by Talbot Mundy
It was easier said than done. The elephants had spread broadcast through the forest, and there was no longer one well-defined swath to follow, but a very great number of twisting narrow alleys through elastic undergrowth between great unyielding trees. We had to separate, to gain any advantage from our number, so that we emerged into the open more than a hundred yards apart, with Fred at the far left and Will in the center. Fred, with Kazimoto close at his heels, was more than fifty yards in front of either of us.
And crossing that mile of open land was no simple business. It was a mass of rocks and tree-roots, burned over in some swift-running forest fire and not yet reseeded, nor yet rotted down. There were winding ways all across it by the dozen that the elephants, with their greater height and better woodcraft, could follow on the run, but great stumps and rocks higher than a man’s head (that from a distance had looked like level land) blocked all vision and made progress mostly guesswork.
However, the latter half-mile was more like level going — I emerged from between two boulders, wondering whether I could ever find my way back again, and envied Fred, who had found a better track and had the lead of me now by several hundred yards. Will was as far behind him as I, but had gone over more to the left, leaving me — feeling remarkably lonely — away in the rear to the right.
Kazimoto followed Fred so closely, stooping low behind him, that the two looked like some strange four-legged beast. They were headed for the forest in front of them at a great pace, increasing their lead from Will, who, like me, was more or less winded. I stooped at a pool to scoop up water and splash my face and neck. When I looked up a moment later I could see none of them.
At that instant, when I could actually smell the great brutes crashing in the forest, unseen within a hundred yards of me, and would have given all I had or hoped for just to have a friend within speaking distance, a shot rang out in the forest ahead, and rattled from tree to tree like the echo of a skirmish. It was not from Fred’s gun, or Will’s. It was the phantom rifleman at work again. Schillingschen — Schillingschen’s ghost — or whoever he was, he could not have timed his fusillade better for our undoing. The first shot was followed by six more in swift succession. And then chaos broke loose.
Toward where I stood, from every angle to my front, the whole herd stampeded. No human being could have guessed their number. The forest awoke with a battle-din of falling trees and crashing undergrowth, split apart by the trumpeting of angry bulls and the screams of cows summoning their young ones. The earth shook under the weight of their tremendous rout. I heard Fred’s rifle ring out three times far to my left — then Will’s a rifle nearer to me; and at that the herd swung toward its own left, and the whole lot of them came full-pelt, blind, screaming, frantic, straight for me.
There was no turning them now. None but the very farthest on the flank could have turned, given sense enough left to do it. It was a flood of maddened monsters, crazed with fear, pent by their own numbers, forced forward by the crowd behind, that invited me to dam them if I could! As they burst into the open, more shots rang out in the forest to lend their fury wings!
I glanced behind, to right and left, but there was no escape, I had come too far into the open to retreat! There were big rocks to the rear to have scrambled on, but there was no time. There was one big rock in front of me that divided their course about in halves; to pass it they must open up, although they would almost surely close again. I took my stand in line with that, as a man on trial for life takes refuge behind an unestablishable alibi.
They talk glibly about men’s whole lives passing in review before them in the instant of a crisis. That may be. That was a crisis, and I saw elephants — elephants! I remembered some of what Courtney had told us — some of the mad yarns Coutlass spun when liquor and the camp-fire made him boastful. All the advice I ever heard; all my previous imaginings of what I should do when such a time came, seemed to be condensed into one concrete demand — shoot, shoot, shoot, and keep on shooting! Yet my finger, bent around the trigger, absolutely would not act!
The oncoming gray wave of brutes split apart at the rock, as it must do, some of them screaming as they crashed into it breast on and were crushed by the crowd behind. In the van of the right-hand wing, brushing the rock with his shoulder, charged an enormous bull with tusks so large that the heavier had weighed down his head to a permanent rakish angle. He caught sight of me — trumpeted like a siren in the Channel fog — and came at me with raised ears and trunk outstretched. I heard shooting to the left, and more shots from the forest, where the very active ghost or madman was keeping up a battle of his own. I felt the fear, that turns a man’s very heart to ice, grip hold of me — felt as if nothing mattered — imagined the whole universe a sea of charging elephants — accepted the inevitable — and suddenly received my manhood back again! My forefinger acted! I fired point-blank down the throat of the charging bull. And it seemed to have no more effect on him than a pea-shooter has on a railroad train!
I had left Schillingschen’s heavy-bored elephant gun behind with Brown, considering it too cumbersome, and was using a Mauser with flat-nosed bullets. I fired four shots as fast as I could pump them from the magazine straight down the monster’s hot red throat; and he continued to come on as if I had not touched him, hard-pressed on either flank by bulls nearly as big as he.
Perhaps the reason why my past history did not flash review was that my time was not yet come! I continued to see elephant — nothing but elephant! — little bloodshot eyes aflame with frenzy — great tusks upthrown — a trunk upraised to brain me — huge flat feet that raged to tread me down and knead me into purple mud! I kept the last shot with a coolness I believe was really numbness — then felt his hot breath like a blast on my face, and let him have it, straight down the throat again!
He screamed — stopped — quivered right over me — toppled from the knees — and fell like a landslide, pushed forward as he tumbled by the weight behind, and held from rolling sidewise by the living tide on either flank. I tried to spring back, but his falling trunk struck me to earth. On either side of me a huge tusk drove into the ground, and I lay still between them, as safe as if in bed, while the herd crashed past to right and left for so many minutes that it seemed all the universe was elephants — bulls, cows and calves all trumpeting in mad desire to get away — away — anywhere at all so be it was not where they then were.
Blood poured on me from the dead brute’s throat — warm, slippery, sticky stuff; but I lay still. I did not move when the crashing had all gone by, but lay looking up at the monster that had willed his worst and, seeking to slay, had saved me. Those are the moments when young men summon all their calf-philosophy. I wondered what the difference was between that brute and me, that I should be justified in slaying; that I should be congratulated; that I should have been pitied, had the touch-and-go reversed itself and he killed me. I knew there was a difference that had nothing to do with shape, or weight, or size, but I could not give it a name or lay my finger on it.
My reverie, or reaction, or whatever it was, was broken by Fred’s voice, flustered and out of breath, coming nearer at a great pace.
“I tell you the poor chap’s dead as a door-nail! He’s under that great bull, I tell you! He’s simply been charged and flattened out! What a dog I was — what a green-horn — what a careless, fat-headed tomfool to leave him alone like that! He was the least experienced of all of us, and we let him take the full brunt of a charging herd! We ought to be hung, drawn and quartered! I shall never forgive myself! As for you, Will, it wasn’t half as much your fault as mine! You were following me. You expected me to give the orders, and I ought to have called a halt away back there until we were all three in touch! I’ll never forgive myself — never!”
I crawled out then from between the tusks, and shook myself, much more dazed than I expected, and full of an unaccountable desire to vomit.
“Damn your soul!” Fred fairly yelled at me. “What the hell d’you mean by startling m
e in that way! Why aren’t you dead? Look out! What’s the matter with the man? The poor chap’s hurt — I knew he was!”
But that inexplicable desire to empty all I had inside me out on to the trampled ground could no longer be resisted, that was all. The aftermath of deadly fear is fear’s corollary. Each bears fruit after its kind.
To my one tusker Will and Fred had brought down five and six respectively. That made twenty-three tusks, for one was an enormous “singleton.” We sent Kazimoto back alone to try to persuade some of our porters to come and chop out the ivory with axes, bidding him promise them all the hearts, and as many tail-hairs as they chose to pull out to keep witches away with. Then, since my sickness passed presently and left me steady on my legs, Fred made a proposal that we jumped at.
“Let’s go and lay Schillingschen’s ghost! If that was Schillingschen shooting in the forest, we’ve a little account with him! If it wasn’t I want to know it! Come along!”
We advanced into the forest and toiled up-hill along the tracks the stampeding elephants had made, amid flies indescribable, and almost intolerable heat. The blood on my clothing made me a veritable feeding-place of flies, until I threw most of it off, and then began to suffer in addition from bites I could not feel before, and from the sharp points of beckoning undergrowth. My bare legs began to bleed from scratches, and the flies swooped anew on those, and clung as if they grew there.
Will climbed a huge tree, at imminent risk of pythons and rotten branches, and descried open country on our right front. We made for it, I walking last to take advantage of the others’ wake, and after more than an hour of most prodigious effort we emerged on rolling rocky country under a ledge that overhung a thousand feet sheer above us on the side of Elgon. To our right was all green grass, sloping away from us.
There was a camp half a mile away pitched on the edge of the forest — a white man’s tent — a mule — meat hanging to dry in the wind under a branch — two tents for natives — and a pile of bags and boxes orderly arranged. We could see a man sitting under a big tent awning. He was reading, or writing, or something of that kind. He was certainly not Schillingschen. We hurried. Fred presently broke into a run; then, half-ashamed, checked himself and waited for me, who was beyond running.
When we came quite close we saw that the man was playing chess all by himself with a folding board open on his knees. He did not look up, although by that time he surely should have heard us. Fred began to walk quietly, signaling to the camp hangers-on to say nothing. We followed him silently in Indian file. As he came near the awning Fred tip-toed, and I felt like giggling, or yelling — like doing anything ridiculous.
He who played chess yawned suddenly, and closed the chess-board with a snap. He got up lazily, smiled, stretched himself like a great good-looking cat, faced Fred, and laughed outright.
“Glad to see you all! Did you get many elephants?” he asked.
“Monty, you old pirate — I knew it was you!” said Fred, holding a hand out.
Monty took it, and forced him into the chair he had just vacated.
“You damned old liar!” he said, nodding approvingly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THEY TOIL NOT, NEITHER DO THEY SPIN
Now for opulence and place
And the increment unearned
We will thieve and stab and cover it with perjury,
Contemptuous of grace
And the lesson never learned
That the Rules are not amenable to surgery.
We will steal a neighbor’s tools
In the quest for easy cash,
Aye, jump his claim and burrow to the heart of it,
But the innocents and fools
Get all the goods, and we the trash,
And that’s the most exasperating part of it!
Nobody in camp slept that night. When the tusks had been chopped out, and our camp carried across and pitched beside Monty’s — ivory weighed — lion-proof boma built — and elephant-heart portioned out to the men, who gorged themselves on it in order that their own hearts might grow great and strong; when all the myriad matters had been seen to that make camping in the tropics such a business, then there were tales to be told. We demanded Monty’s first; he ours; and because his was likely to be much the shortest we won that argument.
“Wait one minute, though,” he insisted. “Before I begin, have you any notion who a man with a beard could be — bruised face-broken front teeth — Mauser rifle — big dark beard cut shovel-shape — enormously powerful by the look of his shoulders and arms? I came on him three, no, four days’ march back.”
“Schillingschen!” we exclaimed with one voice.
“Show me Schillingschen!” echoed Brown, who was very drunk by that time, nearly ready to be put to bed. “Show me Schillingschen, an’ I’ll show you a corpse!”
“He’s right,” nodded Monty. “The man’s dead. Blew his brains out with his last cartridge. Looked to me to have lost himself. Slept in trees, I should say. Clothing all torn. Hadn’t been dead long when some of my boys came on him and drove away the jackals. Had he been in a fight, do you know?”
But we would not tell him that tale until we had his own.
“Mine’s short and simple,” he began. “Some ruffians boarded my ship at Suez, who made such eyes at me, and so obviously intended to do me damage at the first opportunity, that I talked it over with the captain (giving him a hint or two of the possible reason) and he agreed to slip me off secretly at Ismailia. It was easy — middle of the night, you know — had the doctor isolate the ruffians on the starboard side while the ship anchored — some cooked-up excuse about quarantine — and kept ’em out of sight of what was happening until the ship went on again. Very simple.”
“Go on, Didums — we’ll be all night talking — what did you do with the
King of Belgium?” Fred demanded.
“Nothing. Didn’t go near the King of Belgium. I was quarantined at
Ismailia on wholly imaginary grounds for fourteen days; and who should
come smiling into the same lazaretto on the last day but Frederick
Courtney — a very old friend of mine!”
“He was to go to Somaliland,” I said.
“So he told me. He’s on his way there now. Decided for reasons of his own to enter the country by way of Abyssinia. Told me of the advice he’d given you fellows, and assured me he’d seen King Leopold himself on the very matter scarcely a year before. Of course, he said, I might succeed where he failed, using influence and all that sort of thing, but he assured me Leopold was hard to deal with, and difficult to tie down. His advice was, go back to Elgon, and hunt for the stuff there.”
“That’s what he kept advising us,” said Will. “But why should he give away his information free? And if it’s good, where did he get it?”
“Courtney’s no dog in the manger,” Monty answered. “He told me of this man Schillingschen. Said he had sent in a report about him to the Home Government, but couldn’t for the life of him get documentary evidence with which to back up his charges.”
Will whistled, and drew out the diary he had rescued from the tin box.
Fred nodded. Will threw it to Monty, who caught it.
“He told me this Schillingschen had searched the whole country over for the stuff — had it straight from Schillingschen’s boys — I dare say you know how Courtney can make a native tell him all he knows. Schillingschen, he said, had eliminated pretty nearly all the likely places until Mount Elgon was about all there is left. Courtney said, too, that there were always so many thousands of elephants near Elgon that Tippoo Tib probably gathered a harvest there. We discussed probabilities, and agreed it wasn’t likely he would carry the stuff far in order to hide it. It seemed likely to both of us, too, that if the quantity the old man hid was anything like what rumor says, then there were probably half a dozen hiding-places, not one. Most of the stuff may be in the Congo Free State, and we’ll do well to leave that to Leopold of Belgium
and his pet concessionaires. Some of it may be near here. I stayed in the lazaretto an extra day with Courtney, talking it over. One other thing he remembered to tell me was that Schillingschen had hunted high and low for Tippoo Tib’s old servants, and had finally managed to have the relatives of that man Hassan — I remember, Fred, you called him Johnson in Zanzibar — thrown in jail in German East for some alleged offense or other.”
Monty stopped to scrape out a faithful pipe, fill it, press down tobacco with a practised thumb, and reach toward the campfire for a burning brand. Then he smoked for two minutes reflectively.
“I offered Courtney a share should we find the stuff. Knew you fellows would agree.” Pause. “Courtney wouldn’t hear of it.” Pause. “Said good-by to him, and took a coastwise trading steamer back to Mombasa. Delightful trip — put in everywhere — saw everything. Saw a lot of the Galla — fine tribe, the Galla.”
“Suppose you cut the travelogue stuff until later on!” suggested Will.
“Landed at Mombasa, and learned the first day that you fellows had managed to make more enemies than friends. Put in a number of days on heavy social labor — lingered at the club — drank too much of their infernal gin-and-black-pepper appetizer — but made you fellows right, I think.”
“We’re not interested in the slumming. Go on and tell us what you did!” urged Fred.
“That is what I did — and undid. I made friends. Soon I had all the other junior officials in a state of mind to help me if they could. Then I began to inquire for Hassan. They drew the dragnet tight, and discovered him at Nairobi! A young assistant district superintendent of police, who will rise in the service, I hope, before long, discovered a woman — who was jealous of a man — who was just then making love to the dusky damsel particularly favored by Hassan; and in that roundabout way we discovered that Hassan intended to take a trip very soon toward Mount Elgon, where, if you please, he was to take part in Professor Schillingschen’s ethnological studies. On condition that he held his tongue until I gave him leave to talk, I promised that young policeman — to put him en rapport with Schillingschen’s doings as swiftly as may be. Then I returned to Mombasa, and got your code letter saying you would head this way. It all fitted in like a game of chess.”