THE DRUMS OF OKU
Evelyn, ferried across the harbor by a boat's crew from the warship,
boarded the _Estremadura_ in almost regal state. The vessel's cabin
accommodation was poor, but the English girl was given of its best. Not
every day does a small West African trader receive a passenger under
the escort of a peer of the realm and a Captain in the Royal Navy. It
was an interesting moment when Rosamund Laing, accompanied by Figuero,
came alongside. The Portuguese made off at once, but the lady, when
it was too late to retreat, affected a blank indifference to Evelyn's
presence that showed how conscious she was of it. She seldom appeared
on deck, ate each meal in the seclusion of her cabin, and spoke no
word, even to Lord Fairholme. On arriving at Lagos she hurried from the
ship, and Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief as she watched her enemy go
ashore.
She did not carry her dislike of Mrs. Laing to the point of imagining
her to be in active co-operation with the plotters against British
supremacy in that quarter of the world. It was far more probable that
a rich woman who drew some part of her revenues from factories on the
coast might be combining business with the desire to obtain news of
Warden at first hand. At any rate, the girl fondly hoped they might
never meet again, and she trusted to the strength of her own story,
supplemented by a letter from Captain Mortimer to the Governor, to
place her beyond the reach of misrepresentation.
But her troubles, instead of diminishing, became even more pronounced
when she called at Government House. Both she and Lord Fairholme were
entirely ignorant of local conditions. Neither of them knew that Lagos,
though the chief West African port, and practically the only safe
harbor on the Guinea Coast, was the capital of an administration quite
separate from that of North and of South Nigeria. To reach Old Calabar,
the headquarters of Warden's service, they must take a long journey
down the coast and penetrate some forty miles into the Niger delta.
Captain Mortimer, in all probability, thought she was aware of this
vital distinction, but, at the outset, Evelyn almost felt that she had
undertaken a useless task.
Her manifest distress at an unpleasing discovery won her the sympathy
of the deputy Governor of Lagos, his chief having crossed from the
island to the mainland only the day before. But sympathy could not
altogether cloak a skepticism that was galling in the extreme. He
was fully acquainted with the position of affairs in the sister
protectorate, he said. He appreciated Captain Mortimer's motives in
wishing to acquaint the Government of Nigeria with certain curious
circumstances which might or might not be connected with tribal
uneasiness in the Benuë River districts, but the fact remained that all
was quiet now in that region.
"Owing to Captain Warden's unfortunate disappearance," he went on,
"another commissioner visited Oku. He found matters there in a fairly
settled state. The people were cultivating their lands with greater
assiduity than such semi-cannibals usually display, and this is a sure
sign of content in a West African community. Indeed, Captain Forbes
is now about to return to headquarters. A few companies of Hausa
constabulary, who were moved to more convenient centers in case a
strong column was required for an expedition to the Benuë, are going
back to their original cantonments. The incident is ended."
The official tone was blandly disconcerting. Evelyn was aware that
the deputy Governor looked on her somewhat in the light of a runaway
schoolgirl, who had no reason whatever to bother her pretty head about
the business of a prosperous and thriving colony.
"You seem to imply that the Home authorities acted in a panic," she
said, wondering if it were really true that Warden and the men he had
seen in London were laboring under a delusion.
"No. They misread the motives of the Nigeria administration in
curtailing Captain Warden's furlough--that is all. There undoubtedly
were rumors of some border disturbances. The people in that region
hinted that the Oku men were arranging what they term a Long Ju-ju.
There was also a trading activity on the part of our neighbors
that gave rise to unpleasant suspicions. To be forewarned is to be
forearmed, and His Excellency the Governor regarded Captain Warden as
the man who could best deal with and remove any causes of discontent.
Within the last two months, however, all unfavorable symptoms have
vanished, and Oku is now as quiet as Old Calabar, or Lagos itself."
"I am glad of it," she said earnestly. "It is far from my wish to
figure as a messenger of strife. May I revert to a more personal
matter? If Captain Warden has succeeded in crossing the Sahara, when
and where may I reasonably expect to hear of him?"
The deputy Governor stroked his chin. He was a kind-hearted man, and
circumstances had prepared him for that question.
"It is hard to say," he answered, "Assuming he reaches Timbuktu in
safety, he can follow that course of the Upper Niger, through what is
known as the Dahomey hinterland, until he arrives at Ilo, the first
town in the British sphere of influence in that direction. Thence
to the sea, at this season, the river is navigable. If he makes for
Lagos--having been ordered here in the first instance--he might strike
overland from Jebbu to the railhead at Ibadan, but if he sticks to the
river and goes to his own headquarters, by remaining here you should
obtain telegraphic information of his arrival at a town called Lokoja,
situated at the junction of the Niger and the Benuë."
He paused. His brief review conveyed no hint to his hearer of the
tremendous difficulties any man must overcome ere he reached the
comparative civilization of the telegraph, and he flinched from the
task of enlightening her.
"Is it quite certain," he asked, "that Captain Warden went ashore at
Rabat?"
The astonishment in Evelyn's face was almost sufficient answer.
"Unless every one in some Government department in London has gone mad,
it is quite certain," she cried. "Did not an officer from Nigeria go to
meet him at Cape Coast Castle, and is it not evident that he went to
Hassan's Tower to obtain the ruby I have told you of?"
The official smiled. He had effectually distracted her thoughts from
the far more embarrassing topic of Warden's chances of reaching Nigeria
alive.
"One learns to distrust circumstantial evidence, Miss Dane. Have you
heard that the passenger on the _Water Witch_ was known as Mr. Alfred
Williams? Yes? Well, we do not know Captain Warden. We have no means
here of identifying the baggage landed by the captain of the _Water
Witch_ when he reported the Rabat incident. Could you recognize any of
Captain Warden's belongings?"
"No," said Evelyn blankly--"that is, I fear not."
"You mentioned a gourd. I have not seen the thing myself, but one of my
assistants says that a most remarkable object of that nature was found
in one of the missing man's boxes."
"Ah, I should know that anywhere," and she shuddered at the
recollection of the evil face whose appearance had so strangely
synchronized with the stormy events of her recent life.
"Well, have you any objection to examining the gourd now? If it is the
undoubted article you picked up in the Solent, it goes far to prove
that Captain Warden did really take passage on the _Water Witch_."
"I cannot imagine how you can think otherwise," she declared. "Of
course it was he!"
"There is no harm in making sure," he said, having already decided to
entrust to his wife the trying duty of making known to this charming
girl the almost certain fact that her lover was long since dead.
The calabash was brought and taken from its canvas wrapper. Oddly
enough, mildew had formed on its bright lacquer, and the sheen of the
mosaic eyes was dulled. It had lost some of its artistic power, and was
far from being the terrifying creation that scared her so badly when
first she saw it on the deck of the _Nancy_.
"Yes, that is it," she said. "You see, this crown is really a lid, and
the piece of vellum, or parchment, was hidden inside. It is not there
now, yet it is more than likely that Captain Warden kept them both
together."
The servant who had brought the calabash was sent back to search for
the tattooed skin. He soon returned with it, and the deputy Governor
examined the two curios with manifest interest.
"It is not native work," he said. "I have never seen anything just like
it, even in museums at home."
Moved by an impulse which she could never afterwards explain, Evelyn
asked if both the gourd and the parchment might be given to her.
"They are really mine," she explained sadly. "Captain Warden asked
me to accept the carved head, as it was I who discovered it. But I
was afraid of it then. Now, I should be pleased to have it in my
possession. It brought us together in the first instance. Perhaps it
may do the same thing a second time."
"Nigeria is the home of the ju-ju--may this fetish prove a lucky one!"
said the official gravely. "Take it, by all means, Miss Dane, but let
no native see it, or you will attract a notoriety that I am sure you
would dislike. Meanwhile, I shall telegraph to Old Calabar asking for
news, though I should certainly have heard if Warden had turned up
already."
That same afternoon the deputy Governor's wife called on Evelyn, and
invited her to come and stay at her house, urging that she would find
residence in a private family vastly preferable to the hotel in which
she had passed the previous night. For fully three weeks she lived
with this most friendly and hospitable lady. By degrees, as they
became more intimate, her new acquaintance gathered the threads of the
unusual story in which the girl figured so prominently. Similarly, as
Evelyn gained more knowledge of African affairs, she could not help
but discover that it would be nothing less than a miracle if Warden
ever reached Nigeria. The difficulties facing even a well-equipped
expedition on the desert route were so great that all but the most
enthusiastic explorers shrank from them. How, then, could one white
man, accompanied by a solitary Hausa, hope to overcome them? The deputy
Governor scouted the idea that Warden could raise a caravan at Bel
Abbas. He was dubious about the incidents reported from Lektawa, but
he made no secret of the utter improbability that Warden would have
the means of buying camels and hiring men for the dangerous journey
outlined by Captain Mortimer. And, to complete Evelyn's dismay, the
Southern Nigeria administration sent the most positive assurances that
Warden had not been heard of in the upper river districts.
She learned incidentally that Mrs. Laing had gone to Lokoja in a river
steamer. Her hostess believed that Rosamund had found out the latest
version of Warden's adventures, and cherished a faint hope that even
yet she might forestall Evelyn. No small consideration would take her
so far into the interior, especially as the journey was both risky and
useless.
"But that need not trouble you at all, my dear," said her outspoken
friend. "If Captain Warden lives, you can rest assured that my husband
will hear of him long before Mrs. Laing hears. I am afraid that if news
comes at all, it will reach us in the form of a native rumor that a
white man died of fever away up there beyond the hills. It is always
fever--never a spear thrust or a quantity of powdered glass mixed
with a man's food. The natives are loyal enough to each other in that
respect. Even when they know the truth, it is almost impossible to get
them to tell it."
So now it was death, and not life, that was talked of, and Evelyn lived
on in dry-eyed misery until Fairholme hinted one day that she ought to
return home, as the climate was beginning to affect her health.
There were not lacking indications that the merry-souled little peer
had quickly reconciled himself to the loss of Mrs. Laing. He was the
most popular man in Lagos, and he hardly ever visited Evelyn when he
did not assure her that he was "havin' a giddy time with the dear
girls." Yet she knew that he was only waiting until the last hope of
Warden's escape from the desert must be abandoned. When that hour came,
and she was prepared to take ship for England, Fairholme would ask her
to marry him.
The belief became an obsession. To get away from it, to cut herself
wholly adrift from painful associations, she offered her help to
an American Baptist missionary and his wife who were going up the
Benuë. They tried to dissuade her, pointing out the hardships and
positive dangers of the undertaking and the humdrum nature of the
nursing, teaching, and doctoring that constituted the lot of a medical
missionary in West Africa. Finally, they consented, but stipulated that
she should give her new career a six months' trial.
Fairholme protested, and stormed, and was only prevented from proposing
on the spot by Evelyn's placid statement that no matter what the future
might decide, she should not be happy unless she had visited the
little-known land to which her lover had given the best years of his
life.
The reference to Warden effectually sealed his lips. He hastened to the
club, asked a man to dine with him, drank the larger part of a bottle
of champagne, and mournfully informed his friends that he had never
enjoyed a moment's real fun since he ceased to be hard up.
So Evelyn said good-by to the hospitable people who entertained her
at Lagos, and made the long voyage up the great river that perplexed
mankind during so many centuries. Even yet its whole course has not
been surveyed, and it has important tributaries that are unknown beyond
their confluence with the main stream. But the river steamer followed
the established trade route through Old Calabar and Asabao and Idah
to Lokoja; thence a steam launch took the small party of Europeans up
the Benuë to Ibi, and they completed the journey in a roofed boat of
shallow draft manned by krooboys.
The girl seemed now to have left behind the cares and troubles of
the outer world. Busying herself with the daily life of the mission
compound--once a stockaded trading-station and noted center for the
distribution of gin, but now a peaceful hive of simple tuition and
industry--she soon experienced a calm sense of duty accomplished that
had certainly been denied her in the Baumgartner household. At Lagos
she had received one letter from Beryl, who complained bitterly of her
"desertion." A police patrol-boat brought her a letter from home, in
which her stepmother expressed the strongest disapproval of her new
departure as announced by a hurried note sent from Lagos. And that was
all. The links that bound her with England were completely snapped.
She might almost be the kidnapped Domenico Garcia, of whom she thought
occasionally when some chance aspect of a negro's face startled her by
its close resemblance to the black mask on the calabash.
Mindful of the Lagos official's warning, she never showed the carved
head to any one. Not even Mr. and Mrs. Hume, the mission couple, knew
that it was in her possession.
She had been nearly two months in Kadana, as the group of houses and
huts in the clearing by the side of the yellow Benuë was called, when
an apparently trivial incident upset the placid routine of the mission.
One evening, just before sunset, a ju-ju man, fearsomely bedaubed,
and decked with an amazing headdress and skirt of scarlet feathers,
came into the native section of the compound. He cut off the head of
an unhappy fowl that he carried with him, sprinkled its warm blood in
a circle on the ground, chanted some hoarse incantation, and vanished
into the bush.
The white people saw him from a distance. They happened to be standing
on the veranda of an old factory used as a schoolhouse and dwelling,
and Mr. Hume was greatly annoyed by the witch-doctor's visit.
"This will unsettle every native for a week or two," he said, eying
the man's antics with evident disfavor. "Those fellows are a far
more enduring curse to Africa than the gin traffic. Governments can
legislate gin out of existence, but they cannot touch ju-ju."
"We are doing something in that direction here," said Evelyn, glancing
over her shoulder at the rows of woolly-headed little black figures in
the class-room.
"Yes, we are educating the children, but their parents will undo
to-night all that we have accomplished since our return. Look at
Bambuk. He has mixed with Europeans during the past ten years, yet he
is white with terror."
It was an odd phrase to use with regard to a negro, but it was quite
accurate. Bambuk, interpreter, head servant, and factotum-in-chief to
the mission, who was peering through the doorway at the proceedings of
the ju-ju man, showed every sign of alarm when he saw the fowl-killing
ceremony. His ebony face, usually shining and jovial looking, became
livid and drawn. His eyes glistened like those of a frightened animal.
Turning for a second to make sure that the children were not listening,
he drew near and whispered:
"Oku man make war ju-ju. Him say all black people lib for bush, or dem
King of Oku nail ebery one to tree w'en he burn mission."
Bambuk could speak far better English than that. The fact that he had
reverted so thoroughly to the jargon of the krooboy proved the extent
of his fear.
Hume affected to make light of the witch-doctor and his threats.
"Go and tell him to stop his nonsense", he said. "Say I have a bale of
cotton here which I brought especially from Lagos as a present for King
M'Wanga."
But before Bambuk could descend the broad flight of steps leading from
the veranda, the fetish performance was at an end and its chief actor
had rushed off among the trees.
Evelyn felt a chill run through her body, though the air was hot and
vapor-laden.
"Is M'Wagna the name of the King of Oku?" she asked.
"I believe so. I have been absent nearly eight months, as you are
aware, but I haven't heard of any change in the local dynasty."
"Do you think it likely that he has ever visited England?"
"Most improbable," said Hume. "He is an absolute savage. I have seen
him only once, and I should be sorry to think that my life depended on
his good will. But why did you imagine he might have been in England?"
"Because a native of that name came there with two others last August."
"We have been visited by ju-ju men before, Charles," put in Mrs. Hume.
"Yes. Generally they come begging for something they want--usually
drugs--which they pretend to concoct themselves out of a snake's liver
or the gizzard of a bird. Don't lay too much stress on Bambuk's fright.
He is a chicken-hearted fellow at the best. If there is really any
likelihood of a native disturbance I shall send him with you and Miss
Dane down the river----"
"I shall not go without you, dear," said Mrs. Hume.
"Nor I--unless both of you come," answered Evelyn.
Hume laughed constrainedly.
"You will both obey orders, I hope," he said, but he did not urge the
matter further at the moment.
They were eating their evening meal when the distant tapping of a drum
caught their ears. It was not the rhythmical beating of a tom-tom by
some musically-inclined bushman. It much more closely resembled the
dot and dash code of the Morse alphabet, or that variant of it which
Private Thomas Atkins, in a spasm of genius, christened "Umty-iddy."
Heard in the stillness of the forest, with not a breath of air stirring
the leaves of the tallest trees, and even the tawny river murmuring
in so low a note that it was inaudible from the mission-house, this
irregular drum-beating had a depressing, almost a sinister effect.
It jarred on the nerves. It suggested the unseen and therefore the
terrible. At all costs they must find out what it signified.
Bambuk was summoned. He was even more distraught than during the
fetish performance of two hours earlier.
"Dem Oku drum play Custom tune," he explained. "Dem Custom mean----"
"Do you savvy what they are saying?" broke in Hume sharply. He did not
imagine that his wife had discussed the habits of native potentates
with her youthful helper, and even she herself did not know the full
extent of the excesses, the sheer lust of bloodshed, hidden under a
harmless-sounding word.
"Savvy plenty. Dem drum made of monkey-skin--p'haps other kind of
skin--an' dem ju-ju man say: 'Come, come! Make sharp dem knife! Come!
Load dem gun! Come, den, come! Dem ribber (river) run red wid blood!'
Den dey nail some men to tree an' make dance."
The missionary did not check his assistant's recital. It was best that
the women should at least understand the peril in which they were
placed. The compound held not more than fifty able-bodied men, and
the only arms they possessed were native weapons. Hume's influence
depended wholly on his skill in treating the ailments of the people
and his patience in teaching their children not only the rudiments
of English but the simpler forms of handicraft. His experience as
an African missioner was not of long standing, but from the outset
he had consistently refused to own any firearm more deadly than a
shotgun. Hitherto he had regarded the Upper Benuë region as a settled
and fairly prosperous one. His cherished day-dream was that before
he died he might see the pioneer settlement at Kadana transmuted into
a well-equipped college and training school, whence Christianity and
science might spread their light throughout that part of Africa. It
shocked him now to think that all his work might be submerged under
a wave of fanaticism, yet he clung to the hope that the warlike
preparations of the men of Oku might mean nothing more serious than a
tribal quarrel. This had happened once before, and he stepped in as
arbitrator. By a liberal distribution of presents, including the whole
of the mission stock of wine and brandy, he sent away both parties
highly gratified with both his award and his method of arriving at it.
"There are war-drums beating in more than one place," said Evelyn, who
was listening in silence to the spasmodic tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, tap,
that voiced the dirge translated by Bambuk.
"Ah, you have hit on my unspoken thought," cried Hume. "Come, now,
Bambuk, are you not enlarging your story somewhat? Two chiefs make
war-palaver; isn't that the explanation?"
"Dem Oku drum," repeated the native, "all Oku drum. Dey call for Custom
to-night."
"What exactly _is_ Custom, Charles?" said Mrs. Hume.
"Unfortunately, it means in this instance an offering of human
sacrifice."
He saw no help for it. They must know, sooner or later, and his soul
turned sick at the thought of his wife and this gentle girl who
had thrown in her lot with theirs falling into the clutches of the
fetish-maddened bushmen. Each minute he grew more assured that some
unusual movement was taking place among the surrounding tribes. Even
to his untutored ear there was a marked similarity in the drumming,
and he determined that the two women should go down the river in the
mission canoe as soon as the moon rose. A crew of eight men could take
them to the nearest constabulary post, and within twenty-four hours a
steam launch would bring back an armed body of Hausas officered by an
Englishman. Till then, he would trust to Providence for the safety of
the people under his care. That he himself could desert the mission
never entered his mind. Not only would the settlement break up in
direst confusion the moment his back was turned, but the society's
houses and stores would be looted and destroyed, and the work of years
swept away in a single night.
He was considering what excuse would serve to get the women on board
the canoe, when the splash of paddles close at hand stirred all four to
sudden excitement. It was Bambuk who read instantly the meaning of this
unexpected sound. He rushed out, yelling words that proved how soon the
veneer of civilization can wear off the West African negro. Soon he
came back, looking sick with fear.
"Dem dam pagan nigger make off in dem canoe," he almost screamed. "Dey
savvy plenty too much bushman lib. We all be killed one-time."
Even Evelyn, new to the country and its ways, realized what this meant.
The river was their only highway. There were native tracks in plenty
through the dense forest, but to march along any one of them while
a hostile force was lying across every path was to court immediate
disaster. By running away from a peril which was only passive as yet,
they made it active. On the river they might escape; in the bush they
could not travel a mile except on native sufferance.
Hume tried bravely to minimize the force of this unlooked-for blow.
It was true the fugitives might be expected to carry the alarm to the
police post, but until the following night it was quite impossible for
succor to reach Kadana. And now they must all stand or fall by the
mission.
"I did not think any of our men would be such cowards," he said with
quiet sadness. "Let us go and pacify the others. When all is said and
done, we have harmed no one in Oku territory, but given relief to many
who were in pain. I still believe that this scare is unwarranted, and
our presence among our people will tend to calm them."
A minute later he was sorry he had not gone alone. Every hut in the
compound was empty. Nearly two hundred men, women, and children had
fled into the bush, preferring to obey the order of the ju-ju man
rather than defy him by remaining in the mission. Bambuk had not
been taken into their confidence because he was originally a Foulah
Mohammedan. The colony at Kadana was precisely what Bambuk had called
its members in his rage, for the Mohammedan negro looks down upon his
"pagan" brethren with supreme contempt. In a crisis such as that which
now threatened to engulf the mission, these nice distinctions of class
and creed are apt to spring into startling prominence.
Hume faced the situation gallantly.
"Another illusion shattered," he sighed. "Most certainly I did not
expect that all my people would desert me at the first hint of danger.
But we must make the best of it. Even now I cannot believe that the
king of Oku--if it really is he who has created this disturbance--can
contemplate an attack on Europeans. He has many faults, but he is not
a fool, and he knows quite well how swift and complete would be his
punishment if he interfered with us."
Mrs. Hume accepted her husband's views, and tried to look at matters
with the same optimism. Evelyn, curiously enough, was better informed
than even their native companion as to the serious nature of the
outbreak. She was convinced that Warden's theory was correct. Some
stronger influence than a mere tribal _émeute_ lay behind those
horrible drumbeats. The authorities had been completely hoodwinked. In
her heart of hearts she feared that Kadana shared its deadly peril that
night with many a stronger trading-post and station down the river.
Bambuk, quieting down from his earlier paroxysms of fear, seemed to
await his certain doom with a dignified fatalism. Even when he heard
the thud of paddles on the sluggish waters of the river he announced
the fact laconically.
"Bush man lib!" he muttered.
Perhaps the white faces blanched somewhat, and hearts beat a trifle
faster, but Hume alone spoke.
"Where?" he asked.
"On ribber--in dem war canoe."
They strained their ears, and soon caught the measured plashing. Then
Mrs Hume began to weep. Evelyn knelt by her side in mute sympathy. She
was too dazed to find relief in tears. For the moment she seemed to
be passing through a torturing dream from which she would soon awake.
Hume, who had gone to the door, came to his wife.
"Don't cry, Mary," he said. "That does no good--and--it breaks my
heart. I have not abandoned hope. God can save us even yet. Be not
afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that
they can do."
His voice was strong and self-reliant. Even Bambuk glanced at him with
a kind of awe, and thought, it may be, that the creed he had tried
dimly to understand was nobler than the mere stoicism that was the
natural outcome of his own fantastic beliefs. The negro was stupid with
terror, or he could not have failed to distinguish the steady hum of an
engine running at half speed.
And so they waited, while the thud of the paddles came nearer, until at
last the bow of a heavy craft crashed into the foliage overhanging the
bank, and they were rapt into a heaven of relief by hearing an English
voice.
"Hello, there!" it shouted. "Is this the Kadana Mission?"
Mrs. Hume straightway fainted, but Evelyn was there to tend her, and
Hume rushed down to the landing-place. The gleam of a moon rising
over some low hills was beginning to make luminous the river mist. He
was able dimly to note the difference between the pith hats of two
Europeans and the smart round caps of a number of Hausa policemen. And,
though a man of peace, he found the glint of rifle barrels singularly
comforting.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Well," said he who had spoken in the first instance, "I am Lieutenant
Colville of the constabulary, but I have brought with me the Earl of
Fairholme. Have you a lady named Dane, Miss Evelyn Dane, staying with
you?"
Hume, who wanted to fall on his knees and offer thanks to Providence,
managed to say that Evelyn Dane was certainly at Kadana at that moment.
"Ah, that's the ticket!" said another voice. "I suppose you can put us
up for the night? Any sort of shake-down will do, so long as we get
away from this beastly river. Sleepin' on board gives one the jim-jams,
eh, what?"