Etcham’s naming of Stone brought back to us all his tantalizing
story, his fascinating parents, their tragic death; the brilliance
of his college days; the dazzle of his millions; the promise of his
young manhood; his wide notoriety, so nearly real fame; his romantic
elopement with the meteoric authoress whose sudden cascade of fiction
had made her so great a name so young, whose beauty and charm were so
much heralded; the frightful scandal of the breach-of-promise suit
that followed; his bride’s devotion through it all; their sudden
quarrel after it was all over; their divorce; the too much advertised
announcement of his approaching marriage to the plaintiff in the
breach-of-promise suit; his precipitate remarriage to his divorced
bride; their second quarrel and second divorce; his departure from his
native land; his advent in the dark continent. The sense of all this
rushed over me and I believe Van Rieten felt it, too, as he sat silent.
Then he asked:
“Where is Werner?”
“Dead,” said Etcham. “He died before I joined Stone.”
“You were not with Stone above Luebo?”
“No,” said Etcham, “I joined him at Stanley Falls.”
“Who is with him?” Van Rieten asked.
“Only his Zanzibar servants and the bearers,” Etcham replied.
“What sort of bearers?” Van Rieten demanded.
“Mang-Battu men,” Etcham responded simply.
Now that impressed both Van Rieten and myself greatly. It bore out
Stone’s reputation as a notable leader of men. For up to that time no
one had been able to use Mang-Battu as bearers outside of their own
country, or to hold them for long or difficult expeditions.
“Were you long among the Mang-Battu?” was Van Rieten’s next question.
“Some weeks,” said Etcham. “Stone was interested in them and made up a
fair-sized vocabulary of their words and phrases. He had a theory that
they are an offshoot of the Balunda and he found much confirmation in
their customs.”
“What do you live on?” Van Rieten inquired.
“Game, mostly,” Etcham lisped.
“How long has Stone been laid up?” Van Rieten next asked.
“More than a month,” Etcham answered.
“And you have been hunting for the camp!” Van Rieten exclaimed.
Etcham’s face, burnt and flayed as it was, showed a flush.
“I missed some easy shots,” he admitted ruefully. “I’ve not felt ve’y
fit myself.”
“What’s the matter with your chief?” Van Rieten inquired.
“Something like carbuncles,” Etcham replied.
“He ought to get over a carbuncle or two,” Van Rieten declared.
“They are not carbuncles,” Etcham explained. “Nor one or two. He has
had dozens, sometimes five at once. If they had been carbuncles he
would have been dead long ago. But in some ways they are not so bad,
though in others they are worse.”
“How do you mean?” Van Rieten queried.
“Well,” Etcham hesitated, “they do not seem to inflame so deep nor so
wide as carbuncles, nor to be so painful, nor to cause so much fever.
But then they seem to be part of a disease that affects his mind. He
let me help him dress the first, but the others he has hidden most
carefully, from me and from the men. He keeps his tent when they puff
up, and will not let me change the dressings or be with him at all.”
“Have you plenty of dressings?” Van Rieten asked.
“We have some,” said Etcham doubtfully. “But he won’t use them; he
washes out the dressings and uses them over and over.”
“How is he treating the swellings?” Van Rieten inquired.
“He slices them off clear down to flesh level, with his razor.”
“What?” Van Rieten shouted.
Etcham made no answer but looked him steadily in the eyes.
“I beg pardon,” Van Rieten hastened to say. “You startled me. They
can’t be carbuncles. He’d have been dead long ago.”
“I thought I had said they are not carbuncles,” Etcham lisped.
“But the man must be crazy!” Van Rieten exclaimed.
“Just so,” said Etcham. “He is beyond my advice or control.”
“How many has he treated that way?” Van Rieten demanded.
“Two, to my knowledge,” Etcham said.
“Two?” Van Rieten queried.
Etcham flushed again.
“I saw him,” he confessed, “through a crack in the hut. I felt impelled
to keep a watch on him, as if he was not responsible.”
“I should think not,” Van Rieten agreed. “And you saw him do that
twice?”
“I conjecture,” said Etcham, “that he did the like with all the rest.”
“How many has he had?” Van Rieten asked.
“Dozens,” Etcham lisped.
“Does he eat?” Van Rieten inquired.
“Like a wolf,” said Etcham. “More than any two bearers.”
“Can he walk?” Van Rieten asked.
“He crawls a bit, groaning,” said Etcham simply.
“Little fever, you say,” Van Rieten ruminated.
“Enough and too much,” Etcham declared.
“Has he been delirious?” Van Rieten asked.
“Only twice,” Etcham replied; “once when the first swelling broke, and
once later. He would not let anyone come near him then. But we could
hear him talking, talking steadily, and it scared the natives.”
“Was he talking their patter in delirium?” Van Rieten demanded.
“No,” said Etcham, “but he was talking some similar lingo. Hamed
Burghash said he was talking Balunda. I know too little Balunda. I do
not learn languages readily. Stone learned more Mang-Battu in a week
than I could have learned in a year. But I seemed to hear words like
Mang-Battu words. Anyhow the Mang-Battu bearers were scared.”
“Scared?” Van Rieten repeated, questioningly.
“So were the Zanzibar men, even Hamed Burghash, and so was I,” said
Etcham, “only for a different reason. He talked in two voices.”
“In two voices,” Van Rieten reflected.
“Yes,” said Etcham, more excitedly than he had yet spoken. “In two
voices, like a conversation. One was his own, one a small, thin, bleaty
voice like nothing I ever heard. I seemed to make out, among the
sounds the deep voice made, something like Mang-Battu words I knew,
as _nedru_, _metebaba_, and _nedo_, their terms for
‘head,’ ‘shoulder,’ ‘thigh,’ and perhaps _kudra_ and _nekere_
(‘speak’ and ‘whistle’); and among the noises of the shrill voice
_matomipa_, _angunzi_, and _kamomami_ (‘kill,’ ‘death,’
and ‘hate’). Hamed Burghash said he also heard those words. He knew
Mang-Battu far better than I.”
“What did the bearers say?” Van Rieten asked.
“They said, ‘_Lukundoo, Lukundoo!_’” Etcham replied. “I did not
know that word; Hamed Burghash said it was Mang-Battu for ‘leopard.’”
“It’s Mang-Battu for ‘witchcraft,’” said Van Rieten.
“I don’t wonder they thought so,” said Etcham. “It was enough to make
one believe in sorcery to listen to those two voices.”
“One voice answering the other?” Van Rieten asked perfunctorily.
Etcham’s face went gray under his tan.
“Sometimes both at once,” he answered huskily.
“Both at once!” Van Rieten ejaculated.
“It sounded that way to the men, too,” said Etcham. “And that was not
all.”
He stopped and looked helplessly at us for a moment.
“Could a man talk and whistle at the same time?” he asked.
“How do you mean?” Van Rieten queried.
“We could hear Stone talking away, his big, deep-chested baritone
rumbling along, and through it all we could hear a high, shrill
whistle, the oddest, wheezy sound. You know, no matter how shrilly
a grown man may whistle, the note has a different quality from the
whistle of a boy or a woman or little girl. They sound more treble,
somehow. Well, if you can imagine the smallest girl who could whistle
keeping it up tunelessly right along, that whistle was like that, only
even more piercing, and it sounded right through Stone’s bass tones.”
“And you didn’t go to him?” Van Rieten cried.
“He is not given to threats,” Etcham disclaimed. “But he had
threatened, not volubly, nor like a sick man, but quietly and firmly,
that if any man of us (he lumped me in with the men), came near him
while he was in his trouble, that man should die. And it was not
so much his words as his manner. It was like a monarch commanding
respected privacy for a death-bed. One simply could not transgress.”
“I see,” said Van Rieten shortly.
“He’s ve’y seedy,” Etcham repeated helplessly. “I thought perhaps....”
His absorbing affection for Stone, his real love for him, shone out
through his envelope of conventional training. Worship of Stone was
plainly his master passion.
Like many competent men, Van Rieten had a streak of hard selfishness
in him. It came to the surface then. He said we carried our lives in
our hands from day to day just as genuinely as Stone; that he did
not forget the ties of blood and calling between any two explorers,
but that there was no sense in imperiling one party for a very
problematical benefit to a man probably beyond any help; that it was
enough of a task to hunt for one party; that if two were united,
providing food would be more than doubly difficult; that the risk
of starvation was too great. Deflecting our march seven full days’
journey (he complimented Etcham on his marching powers) might ruin our
expedition entirely.