Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Have we done a commendable thing?” laughed Fred, looking at the crowd’s distended paunches. “There’s a good bull hippo the less. We’ve saved the lives for a time of several hundred gluttons. They know neither grace nor gratitude.”

  But he was wrong. They did. They brought Fred a woman — their fattest, ugliest; which means she was skin and bone and uglier than Want, also she was more afraid of Fred than Satan is said to be of shriving. The chief led her by the hand, she hanging back and hiding her face under one arm (which left the rest of her nakedness unprotected). He seized Fred’s hand and put the woman’s in it.

  “Now you’re spliced!” Brown explained. “Married to the gal forever in presence of legal witnesses!”

  Kazimoto confirmed the fearful news.

  “Married in regular form an’ accord with tribal custom!” Brown continued, nodding solemnly.

  “Divorce me — soon and swiftly, somebody!” Fred demanded.

  We appealed to Kazimoto for information, but only threw him into a quandary, and he proceeded to add to ours. The usual price for a woman, it seemed, was cows — many or few according as she was lovely or her father rich. In case of divorce, custom decreed that the cows with their offspring should be given back. The objection to any other property than cows changing hands to bind or loose in wedlock was that food, for instance, when eaten was not returnable.

  “Married to the gal for good an! all!”’ Brown grinned, nudging Will and me to note Fred’s consternation. “You’d better stay here an’ take the chief’s job when he kicks the bucket — possibly you can speed the day by overfeedin’ him!”

  “Some men’s luck,” Will murmured, but stopped in mid-sentence, for interruption came in the form of a weird figure, gesticulating like a windmill, stumbling and careening through the gloom, shouting as it came. Not until it was thirty yards away did an intelligible sound explain at least who the apparition was.

  “Gassharamminy! Give me that gun!”

  Coutlass burst in among us so out of breath that he could not force through his teeth another rational syllable, but he made his intentions partly clear by snatching at Fred’s rifle, persisting until Will and I pulled him off.

  “The dhow’s gone!” he panted at last. “Give me that rifle, or come yourself! Hurry! There’s a wind! You’ll be too late!”

  “You’re dreaming or drunk!” Fred answered, but Coutlass refused to be disbelieved, and in another moment we were all running as fast as we dared through the darkness toward the camp-fires, where we had left the Goanese snoozing and the dhow snugly moored among the rocks.

  The chief and his followers far outdistanced us in spite of their gorged condition — all except the woman, who jogged dutifully, although unhappily, behind Fred. When we reached the campfires they were standing gazing out on the lake, where we could just make out the bellying sail of the Queen of Sheba leaning like a phantom away from the gaining wind. The distance was not to be judged in that weak uncertain light. We all shouted together, but there came no answer and we could not tell whether the sound carried as far as the dhow or not.

  “Gassharamminy! — why don’t you shoot!” shouted Coutlass, dancing up and down the bank in frenzy. “Give me that rifle! I’ll show you! I’ll teach them!”

  I believe I would have fired if the rifle had been in my hands. Brown, last to arrive and most out of breath, joined with Coutlass in angry shouts for vengeance. Will offered no argument against sending them a parting shot. Fred set the butt of the rifle down with a determined snort, walked over toward the fire, stirred the embers, threw on more fuel, and looked about him when the dry wood blazed.

  “If she has left as much as one blanket among the lot of us, I don’t see it anywhere!” he said, taking his seat on a rock.

  “A blanket?” sneered Coutlass. “She has even your money! Worse than that — she has my woman! You were a gum-gasted galoot not to shoot at her!”

  Fred patted the bulging pocket of his shooting jacket.

  “Most of the money is here,” he said quietly, and we all sighed with relief.

  “Take canoes and chase them!” shouted Coutlass, beginning to dance up and down again.

  “There’s time enough” Fred answered. “We know the winds of these parts well enough by this time. This will blow until midnight. Then calm until dawn. After dawn a little more wind for an hour or two, then doldrums again until late afternoon. They’ll run on a rock in all likelihood. If they do we can catch them at our leisure, supposing we can get these islanders to paddle. If it should blow hard, then we can’t catch them anyhow. Sit down and tell us what happened, Coutlass!”

  The Greek cursed and swore and pranced, but all in vain. Fred was inexorable. We others grew calmer when the problem of who should paddle the canoes solved itself suddenly with the arrival of fourteen of our own men. Discovering themselves left behind, they had run along the bank in vain hope of catching the dhow somehow — perchance of swimming through the crocodile-infested water, and returned now disconsolate, to leap and laugh with new hope at sight of us and of the red meat that Kazimoto had thrown on the ground near the fire. They came near in a cluster. Will hacked off a lump of meat for them, and they forthwith forgot their troubles, as instantly as the birds forget when a sparrow-hawk has done murder down a hedge-row and swooped away.

  Not everything was gone after all. Kazimoto found the pots we had cooked the rice in, and started to boil the hippo’s tongue for us.

  “Come, Coutlass — sit down before we eat and tell us what happened,”

  Fred suggested.

  The Greek paced up and down another time or two, and at last calmed himself sufficiently to laugh at Fred’s woman, who had squatted down patiently in the shadow behind him.

  “Easy for you!” he grinned savagely, squatting on the far side of the fire. “You have a woman! Mine is God knows where! She said to me — that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said to me — we sat all three together in the stern of the dhow, I with my arm around Rebecca, and she said to me—”

  “I’ll see if I can’t make a dicker for the chief’s canoes,” Will interrupted. “We can hear the Greek’s tale any old time.”

  “Trade my woman for them!” Fred suggested cheerfully. “Go on,

  Coutlass!”

  The Greek gritted his teeth savagely. “She said — that hell-damned Lady Saffren Waldon said, as we sat there in the dhow, ‘How about the kicking Fred Oakes gave you on the island, Mr. Coutlass? Where is your Greek honor?’ — Do you see? She worked on my bodily bruises and my spiritual courage at the same time — the cunning hussy! ‘That Fred Oakes will win this Rebecca away from you very soon!’ she went on. ‘I have watched him.”’

  Fred smiled about as comfortably as a martyr on the grid. The presence of the dusky damsel, confirmed by her smell behind him, made him touchy on the subject of sex.

  “Presently she said to me, ‘I have my own affairs that will adjust themselves all the better for their absence when I get to British East. As for you, they will simply report you to the authorities for raiding those cattle of Brown’s. Can you imagine that creature Brown forgiving you? He will have you thrown in jail! Why wait? But we must not leave the Goanese or the other porters, and we must hurry! You go,’ she said, ‘and send the Goanese and the rest of the porters on board!’

  “So I did go. I kicked de Sousa awake, and he cursed me, because my toe landed once or twice on his thigh where the bullet wounded him. I drove him on board, and she put him to work with Kamarajes getting up the sail. Then I went off to get those cursed porters. I could not find them! The dogs had gone to the village, to find women I don’t doubt! I tell you what I would do to them if they were mine!”

  “Never mind that!” Fred cut in. We could all guess what form the punishment would take. “Get on with the tale! You couldn’t find the porters. What next?”

  “I decided to leave the dogs behind, and serve them right! I went back to the dhow in a great hurry. She was gone! Vanished! Disappeared
as if the lake had opened up and swallowed her! I could just see the sail in the distance. I shouted! No answer! I shouted again. I heard Rebecca call to me! Then I heard laughter — Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon’s laughter! Gassharamminy! I will run red-hot skewers into that woman when I catch her! Do you see how she has vengeance on Rebecca? Do you see now why she took sides between me and Kamarajes and de Sousa? Do you see how she has plotted? What will she do now? What Will she do?”

  He began to pace up and down again furiously, shaking both fists at the unresponsive stars.

  “She will do Rebecca an injury! She will give that girl to de Sousa or to that old Kamarajes! We shall never catch them! Gassharamminy! Oh, Absalom! You should have fired when I told you! That she-dog has a trick of some kind up her sleeve yet! How shall we catch her? Why do we wait? Give me that rifle! I will take a canoe and go after them alone! You do not know what Greek spirit is! I am American sometimes — English when it suits me — always Greek when I am wronged!”

  “You certainly have been put upon” Fred answered. “Tell us how your

  Greek spirit justified deserting us.”

  “Why not?” snarled Coutlass. “Do you love me? What would you do to me if you could get me to British East in your power? You would hand me over as a cattle thief!”

  “You bet I will!” admitted Brown of Lumbwa. “You dog, you’ve ruined me!”

  “What did I tell you?” demanded Coutlass. “Why, then, should I not look out for myself?”

  “I think we’d better leave you on this island,” Fred told him quietly. “We can’t trust you out of sight. The only way to prevent you from stealing this rifle and murdering us all would be to lie awake in turns.”

  “Bah!” grinned the Greek, striding back toward the fire. “How many cartridges have you left? Five, eh? After I had murdered all of you, how many would remain?”

  “You’ll have to think of a better argument than that,” smiled Fred, and for the first time I suspected he was speaking in deadly earnest. Coutlass suspected it, too, and grew still. The sweat burst out on his face, and his eyes bulged from their sockets.

  “You will leave me here?” he stammered.

  Fred nodded, smiling up at him.

  “You see, you’re such on all-in scoundrel!” Brown assured him.

  “You! You poor drunkard!” Coutlass turned his back on Brown, and faced Fred squarely. “You are a man, Mr. Oakes! I can speak to you as to my brother.”

  Fred smiled blandly.

  “I will speak to you God’s truth!”

  Fred grinned.

  “I will tell you where the ivory is!”

  Fred threw his head back and laughed outright.

  “I speak to you on my honor! That mother of misery, Lady Saffren Waldon, stole a map from Shillingschen. Before I would agree to set the town on fire I made her give me that for a hostage, lest she should prove treacherous and leave me behind after all! I have it now! It is marked with a circle to show where Schillingschen believes the stuff must be, because he has searched everywhere else!”

  “If that map is worth anything,” Fred countered, “how did Lady Saffren

  Waldon care to leave you behind with it?”

  “The harridan forgot it!” answered Coutlass. “She was so delighted to get vengeance on Rebecca by taking her away from me that she did not care for anything else! She hates you! She hates me! She hates Rebecca! Those who hate — as I can hate! — would rather have revenge than all the riches of Africa! Do you think I would hesitate between money and revenge on her?”

  “All right,” Fred answered. “The map, then — what about it?”

  “Take me with you and the map is yours!”

  “Show it to me, then!”

  “I must have a share of the ivory!”

  “Show me the map first!”

  Coutlass searched inside his flannel shirt — swiftly — more swiftly — angrily. His jaw dropped. Even between the fire-light and the moonlight one could judge that his color changed — and changed again.

  “Show me the map before we bargain!” Fred insisted. “Hurry, man!

  There’s Mr. Yerkes with the canoe. We can’t wait here all night!”

  “It is gone!” admitted Coutlass. “Some one stole it!”

  “I could have told you that in the first place,” Fred informed him, rising to his feet. “I have the map in my pocket.”

  “You stole it?” Coutlass gasped.

  “Certainly not. Rebecca stole it while she was supposed to be sleeping in your arms!”

  “Gassharamminy! I might have known it! Those Syrians — she meant to give us all the slip and find the ivory herself!”

  “Nothing of the Sort!” said Fred. “She stole it from you, to give it to Lady Saffren Waldon! Kazimoto saw her do it — saw where Lady Waldon hid it — and stole it from her while she slept to give to me, believing it to be something of mine. Here it is!”

  Fred let the end of a folded map protrude from his inner pocket just far enough for Coutlass to recognize it by the fire-light. The Greek turned on his heel.

  “All right!” he said ruefully, swinging suddenly round again. “If you were alone I would fight you, my knife against your rifle! I can not fight all four of you! Go away then, and be damned! I have nothing to offer. There is nothing I can do. Leave me, and I will look after myself!”

  “Now you’re talking like a man.” said Fred.

  “Leave me that woman of yours, and go to hell, all of you!” laughed the

  Greek.

  Fred seemed suddenly possessed of a bright idea. He turned to the woman and beckoned her to rise. Then in unmistakable pantomime he went through the motions of presenting her to Coutlass. The woman gasped — stammered something that was positively not consent — stared with frightened eyes at Coutlass — shook her shaven head violently — and ran away into the darkness, pursued by roars of laughter that speeded her on her way.

  “A clear case of desertion!” announced Fred judicially. “You men are witnesses!” Then he turned once more to Coutlass. “I don’t think we’ll leave you to raise Cain on this island. It depends on you whether we find you a lonelier island — turn you loose or hand you over to the authorities in British East!”

  “Good!” Coutlass shouted. “By Jingo, you are a gentleman! You are the best man in the world! I will treat you as my brother!”

  “Thanks!” said Fred dryly.

  “Aren’t you men ever coming?” asked Will, striding out of the shadows. “I’ve made the dicker — found a man who’d been on the mainland and knows Swahili. The chief’s agreeable to loan us two canoes in place of deeding you the woman. I took your name in vain, Fred, and consented to that while your back was turned — kick all you like — the deed is done! Four of his savages come with us as far as we want to go, we feeding ’em meat and paying ’em money. It’s agreed they’re to eat just as often as we do. They paddle the canoes back home when we’re through with them. Are you all ready? Then all aboard! Let’s hurry!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “MANY THAT ARE FIRST SHALL BE LAST; AND THE LAST FIRST—”

  When the last of the luck has deserted and the least of the chances

  has waned,

  When there’s nowhere to run to and even the pluck in the smile

  that you carry is feigned;

  When grimmer than yesterday’s horror to-morrow dawns hungry and cold,

  And your faith in the coming unknown is denied in regret for the

  known and the old,

  Then you’re facing, my son, what the Fathers from Abraham down to to-day

  Have looked on alone, and stood up to alone, and each in his several way

  O’ercame (or he shouldn’t be Father). So ye shall o’ercome: while

  ye live,

  Though ye’ve nothing but breath and good-will to your name ye must

  stand to it naked, and give!

  Ye shall learn in that hour that the plunder ye won by profession is

 
; nought —

  And false was the aim ye aspired with — and dross was the glamour

  ye sought —

  The codes and the creeds that ye cherished were shadows of clouds

  in the wind,

  (And ye can not recall for their counsel lost leaders ye dallied

  behind!)

  Ye shall stand in that hour and discover by agony’s guttering flame

  How the fruits of self-will, and the lees of ambition and

  bitterness all are the same,

  Until, stripped of desire, ye shall know that was death. Then the

  proof that ye live

  Shall be knowledge new-born that the naked — the fools and the felons,

  can give!

  Then the suns and the stars in their courses shall speedily swing

  to your aid,

  And nothing shall hinder you further, and nothing shall make you afraid,

  For the veriest edges of evil shall challenge your joy, and no more,

  And room for the right shall shine clear in your vision where wrong

  was before.

  Then the stones in the road shall be restful that used to be traps

  for your feet,

  Then the crowd shall be kind that was cruel before, and your

  solitude sweet

  That was want to be gloomy aforetime and gray — when the proof that ye

  live

  Is no longer the pain of desire, but the will — and the wit — and

  the vision, to give!

  The canoes were the usual crazy affairs, longer and rather wider than the average. The bottom portion of each was made from a tree-trunk, hollowed out by burning, and chipped very roughly into shape. The sides were laboriously hewn planks, stitched into place with thread made from papyrus.