The Fire-Gods Part 6

"How do you kill your elephants?" asked Edward. The hunting of big game was the foremost interest of his life.

Caesar smiled.

"You will not approve of my methods," said he. "You are a sportsman; I am only a trader. I send my natives into the jungle, in the direction in which a herd of elephants has been located. These fellows creep on all-fours amid the undergrowth. They are as invisible as snakes. They are armed with long knives, with which they cut the tendons of the elephants' hind-legs, just below the knee. If an elephant tries to walk after that tendon has been severed, it falls to the ground and breaks its leg. The great beasts seem to know this, for they remain motionless as statues. When all the finest tuskers have been thus disposed of, I come with my rifle and shoot them, one after the other. Thus it is that I have collected a great store of tusks."

Edward Harden made a wry face.

"I have heard of that manner of hunting," said he. "It is much practised on the East Coast. I consider it barbarous and cruel."

Caesar smiled again.

"I told you," said he, "you would not approve."

Harden swung round in his chair, with a gesture of disgust.

"I would like to see the ivory trade stopped," he cried, in a sudden flood of anger, very rare in a man naturally p.r.o.ne to be unexcitable and mild. "I regard the elephant as a n.o.ble animal--the n.o.blest animal that lives. I myself have shot many, but the beast has always had a chance, though I will not deny the odds were always heavily on me. Still, when I find myself face to face with a rogue elephant, I know that my life is in danger. Now, there is no danger in your method, which is the method of the slaughter-house. At this rate, very soon there will be no elephants left in Africa."

"I'm afraid," said Caesar, with a shrug of the shoulders, "we would never agree, because you're a sportsman and I'm a trader. In the meantime, I will do all I can to make you comfortable during your stay at Makanda."

"Is that the name of this place?" asked Max.

"Yes," said the Portuguese. "There was a native village when I came here--just a few scattered huts. The natives called the place Makanda, which, I believe, means a crater. The hills which surround us are evidently the walls of an extinct volcano. But, to come back to business, I can provide a hut for your Fan attendants, but they must be ordered not to leave the stockade. You have noticed, perhaps, that I employ a few Arabs. I am fond of Arabs myself; they are such excellent cooks. An Arab is usually on sentry at the gate of the stockade. That man will receive orders to shoot any one of the Fans who endeavours to pa.s.s the gate. These methods are rather arbitrary, I admit; but in the heart of Africa, what would you have? It is necessary to rule with an iron hand. Were I to be lax in discipline, my life would be in danger.

Also, I must request you and your friends not to leave the stockade, unattended by either de Costa or myself. The truth is, there are several hostile tribes in the neighbourhood, and it is only with the greatest difficulty that I can succeed in maintaining peace."

"I'm sure," said Harden, "you will find us quite ready to do anything you wish. After all, the station is yours; and in this country a man makes his own laws."

"That is so," said Caesar; and added, "I'm responsible to no one but myself."

This man had an easy way of talking and a plausible manner that would have deceived a more acute observer than Edward Harden. As he spoke he waved his hand, as if the whole matter were a trifle. He ran on in the same casual fas.h.i.+on, with an arm thrown carelessly over the back of his chair, sending the smoke of his cigarette in rings towards the ceiling.

"Most of us come to Africa to make money," said he; "and as the climate is unhealthy, the heat unbearable, and the inhabitants savages, we desire to make that money as quickly as possible, and then return to Europe. That is my intention. For myself, I keep tolerably well; but de Costa here is a kind of living ague. He is half consumed with malaria; he can't sleep by night, he lies awake with chattering teeth.

Sometimes his temperature is so high that his pulse is racing. At other times he is so weak that he is unable to walk a hundred paces. He looks forward to the day when he shakes the dust of Africa from his shoes and returns to his native land, which--according to him--is Portugal, though, I believe, he was born in Jamaica."

Max looked at the half-caste, and thought that never before had he set eyes upon so despicable an object. He looked like some mongrel cur. He was quite unable to look the young Englishman in the face, but under Max's glance dropped his eyes to the floor.

"And now," said Caesar, "there is a hut where I keep my provisions, which I will place at your disposal."

At that he went outside, followed by the two Hardens. De Costa remained in the hut. Crouch was still asleep.

Caesar called the Arab from the kitchen, and, a.s.sisted by this man and the five Fans, they set to work to remove a number of boxes from the hut in which it was proposed that the three Englishmen should sleep.

Blankets were spread upon the ground. The tall Portuguese was most solicitous that his guests should want for nothing. He brought candles, a large mosquito-net, and even soap.

Supper that evening was the best meal which Max had eaten since he left the sea-going s.h.i.+p at Banana Point on the Congo. The Portuguese was well provided with stores. He produced several kinds of vegetables, which, he said, he grew at a little distance from the stockade. He had also a great store of spirits, being under the entirely false impression that in tropical regions stimulants maintain both health and physical strength.

After supper, Caesar and Captain Crouch, who had entirely recovered from his faintness, played ecarte with an exceedingly dirty pack of cards.

And a strange picture they made, these two men, the one so small and wizened, the other so tall and black, each coatless, with their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves rolled to the elbow, fingering their cards in the flickering light of a tallow candle stuck in the neck of a bottle.

Crouch knew it then--and perhaps Caesar knew it, too--that they were rivals to the death, in a greater game than was ever played with cards.

They went early to bed, thanking Caesar for his kindness. Before he left the hut, Edward Harden apologized for his rudeness in finding fault with the trader's method of obtaining ivory.

"It was no business of mine," said he. "I apologize for what I said."

No sooner were the three Englishmen in their hut, than Crouch seized each of his friends by an arm, and drew them close together.

"Here's the greatest devilry you ever heard of!" he exclaimed.

"How?" said Edward. "What do you mean?"

"As yet," said Crouch, "I know nothing. I merely suspect. Mark my words, it'll not be safe to go to sleep. One of us must keep watch."

"What makes you suspicious?" asked Max. Throughout this conversation they talked in whispers. Crouch had intimated that they must not be overheard.

"A thousand things," said Crouch. "In the first place, I don't like the look of Arabs. There's an old saying on the Niger, 'Where there's an Arab, there's mischief.' Also, he's got something he doesn't wish us to see. That's why he won't let us outside the stockade. Besides, remember what the natives told us. The tribes the whole country round stand in mortal fear of this fellow, and they don't do that for nothing.

The Fans are a brave race, and so are the Pambala. And do you remember, they told us that every evening there's thunder in the valley which shakes the earth? No, he's up to no good, and I shall make it my business to find out what his game is."

"Then you don't believe that he's an ivory trader?" asked Max.

"Not a word of it!" said Crouch. "Where's the ivory? He talks of this store of tusks, but where does he keep it? He says he's been here for two years. In two years, by the wholesale manner in which he has been killing elephants, according to his own account, he should have a pile of ivory ten feet high at least. And where is it? Not in a hut; not one of them is big enough. I suppose he'll ask us to believe that he keeps it somewhere outside the stockade."

"I never thought of that," said Harden, tugging the ends of his moustache. "I wonder what he's here for."

"So do I," said Crouch.

Soon after that, at Crouch's request, Harden and Max lay down upon their blankets, and were soon fast asleep. As for the captain, he also lay down, and for more than an hour breathed heavily, as if in sleep. Then, without a sound, he began to move forward on hands and knees across the floor of the hut.

When he reached the door he came into the moonlight, and had there been any one there to see, they would have noticed that he carried a revolver, and there was a knife between his teeth.

As quick as a lizard he glided into the shade beneath the walls of the hut. There he lay for some minutes, listening, with all his senses alert.

This man had much in common with the wild beasts of the forests. He was quick to hear, quick to see; it seemed as if he even had the power to scent danger, as the reed-buck or the buffalo.

His ears caught nothing but the varied sounds of wild, nocturnal life in the jungle. The stockade was not more than a hundred paces distant from the skirting of the forest. Somewhere near at hand a leopard growled, and a troop of monkeys, frightened out of their wits, could be heard scrambling through the branches of the trees. Farther away, a pair of lions were hunting; there is no sound more terrible and haunting than the quick, panting noise that is given by this great beast of prey as it follows upon the track of an antelope or deer. Then, far in the distance, there was a noise, so faint as to be hardly audible, like the beating of a drum. Crouch knew what it was. Indeed, in these matters there was little of which he was ignorant. It was a great gorilla, beating its stomach in pa.s.sion in the darkness. And that is a sound before which every animal that lives in the jungle quails and creeps away into hiding; even the great pythons slide back into the depths of silent, woodland pools.

But it was not to the forest that Crouch's ear was turned. He was listening for a movement in the hut in which slept the Portuguese trader, who went by the name of Caesar. After a while, seeming satisfied, he crawled on, in absolute silence, in the half-darkness, looking for all the world like some cruel four-footed beast that had come slinking from out of the jungle.

He reached the door of the hut, and crept stealthily in. Inside, he was not able to see. It was some little time before his eye grew accustomed to the darkness.

Then he was just able to discern the long figure of the Portuguese stretched upon his couch. Half-raising himself, he listened, with his ear not two inches from the man's mouth. Caesar was breathing heavily.

He was evidently fast asleep.

Still on hands and knees, as silently as ever, Crouch glided out of the hut.

Instead of returning by the way he had come, he turned in the opposite direction, and approached another hut. It was that which belonged to the half-caste, de Costa, whom he had met five years before in St. Paul de Loanda.

Once again he pa.s.sed in at the door, silently, swiftly, with his knife still in his teeth.

This hut was even darker than the other, by reason of the fact that the door was smaller. Crouch sat up, and rubbed his eyes, and inwardly abused the universe in general because he was not able to see.

Suddenly there was a creaking noise, as if some one moved on the bed.