their experts on deciphering the message. They’ll say it was lost if there are any inquiries afterward.) I propose we send a straight-out cablegram advising Monty of our whereabouts (they’ll let that go through) and warning him to ask for letters at the Bank in Mombasa before he does anything else.”

  “Yes, but—” Will objected.

  “Wait!” said Fred. “I haven’t finished. Then write two letters: one full of any old nonsense, to be sent in the regular way by mail. They’ll open that. The other to go by runner. Kazimoto can find us a runner. He knows these Wan-yamwezi. He can pick a man who’ll get through without fail.”

  We could think of nothing to say against the plan. The argument that the German government would scarcely stoop to opening private mail did not seem to hold water when we examined it, so we wrote as Fred suggested — one letter telling Monty that we hoped to make some arrangement with the Germans, and at all events to wait in German East until he could join us — and the other telling him the real facts at great length, laboriously set out in the code we had agreed upon.

  We sealed the second letter in several wrappers, and sewed it up finally in a piece of waterproof silk. Then we sent for Kazimoto and ordered him to find the sort of messenger we needed.

  “Send me!” he urged. “I will start now, before it is light! I will hide by day and travel by night until I reach the British border! Give me only enough cooked food and my pay and I will take the letter without fail!”

  We refused, for he was too useful to us. He begged again and again to be sent with the letter, promising faithfully to wait for us afterward on the British side of the border at any place we should name. But we upbraided him for cowardice, ordered him to find another messenger, and promised him he need have no fear of Germans as long as he remained our servant.

  Before high noon we would each have given many years of Kazimoto’s pay if only we could have recalled that decision and have known that he was speeding away from Muanza toward a border where white men knew the use of mercy.

  Just as the first peep of dawn began to color the sky Schubert came swaggering down-street to us, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “How have you slept?” he asked us, laughing.

  We answered something or other.

  “I did not trouble to sleep! I stayed and finished the drinks. I have just swallowed the last of the beer! Whoever wants a morning drink must wait for it now until the overland safari comes!”

  We displayed no interest. Brown, the only one likely to yearn for alcohol before breakfast, snored in his still.

  “What of it now? I go drill my troops. Parade is sharp! There remain twenty minutes. Come with me tell your secret at the boma now, before it is too late!”

  “Explain why it would be too late after breakfast!” demanded Fred.

  “All right,” said Schubert. “I will tell you this much.
There will come a launch this morning from Kisumu in British East. There will be people on that launch, one of whom has authority that overrides that of the commandant of this place. The commandant desires to know your information — and get the credit for it — before that individual, whose authority is higher, comes. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly,” Fred answered.

  “See if this is clear, too!” cut in Will. “You go and ask your commandant what price he offers for the secret! Nothing for nothing! Tell him we’re not afraid of him!”

  “It is none of my business to tell him anything,” sneered Schubert, spitting and turning on his heel. He swaggered out of the camping-ground and up-street again, leaving the clear impression behind him that he washed his hands of us for good and all.

  “Let’s watch him drill his men,” said I. “I’ll wait on the hospital steps until they open the place.”

  So we ate a scratch breakfast and Fred and Will helped me up-street, past where the Jew stood blinking in the morning sun on the steps of the D.O.A.G. He seemed to be saying prayers, but beckoned to us.

  “Trouble!” he said. “Trouble! If you have any frien’s fetch them — send for them!”

  “Can yon send a letter for us to British East?” Fred asked him.

  “God forbid!” He jumped at the very thought, and shrugged himself like a man standing under a water-spout. “What would they do to me if I were found out?”

  “What is the nature of the trouble?” Fred asked him.

  “Ali, who should tell! Trouble, I tell you, trouble! Zat cursed

  Schubert sat here drinking until dawn. I heard heem say many t’ings!

  Send for your friens!”

  He turned his back on us and ran in. There was a lieutenant arrayed in spotless white with a saber in glittering scabbard watching us all from the boma gate. A little later that morning we knew better why the Jew fled indoors at sight of him.

  Schubert was standing in mid-square with a hundred askaris lined up two-deep in front of him. There were no other Germans on parade. The corporals were Nubians, and the rest of the rank and file either Nubian or some sort of Sudanese. He was haranguing them in a bastard mixture of Swahili, Arabic, and German, they standing rigidly at attention, their rifles at the present.