Читать книгу The Slave Brand of Sleman bin Ali - James Anson Buck - Страница 3

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SHEENA stepped out of the pool. She shook out the wet veil of her golden hair and stood, statuesque, her bronzed beauty glowing in a shaft of amber sunlight. The warm ray caressed her, and swiftly drank the moisture from the shimmering veil. Then she flashed across the little clearing to the hut which stood on stilts, five feet above the crawling earth. Quickly she shrugged into leopard skin, and then came to stand in the doorway of the hut, looking out across the pool.

How still it was on these idle days under the thatched eaves of the little house. The pale fruit hung high on the ajap tree before the door, and, higher still, Chim, her pet ape, swung from branch to branch, performing amazing gymnastic feats, and scolding because she did not laugh and shout her approval. The twelve-hour tyranny of the sun was at its ebb, its violence done to the yellow earth of the clearing, and the arras of the forest hung breathless over its secret; for here, deep in the African Congo, was the holy dwelling place of Sheena, the Golden Goddess of the Jungle and all its tribesmen. Here no man had ever set foot, not even those whose escutcheon was white skin and who boasted the title, Bwana. Wise men knew better than to flaunt tribal taboos, and fools die quickly on the forbidden trails of the Congo jungle.

The rainy season was overdue, the heat oppressive in the little clearing even after sundown. Lightning flashed around the horizon, the thunder rolled like distant drums, and all nature waited in breathless suspense. But no rain fell and, though Sheena knew that it must make her forest home damp and depressing, she longed for it to come and break this brooding stillness, this tense waiting for something to happen.

It was a strange, new feeling that had beset her in this season, a feeling that incessantly grew out of her inner heart. She could no longer believe that it was entirely due to the weather. It was linked with the young trader who had come up to the Kuango post as surely as it was linked with his black, bearded companion.

Though no white man had set eyes upon Sheena, not one who came into her domain escaped her scrutiny. Always she liked to look closely into their faces when sleep had removed the mask of consciousness and showed the naked soul. Through their camps she stole, like a ghost in the dead of night. The trader, the hunter, explorer and missionary—she knew them all. Some were wise in the ways of exile, and came and went their ways; others went into the forest with a backward look, and came out with secret and stricken countenance. Sometimes one or another lingered too long in the jungle, and then, as the Abamas said: "He sent his heart into the dark," and built out of his lonely horror and the license of solitude a perverse habitation for his soul. Such men were dangerous, as deadly as the mamba.

And such a man was the Black-Bearded One, with gold rings in his ears. An evil face was his, with a cruel twist to the mouth even in repose. But the young one, flung out on his canvas cot, bronzed chest and muscular limbs thinly veiled by mosquito netting, had not been hard to look at. Black curls against the white of his pillow, a strong face softened by some dream that made him smile in his sleep. Not so tall, perhaps, as Ekoti, chief of the Abamas, but then Ekoti was a giant of a man.

WAS IT the evil she had seen in the face of the one, or was it the disturbing which came when she thought of the other, that kept her in idleness beside this jungle pool?

She could not tell. The uncertainty made her moody and reawakened in her a craving for the trails long familiar to her—the trails that ever coiled and wound mysteriously around the mountains, down into the valleys, and through the dark forest. Chim dropped to the ground and then bounced up onto the floor beside her. She ran her hand through his black hair, and spoke softly what was in her mind:

"Soon the rain must come, little one. Tomorrow we will leave this place for the cave in the mountains."

Chim grimaced at her. They had never stayed in this place for so long before. He sensed his mistress' moodiness, and it made him feel bad. He could not keep still. He swung up into the ajap tree again, and sat scolding her in his comical way.

The sun sank behind the mountains, and shadows overflowed the clearing. The surrounding jungle was windless, yet full of hurried noises, and the sweet, lingering song of the bush cuckoos. Soon the drums, in the deep, absorbing silence of the forest so like the clicking of a giant telegraph, began to talk. At this hour, everywhere, the villages gave ear to the gossip of the jungle.

The drums were not of equal power, nor were their voices more alike than the voices of people are. Sheena never failed to locate a drum by its voice. In the old, primeval code all the facts of life had their phrases, all the adventures and misadventures of the day, their announcements; and no sovereign, despite the white man's magic, knew more of the hopes and fears of his people, or knew them sooner, than did Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

"Your wife has borne a son!" one drum said. And somewhere on the veldt, or deep in the forest, a lone hunter paused to build a ritual fire, and give thanks to his gods. Then out of the darkness, as swift as an arrow aimed at her heart, Sheena heard her own name, her own drum name, and coupled with it was this phrase:

"Aku is dead. The Bearded One killed him. Come, cross his hands on his breast!"

And then there was a crying in the wilderness as one drum, and then another, and another, sobbed out the old, poignant call to mourning.

Under the immediate thrust of it all life in the clearing seemed to be arrested, and Sheena's heart was like a cold stone in her breast. Then, suddenly, she jumped to her feet, her hands clenched, her blue eyes blazing. So, they had dared to kill one of her people, a hunter brave and good. This was the thing her un-quiet spirit had tried to warn her against. But she had not listened to the small voice within her. She had seen the evil in the face of the Bearded One, yet she had not sent Ekoti and his warriors to drive him out. No, she had not done that, because—because, in her heart there lurked a hidden wish to talk with the young one! Ah, but she was not deaf to the small voice now. Let the white men beware, soon they would meet Sheena face to face!

From a peg above her bed she snatched her quiver and bow; then sped down the moon-dappled trail to the Abama village, as light as dust, as swift as a cloud shadow over the veldt. From his perch in the ajap tree Chim saw her flash down the trail, and shrieked out his protest. To keep off the jungle trails at night was just plain monkey-sense.

At sunrise Sheena stood on a rocky eminence, looking toward the distant mountains, a superb figure with her hair streaming out in the hot wind from the south-east. The rippling veldt ran out to the foothills, and there were dark pools of shadow under the euphorbia trees which pointed milky-jade fingers against the serene blue of the sky. But Sheena looked upon the familiar panorama, frowning, undeceived by its beauty. The creeks that wiggled across the plain were showing ripples of sun-baked mud, and there was the stench of decaying fish in the wind. The land was drying up under the furnace-heat of the sun, and the blistering wind from the desert. All the game was drifting south—the eland and the zebra in flashing stampede to avoid the lion and the leopard slinking on their flanks. If the rain did not come soon, it would be bad for her people who hunted and pastured their herds on this plain.

In the far distance the huts of the Abama village released smoke to smudge the blue of the sky. Swiftly she sped on.

THE VILLAGE surrounded a hill and straggled along the fast-drying river which looped around it like a great python. Sheena had been born among the Abamas, but not in this village. All she knew of her past had come to her from the lips of old N'bid Ela, the witch-woman of the tribe. And that was so long ago that it was hard to remember what the old woman had said. But sometimes, as now when she drew near to the village, a vivid picture of N'bid Ela would arise in her mind, and she would see the old woman strike the earth with her staff and drone:

"This and I—we are very old! Soon I go to the Black Kloof. Before I go, I have words for you. Your father and your mother were of the Tribe of God. Your skin is white, little one. You, too, are of the Tribe of God, and it is not good for you to play with black children. I will tell the people to build a hut for us in the forest. I will teach you my craft. Then, when I am gone, you will be their mata-yenda, their wise-woman, and they will obey you."

And so it had come to pass. For a long time she had lived in the forest, drinking of N'bid Ela's dark wisdom until she had sucked the fountain dry. And more beautiful and glowing in her youth she grew under the African sun every day. More than once N'bid Ela had taken her to the village on the Day of Testing when the young men of the Abama clans gathered to prove their fitness for war and wedlock. In those contests no man had proved himself swifter on foot, or more deadly in his aim with the spear and the bow. The tale of her prowess and wisdom had been carried from kraal to kraal, so that now there were few village headmen who would have thought to venture upon any undertaking without having first consulted her.

At times she wondered at N'bid Ela's strange words. Since the Abamas called all missionaries Men of the Tribe of God, she supposed that her father had been a missionary. Beyond this she could not think. It was foolish to try, like tugging at a vine to which there was no fruit attached.

No one was moving on the dusty trails that criss-crossed the village. Goats lay panting in the shade of a grove of ironwood trees, and the birds perched above them held their wings fan-wise to catch the air. The mushroom houses, shaggy with the thickest of palm-leaf thatch, crouched under the burden of sunlight, but in the palavar house there was permanent dusk. The sudden glitter of copper ornaments was there, and the glitter of spear heads. Brilliant eyes set in dark faces, fantastic headdresses studded with buttons and shells and beads, The tumult and vehement gestures of controversy were there also—and then silence when Sheena came to stand among them.

Her eyes picked out Ekoti, the young chief of the Abamas. "My ears are open, Ekoti," she said.

"The white men sent a runner to our village," the chief said as he got to his feet, "because they wanted to trade with us. As you know, Sheena, we are great hunters and there is an ivory under every man's bed in this village. It seemed good to me that we should trade some of it for guns. And—"

"Why did you ask for guns?" Sheena interposed sharply.

Ekoti looked around him uneasily, then he took a deep breath and at length: "Nothing can be hidden from Sheena. I want the guns to go against the Arab's town. Long ago he drove our people. He drove our brothers, the M'Bama, stole many of their women and made slaves of their young men. If I think to make war against him, is it a bad thing?"

Sheena gave him a cold-eyed stare. "Perhaps," she said softly, "Ekoti thinks too much of war. Perhaps it is not good for him to be Chief of the Abamas."

A low murmur ran around the circle of elders, and Ekoti looked down at the ground. Not until the Jungle Queen smiled on him again would his grasp on the chieftainship be firm. For a time Sheena kept him in an agony of suspense, then suddenly she smiled:

"It is good for a man to speak his heart even though it betray his folly. Because your chief did this without fear, I am pleased with him. But in your fathers' time the Abamas, like foolish young bulls, rushed against the Arab's walls, and they broke their horns. Even if you had guns, the Arab would be too strong for you, Ekoti. Think no more of war with him. Now, go on with your story."

"I sent my uncle, Aku, with two hands of teeth to the trader's kraal," Ekoti took up his story. "I did this because once Aku was on safari with the Bearded One, and he knows the Swahili speech which the traders use, I sent only as many men as were needed to carry the ivory. Truly, my head was sick when I did that! The Bearded One would not give Aku guns. No, he cheated Aku. He offered only cloth and beads. This made Aku angry because he knew that the trader offered less for ten teeth—big teeth, I say—than a coast trader would give for one." He paused for breath, then went on:

"Then Aku would have left the trader's kraal, but the Bearded One would not let his men touch the ivory. There was a fight. The trader drove our people. Aku ran for the bush, but the Bearded One fired his gun and Aku fell. Then the trader's people rushed out and seized five of ours, and took them into their kraal. Aku they took also. Doubtless, he is dead. Doubtless, too, the trader will kill the others if we go against him. Now, we ask you what we should do about this thing." He sat down, and all eyes were turned upon Sheena. She was silent for some time, then:

"Ekoti, you spoke only of the Bearded One. Where was the young Bwana when this evil was done?"

"We do not know, Sheena." He swept out his arm and muscles rippled under his black, satin skin. "All who came back sit here now. And they say that the young, white man was not there."

Sheena's smile came and went quickly. Just for a moment it made her dark eyes shine in the dim light. It was a fleeting glimpse of the real woman behind the taboo which was always before her like a shield. Ekoti saw it and, shrewdly guessing what had prompted it, frowned darkly, and spoke a thought fathered by the wish:

"Perhaps he has gone down the river to the coast."

Sheena shook her head. "The drums would have spoken of it," she said, and then fell silent, her eyes clouded with thought. Minutes passed without a sound but the labored breathing of the old men. Then:

"The trader must be shown that he cannot shoot and cheat our people," she said. "We will drive him."

"Good! Good!" the elders approved in one voice. Only Ekoti looked dubious.

"How can we drive them, Sheena?" he asked. "Their kraal is strong. They have guns. Also, they have five of our people behind their fence."

The Jungle Queen smiled. "You are a warrior, Ekoti, and you have nothing in your head but spears and guns. Hear me now. You have much ivory, also. The Bearded One wants ivory, so you will make a big safari and take all your ivory to his place."

Ekoti's jaw sagged. For a long moment he stared at her in complete bewilderment. At last he gasped out: "Is it in your mind to give him the ivory in trade for our captured ones?"

Sheena laughed softly. "It is in my mind," she said, "to teach him, and you, a lesson, Ekoti. Obey me, and all will be well. Be ready to march at sunrise. Leave your spears behind. Let no man carry more than his knife. I have spoken."

"I hear, and obey," said Ekoti.

At the door of the palavar house she turned suddenly and asked: "Do your wives still sew well, Ekoti?"

"Truly, Sheena."

"Good! I would talk with them now." Wearing an expression of profound puzzlement, Ekoti followed her out into the sunlight.