Adventures in Swaziland Part 21

I rushed to the place and looked over. The shadow of the ship was broken by some swirling streaks of phosph.o.r.escence, and that was all.

There was no sign of the little Java wife who could not live without her baby.

That night I asked the old Javanese chief about her. In his clear Dutch he told me that she was the wife of a Javanese who had gone to Guiana some months before. She was to join him and bring his son, of whom he was very proud, when he had established their home in the new land.

"Now, how can I tell him about this?" the old fellow asked. "He will want his wife and child, and I will only have a sad story for him."

But he was spared this. Early the next morning I noticed that he was ill, and in spite of all I could do he pa.s.sed away before noon.

Shortly before he lapsed into unconsciousness he sent for me.

"I must go with those who have already gone," he said. "They need me and have sent for me. I can only go if I know that you, the great white doctor, will guard and care for those whom I leave behind. Will you do this?"

Naturally, I promised, and that was the last I saw of him. He was a kindly, simple, old soul and the misfortune of his people would have broken his heart, had he lived.

In a little while the "flu" began to lose its grip. Fewer and fewer died each day, and I had begun to think that the end was in sight when the white lady who was going to America came down with it. She had been tireless in her efforts to help in caring for the Javanese and I was not surprised when she fell ill. She was the only white person aboard to catch the "flu." We did everything possible for her, but she died on the second day.

As her body went overboard the captain read aloud from the Bible, choosing the pa.s.sage, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This struck me as particularly appropriate, since she had truly given her life for those Javanese.

After her death the "flu" devil seemed satisfied and abandoned us.

Before the end, however, we had lost more than twelve hundred of the Javanese!

The missionaries kept close to their cabins during the whole "flu"

visitation, only appearing now and then on the afterdeck. They even gave this up as soon as the captain suggested that the wind might carry "flu" germs to them. In spite of their protestations, they had to eat with the rest of us or go hungry. The captain insisted on this point, since he felt that they deserved no consideration and it was also highly entertaining to watch their indignation when we all took a stiff nip of brandy with our meals. They spoke of what a great thing prohibition was for the United States, and every time they said it they would look meaningly at the Canadian and me. In fact, after the "flu" left us the missionaries varied their religious conversations by giving table-talks on the evils of liquor. I remember how shocked they professed to be when I told them how much old Labotsibeni liked her toddy and how we always brought it to her when we visited Swaziland.

When we reached Free Town, in the Barbadoes, an incident happened which was very amusing, but which these fanatics used to point out the evils of liquor. I knew some people there, and the Canadian and I went ash.o.r.e and called on them. Of course there was "a party," and we enjoyed ourselves in free and easy fashion.

Now the ship lay about a mile off port, because there was not sufficient water to allow her to dock. We went ash.o.r.e in rowboats and came back in the same way. The deck was reached by a thirty-foot ladder, which is not the safest sort of footing at best. On our return from the party my friend missed his step at the top of the ladder and fell plump into the sea. There were a number of boats about and he was fished out without difficulty. The captain and I regarded the mishap as a good joke on the Canadian, but at dinner that night the missionaries used it as the text for an extended discourse on the evils of strong drink.

One female missionary told us a story which led to a retort that is worth repeating.

"Forty-odd years ago three prominent Philadelphia doctors decided that drink and tobacco were the two great evils of the world," she said, "so they agreed never to touch either as long as they lived. They agreed that they would all meet after forty years and see how they compared with their drinking, smoking, dissipating friends. All lived up to the agreement faithfully. Then they met in Philadelphia as before, and were amazed to see how energetic, health-perfect, and generally superior they were to those who remained of their friends.

They were now between seventy and eighty years old and yet were as active as men scores of years younger.

"This proves conclusively," she concluded, "that all the ills of old age are directly due to drink and tobacco."

Naturally, we agreed with her. This, of course, we should not have done, since the fanatic gets no pleasure unless able to argue for his creed. My Canadian friend, however, could not contain himself.

"Dr. O'Neil told me a similar case this morning," he said quite seriously. "It was about his uncle. This uncle is now one hundred and five years old and is beginning to worry about his health. Not long ago he was talking about drink and tobacco and told the doctor here that he had smoked steadily since he was seven years old; also that since he was fourteen he had drunk like a fish. 'And look at me,' he concluded; 'look at me! I know this whiskey will get me in the end!'"

There was a roar of laughter about the table, but the seven missionaries did not join in it. Instead, we went out of their lives forever, and in the long days that followed, the skipper, the Canadian, and I spent most of our time together.

The remainder of our voyage was uneventful and we finally reached New York. Here I found a cable from Oom Tuys saying that the coronation was to be held soon and advising me to return as quickly possible.

I realized that no time could be lost and rushed about the city getting my equipment and party together. I engaged Dr. Leonard Sugden, the arctic explorer, as art and field director, William T. Crespinell as technical expert, and Earl Rossman as camera-man. Since they were to do the work, I had them buy the equipment. A feature of this was the manner in which the reels of film were packed. Knowing the difficulties of the Transvaal climate, Crespinell had them soldered in tins which were again placed in other tins. These were also soldered and the air exhausted between the outer and inner tins, so that the films practically traveled in a thermos bottle.

After a.s.sembling my party and equipment, the next step was to get the whole outfit to Swaziland. This was a terrific undertaking. The war had so disarranged the world's shipping that I spent days on the docks of Staten Island and South Brooklyn trying to find a ship that would take us to Cape Town. Finally, after almost despairing, I was able to book pa.s.sage for Crespinell and Rossman on the steamer "City of Buenos Aires," which went direct to Cape Town. A day later the captain of a freighter for the same port was induced to include Dr. Sugden and myself in his cargo. He did not know when he would start, but a.s.sured me that it would be soon.

This was on a Sat.u.r.day, and I told Sugden to stand by and wait for word to go on board. I saw that our equipment was stowed in the forward hold of the ship, and then went up to Fairfield, Connecticut, where some friends of my Harvard days were living. They invited me to stay until I had to sail, and I settled down to have a pleasant visit.

They have a fine farm and a barbecue was arranged in my honor. This barbecue was held in the woods, and we were in the midst of it when a servant came from the house with a telegram from the captain of the ship. He said that he would sail at eleven o'clock the next morning!

At once commenced a mad rush. I got Sugden's hotel on the long distance telephone, but they only knew that he had gone somewhere in the country to spend the week-end. I hurried back to New York and looked up every address where I might get information about him, but was unable to locate him. I kept trying up to the last moment, but finally could only leave word at his hotel that I was sailing. I went aboard very low in mind because his duties with my proposed expedition were of great importance.

But Sugden is one of those mortals who seldom gets left. As we swung down the bay past the Statue of Liberty, I spied a tug coming after us with great speed. In addition, she was whistling and generally acting as though she was trying to catch our freighter. We were going slowly, so that in a short time the little craft fussed up alongside--and there was Sugden waving his hand from her forward deck! A rope-ladder was lowered, and a moment later I was gleefully shaking hands with him.

Now this was to be one of the most memorable voyages of my life--and I have traveled a good deal. To begin with, we had the worst accommodations I have ever endured on any vessel. Our ship was only a cargo boat and there were no pa.s.senger-cabins whatever. We slept in a sort of steerage in the hold, in company with twelve of the crew. It was the most filthy hole I was ever in and reeked with vermin, including rats of the largest and most ferocious kind. The crew were the usual sc.u.m found on such boats and were the dirtiest human beings I have ever seen. They disapproved of us--and we of them--to such a degree that I often expected they would try to do us harm. Sugden, however, took all this as part of the game, and his sporting spirit made it possible for us to exist. His experiences in the Far North had made him familiar with all sorts of white men, but I had never seen such as these. People now and then speak slightingly of the kaffir, but the Swazi, with his daily ablutions, is a very superior person when compared with these so-called "white men."

When our ship reached the warmer lat.i.tudes our hole became unbearable and we moved our pallets to the p.o.o.p-deck, where we managed to get some sleep in spite of the terrific rainstorms we ran into. We felt that it was better to be drowned by clean rainwater than to suffocate and die slowly in our steerage bunks. However, our miserable existence used to get on our nerves now and then and we would drown our sorrows with whatever liquor we could obtain.

There was one other pa.s.senger on the boat. He was a typical American of the western type who had lived in South Africa for years. Every year he made a trip to the United States and brought back blooded stock of various kinds. He was the slap-dash, breezy kind of big-hearted soul and soon became chummy with us. Owing to the fact that he was a regular tripper on this boat, he was able to share accommodations with one of the officers.

It soon became his custom to visit us. He would sing out, "Look out below!" and then would creep down the shaky ladder which was the only means of entry to our place of misery. Always he brought a bottle, and the excellent "hootch," as he called it, did much to make our lives bearable. He was a good story-teller and would always introduce a preposterous yarn with the preface, "Now this _is_ true!" We gave him quite a run for his money when it came to yarning, as both of us had been about a bit, Sugden in the north and I in the south of the world.

The first break in the monotony of this dreadful voyage came when we reached St. Lucia, in the British West Indies. This is a gorgeous bit of the tropics set in an opal sea, with cloud-covered mountain-tops that seem to rake the sky.

When the ship tied up in the roadstead, Sugden and I felt that we were due to go on the loose a bit and went ash.o.r.e with the express purpose of forgetting our troubles. We certainly succeeded in doing so, but ended by jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Several of the ship's officers went with us, as they felt there were events at hand which they must not miss. Our "party" started at the first hotel we entered. This, it seems, was exclusively for the colored section of the population, for the place fairly reeked with blacks.

After we had had several drinks, Sugden turned to me and asked:

"Well, what are we here for? What do we want?"

"Excitement!" was my answer, and we proceeded to get it.

There was a billiard-table in the room, and this, with its torn green baize, suggested a battle-ground. We started a series of fights between the blacks, with a prize of five shillings to each winner. The conditions of the battles were that the two blacks should fight on the billiard-table, the loser being the one knocked off. There were some gallant battles, and every winner fairly earned his crown.

The noise of the cheering drew a crowd, and soon the large bare bar-room was jammed with black boys and a sprinkling of whites. We whetted our interest by betting on the combatants, and I was doing quite nicely when the police broke in and stopped the fun.

There was a squad of these funny black policemen, led by what I took to be a sergeant. They carried authority, and the blacks seemed to regard them with a great deal of respect.

The sergeant wanted to know what I was doing. I told him that I was conducting a boxing tournament for the benefit of something or other.

He asked if I had "official permission," and I admitted that I had overlooked this formality.

"Then you are inciting riot and rebellion," he said in his clipped English. "I arrest you in the name of the King!"

At this, Sugden commenced to laugh. This was a great mistake, since the black sergeant seemed to think that we were scoffing at the king.

Without more ado, he invited us to accompany him to the court.

"This, my dear sirs," he said severely, "is a very serious matter. It is not allowed to stir up strife in His Majesty's colonies."

The court was in an old-style Spanish house, and the room was vacant except for buzzing flies. These zoomed like infant meteors through the narrow streaks of sunlight from the long windows. The benches were worn and comfortable, and I remember dropping off to sleep with the thought that even these flies had more luck than we did, since they had sunlight and fresh air, while our home was that dreadful steerage hole.

I was awakened by Sugden's elbow. There on the high bench sat a thin old gentleman all in white. He had a thin hooked nose much like an eagle's beak, and his eyes were of the well-known gimlet type. As I took him in, the sergeant was reciting the charge against us.

"These are desperate men," I heard him say, "from the ship now in the harbor. They were in the St. Lucia Hotel and were--"

"Yes! Yes!" interrupted the thin magistrate in a voice as sharp as his nose. "But what is the charge? What have they done? Never mind the oration; get to the charge!"

By this time I was wide awake. I suddenly came to a full realization that I was one of those "desperate men" and found myself deeply interested.

"They were inciting riot and rebellion," the sergeant went on, undaunted by the magistrate's impatience. "A boy ran to the police-station and said murders were being done at the hotel. I called out all the police and went there as fast as we could run. Inside the billiard-room were hundreds of whites and blacks, all shouting with their desire for blood. On the billiard-table were two black men trying to kill one another. As I watched, one struck the other. He fell from the table and the crowd cheered.

"Then this man," he went on, pointing at me, "hands money to the man on the table and says, 'You win!' After this he takes money from the other white man"--pointing at Sugden--"and tells him that he is rotten at picking fighters."