The Ivory Trail Part 57

The whole tribe rose at once and flitted along beside us on our landward side. We could not hear a footfall, or a breath. They pa.s.sed through dry gra.s.s without rustling, neither stumbling nor crowding one another, but all so governed by one all-absorbing thought that they acted in absolute unison. That the thought was food did not, even in their starving state, make them forget the crowning need for silence.

We with our leather boots made more noise than all they together.

We pa.s.sed along the lake sh.o.r.e for half a mile, until suddenly the chief, looking tall as a stripped tree in the pale uncertain light, threw up an arm and waved it in a circle. Instantly the whole tribe vanished. It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly switched off at the performer's whim. Then the chief continued forward, we marching more carefully.

Now he turned to the half-right and followed a narrow track across a neck of land that jutted out into the lake. We approached a low rise, and as he drew near the top of that he went down on hands and knees, crawling up the last few yards so cautiously that I had to stare hard to be sure he was there at all.

As soon as Fred came near he made frantic signals to him to get down and crawl too; so we all knelt down and crawled behind Fred, striving to make no noise and filling the unhappy chief so full of fury at the noise we did make that he writhed in nervous torment.

On top of the rise Fred stopped and in imitation of the chief thrust his head forward very gradually. One by one we followed suit until, lying p.r.o.ne in line along the ridge within thirty paces of the water, we saw at last what we were after.

Bathed in the moonlight, head and shoulders clear of the mirror-like water, a great bull hippopotamus surveyed the scenery, drinking in contentment through his little placid eyes. Out there nothing troubled him, as for instance the mosquitoes troubled us. He had eaten his fill, for some sort of green stuff hung from his jaws; and he was beginning to feel sleepy, for he opened his enormous mouth and yawned straight toward us--three tons of meat on the hoof, less than a hundred yards away, stock-still, and unsuspicious!

The chief began whispering unintelligible warnings in a voice so low that it sounded like the drone of insects. Fred thrust the rifle forward inch by inch and, taking his time about it, settled himself comfortably for the shot. It was no easy shot in that uncertain light at a downward angle. The glare of the sun on the lake had troubled his eyes during the last few days. The shimmer of the moonlight was deceptive now. I wished he would pa.s.s the rifle to Will, or even to Brown of Lumbwa, who was digging his fingers into the earth beside me in almost uncontrollable excitement. But Fred was unperturbed, and the chief, who was nervous enough to detect the slightest sign of nervousness in Fred, did not seem to mistrust him for one second.

Three times I saw Fred breathe deeply, as if about to squeeze the trigger, but each time he was only "makkin' sikkar," and eased his lungs again. The target a hippo offers to a Mauser rifle bullet is not much more than half the size of a man's hand, including only the ear and eye and the narrow s.p.a.ce between them. By daylight at a hundred yards that is nothing for a cool shot to complain about, but in half-moonlight, at that angle, it is none too much. I swore silently, wishing again and again that Fred would pa.s.s the rifle to Will, or to Brown--or to me! Yet if he had pa.s.sed it to me I should have trembled worse than any one.

Visions began to haunt me of what would happen if Fred should miss!

What would the effect be on wild folk tortured by hunger and keyed to the pitch of frenzy by suspense? Then, even while we watched, another problem added itself. Over on the water there began to come a wind, driving ripples and little waves in front of it. The moment those came near the hippo he would vanish from view, for they only care for moonlight when they can see it mirrored on a perfectly still surface.

I cursed Fred between set teeth, almost loud enough for him to hear me; for the hippo did move. His head was a foot nearer water-level; he had seen or heard something that alarmed him. He was in the act of sinking under water when Fred made sure of the sights at last and the rifle spoke, ringing out into the still night like the crack of Judgment Day, more startling because we had waited so long for it in such suspense.

Instantly the amazing happened. A yell burst out behind us that split the night apart. Where stilly blackness had been, now four or five hundred crazy shadows leaped and danced, murdering the silence with marrow-curdling noises intended to express joy.

Out on the water the stricken hippo pitched head downward and plunged like a mountain of meat gone mad, thrashing up great waves that were darkened with his life-blood. A whole herd, several hundred strong, emerged shoulder-high from the water to take one swift look at him and flee. The arriving wind overswept the little whirlpools they all made in the moonlight, as they dived to seek seclusion somewhere and no doubt to choose themselves a new bully after terrific fighting.

Our quarry plunged a last time, and stayed under. Now was new anxiety.

In twenty minutes or half an hour he should rise to the surface again, but no man could guess where, and the wind and currents would very swiftly hide his great carca.s.s somewhere amid the acres of papyrus unless sharp eyes were alert.

But the papyrus was friend as well as foe. In a s.p.a.ce of time to be measured by seconds the yelling young men of the tribe had uncovered three canoes, hidden from marauding enemies among the more-than-man-high reeds, and the rest of the tribe--men, women and young ones--scattered along the sh.o.r.e to watch from between the stalks.

In less than fifteen minutes some one yelled, and even the very old men, who had stayed beside us to gape at Fred's rifle and our clothes and boots, began running like hares toward the sound. In twenty minutes after that, with the aid of gra.s.s ropes and leather thongs, they had hauled the huge carca.s.s to the sh.o.r.e and rolled it out of the water, where it lay glistening in moonlight, stumpy, foolish, legs uppermost.

The butcher's work----the feast--did not begin yet. There was time-honored custom to obey, which Kazimoto knew all about even if those ignorant wachenzie* would have fallen to without ceremony. He drove them off. A white man had slain that animal; therefore the white man's choice of meat was first, and he very leisurely and skillfully cut out the enormous tongue for us and fifty pounds of meat for our following before he would let them as much as touch the carca.s.s with a dagger. [* Plural of machenzie, "man from 'way back,'"

"rube," "simp."]

Then, though, the tribe fell to, naked, with little naked knives--tearing off the thick hide in foot-wide strips, and hacking the red flesh into lumps that they ate, raw and quivering, while they worked. The little bits of children, each chewing raw b.l.o.o.d.y meat, brought baskets for the overflow, dragging them to wherever they could find a s.p.a.ce between the legs of struggling men, the women emptying the baskets almost as fast as the children filled them, and chewing until their jaws ran blood.

Nothing was wasted. The blood was caught in pools in part of the hide, spread like an ap.r.o.n on the earth, and lapped up by whoever could get to it. The very guts were gathered up in baskets to be cooked. And where the last little soft iron dagger had done its work, the blood had been drunk, and the last sc.r.a.p of hide bad been cut into strips, to be chewed when the meat and its memory were things of the past, the enormous ribs lay glistening in the moonlight like those of an abandoned wreck, picked as clean as if the kites had done it.

"Have we done a commendable thing?" laughed Fred, looking at the crowd's distended paunches. "There's a good bull hippo the less.

We've saved the lives for a time of several hundred gluttons. They know neither grace nor grat.i.tude."

But he was wrong. They did. They brought Fred a woman--their fattest, ugliest; which means she was skin and bone and uglier than Want, also she was more afraid of Fred than Satan is said to be of shriving. The chief led her by the hand, she hanging back and hiding her face under one arm (which left the rest of her nakedness unprotected). He seized Fred's hand and put the woman's in it.

"Now you're spliced!" Brown explained. "Married to the gal forever in presence of legal witnesses!"

Kazimoto confirmed the fearful news.

"Married in regular form an' accord with tribal custom!" Brown continued, nodding solemnly.

"Divorce me--soon and swiftly, somebody!" Fred demanded.

We appealed to Kazimoto for information, but only threw him into a quandary, and he proceeded to add to ours. The usual price for a woman, it seemed, was cows--many or few according as she was lovely or her father rich. In case of divorce, custom decreed that the cows with their offspring should be given back. The objection to any other property than cows changing hands to bind or loose in wedlock was that food, for instance, when eaten was not returnable.

"Married to the gal for good an! all!"' Brown grinned, nudging Will and me to note Fred's consternation. "You'd better stay here an' take the chief's job when he kicks the bucket--possibly you can speed the day by overfeedin' him!"

"Some men's luck," Will murmured, but stopped in mid-sentence, for interruption came in the form of a weird figure, gesticulating like a windmill, stumbling and careening through the gloom, shouting as it came. Not until it was thirty yards away did an intelligible sound explain at least who the apparition was.

"Ga.s.sharamminy! Give me that gun!"

Coutla.s.s burst in among us so out of breath that he could not force through his teeth another rational syllable, but he made his intentions partly clear by s.n.a.t.c.hing at Fred's rifle, persisting until Will and I pulled him off.

"The dhow's gone!" he panted at last. "Give me that rifle, or come yourself! Hurry! There's a wind! You'll be too late!"

"You're dreaming or drunk!" Fred answered, but Coutla.s.s refused to be disbelieved, and in another moment we were all running as fast as we dared through the darkness toward the camp-fires, where we had left the Goanese snoozing and the dhow snugly moored among the rocks.

The chief and his followers far outdistanced us in spite of their gorged condition--all except the woman, who jogged dutifully, although unhappily, behind Fred. When we reached the campfires they were standing gazing out on the lake, where we could just make out the bellying sail of the Queen of Sheba leaning like a phantom away from the gaining wind. The distance was not to be judged in that weak uncertain light. We all shouted together, but there came no answer and we could not tell whether the sound carried as far as the dhow or not.

"Ga.s.sharamminy!--why don't you shoot!" shouted Coutla.s.s, dancing up and down the bank in frenzy. "Give me that rifle! I'll show you! I'll teach them!"

I believe I would have fired if the rifle had been in my hands. Brown, last to arrive and most out of breath, joined with Coutla.s.s in angry shouts for vengeance. Will offered no argument against sending them a parting shot. Fred set the b.u.t.t of the rifle down with a determined snort, walked over toward the fire, stirred the embers, threw on more fuel, and looked about him when the dry wood blazed.

"If she has left as much as one blanket among the lot of us, I don't see it anywhere!" he said, taking his seat on a rock.

"A blanket?" sneered Coutla.s.s. "She has even your money! Worse than that--she has my woman! You were a gum-gasted galoot not to shoot at her!"

Fred patted the bulging pocket of his shooting jacket.

"Most of the money is here," he said quietly, and we all sighed with relief.

"Take canoes and chase them!" shouted Coutla.s.s, beginning to dance up and down again.

"There's time enough" Fred answered. "We know the winds of these parts well enough by this time. This will blow until midnight. Then calm until dawn. After dawn a little more wind for an hour or two, then doldrums again until late afternoon. They'll run on a rock in all likelihood. If they do we can catch them at our leisure, supposing we can get these islanders to paddle. If it should blow hard, then we can't catch them anyhow. Sit down and tell us what happened, Coutla.s.s!"

The Greek cursed and swore and pranced, but all in vain. Fred was inexorable. We others grew calmer when the problem of who should paddle the canoes solved itself suddenly with the arrival of fourteen of our own men. Discovering themselves left behind, they had run along the bank in vain hope of catching the dhow somehow--perchance of swimming through the crocodile-infested water, and returned now disconsolate, to leap and laugh with new hope at sight of us and of the red meat that Kazimoto had thrown on the ground near the fire. They came near in a cl.u.s.ter. Will hacked off a lump of meat for them, and they forthwith forgot their troubles, as instantly as the birds forget when a sparrow-hawk has done murder down a hedge-row and swooped away.

Not everything was gone after all. Kazimoto found the pots we had cooked the rice in, and started to boil the hippo's tongue for us.

"Come, Coutla.s.s--sit down before we eat and tell us what happened,"

Fred suggested.

The Greek paced up and down another time or two, and at last calmed himself sufficiently to laugh at Fred's woman, who had squatted down patiently in the shadow behind him.

"Easy for you!" he grinned savagely, squatting on the far side of the fire. "You have a woman! Mine is G.o.d knows where! She said to me--that h.e.l.l-d.a.m.ned Lady Saffren Waldon said to me--we sat all three together in the stern of the dhow, I with my arm around Rebecca, and she said to me--"

"I'll see if I can't make a d.i.c.ker for the chief's canoes," Will interrupted. "We can hear the Greek's tale any old time."

"Trade my woman for them!" Fred suggested cheerfully. "Go on, Coutla.s.s!"