"THE DARK PLACES OF THE EARTH."
The sun is setting above the tropical forest--hot and red and smoky--his
fiery ball imparting something of a coppery molten hue to the vast seas
of luxuriant verdure, rolling, with scarce a break, on all sides, far as
the eye can reach. But beneath, in the dim shade, where the air is
choked by rotting undergrowth and tangled vegetation, the now slanting
rays are powerless to penetrate, powerless to dispel the steamy miasmic
exhalations. Silence, too, is the rule in that semi-gloom, save for here
and there the half-frightened chirp of a bird far up among the
tree-tops, or the stealthy rustle beneath as some serpent, or huge
venomous insect, moves upon its way. For among the decayed wood of
fallen tree trunks, and dry lichens and hoary mosses growing therefrom,
do such delight to dwell.
Beautiful as this shaded solitude is with its vistas of massive
tree-trunk and sombre foliage, the latter here and there relieved by
clusters of scarlet-hued blossoms, there is withal an awesomeness about
its beauty. Even the surroundings will soon begin to take on shape, and
the boles and tossing boughs, and naked, dead, and broken fragments
starting from the dank soil, assume form, attitude, countenance, in a
hundred divers contortions--gnome-like, grotesque, diabolical. Strange,
too, if the wayfarer threading the steamy mazes of these unending glades
does not soon think to hear ghostly whisperings in the awed silence of
the air, does not conjure up unseen eyes marking his every step--for the
hot moist depression is such as to weigh alike upon nerve and brain.
And now, through the sombre vistas of this phantom-evoking solitude,
faint and far comes a strange sound--a low, vibrating, booming hum,
above which, now and again, arises a shrill, long-drawn wail. The effect
is indescribably gruesome and eerie--in fact, terror-striking--even if
human, for there is an indefinable something, in sight, and sound, and
surrounding, calculated to tell, if telling were needed, that this is
indeed one of "the dark places of the earth."
But if the sinking beams of the orb of light fail to penetrate this
foliage and enshrouded gloom, they slant hot and red upon an open space,
and that which this space contains. Inclosed within an irregular
stockade--mud-plastered, reed-thatched--stand the huts of a native
village.
The noise which penetrated in faint eerie murmur to yon distant forest
shades is here terrific--the booming of drums, the cavernous bellowing
of the native horns, drowning rather than supporting the shrill yelling
chorus of the singers. For a great dance is proceeding.
Immediately within the principal gate of the stockade is a large open
space, and in this the dancers are performing. In a half circle in the
background sit a number of women and children, aiding with shrill nasal
voices the efforts of the "musicians."
The dancers, to the number of about a hundred, seem to represent the
warrior strength of the place. They are wild-looking savages enough with
their cicatrized and tattooed faces, and wool, red with grease and ochre
and plaited into tags, standing out like horns from their heads, giving
them a frightfully demoniacal aspect as they whirl and leap, brandishing
spears and axes, and going through the pantomime of slaying an enemy.
They are of fair physique, though tall and gaunt rather than sturdy of
build. And--is it a mere accident, or in accordance with some
custom--not one there present--whether among the truculent crew
executing the dance or among the women in the background, appears to
have attained old age.
The whole scene is sufficiently repulsive, even terrifying, to come upon
suddenly from the silent heart of the dark, repellent forest. But there
is yet another setting to the picture, which shall render it complete in
every hideous and horrifying detail. For the principal gate itself is
decorated with a complete archway of human heads.
Heads in every stage of horror and decay--from the white, bleached
skull, grinning dolefully, to the bloated features of that but lately
severed, scowling outward with an awful expression of terror and agony
and hate--an archway of them arranged in some grim approach to
regularity or taste. This dreadful gate is indeed a fitting entrance to
a devil's abode, and now, as the red, fiery rays of the sinking sun play
full upon it, the tortured features seem to move and pucker as though
blasted with the flame of satanic fires. A crow, withdrawing his beak
from the sightless eye-holes of one of the skulls, soars upward, black
and demon-like, uttering a weird, raucous croak.
But as the sun touches the far-away sky line the dance suddenly ceases.
In wild hubbub the fighting men stream out of the stockade, through the
awful archway of heads. They are followed by women, bearing
strange-looking baskets and great knives. All are in high spirits,
chattering and laughing among each other.
The forest on this side grows almost to the gate. Just where its shade
begins the crowd halts, clustering eagerly around two trees which stand
a little apart from the rest. But from one to the other of these two
trees is lashed a stout beam, such as butchers might use for hoisting
the carcass of a slain bullock. And look! below are oblong slabs of
massive wood, and upon them is blood. This is the cattle-killing place,
then, and these warriors are about to slaughter the material for a
feast!
Now there is more chatter and hubbub, and all faces are turned towards
the grim gate--are turned expectantly; for the cattle awaited. Then a
shout, an exclamation, goes up. The material for the feast is drawing
near.
The material for the feast! Heavens! No cattle this, but _human beings_!
Human beings! Bound, trussed, helpless, five human bodies are borne
along by their head and heels, and flung down anyhow at the place of
slaughter. The eyeballs of the victims are starting from their heads
with terror and despair as their glance falls upon the grisly
instruments of death. Yet no surprise is there, for they have seen it
all before.
Three of the five are old men. These are seized first, and, a thong
being made fast to their ankles, they are hauled up to the beam, where,
hanging head downwards, they are butchered like calves. And those who
are most active in at any rate preparing them for the slaughter, are
their own children--_their own sons_.
These go about their work without one spark of pity, one qualm of ruth.
Will not their own turn come in the course of years, should they not be
slain in battle or the chase in the interim? Of course. Why then heed
such vain sentiment? It is the custom. Old and useless people are not
kept among this tribe.
The other two, who are not old, but prisoners of war, suffer in like
manner; and then all five of the bodies are flung on to the blocks and
quartered and disjointed with astonishing celerity. And women bearing
the oblong baskets return within the stockade, passing through the
hideous gateway, staggering beneath the weight of limbs and trunks of
their slaughtered fellow-species. Within the open space great fires now
leap and crackle into life, roaring upward upon the still air, reddening
as with a demon-glow this hellish scene, and, gathering around, the
savages impatiently and with hungry eyes watch the cooking of the
disjointed members, and, hardly able to restrain their impatience,
snatch their horrible roast from the flames and embers before it is
much more than warmed through; and with laugh and shout the cannibal
orgy goes on, prolonged far into the night, the bones and refuse being
flung to the women in the background.
At last, surfeited with their frightful feast, these demons in human
shape drop down and sleep like brute beasts. And the full moon soaring
high in the heavens looks down with a gibing sneer in her cold cruel
face upon this scene of a shocking human shambles; and her light, so far
from irradiating this "dark place of the earth," seems but to shed a
livid sulphurous glare upon a very antechamber of hell.
The moon floats higher and higher above the tropical forest, flooding
the seas of slumbering foliage with silver light. Hour follows upon
hour, and in the stockaded village all is silent as with the stillness
of death. The ghastly remnants of that fearful feast lie around in the
moonbeams--human bones, picked clean, yet expressive in their shape,
spectral, as though they would fain reunite, and, vampire-like, return
to drain the life-blood of these human wolves who devour their own kind.
But the sleep of the latter is calm, peaceful, secure.
Secure? Wait! What are these stealthy forms rising noiselessly among the
undergrowth on the outskirts of the clearing? Are they ghosts? Ghosts of
those thus barbarously slain and of many others before them? The moonlit
sward is alive with flitting shapes, gliding towards the stockade,
surrounding it on all sides with a celerity and fixity of purpose which
can have but one meaning. And among them is the glint of metal, the
shining of rifle barrels and spear blades.
The inhabitants of that village are savages, and thus, for all their
flesh-gorged state of heavy slumber, are instinctively on the alert.
They wake, and rush forth with wild yells of alarm, of warning. But to
many of them it is the last sound they shall utter, for numberless forms
are already swarming over the stockade, and now the stillness is rent by
the roar of firearms. Dark, ferocious faces grin with exultation as the
panic-stricken inhabitants, decimated by that deadly volley, turn wildly
in headlong flight for the only side of the stockade apparently left
open. But before these arises another mass of assailants, barring their
way, then springing upon them spear in hand; and the fiendish
war-whistle screeches its strident chorus, as the broad spears shear
down through flesh and muscle; and the earth is slippery with blood,
ghastly with writhing and disemboweled corpses.
If this nest of man-eaters was hellish before in its bloodstained
horror, words fail to describe its aspect now. The savage shouts of the
assailants, the despairing screeches of women and children, who have
come forth only to find all escape cut off, the gasping groans of the
wounded and of the slain, the gaping gashes and staggering forms, and
ever around, grim, demon-like countenances, with teeth bared and a
perfect hell of blood-fury gleaming from distended eyeballs. All is but
another inferno-picture, too common here in the dark places of the
earth. It seems that in a very few minutes not a living being in that
surprised village will be left alive.
But now voices are raised in remonstrance, in command--loud voices,
authoritative voices--ordering a cessation of the massacre, for this is
no expedition of vengeance, but a slave-hunting party. In Swahili and
Zulu the leaders strive to curb this blood-rage once let loose among
their followers. But the savage Wangoni, who are the speakers of the
latter tongue and who constitute about half the attacking party, have
tasted slaughter, and their ferocity is well-nigh beyond control;
indeed, but for the fact of being allowed to massacre a proportion of
the inhabitants of each place attacked, they could not be enlisted for
such a purpose at all. Still their broad spears flash in the moonlight,
and all who are in the way feel them--combatants, shrieking women,
paralyzed, crouching children; and not until the leader has threatened
to turn his rifles upon them will these ferocious auxiliaries be
persuaded to desist, and then only sullenly, and growling like a pack of
disappointed wolves.
Fully one-half of the male inhabitants have been slain and not a few
women and children, and now, as the heavy, sulphurous fumes of powder
smoke roll forth on the still, solemn beauty of the night, and the
Wangoni, reluctantly quitting the congenial work of plunder and rapine,
drive into open space every living being they can muster, the two
leaders step forward, and with critical decision inspect the extent and
quality of their capture. Of the latter there are none but able-bodied,
for the sufficiently hideous reason already set forth. These are
drafted into gangs according to age or sex, and yoked together like
oxen, with heavy wooden yokes.
Upon the whole of this wild scene of carnage and massacre the principal
leader of the slave-hunters has gazed unmoved. Not a shot has he fired,
not deeming it necessary, so complete was the panic wherewith the
cannibal village was overwhelmed. Rather have his energies been devoted
to restraining the blood-thirst of his ferocious followers, for he looks
upon the tragedy with a cold commercial eye. Prisoners represent so many
saleable wares. If it is essential that his hell-hounds shall taste a
modicum of blood, or their appetite for that species of quarry would be
gone, it is his business to see that they destroy no more "property"
than can be avoided.
The force is made up of Swahili and negroid Arabs, and a strong
contingent of Wangoni--a Zulu-speaking tribe, turbulent, warlike, and to
whom such a maraud as this comes as the most congenial occupation in the
world.
The last-named savages are still looking through the reed huts in search
of food, arms, anything portable. If during their quest they happen upon
a terrified fugitive hoping for concealment, their delight knows no
bounds, for have they not the enjoyment of privily spearing such, away
from their leader's eye?
The said leader now gives the word to march, and as the moonlight pales
into the first grays of dawn the scene of the massacre becomes plain in
all its appalling detail. Corpses ripped and slashed, lying around in
every contorted attitude, among broken weapons and strewn about
articles of clothing or furniture. Everywhere blood--the ground is
slippery with it, the huts are splashed with it, the persons and weapons
of the raiders are all horrid with it; and in the midst that band of men
and women yoked like cattle, and with the same hopeless, stolid
expression now upon their countenances. Yet they are not dejected. Their
lives have been spared where others have been slain. But they are
slaves.
"Bid farewell to home, O foul and evil dogs who devour each other," jeer
the savage Wangoni, as these are driven forth. "_Whau!_ Ye shall keep
each other in meat on the way. Ha, ha! For in truth ye are as fat oxen
to each other," pointing with their broad spears to the gruesome trees
and crossbeam--the scene of the hideous cannibal slaughter. For the
Wangoni, by virtue of their Zulu origin, hold cannibalism in the deepest
horror and aversion.
These barbarians now, humming a bass war-song as they march, are in high
glee, for there are more villages to raid. And as the whole party moves
forth from the glade once more to plunge within the forest gloom, the
air is alive with the circling of carrion birds; and the newly risen sun
darts his first arrowy beam upon the scene of horror, lighting up the
red gore and the slain corpses, and the ghastly staring heads upon the
gateway. Even as his last ray fell upon a tragedy of blood and of
cruelty so now does his first, for in truth this is one of the "dark
places of the earth."