The Ivory Trail Part 65

Then the rest of us, with Fred leading and Kazimoto last of all, crept out and sought the lowest level along which to reach the camp. Will had taken Schillingschen's rifle and went next after Fred. Coutla.s.s followed so close on my heels that more than once he trod on them, and once so nearly tripped me that Fred called a halt behind some bushes and cursed me for clumsiness.

But it turned out to be easy hunting. The ten boys had tied the donkeys up to a rope in line and sat crooning while their supper cooked at a long bright fire. We came up to Schillingschen's tent from behind, crept around the side of it, and in a moment had three more good weapons, I taking the big-bore elephant gun that had dealt with us so savagely on the lake, Coutla.s.s seizing another Mauser, and Kazimoto adopting the shot-gun.

The rest was child's play. We marched out of the tent all abreast and called on the ten boys to surrender, making them put up their hands until Coutla.s.s had found their five rifles and ammunition. They were too astonished even to ask questions. Accustomed to Schillingschen's despotic orders, they obeyed ours silently, showing no symptoms of trying to bolt, having nowhere to bolt to; but we took precautions.

Kazimoto ran back to bring our party, and we took a coil of iron wire from Schillingschen's trade goods and fastened every prisoner's hands firmly behind his back, including the unconscious German's. That done, we ate the meat, beans and vegetable supper that the ten had cooked.

Brown and Coutla.s.s found Schillingschen's whisky after that, and under its influence again swore ceaseless friendship beneath the non-committal stars. While they feasted we took Coutla.s.s' rifle away as a plain precaution.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PARCERE SUBJECTIS?

'When the devil's at bay Ye may kneel down and pray For a year and a day To be spared the distress of dispatching him, But the longer ye kneel The more squeamish ye'll feel 'Cause the louder he'll squeal, And at brotherly talk there's no matching him.

Discussion's his aim, And as sure as you're game To give heed to the same, You regarding extremes with compunction, You may bet he'll requite Your compa.s.sion with spite, Knifing you in the night With much probonopublico unction.

For a while we looked like having trouble with Coutla.s.s. We gave Brown a rifle, and distributed the other Mausers among Kazimoto and our best boys, but we did not dare trust the Greek with a weapon he might use against us, and he resented that bitterly. He had an answer to Fred's subterfuge that as a white man he would need a license before daring to carry firearms. "I dare do anything! I care nothing for law!" he argued, and Fred nodded.

That night we reveled in luxury, for after the life we had led recently it took time to reaccustom any of us to the common comforts.

Schillingschen traveled with every provision for his carca.s.s and his belly; and we plundered him.

We put the prisoners and our own porters in a hut in the nearest native village (less than half a mile away) under the watchful eye of Kazimoto and the shot-gun, dividing Schillingschen's two large tents between ourselves. The others offered me the camp-bed as a recent invalid, but I refused, and Will won it by matching coins. We divided the blankets in the same way, and all the spare underwear. Brown and Coutla.s.s had to be satisfied with cotton blankets from a bale of trade goods; but when they had rifled enough to build up good thick mattresses as well as coverings, there were still two apiece for our boys and all the porters.

The chop-boxes were a revelation. The man had with him food enough for at least a year's traveling, including all the canned delicacies that hungry men dream about in the wilderness. Before we slept we ate so enormously of so very many things that it was a wonder that we were able to sleep at all.

We all hoped Schillingschen would die, for it was a hard problem what to do with him. He had no papers in his possession, beyond a diary written in German schrift that even Will could not make head or tail of, for all his knowledge of the language; and a very vague map bearing the imprint of the British government, filled in by himself with the names of the villages he had pa.s.sed on his way. There was no proof that we could find that would have condemned him of nefarious practises in a British court of law.

"And believe me," argued Will, sprawling on the plundered bed, blowing the smoke of a Melachrino through his nose, "your local British judges would take the word of Professor Schillingschen against all of ours, backed up by simply overwhelming native evidence! They're so in awe of Schillingschen's professorial degree, and of his pa.s.sports, and his letters of introduction from this and that mogul that they wouldn't believe him guilty of arson if they caught him in the act!"

"Something's got to be done with him pretty soon, though," answered Fred from the floor, lying at ease on a pillow and a folded Jaeger blanket, smoking a fat cigar.

Coutla.s.s and Brown were singing songs outside the tent and I sat in a genuine armchair with my feet on a box full of canned plum pudding.

(n.o.body knows, who has not hungered on the high or low veld--who has not eaten meat without vegetables for days on end, and then porridge without salt or sugar--how good that common, export, canned plum Pudding is! To sit with my feet on the case that contained it was the arrogance of affluence!)

"We have his stores and his papers," said I. "We have his Baganda; and as time goes on, and his other spies begin to come in, we shall have them, too, if we're half careful. Why don't we let him go, to tell his own tale wherever he likes?"

"Maybe he'll die yet!" said the optimist on the camp-bed, blowing more cigarette smoke.

"Suppose he doesn't. We've done our best to keep him alive. He's quit bleeding. Suppose we let him go, and he lays a charge against us.

Suppose they send after us and bring us in. We've his diary and his men--evidence enough," said I.

"You bally a.s.s!" Fred murmured.

"Cuckoo!" laughed Will.

"I don't believe he'd dare approach a British official with his story,"

said I.

"Incredible imbecile!" Fred answered. "He has the gall of a bra.s.s monkey."

"And magnetism--loads of it," Will added. "He'd make the Pope play three-card monte."

"To say nothing," continued Fred, "of the necessity of not letting the government know we're here! Rather than turn him loose, I'd march him into Kisumu and hand him over. But, as Will says wisely, our proconsuls would believe him, and put us under bonds for outraging a distinguished foreigner."

"Well, then," said I, "what the devil shall we do with him? Offer something constructive, you two solons!"

"Have the four men we borrowed from the island bolted home yet?"

wondered Will.

"They hadn't this evening," I answered. "I don't believe they'll venture home until we stop feeding them. They were hungry on their island. Our shortest commons then seemed affluence. Now they're in heaven!"

"Their canoes must be where they left them in the papyrus."

"Sure. Who'd steal a canoe?"

"Whoever could find them," Fred answered. "But they're skilfully hidden. Why don't we put Schillingschen and his ten pet blacks into those canoes, with a little food and no rifles--and show them the way to German East?"

"Because," said I, "they wouldn't go. They'd turn around and paddle for Kisumu, to file complaint against us."

"Don't you suppose," suggested Will, "that Schillingschen's own men 'ud insist on going home? Out on the water, ten to one, without guns or too much food, they wouldn't have the same fear of him they had formerly."

"That chance is too broad and long and deep," said Fred. "Altogether too bulky to be taken. Let's sleep on it. This cigar's done, and I'm drowsy. Are you quite sure Schillingschen's hands are fast behind him?

Then good night, all!"

The problem looked no easier next morning, with Schillingschen recovered sufficiently to be hungry and sit up. There was a look in his eye of smoldering courage and a.s.surance that did not bode well for us, and when we untwisted the iron wire from his wrists to let him wash himself and eat he looked about him with a sort of quick-fire cunning that belied his story of headache.

He was much too astute a customer to be judged superficially. I whispered to Fred not to shackle him again too soon, and sat near and watched him, close enough for real safety, yet not so close that he might not venture to try tricks. He said nothing whatever, but I noticed that his eye, after roving around the tent, kept returning again and again to a chop-box that stood near the foot of the bed.

Now I had unpacked that chop-box and repacked it the previous night. I knew everything it contained--exactly how many cans of plum pudding.

It was the box I had rested my feet on. I felt perfectly sure he knew as well as I what the box contained, and to suppose he would sit there planning to recover canned food, however dainty, was ridiculous.

Wherefore it was a safe conclusion he was trying to deceive me as to his real intention. I put my foot on the box again, and he frowned, as much as to say I had forestalled his only hope. Pretending to watch the box and him, I examined every detail of the tent, particularly that side of it opposite the box, away from where it seemed he wanted me to look.

The human eye is a highly imperfect piece of mechanism and the human brain is mostly grayish slush. It was minutes before I detected the edge of his diary, sticking out from the pocket of Fred's shooting coat that itself protruded from under the folded blanket on which Fred had slept. It was nearer to Schillingschen than to me. After watching him for about fifteen minutes, during which he made a great fuss about his headache, I was quite sure it was the diary that interested him.

I stooped and extracted it from the coat pocket. The grimace he made was certainly not due to headache.

"Fred!" I called out, and he and Will came striding in together.

"That diary's the key," I said. "It's important. It holds his secrets!"

Will was swift to put that to the test.

"What will you offer?" he asked Schillingschen. "We want you to go back direct to German East. Will you go, if we give you back your diary?"