Cupid in Africa Part 21

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Bridges, in a cloak and pyjamas, had arrived, yawning and shivering, to superintend the loading up of the porters. At an order, given in Swahili, the first line of squatting Kavirondo arose and rushed to the dump.

"Extraordinary zeal!" remarked Bertram to Bridges.

"Yes-to collar the lightest loads," was the illuminating reply.

The zeal faded as rapidly as it had glowed when he coldly pointed with the _kiboko_, which was his badge of office and constant companion, to the heavy ammunition-boxes.

"I should keep that near the advance-guard and under a special guard of its own," said he.

"I'm going to-naturally," replied Bertram shortly, and added: "Hurry them along, please. I want to get off to-day."

Bridges stared. This was a much more a.s.sured and autocratic person than the mild youth he had met at the water's edge a day or two ago.

"Well-if you like to push off with the advance-guard, I'll see that a constant stream of porters files off from here, and that your rear-guard follows them," said he.

"Thanks-I'll not start till I've seen the whole convoy ready," replied Bertram.

Yesterday he'd have been glad of advice from anybody. Now he'd take it from no one. Orders he would obey, of course-but "a poor thing but mine own" should be his motto with regard to his method of carrying out whatever he was left to do. They'd told him to take their beastly convoy; they'd left him to do it; and he'd do it as he thought fit. . . .

Curse the rain, the mud, the stench, the hunger, sickness and the beastly pain that nearly doubled him up and made him feel faint. . . .

Grayne strolled over.

"Time you bunged off, my lad," quoth he, loftily.

"If you'll mind your own business, I shall have the better chance to mind mine," replied Bertram, eyeing him coldly-and wondering at himself.

Grayne stared open-mouthed, and before he could speak Bertram was hounding on a lingering knot of porters who had not hurried off to the line as soon as their boxes of biscuit were balanced on their heads, but stood shrilly wrangling about something or nothing.

"_Kalele_! _Kalele_!" shouted Bertram, and sprang at them with raised fist and furious countenance, whereat they emitted shrill squeals and fled to their places in the long column.

He had no idea what "_Kalele_!" meant, but had heard Bridges and the headman say it. Later he learnt that it meant "Silence!" and was a very useful word. . . .

Ali Suleiman approached, seized three men, and herded them before him to fetch Bertram's kit. Having loaded them with it, he drove them to the head of the column and stationed them in rear of the advance-guard.

Returning, he presented Bertram with a good, useful-looking cane.

"_Bwana_ wanting a _kiboko_," said he. "_Shenzis_ not knowing anything without _kiboko_ and not feeling happy in mind. Not thinking _Bwana_ is a real master."

Yesterday Bertram would have chidden Ali gently, and explained that kind hearts are more than coronets and gentle words than cruel whips. To-day he took the cane, gave it a vicious swish, and wished that it were indeed a _kiboko_, one of those terrible instruments of hippopotamus hide, four feet in length, as thick as a man's wrist at one end, tapering until it was of the thinness of his little finger at the other. . . .

A big Kavirondo seized a rum jar. His bigger neighbour dropped a heavy box and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h it from him. He who had the lighter jar clung to it, bounded away, and put it on his head. The box-wallah, following, gave him a sudden violent blow in the back, jerking the jar from his head.

Raising his cane, Bertram brought it down with all his strength on the starboard quarter of the box-wallah as he stooped to grab the jar. With a wild yelp, he leapt for his box and galloped to his place in the column.

"Excellent!" said Bridges, "you'll have no trouble with the _safari_ people, at any rate."

"I'll have no trouble with anybody," replied Bertram with a quiet truculence that surprised himself, "not even with a _Balliol_ negro."

Bridges decided that he had formed his estimate of Lieutenant Greene too hastily and quite wrongly. He was evidently a bit of a tough lad when he got down to it. Hot stuff. . . .

At last the dump had disappeared completely, and its original components now swayed and turned upon the heads of a thousand human beasts of burden-human in that they walked erect and used fire for cooking food; beasts in that they were beastly and beast-like in all other ways. Among them, and distinguished by being feebler of physique, and, if possible, feebler of mind, was a party of those despised savages, the Kikuyu, rendered interesting as providing the great question that shook the Church of England to its foundations, and caused Lord Bishops to forget the wise councils of good Doctor Watts' hymn. (It is to be feared that among the even mightier problems of the Great War, the problem of the spiritual position and ecclesiastical condition of the Communicating Kikuyu has been temporarily lost sight of. Those who know the gentleman, with his blubber-lipped, foreheadless face, his teeth filed to sharp points, his skin a ma.s.s of scar patterns, done with a knife, and his soulless, brainless animalism and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity, would hate to think he was one short on the Thirty-Nine Articles or anything of that sort.)

Bertram gave a last injunction to Jemadar Ha.s.san Ali, said farewell to Bridges, and strode to the head of the column. Thence he sent out a "point" of a Havildar and three men, and waited to give the word to advance, and plunge into the jungle, the one white man among some fifteen hundred people, all of whom looked to him, as to a Superior Being, for guidance and that competent command which should be their safeguard.

As the point disappeared he turned and looked along the apparently endless line, cried "_Quick March_," and set off at a smart pace, the first man of the column.

He was too proud and excited to realise how very ill he felt, or to be ashamed of the naughty temper that he had so clearly and freely exhibited.

CHAPTER XIV _The Convoy_

Bertram never forgot this plunge into the primeval jungle with its mingled suggestions of a Kew hot-house, a Turkish bath, a shower bath, a mud bath and a nightmare.

His mind was too blunted with probing into new things, his brain too dulled by the incessant battering of new ideas, too drunk with draughts of strange mingled novelty, too covered with recent new impressions for him to be sensitive to fresh ones.

Had an elephant emerged from the dripping jungle, wagged its tail and sat up and begged, he would have experienced no great shock of surprise. He, a town-bred, town-dwelling, pillar of the Respectable, the Normal and the Established, was marching through virgin forest at the head of a thousand African porters and two hundred Indian soldiers and their camp-followers, surrounded by enemies-varying from an _ex_-Prussian Guard armed with a machine-gun to a Wadego savage armed with a poisoned arrow-to the relief of hungry men in a stockaded outpost! . . . What further room was there for marvels, wonders, and surprises? As he tramped, splashed, slipped and stumbled along the path, and the gloom of early morning, black sky, mist, and heavy rain slowly gave way to dawn and daylight, his fit of savage temper induced by "liver," hunger, headache and disgust, slowly gave way, also, to the mental inertia, calm, and peace, induced by monotonous exercise. The steady dogged tramp, tramp, tramp, was an anodyne, a sedative, a narcotic that drugged the mind, rendering it insensitive to the pains and sickness of the body as well as to its own worries, anxieties and problems. . . .

Bertram felt that he could go on for a very long time; go on until he fell; but he knew that when he fell it would be quite impossible for him to get up again. Once his legs stopped moving, the spell would be broken, the automaton would have "run down," and motion would cease quite finally. . . .

As daylight grew, he idly and almost subconsciously observed the details of his environment.

This was better than the mangrove-thicket of the swamp, in a clearing of which the base camp lay. It was the densest of dense jungle through which the track ran, like a stream through a canon, but it was a jungle of infinite variety. Above the green impenetrable mat of elephant gra.s.s and nameless tangle of undergrowth, scrub, shrub, liana, bush, creeper, and young trees, stood, in solid serried array, great trees by the million, palm, mango, baobab, acacia, live oak, and a hundred other kinds, with bamboo and banana where they could, in defiance of probability, squeeze themselves in. Some of the trees looked like the handiwork of prentice G.o.ds, so crude and formless were they, their fat trunks tapering rapidly from a huge ground-girth to a fine point, and putting forth little abortive leafless branches suggestive of straggly hairs. Some such produced brilliant red blossoms, apparently on the trunk itself, but dispensed with the ba.n.a.lity of leaves and branches.

Some great knotted creepers seemed to have threaded themselves with beads as big as a man's head, and the fruit of one arboreal freak was vast sausages.

Through the aerial roadways of the forest, fifty feet above the heads of the _safari_, tribes of monkeys galloped and gambolled as they spied upon it and shrieked their comment.

Apparently the varied and numerous birds held views upon the subject of _safaris_ also, and saw no reason to conceal them.

One accompanied the advance-guard, piping and fluting: "_Poli-Poli_!

_Poli-Poli_!" which, as Ali Suleiman informed Bertram, is Swahili for "Slowly! _Slowly_!"

Another bird appeared to have fitted up his home with a chime of at least eight bells, for, every now and then, a sweet and sonorous tolling rang through the jungle. One bird, sitting on a branch a few feet from Bertram's head, emitted two notes that for depth of timbre and rich sonorous sweetness could be excelled by no musical instrument or bell on earth. He had but the two notes apparently, but those two were marvellous. They even roused Bertram to the reception of a new impression and a fresh sensation akin to wonder.

From many of the overhanging trees depended the beautifully woven bottle-like nests of the weaver-bird. Brilliant parrots flashed through the tree-tops, incredible horn-bills carried their beaks about, the hypocritical widower-bird flaunted his new mourning, the blue starling, the sun-bird, and the crow-pheasant, with a score of other species, failed to give the gloomy, menacing jungle an air of brightness and life, seemed rather to emphasise its note of gloom, its insistence upon itself as the home of death where Nature, red in tooth and claw, pursued her cycle of destruction with fierce avidity and wanton masterfulness. . . .

Suddenly a whistle rang out-sharp, clear, imperative. Its incisive blow upon the silence of the deadly jungle startled Bertram from his apathy.

His tired wits sprang to life and activity, urged on his weary flagging muscles. He wheeled round and faced the Sepoys just behind him, even as the blast of the whistle ceased.

"_Halt_! _Baitho_!" {148} he shouted-gave the drill-book sign to lie down-and waited, for a second that seemed like a year, to feel the withering blast of fire that should tear through them at point-blank range. . . . Why did it not come? . . . Why did no guttural German voice shout an order to fire? . . . . He remained standing upright, while the Sepoys, crouching low, worked the bolts of their rifles to load the latter from their magazines. He was glad to see that they made ready thus, without awaiting an order, even as they sank to the ground. Would it not be better to march in future with a cartridge in the chamber and the cut-off of the magazine open? . . . Accidents? . . . Not if he made them march with rifles at the "slope." . . . Better the risk of an accident than the risk of being caught napping. . . . Why did not the accursed German give the order to fire? . . . Was it because Bertram had got his men crouching down so quickly? . . . Would the crashing volley thunder out, the moment they arose? . . . They could not stay squatting, kneeling and lying in the mud for ever. . . . Where was the ambush? . . .

Had they Maxims in trees, commanding this path? . . . Were the enemy ma.s.sed in a clearing a foot or two from the road, and separated from it only by a thin screen of foliage? . . . . What should he do if there were a sudden bayonet-charge down the path, by huge ferocious _askaris_?

. . . You can't meet a charge with efficient rifle-fire when you are in single file and your utmost effort at deployment would get two, or possibly three crowded and hampered men abreast. . . . On the other hand, the enemy would not be charging under ideal conditions either. . . .

More likely a machine-gun would suddenly nip out, from concealment beside the path, and wither the column away with a blast of fire at six hundred rounds a minute. . . . Perhaps the "point" marching on ahead would have the sense and the courage and the time to get into the gun-team with their bayonets before it got the gun going? . . . _Why did not the enemy fire_? . . . He would go mad if they didn't do so soon. . . .

Were they playing with him, as a cat plays with a mouse? . . .

The whistle rang out again, harsh, peremptory, fateful-and then Ali Suleiman laughed, and pointed at a small bird. As he did so, the bird whistled again, with precisely the note of a police-whistle blown under the stress of fear, excitement or anger, a clamant, bodeful, and insistent signal.