Witch-Doctors Part 19

The personality of Birnier had been apparently wiped from his mind as a spoor in the sand by rain; indeed in addition to the competing excitement of the expedition, the previous night's alcoholic and sentimental debauch had served to exhaust the emotions stimulated by jealousy. To him had appeared an obstruction in his emotional life in the shape of the husband of the woman whom he adored; therefore, according to his nature and training, he had endeavoured to remove that obstacle as swiftly and as efficiently as possible. Superlative confidence in himself, reflected in his pride of family and nationality, the apotheosis of which was the Kaiser, enabled him to devote all his energies to the business in hand, never doubting that his interpretation of native psychology would ensure the extinction of his adversary.

Beyond the mere joy of the game of war was present the fundamental impulse to win the approval of the All Highest by gaining another place in the sun as well as the half-suppressed conviction that such a distinction would naturally further his suit in love. In the orbit of these two poles revolved the life actions of zu Pfeiffer.

That evening zu Pfeiffer dined as leisurely and as sumptuously as usual; drank his port and smoked his cigar while his servants packed the last of his kitchen battery. Then at the first green of the moon he gave the order to march.

The three companies of askaris fell in, marched down to the bayou and embarked without fuss or confusion, each group under a non-commissioned officer to the appointed canoe.

The launch laboured busily out of the bayou past misty reed-girt islands into the indolent waters of the great lake, dragging after her the fleet of forty odd canoes. A cigar under the awning of the tiny p.o.o.p suggested a great firefly in the blue shadows, where lounged zu Pfeiffer with his favourite brandy and seltzer at his elbow.

Resembling an enormous water-fowl leading a strange black brood, the launch towed the flotilla through the night. A war chant pulsed like a fevered heart as the moon upon her back lazily chased the stars into the dawn upon her way to her home in the Mountains of the Moon, to be in turn extinguished by a furious sun. And all that day, while incandescent heat tried to boil illimitable waters, the strange fowl waddled on with her noxious brood. Huddled in the cramped canoes the soldiers slept and snuffed and sang, to which zu Pfeiffer contentedly listened beneath the awning. Three times grey walls of falling water enveloped them, sending frantic black hands to bailing. Once more the moon made the skies to laugh. When the sun had played his part of a flaming Nemesis, a fringe grew upon the horizon like the stubble upon a white man's chin.

Zu Pfeiffer had calculated to arrive at the village of Timballa just within the river at sundown. The headman came down to the strand to meet them. Immediately he was seized, and the soldiers, as joyous and as mischievous as children released from school, surrounded the village.

Sitting in full uniform upon the p.o.o.p of the launch, together with the two sergeants, zu Pfeiffer held a shauri and demanded sufficient paddlers to man his forty canoes. The headman, to whom all white men were alike, thought they were British and hastened to proffer his services, promising that the Bwana should have the men within two days. Zu Pfeiffer curtly ordered him to procure them before the sun was overhead on the next day; and to insure that he was obeyed, detained him as hostage and forbade any man to pa.s.s his line of pickets around the village. The old man protested that they had not sufficient men in the village, but zu Pfeiffer's spies had afforded him practically correct information. He gave the headman the right to send a number of messengers, each accompanied by a soldier, to the neighbouring villages and promised him fifty lashes and to rase his village, if the paddlers were not forthcoming.

Solely because he wished to give his men time to recover from their stiffness did he not insist upon starting that night upon the river trip.

As a good commander he considered his men from every point of view of efficiency. They loved him. He was a warrior chief as they understood such to be; carefully he fostered their warrior pride; never were they ordered to work at menial offices, to fetch or to carry; only to drill and to fight; his punishments were ferocious, but he gave them liberty in pillage and rape. Eh! but the Eater-of-Men was a mighty chief! and of his name they boasted to every man.

With foresight he had demanded twice as many men as he needed, knowing that the panic-stricken chief would round up the halt, the blind, and the sick. By an hour after the stipulated time they were a.s.sembled in the village, a motley crew. Those of the most powerful physique he selected to man the soldiers' canoes, and the next in competency he allotted to the baggage canoes.

They started immediately. They made about two and a half miles an hour, for although the river was swollen it was sluggish and slow streamed, tortuous. Each canoe load of soldiers was made responsible for the paddlers and the speed was set by zu Pfeiffer in a large canoe with Sakamata as guide. Never had those paddlers driven canoes so speedily and persistently. At sundown they halted in a convenient bend where there was no village near; pickets were set on the bank and no other man allowed to land, no lights and no talking. They were ordered to rest.

At the first glint of the moon they started again. The canoes were hauled by the aid of the soldiers over the slight rapids which divided the river into pools in the dry season. Throughout the night the misty forest and swamp slipped by to the perpetual rhythm of the paddles. About the hour of the monkey a hippopotamus charged the flotilla and upset two boats. Zu Pfeiffer forbade any shooting, nor would he permit the expedition a moment's delay to pick up the occupants. Just as they heard the distant crowing of c.o.c.ks from the village for which they were bound, four paddlers collapsed. The soldiers, acting on their own initiative, threw them overboard to swim if they could, and took the paddles themselves.

Afterwards they were thrashed for disobedience to orders in having given a possible chance for one of the men to escape to warn the Wongolo. At an hour after sunrise they arrived at the village. The majority of the paddlers were so exhausted that they dropped in the canoes and had to be thrown ash.o.r.e, where they lay inert, their backs, b.l.o.o.d.y with the urgent bayonet p.r.i.c.ks, caking in the sun.

Beyond this point the river was not navigable, but the village was upon the Wongolo border and within two days or fifteen hours' continuous march of MFunya MPopo's (as zu Pfeiffer knew it). Zu Pfeiffer adopted the same tactics to procure porters. But to the chief, in case he should require his services again, he gave an extravagant present and left bales of cloth for the carriers upon their return. Zu Pfeiffer and Sergeant Ludwig travelled in machilas (hammocks) each with a crew of six; the soldiers carried nothing save their rifles, double cartridge belts, a day's rations; the pick of the carriers bore ammunition and the two Nordenfeldts and two pom-poms slung upon poles, and the chop boxes; the men's blankets and the heavy stuff were to follow more slowly under Sergeant Schultz and fifty men. The country between this village and MFunya MPopo's was mostly forest and very spa.r.s.ely inhabited, which afforded some shade and concealment, and lessened the risk of a warning being given.

The expedition started at noon. The carriers were kept on the native shuffling lope by the aid of attentions from the askaris. Two unfortunate small villages which lay on the line of march were surrounded and the inhabitants ma.s.sacred. Twenty porters collapsed; they were bayoneted to prevent any chance of a successful ruse in escaping to give the alarm, and their loads given to relay men brought for that purpose. The column halted at sundown. The men ate their rations, but the carriers were too exhausted to eat; they drank water and lay prostrate. According to Sakamata they were within two hands' breadth of the moon of Kawa Kendi's.

In full uniform of white, girded with sword and revolver, zu Pfeiffer ate, drank, and smoked cigars until the forest roof was patterned against the cold pallor of the moon. Then, after giving final instructions to Sergeant Ludwig and the various native non-commissioned officers, he ordered the jabbering men to march, with the carriers staggering on at the point of the bayonet.

CHAPTER 11

The doom p.r.o.nounced by the Council of Witch-Doctors was to Bak.u.ma and all concerned as a Bull of Excommunication in mediaeval Europe. MYalu was the one who exhibited the most emotion. Had he not paid seven tusks of good ivory to have the object of his pa.s.sion placed under the most terrible tabu? Against Marufa, who had seemingly betrayed him, was his anger directed. But the rage of MYalu was tempered with fear. A man had not merely to kill an enemy: he had also to appease his justly wrathful ghost; and who knew what the disembodied spirit of the most powerful magician in the land, save Bakahenzie, could do! Moreover, no other wizard would give him absolution in the form of the magic of purification. A chief though he be; he dared not slay a magician. He sought Marufa and found him as usual squatting on his threshold contemplating infinity in a mud wall. He saluted Marufa politely, choking back words of bitter recrimination, for if he even offended him, the wizard might cast a spell upon him instantly.

Marufa returned the greeting as courteously as ever. When at length MYalu reproachfully reminded him of the seven tusks which he had paid apparently to secure his love's terrible fate, Marufa replied uninterestedly:

"I have done that for which thou hast paid."

"What man buyeth a bride for another?" retorted MYalu.

"When I did make magic upon 'the things' did I place in the power of the spirits the owner. Behold, hath not the owner of 'the things' been accursed?"

"Ehh!" gasped MYalu. "But how may that be? Didst thou not thyself take the paring and the hair?"

"I bade the One who is tabu to bring them that he might be bewitched to her girdle. She thought to deceive me by bringing that which was of herself."

"E-eh!" muttered MYalu, impressed at the awful effect of deceiving a wizard. Marufa continued to stare. MYalu meditated ruefully.

"But the tusks," murmured MYalu at length dismally.

"It is not I who have two tongues," responded Marufa indifferently.

And with that MYalu had to rest content. Marufa indeed had no interest at all in the pa.s.sions of Zalu Zako, MYalu and Bak.u.ma. Merely the time had come for the witch-doctors to choose the victim for the Harvest Festival: Bak.u.ma was young and good looking, a dainty morsel that should please the taste of the officiating doctors, and her owner and uncle was a man of no importance: so accordingly he had made known the sin of her name through the divination.

In the solitude of his own hut upon the hill Zalu Zako sat and pondered sulkily. His young and fierce temper was stimulated and the seed of rebellion against the domination of the priesthood was quickened by the fate of his new love; although the masonic secrets of the craft were denied to him, he, as son of the royal house, was suspicious of the powers of the Unmentionable One and the priesthood, as many an one had been before him; yet in spite of that the verdict was absolute, for he was too crushed by terror of the consequences to permit of any hope of annulling it.

The fiat not only doomed Bak.u.ma to a terrible death at the third blooming of the moon, but from that very instant the tabu came into force; for being thus accursed by the possession of two sounds of the sacred name, she was deemed unholy. Her half-sisters and their mother, with whom Bak.u.ma shared the hut, fled to another and were exorcised by the wizard, which, as everybody knows, is an expensive ceremony; gourds and pots, spoons and utensils of all sorts, were left to the sole use of the unclean one and would be burned upon her demise. A magic line was drawn around the hut out of which the soul of the girl as she slept could not escape to bewitch anybody. Neither her name nor anything that had been hers would be ever mentioned again; any word of a household article or any thing or beast which had one syllable of the name "Bak.u.ma" was changed, lest the user be accursed and bewitched.

For the whole day, in this isolation, sat the girl Bak.u.ma, Marufa's useless love charm clutched in her hand, as bewildered as if the earth had suddenly turned inside out under this fact so stupendous and stupefying.

She did not weep. She squatted in the door, her eyes staring with the glazed inquiring expression of a dying gazelle, a bronze question to Fate.

At the feeding time her mother threw her bananas into the circle. Bak.u.ma looked at them as they flopped near to her as if she did not realize what they were. She made no stir to cook or prepare them. The cool twilight came and pa.s.sed like a blue breath. Above the insectile chorus of the night beneath the crystal stars came the faint thrumming of a drum from MKoffo's hill. The sound of music and dancing reminded Bak.u.ma of her ambitious dreams. She could neither weep nor wail; she merely emitted a faint gasping sound. But her mind began to work jerkily, yet more fluently. Visions of the form of Zalu Zako were weaved and spun in the darkness: the lithe walk of him, the haughty carriage of the head. Slowly greened the sky until the banana fronds were etched in sepia against the swollen moon. The dismal croak of the Baroto bird shattered the black coc.o.o.n of Bak.u.ma's mind.

"Aie-eee! the foul bird of my despair!" she wailed, and at last wept. Then she rose and flitted like some green ghost into the plantation and across to the place of water where her lover had first spoken her sweet, recking naught in her mist of despair of spirits of the night nor of the breaking of the magic circle. The moon spattered the squatted form with blue spangles and turned the falling tears to quivering opals. Bak.u.ma broke into wild lament.

"The black Goat hath cried three times in my hut!

My soul hath wandered and been caught in a trap!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

A wizard hath stolen a hair from my head!

The beak of Baroto pecketh my gall!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

A rival hath lain in wait for my love!

She hath slain my bird in the nest of his breast!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

A porcupine dwells in the place of my heart!

The bird of my soul is fluttering faint!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

An ember of fire hath entered my mouth!

The milk of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s is curdled to-night!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

The strings of my bosom are tied with fine knots!

My belly is void! My nipples are dead!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

A monkey hath bitten the back of my tongue!

Hath stolen my breath to make magic by night!

Aieeeeeeeeeee!

The blood in my veins hath turned to sour porridge!

My throat is choked up by the sudd of the Lake!