For the river flowed from a jungle-smothered cave in the face of a cliff.
THIS was the entrance to the GreeGree Cave of the Beast Men. It was known to them as such. Yet they'd come to it but recently. And none of those who had now assembled there had ever seen it before. For the Sapadi hadn't used this particular Lodge Room for nearly a thousand years. They were like that. They appeared. They disappeared. They knew in ways that they never sought to question things that they couldn't understand.
Bele ran lightly in spite of his great weight. He came into a large chamber where there was a natural fire-pit, perhaps twenty feet in diameter and deep as a desert well.
This filled the place with a red glow which, once the eyes were accustomed to it, served the purpose of sight as well as sunlight might have done.
About the edge of the fire-pit were set a row of skulls-all sorts, human and nearly human, the skulls of lions and elephants. The warm air of the place had the small partly of an unclean butcher-shop.
Bele drew this air into his lungs a number of times as if gratefully, and exhaled it with a snorting sound.
THERE were snorts and loud breathing in shadowy corners.. and then soft clattering of hornshod feet as from here and there, the black shapes of other Sapadi began, to appear. Some were young and some were old.
There was one who was very old, and he spoke first.
"Two of the Spotted Believers came," he said, in the snorting, mooing, tribal speech of the Sapadi Lodge. "They told us you were thrown and bound."
"Where are they?" Bele asked. "We took their blood and threw them into the fire-pit."
"You did well."
"They lied?"
"You see me here."
"But the white sacrifice I do not see."'
"He was surrounded by half the killers of Africa. He speaks their speech."
"Yet white?"
"White as a fish."
"His medicine must be strong. I need it."
"I'll get it for you."
"You said that when you left."
"I'll get it."
"When?"
"Tonight. Now. I know where he sleeps. I hurt him badly. To bring him to you unspoiled I'll now take others with me."
And Bele began to look about him at the other members of the Lodge. They shifted about a little, their cloven feet scraping the stone of the floor. None of these others were as large and powerful as Bele was himself. Yet nearly so.
Even the old Sapadi, Bele's father, who'd frightened creatures of the Bush now for upward of a century, had a look of twisted power about him, like a gnarled tree.
The old Sapadi had two fresh leopard skins twisted about him which yielded a scent of fur and blood, and these he sniffed from time to time as medicine.
"Choose," the old man snorted. And Bele began to choose those who would accompany him.
CHAPTER 6
"OVENGUA"
THERE had always been, perhaps, more reason than white people might concede, for some of those strange beliefs that lived and held and proved themselves in this part of Black Africa. Take that belief in the "Ovengua," for example-the one to which Bele, the Beast Man, had referred in his own mind when thinking of Kwa.
The "Ovengua" were terrible, shadowy creatures-spirits, they were believed to be-that roamed the jungle at night, killing men and eating them, or sending them back to their villages at last crazy and frightfully disfigured.
There were witnesses enough to tell of having seen such things and escaped. They told these stories at night as they sat about the village fires and smoked and drank.
Africa liked to talk all night, or drum and dance. Perhaps there was some ancient wisdom in this, as well.
Bele and his Sapadi companions were like "Ovengua" now as they threaded their way through the black and steaming lark of the Sango Lobango bush. How could they see in the dark? How could any of the night prowlers of the Devil Bush see in the dark? The dark wasn't dark to them. It was just another sort of light. It was a light by which, they could see many things better than by sunlight. There were many things they could see in what the White Man calls the dark that would have been invisible by daylight-things that floated, things that crawled, other things that stood and peered.
The Night Side of Nature. Another world. A world that ordinary men dimly remember, perhaps, such times they're in the brush at night, when they look at the slim new moon, when they tell their ghost stories.
Bele had selected only the toughest and boldest of the Sapadi for this enterprise of his.
After the fight in the clearing where he'd been thrown and bound, one of the elephants had picked him up-at Kwa's request-and carried him off through the jungle to the southern slopes of Sango Lobango. While half the beasts of Africa, it seemed, trailed along to see the finish of the day. Kwa had ridden another elephant, where, for a time, an old gorilla had ridden at his side.
THIS man's medicine must be very strong.
And there, at the same warm medicine pool, Kwa himself had reset the dislocated shoulder. The pain of that was so great that Bele would have bitten Kwa just then, but gorillas and elephants had held him.
The shoulder had been laved in the warm waters of the pool. The pain had gone.
Kwa and a few-of his companions were to pass the night at this same pool, where Kwa would soak his wounds. Bele had heard Kwa say that by morning the wounds would be as good as healed.
Not even if they had been Ovengua, in fact as well as in the seeming, could Bele and his Sapadi band have been more silent, more cunning in the ways of darkness.
Wherever they passed they left, it seemed, a trail of silence and of an even greater darkness about them. There would be a great chorus of frogs and crickets-a surf of sound with regular waves; and across these waves every now and then a whoop or a whistle, a whine or a laugh, a bark or a clatter of beaks, that were like the traffic sounds of some invisible harbor.
Then, a sudden silence at the passing of the Sapadi-a silence that lingered-a silence that seemed, somehow, devoted to serious thinking.
Only the leopards kept the Sapadi company on their silent march. And even the leopards kept their distance-ghosting far out on the flanks like the Devil's own hunting dogs.
KWA slept without fire or cover. He lay at the side of the jungle pool that came down warm and medicinal from one of the ten thousand live craters of old Sango Lobango. Even Sango Lobango had its virtues, and not the least of these was that few insects loved the breath of it. The ants and the mosquitoes never came here, nor the gnats and buffalo flies. Anyway, since his return to Africa, Kwa had recalled all the things he'd ever learned while living with the Mu-there in the hidden Valley of the Mu, which Sango Lobango surrounded with its castellated cliffs. There was truce with many of the insects as there was with many of the beasts.
Some day, Kwa dreamed, he might try to explain these things to those who didn't understand. But, so far, there was too much that he didn't understand himself.
While he slept, his animal friends came and went.
They all had their appointments. There was an unceasing business of the jungle. And the difference between the business of the Utangani and the business of the Bush was this:
If you neglected your business in the White World you stood to lose some money. If you neglected your business in the World of the Bush you stood to lose your life.
TALL Golef, the young elephant bull, who'd rocked through half the night, dreaming yet awake, not far from where Kwa lay, now led his herd off into the night on elephant business and a company of TingaTinga-the great black swamp buffalo almost as powerful as elephants-as if casually drifted near.
But scarcely had this happened than a yearling of the buffalo herd set up a help-cry and at the same time a leopard-cry. It seemed impossible, but there it was-two leopards simultaneously had jumped to the yearling's back practically there in the middle of the herd.
The buffalo bulls closed round. The leopards were doomed.
Kwa was instantl
y awake to the alarm among the buffalo, but he had no more idea of rousing himself on this account than a city dweller would think of leaving his bed and running to help each time the firemen pass. Even half asleep, moreover, he followed perfectly all that passed-he was listening to that radio of the buffalos. He knew it when the bulls closed in and were about to kill the leopards.
Out of the dark, like a velvet, suffocating cloud, something had fallen upon him, checking his breath, checking all movement.
It was the scent that told him what had happened-the scent that came with his last gasp of breath-a scent that was charnel, bloodtainted, hot.
About throat and arms and legs and over his face there was a swift, enclosing pressure like the coils of a gigantic snake.
But these coils, he knew, were of Sapadi hands.
All this swift, silent, with the noiseless speed of a dream.
He was far away when his breath came back. He'd been choked so nearly dead that he'd had to keep his mbuiri and his body together by sheer will-power-the sort of will-, power that won't desert some men even when they're unconscious, standing beside them like a faithful dog.
Kwa never had been able to see in the dark as well as some of his jungle friends, but he could see well enough, after a fashion.
Six, seven of the Beast Men, possibly more.
HE'D said that it wouldn't do any good to kill Bele-back there today when he'd had Bele in his power. He'd made the declaration after the thought-dance. He wondered. This was Bele's answer.
They swept him along-half-carrying him at times, forcing him to run. But carried or afoot, he felt the clutch of one great hand in his hair and he knew that this was Bele's hand.
They'd come through a rocky corridor into a dimly lighted cave-a cave that smelled of slaughter-house and stable.
And here Bele shouted: "Lo, I bring you blood of the Moon Colored."
CHAPTER 7
THE FIRE
HE was king of the blooddrinkers-Kwa remembered Bele's vaunt. And there came to Kwa a memory of the spectacle when Bele had broken the little ncheri's neck, then stood there where all could see with that leopard mouth of his clamped to the victim's throat.
The thought and the memory ran like an overtone to what he saw, heard, scented.
He'd been brought-he didn't have to be told-to the secret place of the Beast Men. Not in the knowledge of any living thing-not in all the age old annals of the Mu-was there any record of one who'd ever entered such a place as a captive and escaped alive. The secrets of the Sapadi were as the secrets of Death itself.
There was a slippering clack of horny hoofs on stone. Dimly, then more clearly, he saw the gathering of the Sapadi Clan. The Beast Men. No young. No women, just men. No, neither animals nor men. Beast Men! There were forms of an ancient black magic in the world to make a carved idol shudder. So he'd been told-by the old men of the Furry Tribe, by old gorillas and elephants, by the old chimpanzee woman who'd cared for him once before when he'd lain wounded in the Devil Bush.
He would have none of this black magic. He wouldn't contribute to it even by his death. Not if he could help it.
An old Beast Man was peering into his face, fingering his throat.
At the same instant that Kwa felt an overwhelming spasm of reaction he also felt a slight loosening of that grip in his hair.
He screamed. He struck right and left. The old Sapadi in front of him he bowled over completely.
There was a power in the human voice-puny compared to a hundred other voices of the Bush; yet powerful. So his jungle friends had told him. Always something about a human voice to make the non-humans pause and reflect. Always a possibility of magic in it.
At that sudden scream of Kwa's a touch of panic must have caught the Beast Men. Just for an instant they were weak as water. But in that instant Kwa was out of their suffocating mob.
The walls of the cave took up his cry and magnified it. Kwa himself may have been caught in a gust of panic.
He ran. He was like a dead leaf caught up by a hurricane. The FirePit opened just in front of him. He flung himself into the air in a flying leap.
HE almost shriveled and dropped. He'd seen that happen to birds when they carelessly crossed some open vent in the Valley of the Mu.
But he was over.
He stumbled into a row of skulls. He came up armed. He didn't know what with, but there was a bone cudgel in his hand. The swift thought came to him that here was some earlier victim of the Beast Men now offering him aid, ready to exact the toll of vengeance after many years.
There was no time for consecutive thought. Just flashes-flashes of sight, judgment, action.
The Sapadi were now adding to that clamor he'd set up by that scream of his. For the moment it was as if the cavern had become a trap in which a hundred maddened cattle milled-snorts and bellows, a drum of cloven hoofs, the walls of the place sending all this back magnified.
A black shadow of a giant rushed toward Kwa and Kwa, with that jumping perception of his, read his intent before the enemy closed in. This hadn't been a direct attack. The Beast Man was trying to get between him and the Fire-Pit.
That was it.
They wanted to preserve him alive.
KWA feinted at a scurry to escape, then turned and nailed the black monster with his bone club. The Beast Man lost his balance, turned and clutched. For a moment his hand was scraping Kwa's arm-trying to save himself, trying to take Kwa along.
Kwa struck again-twice-and twice again.
He saw the Beast Man stagger, bellow, topple-Even while this was happening, there were others pressing in along the edge of the pit. There was a screech from the other side, piercing the general tumult with a broken shaft of sound. And that-Kwa somehow knew-was the voice of the old man who had fingered his throat.
Again he heard that inverted form of speech, the meaning of which rocked into his mind.
"Don't spill his blood! Fend him from the pit!"
He'd keep the pit at his back-Kwa resolved. Better a plunge into fire than to have a Minotaur at your throat. His back was so close to the great well of fire that he could feel the scorching waves of its heat pulse up his back, lift his hair.
But he clubbed at a pair of hands that reached for him along the stone at his feet. He shifted aside. Perhaps, if he could round the pit, he might risk a dash for the corridor by which he'd entered this place.
Still with his bone club in his right hand he reached for a buffalo skull with his left and flung this backhanded at those who pressed along the rim.
He saw one go, clutching-then a double scream. One Sapadi had dragged another over the rim.
A lull, sometimes, is a warning as much as a shout. He crouched a little and turned. He was just in time to see a black mass hurtle in his direction. One of the Sapadi had attempted to duplicate that initial leap of his.
He fell far short.
The gaping abyss of the Fire Pit was like the open mouth of some prehistoric serpent.
How many Sapadi were there? Where was Bele?
Kwa stumbled on a skull and fell. He fell on the skull and rolled. For a flaring second it seemed as if he were doomed to a plunge into that bottomless pool of flame whether he wanted to or not. But feet, legs, thighs-these writhed to save theme selves and save him, their master, with them.
And he curled round, with the curl of a scorched snake, just as two more enormous human paws slid toward his feet, along the floor. And now, at least one of those questions in his brain was answered.
HERE was Bele. These were the hands of Bele reaching toward him. That was Bele's face raised in the faint outer zone of light that shivered up from the pit.
Bele's voice reached him.
"Kwa! Kwa! You saved my life! Now I save yours!"
But Kwa, trained to read the silence back of words, read Bele's thought.
"Moon! Moon! Help me, Moon! I offer you this Moon Colored vow so soon as we have drained his blood!"
Kwa pulled himself around to his knees and bashe
d his bone club into Bele's temple. Bele, in a paroxysm, clutched Kwa's arm. The fingers held, even as Kwa, with a gust of dread, felt that Bele's life was gone, Kwa staggered to his feet. But as he rose, he dragged up the weight of Bele's dying clutch. The clutch tightened. It held like iron.
As he jerked backward, one of his feet slipped over the rim of the pit. Now all that saved him was the grip of the dead Beast Man.
So Bele, dead, had been forced to keep that lying promise of his, after all. Bele had saved his life. But for what?
CHAPTER 8
NEW MOON NIGHT
NEW MOON night in the outside world; and in a thousand villages up and down the Guinea Coast of Africa the Black Men were daubing themselves with sacred chalk-white, blue, pink, in designs their fathers had taught them but which no one understood. From moon to moon the chalk lay before the main idol in the greegree house, and thus absorbed the qualities that made it powerful in the spirit world.
Not much drumming on a New. Moon Night. A time for silence, fear, meditation, magic dreams.
So in the Bush, among the animals.
Very close to each other, in some respects, were the animals and men of untouched Black Africa. Secretive. Occult. With ways of their own that simply were not "white man fashion."
Indifferent to death as few white men are. Cool in the fatal emergency. Perpetually attentive to things unseen.
There'd never been anything in the nature of a truce between the DingaDinga tribe-the swamp buffalo-and the Leopard People. But just as the Head Bull of the buffalo was about to rip the life from the second leopard that had attacked the yearling herder it was as if a question and answer had passed between them.
Leopard may have talked to Buffalo, Buffalo to Leopard-all in that unclocked speed with which so much transpires in the Bush.
The Head Bull backed away with a snort. What he might have said was:
"You, a Leopard, follow a thing like Bele! When Bele and his sort have been killing Leopards for a thousand years!"
Adventures of Kwa, Man of the Jungle (Two jungle adventure classics in one volume!) Page 9