Hassan threw himself on the ground again at Monty's feet.
"Oh, what shall I do?" he blubbered. "I am an old man. Who shall take
my people out of jail? Who shall go to Dar es Salaam and make Germans
give them up?"
"If you're willing to show us what you intended to show
Schillingschen," said Monty, "I'll do what I can for your relations."
"What can you do? Oh, what can you do? No man but a German can make
these Germans cease from punishing!"
Monty beckoned to the Baganda who had once done Schillingschen's dirty
work.
"D'you see this man? This is a German spy. The German will be willing
to hand over your relations in exchange for a promise not to make a
fuss about this man. Wait a minute, though! Are your relations
criminals?"
"No, bwana! No, bwana! My relations honorable folk! Formerly living
in Zanzibar--going to Bagamoyo to serve in German family by invitation
of person attached to German Consulate--no sooner landed than thrown in
jail on charges they know nothing whatever about. Then Schillingschen
he finding me, and say to me, 'You show where is that Tippoo Tib's
ivory, and your relations shall go free!' And Tippoo Tib, he say to
me, 'You take first step to show any man where is that ivory, and you
shall be fed to white ants by my faithful people!' And Schillingschen
he catch two of them faithful people, and feed 'em to white ants when
nobody looking that way! Schillingschen terrible! Tippoo Tib
terrible! What shall do? Tippoo Tib, he one time making me go long
trip with Bwana Coutlass, very bad Greek. Bwana Coutlass wanting
ivory--me pretending showing him--leading him wrong way. Coutlass very
bad man, beating me ngumu sana.* All the same, me more afraid of
Tippoo Tib and Bwana Schillingschen. Not long ago Tippoo Tib sending
me with Bwana Coutlass second time, making bad threats against me if I
not lead him wrong. Then Schillingschen he send for me and making
worse threats! Oh, what shall do! Oh, what shall do!" [* Ngumu sana,
very severely.]
"You shall show us where that ivory is!" Monty answered him. "Stop
blubbering! Get up! Look here! See this! (Get me that diary, Will.)
If the Germans won't release your relations from jail on account of
this Baganda, this is a written book that will make them do it! In
this book are the names of men who have broken treaties and the law of
nations. When the Germans know the British Government in London has
this book under lock and key, they will think it a little thing to
release your relations for the sake of avoiding trouble!"
"Promise me, bwana! You promise me!"
"I promise I will do my best for you."
"Word of an Englishman--promise!"
"Word Of an Englishman--I promise to do my best!"
That was a proud enough moment on the shoulder of a mountain, with
wilderness in every direction farther than the highest eagle in the air
above could see, to have that helpless, hopeless ex-slave, part Arab,
part machenzie, put his whole stock-in-trade--his secret--all he had on
earth to bargain with for those he loved--in the balance on the promise
of an Englishman. It was a tribute to a race that has had its share,
no doubt, of bad men, but has won dominion over half the earth and
pretty much all the sea by keeping faith with men who could not by any
means compel good faith.
"Then I tell!" said Hassan. "Then I show!"
But now a new fear seized him, and he clung to Monty, trembling and
jabbering.
"The men who eat men! The men who eat men!"
"Pah! Cannibals!" sneered Fred. "They're always cowards!"
"Tippoo Tib, he afraid of nothing--nobody! He is hiding the ivory
where men who eat men can guard it and none dare come!"
"Lead on, McDuff!" Fred grinned, shouldering his rifle.
All of us except Monty had beards by that time that fluttered in the
wind, and looked desperate enough for any venture. Considering the
rifles and our uncouth appearance, Hassan took heart of grace. He
insisted on an armed guard to walk on either side of him, and nearly
drove Kazimoto frantic by ducking behind rocks at intervals, imagining
he saw an enemy; but he did not refuse any longer to show the way.
It seemed that in expectation of Schillingschen's early arrival he had
camped within a mile of the place where the stuff was hidden, taking
unreasoning courage from the bare fact of having the redoubtable
Schillingschen for friend. But the cannibals (who must have been a
hungry folk, for there were no plantations, and almost no animals on
all those upper slopes) had pounced on his three lean porters, missing
himself by a hair's breadth.
In hiding, he had watched his three men killed, toasted before a fire
in a cavern-mouth, and eaten. Then he had run for his life, following
the shoulder of the mountain in the hope of meeting Schillingschen,
munching uncooked corn he had in a little bag, hiding and running at
intervals for a day and a night until he chanced on us. For an old man
almost sick with fear he was astonishingly little affected by the
adventure.
We took longer over the course than he had done, because he wanted to
find cannibals, and teach them, maybe, a needed lesson. Fred's theory
was that we should surprise them and pen them into a cavern,
discovering some means of talking with them when hunger brought them
out to surrender and cringe.
So we threw out a line of scouts, and pounced on cave-mouths suddenly,
entering great tunnels and following the course of them in ages-old
lava until sometimes we thought ourselves lost in the gloom and spent
hours finding the way out again.
Time and again we found bones--bones of wild animals, and of birds, and
of fish; now and then bones that perhaps had been monkeys, but that
looked too suspiciously like those of the fat babies mothers mourned
for in the villages below for the benefit of the doubt to be conceded
without something more or less resembling proof. But never a human
being did we see until we rounded the northeastern hump of the mountain
in a bitter wind, and spied half a hundred naked men and women, thinner
than wraiths, who scampered off at sight of us and volleyed ridiculous
arrows from a cave-mouth. The arrows fell about midway between us and
them, but threw Hassan into a paroxysm of fear, out of which it was
difficult to shake him.
"Those are the people who ate my men! That is the cavern where Tippoo
Tib hid the ivory! That is where my men's bones are! See--they have
torn my tent for clothing for their naked women!"
We put Hassan under double guard for fear lest he bolt again and leave
us. And all that day, and all the next we hunted for cannibals through
mazy caverns that seemed to extend into the mountain's very womb.
There were times when the stench was so horrible we nearly fainted. We
stumbled on men's bones. We collided with sharp projections in the
gloom--fell down holes that might have been bottomless for aught we
knew in advance--and scrambled over ledges that in places were smooth
with the wear of feet for ages. Everlastingly to right, or left of us,
or up above, or down below we could hear the inhabitants scampering
away. Now and then an arrow would flitter between us; but their
supply of ammunition seemed very scanty.
At night we camped in the cavern mouth to cut off all escape, and
resumed the hunt at dawn. But the caverns were hot--hotter by contrast
with the biting winds outside; and when in the afternoon of the second
day we all came out to breathe and cool off the running sweat, we saw
the whole tribe--scarcely more than fifty of them--emerge from an
opening above, whose existence we had not guessed, and go scampering
away along a ledge like monkeys. Some of them stopped to throw stones
at us--impotent, aimless stones that fell half-way; and Fred sent
three bullets after them, chipping bits from the ledge, after which
they showed us a turn of speed that was simply incredible, and vanished.
"Now for the great disillusionment!" laughed Will. "Hassan! Go
forward, and show us where that hoard of ivory ought ta be!"
We all expected disillusionment. Brown, who was under no delusion as
to his share in the venture, scoffed openly at the idea of finding
anything buried, in a land where every living "crittur," as he put it,
was a thief from birth. But Hassan led on in, fearless now that the
cannibals were gone, and positive as if he led into his own house and
would show his house-hold treasures.
He stopped before a black-mouthed chasm, two or three hundred yards
along the smallest subdivision of the cavern, and called for lights and
a rope. We lit lanterns, and he showed us men's bones lying everywhere
in grisly confusion.
"Tippoo Tib his men!" he remarked. "They throwing ivory in here, then
byumby men who eat men kill and eat them. I alone living to tell!
Plenty men who eat men in those days--all mountains full of them!"
He tied a lantern to a rope and lowered it down what looked like an old
vent-hole in the lava. But the little light was lost in the enormous
blackness, and we could see nothing.
"Send a man down!" he counseled.
We leaned over the edge and sniffed. There was a faint smell of what
might be sulphur, but not enough to hurt.
"Who'll go?" asked Monty, and I thought he was going to volunteer
himself.
"I go down!" announced Kazimoto cheerfully, and promptly proceeded to
divest himself of every stitch of clothing.
We made our stoutest line fast under his arm-pits, gave him a lantern
and lowered him over the edge. For fifty or sixty feet he descended
steadily, swinging the lantern and walking downward, held almost
horizontally by the slowly paid-out rope. Then he stopped, and we
heard him whistling.
"What do you see?" we called down.
"Pembe!" (Ivory.)
"Much of it?"
"Teli!" (Too much!) "Oh, teli, teli! Teli, teli, teli, TELI!"
His voice ended with the very high-pitched note that natives use when
they want to multiply superlatives. Then he whistled again. Next he
called very excitedly.
"Very bad smell here, bwana! Pull me out quickly!"