THE CHASE
I suppose that I swooned for a minute or two. At any rate I remember a
long and very curious dream, such a dream as is evolved by a patient
under laughing gas, that is very clear and vivid at the time but
immediately afterwards slips from the mind’s grasp as water does from
the clenched hand. It was something to the effect that all those
hundreds of skeleton elephants rose and marshalled themselves before
me, making obeisance to me by bending their bony knees, because, as I
quite understood, I was the only human being that had ever escaped from
Jana. Moreover, on the foremost elephant’s skull Hans was perched like
a mahout, giving words of command to their serried ranks and explaining
to them that it would be very convenient if they would carry their
tusks, for which they had no further use, and pile them in a certain
place—I forget where—that must be near a good road to facilitate their
subsequent transport to a land where they would be made into billiard
balls and the backs of ladies’ hair-brushes. Next, through the figments
of that retreating dream, I heard the undoubted voice of Hans himself,
which of course I knew to be absurd as Hans was lost and doubtless
dead, saying:
“If you are alive, Baas, please wake up soon, as I have finished
reloading Intombi, and it is time to be going. I think I hit Jana in
the eye, but so big a beast will soon get over so little a thing as
that and look for us, and the bullet from Intombi is too small to kill
him, Baas, especially as it is not likely that either of us could hit
him in the other eye.”
Now I sat up and stared. Yes, there was Hans himself looking just the
same as usual, only perhaps rather dirtier, engaged in setting a cap on
to the nipple of the little rifle Intombi.
“Hans,” I said in a hollow voice, “why the devil are you here?”
“To save you from the devil, of course, Baas,” he replied aptly. Then,
resting the gun against the stone, the old fellow knelt down by my side
and, throwing his arms around me, began to blubber over me, exclaiming:
“Just in time, Baas! Only just in time, for as usual Hans made a mess
of things and judged badly—I’ll tell you afterwards. Still, just in
time, thanks be to your reverend father, the Predikant. Oh! if he had
delayed me for one more minute you would have been as flat as my nose,
Baas. Now come quickly. I’ve got the camel tied up there, and he can
carry two, being fat and strong after four days’ rest with plenty to
eat. This place is haunted, Baas, and that king of the devils, Jana,
will be back after us presently, as soon as he has wiped the blood out
of his eye.”
I didn’t make any remark, having no taste for conversation just then,
but only looked at poor Marût, who lay by me as though he was sleeping.
“Oh, Baas,” said Hans, “there is no need to trouble about him, for his
neck is broken and he’s quite dead. Also it is as well,” he added
cheerfully. “For, as your reverend father doubtless remembered, the
camel could never carry three. Moreover, if he stops here, perhaps Jana
will come back to play with him instead of following us.”
Poor Marût! This was his requiem as sung by Hans.
With a last glance at the unhappy man to whom I had grown attached in a
way during our time of joint captivity and trial, I took the arm of the
old Hottentot, or rather leant upon his shoulder, for at first I felt
too weak to walk by myself, and picked my path with him through the
stones and skeletons of elephants across the plateau eastwards, that
is, away from the lake. About two hundred yards from the scene of our
tragedy was a mound of rock similar to that on which Jana had appeared,
but much smaller, behind which we found the camel, kneeling as a
well-trained beast of the sort should do and tethered to a stone.
As we went, in brief but sufficient language Hans told me his story. It
seemed that after he had shot the Kendah general it came into his
cunning, foreseeing mind that he might be of more use to me free than
as a companion in captivity, or that if I were killed he might in that
case live to bring vengeance on my slayers. So he broke away, as has
been described, and hid till nightfall on the hill-side. Then by the
light of the moon he tracked us, avoiding the villages, and ultimately
found a place of shelter in a kind of cave in the forest near to Simba
Town, where no people lived. Here he fed the camel at night, concealing
it at dawn in the cave. The days he spent up a tall tree, whence he
could watch all that went on in the town beneath, living meanwhile on
some food which he carried in a bag tied to the saddle, helped out by
green mealies which he stole from a neighbouring field.
Thus he saw most of what passed in the town, including the desolation
wrought by the fearful tempest of hail, which, being in their cave,
both he and the camel escaped without harm. On the next evening from
his post of outlook up the tree, where he had now some difficulty in
hiding himself because the hail had stripped off all its leaves, he saw
Marût and myself brought from the guest-house and taken away by the
escort. Descending and running to the cave, he saddled the camel and
started in pursuit, plunging into the forest and hiding there when he
perceived that the escort were leaving us.
Here he waited until they had gone by on their return journey. So close
did they pass to him that he could overhear their talk, which told him
they expected, or rather were sure, that we should be destroyed by the
elephant Jana, their devil god, to whom the camelmen had been already
sacrificed. After they had departed he remounted and followed us. Here
I asked him why he had not overtaken us before we came to the cemetery
of elephants, as I presumed he might have done, since he stated that he
was close in our rear. This indeed was the case, for it was the head of
the camel I saw behind the thorn trees when I looked back, and not the
trunk of an elephant as I had supposed.
At the time he would give me no direct answer, except that he grew
muddled as he had already suggested, and thought it best to keep in the
background and see what happened. Long afterwards, however, he admitted
to me that he acted on a presentiment.
“It seemed to me, Baas,” he said, “that your reverend father was
telling me that I should do best to let you two go on and not show
myself, since if I did so we should all three be killed, as one of us
must walk whom the other two could not desert. Whereas if I left you as
you were, one of you would be killed and the other escape, and that the
one to be killed would not be _you_, Baas. All of which came about as
the Spirit spoke in my head, for Marût was killed, who did not matter,
and—you know the rest, Baas.”
To return to Hans’ story. He saw us march down to the borders of the
lake, and, keeping to our right, took cover behind the knoll of rock,
whence he watched also all that followed. When Jana advanced to attack
us Hans crept forward in the hope, a very wild one, of crippling him
with the little Purdey rifle. Indeed, he was about to fire at the hind
leg when Marût made his run for life and plunged into the lake. Then he
crawled on to lead me away to the camel, but when he was within a few
yards the chase returned our way and Marût was killed.
From that moment he waited for an opportunity to shoot Jana in the only
spot where so soft a bullet would, as he knew, have the faintest chance
of injuring him vitally—namely, in the eye—for he was sure that its
penetration would not be sufficient to reach the vitals through that
thick hide and the mass of flesh behind. With an infinite and wonderful
patience he waited, knowing that my life or death hung in the balance.
While Jana held his foot over me, while he felt me with his trunk,
still Hans waited, balancing the arguments for and against firing upon
the scales of experience in his clever old mind, and in the end coming
to a right and wise conclusion.
At length his chance came, the brute exposed his eye, and by the light
of the clear moon Hans, always a very good shot at a distance when it
was not necessary to allow for trajectory and wind, let drive and
_hit_. The bullet did not get to the brain as he had hoped; it had not
strength for that, but it destroyed this left eye and gave Jana such
pain that for a while he forgot all about me and everything else except
escape.
Such was the Hottentot’s tale as I picked it up from his laconic,
colourless, Dutch _patois_ sentences, then and afterwards; a very
wonderful tale I thought. But for him, his fidelity and his bushman’s
cunning, where should I have found myself before that moon set?
We mounted the camel after I had paused a minute to take a pull from a
flask of brandy which remained in the saddlebags. Although he loved
strong drink so well Hans had saved it untouched on the mere chance
that it might some time be of service to me, his master. The
monkey-like Hottentot sat in front and directed the camel, while I
accommodated myself as best I could on the sheepskins behind. Luckily
they were thick and soft, for Jana’s pinch was not exactly that of a
lover.
Off we went, picking our way carefully till we reached the elephant
track beyond the mound where Jana had appeared, which, in the light of
faith, we hoped would lead us to the River Tava. Here we made better
progress, but still could not go very fast because of the holes made by
the feet of Jana and his company. Soon we had left the cemetery behind
us, and lost sight of the lake which I devoutly trusted I might never
see again.
Now the track ran upwards from the hollow to a ridge two or three miles
away. We reached the crest of this ridge without accident, except that
on our road we met another aged elephant, a cow with very poor tusks,
travelling to its last resting place, or so I suppose. I don’t know
which was the more frightened, the sick cow or the camel, for camels
hate elephants as horses hate camels until they get used to them. The
cow bolted to the right as quickly as it could, which was not very
fast, and the camel bolted to the left with such convulsive bounds that
we were nearly thrown off its back. However, being an equable brute, it
soon recovered its balance, and we got back to the track beyond the
cow.
From the top of the rise we saw that before us lay a sandy plain
lightly clothed in grass, and, to our joy, about ten miles away at the
foot of a very gentle slope, the moonlight gleamed upon the waters of a
broad river. It was not easy to make out, but it was there, we were
both sure it was there; we could not mistake the wavering, silver
flash. On we went for another quarter of a mile, when something caused
me to turn round on the sheepskin and look back.
Oh Heavens! At the very top of the rise, clearly outlined against the
sky, stood Jana himself with his trunk lifted. Next instant he
trumpeted, a furious, rattling challenge of rage and defiance.
“Allemagte! Baas,” said Hans, “the old devil is coming to look for his
lost eye, and has seen us with that which remains. He has been
travelling on our spoor.”
“Forward!” I answered, bringing my heels into the camel’s ribs.
Then the race began. The camel was a very good camel, one of the real
running breed; also, as Hans said, it was comparatively fresh, and may,
moreover, have been aware that it was near to the plains where it had
been bred. Lastly, the going was now excellent, soft to its spongy feet
but not too deep in sand, nor were there any rocks over which it could
fall. It went off like the wind, making nothing of our united weights
which did not come to more than two hundred pounds, or a half of what
it could carry with ease, being perhaps urged to its top speed by the
knowledge that the elephant was behind. For mile after mile we rushed
down the plain. But we did not go alone, for Jana came after us like a
cruiser after a gunboat. Moreover, swiftly as we travelled, he
travelled just a little swifter, gaining say a few yards in every
hundred. For the last mile before we came to the river bank, half an
hour later perhaps, though it seemed to be a week, he was not more than
fifty paces to our rear. I glanced back at him, and in the light of the
moon, which was growing low, he bore a strange resemblance to a mud
cottage with broken chimneys (which were his ears flapping on each side
of him), and the yard pump projecting from the upper window.
“We shall beat him now, Hans,” I said looking at the broad river which
was now close at hand.
“Yes, Baas,” answered Hans doubtfully and in jerks. “This is very good
camel, Baas. He runs so fast that I have no inside left, I suppose
because he smells his wife over that river, to say nothing of death
behind him. But, Baas, I am not sure; that devil Jana is still faster
than the camel, and he wants to settle for his lost eye, which makes
him lively. Also I see stones ahead, which are bad for camels. Then
there is the river, and I don’t know if camels can swim, but Jana can
as Marût learned. Do you think, Baas, that you could manage to sting
him up with a bullet in his knee or that great trunk of his, just to
give him something to think about besides ourselves?”
Thus he prattled on, I believe to occupy my mind and his own, till at
length, growing impatient, I replied:
“Be silent, donkey. Can I shoot an elephant backwards over my shoulder
with a rifle meant for springbuck? Hit the camel! Hit it hard!”
Alas! Hans was right! There _were_ stones at the verge of the river,
which doubtless it had washed out in periods of past flood, and
presently we were among them. Now a camel, so good on sand that is its
native heath, is a worthless brute among stones, over which it slips
and flounders. But to Jana these appeared to offer little or no
obstacle. At any rate he came over them almost if not quite as fast as
before. By the time that we reached the brink of the water he was not
more than ten yards behind. I could even see the blood running down
from the socket of his ruined eye.
Moreover, at the sight of the foaming but shallow torrent, the camel, a
creature unaccustomed to water, pulled up in a mulish kind of way and
for a moment refused to stir. Luckily at this instant Jana let off one
of his archangel kind of trumpetings which started our beast again,
since it was more afraid of elephants than it was of water.
In we went and were presently floundering among the loose stones at the
bottom of the river, which was nowhere over four feet deep, with Jana
splashing after us not more than five yards behind. I twisted myself
round and fired at him with the rifle. Whether I hit him or no I could
not say, but he stopped for a few seconds, perhaps because he
remembered the effect of a similar explosion upon his eye, which gave
us a trifling start. Then he came on again in his steam-engine fashion.
When we were about in the middle of the river the inevitable happened.
The camel fell, pitching us over its head into the stream. Still
clinging to the rifle I picked myself up and began half to swim half to
wade towards the farther shore, catching hold of Hans with my free
hand. In a moment Jana was on to that camel. He gored it with his
tusks, he trampled it with his feet, he got it round the neck with his
trunk, dragging nearly the whole bulk of it out of the water. Then he
set to work to pound it down into the mud and stones at the bottom of
the river with such a persistent thoroughness, that he gave us time to
reach the other bank and climb up a stout tree which grew there, a
sloping, flat-topped kind of tree that was fortunately easy to ascend,
at least for a man. Here we sat gasping, perhaps about thirty feet
above the ground level, and waited.
Presently Jana, having finished with the camel, followed us, and
without any difficulty located us in that tree. He walked all round it
considering the situation. Then he wound his huge trunk about the bole
of the tree and, putting out his strength, tried to pull it over. It
was an anxious moment, but this particular child of the forest had not
grown there for some hundreds of years, withstanding all the shocks of
wind, weather and water, in order to be laid low by an elephant,
however enormous. It shook a little—no more. Abandoning this attempt as
futile, Jana next began to try to dig it up by driving his tusk under
its roots. Here, too, he failed because they grew among stones which
evidently jarred him.
Ceasing from these agricultural efforts with a deep rumble of rage, he
adopted yet a third expedient. Rearing his huge bulk into the air he
brought down his forefeet with all the tremendous weight of his great
body behind them on to the sloping trunk of the tree just below where
the branches sprang, perhaps twelve or thirteen feet above the ground.
The shock was so heavy that for a moment I thought the tree would be
uprooted or snapped in two. Thank Heaven! it held, but the vibration
was such that Hans and I were nearly shaken out of the upper branches,
like autumn apples from a bough. Indeed, I think I should have gone had
not the monkey-like Hans, who had toes to cling with as well as
fingers, gripped me by the collar.
Thrice did Jana repeat this manoeuvre, and at the third onslaught I saw
to my horror that the roots were loosening. I heard some of them snap,
and a crack appeared in the ground not far from the bole. Fortunately
Jana never noted these symptoms, for abandoning a plan which he
considered unavailing, he stood for a while swaying his trunk and lost
in gentle thought.
“Hans,” I whispered, “load the rifle quick! I can get him in the spine
or the other eye.”
“Wet powder won’t go off, Baas,” groaned Hans. “The water got to it in
the river.”
“No,” I answered, “and it is all your fault for making me shoot at him
when I could take no aim.”
“It would have been just the same, Baas, for the rifle went under water
also when we fell from the camel, and the cap would have been damp, and
perhaps the powder too. Also the shot made Jana stop for a moment.”
This was true, but it was maddening to be obliged to sit there with an
empty gun, when if I had but one charge, or even my pistol, I was sure
that I could have blinded or crippled this satanic pachyderm.
A few minutes later Jana played his last card. Coming quite close to
the trunk of the tree he reared himself up as before, but this time
stretched out his forelegs so that these and his body were supported on
the broad bole. Then he elongated his trunk and with it began to break
off boughs which grew between us and him.
“I don’t think he can reach us,” I said doubtfully to Hans, “that is,
unless he brings a stone to stand on.”
“Oh! Baas, pray be silent,” answered Hans, “or he will understand and
fetch one.”
Although the idea seemed absurd, on the whole I thought it well to take
the hint, for who knew how much this experienced beast did or did not
understand? Then, as we could go no higher, we wriggled as far as we
dared along our boughs and waited.
Presently Jana, having finished his clearing operations, began to
lengthen his trunk to its full measure. Literally, it seemed to expand
like a telescope or an indiarubber ring. Out it came, foot after foot,
till its snapping tip was waving within a few inches of us, just short
of my foot and Hans’s head, or rather felt hat. One final stretch and he
reached the hat, which he removed with a flourish and thrust into the
red cavern of his mouth. As it appeared no more I suppose he ate it.
This loss of his hat moved Hans to fury. Hurling horrible curses at
Jana he drew his butcher’s knife and made ready.
Once more the sinuous brown trunk elongated itself. Evidently Jana had
got a better hold with his hind legs this time, or perhaps had actually
wriggled himself a few inches up the tree. At any rate I saw to my
dismay that there was every prospect of my making a second acquaintance
with that snapping tip. The end of the trunk was lying along my bough
like a huge brown snake and creeping up, up, up.
“He’ll get us,” I muttered.
Hans said nothing but leaned forward a little, holding on with his left
hand. Next instant in the light of the rising sun I saw a knife flash,
saw also that the point of it had been driven through the lower lip of
Jana’s trunk, pinning it to the bough like a butterfly to a board.
My word! what a commotion ensued! Up the trunk came a scream which
nearly blew me away. Then Jana, with a wriggling motion, tried to
unnail himself as gently as possible, for it was clear that the knife
point hurt him, but could not do so because Hans still held the handle
and had driven the blade deep into the wood. Lastly he dragged himself
downwards with such energy that something had to go, that something
being the skin and muscle of the lower lip, which was cut clean
through, leaving the knife erect in the bough.
Over he went backwards, a most imperial cropper. Then he picked himself
up, thrust the tip of his trunk into his mouth, sucked it as one does a
cut finger, and finally, roaring in defeated rage, fled into the river,
which he waded, and back upon his tracks towards his own home. Yes, off
he went, Hans screaming curses and demands that he should restore his
hat to him, and very seldom in all my life have I seen a sight that I
thought more beautiful than that of his whisking tail.
“Now, Baas,” chuckled Hans, “the old devil has got a sore nose as well
as a sore eye by which to remember us. And, Baas, I think we had better
be going before he has time to think and comes back with a long stick
to knock us out of this tree.”
So we went, in double-quick time I can assure you, or at any rate as
fast as my stiff limbs and general condition would allow. Fortunately
we had now no doubt as to our direction, since standing up through the
mists of dawn with the sunbeams resting on its forest-clad crest, we
could clearly see the strange, tumulus-shaped hill which the White
Kendah called the Holy Mount, the Home of the Child. It appeared to be
about twenty miles away, but in reality was a good deal farther, for
when we had walked for several hours it seemed almost as distant as
ever.
In truth that was a dreadful trudge. Not only was I exhausted with all
the terrors I had passed and our long midnight flight, but the wound
where Jana had pinched out a portion of my frame, inflamed by the
riding, had now grown stiff and intolerably sore, so that every step
gave me pain which sometimes culminated in agony. Moreover, it was no
use giving in, foodless as we were, for Marût had carried the
provisions, and with the chance of Jana returning to look us up. So I
stuck to it and said nothing.
For the first ten miles the country seemed uninhabited; doubtless it
was too near the borders of the Black Kendah to be popular as a place
of residence. After this we saw herds of cattle and a few camels,
apparently untended; perhaps their guards were hidden away in the long
grass. Then we came to some fields of mealies that were, I noticed,
quite untouched by the hailstorm, which, it would seem, had confined
its attentions to the land of the Black Kendah. Of these we ate
thankfully enough. A little farther on we perceived huts perched on an
inaccessible place in a kloof. Also their inhabitants perceived us, for
they ran away as though in a great fright.
Still we did not try to approach the huts, not knowing how we should be
received. After my sojourn in Simba Town I had become possessed of a
love of life in the open.
For another two hours I limped forward with pain and grief—by now I was
leaning on Hans’ shoulder—up an endless, uncultivated rise clothed with
euphorbias and fern-like cycads. At length we reached its top and found
ourselves within a rifle shot of a fenced native village. I suppose
that its inhabitants had been warned of our coming by runners from the
huts I have mentioned. At any rate the moment we appeared the men, to
the number of thirty or more, poured out of the south gate armed with
spears and other weapons and proceeded to ring us round and behave in a
very threatening manner. I noticed at once that, although most of them
were comparatively light in colour, some of these men partook of the
negro characteristics of the Black Kendah from whom we had escaped, to
such an extent indeed that this blood was clearly predominant in them.
Still, it was also clear that they were deadly foes of this people, for
when I shouted out to them that we were the friends of Harût and those
who worshipped the Child, they yelled back that we were liars. No
friends of the Child, they said, came from the country of the Black
Kendah, who worshipped the devil Jana. I tried to explain that least of
all men in the world did we worship Jana, who had been hunting us for
hours, but they would not listen.
“You are spies of Simba’s, the smell of Jana is upon you” (this may
have been true enough), they yelled, adding: “We will kill you,
white-faced goat. We will kill you, little yellow monkey, for none who
are not enemies come here from the land of the Black Kendah.”
“Kill us then,” I answered, “and bring the curse of the Child upon you.
Bring famine, bring hail, bring war!”
These words were, I think, well chosen; at any rate they induced a
pause in their murderous intentions. For a while they hesitated, all
talking together at once. At last the advocates of violence appeared to
get the upper hand, and once more a number of the men began to dance
about us, waving their spears and crying out that we must die who came
from the Black Kendah.
I sat down upon the ground, for I was so exhausted that at the time I
did not greatly care whether I died or lived, while Hans drew his knife
and stood over me, cursing them as he had cursed at Jana. By slow
degrees they drew nearer and nearer. I watched them with a kind of idle
curiosity, believing that the moment when they came within actual
spear-thrust would be our last, but, as I have said, not greatly caring
because of my mental and physical exhaustion.
I had already closed my eyes that I might not see the flash of the
falling steel, when an exclamation from Hans caused me to open them
again. Following the line of the knife with which he pointed, I
perceived a troop of men on camels emerging from the gates of the
village at full speed. In front of these, his white garments fluttering
on the wind, rode a bearded and dignified person in whom I recognized
Harût, Harût himself, waving a spear and shouting as he came. Our
assailants heard and saw him also, then flung down their weapons as
though in dismay either at his appearance or his words, which I could
not catch. Harût guided his rushing camel straight at the man who I
presume was their leader, and struck at him with his spear, as though
in fury, wounding him in the shoulder and causing him to fall to the
ground. As he struck he called out:
“Dog! Would you harm the guests of the Child?”
Then I heard no more because I fainted away.