The hour that followed the rattle of the anchor chain stamped on
Norah's brain the impression of a flood of talk, whose waves broke
over her head.
Her eyes were on Dick, white clad, tall and elegant, in the centre of
a sooty group, whose rags dripped with sweat and whose hands waved in
wild gesticulation. Her ears were assailed by the clamour raised by
captain and engineer, stokers and crew, gabbling in a dozen tongues
explanations of what had happened, conjectures of what might have
happened, prophecies of what would happen, while into the babble cut
Dick's sharp queries and criticism. Advice, questions, protests,
orders, oaths, exhortation rolled in a stream as muddy as the water
of the yellow river. Only the sinister figure of the lean Indian
passenger kept aloof and silent, contemptuous of past and future
alike.
At length the obese engineer detached himself from the agitated mob
and vanished below. Reappearing unexpectedly through a hatch, he
held out to Dick an armful of warm, distorted metal with the air of
an afflicted father submitting to a doctor the corpse of his
first-born.
The interruption had the effect of dispersing the conference. Still
plying him with questions, Dick led Alibaba aft. Norah, who had
little confidence in male brains unassisted, joined them.
As she listened, certain facts emerged. If not dangerous, the
situation was at least unpleasant. There seemed no doubt that the
_Mimi_ was immobile. Alibaba supported the engineer in insisting
that the engines (connecting rod, was it?) were damaged beyond his
power of repair.
'I said it was monstrous,' remarked Dick. 'Only niggers to run the
ship.' He turned to the Arab. 'Why can't you patch them up?' he
asked.
Alibaba spread his hands and gabbled apologetically. Norah gathered
from the polyglot flow that welding or brazing was necessary, and the
bellows of the boat's portable forge were under repair at Kigoma. In
any case the job was too big for the _Mimi's_ resources.
'Well, what do you mean to do about it?' asked Dick sourly.
Alibaba was silent. He foresaw that the solution he eventually
proposed would be ill-received. They must stay where they were till
the ship could be towed into Kigoma, 300 miles away.
The fellow's a fool,' said Dick. 'He doesn't know his job! Why not
rig a sail, man?'
Without replying Alibaba licked his finger and held it above his
head. Mildly he remarked that the dead calm would hold till the
rains broke. It might be weeks.
With much head-shaking he rejected a suggestion of Norah's, opining
that an attempt to tow the steamer behind her dinghy would end after
an hour in mutiny. 'Black fellow he say "too much work no good"' was
his comment.
A second fact had to be faced. Not only was the vessel stranded, but
no rescue could be expected from Kigoma or elsewhere for many days.
The _Mimi_ was not due at Kigoma for forty hours, and a further delay
of two or three days would not be sufficiently unusual to excite
attention. When she was a week overdue, alarm would be felt. But
even so, there was no British boat on the lake to send. Kigoma would
have to get in touch with Albertville across the water and ask the
loan of one of the three Belgian steamers. If the Belgians were
willing and a boat was available, she would have to cross the lake
and make slow progress close inshore, visiting each bay and natural
harbour, until she caught sight of the derelict.
Alibaba's estimate that relief could not be expected for at least
twelve days did not strike Norah as pessimistic.
'This'll learn me,' said Dick, 'to trespass into the Stone Age!' He
stared disconsolately across the blue water. A thought struck him:
'What about a dhow? Surely there are Arab dhows on the lake?'
Again Alibaba shook his head with the deprecatory tolerance of an
Anglican divine. Before the English took the land from the
Gerimani[1] there had been much trade, and fleets of dhows. But now
... in any case the calm before the rains would keep dhows beached in
their harbours. And why should a dhow visit this deserted bay?
[1] Germans.
Norah, who did not share Dick's depression and at first looked on the
breakdown as an exciting adventure, cast her eyes to the land, from
which, it seemed, must come their help. Would it not be easy to
despatch one of the crew to the nearest village bidding them send a
runner to the first white settlement with news of the plight of the
_Mimi_ and her passengers?
There were no villages, said Alibaba reluctantly, no natives, no
settlements. Sleeping sickness had wiped the coast clear of life.
In the old days smoke from the fires of fishing villages had shown
blue on the shore, but at present... He waved his hand in the
direction of the ruined tower, and Norah felt she understood
something of that tragedy.
Silence fell on the little group. It testified to the rugged nature
of the country that no one suggested a march inland or along the
shore. As if painted on the back-cloth of a stage, before their
faces rose the encircling wall of the dead volcano. Sheer cliffs
that any advance inland must scale. The broken formation, which
Norah had noticed from the lake, of spurs and buttresses, that
radiated inwards from the crater sides, interset with mountain
torrents and precipitous valleys, made progress parallel to the lake
almost impossible. Should the castaways be bold enough to attempt
either of these desperate marches, braving the risk of sleeping
sickness, where could they find carriers for their loads--tents,
cooking pots, ammunition, and food?
'The mouse has indeed fallen into the bucket,' thought Norah, as she
walked forward with Dick. Alibaba, crestfallen at the failure of his
charge, offering no cure but patience, retired in silence to the
engine-room.
Dick dropped heavily on to his bed.
'Well,' he said at last, 'it looks like staying here a fortnight till
we're rescued by a crowd of grinning Bulamatadi.'[2]
[2] Belgians.
'A fortnight will soon be over,' said Norah cheerfully. But she felt
a shadow had fallen between her and the sun. In a fortnight she had
hoped to be on the high seas, steaming towards Europe. It did not
seem so easy to escape from Africa.
Dick did not answer, misfortune had pricked his buoyancy.
'It's lucky we have got the oxen on board,' she went on. 'We've only
two days' food in the boxes, and I don't want you to go shooting with
S.S.[3] about...'
[3] Sleeping sickness.
She caught her breath in the middle of the sentence.
'Dick,' she cried. 'What idiots we are!' He did not look up.
'Dick, how far is it across the lake to the other side?'
'Forty or fifty miles,' he replied gloomily. 'We can't move a foot.'
'No, but the dinghy can!'
'What d'you mean?'
'With four oars we'd do it between dawn and dark! Or nearly.'
'What's the good?'
'You're not your brightest, dear... At the worst we'd be on the
route of the Belgian boats. At the best we'd strike a Belgian Boma
or mission.'
Dick's gloom was dispelled, and he hurried aft to requisition the
skipper's knowledge of the lake. In answer to his shouts Alibaba
emerged from the secret places of the ship. His smiling face
signalled to Norah that her plan was passed. Even the lean Indian
was interested. She wondered if he had at first been drugged with
hemp and the effects had now worn off.... What an interminable
amount of talk between Dick and the skipper! How men did talk!
'We start at dawn!' Dick greeted her at last. 'It'll be a long day,
let's go and stretch our legs ashore.'
'Don't be maddening, Dick! Start at the beginning!'
The reaction from anxiety had been too much for Dick's self-control.
He was bubbling over with excitement.
'Sorry, darling.' He kissed her on the cheek. 'Well, Alibaba says
there's a Belgian poste, which is Bulamatadi for Boma, opposite here
and about twenty miles north. The lake is under forty miles across
here, so we'll be over to-morrow night and drinking beer with the
Chef du Poste the next day. A happy issue to all our afflictions,
what?' Dick's spirits easily went up or down, and he rattled on.
'Alibaba is picking four of the best oars among the thieves, and
there'll be just room for Changalilo and the baggage. We'd better
take a goat, too. He'll do as a mascot, if we don't have to eat him.'
'What about the others?' asked Norah, who had not Dick's happy
absorption in self.
'What about them?' he stared at her for a moment, 'why they'll be all
right. They'll stay here till we get word through to Kigoma.'
Leg-stretching ashore ended in sleeping there. Norah was reluctant
to leave the ship, but Dick's enthusiasm swept her objections aside.
'It's safe enough if we're careful,' he said. 'The "palp"[4] never
goes far from water and shade.' He pointed to a strip of bare rocky
ground that lay at the back of the amphitheatre of the bay. Above it
rose a sheer red cliff. For a quarter of a mile there was neither
water nor tree. 'At night,' he continued, 'out there there's no fear
of fly. Here there's the certainty of a stench of oil and crew. Not
to mention the roll. Besides, I want to repack my kit.'
[4] Glossina palpalis--the sleeping sickness fly.
Changalilo quickly loaded the baggage into the dinghy, leaving, at
Dick's instructions, the heavy ammunition chest on board to cross
intact next day. The loaded magazine of Dick's Mauser was enough for
emergencies on shore.
There was some difficulty in finding oarsmen. The crew had settled
down to a gamble on the forecastle, slapping on the deck the dice
made of cowrie shells filed smooth on one side, and betting which way
they would turn.
When at last the boat was ready to start, Norah remembered the oxen.
Even if their fate was slaughter, till the day arrived their life
would be more endurable on shore, where the hands could build a
lion-proof kraal.
'Can we manage them?' said Dick. He was unwilling to incur the extra
work till the skipper's opposition to Norah's plan--from laziness, he
thought--converted him, and, on the principle of 'worst first,' the
ox, who had nearly pitched Dick into the hold the evening before, was
lowered into the water.
They had paddled the greater part of the quarter mile that separated
the steamer from the shore, when Obadiah the ox, as Dick had
christened him, suddenly varied the puffing and snorting with which
he met each wavelet, by a plunge that threw his quarters out of the
water, and a bellow in which Norah, accustomed to cattle, could read
an agony of fear and pain. He lashed out, plunging and rearing. His
forelegs churned the water to bubbles that were dark with sand
scooped from the bottom. His maddened struggles rocked the heavily
laden boat.
'Look out, Changalilo; he'll have us over!' shouted Norah.
The frenzied beast, released by Changalilo, slipped rapidly astern,
as if drawn by a current. As he passed her, Norah was moved by the
agonised appeal in his mild eyes. A stain more sinister than sand
now darkened the water. She looked at the deck hands and saw that
they were resting on their oars, pointing with widely grinning mouths
at the contortions of the ox. Bellow on bellow filled the air.
'What on earth is it, Changalilo?' she asked. Then as his lips
framed the world 'ngwene,' she understood. 'A crocodile's got him?'
'Yes,' shouted Dick, 'look!' and she saw a black tail flick out of
the water.
'Poor brute,' she sighed, and turned her eyes away.
The struggle receded from the amused view of the oarsmen, as the
crocodile relentlessly drew his victim towards the southern arm of
the bay. There was no hurry; he had a good hold on a hind leg and in
twenty minutes or so the ox would be drowned and wedged on a certain
muddy bank, where the swollen corpse could rot the time required to
make it palatable.
In the distance the agony continued, now a fore-leg showing above the
surface, now the wide horns, now the white belly.
'Do make them row in, Dick,' said Norah. 'It's horrible!'
Reluctantly they paddled the dinghy inshore. As the bows grated on
the shingle an apparent log lying near the edge of the yellow river
rose to its feet and disappeared into the safety of the stream.
The momentary glimpse of the rough scales dried khaki-grey in the
sun, the pale wicked eye, the high hind legs, which sloped the
obscene body at a slinking angle down to the crooked forelegs,
recalled the monstrous saurians of the prehistoric past.
'And, by Jove, there's another!' whispered Dick, nodding his head at
a couple of black knobs on the surface of the water, that represented
the snout and eyebrow of a submerged monster. He reached for his gun
and fired. A long, pale belly cartwheeled into the air with slashing
tail and legs, to sink without a sound and be devoured, perhaps still
living, by its mate.
Camp was pitched in silence on the site already chosen by Dick, and
the deck hands were sent off grumbling to collect firewood. Norah
was oppressed by the desolation of the bay, once the scene of hopeful
and devoted enterprise, now delivered over to reptiles. A curse
seemed to rest there, and she wondered whether by passing a night on
these shores she submitted to its power.
Here the pale Galilean had not conquered. The gods of Africa had
shown they still could wield their old weapons of remorseless
disease, sudden death, and instantaneous decay, installing at the end
a garrison of reptiles, cruel and hideous like themselves, the
survivors of more ancient and horrific epochs."
"I don't mean," said Ross, "that Norah, who was a healthy-minded
little thing, really believed such stuff. She was upset by the
pitiful fate of the ox under her impotent eyes, and felt a distinct,
if unreasonable, dislike for the place.
She was tempted to ask Dick to take her back to the steamer. But as
the wish crossed her mind, she heard the report of his gun up the
beach. He was amusing himself, bless his heart. She knew men did
not welcome feminine intuitions that make them alter their plans, and
thrust the impulse aside as cowardly.
But when she recollected that rapturous first sight of Tanganyika,
and the hopes it had raised of quick release from the forest's
encirclement and of an easy passage along azure waters to the
civilisation her heart desired, disillusionment was keen. Would she
ever be free, or had Africa put out a tentacle that had retaken her
to its dark bosom? Would Africa master her as it had mastered this
ruined mission?"
* * * * * * *
Ross rose and stretched his arms above his head. He lit a match to
see his watch.
"The work of white men's hands," he remarked, "does not seem to
prosper on the shores of the lake. Ujiji, for instance, is smaller
to-day than it was in Livingstone's time; Niamkolo is a mound of
bricks hidden in the grass; Kigoma, since we took it, grows smaller
every year....
The history of the ruined tower that filled Norah with such
foreboding, I never heard. Whatever the doom, it fell before my day.
Still, it is not hard to imagine the birth and death of the station.
Think of the arrival of the French Fathers....
With heavy rosaries hanging below their untrimmed beards, wide hats
on their heads, clad in white robes of coarse cloth, they had sailed
from some elder station on the lake into the unknown.
Think of the start of their voyage in a home-made boat of clumsy
lines, whose unpainted white wood planks showed the roughly-nailed
joints. Overhead on a light framework was stretched an awning to
shield them from the sun of indefinite days.
The Father who built the boat came with them to the edge of the
water, a carpenter's apron over his white robe, and stood shading his
eyes beside the little red fire on which he had warmed the pitch to
give the seams a final caulking. The other Fathers stood in a group
under the mango trees at the top of the shallow brick steps that led
to the lake, silently speculating on the fate of their brothers whom
they might, or might not, see again.
For many days the adventurers were rowed by native Christians to the
singing of Catholic hymns learnt in place of the melancholy water
songs of their ancestors. At last the canoe stopped at a fishing
village that once populated the bay.
Long beards and robes won for the Fathers the respect due to wizards.
Moreover, there would be hope of their help against the Arab slavers,
who at that time led a train of bones and blood across Africa, whose
dhows were familiar in passage up-lake to Ujiji, whence they drove
their wares overland to Bagamayo for shipment to the markets of
Zanzibar. Had starvation and hardship unduly reduced their cargo,
the loss was soon made good from the lake villages.
In return for protection from this menace, the villagers would be
willing to build a church. They were simple folk and glad to help
those who seemed kind and good men.
So, as the seasons succeeded each other, a group of buildings sprang
up on the lake shore. The layout would be like that of the other
lake missions. A monastery would spread its length ..."
"Ross," I interrupted, "have you ever read a book called _Sandford
and Merton_?"
"No," said Ross. "Is it interesting?"
"Interesting?" I replied. "Hardly interesting...."
"The monastery," continued Ross placidly, "would spread its
single--or double-storied--length parallel to the lie of the lake.
The roof would be low-pitched with a wide overhang supported on brick
pillars, to form a dark spacious verandah from whose centre a double
flight of steps descended to the courtyard. At right angles on one
wing lay stores and outbuildings; and on the other stood the church
with narrow unglazed windows, round brick columns, scanty fittings,
and the ornaments of Latin Catholicism, when humble so devotional, so
secular when rich.
Gardens were dug, fruit trees planted, crops cultivated. All the
time proceeded the less material work of tending the sick, teaching
and preaching. Permanganate of potassium and epsom salts, sermons
and hymns, reading, writing and the other queer things they teach the
heathen--Christian philosophy and the geography of the Holy Land.
By how much the black man profited, I shouldn't care to say, but I
don't doubt that the community grew and multiplied. The birth-rate
increased; famines were averted; refugee relatives from raided
villages came in, and the blessings of the first chapter of Genesis
seemed to rest on the devoted labours of the Fathers, until ...
The first 'fly' may have been brought by one of the refugees or
carried by game or spread naturally up the lakeshore. At the
beginning the presence of the destroyer would not be suspected. The
increased death-rate would be attributed to an unhealthy summer; the
wasting of the sufferers to fever; their fits to epilepsy; their
madness to insanity.
But as the buryings increased, the fear of an epidemic must have
gripped the hearts of the Fathers. Their slight medical knowledge
was as unavailing as their prayers. Bells will have sounded, masses
been said, and litanies sung for defence from the arrow that flieth
in darkness and the pestilence that destroyeth at noonday. But the
mortality did not stay.
Finding the new God did not help them, some of the people will have
relapsed into heathendom. At first frightened, they would settle
into a mute endurance, nearer apathy than stoicism. The more
energetic would flee from the doomed villages ... and spread the
sickness with them. The rest awaited the end with fatalism.
One by one the Fathers buried their people, mourning the loss now of
some favourite convert, now of some skilful workman.
Whether the sickness ultimately struck all the white men, or whether,
since they could not help, they took the resolution of abandoning the
stricken settlement and their lives' work, one does not know.
Alibaba's words, a later discovery of Norah's, and the French
Fathers' tradition of self-sacrifice, suggest that death found them
at their work. The end was the same in either case: Africa took back
its own, and the insatiable forest swallowed up villages, buildings,
and every sign of life, as relentlessly as it had always engulfed
every trace of human endeavour."
I interrupted the silence that followed Ross' last words with a hint
that the fate of the abandoned mission hardly touched on the story of
Norah and Dick.
"So you think," said Ross, "that no emanation from the tragedies of
the past lingers over their scene. I cannot bring myself to believe
that the strip of land from Dixmude to the Vosges will ever quite
lose the breath of four years' agony and heroism; though I know there
is a view that those years may now be forgotten. However, I am
telling this story and you must allow me to suggest that the wind of
that elder tragedy still ruffled the beauty of the bay, blowing cold
on Norah's heart. But since, however, you prefer strictly material
facts, I will skip her presentiments, simply mentioning that they
were interrupted by the reappearance of the two deck hands, who had
collected, they considered, sufficient wood.
As Norah watched the dinghy, rowed towards the steamer's masthead
light, recede from the now darkened shore, a great sense of
loneliness filled her--that microscopic feeling engendered, for
instance, by an imprudent glance at the stars.
It was succeeded by more practical apprehension.
'I wonder if we should have kept them,' she thought. 'What would
happen to us if the boat...'"