The Ivory Trail Part 38

"D'you suppose they think," I said, "that if they had us in jail in this G.o.d-forsaken place we'd divulge the secret of Tippoo's ivory?"

"Why don't we tell 'em the secret!" suggested Will, and that seemed such a good idea that we laughed ourselves back into good temper--even Brown, who had no notion whether we knew the secret, being perfectly sure we would not be such fools as to tell the true whereabouts of the h.o.a.rd in any case.

"I want to get even with all Africa!" he grumbled. "I want to make trouble that'll last! I'd start a war this minute if I knew how! If it weren't for those b.l.o.o.d.y Greeks laughing at me I'd get more drunk to-night than any ten men in the world ever were before in history!

Yes, sir! And my name's Brown of Lumbwa to prove I mean what I say!"

After a while, seeing that no trouble was likely, the Nubian soldiers came out of ambush and marched away. We ate supper. The Greeks and the Goanese subsided into temporary quiet, and our own boys, squatting by a fire they had placed so that they could watch the Greeks'

encampment, began humming a native song. Their song reminded Fred of Will's earlier suggestion, and he unclasped the concertina.

Then for three-quarters of an hour he played, and we sang all the tunes we knew least likely to make Germans happy, repeating The Ma.r.s.eillaise and Rule Britannia again and again in pious hope that at least a few bars might reach to the commandant's house on the hill.

Whether they did or not--whether the commandant writhed as we hoped in the torture of supreme insult, or slept as was likely from the after-effect of too much bottled beer with dinner--there were others who certainly did hear, and made no secret of it.

To begin with, the part of the township nearest us was the quarter of round gra.s.s roofs, where the aborigines lived; and the Bantu heart responds to tuneful noise, as readily as powder to the match. All that section of Muanza, man, woman and child, came and squatted outside the cactus hedge. (It was streng politzeilich verboten for natives to enter the European camping-ground, so that except when they wanted to steal they absolutely never trespa.s.sed past the hedge.)

Enraptured by the unaccustomed strains they sat quite still until some Swahili and Arabs came and beat them to make room. When the struggle and hot argument that followed that had died down, Indians began coming, and other Greeks, until most of the inhabitants of the eastern side of town were either squatting or standing or pacing to and fro outside the camping-ground.

At last rumor of what was happening reached the D.O.A.G.--the store at the corner of the drill-ground, where it seemed the non-commissioned officers took their pleasure of an evening. Pleasure, except as laid down in regulations, is not permitted in German colonies to any except white folk. No less than eight German sergeants and a sergeant-major, all the worse for liquor, turned out as if to a fire and came down street at a double.

They had kibokos in their hands. The first we heard of their approach was the crack-crack-crack of the black whips falling on naked or thin-cotton-clad backs and shoulders. There was no yelling (it was not allowed after dark on German soil, at least by natives) but a sudden pattering in the dust as a thousand feet hurried away. Then, in the glow of our lamplight, came the sergeant-major standing spraddle-legged in front of us.

He was a man of medium height, in clean white uniform. The first thing I noticed about him was the high cheek-bones and murderous blue eyes, like a pig's. His general build was heavy. The fair mustache made no attempt to conceal fat lips that curled cruelly. His general air was that most offensive one to decent folk, of the bully who would ingratiate by seeming a good fellow.

"'nabnd, meine Herren!" he said aggressively, with a smile more than half made up of contempt for courtesy. "Ich heiess Schubert-Feldwebel Hans Schubert."

"Wa.s.s wollen Sie?" Will asked. He was the only one of us who knew German well.

But Schubert, it seemed, knew English and was glad to show it off.

"You make fine music! Ach! Up at the D.O.A.G. very near here we Unteroffitzieren spend the evening, all very fond of singing, yet without music at all. Will you not come and play with us?"

"I only know French and English tunes!" lied Fred.

"Ach! I do not believe it! Kommen Sie! There is beer at the D.O.A.G.--champagne--brandy--whisky--rum--?"

"I'm going, then, for one!" announced Brown, getting up immediately.

"Cigars--cigarettes--tobacco," the sergeant-major continued. "There is no closing time." He saw that the line of argument was not tempting, and changed his tactics. "Listen! You gentlemen have not too many friends in Muanza! I speak in friendship. I invite you on behalf of myself and other Unteroffitzieren to spend gemuthlich evening with us.

That can do you no harm! In the course of friendly conversation much can be learned that official lips would not tell!

"Kommen Sie nun!"

"Let's go!" I said. "My leg hurts like h.e.l.l. If I stay here I can't sleep. Anything to keep from thinking about it! Besides, some one must go and look after Brown!"

"Who'll watch those Greeks?" Fred demanded. "They'd as soon steal as eat!"

"We'd better all stay here together," said Will, "and take turns keeping watch till morning." He said it with a straight face, but I did not think he was in earnest.

"Ach!" exclaimed Schubert. "That is all ganz einfach! You shall have askaris!"

He turned and shouted an order. A non-commissioned officer went running back up-street.

"You shall have three askaris to guard your camp. So nothing whatever shall be stolen! Then come along and make music--seien Sie gemuthlich!

Yah?"

Brown had already gone, jingling money in his pocket. We waited until the Nubian soldiers came--saw them posted--and then walked up-street behind the sergeants, Schubert leading us all, and I limping between Fred and Will. They as good as carried me the last half of the way.

The sergeants marched with the air peculiar to military Germans, of men who are going to be amused. They said nothing--did not smile--but strode straight forward, three abreast, swinging their kibokos with a sort of elephantine sporty air. They were men of all heights and thicknesses, but each alike impressed me with the Prussian military mold that leaves a man no imagination of his own, and no virtue, but only an animal respect for whatever can make to suffer, or appease an appet.i.te.

The D.O.A.G. proved a mournful enough lounging place in which to spend convivial evenings. However, it seemed that when the sergeant-major had decreed amus.e.m.e.nt the non-commissioned officers' mess overlooked all trifles in brave determination to obey. They marched in, humming tunes (each a different one, and nearly all high tenor) and took seats in a room at the rear of the building with their backs against a mud-brick wall that was shiny from much rubbing by drill tunics.

Down the center was a narrow table, loaded with drinks of all sorts. A case of bottled beer occupied the place of pride at one end; as Schubert had boasted, nothing was lacking that East Africa could show in the way of imported alcohol. Under the table was an unopened case of sweet German champagne, and on a little table against one wall were such things as absinth, chartreuse, peppermint, and benedictine.

Soda-water was slung outside the window in a basket full of wet gra.s.s where the evening breeze would keep it cool.

"Now for Gesang!" shouted Schubert, knocking the neck off a bottle of beer, and beginning to sing like a drunken pirate.

A man whom he introduced as "a genuine Jew from Jerusalem" came out from a gloomy recess filled with tusks and sacks of dried red pepper, and watched everything from now on with an eye like a gimlet, writing down in a book against each sergeant's name whatever he took to drink.

They appeared to have no check on him. n.o.body signed anything. n.o.body as much as glanced at his account.

"What is the use?" said Schubert, noticing my glance and interpreting the unspoken question. "There is just so much drink in the whole place. We shall drink every drop of it! All that matters is, who is to pay for the champagne? That stuff is costly."

They all took beer to begin with, knocking the necks from the bottles as if that act alone lent the necessary air of deviltry to the whole proceedings. A small, very black Nyamwesi came with brush and pan and groped on the floor all night for the splinters of gla.s.s, sleeping between times in a corner until a fresh volley of breaking bottle necks awoke him to work again.

"Die Wacht am Rhein!" yelled Schubert. "Start it up! Sing that first!" He began to sing it himself, all out of tune.

Fred cut the noise short by standing up to play something n.o.body could sing to a jangling clamor of chords and runs on which he prides himself, that he swears is cla.s.sical, but of which neither he nor anybody knows the name. Then he drank some beer and sang a comic song or two in English, we joining in the choruses.

Meanwhile, Brown was soaking away steadily, taking whatever drink came first to hand, and having no interest whatever in anything but the task of a.s.suaging the thirst he had acc.u.mulated in the course of all that long marching since he left home. He had forgotten his cattle already--the Greeks who stole them--the Masai who stole from the Greeks. He paid for all he took, to the Jew's extreme surprise and satisfaction, and grumbled at the price of everything, to the Jew's supremest unconcern.

"An' my name's Brown o' Lumbwa, just in proof of all I say!" he informed the room at large at intervals.

When Will had exhausted all the American songs he knew, and Fred had run through his own long list there was nothing left for it but to make up accompaniments to the songs the sergeants had been raised on. Fred made the happy discovery that none of them knew The Ma.r.s.eillaise, so he played that as an antidote each time after they had made the hard-wood rafters ring and the smoke-filled air vibrate with Teutonic jingoism.

The Jew, who probably knew more than he cared to admit, grew more and more beady-eyed each time The Ma.r.s.eillaise was played.

There was a pause in the proceedings at about ten o'clock, by which time all the sergeants except Schubert were sufficiently drunk to feel thoroughly at ease. Schubert was cold-eyed sober, although scarcely any longer thirsty.

A native was brought in by two askaris and charged before Schubert with hanging about the boma gate after dark. He was asked the reason. The Jew, sitting beside me with his book of names and charges, poured cool water over my bandages and translated to me what they all said. He spoke English very well indeed, but in such low tones that I could scarcely catch the words, drawing in his breath and not moving his lips at all.

The native explained that he had waited to see the bwana makubwa--the commandant. He had nowhere to go and no money with which to pay for lodging, so he proposed to wait outside the gate and watch for the coming of the commandant next morning. He would intercept him on his way down from the white house on the hill.

He was asked why. To beg a favor. What favor? Satisfaction. For what? For his daughter. He was the father of the girl whom the commandant had favored with attentions. She had been a virgin. Now she was to have a child. It would be a half-black, half-white child.

Who would now marry a woman with such a child as that? Yet nothing bad been given her. She had been simply sent back home to be a charge on her parents and an already poverty-stricken village. Therefore he had come to ask that justice be done, and the girl be given at least a present of money.

The sergeants roared with laughter, all except Schubert, who seemed only appalled by the impudence of the request. He sat back and ordered the story repeated.

"And you dare ask for money from the bwana makubwa!" he demanded.

"You dog of a Nyamwesi! Is the honor not sufficient that your black brute of a daughter should have a baby by such a great person? You cattle have no sense of honor! You must learn! Put him down! Beat him till I say stop!"

There was no need to put him down, however. The motion of the hand, voice inflection, order were all too well understood. The man lay face-downward on the floor without so much as a murmur of objection, and buried his face in both hands. The askaris promptly stripped him of the thin cotton loin-cloth that const.i.tuted his only garment, tearing it in pieces as they dragged it from him.