It went on and on, the roasting and the eating. And I think that the worst of it all was that in our starved state, the aroma of that roasting meat did arouse in us a hunger despite our horror, so that our mouths ran with rivers of spittle and our stomachs griped and yearned. And what monstrousness was this, to stir with such famine at the smell of man’s cooking flesh? But so starved were we that we could not tell ourselves it was unholy to yearn for some of that meat: it could have been mere pork, for all that our ignorant noses were able to tell.
I know not how many hours the ghastly feast proceeded. But at length it was over; and the Jaqqas rose, and slung over their shoulders the bodies of those men whom they had not consumed, and in their ghostly way did steal away, over a little rise in the sandy spit, and vanished on the other side.
“They will come to us next,” said Faleiro in gloom.
“I think they are sated for now,” I said.
“Ever looking on the brighter side, eh, Piloto?” said he. And it was true, in good sooth: for what value is it to take ever the darkest outlook? We placed guards, and for all the rest of the time we dwelled in that place we looked out day and night for the coming of the Jaqqas. But they did not come, either because they could not reach our shore as readily as they had the other, or because they had satisfied their needs here and now were journeying to some far destination to perform the next of their foul celebrations.
Yet it was hard enough, living there, to walk about with the memory so bright in us of what we had witnessed. A thousand times I wished I had looked away, and closed my eyes, while that feast was happening. But I could not; none of us could; we had witnessed every terrible instant of it, and it blazed now, and for long afterward, in my soul.
After a few days, though, it began to seem to us that our fallen companions were the fortunate ones. For there was next to nothing to eat in that place, and if we had not had the good luck to locate a spring of fresh water we would have died a death even more frightsome than theirs. As it was, we were hard put to live, and Cabral’s jest was amply fulfilled, for we were reduced to such things as gnawing on bones, and chewing scraps of snakeskin, and sucking roots. I thought often of the hardships I had known since leaving England, and nothing seemed worse than this, though perhaps I was mistaken in that: but the hardship of the moment often seems far greater than those endured in other days. I lay staring out to sea, much, and dreamed of home, and sometimes of Anne Katherine and sometimes of Dona Teresa, whose amulet I took from my pocket and studied long. But the sight of it, its breasts and cleft of sex and smooth shining buttocks, did stir distressing desires in me that I could not fulfill, and I regretted bringing it forth. And also did I continue to wonder whether I should be carrying such a talisman at all, it being forbidden by my church and by God Himself to place faith in idols.
Well, and that evil time ended, as all evil times of my life have late or soon come to their end. A vessel out of São Tomé, going south on business to São Paulo de Loanda, passed that way and saw the timbers of the Infanta Beatriz upon the shoal; and, thinking there might be survivors, approached the shore, where the hand of God directed it to us. So were we rescued, and given food and clothing, and a place to sleep, and bit by bit we began to recover from our ordeal. And as we neared São Paulo de Loanda I felt almost myself again. But within my mind now forever were certain images and pictures I would gladly have scraped out. I saw, and still see, Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues hanging suspended in mid-air after I had struck him with my oar; and I saw the dark teeth of the shoal by lightning-flare, with our tight little pinnace wrecked upon it; and I saw, most bitter and painful of all, the demon Jaqqas dancing about our crewfellows, and slaying them, and falling to most heartily on their flesh. Ah, what a world it is, I thought, that has such wolves in human guise loose upon it!
So I was of somewhat a brooding mood by the end of that voyage, which had begun so well. But it is not my nature to dwell morosely on darker things, and I was glad enough to be alive, when I came stepping ashore at São Paulo de Loanda.
I found that much had altered in that city during my absence.
The new governor, Don Francisco d’Almeida, had begun to put his mark upon the place. The slopes of the hill leading up to the high fortress were bustling with fresh constructions. Thousands of blacks did toil under the terrible blaze of the torrid sun, building a palace for the governor far more majestic than the old one, and homes also for the governor’s brother, Don Jeronymo d’Almeida, and for the various other great fidalgos who had accompanied this governor out from Portugal. All these were very grand structures of lime and stone hauled from great distances and covered with tiles of Lisbon, very dignified and awesome, much enhancing the look of the city; for the whiteness of the lime and the merry blue and yellow of the tiles did dance most playfully upon the eye in the bright sunlight. Down below there were many other dwellings a-building, and barracks for the hundreds of new soldiers that Don Francisco had brought with him to Angola. This work had been accomplished at no little cost of native lives. For although all seasons are hot in that place, the rainy season often is more hot and evil than the dry one, and d’Almeida had compelled his people to work regardless of any heat, so that many of them fell in their tracks and died, for all that they were accustomed to such a clime. This I learned from Don João de Mendoça, who by now had taken me as a sort of confidant. “They bury a dozen blacks a day,” he said, with a scowl, “and still d’Almeida shows no restraint. He wants his palace done by winter.”
“Is the man mad?”
“Nay, Andres, not mad, only stupid. Very, very, very stupid.” Don João looked at me long and deep. “That is no way to treat one’s workmen.” I remembered that Don João was the man who had in an angry moment dashed a bowl of spiced sauce into the eyes of a careless slave. But then he added, “It is wasteful to work all those men to death, for some of them have skills that will be not easy to replace,” and I understood that Don João’s objections were objections of economy, not of morality. He laughed and said, “Still, one day Don Francisco will be gone from here, and his palace will remain for the using of his successors. I suppose that’s something good to come out of this.”
Don João did not need to tell me that he had great hopes of dwelling in that palace himself. Anyone with eyes would know of the rivalry between him and d’Almeida: Don João the stronger and shrewder man, Don Francisco the holder of the royal commission. That the governorship should have gone to Don João upon its last vacancy, no one in Angola did doubt; but Don Francisco was higher born, and he had the better connections in the mother country. It was cunning of Don João to make no show of resentment at having been passed over for the governorship, yet must it have been bitter for him, since suddenly Angola was full of new men, the satraps of Don Francisco, and these must also stand between him and true power in the colony. This Don João concealed from me, for he was not one to protest openly his dissatisfactions.
When we were done with these matters, the talk turned to my sorrowful voyage. Here he had lost grievously, since he was a major owner of the cargo that had gone down with the pinnace; but again he made light of that matter.
“There will be other voyages,” said he. “And I trust you will play a great part in them, for I have heard much from Faleiro of your valor and skill.”
“The skill is what I inherit from my father,” I answered. “As for the valor, it was only what was needful to save my life.”
“And the life of others, so I am told. All the men do speak highly of you.”
“Glad am I to have earned their respect.”
“Their respect, and more. For on your next sailing, you shall have a share in the proceeds. It is not right, to send a man off at risk of his life to be pilot for us, and not let him claim his just part of the return.”
This surprised me greatly, that the Portugals would divide a share for me. But I gave him only warm thanks, and not a hint of any ungracious thought.
He said, “Tell me of
the events of your voyage, Andres, before the wreck.”
The which I did, in much detail, dwelling hard on the strange things that had occurred while I was in the land of Loango. Of the rainmaking and the great coccodrillo he took but light notice; it was the tale of the dead Jaqqa that most aroused him. He had me describe it in every detail. When I mentioned the white cross that was painted on the cannibal prince’s chest, he slapped the table, and roared out loud, crying, “By the Mass! They are jolly devils, those Jaqqas!”
I saw nothing jolly about them: to me they were devils, and hyaenas, or wolves in human form. But peradventure Don João had never seen them feeding on his shipmates.
I said, “What meaning has the cross to them? Surely they be not Christians.”
“Why, no, surely not. And it has no meaning for them, I suppose, but they find it a pretty thing. Or else they mean to mock us. Or perhaps they are become Jesuits, and that is their new sign of office. No one understands why the Jaqqas do the things they do. I think they are not human. But none of these blackamoors have any much sense of real Christianity, no matter what they babble in the church of a Sunday. Do you know, Andres, that when I was in Kongo I often saw good Christian Negroes putting the holy cross to pagan use? In one place there was a pile of horns of wild animals surrounded by branches, a sort of altar, and a cross was mounted above it. It is an ancient superstition of theirs that they can witch their animals when hunting them, with piles of horns, and it must have seemed to them that the cross would be an even more powerful mokisso, so they added it to the pile. I thought it clever of them.”
“And I, too, Don João. Why not use all the superstitions one can find, when one is hungry?”
He raised his eyebrows at me and I thought he would be angry, but then he eased somewhat.
“The cross is to you a superstition, then?”
Uncomfortably I said, “We are taught in England that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, even as it is taught by the Roman way. But we believe that it is Jesus who is holy, and not the wood on which He died. We have cast aside our old images and idols.”
“Have you now,” said Don João. “And does it not frighten you, to live without their protection?”
“It was but false protection, sir. For when we destroyed our holy relics, our images of the saints, and the like, there was no plague come upon England, nor any vengeance of our enemies, but rather we have prospered and grown far wealthier than we were in the old days, and when King Philip sent his Armada, we were not harmed, but—”
“Yea,” said Don João darkly. “I wonder why it is, that the Lord encourages such heresies as England’s. But be that as it may: we are far from such quarrels here. I showed the hunter’s cross to a priest, who grew all indignant, and broke it and burned it to pieces, saying it was blasphemy to use it so, and perhaps it was. Well, let the priests burn the Jaqqas as blasphemers, too, if they can catch any. Have you seen these Jaqqas, Andres? Other than the dead one at Loango?”
I looked upon him in amaze, and cried, “Have they not told you, that they devoured some of our men, after we had been cast up on shore?”
“Nay, not a word!”
I found myself atremble from the recollection. “It was the most frightsome thing I ever saw. They appeared like phantoms, in a place ringed round by quicksand, and fell upon the stranded men, and slew them, and—” With a shudder I said, “I saw it all. But need I paint it for you now?”
“I was told only that many men were lost in the wreck.”
“That was how half the dead man perished, to the appetites of Jaqqas, after they had escaped the wrath of the sea.”
And I looked away, that he might not see how pale I was, nor how shaken by the dread memory.
He seemed unaware of my emotion, for he went on talking in the lightest way, saying, “They are bold fellows. Perfect savages, with not a trace of humanity in them. I saw some, once, that we hired to do a battle on our behalf—for they will hire themselves out, you know, when the mood takes them. They were like a band of devils, so that I kept looking to their shoulders, to see if the black wings did sprout there. Yet were they well behaved and quiet. I hear they keep a market in their territory somewhere inland where man’s flesh is sold for meat, like sheep and oxen, by the weight. By the Mass, I wonder what method they use for its cookery, whether they stew it, or roast it, or bake in an oven!” He patted his ample stomach. “God forfend it, Andres, but sometimes—sometimes—I am curious about its flavor. I confess that thing to you that I would not tell even my confessor, and I know not why, except that I think you are a man to my humor. Would you eat man’s flesh?”
“I have seen it done, Don João, when I was a captive of wild Indians in Brazil. I was not tempted.” I would tell him nothing of the effect that the smell of the roasting meat had upon me, when I was so hungered on that sand-spit.
“And if your life depended on it?”
“I think it would not,” said I staunchly. “I could live well enough on roots and leaves and berries, and the small beasts of the wilderness.”
“Nay, I mean, if you were told, Eat this meat or we will slay you, and the meat were man’s flesh?”
“A strange question, Don João.”
“I do put it to you.”
With a shrug I said, “Why, then, I think I would eat of it, if I must! May God spare me from that choice, though.”
“You are to my humor!” he cried. “Wiser to eat than to be eaten, ever! Come, Andres, have some wine with me. And then to your own amusements.” He poured me a brimming goblet of sack and said, handing it to me, “Will the Jaqqas attack Loango?”
“I cannot say. The Loango people fear it greatly.”
“You have heard the tales of that time when the man-eaters struck at São Salvador in the Kongo, have you not?”
“The time when the king of that land was fain to flee to the Hippopotamus Isle?”
“Aye. In ’69, it was. They will come here some day, Andres. They will come everywhere, in time. They are God’s own scourge, loosed upon the world.” He said this mildly, as though he might be talking about the coming of a breeze from the west, or a light shower of rain. “I think they mean to eat their way from nation to nation, until they have devoured all the world. They have a king, Imbe Calandola by name, whose appetite is said to be limitless. Why is it, do you think, that such destroyers are spawned among us again and again? The Turks, the Mongols, the Huns of old, the Assyrians of whom the Bible tells us—now the Jaqqas, and their grand devil Imbe Calandola, are the latest of that sort. They speak for something that exists within us all, do you not think? Eh, Andres? That love of destruction, that joy of doing wrong? God’s own scourge! There is a beauty in such evil. Eh, Andres? Eh? Here: have more wine.” He sat back, laughing to himself, scratching his belly. He was very far gone in his cups, I did perceive. His speech was thickened, his meanings monstrous. I did not know what to reply in the face of such amazing words. We were silent a time, and then he declared, “I will find me a few tame Jaqqas, Andres. And I will feed them on some useless Portugals to make things more quiet in this city. I will let them take a meal of Jesuits first, I think. And then the whoreson fool d’Almeida and his poxy friends. Hah! And my own cook shall brew the sauces for them, that is a master of his art.” He laughed, and drank, and laughed, and drank. I watched, wondering. Before long, I did feel certain, he would fall asleep of his own drunkenness. But instead Don João did quite the opposite, sitting up in his chair and pushing his wineglass aside, and saying to me in altogether a sober voice, no longer slurred nor strange, “There is much trouble here between Don Francisco and the Jesuits, and it will grow worse. I tell you, the man is stupid. He does not know how to handle those priests, and soon there will be open warfare between him and them.”
“Will priests take up arms, then?”
“Nay, I mean no actual war. But some kind of struggle is sure, and it will disrupt our lives. You know, the Jesuits came to Angola in the days of Paulo Dias, and they
have always had a hand in governing here. Dias was strong and wise, and he kept control over them by consulting them in all matters of state, and letting them believe that they were high in his councils. Serrão, when he was governor, and Pereira after him, had so deep a barrel of other problems that they paid the Jesuits no heed, which let the priests collect new powers unto themselves. This, d’Almeida has tried to curb, and he is doing it the wrongest way, as he does everything. He threatens the Jesuits, and he should be seducing them.”
“In what way,” did I ask, “do the priests seek power?”
“Why, by claiming that the blacks are their spiritual flock, and they must be the sole shepherds of them. Already they make intrigue to construct themselves the only intermediaries between the governor and the native chiefs, so that in a short time the chiefs would do the bidding of the Jesuits, and not the governor.”
“But that would mean that the Jesuits would command this country!”
“That is my meaning in precise, Andres. They would relegate to the governor the power to make war and defend our frontiers, and keep all else of substance to themselves. And soon we would need no secular authority here at all, for the holy fathers would have builded themselves into the great power of the land. Well, and d’Almeida does not like that, and for that I applaud him: but now he schemes to forbid the Jesuits to meet with the chiefs at all. That is not the way. They must gradually be taken out of power, so gradually that they do not themselves understand what is happening to them.”
“Is such a thing possible, to cozen a Jesuit?” I asked. “We are taught in England that there is no one subtler nor more crafty than a member of that sly confraternity.”
“Yea. They are diabolical, Andres. They are veritable Jaqqas of the Church. Still, they can be controlled. Paulo Dias knew how to do it. I know how to do it.”
“And how do matters lie now?”
“We have had a meeting of the governing council. D’Almeida announced that the Jesuits have been using their spiritual influence most shiftily to induce the friendly chiefs to withhold obedience from the civil powers, and he did call for authority to deal with that. Which was granted him, by a vote of his brother and his cousins and other such leaders, I voting contrary. Now will he proclaim, this day, that any Jesuit seen entering the camp of a chief or holding conference with one is to be hanged.”
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