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.