Читать книгу Children of the Wind - Matthew Phipps Shiel - Страница 14

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The three were eating an evening meal after the afternoon sweat and trek through leagues of timber, when Cobby remarked: "Here we are within sight nearly, and the plan of action still undetermined"—a browner Cobby, upon whom some beard had sprouted, in moleskin trousers now, and leggings above velschoenen, upon which the bivouac-tire shed beams in a dimness that was an island of dimness within the dismal Pacific of the night.

Rolls began to answer: "Well, we have the rough plan"—but paused, suddenly adding: "Another fight on!—that's the utshwala (millet-grog) working," and, springing up, he trotted off into a still dimmer dimness, where a little mob stood watching a Swahili and a Pondo duelling with two club-sticks in the midst of a bigger mob, who lolled and squatted, enjoying the day's end, and at that lip the calabash tilted, and that puffed at the hashish ("dakka") pipe, and that snub-nose sucked up snuff.

Rolls stamped at the fighters: "Stash that racket!" but still the two kerries acted, rattling anon like castanets, and the clattering antlers of antagonist stags rattling together.

Only when Rolls, roaring at them anew, drew his revolver, did the duel consent to stop, and then the Pondo dropped something at the Swahili's ear, to which the Swahili consented with nods, so that Rolls understood that the feud was still to be settled elsewhere.

"Silly brutes," he grumbled, sitting anew to his tin plate: "we can't afford to have 'em cracking one another's skulls up here"—for just "here" was cannibal, there had been two pitched laager-battles, flow of blood, and the sentries standing out in the dark now about the bivouac were not there for nothing.

"Well, you were saying——" Cobby said, mopping his forehead and a chest all exposed at the opening of his dirty shirt, the sleeves rolled up.

"It's only details that remain over," Rolls answered, casting an underglance at Macray, who lay on his elbow, eating with evident effort and unease: "the dart is to get within the three enclosures one dark night, chloroform 'our mother,' and bring her off like a sack of mealies."

"You'll never put that over," Macray observed.

"With your help we will," Rolls answered, with a sullen eye askance on him.

"Well, no doubt I'm a host in myself," Macray chuckled, ever jocular, in spite of pain.

Now Cobby irritably loosed his belt with its sheaf-knife and six-shooter holster, saying: "But are you aware that the administration of chloroform occasionally ends fatally, and that we have no right——"

"Oh, now for a London sermon!" Rolls muttered intolerantly—tempers here not being at their best! for God caused a mist to rise up out of the ground, a steam of miasmas and malarias, good for snakes and the great venom-insects that came sailing in gay dress out of the tangle of undergrowth to glare at the flame and dance devil-dances to it, but bad for man.

"May I not express myself?" Cobby asked, glancing aside at Rolls, who sat by him, his back propped upon the same mass of banyan-trunk that had dropped there a century gone, to gather its scab of mosses and rot with all the rot of the tropic forest, within which, side by side, vied riot of corruption and riot of life, and the tribes of life thrived on the festering of the unburied dead.

"How many people die of chloroform, old man?" demanded Rolls. "One in a million? And what are we here for but to take a thousand bigger risks?"

"Very good," said Cobby. "I concede the chloroform—let that pass. But there will be sentries round the royal precincts! How about them?"

"We stab the sentries, baas," Macray said, looking at Cobby with one eye winked.

"There'll be only four or five," Rolls said. "Shoot 'em with air-guns—or stab."

Now Cobby frowned. "That is," said he, "we become assassins."

"Put it that road," Rolls curtly said.

"Very good," said Cobby hotly, "be an assassin, if that is to your taste—on the understanding that you never shake my hand after."

Macray chuckled; and Rolls sullenly said: "We'll rub along without much shaking hands—just do a bow, look," and, doffing his opulent hat, he bowed elegantly to the forest, to show how elegantly he and Cobby would bow together.

"I am in earnest, understand," Cobby mentioned, in the act of lighting a pipe, and Rolls then said, patting his friend's arm: "Hamba gachle (go soft): nothing is going to be done that you don't cotton to—not likely! We'll have a regular indaba (debate), and see how it pans out."

He finished eating, drank, lit a cigar, and in that reign of stillness they two smoked together under a gloom of foliage hung with bugle-blooms of blue and ruby, with festoons of bindweed, barbarous triumphs of beard, while anon a baobab-fruit fell with a knell's message, or a branch crashed, or a monkey rushed with shrieks, a hyena pealed the laughter of madness afar, a mule smote a hoof, or a laugh sounded from the crowd of blacks.

And presently Macray emptied his can of utshwala, remarking: "Here's to sleep for little Douglas of that ilk—dog-tired," and picked himself up.

"How's the mouth?" asked Cobby.

"Bad to-night. Good-night, inkoos." He passed away beyond the dying fire-light into the dark.

The others sat still, relishing their sense of full stomachs, and the comfort of smoking.

And presently Rolls: "Those two blacks mean to fight it out."

"Try and stop 'em," Cobby muttered.

And presently again Rolls: "Not bad, to-day's trek, considering the timber and the axes going."

"Fine," Cobby muttered.

And presently again Rolls: "We have sneezing-gas, tear-gas, chloroform, to deal with the sentries."

But Cobby did not answer, the pipe had dropped out of his mouth, his forehead nodded; and now Rolls raised him, saying, "Come on, we're done up," and led him away—they two, by a rule of Rolls, sleeping always together in a spot selected by Rolls, never in the waggon-cartels, now occupied by some wounded blacks, the two this evening sleeping between a rock and a screen of creepers that dropped like a drapery from the rock's top. On the opposite side of the bivouac-glade Macray lay.

But Rolls, who slept like a bush-cat, with one ear awake, was soon sitting up, listening to footsteps that stole near; and he was quickly away, tracking the two duellers, who, carrying their kerries, went prying for some starlit spot to fight out their quarrel.

Rolls, intending to catch them red-handed, and impress them with his omnipresence, shadowed them some hundred yards, then, becoming sick of it, was now about to call and order them back, when his prowling foot encountered some soft obstacle, upon which he switched on the torchlight, to see it.

It was Macray there—asleep.

Till now Rolls had never seen him asleep; and now saw a difference of expression in the face, sufficient to arrest him—the same difference which Cobby, too, had noticed between the Macray of the dockside, and the Macray seen on the steamer.

And though Cobby had not fixed in what the difference lay, Rolls at once did, on catching sight of a plate of top-teeth, lying near the sleeper—though the lightbeam had not been on Macray one second, when up he started, his palm for a moment covering his mouth in an instinctive impulse; and now his eyes and Rolls' met and lingered together a little—both faces pale. Then Macray chuckled; and Rolls said carelessly: "Those two silly niggers—sorry to disturb you," and halloed after the two.

Within ten minutes Rolls was back in his sleeping bag: but in that interval he had seen much.

He did not lie down: sat thinking and thinking. "That's where the sore mouth comes from," he muttered: "some mouths can't stand plates of teeth; this plate may be ill-fitting—perhaps hurriedly made in London for the occasion. Never has had the time to get a new set, nor never has given the mouth time to get used to this set—takes 'em out every minute he's alone, I reckon, they worry so; claps 'em in when needful: never seen without 'em. I see. Always shaved like a dandy in the primeval forest. I see. 'Douglas Macray'—he gave that name: devil's cheek—and cunning. I knew that I'd seen that face somewhere; couldn't drop to where—photo—witless. Otherwise, thank God, I've had all my wits in camp, or there'd be no Cobby now, and no R. K. Rolls now.... Well, the fittest will survive."

Tired as he was, Rolls hardly slept that night, there in the reign of rayless darkness between the creepers and the hollow of the rock, noting when the man-eater roared afar, when the mouth of the ounce yowled to the universe for food, when sentries went out, came in....

The question was—to tell Cobby, or not to tell? and toward morning Rolls answered, "No—not now; after the happening of what has to happen." Cobby would command: "No killing!" and Rolls would obey, but Macray, who was out for killing, would not obey. Rolls, too, now, was all for killing. There are venoms, there are wrongs, which only blood can wash out, which only death can solve.

"One attempt on my life in that Exchange Bar at Johannesburg ... two in London ... one on the steamer. Low-down thug-work. If I forget, may God forget me."

At dawn he shook Cobby with a rollic, "Out of it, lazy bones"—rollic and tender, for where he loved he loved, and hated where he hated.

And at breakfast all was as usual, save that both Rolls and Macray tended to more than usual merriment, which, in the case of Macray, may have been due to the absence, for the first time, of the plate in his mouth; à propos of which Cobby asked: "What is different about you, Macray? You are like a man who has shaved off a moustache."

Macray answered with a chuckle. "Top teeth gone—gorilla knocked 'em out with a club in the night."

This was a jest—like Macray's jests in general: cheery, merrily meant: but pointless, clownish.

"Is it a question of teeth?" Cobby said: "yes, that is it. So what has really happened?"

"Only this—for seven years, off and on, I've been trying to wear false teeth, and last night I chucked them for ever off me into the bush. Bravo! the eaters will be eaten by an ostrich. Now I can dine with my gums and defy the world. That was what made my mouth sore, baas."

"I see. Why didn't you ever mention it?"

"Oh, he was shy before the ladies," Rolls flung off from over a bowl of meal and "amasi"-curds, which he was earnestly eating.

"Still, the teeth did rather heighten your beauty," Cobby remarked to Macray: "and as you look now I seem to remember seeing you in some dream—somewhere—where was it?"

Macray chuckled. "You remember, inkoos, the night you caught your sister under the oak with a man? I was that man."

At which Cobby lowered his lids, silent, many of Macray's jests not being quite to the scientist's liking.

And now the forenoon trek, to the singing of the blacks; and the noontide rest; and the sun's altitude taken; and now the afternoon trek, which revealed that the forest was not really infinite, but had a limit where open country basked in the sun, and a river rolled between rows of crocodile-snouts, where flamingos in their crimson uniforms stood like sentinels who all have lost a leg in the wars; up which river the trek went three miles to find a drift, christened "Crocodile Drift" by Rolls over two years gone; and, crossing the river, they came upon the ashes and charred remains of a cannibal kraal, which, Rolls said, was but one of many of which the Wa-Ngwanya had cleared that region; and now the field-glass, scanning northward, could see a mirage of the mountain-range which bounds Wo-Ngwanya on the south.

And that evening the three men held their indaba on the plan of action, seated on a hillock in the shade of a yellow-wood tree, whence they could see eastward the reeds of a lagoon on a plain peopled with game, deer in thousands, giraffe and buffalo, crane and egret, the three smoking together like friends, with a jest anon; and no one could have guessed the suspense and tension that was between two of them.

Rolls said: "Understand that failure spells final failure for the failer. I know the girl: if you attack her, she fights; and if, as usual, she wins, she gives you time to sigh one last prayer: it's woe to the conquered there, look. What follows? That we shouldn't stake all upon one throw. And we shouldn't try it on without experiment first. Let's rehearse the whole fakement."

"And if the rehearsal fails," Cobby said, "the play never comes off."

"Yes," answered Rolls, "if we are not all in the rehearsal. So let Macray and me go forward alone, get into the sigodhlo, ascertain what's what, and come back to you before we all pitch into it together. If we two come to grief, there'll be still you left."

Rolls' and Macray's glances lingered together, while Cobby flushed a little, saying: "But why am I being put up in cotton wool?"

"Because yours is the most valuable life," Rolls quietly answered.

"Yes"—from Cobby—"but I am deliberately on an adventure, risking that life: I cannot permit you and Macray to incur greater——"

"It must be so, isinduna," Macray said, weighing his Colt's meditatively on his palm. "Rolls knows the road: he must go; you or I must go with him; and he and I both vote you out."

"You're outvoted, Cobby," Rolls remarked.

On which Cobby: "Oh, very well, since you see fit. If you two fail to come back, I shall go after you at all costs."

And Rolls, stretched on the grass, gazing up into the yellow-wood: "Oh, one of us is sure to scrape through."

"Sure," echoed Macray, throwing up and catching his automatic, these both knowing that, if either came back, he would come alone, each knowing that the other knew.