A STRANGE ALLY.
Evan rushed out from the interior of the house, rifle in hand.
"What's up? The natives?"
"We've got the gorilla, I think," said Arthur quietly.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash light. The three of
us started down the steps and approached the fallen figure cautiously.
As we drew near, we could hear it moaning. The moans were curiously
human. I glanced up at the sky. The last wisp of the cloud was just
passing before the face of the moon, and when I looked down again, the
figure was outlined in the pitiless glare of the moonlight.
Evan uttered an exclamation. The moaning figure was not that of the
gorilla. It was a man, a black man, in the monkey skin of a juju
priest, with all the amulets and charms of his calling strung about
him. Evan started forward and shot out a string of questions in the
local dialect. I could not catch a word, but Evan's voice was stern and
angry. The moaning witch doctor spoke feebly, his voice growing weaker
and weaker, and his words interrupted by gasps of pain. At last he
choked and coughed weakly and was still.
Evan turned to us in a towering passion.
"Those damned natives are going to try to rush us at dawn! The witch
doctor came to put a spell on us so they'd succeed. Oh, when I get at
the black animals----"
He burst out into a string of profanity. The slave owner in him had
come uppermost, and the news that his blacks were going to attack us
aroused his anger at their presumption more than his fear that they
might succeed. He stirred the dead figure with his foot.
"They dare to threaten me!" he rasped. "I'll shoot one man in every
four of them! I'll whip the rest until they can't stand. I'll----"
My old dislike of the man returned, I could not doubt his courage, but
I had never been particularly fond of the _servaçal_ system and had
their effort not imperiled the lives of the four of us, I would have
had the best of wishes for the natives in their attempt to liberate
themselves.
"We'd better decide how we're going to stand them off before we decide
how we're going to punish them," I remarked. "There are three of us.
There are at least six hundred of them."
Arthur suddenly turned with a start.
"Alicia's in the casa," he said sharply, "and the beast may come back."
He started for the house on a run. We heard his voice as he called
to Alicia and heard her answer. Evan and I followed more slowly,
discussing methods of protecting ourselves against the coming attack.
"There's one thing," I observed thoughtfully, "with the bush about the
clearing full of natives, the gorilla will either keep a safe distance
away--as is most likely--or else will have to fight his way through to
get to us."
"Perhaps," said Evan gloomily, his voice still full of anger toward the
blacks. "We'll worry about him when we have to. The important thing is
the siege we'll have to stand. If we can stop the first rush, I think
we'll be all right."
"We're all right for ammunition?" I asked.
He nodded. "I could outfit a small army from my gun chest and I've
ammunition to last a year."
We mounted the steps of the casa.
Alicia greeted us with a white face. "I can shoot," she told us both
bravely, "and I shan't mind shooting at these people."
"You shall shoot," said Evan grimly, "if they get a foothold in the
house. Otherwise there's no need. You know enough not to be taken
alive."
"I know," said Alicia quietly.
The last I saw of her for an hour or more, she was going through Evan's
assortment of firearms, picking out a light rifle for her own use and
another for Mrs. Braymore. She already had a small-caliber automatic
pistol hidden in her bosom.
For an hour or more we worked, moving the bundles Evan pointed out in
the storeroom to form a breastwork behind which the women would be
safe from stray shots. We tore up a section or so of flooring, too,
so we could fire down in case any of the blacks found a refuge from
our weapons beneath the house. Bars nailed across the openings at once
provided us with assurance that they could not climb up, and that we
would not accidentally fall through. We brought supplies of food and
water where they would be close at hand.
For close quarters, we were depending on repeating shotguns loaded with
buckshot. Three of us with those weapons should be able to stop almost
any number of blacks. These lay close beside us. We had our rifles and
our pistols in addition.
The drums were beating madly now. The high-pitched ululation that was
the blended note of all the frantic yelling came clearly to our ears.
When we had finished our preparations I went outside to listen. I
instantly realized that the drums were nearer, much nearer. The dogs
were excited and restless.
"We'd better get the dogs up from the ground," I suggested. "They'll
only be killed."
Evan went silently down and unleashed them. They were growling and
bristling, particularly those near the back. They seemed to realize the
imminence of danger.
I looked at my watch. It lacked two hours of dawn. The drums were
growing louder and louder, and the yelling more distinct and defiant.
From three sides the drums closed in on us, and from three sides
choruses of high-pitched yells informed us of the hatred of the blacks
for their masters. Evan interpreted as he caught some of the words.
"They say the juju has declared we are to be killed," he announced with
a faint smile. "We are to be slaughtered and our flesh boiled down
until the fat can be collected, when it will be used to light fires.
Pigs will feed upon us, and our bones will be scattered among the juju
priests of a thousand villages to tell them to rise and slay all white
men."
The drums came up to the very edge of the clearing, and their
thunderous voices boomed with a full-throated bellow across the open
space in a deafening volume of sound. In the moonlight, we became
conscious of darker bodies moving among the bush. Evan sighted from an
open window and with compressed lips fired. There was a mocking yell.
"They say our guns have been bewitched so we cannot harm them," he
informed us a second later. "Give me a shotgun."
The load of buckshot gave better results. Two or three shrieks of pain
announced its arrival. Then the drums boomed forth more loudly. Evan
fired again and again. There was a yell of rage at the third shot, when
the resonant voice of the huge drum became muted and a mere shadow of
itself.
"I was trying for the drum," he remarked. "They were brought from a
thousand miles inland, and there's no way to tell what price was paid
for that one."
The two other drums hastily shifted their positions, and recommenced
their devil's tattoo. Emboldened by the fury of sound, one or two of
the more daring spirits ventured to advance a little way out in the
clearing to howl maledictions upon us.
Arthur's rifle cracked spitefully, and mine followed. Two bold spirits
ceased to yell.
From time to time, as we saw an opportunity and a target in the
moonlight, we shot vengefully into the bush, and several times cries of
different timbre from the hysterical yelling of the blacks followed our
shots. Once or twice, too, I had that curious feeling of certitude that
follows some shots, when one is confident he has hit his mark, though
no cry came to assure me.
Evan fired again and again with his heavy shotgun, almost every deep
explosion being followed by a cry. The range was hardly more than a
hundred yards, and the buckshot carried that distance easily. Spreading
as it did, it had a daunting effect.
Our object in taking the initiative was solely that of dampening the
blacks' enthusiasm. Allowed to cheer themselves with yells, they
would make a rush that would be formidable in the extreme, but if we
began to inflict losses before their attack began, the edge of their
determination would be taken off. They would no longer believe in the
efficacy of their juju to compass our destruction, and we would have
a fraction of that psychological superiority that the white man must
possess in order to handle natives, the complete possession of which
enables a single fever-ridden white man to cow and rule ten thousand
blacks.
Evan made a tour of the house, to make sure that the natives were
equally reluctant to advance on all sides. We heard him fire twice
back there, and painful yells followed each shot. He rejoined us.
"I'm going to take the rear," he said briefly. "They're in the bush all
around. I'll hold them off easily. They'll make their main rush from
this side, so you two stay together."
Arthur's answer was a deliberate squeeze of his trigger. A yell
followed.
"At a hundred yards," he commented, looking up, "one can make good
practice in moonlight like this."
"Dawn soon," said Evan and went once more to the rear. We heard him
settling himself for the rush that we expected.
So far, there had been nothing but yells from the natives. We knew they
had some firearms, but ammunition is very valuable in the bush. Natives
are never supposed to have arms of precision, and when they possess
modern rifles, they have to keep them concealed lest they be taken away
by the Portuguese; but now and then a black boy will make off with a
rifle and a store of shells, and there are other sources of supply.
At that, though, rifles and ammunition are immensely valuable back in
the hill country. Up beyond the Hungry Country, I have known slaves to
be sold for three rifle cartridges apiece. In fact, my boy Mboka--now
run off in the bush with the rest of them--had cost me exactly six
.30-.30 shells. I had found him the slave of a portly Kuloga chieftain
who was about to sell him to a half-caste Arab for export to the Sudan.
I had wondered why the house servants did not clean out the gun chest
when they ran away in the middle of the night, but thanked my luck that
they failed to do so. Half a dozen rifles in the hands of the blacks
would have made matters awkward for us at close quarters. Off in the
bush we could have disregarded them, as the native custom is to fill
the barrel with slugs and fire from the hip. Anything like accuracy is
impossible to them, of course.
When the sky began to pale toward the east, however, they opened up. No
less than six firearms began to bellow at us, from an ancient fowling
piece of who knows what ancient lineage to a modern smokeless-powder
magazine rifle. The slugs and bullets tore through the flimsy walls of
the house, or else imbedded themselves with a thud in one of the posts
that supported the roof. Arthur and myself began to concentrate upon
those weapons. The black-powder arms showed their position at every
fire in the now growing dawnlight, and we fired vengefully at the puffs
of smoke.
The sky was growing lighter now. The stars above us were paling and
winking feebly in an attempt to outshine the sun. The first dim
grayness became nearly white. The east turned from pallid luminosity to
rich rose and then to gold. The gold, in its turn, faded to yellow, and
the first rays of the sun struck the tips of the highest trees about
the clearing. The drumming became fast and furious. The fires of the
guns in the bush ceased for a moment, and wild yelling began. We heard
Evan firing occasionally from the rear of the house. Now his shots came
more rapidly.
With a hideous yell, the fringe of bush about the casa erupted black
figures. Ancient spears, knobbed and gnarled war clubs, fiercely
pointed arrows, and occasional rusted and long-cherished firearms armed
the motley throng that ran yelling toward us.
Arthur dropped his rifle and took up the repeating shotgun by his side.
I took my stand at a window and opened on the advancing mob. In such a
mass it was impossible to miss, and the buckshot was deadly. If we had
had sawed-off shotguns, the loads would have spread more and inflicted
more damage, but as it was we had merely to pull the triggers to see
one or more figures crumple or spin half around and fall. In their
state of frenzy, that did not stop the blacks.
Evan's gun was booming from the rear of the house. Arthur's spoke with
a shattering roar. My own barked angrily. The drums in the bush were
pounding in a mad rhythm that made the universe a place of unbearable
sound. The yells, the shots, the cries, and the thunderous drumming
created an uproar in which I loaded my weapon and emptied it with a
sense of curious detachment. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore were behind the
breastwork we had made for them. I cannot speak for Mrs. Braymore, but
I glanced once at Alicia and saw her grimly holding her light rifle in
readiness.
The blacks came on. The losses we inflicted went unnoticed. They
swarmed up the rise on which the house was built. We took heavy toll
of them, but from sheer weight of numbers their casualties seemed
insignificant. Their yells were deafening as they swept up the last
twenty yards. I emptied my shotgun and began to use my two automatics.
A mass of black humanity flowed up the steps, though a gap in the
stream widened for a moment as Arthur poured the last shells from
his shotgun into them. They clambered the pillars that supported the
veranda and made for the windows.
At that distance, barely ten feet, we could not miss. The veranda
was a shambles. They could not live there. Arthur and myself with an
automatic in each hand swept the place. I heard a shot and a yell
behind me. One of the openings in the floor showed the barrel of an
ancient musket that was just falling back. Alicia had fired down the
opening and undoubtedly saved my life. The musket was aimed directly
for my back, and would have torn my head from my body.
There was a crashing, and an antique blunderbuss appeared through
a hole smashed in the flimsy side wall of the house. Arthur fired
quickly. Then I heard Evan cry out at the rear of the house. Before we
could move, there was an outburst of demoniacal, bestial screamings of
rage. To one who had once heard that sound, the noise was unmistakable.
The gorilla had appeared in a killing fury and was going for the
blacks, as their panic testified. In a moment the clearing was dotted
with running natives. They dared face our weapons, but the gorilla----
Evan's rifle was silent. There was an instant of almost unbearable
quietness. Then came a triumphant, horrible outcry from the beast. It
had slain.