The Ivory Trail Part 72

"Bwana! Oh, bwana! Oh, bwana!"

"Get up, Johnson!" Fred took him by the arm and raised him. "Tell us what's the matter."

"Men who eat men! Men who eat men! I had three porters to carry my tent and food. Now I have none. They have eaten them! Now they hunt me!"

"Well, you're safe," said Monty. "Calm yourself."

"But you are not Bwana Schillingschen! I am here to wait for him.

Have you seen him? Where is he?"

Fred answered him. "Dead!"

Ha.s.san threw himself on the ground again at Monty's feet.

"Oh, what shall I do?" he blubbered. "I am an old man. Who shall take my people out of jail? Who shall go to Dar es Salaam and make Germans give them up?"

"If you're willing to show us what you intended to show Schillingschen," said Monty, "I'll do what I can for your relations."

"What can you do? Oh, what can you do? No man but a German can make these Germans cease from punis.h.i.+ng!"

Monty beckoned to the Baganda who had once done Schillingschen's dirty work.

"D'you see this man? This is a German spy. The German will be willing to hand over your relations in exchange for a promise not to make a fuss about this man. Wait a minute, though! Are your relations criminals?"

"No, bwana! No, bwana! My relations honorable folk! Formerly living in Zanzibar--going to Bagamoyo to serve in German family by invitation of person attached to German Consulate--no sooner landed than thrown in jail on charges they know nothing whatever about. Then Schillingschen he finding me, and say to me, 'You show where is that Tippoo Tib's ivory, and your relations shall go free!' And Tippoo Tib, he say to me, 'You take first step to show any man where is that ivory, and you shall be fed to white ants by my faithful people!' And Schillingschen he catch two of them faithful people, and feed 'em to white ants when n.o.body looking that way! Schillingschen terrible! Tippoo Tib terrible! What shall do? Tippoo Tib, he one time making me go long trip with Bwana Coutla.s.s, very bad Greek. Bwana Coutla.s.s wanting ivory--me pretending showing him--leading him wrong way. Coutla.s.s very bad man, beating me ngumu sana.* All the same, me more afraid of Tippoo Tib and Bwana Schillingschen. Not long ago Tippoo Tib sending me with Bwana Coutla.s.s second time, making bad threats against me if I not lead him wrong. Then Schillingschen he send for me and making worse threats! Oh, what shall do! Oh, what shall do!" [* Ngumu sana, very severely.]

"You shall show us where that ivory is!" Monty answered him. "Stop blubbering! Get up! Look here! See this! (Get me that diary, Will.) If the Germans won't release your relations from jail on account of this Baganda, this is a written book that will make them do it! In this book are the names of men who have broken treaties and the law of nations. When the Germans know the British Government in London has this book under lock and key, they will think it a little thing to release your relations for the sake of avoiding trouble!"

"Promise me, bwana! You promise me!"

"I promise I will do my best for you."

"Word of an Englishman--promise!"

"Word Of an Englishman--I promise to do my best!"

That was a proud enough moment on the shoulder of a mountain, with wilderness in every direction farther than the highest eagle in the air above could see, to have that helpless, hopeless ex-slave, part Arab, part machenzie, put his whole stock-in-trade--his secret--all he had on earth to bargain with for those he loved--in the balance on the promise of an Englishman. It was a tribute to a race that has had its share, no doubt, of bad men, but has won dominion over half the earth and pretty much all the sea by keeping faith with men who could not by any means compel good faith.

"Then I tell!" said Ha.s.san. "Then I show!"

But now a new fear seized him, and he clung to Monty, trembling and jabbering.

"The men who eat men! The men who eat men!"

"Pah! Cannibals!" sneered Fred. "They're always cowards!"

"Tippoo Tib, he afraid of nothing--n.o.body! He is hiding the ivory where men who eat men can guard it and none dare come!"

"Lead on, McDuff!" Fred grinned, shouldering his rifle.

All of us except Monty had beards by that time that fluttered in the wind, and looked desperate enough for any venture. Considering the rifles and our uncouth appearance, Ha.s.san took heart of grace. He insisted on an armed guard to walk on either side of him, and nearly drove Kazimoto frantic by ducking behind rocks at intervals, imagining he saw an enemy; but he did not refuse any longer to show the way.

It seemed that in expectation of Schillingschen's early arrival he had camped within a mile of the place where the stuff was hidden, taking unreasoning courage from the bare fact of having the redoubtable Schillingschen for friend. But the cannibals (who must have been a hungry folk, for there were no plantations, and almost no animals on all those upper slopes) had pounced on his three lean porters, missing himself by a hair's breadth.

In hiding, he had watched his three men killed, toasted before a fire in a cavern-mouth, and eaten. Then he had run for his life, following the shoulder of the mountain in the hope of meeting Schillingschen, munching uncooked corn he had in a little bag, hiding and running at intervals for a day and a night until he chanced on us. For an old man almost sick with fear he was astonis.h.i.+ngly little affected by the adventure.

We took longer over the course than he had done, because he wanted to find cannibals, and teach them, maybe, a needed lesson. Fred's theory was that we should surprise them and pen them into a cavern, discovering some means of talking with them when hunger brought them out to surrender and cringe.

So we threw out a line of scouts, and pounced on cave-mouths suddenly, entering great tunnels and following the course of them in ages-old lava until sometimes we thought ourselves lost in the gloom and spent hours finding the way out again.

Time and again we found bones--bones of wild animals, and of birds, and of fish; now and then bones that perhaps had been monkeys, but that looked too suspiciously like those of the fat babies mothers mourned for in the villages below for the benefit of the doubt to be conceded without something more or less resembling proof. But never a human being did we see until we rounded the northeastern hump of the mountain in a bitter wind, and spied half a hundred naked men and women, thinner than wraiths, who scampered off at sight of us and volleyed ridiculous arrows from a cave-mouth. The arrows fell about midway between us and them, but threw Ha.s.san into a paroxysm of fear, out of which it was difficult to shake him.

"Those are the people who ate my men! That is the cavern where Tippoo Tib hid the ivory! That is where my men's bones are! See--they have torn my tent for clothing for their naked women!"

We put Ha.s.san under double guard for fear lest he bolt again and leave us. And all that day, and all the next we hunted for cannibals through mazy caverns that seemed to extend into the mountain's very womb.

There were times when the stench was so horrible we nearly fainted. We stumbled on men's bones. We collided with sharp projections in the gloom--fell down holes that might have been bottomless for aught we knew in advance--and scrambled over ledges that in places were smooth with the wear of feet for ages. Everlastingly to right, or left of us, or up above, or down below we could hear the inhabitants scampering away. Now and then an arrow would flitter between us; but their supply of ammunition seemed very scanty.

At night we camped in the cavern mouth to cut off all escape, and resumed the hunt at dawn. But the caverns were hot--hotter by contrast with the biting winds outside; and when in the afternoon of the second day we all came out to breathe and cool off the running sweat, we saw the whole tribe--scarcely more than fifty of them--emerge from an opening above, whose existence we had not guessed, and go scampering away along a ledge like monkeys. Some of them stopped to throw stones at us--impotent, aimless stones that fell half-way; and Fred sent three bullets after them, chipping bits from the ledge, after which they showed us a turn of speed that was simply incredible, and vanished.

"Now for the great disillusionment!" laughed Will. "Ha.s.san! Go forward, and show us where that h.o.a.rd of ivory ought ta be!"

We all expected disillusionment. Brown, who was under no delusion as to his share in the venture, scoffed openly at the idea of finding anything buried, in a land where every living "crittur," as he put it, was a thief from birth. But Ha.s.san led on in, fearless now that the cannibals were gone, and positive as if he led into his own house and would show his house-hold treasures.

He stopped before a black-mouthed chasm, two or three hundred yards along the smallest subdivision of the cavern, and called for lights and a rope. We lit lanterns, and he showed us men's bones lying everywhere in grisly confusion.

"Tippoo Tib his men!" he remarked. "They throwing ivory in here, then byumby men who eat men kill and eat them. I alone living to tell!

Plenty men who eat men in those days--all mountains full of them!"

He tied a lantern to a rope and lowered it down what looked like an old vent-hole in the lava. But the little light was lost in the enormous blackness, and we could see nothing.

"Send a man down!" he counseled.

We leaned over the edge and sniffed. There was a faint smell of what might be sulphur, but not enough to hurt.

"Who'll go?" asked Monty, and I thought he was going to volunteer himself.

"I go down!" announced Kazimoto cheerfully, and promptly proceeded to divest himself of every st.i.tch of clothing.

We made our stoutest line fast under his arm-pits, gave him a lantern and lowered him over the edge. For fifty or sixty feet he descended steadily, swinging the lantern and walking downward, held almost horizontally by the slowly paid-out rope. Then he stopped, and we heard him whistling.

"What do you see?" we called down.

"Pembe!" (Ivory.)

"Much of it?"

"Teli!" (Too much!) "Oh, teli, teli! Teli, teli, teli, TELI!"

His voice ended with the very high-pitched note that natives use when they want to multiply superlatives. Then he whistled again. Next he called very excitedly.