I
M‘CRAE, walking up and down the stoep, and meditating on the strangeness
of life, was aware of the drumming which ushered in the dawn. In the
ears of James it awakened only memories of a recent terror; but M‘Crae,
more deeply learned in the ways of Africa, knew that it portended
something more than an echo of the night’s frenzy. The sound no longer
centred in the villages about the foot of Kilima ja Mweze. It came to
him from every point of the compass and from places where he had no idea
that there were villages at all. The rhythm of the music, again, no
longer followed the headlong triple time which had been beaten out by the
drums of the N’goma. He noticed that the rhythms were broken and very
varied: almost as if the hidden drummers were tapping a message in Morse
or some other recognised code. The change filled him with a subtle
anxiety: and in a little while he realised that he was not the only
person whom the sound had disturbed. On the edge of the compound he
heard African voices. Hamisi and Onyango and another M’luguru, a ragged
savage whose business it was to herd the mission goats, were talking
together in high-pitched voices. Determined, if he could, to find the
cause of this excitement, he slipped across the compound under the cover
of a hedge of young sisal, and saw that they were sitting in front of
their shanty. The boy Hamisi was engaged in polishing the long blade of
a Masai spear: and the word which emerged most clearly from their talk
was the Swahili, “Vita,” which by an inversion of sense peculiar to
Western ears has the meaning of “War.”
M‘Crae was troubled by this word, and, with it, the somewhat sinister
occupation which Hamisi was enjoying. He knew all about war: the
assegais of the Zulu, the Mauser bullets of the Boer snipers. Africa is
a land in which that fire has never ceased to smoulder: he had always
accepted it as part of the continent’s life. No more than that. He had
never dreaded it; but now it seemed to him that in some way his attitude
had been subtly changed. When he thought of war he began to think also
of Eva, and to realise that for a woman native warfare includes terrible
possibilities. Now, more than ever, it occurred to him that Destiny had
brought him famished to Luguru to fulfil the part of a protector, for
which she had already, brutally, almost disqualified him.
He wished that he could read the message of these disquieting drum-taps.
Most probably, he thought, they announced some forlorn hope of a native
rising already destined to wither before the German machine guns in the
slaughter of black hosts. He knew the history of German South-West and
the end of the Hereros. And he wondered—for he had lived so long in
Africa that he knew the humble ideals of its millions—why these people
should suffer our civilisation in the hail of Maxim fire. Yet, even
while he indulged this vein of wonder and pity, he realised that a
European community so small and so isolated as their little company at
Luguru might very well be exterminated in the first outburst. In his
years of wandering he had learnt that the best way of dealing with the
African is to be direct and truthful. He stepped out into the path, and
Hamisi, hearing his approach, pushed his spear into the hut and greeted
him with a very charming smile.
“I have heard you talking of the war,” said M‘Crae. “And I have heard
the drums say the same thing. What is this war?”
Hamisi smiled languidly, scratching his legs. “There is no war,” said
he.
“But I have heard all that you said. And you were making ready a spear.
You were not going to spear lions like the Masai. The Waluguru are not
brave enough for that. You had better tell me.”
The idea that his lie had been taken for what it was worth seemed to
please Hamisi. This time he laughed outright. If the _bwana_ knew that
there was a war, he said, why need he ask questions? The _Wasungu_
(Europeans) knew more about everything than the Waluguru. They only knew
that there was a war, and that they were going to fight.
“And who are you going to fight?” asked M‘Crae.
Hamisi smiled, but said he did not know; and when M‘Crae had questioned
him a little longer he became convinced that in this, at least, Hamisi
was speaking the truth. Somewhere in the world, somewhere in
Africa—perhaps no nearer than the northern fringe of the Sahara—the
smouldering flame of violence had flickered out. He did not know then
any more than did Hamisi, sharpening his spear, that these angry
drum-throbs were no more than the diminished echoes of the guns that were
battering Liège.
He went into the house to find Eva. James, it seemed, had fallen once
more into an uneasy and exhausted sleep. Even now his poor brain was
haunted by the memory of the night’s horrors; but the watching had told
so heavily on Eva that she thought she had better leave him for a little.
M‘Crae found her in the kitchen making coffee for breakfast. She spoke
in a whisper, as though she feared that her voice might be heard above
the clamour in James’ brain. “He’s sleeping, or at any rate he’s stopped
talking,” she said. She smiled quite bravely, but saw in a moment that
some new thing was troubling M‘Crae. “What’s the matter now?” she said.
“I had wanted to keep it to myself,” said he. “I don’t think we need
worry about it.”
“Nothing much worse could happen,” she said. “I think I could face
anything now. What is he going to do?”
“It has nothing to do with Godovius this time . . .”
“Then why did you frighten me?” she said.
“It’s war . . . there’s a war somewhere. I don’t know where. In
Tripoli, perhaps. The Waluguru know something about it; but I don’t
suppose they know more than I do. I don’t suppose Godovius knows.”
When he first spoke she had gone very pale; now her colour returned.
“It was too bad of you to frighten me like that,” she said. “I thought
you had heard something terrible about . . . him . . .”
They took breakfast together in the little room, and the atmosphere of
that meal had a peculiar quality of lightness; as though, indeed, they
had just weathered a violent thunderstorm, and were talking together in a
silence which made their voices sound small and unreal. By the time they
had finished their breakfast the sun had risen and filled the air with
golden light. They stood on the stoep together gazing out over the newly
awakened lands. Beneath the sun these lay in a vast and smiling
lethargy. Thus would they awake to-morrow and for many weeks to come.
Thus had they awakened for countless centuries before the ships of Sheba
came to seek their gold. M‘Crae gazed fondly: there was no wonder that
he loved Africa: but Eva was far less conscious of this revelation of
beauty than of the presence of the man at her side. Neither of them
broke the silence: but from within they heard the wailing sound of James’
voice, raised in complaint:
“_A voice was heard upon the high places . . . weeping and supplication . . .
weeping and supplication_ . . .”
Eva turned and left the side of M‘Crae. As she passed him she laid her
hand gently on his arm.
II
Into the heat of the day the rumble of war-drums never ceased. Their
sound contributed an uneasy background to the wanderings of James. It
was no matter for surprise that his night of exposure in the forest had
awakened the activities of the hosts of fever which slept in his veins.
Perhaps this was a blessing; for now his body was so shaken with ague or
burned with the alternate fire that the hot reality of his last horror no
longer filled his brain. Eva sat beside him. In the rare intervals of
lucid thought his mood was merely childish and querulous. M‘Crae, seeing
that there remained for him no sphere of usefulness in the house,
retired, as if by habit, to the shade of his _banda_, and began to busy
himself with the notes of his book.
He wrote in a cramped and undeveloped hand, but very seriously. Even in
the _banda_ he felt the heat of that pale sky. He wrote slowly, as one
would expect of a man for whom life was infinitely spacious and
leisurely, with long pauses between the sentences, in which, perhaps, he
was choosing the unwilling words, or even thinking of very different
things. At times, again, he would stop in the middle of a sentence,
remaining painfully still, as if he were listening. He listened, but
heard no sound beyond the thin, clear note of a grass country under a
tropical noon. Nothing more . . . and yet a curious instinct prompted
him to put out his hand for his Mannlicher, and lay it gently at his
side. He went on writing again. Again stopped and listened. He was not
happy. He wished now that he had kept to his post on the stoep within
call of Eva in James’ room. He gave the matter a moment of serious
thinking. It was a pity, he thought, that he had come into the _banda_,
where he could see nothing: for now there was no need of concealment, and
a man was a poor creature without the use of his eyes. His ears, indeed,
had been so long attuned to the condition of silence that they were quick
to notice the least sound of moving beast or bird and to distinguish
these from the noises which are made by men. Now he instinctively felt
that men were near. In this there was nothing essentially dangerous, for
Hamisi and the other boys might well be in the garden. But he knew that
Eva was tied to the bedside of James, and that no African, unless he were
going to steal, would enter the garden of a European, or work without
being told to do so. And so he wondered, feeling curiously insecure.
He decided that it would be best for him to see for himself. He raised
his body, very quietly, from the heap of sisal, and stole to the door of
the _banda_. By the time that he reached it he knew that he had made a
mistake in leaving his rifle behind. But then it was too late. A group
of armed Waluguru threw themselves upon him. They were so many that he
had no chance. In a moment he was thrown to the ground with a gag in his
mouth, while his arm and his legs were bound with a rope of sisal fibre.
He knew that it was no use struggling. And, after all, this was neither
more nor less than he had expected. The only thing which struck him as
strange was the costume of these Waluguru and the arms which they
carried. He couldn’t imagine that the Germans had trained such savages
for police, armed them with rifles, and put them into shorts and jerseys.
They dragged him along the avenue under the flamboyant trees, and in his
hurried passage the events of the morning suggested to him an incredible
solution. War . . . there was war. Not merely one of the black wars of
Africa, but a war of white men in which his own people were engaged. The
magnitude of the business, its possibilities in the wilds of Africa,
overwhelmed him. He thought of Eva. . . . If he had only guessed that
morning when they first heard the drums . . . if he had not been so
ridiculously unimaginative. . . . But now he could do nothing.
In front of the house Godovius was awaiting him. Behind him, in orderly
silence, stood another dozen of armed askaris. As the others, grunting,
dragged in the body of M‘Crae, the noise of this commotion reached Eva,
and she ran out on to the stoep. At first she didn’t see the bound
figure of M‘Crae. She saw only Godovius—Godovius in the white uniform of
the German colonial army: and the sight disturbed her, strangely enough,
not so much because he was the enemy whom she dreaded most, but because
he happened to be wearing the uniform which she had seen in the picture
which had first frightened her in his house. “That was all I saw,” she
said. “He was holding himself in the same military way, and looking so
important.”
He lost no time in coming to business. He clicked his heels and saluted.
“This is a serious matter, Miss Eva,” he said. “I am no longer here as
your friend and neighbour, but as a soldier of Germany. The Fatherland
imposes hard tasks upon us, but we have no alternative but obedience. It
is only this morning that the message has reached me. Our countries are
at war. This is the work of Russia and France. England, their dupe, has
had the insolence to join them. It is a bad day for England in Africa.
It is the end of England in Africa. Your brother and you and the man
Hare are my prisoners. You will appreciate the fact that I have nothing
to do with this personally. I only do my duty.”
Through this piece of deadly serious bombast Eva had stood bewildered.
When he mentioned the name of Hare she came suddenly, as it were, to
herself. She saw the body of M‘Crae lying bound in the dust. She saw
nothing else. She wanted to see that he wasn’t hurt. She hadn’t nursed
him so tenderly all those weeks for this. She saw the veins of his bound
arm standing out as thick as the cords which bound them. His face was
turned away from her. She hurried to his side. The askaris stood
between them with their bayonets. Godovius shook his head.
“Even now I see that you do not understand. This man is a prisoner of
war. However dear he may be to you, this is the fortune of war. I could
not help you to your desires if I would. You will see no more of him.
But even in war Germany is generous. The Germans do not make war on
women or on priests. You will stay here, for the present at any rate,
under my supervision. What the Government may do with you and your
brother later I do not know. The man Hare will be shot. That I do know.
But even so I shall not shoot him. I shall not shoot him unless you
misbehave. He is your hostage with me. But you will stay here. You
will give me your word that neither you nor your brother will leave the
mission nor attempt to communicate with others of our enemies. I must
see your brother about this. You will be good enough to lead the way.”
“You cannot see him,” she said. “He is ill, oh! very ill. He would not
be able to understand you. Even I don’t understand. I can’t understand
. . .”
He bowed gravely. “I am sorry to hear of your brother’s ill health. It
is the night air. The night air of the swamp is very poisonous to a
missionary. It was imprudent. I have noticed it before. But I will
take your word.”
He bowed again, and turned to his askaris. “Chekua,” he said. “Lift . . .”
They raised the lean body of M‘Crae, and set off down the hill-side.
Godovius came very near to Eva, so near that she shuddered. Again the
nightmare of the picture. . . . “Miss Eva,” he said, “between us there
should not be war. You see the man Hare goes to my house. He may
escape. . . . It is possible that he will escape . . . possible, but not
probable. If he should escape, what will you give me?”
III
The next few days were very terrible for Eva. Perhaps it was fortunate
for her that her brother needed so much attention and that his state
harrowed her sufficiently to keep her mind from the greater tragedy.
James made a very slow recovery, and she could not feel that she was
justified in telling him of a climax in their affairs which might fall
with devastating effect on a mind already torn by his adventure. Little
by little he began to talk more freely of this, and always with a
communicated awe. At first it seemed that he could never recover his
hopes, or his faith in himself. He was far too weak to feel that he
could ever return to the struggle: but in a little while he began to
realise that he must make a new beginning. Then, as the fever left his
body, and his mind became less perilously clear, the old impulse
gradually returned, and he began to make plans for the new campaign.
“This time,” he said, “I shall not be fighting in the dark. I think I
know the worst. Nothing could be worse . . . nothing. If only God will
give me strength. I must not be beaten. I’m only dealing with the same
thing as the prophets and the early Christians. If I were not quite so
utterly alone . . . And yet, if the trial is greater, so will be the
triumph.”
In the end she found he could speak to her almost dispassionately of his
adventure, although he never told her any details of the affair, and she
knew better than to ask him. Indeed she knew very well that when he
spoke to her it was really no more than a little attempt to share his
trouble with another creature, to evade the utter loneliness of which he
had complained, and that it didn’t matter to him whether she understood
him or no. All the time it was clear that he found the whole business in
retrospect rather thrilling, and even though he never once mentioned the
crowning horror of the night, he talked quite frankly of small things
which he remembered: of his passage of the M’ssente River under the
rising moon; of the coarse grasses which had cut his fingers. Indeed he
might well remember those, for his hands were still bandaged so that he
could not hold a book. The ragged wound on his forehead worried him: for
he could not be certain how he had come by it. “I remember nothing after
a certain point,” he said. “I know it seemed to me that they were all
rushing towards me. Perhaps I cried out, and they hadn’t seen me before.
And yet they must have known that I was there. The hill was full of
them. I just remember them all rushing towards me in the firelight. I
remember how white their eyes and their teeth were. And that’s all. Yes
. . . I think I must have cried out in spite of myself.”
And all the time that he spoke of these things she was thinking of
M‘Crae, wondering what enormities he might be suffering in the house of
Godovius. She did not realise herself how much she missed him, what a
stable and reassuring element in her life he had been. She supposed that
she would never see him again; and though this seemed no stranger to her
than the fact that they had ever met, she found it difficult to reconcile
herself to the prospect; for she had begun to think that nobody else in
the world could possibly look after him, remembering, with the greatest
tenderness, the time when he had been so dependent on her care. She had
never in her life known a man so intimately as M‘Crae. She didn’t
suppose that another man like him existed. The impression which she
recalled most fondly was that of his absolute frankness: the desperate
care which he had taken to make their relation free once and for all from
anything that was not strictly true. She was thankful that it had been
so. Musing on the strange story of his life, she was grateful to him for
having told her so much without extenuation or pleading. She would have
felt less happy if he had not cleared the way for their friendship by
abandoning the name which he had worn as a disguise.
From time to time, thinking of his captivity and of what she owed him,
the last words of Godovius would return to her: “If he should escape,
what would you give me?” She knew exactly what that meant: and when she
thought of it, even though the idea were so unspeakably horrible, she
couldn’t help fancying that after all she might trick Godovius, that she
might keep him to his side of the bargain and escape the fulfilment of
her own, very much as she had planned to do when first he had threatened
them. It seemed to her that this would be a natural thing to do: that if
she could screw up her courage to a certain point she might manage to
keep Godovius going and give M‘Crae at least the chance of escape. After
all, it was the sort of thing that a woman could easily do. It might
even be done without any too terrible risk. But always when she allowed
her thoughts to turn in this direction she would find herself peculiarly
conscious of the absent M‘Crae’s disapproval. She remembered how gravely
he had spoken to her when she had made her last confession. “It never
pays to put things off,” he had said, and even though she couldn’t
persuade herself that in this case it might not pay after all, she felt
that in taking so great a risk of failure and its consequences she would
not be as loyal to his ideals as he would have expected her to be. And
so, even though the project pestered her mind, she felt that she was
bound in honour to abandon it. He wouldn’t like it, she thought, and
that was enough. “I am not as good naturally as he thinks me,” she said
to herself. “Not nearly as good as he is.”
Once when she was sitting beside James’ bed and thinking as usual of
M‘Crae, the voice of her brother invaded her thoughts so suddenly that
she found herself blushing. He said: “I’ve just remembered. . . . On
the night when they brought me back there was somebody here. I asked you
who it was. . . . I remember asking. And you said it was a hunter, a
stranger who had turned up. You told me the name. Mac . . . Mac . . .
Mackay. . . . No, it wasn’t Mackay. I get things mixed up. Who was
it?”
“M‘Crae,” she said. “That was the name.”
“But what happened to him? I don’t remember. I’m sorry I didn’t see
him. Where did he go?”
“He went away next day,” she said.
“I hope you made him comfortable. It’s the least one can do. Where did
he go when he left us?”
“He went to Mr. Godovius’s house,” she said. It amazed her to find that
it was easy to speak the truth. M‘Crae would have approved of that, she
thought.
“I would have done anything to prevent him going to that house,” said
James.
“Yes,” she said. “It was a pity, but it couldn’t be helped. I shouldn’t
think any more about it. You were so very ill. And you couldn’t help
him going there.”
“I wonder if he is staying there still,” said James.
The irony of this conversation troubled her. She felt that if she spoke
another word about M‘Crae she must either go mad or tell James outright
the whole story of the fugitive. “But if I did,” she thought, “he
wouldn’t understand. He can’t do anything. It would only be a waste of
breath.” She felt that she would like to cry.
She was so lonely and bewildered. It seemed in these days as if she
couldn’t take things in. The imprisonment of M‘Crae meant so much more
to her than its cause, the European War which Godovius had so
impressively announced. She knew that England was at war with Germany:
that she and her brother, still happily ignorant of the whole trouble,
were in reality prisoners on parole: but for all that it didn’t seem to
her possible that this state could alter their position in any way.
Already, ever since they had been at Luguru they had been prisoners
serving an indefinite term of solitary confinement. She could not
realise what war meant to the rest of the world any more than to
themselves. Eventually, and bitterly, she knew. Nothing could be very
much more terrible to a woman than the prisons of Taborah; but at this
time the war didn’t seem to her a thing of pressing importance: it was no
more than a minor complication which might upset James if he knew of it
and make his recovery slower, and the excuse—that was the way in which
she regarded it—for M‘Crae’s imprisonment.
Yet, all the time, in the back of her brain, another indefinite plan was
maturing. If the liberty of M‘Crae might not be purchased by the offer
of a bribe which she could never bring herself to pay, there remained at
least a chance—how near or how remote she was quite unable to guess—of
rescuing him herself. If once she could manage to seek out the place in
which he was confined, it might be possible for her to help him to
escape. She remembered a few stories of this kind which she had read.
Women had done such things before. They might be done again. A knife, a
rifle and food, that was all that he would need. A knife was an easy
thing to find; and on the very day of his capture she had taken M‘Crae’s
Mannlicher from the _banda_ and hidden it beneath her bed.
As the days passed, and the sinister figure of Godovius failed to
reappear, this plan began to take a more definite shape. She determined
to make the most careful preparations for M‘Crae’s provision, and then,
when everything was ready, to go herself in search of the captive’s
prison. And now it seemed less necessary for her to be secret in her
planning; for James was still in his bedroom, while Hamisi and Onyango,
who had disappeared together with their subordinate Waluguru on the day
of M‘Crae’s arrest, had never since returned. Indeed she had been happy
to find that they stayed away, for now there was no doubt in her mind but
that they were in the hands of Sakharani as much as the forest people.
At length, having planned the matter in detail, she decided upon a day
for her adventure. It surprised her to find how little she found herself
dreading the event: it seemed as if, in this particular, she had almost
outgrown the possibility of fear. Her violent memory of the House of the
Moon no longer disturbed her. She was even prepared to meet Godovius.
Nothing mattered if only she might free M‘Crae.
The day which she chose for her attempt was the fourth after M‘Crae’s
arrest. During the interval she had never left the mission compound.
Now, leaving James in what seemed like a natural sleep, she left the
garden in the first cool of the evening at the back of the sisal hedge by
Mr. Bullace’s _banda_. The bush was very quiet in this hour. The
silence seemed to argue well for her success. She herself would be as
quiet as the evening.
She had chosen this unusual way of leaving the mission so that she might
not be seen by any lurking natives on the forest road. The smooth peak
of Kilima ja Mweze still served her for a guide, and feeling that she
could rely a little on her sense of direction, she had expected to enter
the forest at an unusual angle and make straight for the hill itself and
the house of Godovius without ever touching the zigzag path which climbed
the terraces. She stepped very quietly into the bush, and soon struck
one of those tenuous paths which the goats of the Waluguru make on the
hillsides where they are pastured. A matter of great luck this seemed to
her: for she knew that it must surely lead directly to some village in
the forest. She began to hurry, so that she might advance some way into
the forest before the light failed. She ran till she lost her breath,
and when she stopped and heard the beating of her own heart, she was
thrilled with a delicious anticipation of success. It was all very
adventurous, and her progress, so far, had seemed so secret that she
couldn’t help feeling that luck was with her.
It was not long before she was disillusioned. Emerging from the path in
the bush into a wider sandy lacuna, she found herself suddenly faced by
Hamisi, a transfigured Hamisi, clothed in the German colonial uniform,
and armed with a Mauser rifle. With him stood a second askari, one of
the Waluguru whom she did not know. Both of them smiled as though they
had been expecting her, showing the gap in the lower incisor teeth which
the Waluguru knock out in imitation of the Masai. Hamisi saluted her,
and she began to talk to him, much as a woman who talks in an
ingratiating way to a dog of which she is afraid. But from the first she
realised that it was no good talking. She guessed that these two men
were only part of a cordon of sentries drawn about the mission, and that
Godovius was relying on other things than the parole which she had broken
so lightly. It hadn’t struck her until that moment that she had actually
broken it. In a flash she began to wonder if M‘Crae would approve. It
was strange how this dour new morality of his impressed her even in this
emergency.
From the first she realised that her game was up. She saw how simple she
had been in underrating the carefulness of her enemy. “How he would
laugh at me,” she thought. “He” was M‘Crae. She knew very well that
Hamisi, for all his smiles, had orders not to let her pass. Indeed she
was rather frightened of this new and militant Hamisi. She made the best
of a bad job, and rated him soundly in kitchen Swahili for having left
her in the lurch when the bwana was ill. . . . Hamisi scratched his back
under the new jersey and smiled. He was evidently very proud of his
cartridge belt and rifle and the big aluminium water-bottle which he wore
slung over his shoulder.
In the failing light Eva made her way back to the mission. Rather a
pathetic return after her plans and hopes. In the dim kitchen at the
mission she saw the packet of food which she had prepared for M‘Crae.
She had put the strips of biltong and the biscuits with a tin of sardines
and a single cake of chocolate into a little linen bag. In spite of her
disappointment she could almost have smiled at her own simplicity.
For all that, the failure of this enterprise opened her eyes to a great
many things which she had stupidly missed. Hamisi in a burst of
confidence and pride in his equipment had told her that he was no longer
a house-boy but a soldier, a soldier of Sakharani; that Sakharani was
going to give him not five rupees a month but twenty; that he, being a
soldier, could have as many women as he liked wherever he went, with more
_tembo_ than he could drink, and _minge nyama_ . . . plenty of meat. It
became clear to Eva that Godovius was busy raising an armed levy of the
Waluguru. That was the meaning of many strange sounds which she had
heard in the forest but hardly noticed before: the blowing of a bugle,
and the angry stutter of rifle fire. She began remotely to appreciate
what war meant: how this wretched, down-trodden people had suddenly begun
to enjoy the privileges and licence of useful cannon-fodder. After that
evening she was conscious all the time of this warlike activity. All day
Godovius was drilling them hard, and at night she heard the rolling of
the drums, and sometimes saw reflected in the sky the lights of great
fires which they lighted in their camps. In the presence of this armed
force she wondered however she could have been so foolish as to think
that it was possible to rescue M‘Crae. She knew once and for all that
the idea of succeeding in this was ridiculous. The knowledge that she
and James were really prisoners began to get on her nerves. She could
not imagine what would be the end of all this. She almost wished,
whatever it might be, that the end would come soon. It came, indeed,
sooner than she had expected.