an enemy!  You know I would never be false to a friend such as you--to
a man whom I admire as I do you!"

Will Yerkes, who had tried to keep a straight face, now went off into
peals of laughter, rolling over on his back and rocking his legs in the
air--a performance that did not appear to discourage Coutlass in the
least.  Brown was far from amused.  He advised throwing the Greek into
the lake.

"Remember those cattle o' mine!" he insisted.

"Yes!" agreed Coutlass.  "Remember those cattle!  Consider what a man
of quick decision and courage I am!  How useful I can be!  What a
forager!  What a guide!  What a fighting man!  What a hunter!  What a
liar on behalf of my friends!  What a danger for my friends' enemies!
What are the cattle of a drunkard like Brown--the poor unhappy
sot!--compared to the momentary needs of a gentleman!  Ah! By the
ordeal!  I am a gentleman, and that is the secret of it all!  You, Mr.
Oakes, as one brave gentleman, can not despise the right hand of
friendship of Georges Coutlass, another gentleman!  I know you can not!
You haven't it in you!  You were born under another star than that!  I
have confidence!  I sit contented!"

"You good-for-nothing villain!" Fred grinned.  "I'll take you at your
word!" and Brown of Lumbwa gasped, the very hairs of his red beard
bristling.

"I knew you would!" said Coutlass calmly.  "These others are not
gentlemen.  They do not understand."

"If your word is good for anything," Fred continued.

"My word is my bond!" said the Greek.

"And you really want to prove yourself my friend--"

"I would go to hell for you and bring you back the devil's favorite
wife!"

"I will set you on the mainland, to go and recover those cattle of Mr.
Brown's from the Masai who raided them!  Return them to Lumbwa, and
I'll guarantee Brown shall shake hands with you!"

"Pah! Brown! That drunkard!"

"See here!" said Brown, getting up and peeling off his coat.  "I've had
enough of being called drunkard by you.  Put up your dukes!"

But a fight between Brown and the Greek with bare fists would have been
little short of murder.  Brown was in no condition to thrash that wiry
customer, and we in no mood to see Coutlass get the better of him.

"Don't be a fool, Brown! Sit down!" ordered Fred, and having saved his
face Brown condescended readily enough.

"What you said's right," he admitted.  "Let him get my cattle back
afore he's fit to fight a gentleman!"

And so the matter was left for the present, with Georges Coutlass under
sentence of abandonment to his own devices as soon as we could do that
without entailing his starvation.  We had no right to have pity for the
rascal; he had no claim whatever on our generosity; yet I think even
Brown would not have consented to deserting him on any of those barren
islands, whatever the risk of his spoiling our plans as soon as we
should let him out of sight.

From then until we beached the canoes at last in a gap in the papyrus
on the lake's northern shore, we pressed forward like hunted men.  For
one thing, the very thought of boiled meat without bread, salt, or
vegetables grew detestable even to the natives after the second or
third meal, although hippo tongue is good food.  We tried green stuff
gathered on the islands, but it proved either bitter or else
nauseating, and although our boys gathered bark and roots that they
said were fit for food, it was noticeable that they did not eat much of
it themselves.  The simplest course was to race for the shore with as
little rest and as little sleep as the men could do with.

However, we were not noticeably better off when we first set foot on
shore.  There was nothing but short grass growing on the thin soil that
only partly hid the volcanic rock and manganese iron ore.  Victoria
Nyanza is the crater of a once enormous, long ago extinct volcano, and
we stood on a shelf of rock about a thousand feet below what had been
the upper rim--a chain of mountains leading away toward the north
higher and higher, until they culminated in Mount Elgon, another
extinct volcano fourteen thousand feet above sea level.

It was not unexplored land where we stood, but it was so little known
that the existence of white men was said to be a matter of some doubt
among natives a mile or two to either side of the old safari route that
passed from east to west.  We could see no villages, although we
marched for hours, the loaned canoe-men tagging along behind us,
hungrier than we, until at last over the back of a long low spur we
spied the tops of growing kaffir corn.

At sight of that we broke into a run and burst on the field of grain
like a pack of the dog-baboons that swoop from the hills and make
havoc.  We seized the heads of grain, rubbed them between our hands,
and had munched our fill before we were seen by the jealous owners.  A
small boy herding hump-backed cattle down in the valley watched us for
a minute, and then deserted his charge to report to the village hidden
behind a clump of trees.  Ten minutes after that we were surrounded by
naked black giants, all armed with spears and a personal smell that
outstank one's notions of Gehenna.

We had nothing to offer them, except money, for which they obviously
had not the slightest use.  None of us knew their language.  From their
point of view we were thieves taken in the act, all but one of us
unarmed as far as they knew, to be judged by the tribal standard that
for more centuries than men remember has decreed that the thief shall
die.  They were most incensed at the four unhappy islanders, probably
on the same principle that dogs pick on the weakest, and fight most
readily with dogs of a more or less similar breed.

It was Coutlass who saved that situation.  He instantly went crazy, or
the next thing to it, wrinkling up his black-whiskered face into a
caricature, yelling a Greek monologue in a refrain consisting of five
notes repeated over and over, and dancing around in a wide ring with
one leg shorter than the other and his arms executing symbols of
witchcraft.

The chief was the biggest man--not an inch less than seven feet--black
as ebony, from the curly hair, into which his patient wives had plaited
fiber to hang in a greasy lump over his neck, all down his naked body
to the soles of his enormous feet.  Each time he came in front of that
individual Coutlass paused and executed special finger movements, like
the trills of a super-pianist, ending invariably in a punctuation point
that made the savage shiver.

The fifth time round, to avoid the accusing fingers, the giant dodged
behind a smaller man, who dodged behind a woman, who promptly turned
and ran, swinging in the wind behind her a bustle like a horse's tail
that was her only garment.  Her flight was the touch that settled the
decision in our favor.  We all began to do a mumbo-jumbo dance around
Coutlass, and in five seconds more the whole armed party was in full
retreat, holding their spears behind them as some sort of protection
against magic.

"After that," said Coutlass proudly, "will you still dismiss me from
your party, gentlemen?"

"You've got to go and find Brown's cattle and return them to him!" Fred
answered firmly.  But we none of us felt like sending him packing until
he was better fed and some provision could be made for his safety on
the road.  It was wonderful, the number of excuses that flocked through
my mind for befriending the ruffian, and later on I found it was the
same with Fred and Will.  Brown, on the other hand, affected
indignation at his being allowed to go with us another yard.

"Make a rope o' grass an' hang the swine!" he grumbled.

We decided to march on the village, retreat being obviously far too
dangerous, and the only likely safe course being to follow up the
chance success.  Sleep another night in the open among the mosquitoes
and wild beasts, besides making us wretched at the mere suggestion, was
likely to bring us all down with fever.  We preferred the thought of
fever to the loneliness; for man is unlike all other nomads, and that
is why the dog takes kindly to him; he must have a home of his own--a
portable one, if you will--a tub like Diogenes--a Bedouin's tent--a
cave, or a hole in the ground--something, so be he may rent it or own
it or know for a fact he may sleep there when night comes.  Life in the
open is only good fun when there is cover to take to at will.

All the way along the winding foot-track leading in every imaginable
direction except toward the village, and only turning suddenly toward
it when we had grown disgusted and decided to leave it and try to find
another, Brown kept pointing out trees with suitable overhanging arms
to which we might hang Coutlass.  The Greek, with eyes for nothing but
the fat, hump-backed village cattle in the distance, seemed to think
only of them, until Will commented on the fact, and Fred saw fit to
drop a hint.

"Steal as much as a young calf, Coutlass, and we'll let Brown choose
the tree!  Try it on if you don't believe me!"

The villagers closed their gate against us by dragging great piles of
thorn across the gap in the rough palisade, but, as Coutlass pointed
out, they would have to open it up again to let the cattle in before
dark, so we sat down and ate the remaining fragments of the hippo
tongue--no ambrosia by that time; it had to be eaten, to save it from
utter waste!

Then Coutlass once more did a first-class devil dance backward and
forward this time before the gate, putting genius into it and fear into
the hearts of the defenders.  Kazimoto helped even more than he by
discovering a native within the palisade who could speak a common
tongue.

Their villagers held a very noisy council on their side of the thorn
obstruction, under the apparent impression that it was sound- and
bullet-proof.  It was beginning to be pretty obvious that a man who
advised volleying through the crevices with spears was winning the
argument when Kazimoto detected familiar accents and raised his voice.
After that the barricade was dragged aside within ten minutes and we
entered, if not in honor, at least in temporary safety.

Luxury is a question of contrast.  That evening in a hut assigned to us
by the chief, squatting on the trodden cow-dung floor, leaning against
the dried-mud sides, with a little fire of sticks in the midst to give
us light and keep mosquitoes at a distance at the expense of almost
unbearable heat, we ate porridge made from mtama as they call their
kaffir corn, and washed it down with milk--good rich cows' milk, milked
by Kazimoto into our own metal pot instead of their unwashed gourds.
Lucullus never dined better.

The feast was only rather spoiled by two things:  we all had chiggers
in our feet--the minute fleas that haunt the dust of native villages
and insert themselves under toe-nails to grow great and lay their eggs.
(Nearly every native in the village had more than one toe missing.)
And the chief felt obliged to insert his smelly presence among us and
ask innumerable idiotic questions through the medium of his interpreter
and Kazimoto.  He received some astonishing answers, but would not have
been satisfied with anything more reasonable.  We wanted him satisfied,
and gave our interpreter free rein.

The main trouble was we had nothing of value to offer him.  Money was
something he had no knowledge of.  He wanted beads of a certain size
and color; for two handfuls of them he expressed himself willing to be
our friend for life.  We had to educate him about money, and Kazimoto
assured him that the silver rupees Fred produced from a bag were so
precious that governments went to war to get them away from other
governments.

But the impression still prevailed that we were wasikini--poor men;
and that is a fatal qualification in the savage mind.

"Why have you only one gun?"

In vain Kazimoto assured him that we had dozens of guns "at home"--that
Fred's landed possessions were so vast that two hundred strong men
walking for a month would be unable to march across them--that Fred's
wives (Fred seemed to live under a cloud of sexual scandal in those
days) were so many in number they had to be counted twice a day to make
sure none was missing.

The chief had eighteen wives of his own to show.  He could prove his
matrimonial felicity.  Why had Fred left his behind?  How did he dare?
Who looked after them?  Had he left the guns behind to guard the women?
Why did such a rich man travel without food for his men?  The chief
had seen us with his own eyes devour porridge as if we were starving.

To have told him the truth would have been worse than useless.  To have
mentioned such a thing as shipwreck would only have stirred the savage
instinct to prey off all unfortunates.  Failing evidence of wealth in
our possession, the only feasible plan was to claim so much that he
might believe some of it, and it was Coutlass, drawing a bow at a
venture, who ordered Kazimoto to tell him that we expected a party in a
few days bringing tents, provisions and more guns.

"There will be blue-and-white beads of the sort you long for among
those loads," added Kazimoto on his own account; and that eased the
chief's mind for the night.  Fred gave him a half-rupee, and promised
him to exchange it when the loads should come for as many of the beads
as he could seize in his two fists.  The chief went out to brag to the
village, opening and closing his fists to see how huge their compass
was; and later that night his wives had to be beaten for fighting.
They were jealous because the fattest and the youngest new one had both
been promised double shares.

There was another fight because our porters emerged from their hut and
demanded that a barren cow out of the village herd be butchered.  They
made their meaning perfectly clear by taking the cow by the horns and
tail and throwing her on her back.  Fred decided that argument with a
thick stick about four feet long.

The unusual spectacle of some one taking sides against his own men,
whatever the rights or wrongs of it, so affected the chief that he
entered our hut next morning disposed to hold us up for double promises
of beads.  It was evident we had to deal with a born extortioner.  He
would increase his demands with every fresh concession.

"Oh, what's the odds!" laughed Coutlass.  "Promise him anything!  The
only loads likely to come along this way for a year or two are
Schillingschen's!"

Fred told the chief he would think the matter over, and chased him out
of the hut.  Coutlass had given us all a new idea in an instant, and he
was the only one who did not see its point--he, the only one who did
not give a snap of the fingers for the laws of any land!

"D'you suppose--"

"Too good to hope for!"

"If he thinks we're dead--?"

"And if he believes in that map--"

"He'll not need the map.  He'll have memorized it.  There's only a
circle drawn on it to mark the Elgon district.  All the old pencil
marks have been rubbed out as he searched the other likely places and
drew them all blank."

"He'll travel without military escort?"

"Sure!  He won't want witnesses!  He'll make believe it's a scientific
trip.  Remember, he's a professor of ethnology.  That's how he puts it
all over the British and goes where he pleases without as much as
by-your-leave."

"Say, fellows!  It's a moral cinch that when we broke away from Muanza
he made up his mind in a flash to return to British East and destroy us
on the way.  He thinks he made a clean job of that.  I'll bet he loaded
the launch down with stuff for a long safari, and thinks now he has a
clear run and can take his time!"

"If that's how the cards lie, the game's ours!"

Coutlass saw the point at last and offered himself on the altar of
forgiveness and friendship.

"Make me your partner, gentlemen, and if he travels within a hundred
miles of this I will crawl into that Schillingschen's tent in the night
and slit his throat!  I would murder him as willingly as I eat when I
am hungry!"

"Your job has been assigned you!" answered Fred. "When Mr. Brown's
cattle are back in Lumbwa perhaps we'll give you something else to do!"

Nevertheless, Coutlass had outlined in a flash the limits of the plan.
We would draw the line at murdering even Schillingschen, but must help
ourselves to his outfit as our only chance of re-outfitting without
betraying our presence in British East.  But the plan was not without
rat-holes in it that a fool could see.

"Schillingschen's boys will escape and run to the nearest British
official with the story!"

"And the British official will be so full of the importance of
Schillingschen and the need of protecting his beastly carcass--to say
nothing of the everlasting disgrace of letting him be scoughed on
British territory--and the official reprimand from home that's sure to
follow--that he'll come hot-foot to investigate!"

"We'll have to provide against that," said Fred, and we all laughed,
including Coutlass.  Talk of provisions is easy when you have no means
out of which to provide.  It did not occur to include Coutlass in the
calculations, or to dismiss him from them; but without exchanging any
remarks on the subject it was clear enough to all of us that no such
plan could hope to succeed with the Greek at large, at liberty to spoil
it.  We saw we should have to keep him in our party for the present.

"Don't forget," said Coutlass, more accustomed than we to seizing the
strategic points of desperate situations, "that Schillingschen will
have his own boys with him from German East."

"I didn't see any with him on the launch," I objected.

"He would never have come without them" Coutlass insisted.  "He made
them lie below the water-line out of reach of bullets at the only time
when you might have seen them!  He wouldn't trust himself to British
porters.  My word, no!  That devil knows natives!  He knows some of
them might be British government spies!  He'll have his own boys,--if
they can't carry all his loads he'll buy donkeys at Mumias; there are
always donkeys to be bought at that place, brought down from Turkana by
the Arab ivory traders.  Do donkeys talk?"

At any rate, we talked, and made no bones at all about including
Georges Coutlass in the conversation.  It was his suggestion that we
should send natives to look out for Schillingschen, and Fred's
amendment that reduced the messengers to one, and that one Kazimoto.
Any of the others might decide to desert, once out of sight, and we
could scarcely have blamed them, for their path had not lain among
roses in our company.

Kazimoto had a million objections to offer against going alone on that
errand, as, for instance, that the chigger fleas would invade our
toe-nails disastrously without his cunning fingers to hunt them out
again.  He also prophesied that without him to interpret there would
swiftly be trouble between us and the chief; but we saw the other side
of that medal and rather looked forward to an interval when the chief
should not be able to talk to us at all.

At last, on the second morning after our arrival at the village,
Kazimoto wrapped an enormous mound of cold mtama pudding in a cloth and
went his way, prophesying darkly of murder and sudden death lurking
behind rocks and trees, as unwishful to be alone as a terrier without a
master, but much too faithful to refuse duty.

The chief saw a side of the medal that we had not guessed existed.  He
came and sat beside us like an evil-smelling shadow, satisfied that now
we could not dismiss him, he being under no obligation to understand
gestures.  Curiosity was the impelling motive, but he was not without
suspicion.  Fred said he reminded him of a Bloomsbury landlady whose
lodgers had not paid their board and rooming in advance.

Will solved that problem by taking the rifle, and one cartridge that
Fred doled out grudgingly, and after a long day's stalking among
mosquitoes in the papyrus at the edge of the lake five miles away, at
imminent risk of crocodiles and an even worse horror we had not yet
suspected, shooting a hippopotamus.  Forthwith the whole village, chief
included, went to cut up and carry off the meat, and there followed
revelry by night, the chiefs wives brewing beer from the mtama, and all
getting drunk as well as gorged.  Coutlass and Brown got more drunk
than any one.

Will came back with flies on his coat--three large things like
horse-flies, that crossed their wings in repose, resembling in all
other respects the common tetse fly.  He said the reeds by the
lake-side were full of them.

Remembering tales about sleeping sickness, and suspicion of conveying
it said to rest on a tetse fly that crossed its wings, I went out the
following day and walked many miles east-ward, taking with me the only
two sober villagers I could find.  They came willingly enough for five
miles, thinking, I suppose, that I intended to follow Will's example
and kill some more meat (although, as I did not take the rifle with me,
they were not guilty of much dead-weight reasoning).

At the bank of the fifth stream we came to they stopped, and refused to
go another yard.  Thinking they were merely lusting after the meat and
beer in the village, I took a stick to drive them across the stream in
front of me, but they dodged in terror and ran back home as if the
devil had been after them.

I crossed the stream and continued forward alone about another mile
toward a fairly large village visible between great blue boulders with
cactus dotted all about.  There was the usual herd of cattle grazing
near at hand, but the place had an unaccountable forlorn look, and the
small boy standing on an ant-hill to watch the cattle seemed too
listless to be curious, and too indifferent to run away.  The big brown
tetse flies, that crossed their wings when resting, were everywhere,
making no noise at all, but announcing themselves every once in a while
by a bite on the back of the hand that stung like a whip-lash.  They
seemed to have special liking for coat-sleeves, and a dozen of them
were generally riding on each side of me.  One could drive them off,
but they came back at once, as horse-flies do when poked off with a
whip.

When I drew near the village nobody came out to look at me, which was
suspicious in itself.  Nobody shouted.  Nobody blocked the way, or
dragged thorn-bushes across the gateway.  There were black men and
women there, sitting in the shadows of the eaves, who looked up and
stared at me--men and women too intent on sitting still to care whether
their skins were glossy--unoiled, unwashed, unfed, by the look of
them--skeletons clothed in leather and dust, desiring death, but
cruelly denied it.

One man, thin as a wisp of smoke, rushed at me from the shadow of a hut
door and tried to bite my leg.  The merest push sent him rolling over,
and there he lay, too overcome by inertia to move another inch, his arm
uplifted in the act of self-defense.  Nobody else in the village
stirred.  There were more huts than people, more kites on the roofs
than huts.  Some of the littlest children played in the hut doors, but
nearly all of them were listless like the grown folk.  The only sign of
normal activity was the big black earthen jars that witnessed that the
women performed part at least of their daily round by bringing water
from the lake.

I returned late that afternoon, walking, as it were, out of a belt of
tetse flies.  On one side of a narrow stream they were thick together;
to the west of it there were scarcely any, although the wind blew from
east to west.

"There's no fear of news about us reaching any government official," I
announced.  "There's a curtain of death between us and the government
that even suspicion couldn't penetrate!"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SLEEP THAT IS NO SLEEP*

  Ten were the plagues that Israel fled, and leaving left no cure,
        Whose progeny self-multiplied a million-fold remain,
  The cloak of each one ignorance, idolatry its lure,
        And death the goal till, clarion-called, lost Israel come again.
  Till then that loaded lash that bade the tale of bricks increase
        (Eye for an eye, and limb for limb!) shall fail not though
            ye weep;
  The conqueror's heel for Africa!--The fear that shall not cease!--
        Desire, distrust, the alien law!--The sleep that is no  sleep!

* It is a characteristic of the so-called Sleeping Sickness that is
decimating the tribes around Victoria Nyanza that the victim, although
he goes into a coma, never actually sleeps from the time of taking the
disease until the end, usually more than a year later.  The natives, a
tribe that came originally down from Egypt, themselves say that the
dreaded sickness is a "visitation" by way of revenge on them for former
sins, although what sins, and whose vengeance, they are at a total loss
to explain.

Kazimoto was gone five days, and then came preceded by proof of the
news he brought.  He came in the evening.  In the morning,
unaccountably from the northward, instead of from the westward where
Uganda lay,--avoiding the regular safari route and the belt of sleeping
sickness villages, came a genial, sleek, shiny Baganda, arrayed in
khaki coat, red fez, and bordered loin-cloth, gifted with tongues, and
self-confident beyond belief.

He knew nothing of us at first, for we sat in our hut with a smudge
going, nervous about flies, even Coutlass, reckless as a rule of
anything he could not see, and perfectly indifferent to death for
others, now fidgety and afraid to swagger forth.

One of our Nyamwezi porters suddenly made a great shout of "Hodi!"* and
came stooping through the low door, standing erect again inside to
await our pleasure.  We could hear others outside, listening under the
eaves.  When we had kept him waiting sufficiently long to prevent his
getting too much notion of his own importance, Fred nodded to him to
speak.  [* Hodi! Equivalent to "May I come In!"]

"Is it true, bwana," he asked, "that the Germans will come soon and
conquer this part of Africa?"

"Certainly not!" said Fred.

"There is one out here, a Baganda, who says they will surely come.  He
says the religion of Islam will be preached from end to end of
everywhere, and that the Germans are the true priests of Islam.  They
will come, says he, when the time is ripe, and call on all the converts
of Islam to rise and slay all other people, including all white folk,
like the English, who do not accept that creed.  If that is true,
bwana, whither shall we go, and whither shall you go, to escape such
terrible things?"

"Does the Baganda know there are white men in this village?" Fred asked.

"Not yet, bwana."

"Don't tell him, then, but bring him in here.  Tell him there are folk
in here who say he is a liar."

The Nyamwezi backed out, and we heard whispering outside.  There is
precious little performance in Africa without a deal of talk.  At the
end of about ten minutes the porter again shouted "Hodi!" and this time
was followed in by the stranger, seven other of our own men, uninvited,
bringing up the rear.

"Jambo!"* said the Baganda, with a great effort at bravado, when his
eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom and the first severe surprise of
seeing white men had worn off.  He was a very cool customer indeed.  [*
Jambo! Kiswahili equivalent of "How d'you do?"]

"Whose pimp are you?" demanded Fred, without answering the salutation.

The man fell back on insolence at once.  There is no native in Africa
who takes more keenly to that weapon than the mission-schooled Baganda.

"I am employed by a gentleman of superior position," he answered in
perfectly good English.

"In what capacity?" demanded Fred.

"I am not employed to tell his secrets to the first strangers who ask
me!"

"Do you obey him implicitly?"

"I do.  I am honorable person.  I receive his pay and do his bidding."

"Is his name Schillingschen?"

The Baganda hesitated.

"All right," said Fred.  "I know his name is Schillingschen.  You have
boasted that you do what he orders you.  These men tell me you have
said that the Germans are coming to conquer the country and destroy all
people, including the English, who have not accepted Islam!"

The man hesitated again, glancing over his shoulder to discover his
retreat cut off by our porters, and eying Fred with malignity that
reminded one of a cornered beast of prey.  He could control his face,
but not his eyes.

"Oh, no, sir!" he answered after swallowing a time or two.  "How could
they tell such lies against me!  I am a person born in Uganda, now a
British protectorate and enjoying all blessings of British rule.  I am
educated at the mission college at Entebbe.  How should I tell such a
tale against my benefactors?"

"That is what you are here to explain!" Fred answered.  "No!  You can't
escape, you hellion!  Squat down and answer!"

"All this stuff is pretty familiar," Will interrupted.  "In the States
there are always people going the rounds among our darkies preaching
some form of treason.  Over there we can afford to treat it as a
joke--now and then an ugly one, and on the darkies!"

"This is an ugly joke on a darkie, too!" grinned Fred.

The Baganda made a sudden dive and a determined struggle to get through
the door, but our porters were too quick and strong for him.

"Confession is your one chance!" said Fred.

"Put hot irons to his feet!" advised Coutlass.  (The native beer had
left him villainously evil-tempered.)  "Gassharamminy!  Leave me alone
with that fat Baganda for half an hour, and I will make him tell me
what is on the far side of the moon, as well as what his mother said
and did before she bore him!"

"Shall I hand you over to this Greek gentleman?" suggested Fred.

"Oh, my God, no!" the Baganda answered, trembling.  "Hand me over to
the bwana collector!  He will put me in jail.  I am not afraid of
British jail!  It will not be for long!  The English do not punish as
the Germans do!  You dare not assault me!  You dare not torture me!
You must hand me over to the bwana collector to be tried in court of
law.  Nothing else is permissible!  I shall receive short sentence,
that is all, with reprieve after two-thirds time on account of good
conduct!"

"Make him prisoner in the sleeping sickness village you told us about!"
advised Coutlass, lolling at ease on his elbow to watch the man's
increasing fear.

"Oh, no, no!  Oh, gentlemen!  That is not how white Englishmen behave!
You must either let me go, or--"

He made another terrific dive for liberty, biting and kicking at his
captors, and finally lying on his back to scream as if the hot irons
Coutlass had recommended were being applied in earnest.

"What shall we do with the beast?" asked Fred.  The hut was so full of
his infernal screaming that we could talk without his hearing us.

"Tie him up," I said.  "If we let him go he'll run straight to
Schillingschen."

"Leave him here with Coutlass and me!"  urged Brown.  (He and Coutlass
had grown almost friendly since getting drunk together on the native
beer.)

"I recommend," said Will, "that we take the law in our own hands--"

The Baganda ceased screaming and listened. For some reason he suspected
Will of being the deciding factor in our councils--perhaps because Will
had said least.

"--take the law in our own hands, and thrash him soundly.  Later on we
can report what we have done to the British government, and ask for
condonation under the circumstances or pay whatever piffling fine they
care to impose for the sake of appearances.  The point is, there's no
court of law in these parts to hand him over to, and he needs
punishing."

"I agree," said Fred. "Let's thrash him to begin with."

"Let's thrash him," went on Will, "as thoroughly as we've seen his
friends the Germans do the job!"

"Both sides!" agreed Brown.

"Oh, no, no, no!  You can not do that, gentlemen!"

"Lay him out!" ordered Fred.  "Let's begin on him.  Who shall beat him
first?"

At a nod from Fred our porters stretched him face downward on the dry
dung floor, and knelt on his arms and legs.  One of them staffed a good
handful of the dry dung into his mouth to stop his yelling.

"Of course," said Will, rather slowly and distinctly, "if he told us
about Schillingschen, we'd have to let him off.  Let's hope he holds
his tongue, for I never wanted to flog a man so much in all my life!"

The most palpable absurdity at the moment was that there was nothing in
the hut to beat him with.  There were dozens of strips of the recently
shot hippo hide hanging in the sun outside to dry, with stones tied to
the end of each, to keep them taut and straight, but nobody made a move
to bring one in.

"Take off his loin-cloth!" ordered Fred.  "It won't hurt him enough
with that thing on!"

The Baganda spat the cow-dung from his mouth and struggled violently.

"Oh, no, no!" he shouted.  "I will tell!  I will tell everything!"

"Too late now!" said Will jubilantly.

"No, gentlemen, no!  Not too late!  I tell all--I tell quickly!  Only
listen!  Bwana Schillingschen will shoot me if he knows!  He is very
bad man--very kali--very fierce--and oh, too clever!  You must protect
me!"

He could hardly get the words out, for the knees of our porters pinned
him down, and his chin was pressed hard on the floor.

"I ordered that loin-cloth removed!" was all Fred commented.  One of
the porters attended to the task, and the Baganda hurried with his
tale, drawing in breath in noisy gasps like a man with asthma because
of the weight of his captors on him and the strained position of his
neck.

"Bwana Schillingschen is sending me and many other men--not all
Baganda, but of many tribes--to go through all parts and say Islam is
the only good religion--all Germans are high-priests of Islam--soon the
Germans are coming with great armies to destroy the British and all
other foolish people who have not accepted Islam as their creed!  All
are to get ready to receive the Germans."

"Where is Schillingschen now?" demanded Fred.

"Beyond Mumias."

"How far beyond Mumias?"

"Who knows?  He is marching."

"In which direction?  What for?"

"To Mount Elgon.  I do not know what for."

"How do you know he is going to Mount Elgon?"

"He told me to go there and find him after my work is done."

"How long were you to continue at what you call your work?"

"A month or five weeks."

"So he expects to stay a long time up there?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I do not know."

"Has he many loads with him?"

"Very many provisions for a long time."

"Guns?"

"Several.  I do not know how many.  He gives guns to some of his men
when he gets to where the government will not know about it."

"How many men has he?"

"Not many.  Ten, I think."

"How can they carry all those loads?"

"He brought a hundred porters from Kisumu to Mumias, and there bought
more than forty donkeys, sending the porters back again."

"Then are the men he has with him his own?"

"Yes."

"From German East?"

"Yes."

"What orders did he give you besides to tell these lies about German
conquest?"

"None.

"Pass me that whip!" ordered Fred.  There was no whip, but the Baganda
could not know that.

"He gave the same order to all of us," he yelled.  "We are to stay out
a month or five weeks unless we meet white men.  If we meet white men
we are to discover the white men's plans by talking with their
servants, and then hurry to him and report."

"Ah!  How many other spies has he out in this direction?"

"None."

"Why don't you pass me that whip when I ask for it?" demanded Fred.

"None!  None! None, bwana!  I am the only man in this direction!  He
has sent them north, south, east and west, but I am the only one down
here."

"He has a lot more to tell yet," said Coutlass.  "Let me put hot irons
on his feet!"

Fred demurred.  "He couldn't march with us if we did that!" he said
with a perfectly straight face.

"Who cares whether or not he marches!" answered Coutlass.  "To tell all
he knows is his business!  Wait while I heat the iron!"

The Baganda began to scream again, babbling that he knew no more.  He
assured us that Schillingschen had set the closest watch along the old
caravan route, and toward his own rear in the direction of Kisumu,
whence officials might come on chance errands.

"All right," said Fred.  "Truss him up tight and keep him prisoner
among our men in their hut."

"Our men are likely to get drunk tonight," warned Will.

"Let me watch him!" urged Coutlass.  "Leave me with him alone!"

To the Greek's disgust we decided to trust the prisoner with our own
men, and to keep very careful watch on them, threatening them with loss
of all their pay if they dared get drunk and lose him--a threat they
accepted at its full face value, but resented because of Brown's and
the Greek's behavior the night before.  They begged to get a little
drunk--to get half as drunk as Brown had been--half as drunk as
Coutlass had been--not drunk at all, but just to drink a little.  We
were adamant, and Brown added to their resentment by preaching them a
sermon in their own tongue on the importance of being respectful toward
white folk.

Kazimoto came in toward dark, foot-weary, but primed with news, and
most of what he had to say confirmed the Baganda's story.
Schillingschen, he said, was making for Mount Elgon in very leisurely
stages, letting his loaded donkeys graze their way along, and spending
hours of his time in questioning natives along the way on every subject
under the sun.

Besides the fact of his leisurely progress, which was sufficiently
important in itself, we learned from Kazimoto that Schillingschen's own
ten boys were unable to speak the language of the country beyond a few
of the commonest words--that they all slept in a tent together at
night, usually quite a little distance apart from Schillingschen's--and
that the donkeys were usually picketed between the two tents in a long
line.  He also told us the ten men had five Mauser rifles between them,
in addition to the German's own battery of three guns, one of which he
carried all day and kept beside his bed at night; the other two were
carried behind him in the daytime by a gun-bearer.

That was good news on the whole.  Coutlass went out on the strength of
it and began to drink beer from the big earthenware crock in which the
women had just brewed a fresh supply.  Brown joined him within five
minutes, and at the end of an hour, they were swearing everlasting
friendship, Coutlass promising Brown his cattle back, and Brown
assuring him that Greece and the Greeks had always held his warmest
possible regards.

"Thermopylae, y'know, old boy, an' Marathon, an' all that kind o'
thing!  How many miles in a day could a Greek run in them days?  Gosh!"

They two drank themselves to sleep among the gentle cattle in the
circular enclosure in the midst of the village, and we--going out in
turns at intervals to make sure our own boys were not drinking--matured
our plans in peace.

We were too few to dare undertake the task in front of us without the
aid of Brown and the Greek.  It was a case of who was not against us
must be for us, and the end must justify both men and means.  We tried
to work out ways of managing without them, but when we thought of our
Baganda prisoner, and the almost certainty that both he and Coutlass
would race to give our game away to Schillingschen if let out of sight
for a minute, the necessity of making the best, not the worst, of the
Greek seemed overwhelming.

Early next morning, before the village had awakened from its glut of
beer and hippo meat, we shook Coutlass and Brown to their feet none too
gently, and, with the Baganda firmly secured by the wrists between two
of our men, started off, Fred leading.

The village awoke as if by magic before we had dragged away the thorns
from the gate, and the chief leaped to the realization that the beads
he had promised his women were about as concrete as his drunken dreams.
He and a swarm of his younger men followed us, begging and
arguing--mile after mile--growing angrier and more importunate.  It was
by my advice that we crossed the stream into the sleeping sickness zone
and left them shuddering on their own side.  Our own men did not know
so much about the ravages of that plague, and in any case were willing
to dare whatever risks we despised.  But we took a long bend back and
crossed the stream again higher up as soon as the chief and his beggars
were out of sight.  It was a pity not to keep exact faith and give them
the promised beads, if only for the sake of other white men who might
camp there in the future; but more than two tons of hippo meat was not
bad pay for their hospitality.

We wished we had as good price to offer at the villages on our way, for
sleep under cover we must, if we hoped to escape the ravages of fever;
and the primitive savage, at least in those parts, had the principle
down fine of nothing whatever for nothing.  Yet as it turned out, the
very man whose company we looked on as a nuisance proved to be a key to
all gates.  We marched along the track the Baganda had taken. The
chiefs of all villages knew him again; and the men who dared take such
a prophet of evil prisoner were looked upon as high government
officials at least.

We accepted that description of ourselves, letting it go by silent
assent, and explained our lack of tents and almost every other thing
the white man generally travels with as due to haste.  Heaven only knew
what lies Kazimoto told those credulous folk, to the perfectly worthy
end of making our lot bearable, but we were fed after a fashion, and
lodged after a worse one all along our road.  And who should send in
reports about us--and to whom?  Obviously white men with a prisoner,
marching in such a hurry toward the north, were government officials.
Who should report officials to their government?  As for the tale about
our having left our loads behind--are not all white people crazy?  Who
shall explain their craziness?

From being a nuisance the Baganda became a joke.  When it dawned on
his fat intellect that we were hurrying toward Schillingschen with only
one rifle among us and no baggage at all, he jumped at once to the
conclusion we must be Schillingschen's friends; and his fear that we
intended to hand him over to that ruthless brute for summary punishment
was more melting to his backbone than the dread of our imaginary whip,
that had caused him to give Schillingschen away.

He tried to bite through the thongs that held him, but Will twisted for
him handcuffs out of thick iron wire that we begged from a chief, who
had intended to make ornaments with it for his own legs.  We did not
dare let the man escape, nor care to prevent our men from using force
when he threw himself on the ground and wept like a spoiled child.

"I will tell you" he said at last, deciding he might as well be hanged
for mutton as for lamb, "what Bwana Schillingschen is searching for!  I
will tell you who knows where to find it!  I will tell you where to
find the man who knows!  Only let me run away then to my own home in
Uganda, and I will never again leave it!  I am afraid!  I am afraid!"

But that was only one more reason for keeping him with us, and no
ground at all for delay.  He would not tell unless we loosed his hands
first, so we pressed on, camping late and starting early, until about
noon of the fourth day we caught sight of Schillingschen's tents in the
distance, and gathered our party at once into a little rocky hollow to
discuss the situation.

Behind us the land sloped gradually for thirty or forty miles toward a
sharp escarpment that overlooked the level land beside the lake.  At
times between the hills and trees we could glimpse Nyanza itself,
looking like the vast rim of forever, mysterious and calm.  In front of
us the rolling hills, broken out here and there into rocky knolls,
piled up on one another toward the hump of Elgon, on which the blue sky
rested.  In every direction were villages of folk who knew so little of
white men that they paid no taxes yet and did no work--marrying and
giving in marriage--fighting and running away--eating and drinking and
watching their women cultivate the corn and beans and sweet
potatoes--without as much as foreboding of the taxes, work for wages,
missionaries, law and commerce soon to come.

Schillingschen was more than taking his time, he was dawdling, keeping
his donkeys fat, and letting his men wander at pleasure to right and
left gathering reports for him of unusual folk or things.  We came very
close to being seen by one of them, who emerged from a village near us
with a pair of chickens he had foraged, followed by the owner of the
luckless birds in a great hurry and fury to get paid for them.

Schillingschen's tent could fairly easily be stalked from the far side
in broad daylight, and I was for making the attempt.  There was the
risk that one of our porters might grow restless and break bounds if we
waited, or that the Baganda might take to yelling.  We gagged him as
soon as I talked of the danger of that.

Coutlass and Brown, however, were the only two who would agree with me.
Like me, they were weary to death of mtama porridge, with or without
milk, and the sight of Schillingschen's distant campfire with a great
pot resting on stones in the midst of it whetted appetite for white
man's food.  They and I were for supping as soon as possible from the
German's provender, and sleeping under his canvas roof.

But Fred and Will insisted on caution, claiming reasonably that
surprise would be infinitely easier after dark.  It was unlikely that
Schillingschen would post any sentries, and not much matter if he did.
His knowledge of natives and natural air of authority made him quite
safe among any but the wildest, and these were a comparatively peaceful
folk.  In all probability he would sit and read by candle light, with
his boys all snoring a hundred yards away.  There was no making Fred
and Will see the virtue of my contention that a sudden attack while his
boys were scattered all about among the villages would be just as
likely to succeed; so we settled down to wait where we were with what
patience we could summon.

It was a miserable, hungry business, under a blazing hot sky, packed
tightly together among men who objected to our smell as strongly as we
to theirs.  It is the fixed opinion of all black people that the white
man smells like "bad water"; and no word seems discoverable that will
quite return the compliment.  That afternoon was reminiscent of the
long days on the dhow, when nobody could move without disturbing
everybody else, and we all breathed the same hot mixed stench over and
over.

We posted two sentries to lie with their eyes on the level of the rim
and guard against surprise.  But there was so little to watch, except
kites wheeling overhead everlastingly, that they went to sleep; and we
were so bored, and so sure of our hiding-place and Schillingschen's
unsuspicion that we did not notice them.  I myself fell asleep toward
five o'clock, and when I awoke the sun was so low in the west that our
hollow lay in deep gloom.

Fred was lying on his elbow, sucking an unfilled, unlighted pipe.  Will
lay on his side, too, with back toward both of us, ruminating.
Coutlass and Brown were both asleep, but Coutlass awoke as I rolled
over and struck him with my heel.  Nearly all the porters were snoring.

It was a sharp exclamation from the Greek that caused me to sit up and
face due westward.  The others lay as they were.  It was the gloom in
our hollow--the velvety shadows in which we lay with granite boulders
scattered between us, and no alertness on our part that saved that day,
although Coutlass acted instantly and creditably, once awake.

Schillingschen stood there looking down on us, with his feet planted
squarely on the rim of the hollow, and Mauser rifle under one arm.  His
great splay beard flowed sidewise in the evening wind.  One hand he
held over his eyes, trying to make out details in the dark, as stupid
as we were.  He stood with his back to the setting sun, exposing
himself without any thought of the risk he ran, his huge, filled-out
head refusing stubbornly to take in the truth of what had happened.
Once convinced, the Prussian mind is not readily unconvinced.  He had
assured himself long ago that our party was at the bottom of Victoria
Nyanza.

The second he did make out details he was swift to act, but that was
already too late, although he did not know it at the moment.  He threw
up his rifle and laughed--a great deep guffaw from the stomach, that
awoke every one.

"So, so!" he gloated.  "So Mr. Oakes and his fellow escaped convicts
are alive after all!  Ha-ha-ho-ho!  So you followed me all this way,
only to forget that kites are curious!  A fine comfortless journey you
must have had, too!  There were twenty kites wheeling over you.  I
counted, and wondered.  Curiosity drove me to come and see.  The first
man who moves a finger, Mr. Oakes, will die that instant!  Let your
rifle lie where it is!"

It would be no use pretending the man had not courage, at all events of
the sort that glories in the upper hand of a fight.  He chuckled, and
reveled in our predicament, taking in, now that his eyes had grown
accustomed to the darkness of our hollow, the utter lack of comforts or
provisions, and enjoying our disappointment.  He certainly knew himself
master of the situation.

"I suspect you have a man of mine down there with you!" he announced
presently.  "Is not that my Baganda?  Is he gagged?  Is he bound?
Loose him, Mr. Oakes, at once!  I say at once!  Otherwise you die now!"

He pointed his rifle directly at Fred, and the next second fired it,
but not intentionally.  Coutlass sprang from behind him, having crawled
out through a shadow, and hit him so hard with a stone on the back of
the skull that he loosed off the rifle and pitched head-foremost down
among us.  The Greek promptly jumped on top of him with a yell like a
maniac's, failing to land with both heels on his backbone by nothing
but luck.  As it was, he lost balance and sat down so hard on
Schillingschen's head that there was no need of the energy with which
we all followed suit, piling all over him to pin him down like hounds
that have rolled their quarry over.

The German was stunned--knocked into utter oblivion--breathing like a
sleeping drunkard, and bleeding freely from the nose.  Coutlass jumped
off him and began to execute a war dance up and down, yelling like a
madman until Fred threatened him with the rifle and Will gagged him
from behind.

"Do you want his armed men down on us, you ass?"

"Gassharamminy!" he laughed. "I forgot about them!  Let us go and eat
their supper!"  He spoke as a man who had full right now to be
considered a member in good standing.  We all noticed it, and exchanged
glances; but that was no time for argument about men's rights.

Brown was already over the rim of the hollow and making in the
direction of the tents.  We called him back and compelled him to stay
on guard over the prisoners, to his awful disgust, for he suspected
there was whisky among Schillingschen's "chop-boxes."  But so did we!
We left all our boys with him except Kazimoto, threatening them with
hitherto unheard of penalties if they dared as much as show a lock of
hair above the rim of the hollow while we were gone.

Then the rest of us, with Fred leading and Kazimoto last of all, crept
out and sought the lowest level along which to reach the camp.  Will
had taken Schillingschen's rifle and went next after Fred.  Coutlass
followed so close on my heels that more than once he trod on them, and
once so nearly tripped me that Fred called a halt behind some bushes
and cursed me for clumsiness.

But it turned out to be easy hunting.  The ten boys had tied the
donkeys up to a rope in line and sat crooning while their supper cooked
at a long bright fire.  We came up to Schillingschen's tent from
behind, crept around the side of it, and in a moment had three more
good weapons, I taking the big-bore elephant gun that had dealt with us
so savagely on the lake, Coutlass seizing another Mauser, and Kazimoto
adopting the shot-gun.

The rest was child's play.  We marched out of the tent all abreast and
called on the ten boys to surrender, making them put up their hands
until Coutlass had found their five rifles and ammunition.  They were
too astonished even to ask questions.  Accustomed to Schillingschen's
despotic orders, they obeyed ours silently, showing no symptoms of
trying to bolt, having nowhere to bolt to; but we took precautions.

Kazimoto ran back to bring our party, and we took a coil of iron wire
from Schillingschen's trade goods and fastened every prisoner's hands
firmly behind his back, including the unconscious German's.  That done,
we ate the meat, beans and vegetable supper that the ten had cooked.

Brown and Coutlass found Schillingschen's whisky after that, and under
its influence again swore ceaseless friendship beneath the
non-committal stars.  While they feasted we took Coutlass' rifle away
as a plain precaution.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PARCERE SUBJECTIS?

  'When the devil's at bay
  Ye may kneel down and pray
  For a year and a day
  To be spared the distress of dispatching him,
  But the longer ye kneel
  The more squeamish ye'll feel
  'Cause the louder he'll squeal,
  And at brotherly talk there's no matching him.
  Discussion's his aim,
  And as sure as you're game
  To give heed to the same,
  You regarding extremes with compunction,
  You may bet he'll requite
  Your compassion with spite,
  Knifing you in the night
  With much probonopublico unction.

For a while we looked like having trouble with Coutlass. We gave Brown
a rifle, and distributed the other Mausers among Kazimoto and our best
boys, but we did not dare trust the Greek with a weapon he might use
against us, and he resented that bitterly.  He had an answer to Fred's
subterfuge that as a white man he would need a license before daring to
carry firearms.  "I dare do anything!  I care nothing for law!" he
argued, and Fred nodded.

That night we reveled in luxury, for after the life we had led recently
it took time to reaccustom any of us to the common comforts.
Schillingschen traveled with every provision for his carcass and his
belly; and we plundered him.

We put the prisoners and our own porters in a hut in the nearest native
village (less than half a mile away) under the watchful eye of Kazimoto
and the shot-gun, dividing Schillingschen's two large tents between
ourselves.  The others offered me the camp-bed as a recent invalid, but
I refused, and Will won it by matching coins.  We divided the blankets
in the same way, and all the spare underwear.  Brown and Coutlass had
to be satisfied with cotton blankets from a bale of trade goods; but
when they had rifled enough to build up good thick mattresses as well
as coverings, there were still two apiece for our boys and all the
porters.

The chop-boxes were a revelation.  The man had with him food enough for
at least a year's traveling, including all the canned delicacies that
hungry men dream about in the wilderness.  Before we slept we ate so
enormously of so very many things that it was a wonder that we were
able to sleep at all.

We all hoped Schillingschen would die, for it was a hard problem what
to do with him.  He had no papers in his possession, beyond a diary
written in German schrift that even Will could not make head or tail
of, for all his knowledge of the language; and a very vague map
bearing the imprint of  the British government, filled in by himself
with the names of the villages he had passed on his way.  There was no
proof that we could find that would have condemned him of nefarious
practises in a British court of law.

"And believe me," argued Will, sprawling on the plundered bed, blowing
the smoke of a Melachrino through his nose, "your local British judges
would take the word of Professor Schillingschen against all of ours,
backed up by simply overwhelming native evidence!  They're so in awe of
Schillingschen's professorial degree, and of his passports, and his
letters of introduction from this and that mogul that they wouldn't
believe him guilty of arson if they caught him in the act!"

"Something's got to be done with him pretty soon, though," answered
Fred from the floor, lying at ease on a pillow and a folded Jaeger
blanket, smoking a fat cigar.

Coutlass and Brown were singing songs outside the tent and I sat in a
genuine armchair with my feet on a box full of canned plum pudding.
(Nobody knows, who has not hungered on the high or low veld--who has
not eaten meat without vegetables for days on end, and then porridge
without salt or sugar--how good that common, export, canned plum
Pudding is!  To sit with my feet on the case that contained it was the
arrogance of affluence!)

"We have his stores and his papers," said I.  "We have his Baganda;
and as time goes on, and his other spies begin to come in, we shall
have them, too, if we're half careful.  Why don't we let him go, to
tell his own tale wherever he likes?"

"Maybe he'll die yet!" said the optimist on the camp-bed, blowing more
cigarette smoke.

"Suppose he doesn't.  We've done our best to keep him alive.  He's quit
bleeding.  Suppose we let him go, and he lays a charge against us.
Suppose they send after us and bring us in.  We've his diary and his
men--evidence enough," said I.

"You bally ass!" Fred murmured.

"Cuckoo!" laughed Will.

"I don't believe he'd dare approach a British official with his story,"
said I.

"Incredible imbecile!" Fred answered.  "He has the gall of a brass
monkey."

"And magnetism--loads of it," Will added.  "He'd make the Pope play
three-card monte."

"To say nothing," continued Fred, "of the necessity of not letting the
government know we're here!  Rather than turn him loose, I'd march him
into Kisumu and hand him over.  But, as Will says wisely, our
proconsuls would believe him, and put us under bonds for outraging a
distinguished foreigner."

"Well, then," said I, "what the devil shall we do with him?  Offer
something constructive, you two solons!"

"Have the four men we borrowed from the island bolted home yet?"
wondered Will.

"They hadn't this evening," I answered.  "I don't believe they'll
venture home until we stop feeding them.  They were hungry on their
island.  Our shortest commons then seemed affluence.  Now they're in
heaven!"

"Their canoes must be where they left them in the papyrus."

"Sure. Who'd steal a canoe?"

"Whoever could find them," Fred answered.  "But they're skilfully
hidden.  Why don't we put Schillingschen and his ten pet blacks into
those canoes, with a little food and no rifles--and show them the way
to German East?"

"Because," said I, "they wouldn't go.  They'd turn around and paddle
for Kisumu, to file complaint against us."

"Don't you suppose," suggested Will, "that Schillingschen's own men 'ud
insist on going home?  Out on the water, ten to one, without guns or
too much food, they wouldn't have the same fear of him they had
formerly."

"That chance is too broad and long and deep," said Fred.  "Altogether
too bulky to be taken.  Let's sleep on it.  This cigar's done, and I'm
drowsy.  Are you quite sure Schillingschen's hands are fast behind him?
Then good night, all!"

The problem looked no easier next morning, with Schillingschen
recovered sufficiently to be hungry and sit up.  There was a look in
his eye of smoldering courage and assurance that did not bode well for
us, and when we untwisted the iron wire from his wrists to let him wash
himself and eat he looked about him with a sort of quick-fire cunning
that belied his story of headache.

He was much too astute a customer to be judged superficially.  I
whispered to Fred not to shackle him again too soon, and sat near and
watched him, close enough for real safety, yet not so close that he
might not venture to try tricks.  He said nothing whatever, but I
noticed that his eye, after roving around the tent, kept returning
again and again to a chop-box that stood near the foot of the bed.

Now I had unpacked that chop-box and repacked it the previous night.  I
knew everything it contained--exactly how many cans of plum pudding.
It was the box I had rested my feet on.  I felt perfectly sure he knew
as well as I what the box contained, and to suppose he would sit there
planning to recover canned food, however dainty, was ridiculous.

Wherefore it was a safe conclusion he was trying to deceive me as to
his real intention.  I put my foot on the box again, and he frowned, as
much as to say I had forestalled his only hope.  Pretending to watch
the box and him, I examined every detail of the tent, particularly that
side of it opposite the box, away from where it seemed he wanted me to
look.

The human eye is a highly imperfect piece of mechanism and the human
brain is mostly grayish slush.  It was minutes before I detected the
edge of his diary, sticking out from the pocket of Fred's shooting coat
that itself protruded from under the folded blanket on which Fred had
slept.  It was nearer to Schillingschen than to me.  After watching him
for about fifteen minutes, during which he made a great fuss about his
headache, I was quite sure it was the diary that interested him.

I stooped and extracted it from the coat pocket.  The grimace he made
was certainly not due to headache.

"Fred!" I called out, and he and Will came striding in together.

"That diary's the key," I said.  "It's important.  It holds his
secrets!"

Will was swift to put that to the test.

"What will you offer?" he asked Schillingschen.  "We want you to go
back direct to German East.  Will you go, if we give you back your
diary?"

Schillingschen blundered into the trap like a buffalo in strange
surroundings.

"Ja wohl!" he answered.  "Give me that, and yon shall never see me
again!"

At that Fred threw himself full length on his blanket and took one of
Schillingschen's cigars.

"Of course," he said, "you would give anything for leave to take those
words back!  You needn't try to hide the wince--we fully appreciate the
situation!  What do you say, you fellows?  How about last night's idea?
Who mooted it?  Shall we send him back by canoe to German East, with a
guarantee that if he doesn't go we'll hand over diary and him to our
government?"

"Better send the book to the commissioner at Nairobi, or Mombasa, or
wherever he is," suggested Will.  "Then if the 'prof' here doesn't get
a swift move on he's liable to be overtaken by the cops, I should say."

"Let's make no promises," said I.  "I vote we simply give him time to
get away."

At that the Germain saw the weak side of our case in a flash.

"If you dared give that diary to your government," he growled, "you
would do so without bargaining with me!  Why do you propose to let me
go?  Out of love for me?  No!  But because you dare not appeal to your
government!  Give me that diary, and I will go at once to German East,
not otherwise!  It is only a diary," he added.  "Nothing
important--merely my private jottings and memoranda."

Fred turned toward me so that Schillingschen could not see his face.

"Are you willing to start for Kisumu at once with that book?" he asked,
and I nodded.  He winked at me so violently that I could not trust
myself to answer aloud and keep a straight face.

"Very well,"' he said.  "Suppose you start with it to-morrow morning.
At the end of a week well turn the professor home to follow his own
nose!"

Schillingschen shrugged his shoulders and refused to be drawn into
further argument.  We gave him a good meal from his own provisions, and
then once more made his hands fast with wire behind him and left him to
sleep off his rage if he cared to in a corner of the tent.

Later that morning we sent for the Baganda--gave him a view of
Schillingschen trussed and helpless--and questioned him about the man
he boasted he knew, who could tell us what Schillingschen was after.
He was so full of fear by that time that he held back nothing.

He assured us the German was after buried ivory.  There was a man, who
had promised to meet Schillingschen, who knew where to find the ivory
and would lead the way to it.  He did not know names or places--knew
only that the man would be found waiting at a certain place, and was
not white.

"How did you get that information?" Fred demanded.

"By listening."

"When?  Where?"

"At night, months ago, in Nairobi, outside the professor's tent.  I lay
under the fly among the loads and listened.  The man came in the dark,
and went in the dark.  I did not see him.  I did not hear him called by
name.  He must have been an old man.  Speaking Kiswahili, he admitted
he knew where the ivory is.  He said he saw it buried, and that he
alone survives of all men who buried it.  He promised to lead the
professor to the place on condition that the Germans shall release his
brother, and his brother's wife, and two sons whom they keep in prison
on a life-sentence.  The professor agreed, but said, 'Wait!  There are
first those people who also think they know the secret.  Perhaps they
do!  Wait until after I have dealt with them.  Then you shall take me
to the place!  After that your criminal relations shall be pardoned!
Here is money.  Go and wait for me at the place we spoke of when we
talked before.'"

We each cross-examined him in turn, but could not make him change his
story in any essential.  He merely exaggerated the parts that he
guessed might please us, and begged to be allowed to run before
Schillingschen could break loose and get after him.

By noontime, when we gave him his second meal, Schillingschen had made
up his own mind that his case was desperate and called for heroic
remedy.

"All right," he growled.  "I need that diary.  Hand it to me and I'll
tell you how to find what you're after!"

"You mean about the man who's to meet you?" suggested Fred blandly.

Schillingschen started as if shot.

"One of your men is an eavesdropper," Fred assured him with a cheerful
nod.  "That plug has been pulled already, Professor!"

"Let's play the cards face up!" Will interrupted impatiently.  "Listen,
Schillingschen.  You're an all-in scoundrel.  You're a spy.  You're a
bloody murderer of women and defenseless natives.  If we could prove
that we wouldn't argue with you.  We know you burned that dhow with the
women in it, but we've got no evidence, that's all.  We know the German
government wants that ivory, and we know why.  We also want it.  Our
only reason for secrecy is that we hope for better terms from the
British government.  We've nothing to fear, except possible financial
loss.  If you prefer to come with us to Kisumu and have the whole
matter out in court, all you need do is just say so.  On the other
hand, if you want to get out of this country before your diary can
reach the hands of the British High Commissioner--you'd just better
slide, that's all!"

"You've only until dawn to think it over," remarked Fred.  "You poor
boob!" continued Will.  "You imagine we're criminals because you're one
yourself!  The difference between your offer and ours is that you're
bluffing and we know it, whereas we're not bluffing by as much as a
hair, and the quicker you see that the better for you!"

"Oh, rats!  Let's take him in with us to Kisumu!" said I, and at that
Professor Schillingschen capitulated.

"Very well," he said.  "Kurtz und gut. I will leave the country.  Permit
me to take only food enough, and my porters, and one gun!"

"No guns!" said Fred promptly.

Schillingschen sighed resignedly, and we went out of the tent to talk
over ways and means.  In spite of our recent experience of Germany's
colonial government we were still so ignorant of the workings of the
mens germanica that we took his surrender at face value.

The problem of getting him down to the lake shore safely was none too
simple.  I was soft hearted and headed enough to propose that we should
loose his hands, now that he had surrendered, and permit him reasonable
liberty.  Will--least inclined of all of us to cruelty--was disposed to
agree with me.  We might have overborne Fred's objections if Coutlass
and Brown, returning from walking off their overnight debauch together,
had not shouted and beckoned us in a mysterious sort of way, as if some
new discovery puzzled them.

We walked about a hundred and fifty yards to where they stood by a row
of low ant-hills.  Neither of them was in a sociable frame of mind.  It
was obvious from the moment we could see their faces clearly that they
had not called us to enjoy a joke.  They stood like two dumb bird-dogs,
pointing, and we had to come about abreast of them before we knew why
we were summoned.

There lay five clean-picked skeletons, one on each ant-hill.  One was a
big bird's; one looked like a dog's; the third was a snake's; the
fourth a young antelope's; and the fifth was certainly that of a
yellow village cur, for some of the hairs from the tip of its tail were
remaining, not yet borne off by the ants.

The skeletons lay as if the creatures had died writhing.  There were
pegs driven into the earth that had evidently held them in position by
the sinews.  Most peculiar circumstance of all, there was a camp-chair
standing very near by, with its feet deep in the red earth, as if a
very heavy man had sat in it.

I went back to the camp and told Kazimoto to bring one of the
professor's men.  Kazimoto had to do the talking, for we did not know
the man's language, nor he ours.

Yes, the professor always did that to animals.  He liked to sit and
watch them and keep the kites away.  He said it was white man's
knowledge (science?).  Yes, the animals were pegged out alive on the
ant-hills, and the professor would sit with his watch in his hand,
counting the minutes until they ceased from writhing.  It was part of
the duty of the ten to catch animals and bring them alive to him in
camp for that purpose.  No, they did not know why he did it, except
that it was white man's knowledge.  No, natives did not do that way,
except now and then to their enemies.  The professor always made
threats he would do so to them if they ran away from him, or disobeyed,
or misbehaved.  Certainly they believed him!  Why should they not
believe him?  Did not Germans always keep their word when they talked
of punishment?

We decided after that to let Schillingschen lie bound, whether or not
the iron wire cut his wrists.  We did not trouble to go back to inquire
whether he needed drink, but let him wait for that until supper-time.
The remainder of that afternoon we spent discussing who should have the
disagreeable and not too easy task of taking the professor to the lake
and sending him on his way.  We sat with our backs against a rock, with
the firearms beside us and a good view of all the countryside, very
much puzzled as to whether to leave Coutlass behind in camp (with Brown
and the whisky) or send him (with or without Brown) and one or two of
us on the errand.  He was a dangerous ally in either case.

Evening fell, and the good smell of supper came along the wind to find
us still undecided.  We returned to the tent thinking that perhaps
something Schillingschen himself might say would help us to decide one
way or the other.

"Better see if the brute wants a drink," said Fred, and I went in ahead
to offer him water.

He was gone!  Clean gone, without a trace, or a hint as to how he
managed it!  I called the others, and we hunted.  The sides of the tent
were pegged down tight all around.  The front, it is true, was wide
open, but we had sat in full view of it and not so much as a rat could
have crept out without our seeing.  There were no signs of burrowing.
He was not under the bed, or behind the boxes, or between the sides of
the tent and the fly.  The only cover for more than a hundred yards was
the shallow depression along which we had come to the capture of the
camp, and that was the way he must have taken.  But that, too, had been
practically in full view of us all the time.

We counted heads and called the roll.  Coutlass was close by.  It did
not look as if he had played traitor this time.  Brown was sleeping off
his headache in the shade.  Kazimoto and all the boys were accounted
for.  The prisoners were safe.  No donkeys were missing--no
firearms--and no loads.  The earth had simply opened up and swallowed
Schillingschen, and that was all about it!

He had not made off with his pocket diary.  Fred had that.  There and
then we packed it in an empty biscuit tin and buried it under a rock,
Will and I keeping watch while Fred did the digging and covering up.
It was too likely that Schillingschen would come back in the night and
try to steal it for any of us to care about keeping it on his person.

It was too late to look far and wide for him that evening.  A hunter
such as he could have lain unseen in the dark with us almost stepping
on him.  Gone was all appetite for supper!  We nibbled, and swore, and
smoked--locked up the whisky--defied either Brown or Coutlass to try to
break the boxes open--and arranged to take turns on sentry-go all that
night, Will, Fred, and I--declining very pointedly offers by the other
two to have their part in keeping watch.  In spite of lack of evidence
we suspected Coutlass; and we knew no particular reason for having
confidence in Brown.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE SONG OF THE DARK-LORDS

  Turn in!  Turn in!  The jungle lords come forth
        Cat-footed, blazing-eyed--the owners of the dark,
  What though ye steal the day! We know the worth
        Of vain tubes spitting at a phantom mark
  With only human eyes to guide the fire!
        Tremble, ye hairless ones, who only see by day,
  The night is ours!  Who challenges our ire?
        Urrumph!  Urrarrgh!  Turn in there!  Way!

  Ye come with iron lines and dare to camp
        Where we were lords when Daniel stood a test!
  Where once the tired safaris used to tramp
        On noisy wheels ye loll along at rest!
  Tremble, ye long-range lovers of the day,
        'Twas we who shook the circus walls of ancient Rome!
  The dark is ours!  Take cover!  Way there!  Way!
        Urmmph!  Urrarrgh!  Take cover!  Home!

The man who tries to explain away coincidences to men who were the
victims of them is likely to need more sympathy than he will get.  The
dictionary defines them clumsily as instances of coinciding, apparently
accidental, but which suggest a casual connection.

Lions paid us a visit that first night after Schillingschen's
escape--the first lions we had seen or heard since landing on the north
shore of the lake.  We prayed they might get Schillingschen, yet they
and he persisted until morning--they roaring and circling never near
enough for the man on guard to get a shot--he also circling the camp,
calling to his ten men, whom we had transferred from the native village
to the second tent under guard of Kazimoto and our own men as a
precaution.

Our boys slept as if drugged, but not his.  He called to them in a
language that even Kazimoto did not understand, and they kept answering
at intervals.  Once, when I was listening to locate Schillingschen if I
could, the lions came sniffing and snuffing to the back side of the
tent.  I tried to stalk them--a rash, reprehensible, tenderfoot trick.
Luck was with me; they slunk away in the shadows, and I lived to
summon Fred and Will.  We tried to save the donkeys, but the lions took
three of them at their leisure, and scared the rest so that they broke
out of the thorn-bush boma we had made the boys build (as a precaution
against leopards, not lions).  Next morning out of forty we recovered
twenty-five, and wondered how many of them Schillingschen got.

Remembering how we ourselves had managed, without ammunition or
supplies, we did not fool ourselves with the belief that
Schillingschen, with his brutal personal magnetism and profound
knowledge of natives, would not do better.  The probability was he
would stir up the countryside against us.

He had been doing missionary work; it might be the natives of that
part were already sufficiently schooled to do murder at his bidding.

We decided to leave at once for a district where he had not yet done
any of his infernal preaching.

"You should set a trap and shoot the swine!" Coutlass insisted.  Will
was inclined to agree with him, but Fred and I demurred.  The British
writ had never really run as far as the slopes of Elgon, and we could
see them ahead of us not very many marches away.  If Schillingschen
intended to dog us and watch chances we preferred to have him do that
in a remote wilderness, where our prospect of influencing natives would
likely be as good as his, that was all.

Part of our strategy was to make an early start and march swiftly,
taking advantage of his physical weariness after a night in the open on
the prowl; but after a few days in camp it is the most difficult thing
imaginable to get a crowd of porters started on the march.  It was more
particularly difficult on that occasion because none of our men were
familiar with Schillingschen's loads, and the captured ten, even when
we loosed their hands and treated them friendly, showed no disposition
to be useful.  We gave them a load apiece to carry, but to every one we
had to assign two of our own as guards, so that, what with having lost
the fifteen donkeys, we had not a man to spare.

It was after midday when we got off at last.  We had not left the camp
more than half a mile behind when I looked back and saw Schillingschen
where his great tent had stood, cavorting on hands and feet like an
enormous dog-baboon, searching every inch of the ground for anything we
might have left.  We three stood and watched him for half an hour,
sweating with fear lest he chance on the place where his diary lay
buried in the tin box.  We began to wish we had brought it with us.  I
said we had done foolishly to leave it, although I had approved of
Fred's burying it at the time.

"Suppose," I argued, "he sets the natives of that village to searching!
What's to prevent him?  You know the kind of job they'd make of
it--blade by blade of grass--pebble by pebble.  Where they found a
trace of loosened dirt they'd dig."

"Did you bury something, then?" inquired a voice we knew too well.  "By
the ace of stinks, those natives can smell out anything a white man
ever touched!"

We turned and faced Coutlass, whom we had imagined on ahead with the
safari.  If he noticed our sour looks, he saw fit to ignore them; but
he took an upperhanded, new, insolent way with us, no doubt due to our
refusal to shoot Schillingschen.  He ascribed that to a yellow streak.

"I was right.  Gassharamminy!  I could have sworn I saw two of you on
watch while the third man dug among the stones!  What did you bury?  I
came back to talk about Brown.  The poor drunkard wants to head more to
the east.  I say straight on.  What do you say?"

We told him to go forward.  Then we looked in one another's eyes, and
said nothing.  Whether or not the original decision had been wise,
there was no question now what was the proper course.

Instead of tiring out Schillingschen we made an early camp by a
watercourse, and built a very big protection for the donkeys against
lions--a high thorn enclosure, and an outer one not so high, with a
space between them wide enough for the two tents and half a dozen big
fires.  Before dark we had enough fuel stacked up to keep the fires
blazing well all night long.

Neither Coutlass nor Brown had had a drink of whisky that day, so it
was all the more remarkable that Coutlass lay down early in a corner of
the tent and fell into a sound sleep almost at once.  We were
thoroughly glad of it.  Our plan was for two of us to creep out of camp
when it was dark enough, and recover the contents of that tin box
before Schillingschen or the blacks could forestall us.

The lions began roaring again at about sundown, but they love
donkey-meat more than almost any except giraffe, and it was not likely
they would trouble us.  We were so sure the task was not particularly
risky that Fred, who would have insisted on the place of greater danger
for himself, consented willingly enough to stay in camp while Will and
I went back.  Our original intention was to take Schillingschen's
patent, wind-proof, non-upsettable camp lantern to find the way with
and keep wild beasts at bay; but just as Will went toward the tent to
fetch it (Fred's back was turned, over on the far side where he was
seeing to the camp-fires) we both at once caught sight of Coutlass
creeping on hands and knees along a shadow.  We had closed the gap in
the outer wall of thorn, but he dragged aside enough to make an opening
and slipped through, thinking himself unobserved.

To have followed him with a lantern would have been worse than my crime
of stalking lions in the dark.  Will ran to tell Fred what had happened
while I followed the Greek through the gap, and presently Will and I
were both hot on his trail, as close to him as we could keep without
letting him hear us.

"Fred says," Will whispered, "if we catch him talking with
Schillingschen, shoot 'em both!  Fred won't let him into camp again
unless we bring back proof he's not a traitor!"

We were pursuing a practised hunter, who at first kept stopping to make
sure he was not followed.  He took a line across that wild country in
the dark with such assurance, and so swiftly that it was unbelievably
hard to follow him quietly.  It was not long before we lost sound of
him.  Then we ran more freely, trusting to luck as much as anything to
keep him thinking he had the darkness to himself.

Our short day's journey seemed to have trebled itself!  We were
leg-weary and tired-eyed when at last we reached, and nearly fell into
a hollow we recognized.  Will went down and struck a match to get a
look at his watch.

"There ought to be a moon in about ten minutes," he whispered.  "We're
within sight of the place.  Suppose we climb a tree and scout about a
bit."

It was not a very big tree that we selected, but it was the biggest;
it had low branches, and the merit of being easy to climb.

When the pale latter half of the moon announced itself we could dimly
make out from the upper branches all of the flat ground where the camp
had been.  There was no sign of Coutlass.  None of Schillingschen.  A
lioness and two enormous lions stood facing one another in a triangle,
almost exactly on the spot where the larger tent had stood, not fifty
yards from us.

"Gee!"' whispered Will excitedly.  "We nearly stumbled on 'em!"

"Shoot!" I whispered.  My own position on the branch was so insecure
that I could not have brought my rifle into use without making a
prodigious noise.  Will shook his head.

"I can see Coutlass now!  Look at that rock--he's hiding behind
it--see, he's climbing!  And look, there's Schillingschen!"

Neither man was aware of the other's presence, or of ours.  They were
out of sight of each other, Coutlass on the very rocks against which we
had leaned to watch the tent the afternoon before, and neither man
really out of reach of anything with claws that cared to go after them
in earnest.

The arrival of the dim moon seemed to give the lions their cue for
action.  The lioness turned half away, as if weary of waiting, and then
lay down full-length to watch as one lion sprang at the other with a
roar like the wrath of warring worlds.  They met in mid-air, claw to
claw, and went down together--a roaring, snarling, eight-legged,
two-tailed catastrophe--never apart--not still an instant--tearing,
beating--rolling over and over--emitting bellows of mingled rage and
agony whenever the teeth of one or other brute went home.

Even as shadows fighting in the shadows they were terrible to watch.
They shook the very earth and air, as if they owned all the primeval
bestial force of all the animals.  And the she-lion lay watching them,
her eyes like burning yellow coals, not moving a muscle that we could
see.

Iron could not have withstood the blows; the thunder of them reached
us in the tree!  Steel ropes could not have endured the strain as claws
went home, and the brutes wrenched, ripped, and yelled in titanic
agony.  Their fury increased.  Wounds did not seem to enfeeble them.
Nothing checked the speed of the fighting an instant, until suddenly
the lioness stood erect, gave a long loud call like a cat's, and turned
and vanished.

She had seen.  She knew.  Like a spring loosed from its containing box
one of the lions freed himself in mid-air and hurtled clear, landing on
all-fours and hurrying away after the lioness with a bad limp.  The
other lion fell on his side and lay groaning, then roared
half-heartedly and dragged himself away.

The second lion had hardly gone when Coutlass descended gingerly from
the rock, peering about him, and listening.  He evidently had no
suspicion of our presence, for he never once looked in our direction.
It was Schillingschen, not lions, he feared; and Schillingschen,
clambering over the top of another rock, watched him as a night-beast
eyes its prey.  Another one-act drama was staged, and it was not time
for us to come down from the tree yet.

Satisfied he was not followed and that Schillingschen was elsewhere,
Coutlass crept from rock to rock toward the little cluster of small
ones where, by his own confession, he had seen Fred bury the box.
Schillingschen stalked him through the shadows as actively as a great
ape, making no sound, as clearly visible to us as he was invisible to
Coutlass.

There was not a trace of mist--nothing to obscure the dim pale light,
and as the moon swung higher into space we could see both men's every
movement, like the play of marionettes.

Down on his knees at last among the small loose rocks, Coutlass began
digging with his fingers--grew weary of that very soon, and drew out
the long knife from his boot--dug with that like a frenzied man until
from our tree we heard the hard point strike on metal.  Then
Schillingschen began to close in, and it was time for us to drop down
from the tree.

We made an abominable lot of noise about it, for the tree creaked, and
our clothing tore on the thorny projections of limbs that seemed to
have grown there since we climbed.  To make matters worse, I stepped
off the lowest branch, imagining there was another branch beneath it,
and fell headlong, rifle and all, with a clatter and thump that should
have alarmed the village half a mile away.  And Will, not knowing what
I had done but alarmed by the noise I made, jumped down on top of me.

We picked ourselves up and listened.  We could hear the short quick
stabs of the knife as Coutlass loosed and scooped the earth out.  Among
the myriad noises of the African night our own, that seemed appalling
to us, had passed unnoticed--or perhaps Schillingschen heard, and
thought it was the injured lion dragging himself away.  (Nobody needed
worry about the chance of attack from that particular lion for many a
night to come; he would ask nothing better than to be left to eat mice
and carrion until his awful wounds were healed.)

Reassured by the sound of digging we crept forward, knowing pretty well
the best path to take from having seen Schillingschen stalking.  But it
was more by dint of their obsession than by any skill of ours that we
crept up near without giving them alarm.  Coutlass was still on his
knees, throwing out the last few handfuls of loose dirt.
Schillingschen stood almost over him, so close that the thrown dirt
struck against his legs.

We took up positions in the shadow, one to either side, almost afraid
to breathe, I cursing because the rifle quivered in my two hands like
the proverbial aspen leaf.  The prospect of shooting a white man--even
such a thorough-paced blackguard white as Schillingschen--made me as
nervous as a school-girl at a grown-up party.

At last Coutlass groped down shoulder-deep and drew the box out.

"Give that to me!"  Schillingschen shouted like a thunder-clap, making
me jump as if I were the one intended.

The moonlight gleamed on the tin box.  Coutlass did not drop it but
turned his head to look behind him.  Schillingschen swung for his face
with a clenched fist and the whole weight and strength of his ungainly
body.  He would have broken the jaw he aimed at had the blow landed;
but the Greek's wit was too swift.

He kicked like a mule, hard and suddenly, ducking his head, and then
diving backward between the German's legs that were outspread to give
him balance and leverage for the fist-blow.  Schillingschen pitched
over him head-forward, landing on both hands with one shoulder in the
hole out of which the box had come.  With the other arm he reached for
the knife that Coutlass had laid on the loose earth.  Coutlass reached
for it, too, too late, and there followed a fight not at all inferior
in fury to the battle of the lions.  Humans are only feebler than the
beasts, not less malicious.

Will reached for the tin box, opened it, took out the diary, closed it
again, put the diary in his own inner pocket, and returned the box;
but they never saw or heard him.  The German, with an arm as strong as
an ape's, thrust again and again at Coutlass, missing his skin by a
bait's breadth as the Greek held off the blows with the utmost strength
of both hands.

Suddenly Coutlass sprang to his feet, broke loose for a second, landed
a terrific kick in the German's stomach, and closed again.  He twisted
Schillingschen's great splay beard into a wisp and wrenched it, forcing
his head back, holding the knife-hand in his own left, and spitting
between the German's parted teeth; then threw all his weight on him
suddenly, and they went down together, Coutlass on top and
Schillingschen stabbing violently in the direction of his ribs.

Letting go the beard, Coutlass rained blows on the German's face with
his free fist.  Made frantic by that assault Schillingschen squirmed
and upset the Greek's balance, rolled him partly over and, blinded by a
very rain of blows, slashed and stabbed half a dozen times.  Coutlass
screamed once, and swore twice as the knife got in between his bones.
The German could not wrench it out again.  With both hands free now,
the Greek seized him by the throat and began to throttle him, beating
with his forehead on the purple face the while his steel fingers
kneaded, as if the throat were dough.

We were not at all inclined to stop Coutlass from killing the man.  We
came closer, to see the end, and Coutlass caught sight of us at last.

"Shoot him!" he screamed.  "Gassharamminy!  Shoot him, can't you, while
I hold him!"

As he made that appeal the German convulsed his whole body like an
earthquake, wrenched the knife loose at last, and as Coutlass changed
position to guard against a new terrific stab rolled him over, freed
himself and stood with upraised hand to give the finishing blow.  Then
suddenly he saw us and his jaw dropped, the beastly mess that had been
his well-kept beard dropping an inch and showing where the Greeks fist
had broken the front teeth.  But that was only for a second--a second
that gave Coutlass time to rise to his knees, and dodge the descending
blow.

I made up my mind then it was time to shoot the German, whatever the
crimes of the Greek might be; but Coutlass had not grown slower of wit
from loss of blood.  As he dodged he rolled sidewise and seized my
rifle, jerking it from my hand.  He jerked too quickly.  The German saw
the move and kicked it, sending it spinning several yards away.  We all
made a sudden scramble for it, Schillingschen leading, when the German
turned as suddenly as one of the great apes he so resembled, tripped
Will by the heel, wrenched the rifle from his right hand, pounced on
the empty tin box, and was gone!

Too late, I remembered my own rifle and fired after him, emptying the
magazine at shadows.

Will's rage and self-contempt were more distressing than the Greek's
spouting knife-wounds.

"By blood and knuckle-bones!  Give me that gun of yours, will you!  I
go after the swine!  I cut his liver out!  Where is my knife?  Ah,
there it is!  Stoop and give it me, for my ribs hurt!  So!  Now I go
after him!"

We held Coutlass back, making him be still while we tore his shirt in
strips, and then our own, and tried to staunch the blood, Will almost
blubbering with rage while his fingers worked, and the Greek cursing us
both for wasting time.

"He has the box!" he screamed.  "He has the rifle!"

"He has no ammunition but what's in the magazine," said I; and that
started Will off swearing at himself all over again from the beginning.

"You damned yegg!" he complained as he knotted two strips of shirt.
"This would never have happened if you hadn't sneaked out to steal the
contents of the box!"

Suddenly Coutlass screamed again, like a mad stallion smelling battle.

"There he is!  There the swine is!  I see him!  I hear him! Give me
that--"

He reached for my rifle,  but I was too quick that time and stepped
back out of range of his arm.  As I did that the blood burst anew from
his wounds.  He put his left hand to his side and scattered the hot
blood up in the air in a sort of votive offering to the gods of Greek
revenge, and, brandishing the long knife, tore away into the dark.

"I see him!" he yelled.  "I see the swine!  By Gassharamminy!  To-night
his naked feet'll blister on the floor of hell!"

We followed him, enthralled by mixed motives made of desire and a sort
of half-genuine respect for the courage of this man, who claimed three
countries and disgraced each one at intervals in turn.  We did not go
so fast as he.  We were not so enamored of the risks the dark contained.

Suddenly there came out of the blackness just ahead a marrow-curdling
cry--agony, rage, and desperation--that surely no human ever
uttered--roar, yelp of pain, and battle-cry in one.

"Help!" yelled Coutlass.  "Help!  Oh-ah!  Ah!"

We raced forward then, I leading with my rifle thrust forward.  A
second later I fired; and that was the only time in my life I ever
touched a lion's face with a rifle muzzle before I pulled the trigger!
The brute fell all in a heap, with Coutlass underneath him and the
Greek's long knife stuck in his shoulder to the hilt.  The lion must
have died within the minute without my shot to finish him.

Coutlass lay dead under the defeated beast that had crawled away to
hide and lick his wounds.  We dragged his body out from under, and in
proof that Schillingschen, the common enemy, lived, a bullet came
whistling between us.  The flash of my shot had given him direction.
Perhaps he could see us, too, against the moon.  We ducked, and lay
still, but no more shots came.

"He's only got four left," Will whispered.  "Maybe he'll husband those!"

"Maybe he knows by now that box is empty!" said I.  "He'll stalk us on
the way back!"

"Us for the tree, then, until morning!" said Will.

"Sure!" I answered.  "And be shot out of it like crows out of a nest!"

But Will had the right idea for all that.  He was merely getting at it
in his own way.  After a little whispering we went to work with fevered
fingers, stripping off the bloody bandages we had tied on the Greek's
ribs--stripping off more of his clothes--then more of ours--tying them
all into one--then skinning the mangled lion with the long knife that
had really ended his career, tearing the hide into strips and knotting
them each to each.  In twenty minutes we had a slippery, smeary, smelly
rope of sorts.  In five more we had dragged the Greek's dead body
underneath the tree.

Then I went back to the vantage point among the rocks and waited until
Will had thrown the rope with a stone tied to its end over an upper
branch.  Presently I saw Coutlass' dead body go clambering ungracefully
up among the branches, looking so much less dead than alive that I
thought at first Will must have tangled the rope in the crotch of the
tree and be clambering up to release it.

The ruse worked.  Georges Coutlass served us dead as well as living.
Out of the darkness to my left there came a flash and a report.  I did
not look to see whether the corpse in the tree jerked as the bullet
struck.  Before the flash had died--almost before the crack of the
report bad reached my ear-drums I answered with three shots in quick
succession.

"Did you get him?" called Will.

"I don't know," I answered.  "If I didn't, he's only got three
cartridges left!"

We left the Greek's body in the tree for Schillingschen to shoot at
further if he saw fit; it was safer there from marauding animals than
if we had laid it on the ground, and as for the rites of the dead, it
was a toss-up which was better, kites and vultures, or jackals and the
ants.  We saw no sense that night in laboring with a knife and our
hands to bury a body that the brutes would dig up again within five
minutes of our leaving it.

"Schillingschen has three cartridges,"' sad Will. "One each for you, me
and Fred Oakes!  I'll stay and trick him some more.  I'll think up a
new plan.  I don't care if he gets me.  I'd hate to face Fred without
my rifle, and have to tell him the enemy is laying for him with it
through my carelessness."

It was my first experience of Will with hysteria, for it amounted to
that.  I remembered that to cure a bevy of school-girls of it one
should rap out something sharply, with a cane if need be.  Yet Will was
not like a school-girl, and his hysteria took the pseudo-manly form of
refusal to retreat.  I yearned for Fred's camp-fires, and Fred's laugh,
hot supper, or breakfast, or whatever the meal would be, and blankets.
Will, with a ruthless murderer stalking him in the dark, yearned only
for self-contentment.  All at once I saw the thing to do, and thrust my
rifle in his hands.

"Take it," I said.  "Hunt Schillingschen all night if you want to.  I'm
going back to tell Fred I've lost my rifle, and was afraid to face you
for fear you'd laugh at me.  Go on--take it!  No, you've got to take
it!"

I let the rifle fall at his feet, and he was forced to pick it up.  By
that time I was on my way, and he had to hurry if he hoped to catch me.
I kept him hurrying--cursing, and calling out to wait.  And so, hours
later, we arrived in sight of Fred's fires and answered his cheery
challenge:

"Halt there, or I'll shoot your bally head off!"

Lions had kept him busy making the boys pile thornwood on the fires.
He had shot two--one inside the enclosure, where the brute had jumped
in a vain effort to reach the frantic donkeys.  We stumbled over the
carcass of the other as we made our way toward the gate-gap, and
dragged it in ignominiously by the tail (not such an easy task as the
uninitiated might imagine).

Once within the enclosure I left Will to tell Fred his story as best
suited him, Fred roaring with laughter as he watched Will's rueful
face, yet turning suddenly on Brown to curse him like a criminal for
laughing, too!

"Go and fetch that Mauser of yours, Brown, and give it to Mr. Yerkes in
place of what he's lost!  Hurry, please!"

It was touch and go whether Brown would obey.  But he happened to be
sober, and realized that he had committed tho unpermissible offense.
Fred might laugh at Will all he chose; so might I; either of us might
laugh Fred out of countenance; or they might howl derisively at me.
But Brown, camp-fellow though he was, and not bad fellow though he was,
was not of our inner-guard.  He might laugh with, never at, especially
when catastrophe brought inner feelings to the surface.

"Take the shot-gun if you care to," Fred told him, as he passed Will
the rifle. "I'll unlock the chop-box presently, and let you have some
whisky!"

This last was the cruellest cut, but it did Brown good.  When Fred kept
his promise and produced a whole bottle from the locked-up store Brown
refused to touch it, instead insulting him like a good man, cursing
him--whisky, whiskers, whims and all, using language that Fred
good-naturedly assured him was very unladylike.

Before dawn the boys, peering through the gaps between the camp-fires,
to distinguish lions if they could and give the alarm before another
could jump in and do damage, swore they saw Schillingschen, rifle in
hand, stalking among the shadows.  Nothing could convince them they had
not seen him.  They said he stooped like a man in a dream--that big
beard was matted, and his shirt torn--that he strode out of darkness
into darkness like a man whose mind was gone.  We purposely laughed at
their story, to see if we could shake them in it.  But they laughed at
our incredulity.

"My eyes are good eyes" answered Kazimoto.  "What I see I see!  Why
should I invent lies?"

It was not pleasant to imagine Schillingschen, mind gone or not, with
or without three cartridges and a rifle, prowling about our camp
awaiting opportunity to do murder.

"Come to think of it," said Fred, "we've no proof he hasn't a lot more
than three cartridges.  It's hardly likely, but he might have cached
some in reserve near where we found his camp pitched.  More unlikely
things have happened.  But the bally man must go to sleep some time.
He seems to have been awake ever since he escaped.  We'll be off at
dawn, and either tire him out or leave him!"

"I'll bet he's got one or more of those donkeys," I answered.  "He'll
not be so easy to tire."

"Suppose you and Will go and sleep," suggested Fred.  "Otherwise we'll
all go crazy, and all get left behind!"

There did not remain much time for sleeping.  The porters, being used
to the tents and their loads now, got away to a good start, heading
straight toward the frowning pile of Elgon that hove its great hump
against a blue sky and domineered over the world to the northward.

There were plenty of villages, well filled with timid spear-men and
hard-working naked wives.  Now that we had trade goods in plenty there
was no difficulty at all about making friends with them.  They had two
obsessing fears:  that it might not rain in proper season, and "the
people" as they called themselves would "have too much hunger"; and
that the men from the mountain might come and take their babies.

"Which men, from what mountain?"

"Bad men, from very high up on that mountain!"  They pointed toward
Elgon, shuddered, and looked away.

"Why should they take your babies?"

"They eat them!"

"What makes you think that?"

"We know it!  They come!  Once in so often they come and fight with us,
and take away, and kill and eat our fat babies!"

All the inhabitants of all the villages agreed.  None of them had ever
ventured on the mountain; but all agreed that very bad black men came
raiding from the upper slopes at uncertain intervals.  There was no
variation of the tale.

One thing puzzled us much more than the cannibal story.  We heard
shooting a long way off behind us to our right--two shots, followed by
the unmistakable ringing echo among growing trees.  Had Schillingschen
decided to desert us?  And if so, how did he dare squander two of his
three cartridges at once--supposing he were not now mad, as our boys,
and his, all vowed he was?  His own ten men began to beg to be
protected from him, and the captured Baganda recommended in best
missionary English that we seek the services of the first witch doctor
we could find.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE SONG OF THE ELEPHANTS

  Who is as heavy as we, or as strong?
        Ho! but we trample the shambas down!
  Saw ye a swath where the trash lay long
        And tall trees flat like a harvest mown?
  That was the path we shore in haste
        (Judge, is it easy to find, and wide!)
  Ripping the branch and bough to waste
        Like rocks shot loose from a mountain side!
  Therefore hear us:

(All together, stamping steadily In time.)

        'Twas we who lonely echoes woke
        To copy the crash of the trees we broke!
        Goad, nor whip, nor wheel, nor yoke
        Shall humble the will of the Ivory Folk!

  Once we were monarchs from sky to sky,
        Many were we and the men were few;
  Then we would go to the Place to die--
        Elephant tombs* that the oldest knew,--
  Old as the trees when the prime is past,
        Lords unchallenged of vale and plain,
  Grazing aloof and alone at last
        To lie where the oldest had always lain.
  So we sing of it:

-----------------------------
* The legendary place that every Ivory hunter hopes some day to stumble
on, where elephants are said to have gone away to die of old age, and
where there should therefore be almost unimaginable wealth of ivory.
The legend, itself as old as African speech, is probably due to the
rarity of remains of elephants that have died a natural death.
------------------------------

(All together, swinging from side to side in time, and tossing trunks.)

        'Twas we who lonely echoes woke
        To copy the crash of the trees we broke!
        Goad, nor whip, nor wheel, nor yoke
        Shall govern the strength of the Ivory Folk!

  Still we are monarchs! Our strength and weight
        Can flatten the huts of the frightened men!
  But the glory of smashing is lost of late,
        We raid less eagerly now than then,
  For pits are staked, and the traps are blind,
        The guns be many, the men be more;
  We fidget with pickets before and behind,
        Who snoozed in the noonday heat of yore.
  Yet, hear us sing:

(All together, ears up and trunks extended.)

        'Twas we who lonely echoes woke
        To copy the crash of the trees we broke!
        Goad, nor whip, nor wheel, nor yoke
        Have lessened the rage of the Ivory Folk!

  Still we are monarchs of field and stream!
        None is as strong or as heavy as we!
  We scent--we swerve--we come--we scream--
        And the men are as mud 'neath tusk and knee!
  But we go no more to the Place to die,
        For the blacks head off and the guns pursue;
  Bleaching our scattered rib-bones lie,
        And men be many, and we be few.
  Nevertheless:

(All together, trunks up-thrown, ears extended, and stamping in slow
time with the fore-feet.)

        'Twas we who lonely echoes woke
        To copy the crash of the trees we broke!
        Goad, nor whip, nor wheel, nor yoke
        Shall humble the pride of the Ivory Folk!

We had laughed at Fred's suggestion that Schillingschen might have
ammunition cached away.  Fred had sneered at my guess that the German
might ride donkey-back and not be so easily left behind.  Now the
probability of both suggestions seemed to stiffen into reality.

Day followed day, and Schillingschen, squandering cartridges not far
away behind us, always had more of them.  He seemed, too, to lose
interest in keeping so extremely close to us, as we raced to get away
from him toward the mountain.  If he was really crazy, as his trembling
boys maintained, then for a crazy man blazing at everything or nothing
he was shooting remarkably little.  On the contrary, if he was sane,
and shooting for the pot, he must have acquired a big following in some
mysterious manner, or else have lost his marksmanship when Coutlass
bruised his eyes.  He fired each day, judging by the echo of the shots,
about as many cartridges as we did, who had to feed a fairly long
column of men, and make presents of meat, in addition, to the chiefs of
villages.  It began to be a mystery how he carried so much ammunition,
unless he had donkeys or porters.

Soon we began to pass through a country where elephants bad been.
There was ruin a hundred yards wide, where a herd of more than a
thousand of them must have swept in panic for fifteen miles.  There
were villages with roofs not yet re-thatched, whose inhabitants came
and begged us to take vengeance on the monsters, showing us their
trampled enclosures, torn-down huts, and ruined plantations.  They
offered to do whatever we told them in the way of taking part, and
several times we marshaled the men of two or three villages together in
an effort to get a line to windward and drive the herd our way.

But each time, as the plan approached development, ringing shots from
behind us put the brutes to flight.  It became uncanny--as if
Schillingschen in his new mad mood was able to divine exactly when his
noise would work most harm.  Our fool boys told the local natives that
a madman was on our heels, and after that all offers of help ceased,
even from those who had suffered most from the elephants.  We began to
be regarded as mad ourselves.  Efforts to get natives to go scouting to
watch Schillingschen, and report to us, were met with point-blank
refusal.  Rumor began to precede us, and from one village that had
suffered more than usually badly from passing elephants the inhabitants
all fled at the first sign of Brown, leading our long single column.

We followed the herd.  Its track was wide, and easier than the winding
native foot-paths; and we were willing enough to jettison loads of
trade-goods if only we could replace them with tusks.  The chase led up
toward Elgon, over the shoulder of an outlying spur, and upward toward
the mountain's eastern slopes.

As long as we kept in the wake of the herd the going presented no
difficulties.  We knew by the state of the tracks and the dung that the
herd was never far ahead.  Frequently we heard them crashing through
trees in front of us.  Yet whenever we came so close as to hope for a
view, and a shot at a tusker, invariably a regular fusillade from the
eastward to our rear would start the herd stampeding with a din like
all the avalanches.

Streams by the dozen flowed down from the mountain's sides, their banks
crushed into bog where the elephants had crossed.  Our donkeys grew
used to being tied by the head in line and hauled across (for in common
with all herds of donkeys, there were a few of them that swam readily,
and many that either could not or refused).  The flies in the wake of
the elephants were worse than the tetse that haunted the shore of
Nyanza.

We had no trouble now from our boys.  We could even let the Baganda's
hands loose.  They feared the cannibals of the higher slopes, but were
much more afraid of the madman to our right rear.  Our difficulty lay
in compelling them to keep a course sufficiently to eastward, and in
calling a halt each day before men and animals were too utterly tired
out.  Yet for all their hurry, we did not gain on the man who made them
so afraid.

Elephants, once thoroughly scared, will run away forever.  Our boys
openly praised the herd in front for its speed and stamina, hoping it
would continue on its course and oblige us to keep the madman with the
rifle at a safe distance to our rear.  But it seemed he had an easier
line than we, or else his frenzy gave him seven-league boots, for he
even began to gain on us, keeping along our right flank at a distance
of several miles, and driving us nearly mad in the frantic effort to
keep our column from turning and running away to the westward.  If we
had relaxed our vigilance for a moment they would have broken line and
fled.

It was old volcanic country we were marching through, densely wooded,
virgin forest for the most part, with earth so warm at times that it
was not easy to believe the crater of Elgon quite extinct.  Even at
that low level we came on blow-holes nearly filled in with dirt and
trash, serving as fine caves for beasts of prey.  We went into one for
about three hundred paces before it narrowed into nothing, and would
have camped in it but for the stink.  It smelt like a place where the
egg of original sin had turned rotten.  Fred said that was sulphur,
with the air of a man who would like it believed that he knew.

At last the enemy must have made a night march, for he passed us, and
the following dawn we heard him shooting to our right in front.  That
morning it was simply impossible to make the boys break camp.  They
swore that the ghost of Schillingschen had gone in league with the
elephants to destroy us, and they preferred to be shot by us rather
than murdered by witchcraft.

Beyond doubt they would have bolted and left us had that camp not been
an almost perfect one, on rising ground with two great wings of rock
almost enclosing it, and a singing brook galloping through the midst.
There was only one gap by which elephant or man could enter (unless
they should fall from the sky), and they closed that by rolling rocks
and dragging up trunks of trees.

After a useless argument, during which we all lost our tempers and they
were reduced to the verge of panic, we decided to leave them there in
charge of Brown and those porters, except Kazimoto, who had rifles.
The armed men promised faithfully to die beside Brown in the only place
of exit rather than permit a man to pass out; and the rest all agreed
it would be right to shoot them if they attempted to desert; but we
left the camp together--Fred, Will, I, and Kazimoto, with Will's
personal servant and mine bringing up the rear--wondering whether we
should ever see any member or part of the outfit again.  It felt like
going to a funeral--or rather from it--more than likely Brown's.

Kazimoto and the other two should have been carrying spare rifles; but
Brown had refused to remain behind unless we left him all but the one
apiece we absolutely needed.  We took the boys more from habit than for
any use they were likely to be; and my boy and Will's bolted back to
the camp almost before we were out of sight of it, Kazimoto begging us
to shoot them in the back for cowards.

"Huh!" he grunted.  "They are afraid of death.  Teach them what death
is!"

We heard Brown challenge them as they approached the camp, and hoped he
thrashed them soundly.  But it turned out he did not.  He himself had
grown afraid; for the fear of a crowd is contagious, and spreads
nearly as readily from black to white as from white to black.  He broke
open a chop-box and consoled himself with whisky.

Forcing our way through vegetation that crowded around a spur of
volcanic rock, it soon became evident that the whole of the huge herd
was breakfasting not far in front of us, tearing off limbs of trees,
and crashing about as if noise were the only object.  We climbed and
attempted to look down on them, only to discover that the part of the
forest where we were consisted of a narrow belt, with a mile-wide open
space beyond it between us and the elephants.  The wind was from them
toward us, but that did not wholly account for the amount of noise that
reached us.  It was the fact that the herd was twice as big as we
imagined.  There were elephants in every direction.  We could see and
hear branches breaking with reports like cannon-fire.

Kazimoto was as steady as an old soldier, a great grin spreading across
his ugly honest face, and his eyes alight with enthusiasm.  This was
the profession he had followed when he was Courtney's gun-bearer, and
he kept close to Fred with a handful of cartridges ready to pass to
him, whispering wise counsel.

"Get close to them, bwana!  Go close!  Go close!  Wind coming our
way--smell coming our way--noise coming our way--elephant very busy
eating--no hurry!  No long shooting!  Go right up close!"

It was easier said than done.  The elephants had spread broadcast
through the forest, and there was no longer one well-defined swath to
follow, but a very great number of twisting narrow alleys through
elastic undergrowth between great unyielding trees.  We had to
separate, to gain any advantage from our number, so that we emerged
into the open more than a hundred yards apart, with Fred at the far
left and Will in the center.  Fred, with Kazimoto close at his heels,
was more than fifty yards in front of either of us.

And crossing that mile of open land was no simple business.  It was a
mass of rocks and tree-roots, burned over in some swift-running forest
fire and not yet reseeded, nor yet rotted down.  There were winding
ways all across it by the dozen that the elephants, with their greater
height and better woodcraft, could follow on the run, but great stumps
and rocks higher than a man's head (that from a distance had looked
like level land) blocked all vision and made progress mostly guesswork.

However, the latter half-mile was more like level going--I emerged from
between two boulders, wondering whether I could ever find my way back
again, and envied Fred, who had found a better track and had the lead
of me now by several hundred yards.  Will was as far behind him as I,
but had gone over more to the left, leaving me--feeling remarkably
lonely--away in the rear to the right.

Kazimoto followed Fred so closely, stooping low behind him, that the
two looked like some strange four-legged beast.  They were headed for
the forest in front of them at a great pace, increasing their lead from
Will, who, like me, was more or less winded.  I stooped at a pool to
scoop up water and splash my face and neck.  When I looked up a moment
later I could see none of them.

At that instant, when I could actually smell the great brutes crashing
in the forest, unseen within a hundred yards of me, and would have
given all I had or hoped for just to have a friend within speaking
distance, a shot rang out in the forest ahead, and rattled from tree to
tree like the echo of a skirmish.  It was not from Fred's gun, or
Will's.  It was the phantom rifleman at work again.
Schillingschen--Schillingschen's ghost--or whoever he was, he could not
have timed his fusillade better for our undoing.  The first shot was
followed by six more in swift succession.  And then chaos broke loose.

Toward where I stood, from every angle to my front, the whole herd
stampeded.  No human being could have guessed their number.  The forest
awoke with a battle-din of falling trees and crashing undergrowth,
split apart by the trumpeting of angry bulls and the screams of cows
summoning their young ones.  The earth shook under the weight of their
tremendous rout.  I heard Fred's rifle ring out three times far to my
left--then Will's a rifle nearer to me; and at that the herd swung
toward its own left, and the whole lot of them came full-pelt, blind,
screaming, frantic, straight for me.

There was no turning them now. None but the very farthest on the flank
could have turned, given sense enough left to do it.  It was a flood of
maddened monsters, crazed with fear, pent by their own numbers, forced
forward by the crowd behind, that invited me to dam them if I could!
As they burst into the open, more shots rang out in the forest to lend
their fury wings!

I glanced behind, to right and left, but there was no escape, I had
come too far into the open to retreat!  There were big rocks to the
rear to have scrambled on, but there was no time.  There was one big
rock in front of me that divided their course about in halves; to pass
it they must open up, although they would almost surely close again.  I
took my stand in line with that, as a man on trial for life takes
refuge behind an unestablishable alibi.

They talk glibly about men's whole lives passing in review before them
in the instant of a crisis.  That may be.  That was a crisis, and I saw
elephants--elephants!  I remembered some of what Courtney had told
us--some of the mad yarns Coutlass spun when liquor and the camp-fire
made him boastful.  All the advice I ever heard; all my previous
imaginings of what I should do when such a time came, seemed to be
condensed into one concrete demand--shoot, shoot, shoot, and keep on
shooting!  Yet my finger, bent around the trigger, absolutely would not
act!

The oncoming gray wave of brutes split apart at the rock, as it must
do, some of them screaming as they crashed into it breast on and were
crushed by the crowd behind.  In the van of the right-hand wing,
brushing the rock with his shoulder, charged an enormous bull with
tusks so large that the heavier had weighed down his head to a
permanent rakish angle.  He caught sight of me--trumpeted like a siren
in the Channel fog--and came at me with raised ears and trunk
outstretched.  I heard shooting to the left, and more shots from the
forest, where the very active ghost or madman was keeping up a battle
of his own.  I felt the fear, that turns a man's very heart to ice,
grip hold of me--felt as if nothing mattered--imagined the whole
universe a sea of charging elephants--accepted the inevitable--and
suddenly received my manhood back again!  My forefinger acted!  I fired
point-blank down the throat of the charging bull.  And it seemed to
have no more effect on him than a pea-shooter has on a railroad train!

I had left Schillingschen's heavy-bored elephant gun behind with Brown,
considering it too cumbersome, and was using a Mauser with flat-nosed
bullets.  I fired four shots as fast as I could pump them from the
magazine straight down the monster's hot red throat; and he continued
to come on as if I had not touched him, hard-pressed on either flank by
bulls nearly as big as he.

Perhaps the reason why my past history did not flash review was that my
time was not yet come!  I continued to see elephant--nothing but
elephant!--little bloodshot eyes aflame with frenzy--great tusks
upthrown--a trunk upraised to brain me--huge flat feet that raged to
tread me down and knead me into purple mud!  I kept the last shot with
a coolness I believe was really numbness--then felt his hot breath like
a blast on my face, and let him have it, straight down the throat again!

He screamed--stopped--quivered right over me--toppled from the
knees--and fell like a landslide, pushed forward as he tumbled by the
weight behind, and held from rolling sidewise by the living tide on
either flank.  I tried to spring back, but his falling trunk struck me
to earth.  On either side of me a huge tusk drove into the ground, and
I lay still between them, as safe as if in bed, while the herd crashed
past to right and left for so many minutes that it seemed all the
universe was elephants--bulls, cows and calves all trumpeting in mad
desire to get away--away--anywhere at all so be it was not where they
then were.

Blood poured on me from the dead brute's throat--warm, slippery, sticky
stuff; but I lay still.  I did not move when the crashing had all gone
by, but lay looking up at the monster that had willed his worst and,
seeking to slay, had saved me.  Those are the moments when young men
summon all their calf-philosophy.  I wondered what the difference was
between that brute and me, that I should be justified in slaying; that
I should be congratulated; that I should have been pitied, had the
touch-and-go reversed itself and he killed me.  I knew there was a
difference that had nothing to do with shape, or weight, or size, but I
could not give it a name or lay my finger on it.

My reverie, or reaction, or whatever it was, was broken by Fred's
voice, flustered and out of breath, coming nearer at a great pace.

"I tell you the poor chap's dead as a door-nail!  He's under that great
bull, I tell you!  He's simply been charged and flattened out!  What a
dog I was--what a green-horn--what a careless, fat-headed tomfool to
leave him alone like that!  He was the least experienced of all of us,
and we let him take the full brunt of a charging herd!  We ought to be
hung, drawn and quartered!  I shall never forgive myself!  As for you,
Will, it wasn't half as much your fault as mine!  You were following
me.  You expected me to give the orders, and I ought to have called a
halt away back there until we were all three in touch!  I'll never
forgive myself--never!"

I crawled out then from between the tusks, and shook myself, much more
dazed than I expected, and full of an unaccountable desire to vomit.

"Damn your soul!" Fred fairly yelled at me.  "What the hell d'you mean
by startling me in that way!  Why aren't you dead?  Look out!  What's
the matter with the man?  The poor chap's hurt--I knew he was!"

But that inexplicable desire to empty all I had inside me out on to the
trampled ground could no longer be resisted, that was all.  The
aftermath of deadly fear is fear's corollary.  Each bears fruit after
its kind.

To my one tusker Will and Fred had brought down five and six
respectively.  That made twenty-three tusks, for one was an enormous
"singleton."  We sent Kazimoto back alone to try to persuade some of
our porters to come and chop out the ivory with axes, bidding him
promise them all the hearts, and as many tail-hairs as they chose to
pull out to keep witches away with.  Then, since my sickness passed
presently and left me steady on my legs, Fred made a proposal that we
jumped at.

"Let's go and lay Schillingschen's ghost!  If that was Schillingschen
shooting in the forest, we've a little account with him!  If it wasn't
I want to know it!  Come along!"

We advanced into the forest and toiled up-hill along the tracks the
stampeding elephants had made, amid flies indescribable, and almost
intolerable heat.  The blood on my clothing made me a veritable
feeding-place of flies, until I threw most of it off, and then began to
suffer in addition from bites I could not feel before, and from the
sharp points of beckoning undergrowth.  My bare legs began to bleed
from scratches, and the flies swooped anew on those, and clung as if
they grew there.

Will climbed a huge tree, at imminent risk of pythons and rotten
branches, and descried open country on our right front.  We made for
it, I walking last to take advantage of the others' wake, and after
more than an hour of most prodigious effort we emerged on rolling rocky
country under a ledge that overhung a thousand feet sheer above us on
the side of Elgon.  To our right was all green grass, sloping away from
us.

There was a camp half a mile away pitched on the edge of the forest--a
white man's tent--a mule--meat hanging to dry in the wind under a
branch--two tents for natives--and a pile of bags and boxes orderly
arranged.  We could see a man sitting under a big tent awning.  He was
reading, or writing, or something of that kind.  He was certainly not
Schillingschen.  We hurried.  Fred presently broke into a run; then,
half-ashamed, checked himself and waited for me, who was beyond running.

When we came quite close we saw that the man was playing chess all by
himself with a folding board open on his knees.  He did not look up,
although by that time he surely should have heard us.  Fred began to
walk quietly, signaling to the camp hangers-on to say nothing.  We
followed him silently in Indian file.  As he came near the awning Fred
tip-toed, and I felt like giggling, or yelling--like doing anything
ridiculous.

He who played chess yawned suddenly, and closed the chess-board with a
snap.  He got up lazily, smiled, stretched himself like a great
good-looking cat, faced Fred, and laughed outright.

"Glad to see you all!  Did you get many elephants?" he asked.

"Monty, you old pirate--I knew it was you!" said Fred, holding a hand
out.

Monty took it, and forced him into the chair he had just vacated.

"You damned old liar!" he said, nodding approvingly.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY TOIL NOT, NEITHER DO THEY SPIN

  Now for opulence and place
        And the increment unearned
        We will thieve and stab and cover it with perjury,
  Contemptuous of grace
        And the lesson never learned
        That the Rules are not amenable to surgery.
  We will steal a neighbor's tools
        In the quest for easy cash,
        Aye, jump his claim and burrow to the heart of it,
  But the innocents and fools
        Get all the goods, and we the trash,
        And that's the most exasperating part of it!

Nobody in camp slept that night.  When the tusks had been chopped out,
and our camp carried across and pitched beside Monty's--ivory
weighed--lion-proof boma built--and elephant-heart portioned out to the
men, who gorged themselves on it in order that their own hearts might
grow great and strong; when all the myriad matters had been seen to
that make camping in the tropics such a business, then there were tales
to be told.  We demanded Monty's first; he ours; and because his was
likely to be much the shortest we won that argument.

"Wait one minute, though," he insisted.  "Before I begin, have you any