Kitabı oku: «The League of the Leopard», sayfa 11
CHAPTER XIV
AN EVENTFUL DECISION
The weeks that followed left only a hazy impression of hurry, effort, fatigue that was almost overwhelming, and anxiety which spurred wornout mind and body to further action, with the two white men who lived through them. Some of the sick they cured, and though it is possible their lack of knowledge hastened the end of others, their intentions at least were benevolent, and while they often went hungry the convalescent were always fed. They put heart into the hopeless and buried the dead, stormed, exhorted, and jested by turn all day long, and sat watching the worst cases when the hot night fell. Dane was never afterward able to recollect the exact mixtures he dispensed, which Maxwell said was probably fortunate; but as a result of their labors, while all would otherwise have perished, part at least of their followers escaped. They had also capable assistants. Amadu, Maxwell's man, had fought under a great Emir who had made his name a terror in the Soudan; and Monday, so Dane gathered, had carried the standard of a successful robber chieftain somewhere far up in the land of the brown men who swear by the Prophet; but both had the full courage of their fatalist convictions, and what their masters bade them that they did. The rank and file of the orderlies were thick-headed heathen who grinned each time their leader stormed at them.
One day when the sick were recovering, and a little hope was springing up again, Dane, staggering half asleep behind his bearer detachment, halted when Maxwell beckoned him.
"Get on, you dusky angels, and try to carry that poor devil right-side-up," Dane said. "Monday, tell them hopeless idiots if they handle the other fellow that way they'll pull his head off. You would tempt the most patient man to murder some of you."
The bearers beamed upon him with mouths extended, and Maxwell laughed.
"They take your abuse as a compliment, Hilton; and your capabilities become apparent by degrees. Still, after the success which has attended your daring pharmaceutical experiments, one could hardly be astonished at your licking even yonder most unpromising raw material into shape."
"The credit is to necessity," replied Dane, surveying his assistants with a certain air of pride. "Those are the most wooden-headed niggers in Africa, and the more I swear at them the wider they grin; but if I wanted sulphur from the pit, and told them, the beggars would go – and get it."
"I wish we were both fresher," Maxwell said; "because there is another worry to grapple with. The man I sent over to Rideau found the camp empty, and this pinned to the tree his tent had been pitched beneath."
"If Mr. Rideau desires to repeat his opinion that we should set them all to work it is as well he does it in writing. I could hardly keep my hands off the brute the last time he made the suggestion in person," answered Dane.
"Read, and see," said Maxwell, holding out the note; and because Dane's head was swimming he translated the indifferent French with difficulty. The message might have appeared ambiguous to a more accomplished linguist. Nevertheless, he gathered from it that their partner, who professed a total ignorance of physics and a fear of contagion, regretted his inability to render them any assistance, and had decided to visit a headman he had dealings with who dwelt at a considerable distance. He stated that none of his boys could be induced to carry a message to the stricken camp.
"He might have expressed himself more plainly, but it is plausible. Do you attach a different meaning?" Dane asked.
Maxwell, instead of answering, asked another question.
"You feel tolerably certain that we have seen the worst of this epidemic?"
"Yes," was the answer. "I did not, however, tell our estimable partner so. It seemed a pity to relieve him prematurely of what he called his fear of the sick. Perhaps I was wrong in this."
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Maxwell. "It is not the plague he fears the most. In fact, considering that he must have lived through one or two outbreaks already, part, at least, of his fear must have been simulated. If you expect to see Rideau here again on the old terms, Hilton, you are mistaken."
"His absence would not leave me disconsolate," said Dane. "In that case, one wonders what he is afraid of, and why he came? Isn't it also surprising that he should abandon his share of the gold?"
"In reply to the first query, I don't know – but we shall doubtless discover in good time. There is no difficulty in answering the rest. He came to see if the river was worth exploitation, and to pick up a practical knowledge of the necessary operations. His share of what we have obtained is, after all, but trifling for an avaricious man who cherishes a grudge against you, and desires the whole. Two men alone at present prevent him from obtaining it, and the life of any white man is very uncertain in this country."
"A grudge against me?" Dane queried.
Maxwell nodded.
"Have you forgotten Miss Castro? Your powers of attraction may prove a dangerous gift, Hilton."
Dane flushed with sudden anger, for this appeared to him ill-timed levity; but Maxwell continued unheeding:
"The whole complication resembles a mosaic puzzle, and I have fitted most of it together. One or two pieces, however, are missing, and we must wait until accident supplies them. Meanwhile, every effort to expedite our sick men's recovery would be advisable."
Maxwell left his comrade startled and uneasy. Dane could see that he was anxious, and they already had sufficient to try their endurance without the addition of a haunting fear. There was, however, no remedy, and they continued to tend the sick, setting those who had recovered to work as the pestilence slackened its grip. So, while groups of naked tribesmen whose tongue nobody therein could understand traveled southward past the camp, the days went by until Maxwell was supplied with one missing portion of his mosaic. One morning a seaboard negro, whose leg had been rendered useless by the horrible Guinea worm which had burrowed from knee to ankle, crawled into camp, and told a story which roused both listeners to suppressed fury. Rideau had left him behind crippled, to starve, but with many sufferings he had managed to drag himself to their camp.
"I be missionary boy, sah, and savvy them JuJu palaver be all dam fraud," he stated in the coast English. "When them low white nigger Rideau lib for them first river by the Leopards' country he send one man two day into the bush."
"What was the man like? How that boy he look?" asked Maxwell.
"Yellow man with mark on front of him head, sah. He be fit to make fetich palaver."
"Oh," commented Maxwell. "This is going to be very interesting, Hilton."
"Two night go," continued the negro. "Then I look them white man he wait for somebody sitting with a pistol outside him tent. I lib for behind a cottonwood, where he not done see me. Bimeby, two leopard come soffly, soffly, and stand up when he see them. The white man light a lamp before him say: 'Why you done play them fool trick with me?'"
"You were too frightened to crawl away?" Maxwell asked; and though the negro evidently trembled at the mere recollection, he answered boldly:
"I be missionary boy, and savvy all them JuJu palaver humbug, sah. One leopard done throw off him skin and sit down by the tent. I know him for the man with the mark on him. 'How much you want for let me lib for your country and come back again,' the white man say, and they all talk plenty. Then the white man say: 'I leave them cloth and bead and gun in the bush, and when I lib for come back safe you get two time as much, but you see them other white men done get lost or sick too much in your country.' Rideau talk more plenty, and them leopard go away. I not know how. I see him one lil' minute, then there be no more leopard, sah. I lib for say nothing. Suppose Rideau guess I look him he shoot me, sah. The Lord he give me sense too much."
"Rideau is a capable rascal and this explains a good deal," said Maxwell, when he had handed the cripple over to the Krooboy cook. "The man with the scarred forehead is clearly an influence among the Leopards. Otherwise Rideau might never have overtaken us. His prudence in promising to double the toll demanded on his safe return strikes me as highly commendable; and one can only presume that, seeing us successful in spite of his efforts, he determined to cast his lot in with us for a time."
Dane's answer was fierce and emphatic; and Maxwell smiled.
"Over-confidence is a weakness of yours, Hilton. Now it is no doubt flattering to one's pride to disdain petty suspicions and precautions; but having done so, isn't it illogical to grow feverishly indignant when you are victimized?"
"You need not waste time in moralizing. It is much more necessary to discover why Rideau cleared out in a hurry, and what he is doing now."
"I don't know, but it will be high time to move when we do. Meanwhile, we can only wait. It will become apparent presently."
Dane left him, and went back to his task, stolidly determined that he would have a reckoning with M. Victor Rideau before he sailed from Africa. Hilton Dane, though by no means a fool, possessed neither his comrade's power of deduction nor his insight into the weakness of human nature; but he was, nevertheless, likely to prove an even more dangerous enemy when his natural generosity, being abused, had changed into vindictiveness. It is generally well to avoid the righteous indignation of the good-humored man when his patience is exhausted; and Dane's patience was not of the longest.
The time dragged slowly by until, when those the plague had spared were well on the way to recovery, chance supplied the partners with the final clue. A man swathed in ragged cotton and of comparatively light color halted one morning to beg a little food at their camp, and Maxwell grew eager when he found that Amadu could understand him. Headman Shaillu's villages had been stricken by the plague, he said, and that ruler, either to avoid contagion or to prevent the spread of disaffection among his people, had marched them out on a campaign against his northern neighbors. He had been badly beaten, and the tribesmen had summoned every petty chieftain who had suffered by his depredations to join them in retaliating. They would probably wait until the rains were over, the stranger said, though this was not certain; but once they started, they would spare nothing on their march; and as their priests had a special animus against white men, he considered they would certainly storm the camp.
It was dark when Dane and Maxwell held their final conference, and they sat moodily silent a while before either spoke. The sufferings and hardships undergone had left their mark on them; it is possible that Maxwell's British acquaintances might scarcely have recognized him, as he sat huddled, as it were, together under the smoky lamp. Even his ironical humor had deserted him along with every personal characteristic save the courage and certain racial instincts that were ineradicable. Dane was reminded of an ancient portrait in Culmeny as he watched him. The old moss-trooper had looked much the same – lean and dour and grim; and the observer could recognize the same baleful light in his wolfish eyes. It was not an unnatural reversion, for the customs of modern Africa are not greatly different from those of Britain in bygone days.
It was hotter than ever, and a darkness that could be felt hung over the tent.
"We have had several of these talks, Hilton, but never one half so important as that before us now," said Maxwell at length. "Rideau's whole intentions are clear at last. He learned what was threatening long before we did, and profited by the sickness as an excuse for escaping and leaving us to our fate. The gold? Please wait until I have concluded. These tribesmen are mere predatory nomads, with no knowledge of mining, and after burning every village they come across they will vanish into the bush again. Therefore, our partner clearly expects that if the pestilence fails to remove us the spearmen will; and he no doubt hopes to return when there is peace again, and clean out this river without our assistance."
Dane smote the camp table hard with his fist, and was sullenly pleased to see that he had not lost all his strength, for one of the thin boards split.
"Then I solemnly pledge myself to carry out the second portion of our compact. The vile, treacherous scoundrel shall not escape if I live," he declared.
Maxwell raised his hand, but there was an ominous light in his eyes as they met those of his companion.
"That may come later; but in the first place the severely practical aspect of this affair requires to be dealt with. To begin, less than half our men are, even yet, capable of steady marching, and our numbers would be quite insufficient to convoy those too weak to walk safely through a hostile country. Therefore we have to choose between two evils. The first possible course would be to leave all the sick and weakly, and striking due south, not by the way we came, endeavor to reach the coast with what gold we have won. We could return when it appeared safe to do so. I put it before you, without expressing my own opinion, dispassionately."
Dane did not falter, but he remembered that in all probability there was gold enough in the river to enable him to market his patent with at least a hope of success, and this implied a prospect of winning Lilian. Of late his hopes that he would eventually do so had grown steadily stronger; and during many a lonely watch, when he recalled her delicate beauty, the longing for her had almost mastered him. As Maxwell had pointed out, one way to realize his ambitions was still open; but Dane knew that he could not go home with the blood of the men who had trusted him upon his hands.
"That course is impossible!" he said hoarsely.
"Yes," agreed Maxwell with impressive quietness. "We have, it is said, outgrown superstition, but I can't help thinking misfortune would follow the money we made that way. They have done their best for us, poor devils. Therefore, we come to the second alternative. This camp could be further stockaded into a very strong position, and you or I must hold it against all comers. While one of us does so, the other, with a couple of picked men, will strike straight for the coast, catch the first mailboat, and, if he can't persuade an agent to believe and finance him by the sight of a few ounces of gold, cable home for a credit to be opened by telegraph on some big trading firm. My bankers should manage that. Then he will return with a strong expedition. Speed affords the one chance for success, for if Rideau heard of the attempt, he and the Leopards would frustrate it; and both are doubtless watchful; but two or three men traveling night and day might escape observation. They must start unburdened, with just sufficient food, abandoning all idea of carrying treasure. The one question is, who is to go?"
Dane was conscious of a grim satisfaction. Everything pointed to him as the one to stay, and he had no desire to return home with nothing more than expectations; while, harassed as he had been by many enemies, deserted, and betrayed, the prospect of trying conclusions with an open foe came as a relief to him.
"You have the money, and brains, Carsluith, and you must go," he said. "I have the brute strength, and, I think, to-night some of its ferocity. I can promise that all the savages in Africa shall not turn me out of this camp. Neither would I be sorry if they attempted it."
As Maxwell turned toward him the smoldering fire was plainer in his eye.
"Are you not forgetting that other men are born with the same passions? Break that twig into unequal lengths, shut your eyes, and draw. The man who picks the longest stays."
They were equal at the second draw, and Dane grew feverishly anxious as he thrust in his hand again. Then he threw the twig on the table triumphantly.
"It points to me," he said.
"So be it," Maxwell answered quietly. "Then we will get ready two loads of provisions. I start at sunrise to-morrow, taking Amadu and one other man with me."
The night was far spent before the preparations were finished and they lay down to sleep; and Maxwell was dressed and equipped when his comrade awakened.
"I could not bring myself to disturb you earlier," he said, when Dane glanced at him reproachfully. "We will eat a morsel of breakfast, and then I will start."
Dane could swallow nothing, but Maxwell ate a little, though he seemed to force his appetite. Then they walked silently together as far as the stockade gate, where Maxwell turned and held out his hand.
"God knows whether I will reach the coast. This gold, with whatever you can add to it, is yours if I fail," he said. "If I live I will come back and join you should I come alone!"
"Whether you come late or early you will find me or my bones here," Dane answered huskily, for there was a painful contraction in his throat.
Their hands met in a strenuous grasp, and with a hoarse "Good luck!" following him, Maxwell strode out through the gate. Dane watched him descend the slope to the river, while all the camp boys capable of motion clustered about the one who stayed, and Monday squatted at his feet. They were all very silent until a murmur went up as the white man, halting on the edge of the forest, turned toward them. He raised his shapeless sun-hat high above his head, answering Dane's salute; and long afterward the latter sighed each time that lonely figure rose out of the blurred memories.
A horrible sense of loneliness oppressed the man left behind, and there came upon him an irrepressible desire for speech.
"He has gone, Monday," he said, patting the naked shoulder of the big dark-skinned alien, who looked up at him sympathetically; "but if he lives he will certainly come back; and you and I in the meantime are going to keep his place warm for him. You don't understand? Well, you probably will when several hundred yelling devils come round this way at midnight wanting to get in. Still, I don't think we'll make a bad show between us, even then."
The dusky man caught a glimpse of his meaning, for he grinned and nodded when Dane continued:
"You don't feel quite sure what I'm saying yet. I don't care, so long as you sit up and listen patiently. I'm feeling very low and lonely this morning, Monday."
The listener appeared to consider, and then rose upright, saying solemnly:
"Cappy Maxwell, say we lib for this place, then we dam well lib. Cappy Maxwell fine white man too much. Suppose them low bushmen come we dam well go chop him."
CHAPTER XV
THE BOARDING OF THE KABUNDA
It was a hot and steamy night when trader Redmond sat with his comrade Gilby in an upper room of their factory perched above a beach swept by smoking surf, which was even heavier than usual that night. The factory was not a desirable residence, even for West Africa, where there are not many places where a fastidious white man would care to live; but neither Redmond nor his comrade was particular, and so long as they could make a good percentage on the factory's turnover, they disregarded the dirt, smells, and insect legions. Redmond was pale and round-shouldered; Gilby lank and tall; and their speech was usually vivid and their tempers quick.
Redmond strolled toward the window and swore at the surf. He had some justification, for the whole heave of the southern ocean hurled itself thundering upon the hammered beach. The factory windows rattled as each breaker dissolved into long sheets of foam which surged far up the trembling sand, while the steamy haze of spray veiled almost to its summit the lofty bluff behind the edifice.
"No use lighting the signal fire. There's not a surf-boat on the coast could run a load of produce through. The Kabunda can either blow her whistle off or go on again," he said. "It's even too bad to venture off light, and screw an odd bottle of liquor out of her purser."
"It always is when the markets are rising and we have cargo waiting," grumbled Gilby. "As to the liquor, you can go yourself if you want it. I'm not over-keen on playing that game with the Kabunda's new factotum again. It takes a good deal to stir me, but that man has no sense of humor, and was positively insulting. 'No cargo in your confounded boat?' growls he. 'Well, the next time you stop this mailboat just because you're thirsty, we'll heave you over the rail!'"
Redmond chuckled dryly. The steamboat officials who ply along that coast have a good deal to ruffle them; and it is exasperating for the master of a steamer, attracted by flag or fire signal, to anchor off a dangerous beach expecting several boat-loads of cargo at least, and then discover that the shipper desires only a piece of ice or gratis liquor.
"Better wait for the old Luala. She's the canteen ship. Still, we'll sit up until we hear the Kabunda's whistle. It sounds homelike," he said.
Gilby nodded approval, for the coast-hunting steamers were the only link connecting the two lonely men with civilization, and there were times when they acquired a childish fear of losing all touch with it.
Redmond sat smoking in silence, while Gilby listlessly turned over an old English newspaper, and huge brown cockroaches crawled up and down the mildewed walls.
"Hallo!" Redmond exclaimed suddenly. "There's a man with boots on crossing the compound. Who, by all that's wonderful, can it be?"
"The Frenchman from Swamp Creek, looking for drinks," suggested Gilby.
"Guyot's dying of fever this time, sure, his nigger said. There's no other white man within marching distance; but whoever it is is coming up the stairs!"
Projected against the darkness outside, a strange, bedraggled figure stood in the door. The man's hair was wet and long, the half-closed eyes beneath it glittered feverishly, and the bones of the haggard face showed through the pallid skin. Thorn-rent rags barely decently covered the bony limbs beneath them, and the mire of many a league of swamp clung about him to the knees. Behind loomed the figure of a negro leaning on a rifle.
Moving unevenly, the stranger advanced into the room, and Redmond positively recoiled before him.
"Who in the name of perdition are you, and where do you come from?" he gasped.
The newcomer, instead of answering the question, caught at the table as he asked another:
"What day of the month is this, and have they changed the homeward mailboat's time bill?"
"The tenth, and the Kabunda should pass to-night," said Gilby, staring blankly at him.
"Thank heaven!" was the response. "I am just in time! You ought to know me. I am Maxwell, and have been prospecting for Niven's gold beyond the Leopards' country."
"Good Lord!" broke from Redmond. "Stir round, Gilby, instead of gaping there! Fetch out some whisky, and kick up the steward boy! Can't you see there's a white man starving? Sit down before you fall over, Mr. Maxwell."
Maxwell gulped down a draught of the spirit forced upon him, and sank into the chair his host dragged forward, while there was a crash and a howl on the veranda where Gilby fell over the sleeping steward boy.
"He means well, but can't help having been born clumsy," said the trader apologetically. "Lie right back there, and don't talk until you've eaten. Oh, I see – brought a nigger with you. Tell the cook to stuff the black man, Gilby."
When food was set before him, Maxwell ate ravenously; then leaning forward in his chair, he looked at his hosts.
"I must thank you for your kindness, and ask another favor," he said. "It is of vital consequence that I should catch the Kabunda to-night. I will pay up to twenty pounds for a passage off to her."
The pair stared at him, and there was a sceptical smile on Gilby's lips. It was clear that he doubted the ragged adventurer's ability to redeem his promise.
"It can't be done," declared Redmond. "Our surf-boat has a plank badly split; and if she hadn't there's not a man on all this coast could run you off to-night."
"Nevertheless, if you will listen a few minutes, and treat what I tell you in strict confidence, I think one of you will," said Maxwell, determining to trust them in part.
As he told the story, the incredulous smile faded from the faces of his listeners.
"You can understand the necessity for my desperate hurry now," he concluded. "My partner is left alone, save for a handful of sickly niggers, with the bushmen coming down, and his life may depend upon my catching that steamer. I will leave this packet of gold dust, which I had intended to use for traveling expenses, as the price of my passage."
Redmond opened the leather bag tendered him, and Gilby dropped acid upon part of its contents. Then there was silence, until Redmond spoke with a naive directness which called up the faintest flicker of amusement into Maxwell's eyes.
"It is quite genuine, and we believe you. Rideau's a hard case, and we'd stake a good deal to get even with him after a certain game he played us; but our folks at home are so confoundedly particular, and you wouldn't find an agent on the coast willing to speculate in mines beyond Shaillu's country. You see, if you let us in, the auditors would set off the sum against our salary. Steady; I haven't quite finished yet. We're not fastidious, either of us, but we haven't come down to screwing money out of a countryman's necessity; so we're open to do the best we can for you. Now take back your gold, and be hanged to you!"
"My sentiments, too!" nodded Gilby. "Redmond can talk sensibly when he likes. It looks uncommonly like suicide, but as my place down under can't be much worse than this one, I'm open to chance drowning with you. I'll go out, and fill my boat boys up with trade gin now. They're tolerably daring beggars, but they'd never face it sober."
An hour later Maxwell and the two traders stood upon the roaring beach amidst a crowd of black men. Steamy spray whirled about them, and veiled half the palm-crowned bluff from whose summit a crimson flame leaped up; and each time the white haze thinned, two lights reeled wildly through the blackness out at sea. Between these and the beach a succession of great rollers reared their crests of phosphorescent flame, and the hoot of the steamer's whistle was but faintly audible through the roar they made. A picked crew of brawny negroes chattered about the big surf-boat they held upright on rollers just clear of the surges which raced up the sand.
"It does not look nice. In fact, I've seldom seen it worse, but we'll take our chances when those big ones have run in," said Gilby. "Get into the boat Maxwell, and take care when the rest of us follow in a hurry that we don't fall over you. Hyah you Krooboy, all be fit and ready!"
Huge breakers usually run in series, and when the last of the larger ones had crumbled with a thunderous roar, burying the half-mile sweep of sand in foam from end to end, there was a heaving of muscular shoulders, and clamorous black men floundered waist-deep through the backwash dragging at the boat. She was large and heavy, but thirty pairs of strong hands made light work, and when a dozen amphibious Kroos had swung themselves on board the rest toiled almost shoulder-deep in hissing froth while the sand streamed seaward under them. The craft's stern alone stuck fast, and Redmond shouted himself breathless as he braced his shoulders beneath her quarter, knowing that unless they could drive her clear boat and crew would be rolled over together when the next sea came in.
"Shove, you black imps, shove before them sharks go chop you!" he cried.
They made a last effort, the boat slid clear. Twelve three-tongued paddles smote the water together, and Redmond watched the craft rise almost upright with bows buried in froth and seafire as another majestic breaker came rolling in. Then he turned and raced shoreward for his life, with an acre of foam close behind him. When he halted again the surf-boat had vanished into the hollow of the sea, but the howling of those who paddled her, and the helmsman's sulphurous encouragement, rising above the roar of waters, betokened her safety.
"Gilby's no fool in a surf-boat, anyway," he mused, as he went back dripping to the factory.
Another hour had passed when the boat was flung upon the beach with a crash which rent her damaged plank from end to end; and the soaked white man who sprang out of her hurried to the factory with his proud display of two bottles of claret, and one, partly-empty, of liqueur, besides a piece of ice in flannel, and a cigar box.
"The time was too short, or I might have done better," he explained. "Had only a few minutes to tax the skipper and mates in, while the old man wasn't over-pleased about stopping for one passenger. Boat was half-full when we got alongside, and Maxwell too weak to climb the ladder. They hove him on board with the crane, wrong side uppermost, and half-dazed apparently. The boat was plunging wildly, and Sorrowful Tom too drunk to fix the sling. Taking things all around, it's a mercy we didn't drown him."
"You're a good man in a boat," Redmond conceded. "Still, you have very little sense. Fancy making a run of that kind and coming ashore with – claret!"
While Dane and Maxwell fought the plague in Africa, Lilian Chatterton and the young clergyman in charge of that parish walked side by side down the street of a village in North Britain one afternoon. The village was neither picturesque nor prosperous just then, for there was a scarcity of work at the quarries, and for weeks together hard frost had rendered all stone-cutting impossible. A bitter wind sighed about the low stone houses which rose dripping in unlovely simplicity from the muddy street, while an air of stolid, uncomplaining poverty was stamped upon the faces of the men who lounged idly where they could find a shelter in the lee of a building. Miss Chatterton had not enjoyed good health that winter, and the surroundings depressed her. Neither did she find the vista of bleak hillside, snow-streaked moor, and lowering sky much more cheerful, and she was glad when her companion broke the silence.
