THE LEGEND OF HEU-HEU
Zikali stopped laughing and contemplated us with his hollow eyes.
“Who was it who first said that all men are fools?” he asked.
“I do not know, but I think it must have been a woman, a pretty woman
who played with them and found that it was so. If so, she was wise, as
all women are in their narrow way, which the saying shows, since they
are left out of it. Well, I will add to the proverb; all men are
cowards also in one matter or another, though in the rest they may be
brave enough. Further, they are all the same, for what is the
difference between you, Macumazahn, wise White Man who have dared death
a hundred times, and yonder little yellow ape?” Here he pointed to
Hans, lying upon his back, with rolling eyes and muttering prayers to a
variety of gods between his chattering teeth. “Both of you are afraid,
one as much as the other; the only difference being that the White Lord
tries to conceal his fear, whilst the Yellow Monkey chatters it out, as
monkeys do.
“Why are you so frightened? Just because by a common trick I show to
your eyes a picture of that which is in the minds of both of you. Mark
you again, not by magic but by a common trick which any child could
learn, if somebody taught it to him. I hope that you will not behave
like this when you see Heu-Heu himself, for if you do I shall be
disappointed in you and soon there will be two more skulls in that cave
of his. But then, perhaps, you will be brave; yes, I think so, I think
so, since never would you like to die remembering how long and loud I
should laugh when I heard of it.”
Thus the old wizard rambled on, as was his fashion when he wished to
combine his acrid mockery with the desire to gain space for thought,
till presently he grew silent and took some of the snuff which I had
brought him, for he had been engaged in opening the packet while he
talked, all the while continuing to watch us as though he would search
out our very souls.
Now, because I thought that I must say something, if only to show that
he had not frightened me with his accursed manifestations, or whatever
they were, I answered,
“You are right, Zikali, when you say that all men are fools, seeing
that you are the first and biggest fool among them.”
“I have often thought it, Macumazahn, for reasons that I keep to
myself. But why do you say so? Let me hear, who would learn whether
yours are the same as my own.”
“First, because you talk as though there were such a creature as
Heu-Heu, which, as you know well, does not live and never did; and
secondly, because you speak as though Hans and I would meet it face to
face, which we shall never do. So cease from such nonsense and show us
how to make pictures in the fire—an art, you tell us, any child can
learn.”
“If they are taught, Macumazahn, _if_ they are taught how. But were
I to do this, I should indeed be the first of fools. Do you think that
I wish to establish two rival cheats—you see, between ourselves, I give
myself my right name—in the land to trade against me? No, no, let each
keep the knowledge he has earned for himself, for if it becomes common
to all, who will pay for it? But why do you believe that you will never
stand face to face with Heu-Heu except in pictures on rock or fire?”
“Because he doesn’t exist,” I answered with irritation;
“and if he does, I suppose his home is a long way off and I cannot trek
without fresh oxen.”
“Ah!” said Zikali, “that reminds me again that those who told
me of how you refuged in the cave from the storm and the rest said that
you wanted more oxen. So, knowing that you would be in as great a hurry
to get to Heu-Heu as a young man is to find his first wife, I made
ready. The story you heard was quite true. A white trader did leave a
very fine team of footsore oxen in this neighbourhood, salted, every
one of them, which after three moons’ rest, are now fat and sound. I
will have them driven up to-morrow morning and take care of yours while
you are away.”
“I have no money to pay for more oxen,” I said.
“Is not the promise of Macumazahn better than any money, even the red
English gold? Does not the whole land know it? Moreover,” he added
slowly, “when you return from visiting Heu-Heu you ought to have plenty
of money—or, rather, of diamonds, which is the same thing—and
perhaps of ivory, though of that I am not so sure. No, I am not sure
whether you will be able to carry the ivory. If I do not speak truth I
will pay for the oxen myself.”
Now at the word “diamonds” I pricked up my ears, for just then all
Africa was beginning to talk about these stones; even Hans rose from
the ground and began once more to take interest in earthly things.
“That’s a fair offer,” I said, “but stop blowing
dust” (_i. e._, talking nonsense) “and tell me straight out
what you mean before it grows dark. I hate this kloof in the dark. Who
is Heu-Heu? And if he or it lives, or lived, where is Heu-Heu, dead or
alive? Also, supposing that there was or is a Heu-Heu, why do you,
Zikali, wish me to find him, as I perceive you do, who always have a
reason for what you wish?”
“I will answer the last question first, Macumazahn, who, as you say,
always have a reason for what I want you or others to do.”
Here he stopped and clapped his hands, whereon instantly one of his
great serving men appeared from the hut behind, to whom he gave some
order. The man darted away and presently was back with more of the skin
bags such as witch doctors use to carry their medicines. Zikali opened
one of these and showed me that it was almost empty, there being in it
but a pinch of brown powder.
“This stuff, Macumazahn,” he said, “is the most wonderful of
all drugs, even more wonderful than the herb called _taduki_ that can
open the paths of the past, with which herb you will become acquainted
one day. By means of it—I speak not of _taduki_ but of the powder in
the bag—I do most of my tricks. For instance, it was with a dust of it
that I was able to show you and the little yellow man the picture of
Heu-Heu in the flames just now.”
“You mean that it is a poison, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes, among other things, by adding another powder it can be made
into a very deadly poison; so deadly that as little of it as will lie
upon the point of a thorn will kill the strongest man and leave no
trace. But it has other properties also that have to do with the mind
and the spirit; never mind what they are; if I tried to tell you, you
would not understand. Well, the Tree of Visions from the leaves of
which this medicine is ground grows only in the garden of Heu-Heu and
nowhere else in Africa, and I got my last supply of it thence many
years ago, long before you were born, indeed, Macumazahn; never mind
how.
“Now I must have more, of those leaves, or what these Zulus call my
magic, which wise white men like you know to be but my tricks, will
fail me, and the world will say that the Opener-of-Roads has lost his
strength and turn to seek wiser doctors.”
“Then why do you not send and get some, Zikali?”
“Whom can I send that would dare to enter the land of Heu-Heu and rob
his garden? No one but yourself, Macumazahn. Ah! I read your mind. You
are wondering now if that be so, why I do not order that the leaves
should be brought to me from the place of Heu-Heu. For this reason,
Macumazahn. The dwellers there may not leave their hidden land; it is
against their law. Moreover, if they might they would not part even
with a handful of that drug, except at a great price. Once, a hundred
years ago” (by which, I suppose, he meant a long time), “I paid
such a price and bought a quantity of the stuff of which you see the
last in that bag. But that is an old story with which I will not
trouble you. Oh! many went and but two returned, and they mad, as those
are apt to be who have looked on Heu-Heu and left him living. If ever
you see Heu-Heu, Macumazahn, be sure to destroy him and all that is
his, lest his curse should follow you for the rest of your days.
Fallen, he will be powerless, but standing, his hate is very strong and
reaches far, or that of his priests does, which is the same thing.”
“Rubbish!” I said. “If there is any Heu-Heu, he is but a big
ape, and living or dead, I am not afraid of any ape.”
“I am glad to hear that, Macumazahn, and hope that you will always be
of the same mind. Doubtless it is only his picture painted on rock or
in the fire that frightens you, just as a dream is more terrible than
anything real. Some day you shall tell me which was the worse,
Heu-Heu’s picture or Heu-Heu himself. But you asked me other questions.
The first of them was, Who is Heu-Heu?
“Well, I do not know. The legend tells that once, in the beginning,
there was a people white, or almost white, who lived far away to the
north. This people, says the old tale, were ruled over by a giant, very
cruel and very terrible; a great wizard also, or cheat, as you would
call him. So cruel and terrible was he, indeed, that his people rose
against him, and strong as he might be, forced him to fly southwards
with some who clung to him or could not escape him.
“So south he came with them, thousands of miles, until he found a
secret place that suited him to dwell in. That place is beneath the
shadow of a mountain of a sort that I have heard spouted out fire when
the world was young, which even now smokes from time to time. Here this
people, who are named Walloo, built them a town after their northern
fashion out of the black stone which flowed from the mountain in past
ages. But their king, the giant wizard, continued his cruelties to them
forcing them to labour night and day at his city and Great House and a
cave in which he was worshipped as a god, till at last they could bear
no more and murdered him by night.
“Before he died, however, which he took long to do because of his
magic, he mocked them, telling them that not thus would they be rid of
him since he would come back in a worse shape than before and still
rule over them from generation to generation. Moreover, he prophesied
disaster to them and laid this curse upon them, that if they strove to
leave the land that he had chosen, and to cross the ring of mountains
by which it is enclosed, they should die, every one of them. This,
indeed, happened, or so I have heard, since if even one of them travels
down the river, by which alone that country can be approached from the
desert, and sets foot in the desert, he dies, sometimes by sudden
sickness, or sometimes by the teeth of lions and other wild beasts that
live in the great swamp where the river enters the desert, whither the
elephants and other game come to drink from hundreds of miles around.”
“Perhaps fever kills them,” I suggested.
“Maybe so, or poison, or a curse. At least, soon or late they die, and
therefore it comes about that now none of them leaves that land.”
“And what happened to the Walloos after they had finished off this kind
king of theirs?” I asked, for Zikali’s romantic fable interested
me. Of course, I knew that it was a fable, but in such tales, magnified
by native rumour, there is sometimes a grain of truth. Also Africa is a
great country, and in it there are very queer places and peoples.
“Something very bad happened, Macumazahn, for scarcely was their king
dead when the mountain began to belch out fire and hot ashes, which
killed many of them and caused the rest to fly in boats across the lake
that makes an island of the mountain, to the forest lands that lie
around. There they live to this day upon the banks of the river which
flows through the forest, the same that passes through the gorge of the
mountains into the swamp, and there loses itself in the desert sands.
So, at least, my messengers told me a hundred years ago, when they
brought me the medicine that grows in Heu-Heu’s garden.”
“I suppose that they were afraid to go back to their town after the
eruption was over,” I said.
“Yes, they were afraid, at which you will not wonder when you see it,
for when the mountain blew up the gases killed very many of them and
what is more, turned them to stone. Aye, there they sit, Macumazahn, to
this day, turned to stone, and with them their dogs and cattle.”
Now at this amazing tale I burst out laughing, and even Hans grinned.
“I have noted, Macumazahn,” said Zikali, “that in the
beginning it is you who always laugh at me, while in the end it is I
who laugh at you, and so I believe it will be in this case also. I tell
you that there those people sit turned to stone, and if it is not so,
you need not pay me for the oxen that I bought from the white man even
should you come back with your pockets full of diamonds.”
Now I bethought me of what happened at Pompeii, and ceased to laugh.
After all, the thing was possible.
“That is one reason why they did not return to their town, even when
the mountain went to sleep again, but there was another, Macumazahn,
that was stronger still. Soon they found that it was haunted.”
“Haunted! By what? By the stone men?”
“No, they are quiet enough, though what their spirits may be I cannot
tell you. Haunted by their king whom they had killed, turned into a
gigantic ape, turned into Heu-Heu.”
Now at this statement I did not laugh, although at first sight it
seemed much more absurd than that of the dead people who had been
petrified. For this reason: as I knew well, it is the commonest of
beliefs among savages, and especially those of Central Africa, that
dead chiefs, notably if they have been tyrants during their life, are
metamorphosed into some terrible animal, which thenceforward persecutes
them from generation to generation. The animal may be a rogue elephant
or a man-killing lion, or perhaps a very poisonous snake. But whatever
shape it takes, it always has this characteristic, that it does not die
and cannot be killed—at any rate, by any of those whom it afflicts.
Indeed, in my own experience I have come across sundry examples of this
belief among natives. Therefore, it did not strike me as strange that
these people should imagine their country to be cursed by the spirit of
a legendary tyrant turned into a monster.
Only in the monster itself I put no faith. If it existed at all
probably it would resolve itself into a large ape, or perhaps a gorilla
living upon an island in the lake where it had become marooned, or
drifted upon a tree in a flood.
“And what does this spirit do?” I asked Zikali incredulously.
“Throw nuts or stones at people?”
“No, Macumazahn. According to what I have been told, it does much more.
At times it crosses to the mainland—some say upon a log, some say by
swimming, some say as spirits can. There, if it meets any one, it
twists off his or her head” (here I bethought me of the picture in the
cave), “for no man can fight against its strength, or woman either,
because if she be old and ugly, it serves her in the same fashion, but
if she be young and well favoured, then it carries her away. The island
is said to be full of such women who cultivate the garden of Heu-Heu.
Moreover, it is reported that they have children who cross the lake and
live in the forest—terrible, hairy creatures that are half human, for
they can make fire and use clubs and bows and arrows. These savage
people are named Heuheua. They dwell in the forests, and between them
and the Walloos there is perpetual war.”
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes, one thing. At a certain time of the year the Walloos must take
their fairest and best-born maiden and tie her to an appointed rock
upon the shore of the island upon a night of full moon. Then they go
away and leave her alone, returning at sunset.”
“And what do they find?”
“One of two things, Macumazahn; either that the maiden has gone, in
which case they are well pleased, except those of them to whom she is
related, or that she has been torn to pieces, having been rejected by
Heu-Heu, in which case they weep and groan, not for her but for
themselves.”
“Why do they rejoice, and why do they weep, Zikali?”
“For this reason. If the maiden has been taken, Heu-Heu, or his
servants, the Heuheua, will spare them and his priests for that year.
Moreover, their crops will prosper and they be free from sickness. If
she has been killed, he or his servants haunt them, snatching away
other women, and they will have bad harvests; also fever and other ills
fall upon them. Therefore, the Offering of the Maiden is their great
ceremony, which, should she be taken, is followed by the Feast of
Rejoicing, and should she be rejected and slain, by the Fast of
Lamentation and the sacrifice of her parents or others.”
“A pleasant religion, Zikali. Tell me, is it one that pleases these
Walloos?”
“Does any religion please any man, Macumazahn, and do tears, want,
sickness, bereavement, and death please those who are born into the
world? For example, like the rest of us, you white people suffer these
things, or so I have heard; also you have your own Heu-Heu or devil who
claims such sacrifices and yet avenges himself upon you. You are not
pleased with him, still you go on making your sacrifices of war and
blood and all wickedness in return for what he did to you, thereby
binding yourselves to him afresh and confirming his power over you, and
as you do, so do we all. Yet if you and the rest of us would but stand
up against him, perhaps his strength might be broken, or he might be
slain. Why, then, do we continue to sacrifice our maidens of virtue,
truth, and purity to him, and how are we better than those who worship
Heu-Heu, who do so to save their lives?”
I considered his argument, which was subtle for a savage, however old
and instructed, to have evolved from his limited opportunities of
observation, and answered rather humbly,
“I do not suppose that we are better at all.” Then to change the
subject to something more practical, I added, “But what about those
diamonds?”
“The diamonds! Oho! the diamonds, which, by the way, I believe are one
of the offerings that you white people make to your own Heu-Heu. Well,
these people seem to have plenty of them. Of course, they are useless
to them, as they do not trade. Still, the women know that they are
pretty, and fasten them about themselves in little nets of hair after
polishing them upon stone, because they do not know how to make holes
in them, being so hard, and cannot set them in metals. Also they stick
them in the clay of their eating-dishes before these are dried, making
pretty patterns with them. It seems that these stones and others that
are red, are washed down by the river from some desert across which it
flows above, through a tunnel in the mountains, I believe. At any rate,
they find them in plenty in the gravel on its banks, which they set the
children to sift in a closely woven sieve of human hair, or in some
such fashion. Stay, I will show you what they are like, for my
messengers brought me a fistful or two many years ago,” and he clapped
his hands.
Instantly, as before, one of his servants appeared, to whom he gave
certain instructions. The man went, and presently returned with a
little packet of ancient, wrinkled skin that looked like a bit of an
old glove. This he untied and gave to me. Within were a quantity of
small stones that looked and felt like diamonds, very good diamonds, as
I judged from their colour, though none of them were large. Also among
them was a sprinkling of other stones that might have been rubies,
though of this I could not be sure. At a guess I should have estimated
the value of the parcel at £200 or £300. When I had
examined them, I offered them back to Zikali, but he waved his hand and
said,
“Keep them, Macumazahn; keep them. They are no good to me, and when you
come to the land of Heu-Heu, compare them with those you will find
there, just to show yourself that in this matter I do not lie.”
“When I come to the land of Heu-Heu!” I exclaimed indignantly.
“Where, then, is this land, and how am I to reach it?”
“That I propose to tell you to-morrow, Macumazahn, not to-night, since
it would be useless to waste time and breath upon the business until I
know two things: first, whether you will go there, and secondly,
whether the Walloos will receive you if you do go.”
“When I have heard the answer to the second question, we will talk of
the first, Zikali. But why do you try to make a fool of me? These
Walloos and the savage Heuheuas with whom they fight, I understand,
dwell far away. How, then, can you have the answer by to-morrow?”
“There are ways, there are ways,” he answered dreamily, then seemed
to go into a kind of doze with his great head sunk upon his breast.
I stared at him for a while, till, growing weary of the occupation, I
looked about me and noted that of a sudden it was growing dusk. Whilst
I did so I began to hear screechings in the air: sharp, thin
screechings such as are made by rats.
“Look, Baas,” whispered Hans in a frightened voice, “his
spirits come,” and he pointed upwards.
I did look, and far above, as though they were descending from the sky,
saw some wide-winged, flittering shapes, three of them. They descended
in circles very swiftly, and I perceived that they were bats, enormous
and evil-looking bats. Now they were wheeling about us so closely that
twice their outstretched wings touched my face, sending a horrid thrill
through me; and each time that a creature passed, it screeched in my
ear, setting my teeth on edge.
Hans tried to beat away one of them from investigating him, whereon it
clung to his hand and bit his finger, or so I judged from the yell he
gave, after which he dragged his hat down over his head and plunged his
hands into his pockets. Then the bats concentrated their attention upon
Zikali. Round and round him they went in a dizzy whirl which grew
closer and closer, till at last two of them settled on his shoulders
just by his ears, and began to twitter in them, while the third hung
itself on to his chin and thrust its hideous head against his lips.
At this point in the proceedings Zikali seemed to wake up, for his eyes
opened and grew bright, also with his skinny hands he stroked the bats
upon his shoulders as though they were pet birds. More, he seemed to
speak with the creature that hung to his chin, talking in a language
which I could not understand, while it twittered back the answers in
its slate-pencil notes. Then suddenly he waved his arms and all three
of them took flight again, wheeling outwards and upwards, till
presently they vanished in the gloom.
“I tame bats and these are quite fond of me,” he said by way of
explanation, then added, “Come back to-morrow morning, Macumazahn, and
perhaps I shall be able to tell you whether the Walloos wish for a
visit from you, and if so, to show you a road to their country.”
So we went, glad enough to get away, since the Opener-of-Roads, with
his peculiar talk and manifestations, as I believe they call them in
spiritualistic circles, was a person who soon got upon one’s nerves,
especially at nightfall. As we stumbled down that hateful gorge in the
gloom, Hans asked,
“What were those things that hung to Zikali’s shoulders and
chin?”
“Bats, very large bats. What else?” I answered.
“I think a great deal else, Baas. I think that they are his familiars
whom he is sending to those Walloos, just as he said.”
“Do you believe in the Walloos and the Heuheua then, Hans? I
don’t.”
“Yes, I do, Baas, and what is more, I believe that we shall visit them,
because Zikali means that we should, and who is there that can fight
against the will of the Opener-of-Roads?”