The Pools of Silence Part 15

A two days' march brought them clear of the woods and into a broken country, vast, sunstrewn and silent; a beautiful desolation where the tall gra.s.s waved in the wind, and ridge and hollow, plain and mimosa tree, led the eye beyond, and beyond, to everlasting s.p.a.ce.

Standing here alone, and listening, the only sound from all that great sunlit country was the sound of the wind in the gra.s.ses near by.

Truly this place was at the very back of the world, the hinterland of the primeval forests. Strike eastward far enough and you would sight the snow-capped crest of Kilimanjaro, King of African mountains, sitting snow-crowned above the vast territory to which he has given his name, and which stretches from Lake Eyasi to the Pare Mountains. The hunters of Kilimanjaro, which once was the home of elephants, have thinned the herds and driven them to wander. Elephants that a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, were almost fearless of man, have altered their habits from the bitter lessons they have received, and now are only to be found in the most inaccessible places. Should they cling to more inhabited districts, they come out of the sheltered places only by night. A man may spend years in an elephant district without once seeing an elephant. Driven by the necessity of food and the fear of man, the great herds wander in their wonderful and mysterious journeys for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Never lying down, sleeping as they stand, always on guard, dim of sight yet keen of smell, they pa.s.s where there are trees, feeding as they go, stripping branches of leaves. Alarmed, or seeking a new feeding place, a herd moves in the rainy season, when the ground is soft, with the silence and swiftness of a cloud shadow; in the dry season when the ground is hard, the sound of them stampeding is like the drums of an army.

"Elephants," said Berselius, pointing to some bundles of dried stuff lying near a vangueria bush. "That stuff is a bundle of bowstring hemp. They chew it and drop it. Oh, that has been dropped a long time ago; see, there you have elephants again."

A tree standing alone showed half its bark ripped off, tusked off by some old bull elephant, and above the tusk marks, some fifteen feet up, could be seen the rubbing mark where great shoulders had scratched themselves.

As they marched, making due south, Berselius in that cold manner which never left him, and which made comradeship with the man impossible and reduced companionship to the thinnest bond, talked to Adams about the game they were after, telling in a few graphic sentences and not without feeling the wonderful story of the moving herds, to whom distance is nothing, to whom mountains are nothing, to whom the thickest jungle is nothing. The poem of the children of the mammoth who have walked the earth with the mastodon, who have stripped the trees wherein dwelt arboreal man, who have wandered under the stars and suns of a million years, seen rivers change their courses and hills arise where plains had been, and yet remain, far strewn and thinned out, it is true, but living still. At noon they halted and the tents were pitched for a four hours' rest.

Adams, whilst dinner was preparing, walked away by himself till the camp was hidden by a ridge, then he stood and looked around him.

Alone, like this, the spirit of the scene appeared before him: the sun, and wind, and sky; the vast, vast s.p.a.ces of waving gra.s.s, broken by the beds of dried-up streams, strewn here and there with mimosas and thorns, here dim with the growth of vangueria bushes, here sharp and gray-green with cactus; this giant land, infinite, sunlit, and silent, spoke to him in a new language.

It seemed to Adams that he had never known freedom before.

A shadow swept by him on the gra.s.s. He looked up and watched the great bird that had cast the shadow sailing away on the wind, dwindling to a point, and vanishing in the dazzling blue.

CHAPTER XVIII

FAR INTO ELEPHANT LAND

They sighted a small herd of giraffe two days later, but so far off as to be beyond pursuit; but before evening, just as they were about to camp by some pools, they came across rhino.

Berselius's quick eye spotted the beasts, a bull and a cow. They were in the open, under shelter of some thick gra.s.s; the bull was half sitting up, and his head and horn in the evening light might have been taken for the stump of a broken tree. The cow was not visible at first, but almost immediately after they sighted the bull, she heaved herself up and stood a silhouette against the sky.

The wind was blowing from the beasts, so it was quite possible to get close up to them. The meat would be useful, so Berselius and his companion started, with Felix carrying the guns.

As they drew close Adams noticed that the back of the great cow seemed alive and in motion. Half a dozen rhinoceros birds, in fact, were upon it, and almost immediately, sighting the hunters, they rose chattering and fluttering in the air.

These birds are the guardians of the half-blind rhinoceros. They live on the parasites that infest his skin. It is a partnership. The birds warn the rhinoceros of danger, and he, vicariously, feeds the birds. Scarcely had the birds given warning than the bull heaved himself up. Berselius's rifle rang out, but the light was uncertain, and the brute wounded, but not mortally, charged forward took a half circle, swung his head from side to side in search of his a.s.sailant, and sighted the cow. Instantly, horn down and squealing, he charged her. She met him horn to horn, and the smash could be heard at the camp where the porters and the soldiers stood gazing open-mouthed at the battle between the two great brutes charging each other in the low evening light, fighting with the ferocity of tigers and the agility of cats.

Adams, close up as he was, had a better view, and unless he had seen with his own eyes, he could not have believed that two animals so heavy and unwieldy could display such nimbleness and such quickness of ferocity.

It was the wickedest sight, and it was brought to an end at last by the rifle of Berselius.

Curiously enough, neither brute had injured the other very much. The horns which, had they been of ivory, must have been shivered, were intact, for the horn of a rhinoceros is flexible; it is built up of a conglomeration of hairs, and though, perhaps, the most unbreakable thing in the universe, it bends up to a certain point just as a rapier does.

Next morning, two hours after daybreak, Felix, who was scouting just ahead of the column, came running back with news he had struck elephant spoor.

Every tooth in his head told the tale. Not only spoor, but the spoor of a vast herd cutting right across the line of march.

Berselius came forward to examine, and Adams came with him.

The dry ground and wire gra.s.s was not the best medium for taking the track of the beasts, but to the experienced eyes of Berselius and the Zappo Zap everything was clear. A herd of elephant had pa.s.sed not long ago, and they were undisturbed and unsuspicious. When elephants are suspicious they march in lines, single file, one stepping in the tracks of another. This herd was spread wide and going easy of mind, but at what pace it would be impossible to say.

The long boat-shaped back feet of the bulls leave a print unmistakable in the rainy season when the ground is soft, but still discernible to the trained eye in the dry season. Felix declared that there were at least twenty bulls in the herd, and some of huge size.

"How long is it since they pa.s.sed here?" asked Berselius.

Felix held up the fingers of one hand. From certain indications he came to the conclusion they had pa.s.sed late in the night, three hours or so before daybreak. They numbered forty or fifty, leaving aside the calves that might be with them. He delivered these opinions, speaking in the native, and Berselius instantly gave the order, "Left wheel!" to the crowd of porters; and at the word the long column turned at right angles to the line of march and struck due west, treading the track of the herd.

Nothing is more exciting than this following in the track of a mammoth army whose tactics you cannot foresee. This herd might be simply moving a few miles in search of a new feeding ground, or it might be making one of those great sweeping marches covering hundreds of miles that the mysterious elephant people make at the dictates of their mysterious instinct. It might be moving at a gentle pace, or swifter than a man could run. A mile on the new route they came on a broken tree, a great tree broken down as if by a storm; the fractures were quite recent. The elephant folk had done this. They came across another tree whose sides, facing north and south, had been clearly barked, and the pieces of the bark, farther on, that had been chewed and flung away.

With one stroke of a tusk pa.s.sing a tree, and without stopping, an elephant will tear off a strip of bark; and it was curious to see how the bark of this tree to east and west was intact. The moving herd had not stopped. Just in pa.s.sing, an elephant on either side of the tree had taken his slice of bark, chewed it and flung it away. There were also small trees trodden down mercilessly under foot. Thus the great track of the herd lay before the hunters, but not a sign in all the sunlit, silent country before them of the herd itself.

It was Berselius's aim to crowd up his men as quickly as a forced march could do it, camp and then pursue the herd with a few swift followers, the barest possible amount of stores and one tent.

The calabashes and the water bottles had been filled at the last halt, but it was desirable to find water for the evening's camping place.

It was now that Berselius showed his capacity as a driver and his own enormous store of energy.

He took the tail of the column, and woe to the porters who lagged behind!

Felix was with him, and Adams, who was heading the column, could hear the shouts of the Zappo Zap. The men with their loads went at a quick walk, sometimes breaking into a trot, urged forward by the gun-b.u.t.t of Felix.

The heat was sweltering, but there was no rest. On, on, on, ever on through a country that changed not at all; the same breaks and ridges, the same limitless plains of waving gra.s.s, the same scant trees, the same heat-shaken horizon toward which the elephant road led straight, unwavering, endless.

The brain reeled with the heat and the dazzle, but the column halted not nor stayed. The energy of Berselius drove it forward as the energy of steam drives an engine. His voice, his very presence, put life into flagging legs and sight into dazzled eyes. He spared neither himself nor others; the game was ahead, the spoor was hot, and the panther in his soul drove him forward.

Toward noon they halted for two hours where some bushes spread their shade. The porters lay down on their bellies, with arms outspread, having taken a draught of water and a bite of food; they lay in absolute and profound slumber. Adams, nearly as exhausted, lay on his back. Even Felix showed signs of the journey, but Berselius sat right back into the bushes, with his knees drawn up and, with eyes fixed on the eastern distance, brooded.

He was always like this on a great hunt, when the game was near. Silent and brooding, and morose to the point of savagery.

One might almost have fancied that in far distant days this man had been a tiger, and that the tiger still lived slumbering in his soul, triumphant over death, driving him forth at intervals from civilization to wander in the wild places of the earth and slay.

Two hours past noon they resumed their journey: on, on, on, treading the elephant track which still went due east straight as an arrow to the blue horizon. The frightful tiredness they had felt before the noonday halt had pa.s.sed, giving place to a dull, dreamy feeling, such as comes after taking opium. The column marched mechanically and without thought, knowing only two things, the feel of the hard ground and gra.s.s beneath their feet, and the smiting of the sun on their backs.

Thus the galley slaves of old laboured at their oars and the builders of the pyramids beneath their loads, all moving like one man. But here was no tune of flutes to set the pace, or monotonous song to help the lifting; only the voice of Berselius like a whip-lash, and the gun-b.u.t.t of Felix drumming on the ribs of laggards.

A light, hot wind was blowing in their faces. Adams, still at the head of the column, had suffered severely during the morning march, and the re-start after the noon rest was painful to him as a beating; but the reserve forces of a powerful const.i.tution that had never been tampered with were now coming into play, and, after a time, he felt little discomfort. His body, like a wound-up mechanism, did all the work; his mind became divorced from it; he experienced a curious exaltation, like that which comes from drink, only finer far and more ethereal. The column seemed marching far swifter than it was marching in reality, the vast sunlit land seemed vaster even than it was; the wind-blown gra.s.s, the far distant trees, the circling skyline, all spoke of freedom unknown to man: the freedom of the herd they were pursuing; the freedom of the bird flying overhead; the freedom of the wind blowing in the gra.s.s; the freedom of the limitless, endless, sunlit country. Meridians of silence, and light, and plains, and trees, and mountains, and forests. Parallels of virgin land.

He was feeling what the bird knows and feels when it beats up the mountains or glides down the vales of air; what the elephant herd knows and feels when it moves over mountains and across plains; what the antelopes know when distance calls them.

A shout from Felix, and the Zappo Zap came running up the line; his head was flung up and he was sniffing the air. Then, walking beside Adams, he stared ahead right away over the country before them to the far skyline.

"Elephant smell," he replied, when Adams asked him what was the matter; then, turning, he shouted some words in the native back to Berselius, and tramped on beside Adams, his nose raised to the wind, of which each puff brought the scent stronger.

Adams could smell nothing, but the savage could tell that right ahead there were elephants; close up, too, yet not a sign of them could be seen.

This puzzled him, and what puzzles a savage frightens him.

His nose told him that here were elephants in sight of his eyes; his eyes told him that there were none.