‘Perhaps we can slip away some night?’
‘And then what will we do?’ he said bitterly. ‘Watson, you and I know the jungles of London well and are quite fitted to conduct our safaris through them. But here . . . no, Watson, any black child of eight is more competent, far more so, to survive in these wilds.’
‘You don’t paint a very good picture,’ I said grimly. ‘Though I am descended from the Vernets, the great French artists,’ he said, ‘I myself have little ability at painting pretty pictures.’
He chuckled then, and I was heartened by this example of pawky humour, feeble though it was. Holmes would never quit; his indomitable English spirit might be defeated, but it would go down fighting. And I would be at his side. And was it not after all better to die with one’s boots on while one still had some vigour than when one was old and crippled and sick and perhaps an idiot drooling and doing all sorts of pitiful, sickening things?
That evening preparations were made to abandon the ship. Ballast water was put in every portable container, the food supply was stored in sacks made from the cotton fabric ripped off the hull, and we waited. Sometime after midnight, the end came. It was fortunately a cloudless night with a moon bright enough for us to see, if not too sharply, the terrain beneath. This was a jungle up in the mountains, which were not at a great elevation. The ship was steered down a winding valley through which a stream ran silvery. Then, abruptly, we had to rise, and we could not do it.
We were in the control car when the hillside loomed before us. Reich gave the order and we threw our supplies out, thus lightening the load and giving us a few more seconds of grace. We two prisoners were allowed to drop out first. Reich did this because the ship would rise as the crew-members left, and he wanted us to be closest to the ground. We were old and not so agile, and he thought that we needed all the advantages we could get.
He was right. Even though Holmes and I fell into some bushes which eased our descent, we were still bruised and shaken up. We scrambled out, however, and made our way through the growth toward the supplies. The ship passed over us, sliding its great shadow like a cloak, and then it struck something. The whirring propellors were snapped off, the cars crumpled and came loose with a nerve-scraping sound, the ship lifted again with the weight of the cars gone, and it drifted out of sight. But its career was about over. A few minutes later, it exploded. Reich had left several time-bombs next to some gas cells.
The flames were very bright and very hot, outlining the dark skeleton of its framework. Birds flew up and around it. No doubt they and the beasts of the jungle were making a loud racket, but the roar of the flames drowned them out.
By their light we could see back down the hill, though not very far. We struggled through the heavy vegetation, hoping to get to the supplies before the others. We had agreed to take as much food and water as we could carry and set off by ourselves, if we got the chance. Surely, we reasoned, there must be some native village nearby, and once there we would ask for guidance to the nearest British post.
By pure luck, we came across a pile of food and some bottles of water. Holmes said, ‘Dame Fortune is with us, Watson!’ but his chuckle died the next moment when Von Bork stepped out of the bushes. In his hand was a Luger automatic and in his one eye was the determination to use that before the others arrived. He could claim, of course, that we were fleeing or had attacked him and that he was forced to shoot us.
‘Die, you pig-dogs!’ he snarled, and he raised the gun. ‘Before you do, though, know that I have the formula on me and that I will get it to the Fatherland and it will doom you English swine and the French swine and the Italian swine. The bacilli can be adapted to eat Yorkshire pudding and snails and spaghetti, anything that is edible! The beauty of it is that it’s specific, and unless it’s mutated to eat sauerkraut, it will starve rather than do so!’
We drew ourselves up, prepared to die as British men should. Holmes muttered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Jump to one side, Watson, and then we’ll rush him! You take his blind side! Perhaps one of us can get to him!’
This was a noble plan, though I didn’t know what I could do even if I got hold of Von Bork. After all, he was a young man and had a splendid physique.
At that moment there was a crashing in the bushes, Reich’s loud voice commanding Von Bork not to shoot, and the commander, tears streaming from his face, stumbled into the clearing. Behind him came others. Von Bork said, ‘I was merely holding them until you got here.’ Reich, I must add, was not weeping because of any danger to us. The fate of his airship had dealt him a terrible blow; he loved his vessel and to see it die was to him comparable to seeing his wife die. Perhaps it had even more impact, since, as I later found out, he was on the verge of a divorce.
Though he had saved us, he knew that we were ready to skip out at the first chance. He kept a close eye on us, though it was not as close as Von Bork’s. Nevertheless, he allowed us to retreat behind bushes to attend to our comforts. And so, three days later, we strolled on away.
‘Well, Watson,’ Holmes said, as we sat panting under a tree several hours later, ‘we have given them the slip. But we have no water and no food except these pieces of mouldy biscuit in our pockets. At this moment I would trade them for a handful of shag.’
We went to sleep finally and slept like the two old and exhausted men we were. I awoke several times, I think because of insects crawling over my face, but I always went back to sleep quickly. About eight in the morning, the light and the uproar of jungle life awoke us. I was the first to see the cobra slipping through the tall growths toward us. I got quickly, though unsteadily and painfully, to my feet. Holmes saw the reptile then and started to get up. The snake raised its upper part, its hood swelled, and it swayed as it turned its head this way and that.
‘Steady, Watson!’ Holmes said, though the advice would better have been given to himself. He was much closer to the cobra, within striking range, in fact, and he was shaking more violently than I. He could not be blamed for this, of course. He was in a more shakeable situation.
‘I knew we should have brought along that flask of brandy,’ I said. ‘We have absolutely nothing for snakebite.’
‘No time for reproaches, you imbecile!’ Holmes said.
‘Besides, what kind of medical man are you? It’s sheer superstitious nonsense that alcohol helps prevent the effects of venom.’
‘Really, Holmes,’ I said. He had been getting so irascible lately, so insulting. Part of this could be excused, since he became very nervous without the solace of tobacco. Even so, I thought . . .
The thought was never finished. The cobra struck, and Holmes and I jumped, yelling.
VII
For a moment both Holmes and I thought that he had been bitten. The blunt nose of the cobra, however, had only touched Holmes’s leg. But he was in as perilous a situation as before, having jumped straight up instead of away and having come down in the same place, in his footprints in the mud, in fact. The cobra, meanwhile, had moved closer and now could not miss.
‘Don’t move, Holmes!’ I cried. ‘It may not strike again!’
‘The cobra is like lightning; it always strikes the same place twice!’ he said. ‘For heaven’s sake, Watson, divert it!’
I started to move around Holmes toward the creature, though not too closely, when I saw a bush ahead of me shake. Great Scott, I thought, is another venomous killer, perhaps its mate, coming to join it?
The bush ceased shaking, and from behind it stepped out a man such as I had never seen before. At least, I’ve never seen a totally naked man in a public place before, if the African jungle may be classed as such. I have viewed few with such a heavy bone structure and superb muscles, more like Apollo’s than Hercules’ though, more leopardish than lionish.
He stood perhaps six feet two inches and was very dark, definitely not an Englishman but not as dark as a Negro. His shoulder-length hair was straight and blue-black. Below the bulging atavistic supraorbital ridges were large lo
ng-lashed deep brown eyes. His face was indeed handsome, and he had the biggest [word blotted out by ink] I’ve ever seen, and as a medical man I’ve seen some startlers.
He was a magnificent specimen, unflawed except for an angry-red spot between and on the big toe and next toe of his left foot. This, I assumed, was caused by a birthmark or one of the fungi so rife in the jungle.
My statement that he was altogether unclothed is not quite accurate. He did wear a broad belt of crocodile hide, secured at the front by thongs tied in a knot, and the belt supported a crocodile-hide scabbard in which was a huge hunting knife.
The man advanced toward us, saying in English with an Oxford accent, ‘Don’t move a muscle, gentlemen.’
He looked at Holmes.
‘Try to keep your teeth from chattering.’
He walked up quite close to the cobra and spoke to it in a language totally unfamiliar to me. Holmes, an accomplished linguist, later confessed to me that the language was also unknown to him.
The cobra twisted its body towards him and hissed a few times, its forked tongue shooting out. Then its hood collapsed, and it crawled off into the bush.
‘White Hood is my brother,’ the dark man said, ‘and I explained to her that you were no danger to her and that she was under no obligation to the Law of the Jungle to attack you.’
Holmes surprised me by his reply, which I though under the circumstances was remarkably ungrateful.
‘Really?’ he said, sneering. ‘Just how could she hear you, since cobras are totally deaf? And why do you call it brother, since it’s a female?’
The man’s dark eyes seemed to flame, and his hand went to the handle of the knife.
‘Are you calling me a liar, sir?’
‘My friend has been under a series of strains and stresses of high degree,’ I hastily said. ‘He is not quite himself. I assure you, sir, whoever you may be, that we are both very grateful to you for having rescued us from a possibly fatal situation. Nor do we doubt for a moment that you and the snake were carrying on a dialogue.
‘Allow me to introduce us. That gentleman is Mr. Sherlock Holmes, of whom you may have heard, and I am his colleague, Doctor John H. Watson.’
‘Another madman!’ Holmes said, though softly. The ears of the stranger must have been singularly keen because he frowned and looked strangely at Holmes. However, he then grinned, but this did not ease my apprehension. His facial expression reminded me of Chaucer’s line about ‘the smiler with the knife.’
Holmes had by then somewhat regained his composure and was no doubt regretting his hasty and ill-considered words. He said, ‘Yes, we owe you a great debt of gratitude.’
Then, his keen grey eyes narrowed, a slight smile—of triumph?—playing about his lips, he said, ‘Sir Mowgli of the Seeonee, I presume?’
VIII
Our saviour was visibly startled. He said, ‘We have met before? I don’t remember your odor!’
‘There is no reason to get personal,’ Holmes said. ‘No,
Sir Mowgli, we have not met elsewhere. But it is obvious to me that you must be that man who claims to have been reared from infancy by wolves, the man of whom Rudyard Kipling wrote so strikingly and beautifully. You are Mowgli—that is, translated from the universal jungle language, Frog. You are obviously of that branch of the dark Caucasian race which principally inhabits the chief jewel on the diadem of the British Empire, India. You are not of the light-skinned Caucasion branch to which several feral human beings of the African area belong. That is, to name a few, Tarzan the Ape-Man, Kaspa the Lion-Man, Kungai the Leopard-Man, Miota the Jackal-Girl, Ka-Zar the Lion-Man, Kalu the Baboon-Boy, Azan the Ape-Man, and several others whose names and titles I do not recall. All are said to be roaming the jungles and veldts of the Dark Continent, consorting with their various hairy companions, and breaking the necks or gashing the throats of evil men.
‘You claim . . . I mean . . . you speak with a cobra and call it your brother, White Hood. So did Mowgli, according to your biographer, Kipling. You go naked, whereas the others I named, though not clad as if they were walking through Trafalgar Square, still are modest enough to wear loincloths of animal origin. Also, I happen to know that Sir Mowgli is in Africa, though I was informed that he was in Central, not East, Africa.’
‘Yes, it is obvious, now that you explain it,’ the baronet said.
Holmes’ face twisted with anger as it does sometimes when I make the same remark.
The baronet said, ‘I have heard of both of you, and I have read some of the chronicles of your adventures. I am as surprised at finding you here in this jungle, far away from the great but dingy and misery-ridden metropolis of
London, as you are at encountering me here. How did you happen to come here?’
Holmes told our story. When my companion had finished it, the baronet said, ‘You are indeed fortunate to have survived such harrowing experiences.’
He turned and gestured at the bush behind which he had hidden and which again was shaking. He seemed to be indicating to someone to come out from hiding. Presently, that turned out to be so. The head of a white woman came from behind the bush and was followed after some hesitation by the body. She was, it was embarrassingly clear, clad only in a ragged and exceedingly dirty slip. I could not help observing that she had a magnificent figure—much like Irene Adler’s, if I may reminisce—but the effect was spoiled by the mud, scratches, and rashes which seemed to cover most of the skin that was exposed, which was considerable.
Her long and curly auburn hair was a tangle of dirt and burrs. One big blue eye was quite beautiful, but the other was swollen shut by an insect bite. Or so I thought at the time.
Despite the scanty and torn attire, the lack of coiffure, and the various disfigurements, I recognized Liza Borden, the actress, whose true name was Mary Anne Liza Murdstone-Malcon, daughter of the Viscount of Utter Bickring, widow of the Earl of Murdstone-Malcon. Who would not recognize the face and body of this beauty who had played the lead female role in such movies as The Divine Aspasia, Socrates’ Wife, The Motor Maidy She Stooped to Holly, The Scarlet Marky and The Witch of Endor?
But the voice that accompanied that goddess-like beauty made me glad that the movies were silent. Its effect was that of a screech owl’s shriek issuing from a nightingale’s throat. It was high and whining and nasal and strident, what one might expect from a fishwife or a Siamese cat.
‘Oh, gentlemen!’ she cried as she ran toward us, purple and red furrowed arms outsretched. ‘Save me! Save me!’
She fell sobbing into my arms, and her body shook with uncontrolled grief.
‘There, there, you’re all right. You are saved,’ I said, patting her back.
‘Save you from what, Madame?’ Holmes said.
She tore herself from my embrace, whirled, and thrust an accusing finger at Sir Mowgli.
‘From him the beast! He’s an absolute savage, he doesn’t know what decency or honor or kindness or consideration or civilization means! He has wronged me, wronged me, violated me many times over, night and day, day and night, despite all my pleas, my tearful protestations . . .!’
There was much more, but I would have felt more strongly about her accusations if I had not recognized that her words were exactly the same as those she had delivered in the film Mrs. Milton’s Revenge. I will never forget those words, burning white in the subtitles.
‘Now, now, my dear,’ I said, ‘just what do you mean, wronged you? When you say violated do you mean by that that . . .?’
‘Yes, I do!’ she cried, her rasping voice not only scraping my nerves but driving birds for some distance around to soar screaming from the trees. ‘He ravished me, took me against my will! It tears my heart out to utter such words, but I must!’
These words were not from Mrs. Milton’s Revenge but from The Divine Aspasia.
‘Sir, is this true?’ I sputtered at the wild man. ‘And have you no decency, standing naked before a white woman, a noble lady?’
‘She�
�s no lady,’ he said, grinning, ‘except in the titular sense. As for being ravished, it is the ravisher who accuses me, the ravishee-to-be, of being the ravisher. Though, actually, there was no foul deed, no carnal knowledge except for some brief unavoidable contact while I was fighting her off. I even had to blacken her eye and knock her down a few times before she understood that I am faithful to my marriage vows. The wolves take only one mate during their lifetime, and I am brother to the wolf.’
‘You lie, you utter cad!’ she screamed. She turned to me, and she said, ‘Oh, sir, you look like a gentleman! Please defend me!’
‘But . . . but . . .’ I said, ‘he’s not attacking you?’
‘Then please don’t let him! Keep the beast away from me!’
‘He will not touch you, I assure you, while I am alive to protect you,’ I said.
‘Don’t worry,’ Sir Mowgli said. ‘The panther does not mate with the crocodile. Nor the eagle with the skunk. That is the Law of the Jungle, but she knows only the Law of Hollywood, the Law of the British Nobility, and both are decadent.’
‘Sir!’ I cried, ‘a gendeman does not say anything about a lady’s honor even if he is wronged!’
‘Ngaayah!’ he said. I supposed that it was an exclamation of disgust in the jungle language, and his spitting on the ground with vigor and his grimace confirmed my surmise.
‘If you want to fill your bellies, follow me,’ he said, and he walked around the bush out of our sight.
‘Aren’t you going to do anything?’ the countess said.
I harrumphed several times and said, ‘Under the, uh, circumstances, there seems little that I can do.’
The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes II Page 12