The Leopard Woman Part 36

"Those tiny beasts!" she cried incredulously.

"Just so. Sweet voices, haven't they? Some of these people must be wearing hyrax robes."

And indeed she remembered seeing some of the soft, beautiful karosses.

But now from the direction of M'tela's palaces arose a confused murmur that swelled as a mult.i.tude drew near. The drums began again. Soon, the Leopard Woman described, torches began to flash through the trees. At the same moment Cazi Moto came to report.

"Build up a big fire," commanded Kingozi. He turned to the Leopard Woman.

"This is likely to be an all-night session," he said resignedly. "If you want to get out of it, I advise you to go now. Not that you'll be able to get any sleep. But if you stay, you must stick it out. It would never do to leave in the middle of the performance. Some of it you won't like."

"What is it to be?"

"Ceremonial dances, I fancy."

"I think I shall stay," she said slowly.

In her heart she thought it extremely unlikely that the performance would last all night. Indeed her own opinion was that Kingozi would be a prisoner within an hour.

Kingozi settled himself stolidly in his chair before the fire that was now beginning to eat its way through an immense pile of fuel, where, during all subsequent events, he remained in the same att.i.tude.

The Leopard Woman, on the contrary looked with all her eyes. The torches came nearer. People began to pour out from the woods. There were warriors in full panoply; lithe, naked men carrying only wands peeled fresh to the white; women hung heavily with cowries; other women with neither garment nor ornament, their bodies oiled and glistening. A deep, rolling chant arose from hundreds of throats, punctuated and carried by a sort of shrill, intermittent ululation. The drums were there, but for the moment they were not being beaten in cadence, only rubbed until they roared in undertone to the men's chanting.

All these people divided to right and left in the clearing of the guest camp, and took their stations. More and more appeared. The s.p.a.ce filled, filled solidly, until at last there was no break in the ma.s.s of humanity except for a circle forty feet in diameter about the fire.

Suddenly a group of fifteen or twenty men detached themselves from the main body and leaped into this cleared s.p.a.ce. The great chant still rolled on; but now a varied theme was introduced by a chorus of the nearby women. The dancers were oiled to a high state of polish, naked except for a single plume apiece and a sort of ta.s.selled tail hung to a string belt. They cl.u.s.tered in a close group near the fire, facing a common centre. In deep chest tones they p.r.o.nounced the word _goom_, at the same time half crouching; then in sharp staccato head tones the word _zup_, at the same time rising swiftly up and toward their common centre. It was like the ebb and surge of a wave, the alternate smooth crouch and spring over and over again--_goom, zup! goom, zup! goom, zup!_--and behind it the twinkle of torches, the gleam of eyes, the roll of the deep-voiced chanting.

Endlessly they repeated this performance. The Leopard Woman, watching, at last had to close her eyes in order to escape the hypnotic quality of it. In spite of herself her senses swam in the rhythmic monotony.

All outside the focus of the dancers turned gray--_goom, zup! goom, zup!_--was it never to end? And then it seemed to her that it never would end, that thus it would go on forever, and that so it was just and right. The men were tireless. The sweat glistened on their bodies, but their eyes gleamed fanatically. She floated off on a tide of irrelevant thoughts.

Hours later, as it seemed to her, she came to herself suddenly. Kingozi still sat stolidly in his chair. The dancers were retiring step by step, still with unabated vigour, continuing their performance. They melted into the crowd.

Now a pellmell of bizarre figures broke out. They were bedecked fantastically: some of them were painted with white clay; one was clad in the skins of beasts. There was no rhythm or order to their entrance; but immediately they began to dash here and there shouting.

"It is the Lion Dance, _memsahib_," Cazi Moto told her in a low voice.

"That one is the lion; and they hunt him with spears in the long gra.s.s."

The chase went forward with some verisimilitude, and yet with a symbolic syncopation that indicated the Lion Dance was a very ancient and conventional ceremony. These dancers gave way to a chorus of singers. For interminable hours, so it seemed, they chanted a high, shrill recitative, carried in fugue by deeper voices. The burden of the song was evidently an impromptu. Occasionally some peculiarly apt or pleasing phrase was caught up for endless repet.i.tion. And in the background, against the farther background of the undistinguished ma.s.ses, those who had formerly carried on their performances in the full glare of front-row publicity and the campfire, now continued their efforts almost unabated. The impressive utterers of the _goom-zup_ shibboleth, the slayers of the symbolical lion, carried on still.

Indeed as the night wore on, and one group of dancers succeeded another, the h.o.m.ogeneous crowd began to break into varied activity.

Each took his turn as princ.i.p.al, then fell back to form part of the variegated background. Each dance was different. Warriors fully armed clashed shield and spear; witch doctors crouched and sprang; women stamped in rhythm; the elephant was hunted, the crops sown and gathered, all the activities of community and individual life were danced, the frankness of some saved from obscenity only by the unconscious earnestness of their exposition and the evidence of their symbolism that they were not the expression of the moment but very ancient customs.

The Leopard Woman watched it all with shining eyes. The emotion of the picturesque, the call of savage wildness, the contagion of a mounting community excitement caused the blood to race through her veins. The drums throbbed against her heart as the pulse throbbed against her temples. She resisted an actual impulse to rise from her chair, to throw herself with abandon into an orgy of rhythm and motion. Perfectly she understood those who, having reached the breaking point, dashed madly through the fire scattering embers and coals, or who darted forward to kiss ecstatically the white man's feet, or who reached a wild paroxysm of nerves to collapse the next instant into exhaustion.

She was brought to herself by Kingozi's calm voice.

"Sweet riot, isn't it?" he remarked. "They're working themselves up to a high pitch. It's always that way. You would think they'd drop from sheer weariness."

"How long will they keep it up?" she asked, drawing a deep breath, and trying to speak naturally.

"So it got you, too, a little, did it?" he said curiously.

"What do you mean?"

"The excitement. It's contagious unless you are accustomed to it. I've seen safe and sane youngsters go quite off their heads at these shows, and dash down and caper around like the maddest _shenzi_ of them all.

Felt it myself at first. It draws you; like wanting to jump off when you look down from a high place." He was talking evenly and carelessly.

"Enough of this sort of thing will make a crowd see anything.

Devil-worshippers for instance, they see red devils, after they work up to it, not a doubt of it."

"Thank you," she answered his evident purpose of bringing her to herself.

"All right now, eh?"

"Yes."

"Well, to answer your question; I've known dances to last two days."

"Heaven!" she cried, dismayed.

"But this is to prepare a suitable entrance for his majesty. We'll hear from him along toward daylight." He held out his wrist watch toward her. "What time now?"

Somehow the simple action seemed to her pathetic. Her eyes filled, and she stooped as though to kiss the outstretched hand. Never again would the worn old wrist watch serve its owner, except thus, vicariously!

"It is ten minutes past the twelve," she answered in a stifled voice.

"We must settle down to it. If you want tea or something to eat, tell Cazi Moto."

He resumed his stolid demeanour.

The dancing continued. Every once in a while women threw armfuls of fuel on the blaze. The tree hyraxes, out-screeched and outnumbered, fell into silence or withdrew. Above the stars shone serenely; and all about stood the trees of the ancient forest. Outside the hot, leaping red light they drew back aloof and still. They had seen many dances, many ebbs and flows of men's pa.s.sions; for they were very old.

The Leopard Woman's vision blurred after a time. She was getting drowsy. Her thoughts strayed. But always they circled back to the same point. She found herself wondering whether Winkleman would appear to-night.

A few hours earlier than Kingozi had predicted, in fact not far after two o'clock, the wild dancing died to absolute immobility and absolute silence, and M'tela arrived.

He appeared walking casually as though out for a stroll, emerging from the end of the wide forest path. Central African natives are never obese--comic papers to the contrary notwithstanding. Nevertheless, M'tela was a large man, amply built, his muscles overlaid by smoother, softer flesh. He possessed dignity without aloofness, a rare combination, and one that invariably indicates a true feeling of superiority. As he moved forward he glanced lazily and good-humouredly to right and left at his people, in the manner of a genial grown-up among small children. He wore a piece of cotton cloth dyed black, so draped as to leave one arm and shoulder bare, a polished bone armlet, and a tarboush that must have been traded through many hands.

"The _sultani, bwana_," murmured the ever-alert Cazi Moto.

M'tela wandered to where Kingozi sat. The white man did not move, but appeared to stare absently straight before him. At ten paces M'tela stopped and deliberately inspected his visitor for a full half-minute.

Then he advanced and dropped to the stool an obsequious and zealous slave placed for him.

"_Jambo_, papa," he said casually.

His manner was perfect. The thousand or so human beings who crowded the clearing might not have existed. Himself and Kingozi, two equals, were settling themselves for an informal little chat in the midst of solitudes. His large intelligent eye pa.s.sed over the Leopard Woman, but if her appearance aroused in him any curiosity or other interest no flicker of expression betrayed the fact.

As he heard the form of address a brief gleam of satisfaction crossed Kingozi's face. Whether it has been transferred from the English, or has been adopted more directly from the babbling of infants, "papa" is perfectly good Swahili. When M'tela addressed Kingozi as "papa" he not only acknowledged him as a guest, but he admitted the white man to the intimacy that exists between equals in rank.

M'tela was friendly.