"What kind of letter is worth fifty pounds?" he asked me. "Isn't it
something illegal that you fear might get you into worse trouble if
opened and read?"
I argued in vain, and only made my case worse by citing as an instance
of German official turpitude the staff surgeon's neglect of me.
"But he tells me you refuse to be treated by him!" he answered. "He
says you enter his hospital and are insolent if he happens to be too
busy to attend to you at once. He says you refuse to let a native
orderly dress your wound!"
He had been entertained to one meal at the commandant's house on the
hill, and regaled by awful accounts of our ferocity. I did not succeed
in inserting as much as the thin end of a different view until he asked
me how a man's name could be professor Schillingschen and his wife's
Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon.
"I don't understand about titles," he said. "Shouldn't she take his
name, or else he hers, or something?"
I assured him that marriage had never as much as entered the head of
either of them.
"They're simply living together," I said. "He's a cynical brute. She's
a designing female!"
The missionary mind recoiled and refused to believe me. But after he
had thought the matter over and seen the probability, he swung over to
a sort of lame admission that a few more of my statements might perhaps
be true.
"I will take your letter and guarantee its delivery in British East,
provided I may read it and do not disapprove of its contents." he
volunteered.
"That's not unreasonable," I said, "but the letter is in code."
"I should have to see it decoded."
I told him to find Fred and Will. He came on them sitting smoking
under the great rock near the waterfront that had been inset with a
bronze medallion of Bismarck, and startled them almost into committing
an assault on him, by saying that he wanted our secret code at once.
They had been trying to get tobacco to Brown, and sweetmeats to
Kazimoto, had failed in both efforts and were short-tempered. He
explained after they had insulted him sufficiently, and they walked
down to the camp one on either hand, apologizing all the way. I
imagine they had criticized missions of all denominations pretty
thoroughly.
In the end he decided not to read the letter at all.
"I have reached the conclusion you three men are gentlemen," he said,
"and would not take advantage of me. I will take your letter to Ujiji,
and send it to the south end of Lake Tanganika, to be put in the
British mail bag for Mombasa by way of Durban. It will take a long
time to reach its destination--perhaps two months; but I will have it
registered, and it will undoubtedly get there."
That he kept his word and better we had ample proof later on, but I did
not bless him particularly fervidly at the time, for he went straight
to the doctor and repeated my complaints. He left for Ujiji the next
day, and the net result of his friendly interference was that the
doctor refused me any sort of attention at all--even a change of
bandages.
Fred and Will did their best for me, but it was little. I read in
their faces, and in their studied cheerfulness when speaking in my
presence, that they had made up their minds I was going to lose the
number of my mess. They went to the commandant and the lieutenant
besides the doctor in efforts to secure for me some sort of
consideration, but without result; and they wrote at least six letters
to the British East African Protectorate government that we ascertained
afterward never reached their destination. They tried to register one
letter, but registration was refused.
"Why don't they jail us simply, and have done with it?"--Will kept
wondering aloud.
"They will when it suits their books," said I. "For the present they
scarcely dare. Word might reach the British government. They're
breaking no international law by holding us here and keeping tabs on
us."
Before many days I grew unable to leave the hard cork mattress on the
camp-bed in Fred's tent. They went again to the commandant, this time
determined to force the issue.
"I will send some one," he told them, and they came away delighted that
strong language should succeed where politeness formerly had failed.
But all the commandant did send was an askari twice a day, to lean on
his rifle in the tent door, leer at me, and march away again.
"He comes to see if I'm dead," said I. "It would be inconvenient to
have me die in jail; there might be inquiries afterward from British
East. After I'm dead and buried they'll jail you two healthy ones, and
keep you until you 'blab'!"
"Why don't we straight out tell 'em we don't know a thing about the
ivory?" wondered Will.
"Because they wouldn't believe us!" Fred answered.
Seven days after the sentry's first call the doctor took to coming in
person to look at me. He never except once stepped inside the tent,
but was satisfied to give me a glance of contempt and go away again,
once or twice taking pains to inspect the Greeks' camp before leaving.
He usually had Schubert trailing in his wake, and gave him stern orders
about sanitation which nobody ever carried out. The sanitary
conditions of that rest-camp were simply non-existent until we came
there, and we had gone to no pains on the Greeks' account.
But the Greeks did us an unexpected good turn, though it looked like
making more trouble for us at the time. They began to complain of lack
of exercise, and to grow actually sick for want of it. Because of
that, and jealousy, they raised a clamor about our freedom to go
anywhere within township limits as against their strict confinement to
the camp. The commandant came down to the camp in person to hear what
they had to say, and being in a good humor saw fit to yield a point.
Being a military German, though, he could not do it without attaching
ignominious conditions.
There was a band attached to the local company of Sudanese--an affair
consisting of four native war-drums and two fifes. They knew eight
bars of one tune, and were proud of it, the fifers blowing with beef
and pluck and the drummers thundering native fashion, which means that
the only difference between their noise and a thunder-storm was in the
tempo.
Day after day, twice a day, whether it rained or shone, it seemed to be
the law that this "band" should patrol the whole township limits,
playing its only tune, lifting the tops of men's heads with its
infernal drumming, and delighting nobody except the players and the
township urchins, who marched in its wake rejoicing.
The Greeks and the Goanese were given leave to march with the band
twice a day for the sake of exercise. They refused indignantly. The
commandant flew into the rage that is the birthright of all German
officials, but suddenly checked himself; he had a brilliant idea.
He withdrew the permission and changed it to an order that Coutlass and
his two friends should march with the band twice daily for the sake of
their health, on pain of imprisonment should they refuse.
"And I will prove to you," he said, "that the good German rule is
impartial. All aliens awaiting trial and confined within the township
limits shall march with the band if they are able!" As an afterthought
he added magnanimously: "Those in the jail, too, provided they have
not been sentenced for serious crimes!"
So Coutlass, his Greek friend, the Goanese, Fred, Will, and Brown of
Lumbwa marched about the town twice daily, at seven in the morning and
three in the afternoon, a journey of five miles, Fred and Will making
no objection because it gave them a chance to talk with Brown. There
were strict orders against talking, and four askaris armed with rifles
marched behind to enforce the rule as well as keep guard over Brown.
But the drums were so thunderous and the shrill fifes so lusty that the
askaris could not hear conversation pitched in low tones.
"Brown says," said Fred, returning from the first march, "that he
sleeps with only a sheet of corrugated iron between him and the ward
where the chain-gang lies. He can talk with Kazimoto when he happens
to be at that end of the chain. They've nothing but planks to lie on,
any of them. He says Kazimoto seems determined to kill the lieutenant
who sentenced him, and as soon as he's off the chain we'd better grab
him and hurry him out of the country."
"Six months!" said I. "Splendid advice! How many of us will be alive
or at liberty six months from now? Not I, at any rate!"
"How d'you suppose they discipline the chain-gang?" Fred asked,
ignoring my growing hopelessness.
"With the lash," said I. "I've seen!"
"That's by day," said Fred. "They've better ways at night. One plan
is no supper or breakfast; but the champion scheme is the doctor's.
On complaint by the askaris that a man on the chain has shirked his
work, or answered back, or been obstreperous, the doctor serves him out
a handful of strong pills and sees him swallow them. They don't
unchain them at night. D'you get the idea?"
"Not yet."
"Every time the man has to go outside he must wake the whole gang and
take them with him! They're weary after working twelve hours at a
stretch. After the second or third time up they begin to object pretty
strenuously. After the third or fourth time he's so unpopular that
he'd almost rather die than wake them. Imagine the result, and what he
suffers!"
Despondency began to have hold of me, and I no longer wished to live.
The doctor's momentary daily visits increased my loathing for the crew
who tyrannized there in the name of Progress, and I could see no way of
retaliating. I became seized with a sort of delirious conviction that
if only I could die and be out of the way my friends would be far
better able to contrive without me. There is no convalescence in a
mood of that sort, and each morning found me nearer death than the
last. Then malaria developed, to give me the finishing touch, and
although strangely enough I grew less instead of more delirious, Fred
and Will at last made no secret of their belief that I was doomed.
I myself was as sure of death as they were of dinner, and had better
appetite for my fate than they for the meal, when one morning the
doctor came earlier than usual. He had Schubert with him, and they
both peered through the tent door. I was alone, for Fred and Will were
in the other tent. The doctor stepped inside and examined me closely,
drawing up the mosquito net to see my face. I did not trouble to speak
to him, or even to open my eyes after the first glimpse. He spoke to
Schubert in German, let the net fall again, and went away. Schubert
spat and rubbed his hands, and swung along after him.
Then I heard Will and Fred arguing.
"Don't be a fool!" That was Fred's voice.
"I tell you I'll tell him!"
"Fine thing to tell a poor devil that's dying! Let him die in peace!"
"No. He has guts, for I've seen him use 'em. I shall tell him. You
wait here!"
But they both came in, and sat one on either side of my bed.
"Did you hear what that doctor person said to the sergeant-major?"
asked Will.
"I don't talk his beastly language," I answered.
"He said you'll be dead by this evening! He told Schubert to go and
get the chain-gang and have them dig your grave at noon instead of
laying off for dinner. He added they'll have you buried and out of the
way by four or five o'clock. Then Schubert asked him--"
"No need to tell him that!" Fred objected. But Will was watching my
face keenly, and went on.
"Schubert asked him who was to say whether you are dead or not. What
d'you suppose the answer was?"
Fred objected again, but Will waved him aside.
"The answer he gave Schubert was: 'Once he is covered with two meters
of earth, I shall not hesitate to sign a certificate!'--So now you know
what to expect!"
Will smiled as he watched me. His face was as keen and calm as Fred's
was troubled.
"Take more than his guesswork to put you where he'd like to have
you--eh?" he laughed. And I sat up.
Fred began to grin too. "You were right, Will!" he admitted.
It was not anger that swept over me and gave me new strength. Anger, I
think, would have hastened the end. It was sudden recognition of my
own superiority to the devils who knew so little mercy. It was simple
inability in the last recourse to admit myself able to be their victim.
Even my leg felt better. I demanded food; and by the time they
returned from their morning march around the township I had made my boy
dress me and was sitting up.
We dated the turn of the tide of our fortunes from that hour.
Certainly from that day we began to prosper--at first gradually, but
after a while in the old swift way that had made all our ventures with
Monty such amazingly amusing work.
We saw the chain-gang--Kazimoto last, with a shovel over his
shoulder--march away at noon to dig me a grave in the sand close to
where they burned the township refuse. Fred and Will went and watched
them a while, contriving to slip a paper of snuff into Kazimoto's hand
while he rested and let the pick-men labor. (Snuff to a Nyamwezi is as
comforting as an old sweet pipe to nine white men out of ten.)
When Schubert came that evening at five with an old sack to put my body
in, and plenty of askaris to help decide disputes, I was standing up.
He could not very well make even himself believe that a man who could
speak and walk was dead, but he could be immensely enraged by what he
was pleased to call my schweinspiel.* He cursed me in every language he
knew, including several native ones, and ended by threatening to make
sure of me before going to so much trouble a second time. [*Literally,
pig-play.]
We enraged him still further by laughing at him, and Fred got out his
concertina that for many days past had lain idle. The first few notes
of it made me realize more than any other thing could have done what
depths of despondency we must have plumbed, for hitherto, for as long
as I had known Fred, he had always been able with that weird instrument
of his to rouse his own spirits and so stir the rest of us. He resumed
old habits now, and gloom departed.
That evening I went to bed like a new man, and for the first night for
long weeks slept until dawn, awaking hungry. My leg began to mend. We
all saw the absurdity, if nothing else, of the treatment meted out to
us, based on no better grounds than our supposed possession of a
secret. Laughter brought good hope. Hope gave us courage, and courage
set Fred and Will hunting for a means of escape. We decided there and
then that to wait for this Major Schunck to come from the coast and
pass judgment on us was a ridiculous waste of time as well as highly
dangerous.
The first discovery Fred and Will made was that there were footholds
cut in the great granite rock in which the Bismarck medallion was set.
They climbed it, and discovered that from the summit they could see all
Muanza harbor from the shore line to the island in the distance.
Sitting up there, they presently spotted a native dhow drawn up with
bow to the beach with the indefinable, yet unescapable air of rather
long disuse.
Resisting the first temptation to hurry along the shore and examine it,
they returned to camp to tell me of the find, and sent Simba,
Kazimoto's understudy, to find out whose the dhow was and why it lay
there. They explained it was a fairly big dhow, and might be laid up
there on account of leakiness.
But Simba came back grinning with the news that the dhow belonged to an
Indian from British East who had been jailed for smuggling. The dhow
had been sold to pay his court fine, and was now owned by a Punjabi who
had bought it as a speculation and repented already of his bargain,
because the Germans would grant him no license to use it and nobody
else would buy.
They went off again to have another distant view of it and to try and
invent some means of inspecting it closely without betraying their
purpose. I was already able to walk with the aid of a stick, although
not fast enough to keep up with them, and curiosity taking hold of me I
called two of our servants to give me a supporting arm and limped off
to see the grave the chain-gang had recently dug for me.
It was a struggle to get there, but it seemed to me the trip was worth
it. I found the grave about a foot too short, but otherwise
commensurate, and sat down on a stone beside it to consider a number of
things. A convalescent man sitting beside his own grave may be
forgiven for amusing himself with a lot of near-philosophy, and if I
trespassed over the borders of common sense on that occasion I claim it
was not without excuse.
My meditations were disturbed by the arrival on the scene of the very
last man I expected. We had been told that Professor Schillingschen
had gone out on a journey, leaving his "wife" in the care of the
commandant; yet I looked up suddenly to see him standing on the other
side of the grave with both hands in the pockets of his knickerbockers
and a grin of malevolent amusement showing through the tangled mass of
hair that hid his lower face.
"Yours?" he asked.