Enslaved in Africa

by Ian Smith

  “Enough talk,” another of the men was saying. “I’ve been watching you two flaunt yourselves for days. Now you can get a taste of real men after those poncy toff pricks.” He began to move menacingly forwards.

  “I want the blonde,” the third man said as he also stepped forwards. “I fancy a feel of those jugs.”

  “Me for the brunette,” began the other, and reached out.

  It was now or never. Penny stepped back, turned and two quick steps and one leap took her feet onto the yacht’s rail. Pushing off it, she took a beautiful arcing dive into the sea. Carrie had got the message and was only a split-second behind her.

  Cool azure waters closed over Penny’s head. The glare of the sun was replaced by the more diffuse but still bright light below the surface. She sensed rather than heard Carrie’s arrival to her left and turned to see the blonde’s trim form cutting gracefully through the water surrounded by a mist of bubbles. Gesturing in the direction of the shore, Penny led the way. They stayed beneath the waves for as long as they could hold their breath, then broke the surface and began a powerful front crawl. They were both strong swimmers and from here to the shore at a fast pace was well within their capabilities.

  Now they were no longer underwater, they could hear angry shouting behind them on the boat and frantic commands being issued. Their action, however, had taken the three men completely by surprise and in addition precious moments had probably been spent in argument and recrimination before the pursuit was launched in earnest. One option had been for one of the men to dive in after them, but this idea had been wisely dropped: it was clear just from their dives that the girls were accomplished swimmers, thanks to their finishing school and they were dressed ready for it, whereas the men would have lost too much time getting clothes and shoes off. So, they would have to restart and rev up the engine, turn the boat through more than ninety degrees and build up speed: it was not a fast boat as yachts go, although once up to flank speed it would go much faster than they could swim. Still, they had a head-start and the men would have to be careful not to get too close to the shore for fear of grounding the boat. Would the girls have enough time to lose themselves in the jungle before they were caught?

  A golden beach began to fill their vision. Penny broke stride long enough to glance behind her: the yacht was still some way off. The maid had not followed them; presumably she had been grabbed and secured. Belatedly, both girls had wondered if there were any sharks in these waters, but it seemed not. The water was changing colour now, from deep blue to pale green, and the bottom was visible. They felt the sand beneath their feet and touched down and came splashing out of the sea. Penny was reminded of the girl in the James Bond film who came out of the sea in a white bikini, the same colour as Carrie’s. Penny’s shorts and halter top were both light denim blue, which would be less conspicuous in the dense woodland ahead.

  The place was a tropical paradise, the hot dry sand sinking in between their toes, the bright sun beating down, birds singing away. It looked as unspoilt as if nobody had been here for hundreds of years: there was absolutely no sign of human influence, much less habitation. Right now, of course, that was not what they would have wanted, but there was nothing to be done about it. Penny leading the way, they raced up the beach and into the trees. The hot, dry sand slipped beneath the toes of their bare feet and their minds shifted from sharks to snakes, but the over-riding threat came from the two men who were just starting to splash ashore some way behind them.

  The lithe girls went crashing through the undergrowth, finding it not quite as impenetrable as Penny had at first feared. They appeared to have another advantage in that they seemed to be faster than their pursuers on foot. Both of them were very fit: although the lumbering men behind them had the advantage of shoes, the girls could still move faster. The brambles and bracken hurt their feet and whipped against their legs, but they thought nothing of it, concerned only to get away.

  And then they stumbled onto a bridleway, the first evidence of humanity they had encountered since coming ashore. Penny hesitated for just a moment, wondering if their best chance lay in losing their hunters in the trees, but then decided that their superior speed would serve them better on the dirt road. Plus, the two twenty year-olds (or thereabouts, Carrie being a few weeks short of that age) could keep up the pace far longer than the men, who for all their hardness were all past thirty and smokers with beer bellies. Anyway, this also seemed their best chance of finding civilisation and legal authority.

  They sprinted for what seemed like ages, until their lungs seared with every breath and their legs ached. Eventually exhaustion forced them to slow into a jog, but they covered miles of the twisting track before finally coming to a halt. On the longest of the few straight stretches, Penny had looked back and seen no sign of pursuit. Now she tried to control the noise of her gasping breathing and listen. There were no sounds of footsteps, only the singing of birds and the screeching of what she hoped might also be birds or maybe small chimpanzees.

  “I think,” heaved Carrie as she gulped down painful lungfuls of air, “that we’ve done it.”

  Penny looked around. “Probably,” she managed between gasps. However, when Carrie said nothing more, Penny added, “but we’re barefoot, half dressed, soaked to the skin, and penniless. Come to that, I don’t know what the local currency is, or even which country we’re in, and the only thing I know about the language around here is that if it isn’t English, French or German then neither of us speaks it. That’s assuming that there is anybody around here: we could be hundreds of miles from the nearest tribal village, and this track doesn’t look well used. We missed lunch and pretty soon we’re going to be very hungry.” She looked around them nervously. “And I hope there’s nothing else in this jungle that’s also getting hungry and feels like having us for it’s next meal.” Carrie shivered. Penny started walking in the direction they had been running. “Come on,” she said grimly, “We’d better keep moving.”

  Chapter Two

  During the next few hours, the thoughts of both girls were far from pleasant.

  Every sound and movement coming from the foliage to either side of them made them jump. Neither of them had the least idea of whether lions and tigers or any other large predators were prevalent in this area, or what to do if they came across one, or anything like that. Their classical education had not covered such things. Very conscious of their bare and aching feet, both girls also kept a sharp look-out for snakes.

  The jungle to either side of them had grown thicker and they now had no real choice but to keep to the path. The air had grown more humid and oppressive and it was increasingly difficult to breathe. Both of them were grateful that they were only scantily dressed and the sea water had drained and evaporated from the few clothes they wore, only to be replaced by perspiration. The temperature further sapped their strength. Penny theorised that the path was moving away from the sea and so losing the ocean breeze which had made the weather on the yacht so delightful. It was impossible to tell: they had originally picked the path up maybe a quarter to half a mile inland and the sea had not been visible then and certainly wasn’t now. The trees and vegetation went so high that there was no way to see anything.

  Penny had other concerns. Firstly, it had been about noon when they had left the boat. Neither of them had a watch, but they had certainly been walking for hours and it would be growing dark soon. With the possibility that they were still being pursued, did they dare stop and light a fire that night? For that matter, could they light one? Rubbing sticks together is all very well in theory, but neither of them had ever actually tried it. And what about food? Penny had seen little that looked edible on their journey and if they did risk eating something and it gave them food poisoning, they would end up, quite simply, dead.

  Then there was the problem of what happened if they did meet people. Carrie had recovered just a little of her arrogant poise and sim
ply insisted that they needed to find a telephone and contact the nearest British embassy. Penny was far from convinced. Apart from the extremely low probability of finding someone with a radio or phone, they had to face the possibility that whoever they met might be far from friendly. Half dressed, young, attractive and helpless, they were certainly candidates for rape at least. Candidly, Penny had pointed this out to Carrie, but the blonde had sniffed dismissively and pointed out that whoever they met would probably be blacks and sex with them was quite out of the question. Although not quite so openly racist as her friend, Penny didn’t fancy the prospect much herself, but she was far less certain that she could prevent it, or the possibility that they would be killed afterwards. Maybe even eaten: were there cannibals in this part of the world? She had absolutely no idea.

  As the day began to slip with growing speed into evening, at least the temperature dropped and the air became easier to breathe. The path climbed somewhat, and the vegetation, although still too thick to consider venturing into it even if there was any point, at least fell away from the path. The shadows which they tried to inhabit earlier to avoid the blazing sun became longer, and the light grew alarmingly dim. Soon, they would barely be able to see their way ahead. Their legs trembled with exhaustion and they felt unbelievably tired, and it was getting markedly cooler.

  And then, rounding a bend onto a long straight stretch, they saw two men on horseback coming towards them.

  Penny had been working herself up so much about what sort of people they might meet that her first reaction was to look around for somewhere to hide. It was quite pointless, because there wasn’t anywhere and anyway they had already been seen despite the gloom: the men carried powerful torches. In any case, they were desperately in need of help, and too tired to run away.

  The men came closer. They were both Negro, but in Western style shorts and vests. Penny and Carrie exchanged anxious glances and then Penny spoke for both of them.

  “Excuse me, can you help us? We are lost.” It was a ridiculous understatement, but she didn’t want to say too much until they found out a little more about these men. Anyway, she was far from sure that they would understand her. They stared at her without replying. Penny tried again in reasonably fluent French and German and Carrie added a try in broken Spanish, although Penny suspected that the average Spaniard wouldn’t have understood much of it.

  Throughout all this, the men just stared at the two girls, saying nothing. When the girls’ fund of languages had dried up, one turned to the other and spoke rapidly in a tongue neither of them had ever heard before.

  “We no speak Dago,” Carrie stated with irritable arrogance.

  “And I hope they don’t speak English well enough to understand insults like that,” Penny whispered to her friend.

  Carrie shrugged. “Obviously they don’t speak it at all,” she replied; “they’re only savages.”

  Penny was about to reply when one of the men spoke to them. “We take you to boss,” he said slowly and haltingly in English.

  Both girls were taken completely by surprise. “Er, yes, please,” Penny managed.

  “You climb up behind us, one on each horse.”

  “Um, can’t you share one and we’ll take the other?” Carrie asked. “We can handle it.” She fancied herself as a horsewoman, Penny knew and with fair reason, but the brunette privately doubted if either of them could manage the huge beast. The question was irrelevant in any case, because the Negroes just stared back at them and waited for them to climb up as had been initially suggested. The girls did so, scrambling up without any help. Penny had no option but to hang on to the muscular waist of the man in front of her. Both of the men looked lean and very strong. The one she clung to smelled of sweat, but then right at this moment her expensive perfume was tinged with her own perspiration.

  The horses started off at a fast trot. Darkness was descending rapidly now and soon the men had to use the torches to pick their way out. The scantily dressed girls were both starting to feel cold. Penny observed politely that it was a good job they had met up when they had, but both men ignored her.

  They went on for some distance, at least half a dozen miles or so, at a much faster speed than the girls had managed on foot. Then a camp appeared ahead of them; a set of maybe five or six buildings in what looked to be a man-made clearing, with lights burning through the gathering gloom. Both girls had the impression, correctly, that it was designed as an overnight stop, rather than a permanent residence. They had dropped back down towards the sea, and it could be heard not too far away, waves crashing against the shore. If these people were traders of some sort, they might do business with boats coming close to the shore.

  The two Negroes helped the girls down, then dismounted themselves. One led the horses away, the other took them to a clearing where a third Negro and - salvation! - a white man gathered around a fire. The white man looked up, and by the way the other three deferred to him he was clearly the leader. Carrie, who had made that assumption anyway on the basis of his skin, spoke: “do you speak English?”

  “Of course,” the man replied suavely. He seemed unsurprised by their presence, Penny noted. It can’t be too often that you find two half-naked young English girls wandering down a jungle path in East Africa. “My name is Brian Norris.”

  “We were on a boat and the crew staged a mutiny,” explained Carrie. “They were going to ... abduct us too” - it was rather too embarrassing to discuss the pirates’ full intentions for them - “so we jumped ship and swam ashore. They came after us, but we lost them in the jungle. Then we found this path and walked along it until we met your men.”

  Norris said nothing, just listened thoughtfully. Carrie waited for a response and when she didn’t get one she went on, “is there any way we can contact the authorities from here? Or send a messenger?”

  “My dear girl,” replied the man suavely, “this is the jungle. There are no competent authorities for at least a hundred miles in any direction.”

  “Don’t you have any radio?”

  “Only a local transmitter.” He became rather more abrupt. “It is late now. We have a storage room where you can sleep tonight. In the morning we will see what can be done.”

  With a nod, he left them, and the two girls found themselves hustled towards one of the primitive stone-hewn shacks by the Negroes. They were almost pushed inside and another Negro brought some rough blankets, an oil lamp and a tray containing some fairly basic food and water. The coloured men ignored Carrie’s questions totally and left, shutting the heavy wooden door behind them.

  Penelope and Carrie looked around. There were just the four walls, with a couple of small window slits, some sacks of flour and some straw. Their attention focused onto the food. Extremely hungry, they ate it all. The bread was rather dry but at least plentiful, and after they had drunk their fill of the lukewarm water there was still plenty left to sustain them during the night. They pulled as much straw together as they could and settled down rather uncomfortably, Carrie complaining quite loudly. Penny brought the conversation around to their plight partly to keep Carrie from her perpetual moaning.

  “What nationality do you think that man is?” she asked thoughtfully.

  “Hmm?” responded Carrie. “I didn’t really notice. European extraction, certainly, but not English despite the name. Or maybe an ex-colonial. A Boer, maybe.”

  “We’re not that far south, surely.”

  “Don’t they travel quite a bit? Anyway, what does it matter? They’ll take us to the nearest civilisation, if there is any in this God-forsaken land and we can contact my dad and the police.”

  “The yacht will be long gone.”

  “Stuff the yacht, it’s insured. I’d like to see those men behind bars, though.”

  Penelope looked around. “I wonder what this place is,” she mused.

  Carrie shrugged, unin
terested. “Just a staging post on a trading route, I suppose.”

  “Perhaps. The path we were on doesn’t strike me as a caravan trail. What do you think these men are doing here?”

  “Does it matter?” Carrie asked irritably.

  “It might,” Penelope replied quietly.

  “Why?”

  The brunette didn’t answer straight away. Instead she asked, “what did the men on the boat say they would do with us?”

  “Apart from the graphic bits, you mean?” Carrie frowned. “I was too shocked to take it all in, but they said they would sell us to slave traders. Ridiculous idea,” she added haughtily.

  “Why ridiculous?”

  “Well, it just is. Any fool can see that we’re British nobility.”

  Penelope suppressed a smile. She herself had noble blood, Carrie just had a self-made wealthy father, but never mind that right now. “I don’t see how that would save us.”

  Carrie gave her a look of pitying scorn, as if to say, you just don’t understand, do you? But her reply was, “anyway, we’re safe from all that now.”

  “Are we?”

  Penelope’s reply was quietly spoken, but devastating nevertheless. There was a long silence; at length, Carrie asked, “what do you mean?”

  “Consider: the pirates were going to sell us to some land-based slavers. They had probably already diverted our course to where they wanted to go. I hadn’t been checking where we were, had you?”

  Carrie shook her head. “I wouldn’t know how to.”

  “Nor me. So, they were heading for the rendezvous with the slavers. No point in revealing their plans to us until we were nearly there, just leave enough time to, er, have their bit of fun.”

  “So?”

  “So we were close to the meeting with the slavers and then we jumped ship and the next thing we know we run into this group.”

  Carrie caught the drift. Her elegant eyebrows raised, her sky-blue eyes opened wide “You think these people might be the slavers?”