Witch-Doctors Part 36

"Two men killed and three wounded."

"Ugm! Where's the interpreter?"

"Bwana!"

Cloth creaked as the man saluted in the dark.

"Where is Sakamata?" demanded zu Pfeiffer in Kiswahili.

"Here, Excellence," replied Sergeant Schultz. "He was running away. I had him arrested."

"Good. Bring the animal to my quarters."

"Excellence."

The sergeant and the interpreter, with a trembling Sakamata between them, followed zu Pfeiffer to the tent. As he entered he picked up the portrait in the ivory frame and replaced it carefully on the table and sat down.

"Ask the shenzie why he has not informed us of this attack?"

The interpreter put the question to the terrified old man who mumbled that he had not known anything about it.

"Ugm!" grunted zu Pfeiffer. "Send for a file of men, sergeant, and-- No!"

Zu Pfeiffer rose. "I'll get the truth out of him. Stand aside, corporal!"

The corporal obeyed with alacrity as jerking his revolver downwards zu Pfeiffer pulled the trigger. The shot took off two of Sakamata's smaller toes. The corporal grinned in appreciation. Zu Pfeiffer experienced a shadow of the pleasure he would have had in mutilating Birnier.

"Pull him up!" commanded zu Pfeiffer. "Now ask him again!"

For a moment or two Sakamata, scarcely conscious of any pain in his fright, could not comprehend what was said; at length he mumbled and muttered. The interpreter lowered his head to listen.

"Well?"

"He says, Bwana, that he does not know anything; that they will not tell him, but that he has heard that the G.o.d has come back."

"The G.o.d! What G.o.d?"

"The G.o.d which these shenzie (savages) had here before the Bwana came."

"The idol!" Zu Pfeiffer ripped out an oath. Then glaring questioningly at the shrunken figure on the floor considered.

"Tell him he lies. How does he know that the idol has come back if they will not tell him anything?"

Again the interpreter jabbered at Sakamata who mumbled back.

"He says, Bwana, that his words are white. That they have not told him, but that he has heard the message of the drums. 'The Fire is lighted!'"

"What is that?"

"I don't know, Bwana."

"Ask him, you swine pig!"

"He says that whenever there is a new king that they call out those words, meaning that he is come."

"Ugm!" Zu Pfeiffer took out a cigar and lighted it as he considered. I believe the animal is right, he reflected. That swinehund American has done this! He turned sharply to Sergeant Schultz: "Post double guards; bring me Ludwig's report and take this thing away and have it shot."

"Excellence!"

The party went out. Zu Pfeiffer sat smoking fiercely. A single shot rang out. Presently came Sergeant Ludwig in person.

"I have to report, Excellence, that the investigation infers that the attack was only made with the purpose of freeing the sons of chiefs, for the picket has been slain but all the others are unhurt save three wounded."

Zu Pfeiffer swore mightily, but he dismissed the sergeant with an admonition to have his troops ready for inspection at four-thirty. He drank a brandy neat and sat on, staring at the darkness. Then suddenly he exclaimed and wheeled to the abandoned report.

"This is an undeniable overt act," he muttered, seeing what he considered an opportunity to neutralise the suppositious complaint which Birnier had sent to Washington; and taking up his pen began a formal accusation against Birnier, as an American subject, for having violated the international laws of the Geneva Convention by aiding and abetting rebels of his Imperial Majesty.

CHAPTER 28

Sergeant Schultz's gloomy foreboding of the inevitable result attending the refusal to follow the teachings of his national preceptors was justified.

Zu Pfeiffer, crazed with wounded pride or magic, according to the white or black point of view, had held rigidly to his schedule; precisely at four-thirty he had inspected the expedition and marched at the first streak of dawn. Schultz removed to the other hill, leaving twenty-five men and a gun under a black sergeant. Afterwards he visited the village. The bodies of five of the picket were lying in the sun mutilated. Not a native of any sort was to be seen or heard. He sent out scouts. A village a couple of miles away was deserted too. He wished to burn the huts and plantation to clear the ground around the fort but he dared not do so without orders. Muttering to himself he returned and posted double sentries.

Throughout the day and the moonlight not a sound of a drum or the voice of a native disturbed the moist heat. He slept for a while and then took to pacing upon the levee outside the fort. He was aware of a restlessness among the men. About midnight a nervous sentry fired at a moving shadow in the village. Erratic shots followed; flickered and ceased at the sergeant's angry order. The trees seemed to whisper mockingly. The sergeant decided that it must have been a prowling jackal or hyena; but the incident made him irritable.

In ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have posted picket sentries as provided by the regulations, but he could not spare any of his fifty men, for in the case of an attack they would never regain the fort. The moon sank as if reluctantly, seeming to hesitate upon the fringe of banana fronds at something that she alone could see. But the night creaked slowly on.

Schultz knew that the favourite hour for an attack was just at the first glimmer of dawn when the spirits are making for their homes and the light is deceptive.

He was standing in front of the Nordenfeldt when a sentry's keener ears caught a peculiar whispering rustle. As Schultz turned his head to listen, the whisper grew in volume to the sound of a hail-storm-the patter of bare feet on sand. Faint light on spears rippled round the base of the hills.

Schultz sprang inside the barrier barking at his men to open fire. He deflected the muzzle of his gun and began pumping nickel into the advancing ma.s.s of yelling figures....

The rush carried the fort; for the defenders were out-numbered by fifty to one. Schultz fell under a dozen spear thrusts. The askaris were ma.s.sacred to a man before the sun rose inquiringly beyond the sacred hill of Kawa Kendi.

When all the b.l.o.o.d.y acts of war were done and the triumphant yelling quietened, there came from across the river a pulsing trickle of sound in the sizzling heat, which was answered by a thundering crash of spear against shield and the "Ough! Ough!" of three thousand warriors gathered upon the hill to do homage to the Unmentionable One.

Across the river, at the ford where Bak.u.ma had sung her swan song, came the procession led by the craft in full panoply. In the van stalked Bakahenzie, grave and solemn as befitted the high priest. Around him capered with untiring energy a group of lesser wizards whose duties were as those of professional dancers, having dried bladders and magic beads fastened to their ankles and wrists. Then behind Marufa a litter was borne by sacred slaves doomed to perish after performing their holy office, in which, swathed entirely from the public gaze, was Usak.u.ma, the Incarnation of the Unmentionable One. In another litter, as securely screened, was the son of the Lord-of-many-Lands, endeavouring to endure a perpetual bath of sweat in the sacred cause, peeking professorial eyes through the interstices, scribbling in a notebook. Behind again marched Mungongo bearing a smouldering brand of the Sacred Fire; then Yabolo, reinstated in office for a reason that any politician will understand. After him came more litters bearing the magic "things" of the Incarnation of an Incarnation, the King-G.o.d.

As they splashed across the river, like troops of bronze gazelle, women and girls dashed eager to gather of fertility from the water enchanted by the pa.s.sage of the Bearer of the World.

So they came through the banana plantation and up the wide street which the Son-of-the-Earthquake had planned. The chant quavered like a dragonfly in the sun and the chorus of the warriors replied with the rhythm and the profundity of gargantuan frogs. Then as Bakahenzie stepped upon the incline of the hill, burst from the women the cricket song which is made tremolo by the rapid beating of the fingers upon the lips, as from the drums went out the message over the land that the Unmentionable One had indeed returned to the Place of Kings, the City of the Snake.

Ten minutes later a half-stewed G.o.d, as exhausted as any emperor after a state parade, was permitted to emerge from the litter and to recuperate within the cool of the unfinished house that was to have been the bungalow of the Kommandant. No one else save the Keeper of the Fires, Bakahenzie and Marufa, were within the stockade which ringed the fort. Outside rose the mutter and rumble of the warriors and the cries of the women. The huddled lines of huts which had been barracks were already in process of demolition at the hands of the slaves, and the square within the fort was cleared of the slain askaris by the simple process of heaving the bodies over the palisade. The idol remained within the litter until the consecrating of the defiled ground should be performed by Bakahenzie and the craft.

No Wongolo nor any wizard, not even Bakahenzie, would touch the enchanted coughing monsters; but as the holy slaves were already doomed they were set to pull and to push the Nordenfeldt from the embrasure beside the entrance across the levee until it toppled over and rolled half-way down the hill, where it was allowed to stay, surrounded from morning to night by a crowd of women and children and idle warriors.