*CHAPTER XIII*
*THE RETURN TO UNGUJA*
Up the scarcely-discernible path they climbed, leaving the Happy Valley
behind them; over the foothills and under cliff at the base of the
northern escarpment, where the gaily flowering bushes in their early
spring display gave way to tall forest trees, hung with lianas. The
black Colobus monkeys with their white-plumed tails chattered and showed
their teeth and flopped from branch to branch in the leafy canopy, not
used to this tumultuous invasion of their solitudes. Then suddenly the
escarpment rose like the wall of a Babel towering into Heaven. How
could any way for human beings walking on two legs be found up these
precipices? But despite its savagery there is scarcely one of Africa's
fastnesses that has not been trodden by man, and although the practised
route into the Happy Valley was from the south, and though its
encompassing walls of cliff on either side and at the northern end of
its lake seemed impassable, there were ways up and over them known to
the Masai and Hamitic and Nilotic peoples of this sequestered rift
valley.
Up some such _Via mala_ the Masai guides were now leading Brentham's
caravan, with little concern for the trepidation it caused. The white
man and woman and the silently suffering Goanese cook had been obliged
to descend from their donkeys and trudge with the porters. The donkeys,
in fact, were sent to the rear of the procession, and Brentham walked in
front with the guides and a few disencumbered porters to help Lucy over
an ascent which would have been thought rough climbing in the Alps, and
here had to be made without any paraphernalia of ropes and irons.
Lucy sometimes had to shut her eyes and hold her body rigidly pressed
against the wall of rock that she might recover from vertigo and
continue with shaking legs her ascent of a twisting path, sometimes only
fifteen inches broad where it overhung an abyss. Roger was beside
himself with anxiety. He cast about in his mind for safeguards--Ropes?
But they had none. Lengths of cotton cloth? But how get at them and
apply them, when any extra movement might turn Lucy giddy and
precipitate her into the tree-tops far below? Their taciturn Masai
guides, pledged only to show them the way to Kilimanjaro, had given them
no warning of what the path was like from the lake shore, between three
and four thousand feet above sea level, to the top of the escarpment at
seven thousand feet.
Once committed to the ascent the caravan had to continue, as there was
no room in which to turn the donkeys round and descend again to the
valley. All Roger could do was to insist on great deliberation in the
climb and frequent halts, though this policy was not endorsed by the
impatient asses behind. When the white people in front paused to
negotiate some more than usually dangerous section of the path, the rest
of the caravan had to pause too, the porters with their loads poised on
their heads and their sinewy legs trembling with the strain, while the
donkeys pranced with impatience to pass them, and nearly pushed some of
them and their loads over into the gulf below.
"It's no good," Roger would say to his companion, "you can't get round
this, walking upright; you must go on hands and knees and _crawl_ over
it. Never mind your dress or your knees. If your skirt is torn I'll
make you one out of buck-skin; if your knees are cut it's better than
breaking your neck."
He had never lived through such a nightmare as this climb, and ran down
in sweat for sheer apprehension of an irretrievable disaster. However
it came to an end at last, and towards that end its difficulties were
tempered by the path's entry into gorges where there were merciful bays
of level ground, places to rest in and stretch oneself, to put down the
loads and regain one's breath and ease one's palsied legs. From the
jagged rocks grew out horizontally fleshy-leaved aloes with zebra
markings of green and white, and long stalks of blood-red or
orange-yellow, tubular flowers, haunted by large yellow-velvet bees with
probing tongues. Huge blue-black ravens with arched bills and white
collars perched on pinnacles of rock above the path, or set out to sail
in circles over the gorge below, hoping no doubt some beast or human
would fall and die and provide sightless eyeballs and protruding
entrails for the ravens' feast.
Lucy thought of this in these silent halts--all were too exhausted to
speak--and shuddered. Yet for a white woman of that period, unsuitably
costumed as she was, she gave no more trouble to her male companion than
she could help, uttered no futile complaints or queries. They had
exchanged but little conversation during the two days which had elapsed
since they received Ann Jamblin's message. John Baines's ghost, like a
Banquo, came between them. Lucy was--and looked as though she was--in
perfect health. Deep down within her heart she was quietly content,
convinced now that somehow, some day, she would marry Roger. Equally
certain was she that none of the ordinary dangers of African travel
would prevent her from reaching the coast under his escort; so that he
had in her a more cheerful and far less sulky or doleful companion than
had accompanied the unfortunate John on his wedding tour.
After the ascent of the escarpment they camped two nights in succession
in a strange region suggestive of the Moon's surface as revealed by a
powerful telescope. There were the crumbling sides of craters, the cones
of extinct volcanoes--extinct, perhaps; but sometimes a strange and
ominous-looking white smoke or gassy vapour issued from cracks in the
ground and through veins in the obsidian rocks. Vegetation was very
scanty--a few yellow stalks of bamboo in the hollows; and water was
scarce enough to cause anxiety and limit washing to a minimum. Yet if
they could cross this dry belt of naked rock and barren mountain and the
possibly waterless plain that lay in front of them, to the east there
was a promise of better things. Far away, a blue pyramid seen against
the morning sun, was Mount Meru, one of the great, unmistakable
landmarks of East Africa. It towered fifteen thousand feet into the sky
and when the sun turned to the zenith and the west they could see the
peak of the pyramid was white with snow. And behind Meru in the early
morning or in the early evening there came into view something at first
unbelievable, a floating island in the sky, a Laputa: the great snowy
dome of Kibo....
A few days of rough, silent travel--seeing no natives and very few birds
and beasts--and they were in the Kisongo plains. Here it was less arid,
and beneath the burnt stems of the old grass the fresh green grass was
springing. The occasional scrubby trees and bushes were putting forth
fresh leaves, sometimes quite red in colour, or even purplish black.
Big game swarmed round them unafraid of man, inclined even to be
insolent. Rhinoceroses charged the caravan and both Lucy and Roger had
narrow escapes of being tossed on their horns, while Lucy was twice
flung from her donkey when it bolted with terror at a tangent from the
unexpected rush of the squealing monster. A Nyamwezi porter was gored
and trampled, his load smashed and the caravan disorganized. Roger laid
low one rhinoceros; and then, water being near, they spent all the rest
of that day and the next cutting up its flesh, smoking it, drying it in
the sun, and making of it a food provision greatly wanted by the
porters.
This much-needed rest however brought another danger on them. The sound
of rifle firing, the assemblage of vultures, the noise of the porters'
excited voices attracted the attention of a large war party of Masai,
trailing southward to see what was up in this rumoured war between the
Arabs--or, as they called them, the "coast" people--and the White men
... troubled waters in which they might fish to advantage. Lucy was
sitting in camp in as much placid enjoyment as she could feel, with the
remembrance of John's death in the background. She forgot, at any rate
for the moment, her remorse and her anxieties "as to what people would
say." It was very pleasant to rest here and to know that she would not
have to rise at five the next morning and ride nearly all day, and
perhaps have another close shave from a charging rhinoceros....
Gradually there stole on her ear a sound like distant thunder. The sky
was clear ... surely it couldn't be a whole _herd_ of rhinos, or a
distant earthquake--earthquakes not being unknown in this region?
Presently the Wanyamwezi looked up anxiously from their camp employments
or their parcelling out of the rhinoceros meat. Roger was away,
shooting more game.... There went up the fear-inspiring word: "Masai!"
Then appeared on the north a cloud of red dust and out of this emerged a
small army of red-coloured men trailing their shields by lanyards, with
a rumbling noise, waving long-bladed white-flashing spears, and uttering
a growling chant, a war-song of bloodthirsty purport, though its words
were not understood by the people in the undefended camp.
The Swahili Kiongozi fortunately was on the spot, and then and at other
times never lost his head. He stood quietly beside Lucy, who was seated
in her deckchair with her white umbrella to shade her from the sun.
"Starehe, Bibi," he said; "usiogope; Muungu anatulinda. Hawa ndio
Masai, kweli; walakini tutawashinda na akili."[#]
[#] "Be tranquil, Lady. Do not fear. God is guarding us. These indeed
are Masai truly, but we shall overcome them with intelligence."
The porters just stayed where they were. To have started to run
would--they knew--have been fatal. They just stood about, silent, while
the advancing army--perhaps three hundred in number--suddenly halted and
lay down behind their large, gaily-painted shields. The two men of the
expedition who knew the Masai language drew up to the
Kiongozi--unfortunately the Masai guides were away, out hunting with
Roger. A hundred yards distant there stood out one superb Masai
warrior, the leader of the party; a naked figure of perfect manhood, red
in colour, with a naturally brown skin, raddled with ochre and powdered
with the dust of the red ground. The vertical sun seemed to make a red
halo round the outline of his beautiful body. He held a tuft of grass in
his hand and shouted in an authoritative voice: "Totona!" (Sit down!)
At once the men of Brentham's caravan obeyed him. All sat down and
plucked tufts of fresh green grass. Then the Masai spokesman advanced
slowly ... wonderingly ... peeringly towards the white woman, reclining
on the deck-chair. "What is _this_?" he asked the headman and the two
interpreters. "This," they replied, glad to get a chance of making an
impression, "_this_ is a WHITE WOMAN of the great race of the
Wa-ingrezi. Her husband is the great chief, the Balozi of the
Wa-ingrezi on the coast. We come now from the Manyara country, guided
by your own people, the Masai. There is war to the south, in Nguru and
Ugogo, war between the Lajomba and the White men. Our Balozi is taking
his wife to the coast to put her with his own people; then he will
return and finish the Lajomba."
"Good," said the Masai war-captain. "We heard of this war and we are
going there to see if we can join in. We hate the Lajomba."
At this moment there was a stir among the three hundred warriors sitting
apart. It was caused by the approach of Brentham, filled with
apprehension and anxiety as to Lucy. Unfortunately his own Masai guides
belonged to a southern clan of the Masai, not on very good terms with
this more northern, purer breed. So there was a ruffle of angry words as
each realized the other as whilom foes. But the leader who had been
sitting close to Lucy rose to his feet and spoke with a carrying
voice--rather than shouted--a command and once more his warriors sat
down. He then took Lucy's hand, but quite gently. His own hand had
well-trimmed nails and was clean except for the red dust. He turned
back her sleeve a little (she trembled, but tried to smile). Having
satisfied himself that the arm was even whiter than the hand, he threw
back his head and laughed a full-throated laugh, while his eyes sparkled
with the wonderment of it all. Seeing her smile he looked at her with
such a friendly glance that she felt completely reassured. Then he sat
down again, took snuff, and was framing other questions when Roger
strode up. "It is all well, master," said the headman hurriedly in
Swahili.
"Why, you're holding quite a court, Lucy," said Roger, inwardly
immensely relieved.
"Ye-es. But I shall be _rather_ glad when they all go."
The Masai leader rose to his feet and held out his hand to Brentham.
The latter took it and White man and Red man looked for a moment into
each other's eyes. Roger, knowing something of Masai customs--was he
not indeed but three or four marches from scenes of earlier
exploration?--did not shrink away when the Masai captain spat on his
clothing and on Lucy's dress. He knew it was intended for the
friendliest of greetings, a seal on their good relations.
After that, all was boisterous good-fellowship, though the Wanyamwezi
porters were careful to keep together and half carelessly to reclaim
their rifles. The three hundred Masai agreed to overlook the fact that
Roger's guides had belonged to a once hostile clan. And when they
learnt from these men what a hunter he was and what an unerring shot,
they pressed their friendship and their red presence on him. They
visited his tent--they were throughout strictly honest--they sat on his
bed, and he had afterwards to do without sheet and pillow case, for
besides leaving red dust wherever they sat they distributed a flavour of
tallow from their favourite unguent, mutton fat. They insisted on
blood-brotherhood and declared they would escort the white chieftain and
his lady to the coast.
As a matter of prosaic fact, they took him no farther than the base of
Meru. There the rainy season began to break with vehemence. So there
they left him and went off to the drier steppe country and the War in
the south with its possibilities of loot.
Roger longed at this time to ascend Meru and explore its hidden wonders;
and Lucy gazed with awe at the now fully displayed majesty of
Kilimanjaro, rising above the watery plain of Kahe, with its dome of
snow and ice, and its lesser peak of Kimawenzi.
But being short of stores they made straight for a newly-founded
Evangelical Mission station, at an altitude of four thousand feet, where
it was hoped Lucy might find shelter for a few days from the torrential
rains, and he himself gather news about the happenings on the coast, and
dispatch carriers to Mvita with messages which might be telegraphed to
Unguja.
After all their adventures this seemed rather a prosaic phase in the
journey, and Lucy found herself actually depressed at being once more
with fellow-countrymen. There were three missionaries--a married couple
and an assistant bachelor propagandist--at the station of the
Evangelical Mission, but they did not seem over surprised at this
arrival of a white man and woman from the unknown interior. They
received Lucy's halting explanations civilly but coldly, and though they
gave her a room to herself and nicely cooked meals, they seemed--to her
fancy--to have purposely adopted an almost penitentiary surfeit of
services and prayers.
Captain Brentham preferred to camp out at the Chief's village, two miles
away. He had known this genial, old, one-eyed ruffian three years
before, when he was exploring the approaches to the great Snow Mountain,
and making tentative treaties to forestall the Germans. He rather
ground his teeth over the changing scene. Since his first journey,
missionaries, big-game sportsmen, concession hunters, had thronged into
this wonderful country, and had not the slightest respect for its
earliest pioneers. Already there was a large and flourishing mission
station on the site of his first camp; and when on installing Lucy there
he had drawn the missionaries' attention to this fact, and to his having
made the site ready for them, purchased it in fact, the present
occupants merely said with pursed lips, "Indeed?"; and Mrs. Missionary
added primly: "Yes: we _heard_ from the Chief you had stayed here, three
years ago; but we prefer _never_ to listen to _gossip_ about white
people. It is so _often ill-natured_."
And so onwards to the Taita Hills and the coast. A sense of flatness, a
leaking-out of all romance in their adventure. They were no longer
alone. Lucy went to see Mr. Thomas at the East African Mission station
in Taita. He startled her by asking cheery questions about John, his
old college-mate, and supposing John was with her on this _safari_. He
had heard nothing about the disaster and made rather stupid and
inquisitive inquiries as to the motives of her journey. Farther on, they
had the misery of crossing the red Maungu desert, with its stretch of
forty miles between water and water; but there was no "adventure" about
this; and midway they met the caravan of a very rich Englishman with two
companions, wearing single eye-glasses, who offered them champagne and
soda-water at midday to relieve their thirst, and told Lucy he wasn't
surprised at her travelling about with a stray Consul, as he always
contended that missionaries out in Africa had a jolly good time and did
themselves uncommonly well, and for his part he didn't blame her.
"Gather ye roses, don't you know--while you can--or was it while you're
young? And now I suppose you're on your way back to Hubby?"
The old Arab port of Mvita was not much altered since Roger had seen it
last; though there was the beginning of a stir, for a British Chartered
Company was preparing to make this their head-quarters. Meantime, the
centre of rank and fashion, so to speak, was the British Consulate.
Roger made his way here, with Lucy and Halima, while he left the bulk of
his caravan encamped across the water.
His colleague, the Vice-Consul, was an ex-Naval Officer, who had given
up the Navy for a while to serve in the East African Consulates, in the
idea that they entailed little office work, good pay, and any amount of
shooting, varied with agreeable _safaris_ at the expense of the
Government. This particular example of his kind had been rather sharply
called back to more humdrum duties and the preparation of statistics by
Roger himself, when he was acting Consul-General. So now was the time to
get his own back:--
"_Hullo_, old chap! _Who'd_ have thought it. Where have you sprung
from? We'd all given you up for lost--thought you'd gone 'Fanti,'
eloped with a missionaryess for the far interior and were founding an
empire on your own...."
"I've brought here," interrupted Roger, with a set face, "_Mrs. John
Baines_" (Lucy had retreated out of ear-shot with Halima to the verandah
of the Consulate)--"_Mrs. John Baines_, whose husband has been killed, I
fear, in the Ulunga country. I should be much obliged if you could put
her up here till we can get a dau to take us over to Unguja.... As for
me..."
"_Aw*fully sorry old chap. *Of course_, I can make room for _you_ ...
give you _some_ sort of a shakedown.... You're a fellow _man_ and
you'll understand.... But the fact is I'm--I'm not--quite
prepared--er--to entertain a white lady here. Bachelor establishment you
know.... _You_ twig? ... Dare say you're fixed up just the same
at--where is it? at Medina, What?"
Roger turned away angrily.
"Lucy! ... Mrs. Baines!"
"Yes, Captain Brentham."
"I'll get a boat and we'll go over to the Mission station across the
Bay. I expect they'll have room--indeed they must _make_ room--for you
there till our dau is ready to sail...."
Then turning to the Vice-Consul: "Be good enough to send a cablegram
to-day to the Agency at Unguja stating that H.M. Consul for Zangia
arrived here this morning from the interior with Mrs. John Baines from
Ulunga, and add that I shall arrive at Unguja to report as soon as I can
charter a dau; unless a gun-boat comes in first. My Camp is at
Kisolutini. You can send on any letters that come for me there...."
"Well, but I say..."
Roger having been joined by the wondering and disappointed Lucy, who had
taken a great fancy to the picturesque Consulate, strode out with an
angry face, flushed under the tan.
No return message came for him from the Agency at Unguja. And a few
days afterwards he embarked with Lucy and Halima (who had already agreed
to marry the Goanese cook), his Wanyamwezi porters, and a selected
collection of trophies and mineralogical specimens, in an Arab dau, for
the island port of Unguja. This time--December 27, 1888--Lucy was too
anxious about her future to notice or to care whether it had bugs or not
in its rotting timbers or its frowsy thatch.
Meantime, unfriendly forces were at work to Roger's detriment. Here is
a letter which Mrs. Spencer Bazzard probably wrote to Mr. Bennet
Molyneux, of the Foreign Office. (Like most of the letters appearing in
this book, it is based on my deductions as to the kind of letter that
would have been written under the circumstances, rather than on textual
evidence):--
H.B.M. Consulate for Zangia,
Medinat-al-Barkah,
_December_ 23, 1888.