IN CENTRAL AFRICA

I

I had gone to Zanzibar and hired carriers for a hunting expedition and then pushed into the wild alone—for uneducated natives are not companions. Week after week I had marched, rising steadily towards the great lake, killing game only when food was needed, going wherever the spirit moved, in perfect lawless freedom.

One evening the great mountain Kilimanjaro etched its mass against the opal sky and I made up my mind to climb it, or at least to get to know it, and a week later we were among the foothills. One day the negro captain I had put in charge of the men told me the carriers were all frightened, for a great chief lived on the mountain, and he was a slave-dealer and might send them away in chains to die far from kith or kin on the further side of the sea.

I asked his name. Suleiman, I was told; and for curiosity’s sake or for adventure I resolved to visit him. Two days later, just as we were breaking camp, three men from Suleiman presented themselves with a letter asking me to halt my men and accompany the messengers to the Great Chief. In spite of the captain’s warnings I took my English servant and went with them.

All three were fine specimens; the leader, a chief of the Swahili, must have been six feet three and was broad in proportion, and two of his tribesmen, both above medium height, were stoutly built and armed, as I noticed at once, not with assegais or clubs, but with cheap repeating rifles.

“Where did you get them?” I asked the chief, pointing to the rifles.

“Chief Suleiman,” was his reply. Evidently Suleiman, in his eyes, was a sort of god, for he mouthed the word like a challenge.

That first morning the march lay through scattered clumps of trees and bushes of thorn and was steadily upward, I remarked, for towards evening the air was at once lighter and cooler.

Next day we got into the forest itself and marched along a narrow winding path, which ran like a black ribbon through the gloom. Often I had wondered who first made these winding ways through the forest trees and thorn bushes; wait-a-bit thorns the Boers call them, and indeed if you get caught in them you are likely to wait a bit and be uncommon glad to get free with a whole skin, for the thorns are often as thick and long as a man’s little finger and as sharp as a steel fishhook, and these hooks are set at all angles on tough branches. I’d rather brave a German barrage and the worst barbed wire than that murderous, elastic entanglement.

All that day I walked behind the big chief and learned from him half a hundred Swahili words; savages, I found, are very like children, and love to give themselves airs as teachers.

Early in the afternoon he stopped suddenly and pointed into the thick bush on the right—“Buffalo.”

I looked, and after a while distinguished the beast’s head, chiefly because he kept moving his ears to ward off the flies; but for the life of me I could not see his body.

“Shall I shoot?” I asked the chief.

“If you can kill,” he replied shortly.

I thought the doubt ridiculous at ten yards’ range; besides, I had a double-barrelled ·450 Rigby and felt that if one shot failed to kill, the second would not. I knew the chances, knew that if he were not killed the great beast could rush through the thorn bushes as we would go through rushes, whereas we should all be kept to the path, and as he could move twice as fast as we could, in ten minutes he would have killed us all. But I felt sure and, besides, I was excited. The beast was looking right at me, so I aimed just below the horns and between the eyes and fired. With a grunt the buffalo pitched forward on his knees and rolled over, dead.

In a trice the Swahili tribesmen had cut their way through the thorns and we were standing over the dead body of a fine young bull. They all made much of the shot, though in truth it was not a good one. Either I had aimed a little high or the rifle had thrown high at the short range, and only the force of the nitrous powder had driven the steel-pointed bullet through two inches at least of the bossed horn into the brain. As a matter of fact the whole head was traversed, for we found the bullet in the skin of the neck.

That evening we halted in a clearing and I saw an African feast; it began about six in the evening and went on till after midnight. Each man stuffed down ten pounds, at least, of buffalo meat, and with a bottle of Cape “smoke” they soon became half delirious with excitement, mimicking my shot and the fall of the buffalo a hundred times. The chief, too, though less excited, was just as enthusiastic. I was immediately christened “Rahala,” or the man who kills dead.

Next morning the chief told me that we had nearly reached our destination, and I found that every quarter of a mile or so we had to turn out of the path and make a detour in order to avoid some murderous trap or snare. The whole forest was mined for some three miles deep. I began to have a high opinion of Suleiman’s power and cunning.

I was soon to have convincing evidence of it. A little after noon we came through the forests into the open and found ourselves in cultivated fields of maize and vegetables. I did not pay much attention to these surroundings at the time, for there was a broad road rising steadily, and half-an-hour or so of rapid walking brought us out on a grass-covered slope and in front, a mile above us, there was a collection of kraals, and people moving about like bees before the hives. Beyond the grassy slope again the mass of the mountain rose in almost a cliff at least a thousand feet in height and thickly wooded; the kraals were all together near the foot of this natural bastion.

About a quarter of a mile away from the Big Kraal we were met by some messengers who came to conduct us to the presence of the Great Chief. We found Suleiman seated alone in front of his kraal, with at least two hundred Swahili warriors about him, all armed with repeating rifles; the source of his power was obvious enough.

Chief Suleiman impressed me; he was an imposing figure, with large head, beaked nose and hawk-like eyes, evidently an Arab, or Semite, if you will, of pure race. Usually his eyes were half closed, peering at once and reflective, with a myriad of tiny wrinkles about them, as if he lived in the Great Desert, where men have to shield their eyes from excess of light. Some remark would interest him and suddenly his eyes would flash wide open and the imperious hawk-glance would shock you. He was somewhat above middle height, forty-two or forty-five years of age; his thick black hair and beard were slightly grey already and he was rather stout. An air of high courage and command seemed to emanate from him. He rose from his chair to meet me, took my offered hand, put me in a seat on his right and sat down. While this was going on all the men about him bowed with their hands on their hearts and profuse “salaams.” It was evidently peace.

Though he talked Swahili at first I soon found that Suleiman knew English and French, and talked both much better than I could talk Swahili. Strange to say, as soon as he spoke English he put off some of his pride of place and became more human and friendly. I learned that he had been born near Tangiers and had lived for ten years near Biskra: like most successful men he preferred the English to the French. He was curious to know in what way I represented the British Government, and when I assured him I had no official position whatever, he was still more curious to find out why I had come at the risk of my life to Central Africa. I told him I loved the wild freedom of the life and loved to watch the habits of wild beasts and birds, and even to note the characteristics of native customs. “It rests me,” I said, “to live as a hunter and watch life as it was a hundred thousand years ago.”

“Do you collect ivory?” was the next question, for ivory is the road to wealth in Africa.

“No. I have a pair of enormous horns just for specimens, and that is all.”

“How do you protect yourself from wandering bands of warriors of this or that tribe?”

“I have a dozen well-armed men,” I replied.

“As well armed as mine?” he asked, and I nodded, smiling; no conception of the seriousness of the question even dawned on me.

We talked more than an hour, and then he invited me to dinner in his kraal. The food was very good indeed, but the wine was a sort of native product, and I contented myself with tasting it. After the meal we came out and sat before the kraal, and suddenly a dozen girls came and danced before us, Arab fashion. Some were negresses, but one or two were Arabs of the famous Ouled-Nail tribe, hereditary dancers by profession, as graceful as possible, sylph-like, indeed, for they all exercise assiduously and train themselves as strenuously as our prize-fighters.

The show amused and interested me, for the girls were of different colour and very different type, but all had been selected by no mean judge for their beauty. The Arabs were, of course, white, but there were two or three golden-brown girls, whom Suleiman spoke of disdainfully as Copt-Christians, and in contrast with these the shining bronze of the natives, with their pearly white teeth and flashing dark eyes.

The natives were only clothed in the “moocha” tablier about their waists; but the Copts and Arabs were swathed in silk veils that floated about the slim figures, now revealing, now concealing rounded limbs and curves. The music was a slow chant of the girls’ voices, punctuated by the beat of the tom-tom. Large fires had been lighted, because at sundown a chilliness came into the mountain air.

It would have been impossible, I thought, to have imagined a more primitive or a more picturesque scene. The girls danced between us and the fires, their figures and waving limbs etched, so to speak, against the red glow, while all around the natives sat or hunkered down as a living frame. Gradually the girls left off, the natives first, and then the Copts, while the trained Arab professionals continued to show all their powers, from the famous danse du Ventre to posturings and abandonments, such as the Almas of India display. The fires had died down and the round yellow moon had climbed high above the trees.

“Bedtime,” said Suleiman. “You will find beds and servants yonder,” and he pointed to a kraal near by.

“You have given me a royal entertainment,” I said. “I am infinitely obliged to you.”

His eyes flashed and, as we parted, he summed up:

“Power and women. What else is there in life?”

I laughed and made some remark about wishing that I could show him equal hospitality and that I would do my best when my carriers came. He waved his hand to me: “To-morrow is another day.”

Next morning I was a little surprised to find all my men grouped round the kraal Suleiman had allotted them. The Chief told me he thought I should be more comfortable if he hastened to bring up my baggage and stores. I could only thank him for his foresight. At the same time a doubt of his good faith occurred to me, but I showed no sign of any suspicion; in fact I scarcely felt enough for the apprehension to become articulate.

I had armed a dozen of my best men with Springfield rifles and automatic pistols, and Suleiman, I found, was very eager to know how far the pistols could carry and whether they would kill or not. I soon proved to him that they were more trustworthy and far deadlier than his “trade” rifles, which often burst or jammed. Seeing his admiration of the automatic pistols I made him a present of one and remarked casually that when I returned to the coast I’d send him up a hundred; his face lit up at the promise. Before leaving me that morning he pointed out a kraal some distance away which he had allotted to my carriers and baggage, but, fortunately for me, my armed guards always slept about my kraal, and so I told him. The Chief bowed, smiling (he was really a born diplomat), and went away after saying he would send food in for me. Fortunately, again, I asked him to lunch with me, as I had some champagne.

We had a great lunch and Suleiman, though a Mohammedan, drunk much more than was good for him, and indeed was not to be seen for the rest of the day. But about nightfall one of the Arab dancers whom I had admired the evening before presented herself, declaring proudly that she had been sent to me as a present by the Great Chief. I laughed and shook my head, telling her she must return to the Great Chief’s kraal, as women were not allowed in my religion.

She seemed much hurt, told me she could serve me in many ways, and began unwinding her swathing veils. When I stopped her showing her beauty she would have me touch her arms and breasts and hips to prove that she was firm everywhere, as a trained boy might have been. Were it not for her too large nose she would indeed have been a model of rare beauty. But I could not assume the responsibility for her, so I sent her back pitilessly, and as it turned out I could not have acted more wisely, for I thereby won a priceless ally.

The third or fourth day I had been Suleiman’s guest two or three things happened that gave me pause. Tapp, my English servant, came to me, saying he could not find his automatic pistol, and when I questioned him I found that he had been flirting with one of the Arab dancers, and he believed she had taken it. Tapp was a Cockney youth, undersized and ugly, but wiry and healthy, extremely clever with horses and, strange to say, with machines also, willing to make himself useful in any way, brimful of the spirit of adventure, yet quick-witted in life and extraordinarily loyal. “I thought I ought to tell you the story, sir,” he said, “because that Chief Suleiman’s a slippery sort of gent, and in my opinion he’s up to no good; he’s put our carriers slap-bang in the middle of his soldiers, where they’re no use to us,” he added significantly. I told him to keep his eyes and ears open and report anything suspicious, and I assured him that I was on the look-out, though I didn’t believe in any danger. I had a couple of automatic pistols that were not being used, and I knew the value both of a small gift and large promises.

The next afternoon Suleiman came and told me that he wanted me to come to his kraal to see his daughter. I looked surprised, and he added, “My only real child. The others don’t matter; but Rachel is beautiful. I was married to her mother in Algiers,” he added. “She was of the great tribe of the Ouled-Nail—the tribe in which all the women are dancers from generation to generation.” An hour or so later I went over to Suleiman’s kraal, and I took with me the automatic pistols; his people would perhaps cease stealing them when he got a couple for nothing. But I forgot what I came to do when Rachel, his daughter, came towards me out of the gloom. She was short rather than tall, with very fair skin, and showed hardly a trace of her Jewish origin. Her nose was slightly aquiline, but the eyes were blue—at once candid and cordial eyes that met yours fairly, and lent her a sort of innocent air, at variance with her quiet, self-possessed manner. There were contrasts in her that piqued curiosity. “I wonder if you know why I am glad to meet you?” she asked, after father had introduced us.

“No,” I replied, a little astonished at the unusualness of the greeting. “No, I can’t imagine, except, perhaps, out of loneliness.”

“I have books,” she replied, “and am not lonely—at least not very,” she added truthfully. “But I wished to meet you because my father said you knew French and had lived in Paris, and because—well, because you sent Micah back to him—the dancer, I mean,” she added hastily, for the Chief seemed about to break in, as if he wanted to complete her thought. “He thinks Micah a miracle of beauty.”

“She’s certainly pretty,” I said, “and has a lovely figure; but she speaks only a very few words of French, and I thought she’d be happier with her companions than with a stranger of another race.”

Rachel clapped her hands together with a little crow of delight. “I told you so, father,” she said; and then to me: “You were quite right; she snores dreadfully; what could you expect with that nose! But won’t you be seated? What’s in the package?” she added, pointing to the parcel in which I had the automatics.

“Something for the Chief,” I replied, and I took out the pistols and handed them to him. Suleiman started and the hawk’s eyes stared at me. I saw at once that Tapp’s suspicions had been well founded. I should have to take care.

“I had a couple of these pistols over,” I added significantly, “and I thought you might like them, Chief, and if you do, and find them useful, I can write to London and get you as many as you wish.”

He was trembling with eagerness. “I’d like to try them myself,” he broke in, “then I’ll talk to you.”

“Sure, sure,” I interjected, putting the parcel with the cartridges into his hands. “You have five hundred shots there, and fifty will tell you all about them.”

In a trice he was out of the kraal, his usual dignity thrown off in his excitement. As we sat down Rachel looked at me.

“You are very clever,” she said thoughtfully, “and I like clever people. But how did you know?”

“Know what?” I asked.

“Know,” she replied, “that my father is crazy to have all new weapons. His power,” she added, “is founded on his rifles.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” I replied negligently. “The Chief has treated me well. I wanted him to have the pistols.”

“When you write to London for more,” she said quietly, “I’d show him the letter and let him send it. It’ll get to Mombasa quickly,” she added, smiling.

I noted the advice and gave Suleiman the letter the morning after. Meantime I went on talking to Rachel. For some reason or other she interested me. She moved gracefully and was beautifully formed—as, indeed, all the women of her tribe are apt to be; for as dancers they have developed in the centuries the perfect dancer’s figure. They are nearly all slight and round, with small breasts and fine limbs. Most Arabs, I think, have small wrists and ankles, and Rachel happened besides to have an interesting, pretty face and the curious, frank ways of one who has always been in authority, so to speak, and had to consider nothing but her own pleasure.

Almost at once she asked me: “Are you married?” and when she heard I was free she rounded her shoulders and hugged herself, so to speak, in a funny little gesture, very expressive of intimate pleasure.

At once, too, she asked me about Paris. I had to tell her what women did there, and speak of theatres and dances and jewellery and dresses—dresses especially. “How did they dress in the evenings?”

A little maliciously I told her how low the dresses were being worn, and her eyes made pictures of all I saw and all I left unsaid as well.

“Do you like those low dresses?” she asked, and I confessed that I did, that the Paris Opera House was a splendid sight with the myriads of nude shoulders set off by the diamond and pearl necklaces.

The music, too, interested her, and she got up and went over to a sort of musical box, which presently wheezed forth Voi che Sapete and Caro Nome and half-a-dozen other favourite airs. Rachel had musical talent and could hum (and did hum in and out of season) more tunes than I had ever heard of.

In many respects she was a child of nature, and if my talk did not interest her, she usually began humming or singing some tune to herself in a way that set all my nerves on edge. What pleased her must evidently please everyone else, and she had no voice, poor girl!

I soon found that she thought over everything I said and acted on it very ingeniously.

Suleiman asked me to dinner a day or so later and told me Rachel was going to be there, and sure enough she appeared in a dress without shoulder-straps, as I had said, and cut far lower even that one would find in Paris. But her figure was almost perfect, and she was as pleased as a child when I praised it.

When the dancing girls came in she drew back, and we talked together in the mouth of the kraal. She asked me again whether “she was pretty this way,” and she touched her low dress. I told her she made one want to kiss her, she was so pretty. “Why not?” she asked simply, and our intimacy began.

After my gift of the automatics and my letter to London ordering a hundred more pistols of the same calibre Chief Suleiman became very confidential, and gradually I learned all about him and his pretty daughter. Whenever I was in any doubt as to the Chief’s motives Rachel enlightened me and unconsciously, at the same time, discovered her own character.

Suleiman was a Mohammedan, and while studying him I found I was getting an astonishing insight into his religion; for his faith was merely the garment of his spirit. He was of an incomparable, a brutal sensuality; he could imagine no heaven without houris, and his individualism was just as marked. Mohammed’s view of life was that of the Arab sheik; he wanted “justice” for all men, kindness to dependents and those of the true faith; but there he stopped. Suleiman had no conception that the claims of other weaker human beings were as valid as his; Socialism was clean beyond his horizon; he thought it as silly as an American banker thinks it or a French Bourbon. And Rachel was as self-centred as her father, as resolved to get what she wanted out of life. All this dawned on me gradually through the intercourse of many days and weeks and shall be told in the next chapter. Here and now I just want to say that as Suleiman grew friendly he showed a wonderful hospitality. He devised a great game-beat for me, where I feasted my eyes for days and nights on all sorts of strange beasts; he taught me, or one of his conjurers did, that snakes talk, and often I spent the night listening to the “mambas” or cobras making weird noises, which the conjurer often interpreted rightly.

He always knew, for example, when they were going to separate; the curious way they rubbed their bodies and heads together before they parted taught me that our human “good-night kiss” may perhaps be found all through nature, even in the rustling of the leaves.

But feastings with dances afterwards constituted the chief element in Suleiman’s hospitality, and one incident illumined the man’s whole being to me in such an astonishing way I must give it as it took place.

I had asked him about African cooking, I remember, told him I wanted a distinctively African meal, and he promised he would have one prepared if I cared to provide the “sweet, foaming wine,” as he called champagne.

In a day or two the feast was arranged, and as usual now Rachel took her place at the board. We had an ostrich egg on a sort of native spinach, and then a small roast that looked like a leg of lamb or kid. I should have thought nothing of it if Suleiman had not expatiated on its merits even before it was brought on the table.

“What sort of meat is it?” I asked casually; “what do you call it in French?”

“Taste it,” he said, putting a large slice on my plate. “Taste it and tell me what you think; this is the best meat in the world, the sweetest and most tender, and agrees with everyone; a fever-sick man can digest it.”

I looked at Rachel and she nodded, smiling encouragement. She evidently thought as much of it as her father. But now my curiosity was roused; I turned the meat over; it was very close-grained and evidently tender, though it was dark in colour.

“What is it called in English?” I asked. “Surely you know its name in French or English, or at least you can describe it.” And I filled their glasses and my own with champagne.

Suleiman saw he could get me no further, so he began: “It is the best meat on earth; that is, tenderer,” and he pointed to the pear-like joint, “than lamb, sweeter than kid or chicken. If you won’t taste it till you know, then learn that it is the thigh, properly kept for a fortnight and smoked, of a young girl about thirteen years old——”

“Did she die?” I asked, cold with horror.

“Sure,” he said with a loud laugh, “that’s not alive, is it?”

“Was she killed?”

“In a row,” he remarked, waving his hand. “She was in a slave-gang and got in the way of a Swahili’s spear when her mother fainted.”

The whole scene flashed before me.

“Good God!” I cried, and poured down my glass of champagne while drawing back from the table.

They both laughed. Suleiman said: “Look at the effect of mere prejudice, stupid prejudice. Try it, man, and you’ll get the same liking for it we have; won’t he, Rachel?”

Rachel agreed, but I got up and went to the door of the kraal. God’s sunshine even seemed unreal to me—from that moment on I began to think better of some prejudices.

II

I have often wondered since how I came to put myself into Suleiman’s power without hesitation or suspicion. And even more curious it seems how I learned to know the dangers of my position bit by bit and just in time to save my skin.

After my letter to London, ordering one hundred automatic pistols for him, Suleiman promised me a wonderful entertainment.

“I will show you all Africa can show,” he said, “in beauty.”

Naturally I thanked him, and we were still in talk when a sort of headman, Abdulla, “salaamed” before him, calling “Sultan.”

This Abdulla was a Bajoon, a tribe of mixed negroid and Arab descent, a mixture which gave him intelligence above the average. He was very short and broad, evidently powerful, and though probably not more than thirty always had his head shaved—shaved, as I found out by chance, with a piece of broken bottle-glass. Abdulla was the Sultan’s right hand in all ways, and deserved to be. He was not only intelligent as Europeans estimate intelligence, but a master of slave-craft and bush-craft as well. He came, it appeared, to announce to the Sultan that a herd of elephants had been located on the other side of the shamba (the Swahili word for a native clearing). Abdulla’s excitement was contagious, and when he wound up with Wananame labuda, “Males too, I heard!” I saw that Suleiman was keenly interested.

“A troop of elephants, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied Suleiman; “males and females in a herd. Do you love shooting, like most Englishmen?”

“No,” I answered. “But I’d love to study a mixed troop on the feed without being seen.”

“Without being seen,” repeated Suleiman disdainfully, “is easy enough: elephants have poor sight; but without being smelt is another thing. Besides, the males seldom feed with the females. Elephants are hard to kill,” he went on significantly, “and a wounded elephant is more dangerous than a buffalo in bush.”

“Our modern rifles kill elephants as easily as deer,” I replied carelessly.

Suleiman flashed his hawk-glance on me, in surprise I thought, and his daughter’s phrase came into my head that her father’s power was “founded on his rifles.”

He was probably even more desirous of getting fine rifles than automatic pistols. But for the moment he said nothing, save that he would have the elephants kept in the same bush till next morning. Abdulla assured him that was easy, for the forest was full of rubber bushes, and the elephants loved the fruit.

That evening I met Rachel as usual between the kraals and went with her for a walk. She spoke of the elephants.

“Of course, if you’ll kill elephants for father he’ll do anything you wish,” was her way of putting it.

“But you said he was rich,” I put in lamely.

“No rich man is ever rich enough,” she remarked shortly, as if announcing a universal truth. Probably because she felt she had been abrupt she added: “Riches give power. But why do you object? It surely isn’t the danger?”

“No, no,” I replied; “the contrary is nearer the truth. Modern weapons and scientific knowledge have made killing wild animals too easy and too safe to be exciting. Besides, I hate taking life——”

She shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Why not do what is safe and easy?” It was evidently useless to argue, so I changed the subject.

About three in the morning Abdulla woke me with the news that there was one big solitary bull elephant as well as the herd of smaller animals. I felt little scruple in killing an old “rogue,” and consequently in about half-an-hour we had entered the bush preceded by Abdulla. Tapp followed me with my ·404 Rigby, while I carried a ·450 Westley-Richards. Suddenly Abdulla stopped and showed us the footprints of the herd; most of them were round and not more than twelve or fourteen inches across, significantly he pointed to an oval spoor fully twenty-one inches in length—“the big bull.”

After feeding, the old solitary had walked fast for a couple of hours, for it was nearly six o’clock before we found warm droppings, and then, moving cautiously, came on the bull lying down and apparently asleep, though one huge ear was mechanically fanning the air to his trunk, so that even in sleep he could get the scent of any intruder.

“Shoot, shoot before he wakes!” whispered Abdulla in great excitement; but I saw that it was easy to get a better view by moving a few yards to the left. Holding my hand up for warning I crawled round and soon got the head quite distinctly. I had never seen such horns; but all my attention was concentrated on the saucer-like depression in the forehead of the great beast just between and a little lower than the eyes. Aiming at the bottom of the depression for fear the rifle should throw high at the short range, I fired. To my astonishment nothing happened; nothing, save that the ear stopped moving. I saw the bullet-hole. Was the beast dead or only stunned? Should I fire again? The next moment Abdulla came to me: “Shoot again, quick!” I shook my head. I wanted the credit for killing the bull with a single shot. “He’s dead,” I said, and the event proved I was right.

Luck was favouring me persistently. I was not a good shot; yet even Selous, who was a fine shot, had bagged many elephants before killing one with a single bullet. And the horns of this one were very large, weighing over one hundred and sixty pounds, and splendidly regular, except that the tip of one had been broken off years before....

I knew about Suleiman to guess that the more he wanted my rifles the less he would say about them; but before noon he came to ask me if I wanted the bull’s horns, and when I said “No,” he announced a great entertainment for that evening. “My daughter says she will be dressed like the Paris ladies,” and he added, smiling through half-closed eyes, “the dancers will not.”

At first Rachel did not appear; but instead a great troop of Swahilis, mimicking an attack on a village and the carrying off of the women. The whole thing was staged with a prodigious realism and excellently acted. Then a dozen Hottentot girls moving to the slow melancholy beat of the tom-toms; they were hideous I thought; short steatopygous figures of the most extravagant proportions. I found that if a girl sat down she could only get up by turning over on her face and rising with the help of her hands.

Then a crowd of natives of various tribes and half-breeds danced with the Arab professionals. It interested me to notice that some of the natives had as fine figures as the Semites and danced as well. In particular, one mulatto not only had an excellent figure but a bright, vivacious face to boot, and danced as lightly as any sylph. I asked her name and found she was called Leah and much liked by Rachel, her mistress.

It was fascinating to watch these hundreds of half-nude girls mimicking before one the vagaries of savage courtship, for all the dances were in essence seductive symbols of love and desire, and Leah, for example, had caught all the tricks of the Arabs and used them with an astonishing artistry.

I called her over to me and could not but admire her. She was tall, with surprisingly regular features; the skin was citron-coloured, but soft and clear, the eyebrows pencilled and the large brown eyes were simply startling. Looking closely I found that their beauty came from the fact that there were golden specks in them radiating light and warmth. Her figure was all grace, though somewhat fuller and rounder in outline than the Arab dancer type. Leah was very quick and intelligent, and caught the meaning of my Swahili in spite of my grotesque blundering. While talking with her, Rachel surprised us.

Leah moved away as Rachel came to the entrance of the kraal. Her dress was of shimmering blue and draped about as low as the European full dress, but tightly swathed about the hips, Indian fashion. It was very becoming and set off her fair skin and shapely figure.

“You’re late,” I said.

“I hate to see those creatures,” she replied, indicating the little fat, crab-like Hottentots; “they seem to me caricatures of humanity. What a pity Leah is coloured, isn’t it? If she weren’t, she’d be quite pretty, don’t you think?”

“She is more than pretty as it is,” I said, “and has a lovely figure to boot. I think she is lovelier than any of the dancers.”

“Really!” rejoined Rachel, a little piqued. “Perhaps you told her so.”

“No,” I rejoined; “I’m sorry, but my Swahili does not go that far.”

Rachel broke in: “Do you like my dress? Is it right at last?”

“Perfectly right,” I replied, “and extremely becoming; you are en beauté this evening.” Smiling, she made me a little curtsy for my praise.

“I’m glad,” she began, after seating herself at my side; “every woman likes to know she’s looking her best.” After a short pause she went on: “You’ve covered yourself with glory again I hear, and the horns are really fine. Won’t you tell me about the hunt?”

“There is nothing to tell,” I answered, “and I’d much rather talk of you.”

“Let us go to my room then,” said Rachel, rising.

And now I must explain what the room was.

Almost midway between our kraals and a few hundred yards down the grassy slope was a clump of trees with little clearing in the middle, and here Rachel had made her pet withdrawing-room—only a roof, leaf-covered and supported on four stout poles. Beneath its shelter a wooden flooring raised six inches above the ground was covered with rugs and cushions. On moonlit nights the place was nearly as light as day, but without the moon it was ghostlike, eerie in dark glooms and silence.

The natives all believed that the grove was spirit-haunted, and not one of them, not even Abdulla or Leah or the Sultan himself, would willingly come near it. With glee Rachel had told me how she had heightened this dread by smearing phosphorus on the posts one afternoon, and then visiting the place at night, accompanied by Abdulla, Leah and some of the dancers. When they caught sight of the posts they all fled shrieking, and afterwards spread such tales of what they had seen that Rachel’s resting-place was free of spying eyes and curious ears for ever. Hither we went that evening almost in silence. The edge of the estrade was in the full light of the moon, and there we seated ourselves.

“I hated to hear you praise Leah’s figure,” Rachel began; “it’s stupid of me to say so, I know, but I just can’t help it. Why do you think her figure the loveliest of all?”

“I don’t,” I rejoined: “I haven’t seen more than half-a-dozen. How could I say hers was the loveliest?”

“Were her shoulders prettier than mine?” she went on earnestly.

“No, no,” I replied, after apparently weighing the question; “and your skin,” I added slowly, “is milky white, which gives you the advantage.”

Suddenly she stood up, and in a moment, as with one gesture, unveiled herself to the sandals.

“Is her figure prettier than mine?” she challenged.

“No, no,” I cried, seizing her in my arms, and delighted to find that she was as firm and lithe and shapely as the prettiest of the dancers; but the next moment she had wound herself out of my hands and, with a quick turn, had swathed herself again in the soft Indian silk. She sat down and I drew her to me.

“You shame me,” she said with quivering lips. The next minute she added hotly: “I’m a fool,” shaking off the emotion in proud revolt.

I soon comforted her, however, and my enthusiastic warm praise quickly brought her back to her usual good humour; indeed I think the little fever fit did her good, shook her out of her habitual mutism. She became really affectionate and prodigal of caresses, and for the first and only time showed pretty fancies.

“Do you know why I was so jealous and am now so happy?” she asked with shining eyes. “Because I dreamed of you last night, and the first man a girl dreams of will meet her soul when on its way to the Judgment!”

“Is that a Moslem belief?” I asked in wonder.

“Do you like it?” she countered.

“It’s charming,” I exclaimed, “quite charming; but I never heard it before.”

“The tribe I come from, near Fez,” she went on, “believes, too, that all a man’s good deeds turn into a lovely girl, who meets his spirit to give it courage and hope in the dread hour. The better man he has been, the lovelier the angel. The woman’s lot is different. You find an ideal of beauty, whereas if we have been good, it is the first man to whom we give ourselves, even in desire, who appears to comfort us on the dark way.”

“I thought that in Mohammed’s teaching,” I exclaimed, “no woman entered Paradise——”

“How awful!” she broke in; “you are all wrong, wrong. Ayesha, the Prophet’s wife, is highest among the holy, and Zahra Fatimah, his daughter, sits by his feet in heaven. Think, even after bearing two sons she was called the Virgin. Everyone knows that. Every Moslem believes It.” I was amused by her earnestness and delighted with the pretty imaginings. It was the first touch of poetry I had found in this child of nature, and it really gave my liking for her a fervour of spiritual intensity entirely lacking before. And this deeper feeling made me bold, and I took her on my knees and began kissing her with glowing lips and praising her.

“You are lovely, lovely,” I whispered; “but why didn’t you let me see you longer and imprint your beauty on my heart?”

“Hush,” she said prettily, putting her hand on my mouth, “and tell me why you love beauty so excessively. We women don’t.”

“One of our poets, named Spenser,” I responded, “has given the true reason.” I repeated to her the lines:

“It isn’t true,” she interrupted. “I know a—— If it only was true, what a wonderful world it would be. Oh!”

I had stirred her at length, and she kissed me now as I kissed her; but soon she pouted and restrained me, and in my vexation I quoted another couplet to her, wondering whether she would understand it fully:

But that sort of wisdom is within the ken of every girl, and she just shook her head.

“To put off is not to deny,” she pouted, and I kissed her for the word; but when I sought to detain her, she said simply:

“Lady Moon is going to bed. My father will wonder; and surprise and suspicion are of kin, you know,” she added, “and just now I don’t want to vex him.

“My father’s beginning to think you’re a wizard or magician,” she went on, smiling, “for your shooting surprised everyone. He told me to-day that he liked you; he is willing to have you as a son-in-law.”

She said it quite casually, as if the whole thing were fixed and arranged. I was more than astonished. I had flirted a little, kissed and paid compliments as one does to a pretty girl; but matrimony—straight off—without more ado—I was not prepared for it. I grasped at the first straw of excuse to gain time.

“Marriage,” I cried, “is a costly business, and I’m a poor man—very poor.”

“Father’ll make that all right,” she replied; “he’s rich enough for anything.”

“But I mustn’t take your father’s money,” I replied. “I don’t like being a parasite.”

“What matter who has got it,” she remarked, with a superb indifference, “so long as we can have all we need. Kiss me and don’t talk nonsense.”

I did as I was told, but the curious command in her word and voice stirred me to revolt. I can’t explain why, but I began to look at Rachel critically from that moment.

She was certainly pretty, and the face with its ivory skin, candid blue eyes and rounded chin, had no suspicion of hardness; but the imperiousness in the girl was extraordinary. Perhaps I resented it so strongly because I had always been used to taking the lead myself. Suddenly as she moved the moonlight fell on her chest in ivory radiance and showed up a dozen or so small, curling, black hairs. It was the first time I had ever seen hairs on a girl’s breast. I don’t know why, but at once a suggestion of negroid or Indian intermixture came into my mind and my critical observation became depreciatory.

When she reached the kraal, ten minutes later, Rachel clapped her hands for a servant; she wanted to know where the Sultan was, and when told he would be back soon, she wished to prepare his chibouque.

I noticed now that she was short; in ten years she would be stout; she was just an ordinary pretty girl with a domineering character. As she resumed her seat she began to hum Mimi’s song from La Bohême: “Mi chiamano, Mimi.”

Involuntarily I shrugged impatient shoulders. Interminable evenings of boredom intensified by badly hummed music came over me in a wave. Rachel had no gift of conversation, knew no literary language, took no interest in the best that was thought or known in the world. Nine hours out of ten she was uninteresting. In the tenth, however, she showed rare qualities.

Ever since the word marriage had been spoken she let herself go and she showed me her real nature. She was curiously passionate and even magnetic; she seemed to know all the ways of love by intuition, and her heat was contagious. At the same time she was reticent in speech to an extraordinary extent and would give no account in words of her feelings or sensations.

“Why talk of it?” she used to say when I questioned her, and with a mon petit homme she would close my lips with a kiss. She was always eager to talk French and to learn French phrases. Paris was her Mecca.

Now, telling love’s secrets is half the joy of intimacy, and her persistent silence at first annoyed and then exasperated me. I think she might have won me had she given up her mutism or even tried to relax her rule and please me now and then by a frank confession. But her imperiousness was the very soul of her. She was not only unwilling to constrain herself in any way, but apparently incapable of understanding any desire but her own, and absolute reticence was natural to her.

She didn’t even recall the past, as lovers are accustomed to do, and retrace the flowered steps by which love came to his dominion. If I told her how I first discovered this, that or the other trait in her she would listen, it is true; but never respond in like manner. She was as dominant as an empress, and through her I realised that small and ill-furnished minds and hearts can be even more despotic than great and rich natures.

Bit by bit I turned against her, and as my affection died out I set myself to master my desire. After all, the body is easier to subdue than the heart. “I am not going to marry Rachel”: that was a definite irrevocable decision, and when I returned to the present I found her still humming the intolerable hackneyed tune, as if to confirm my resolution.

Next morning, when dressing, I asked Tapp how he was getting on with his courtship. “Like a house on fire, sir,” was his frank avowal. “They don’t let the grass grow under their feet, these Arab girls.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Leah says we’ll be married when you marry Rachel,” he explained.

“Leah is very pretty,” I remarked, “and dances wonderfully. Are you in love with her, Tapp?”

“In love,” he repeated. “Every man’s in love with a pretty girl when she makes up to him. Leah is very clever.”

“Do you want to marry her?” I probed.

“Does a man ever want to be tied?” Tapp countered, with a grin.

“Well, if you wait till I’m married,” I concluded, “you’ll wait some time.”

“Miss Rachel means business, sir,” warned Tapp seriously. “She has sent to Mombasa for her wedding dress, veil and orange blossoms.”

“Good God!” I cried, “who put it into her head that a veil and orange blossoms were necessary?”

“Me, sir,” replied Tapp unblushingly. “I thought you might want a little time, so I mentioned the orange blossoms casual like. You ought to take care, sir,” he went on; “that Abdulla is crazy after Miss Rachel, and before you came along he had a good chance, Leah tells me.”

The idea of Abdulla as a rival killed my affection. I looked on him as an inferior, as a mere servant. Had there been passages between them? I must find out. “I wonder,” I began, “if Leah would tell you how far the courtship had gone?”

“Sure,” replied Tapp unhesitatingly, “me and her, sir, is that thick she’d deny me nothing. Leah is a good sort,” he added; “and beautifully made, sir, isn’t she? A perfect picture, but I don’t care for ’em so dark myself.”

“Find out what you can, Tapp,” I concluded, “and let me know if we can get away without trouble. I don’t mean marrying, that’s certain.”

“There’ll be bad trouble,” said Tapp, “when Miss Rachel finds that out; but we needn’t cross the stream till we come to it. When will the automatics reach Mombasa, sir?”

“How did you know about the pistols?” I asked.

“The Sultan tells everything to Abdulla and Rachel, and she and Leah are like sisters; they’re always talking. She asks Leah whatever she wants to know; Leah is a sort of help to her. Suleiman meant having all our pistols when he brought us up here, only you promised him more, and now he’s half frightened of your rifles; they all think there’s magic in ’em. They’re a honeducated lot.”

“Well, keep your eyes and ears open,” I counselled, “and let me know if anything important happens. I’m not afraid of Suleiman, but we don’t want to fight if we can get away peaceably.”

“We could get away all right,” rejoined Tapp, “and with our guard too, by all going on some hunting expedition; but how to get the carriers and baggage and rifles out of the Sultan’s clutches will be a job, especially if Miss Rachel is against us.”

“Do your best with Abdulla,” I replied. “I might arrange with the Sultan to go to the coast for his guns with Abdulla and bring back my marriage licence.”

“That might work,” cried Tapp. “Abdulla will help, I’m sure. Leah says he would have tried to kill you long ago, only he fears your magic. No one ever killed an elephant before with a single shot; that’s frightened them all. Even the girls put out a finger when you come near, Leah tells me—afraid of your devil.

“But are you sure, sir, you don’t want Rachel? She’s very pretty.”

“Prettiness alone soon loses its appeal,” was my reply.

“That’s it, sir,” cried Tapp; “these girls are all right for a week or a month, but I likes ’em more refined if I have to live with ’em.” He had said it in his way.

From this time on I began to think what pretext I could devise to get away. I was not anxious, for, after all, European wits, I knew, are better than African.

A little later Suleiman drew me aside to consult when the marriage should take place; the dresses could be delivered in a month. Would some date a couple of months ahead suit me?

“The truth is,” I replied, “I haven’t money enough to keep myself, let alone a wife.”

“Leave that to me,” said the Sultan. “Rachel will not go to her husband empty handed.”

I felt I was on the wrong track. “Besides,” I added, “I shall have to go to Mombasa too.”

“Why?” he interrupted.

“To get a licence,” I rejoined lamely; and then, as I saw I had made no impression, a brilliant idea occurred to me. “A consular officer, you know, must be present as a witness, or there is no marriage in England or France or any civilised country. I must get a consular officer as ‘witness,’ and a licence, or Rachel would not be accepted anywhere as my wife. Why, I haven’t even a Prayer Book,” I cried, as if shocked.

His eyes narrowed and the wrinkles all showed; but the suspicion or apprehension of the unexpected was only lulled, not stilled. I set my wits to work, and then remarked casually but seriously: “I think, too, you should have at least a dozen modern rifles. I had no idea how bad your guns are, or I’d have ordered for you rifles like mine instead of automatic pistols. Abdulla says you never kill buffalo, let alone elephant, with a single shot, and you’ve seen that I always do. It’s the rifle does it. With a dozen rifles like mine in the hands of men like Abdulla and yourself you would be invincible for the next twenty-five years.”

I had won. I saw it in his eyes and manner. “If you’ll do that,” he exclaimed, “I’ll do more for you even than I promised Rachel. I’ll send a slave-gang, not of five hundred, but of one thousand, with you to the coast, and sixty thousand pounds of ivory is a fortune, you know,” he remarked regretfully, not a thought in his head of the poor human beasts of burden carrying each sixty pounds of ivory, besides yoke and food and scanty belongings, through that awful tropical candescence. His inhumanity confirmed me in my purpose. Bad men make us worse, just as good ones make us better.

I had won if Rachel could be fooled as easily.

Of course I saw Tapp and talked it over with him.

“Beat it into Leah’s head that a consular officer as ‘best man’ is necessary,” I said, and made him repeat the phrase “best man” over and over again.

“Abdulla is keen to get you away from Rachel,” Tapp responded. “He let out to Leah the other night that she hasn’t kissed him once since you came, and that he was really resolved to murder you when Leah put it into his head to get you away instead. We’ll have no difficulty with him, sir.”

“Did he really say Rachel used to kiss him?” I asked, jealousy stabbing me with the memory of her wonderful kisses.

“Sure,” replied Tapp unhesitatingly. “Leah says they were as loving as we are, and if that’s true, Miss Rachel didn’t deny him much.”

“That’s how she learned the magic of her caressing,” I said to myself. “She practised with Abdulla—perhaps that’s the reason, too, of her mutism,” I went on infuriating myself. “He couldn’t have been very articulate.”

Jealousy is the only passion that feeds on itself and grows rank on its own maleficence. As soon as I became calmer I recognised that Rachel’s silence was more wilful than any man’s could be, and more obstinate; it was native in her, invincible.

That evening, or a little later, I was with Rachel again. She sought now naturally to be alone with me on all occasions, and so we went straight to her “room.” Usually she turned to me with burning lips, but the evening after I had made my proposal she was astonishingly cool. She wished to understand the whole position, and I let her talk and draw me out, knowing that the conclusions thus reached would be more effective than anything I could say. It is well to let small secretive natures persuade themselves in their own way; then they are immovable in their mistakes.

She probed skilfully, and I answered as if I were reluctant to go, reluctant to leave her. “I want to kiss you,” I broke off, but when I kissed her I found her totally unresponsive; she evidently was intent on making sure first that it was necessary for me to go, and then that I was sure to return.

“Is a licence and ‘best man’ necessary?” she asked.

“Who told you of a ‘best man’?” I questioned, with feigned surprise.

“Never you mind,” she replied. “I know a great deal more than you think,” she added; and I immediately thought of her relations with Abdulla.

“Very likely you do,” I retorted bitterly, and my unfeigned feeling convinced her better than any acting.

“But is a ‘best man’ necessary,” she persisted, “to a European wedding?”

“In every marriage,” I replied, “a licence is needed, and in any marriage outside England a consular officer as witness; but I think I could get an officer who would also act as ‘best man.’”

“Would that be legal?” she asked.

“Oh yes,” I remarked; “but what does the marriage matter if we love each other?”

“Love’s all right,” she said, “but marriage gives security, and that’s what a woman wants above everything.

“You’ll see,” she whispered, “how I’ll love you when you’re my husband,” and she wound her arms around my neck and put her lips on mine. In one moment they were hot, and she began then to ruffle my hair with quick, impatient hands, small symbols of her keen desire. As in turn I took and kissed her she sighed and relaxed, yielding to my embrace. However self-interested and tyrannic she might be, she was certainly a wonderful lover.

I now pretended that I did not want to go to the coast. “I’m in no haste,” I said to Rachel. “I’d be content to stay always just as we are. What do you care for a dress? And what’s a ‘best man’ to me?”

She appeared to agree with me, though now and then she would say that the sooner an unpleasant thing was finished and done with the better; but I noticed that the Sultan and Abdulla steadily hastened our departure, and Tapp informed me from Leah that Rachel was secretly helping the whole movement.

Meanwhile she showed me more unreservedly the passionate side of her nature, evidently trusting altogether to the sex attraction to pull me back to her at the earliest possible moment.

I sometimes wondered if she had any further or higher conception of love; and now, looking back, I question it. No doubt a certain motherliness would have come into her love if ever she had children, but as a girl she was singularly free of it—a lover and nothing more.

The æsthetic sense in her was fairly developed. She knew a lovely woman’s figure from a common type; knew that Leah’s shapely slim form was more beautiful than Micah’s, and that Micah in turn was finer than the negroid type. The conventional appealed to her strongly. As soon as I spoke about the black hairs on her chest, they disappeared. She tweaked them out ruthlessly, though she made her chest sore by her roughness. I was astonished to see how angry and inflamed the place became, but I treated it with wet pad of boracic acid, and it healed up in a day. “He just put his hands on her breast and a little water on a rag, and next morning it was well: great magic, his,” Leah told Tapp, and that report brought me hosts of patients. But that’s another story. For music Rachel had a distinct gift, but there her talents ended. Love to her was a matter of sex, and spiritual companionship had little or nothing to do with the matter.

It was Rachel who taught me to see the ordinary girl without glamour or romance. As soon as I drew away from her I began to study her, and with study came understanding. I could soon read her like an open book, and her ignorance would have aroused my pity were it not for her hard obstinacy of temper. In spite of her passionate kisses we drifted steadily apart, till I could see her and her father in fair perspective as Semites and Mohammedans. Their self-centred imperiousness threw light for me on that religion of Mohammed that captivated, as by a sirocco or cyclone, the whole Semitic race and still sways more than two hundred millions of people. There is little of gentleness or meekness or broad humanity in that creed, with its paradise of lovely houris and sensual delights. Man’s duty to his brother man is summed up in kindness to one’s dependents if they are of the true faith. It is the religion of rank individualism and unrestrained sensuality.

But there is just a touch of higher things in Mohammed el Amin, or The Honest, as he was called—an æsthetic sense at least. In the Koran I find this great injunction: “If you have two loaves, sell one quickly and buy a flower, for the soul, too, must be fed.” This love of beauty was typified to me in Rachel’s pretty fancies and in her love of music. She represented to me the very soul of Mohammed at its best.

At length the great moment came. The slave-caravan under Abdulla would be ready next morning, the Sultan said, and my carriers had been warned to be prepared.

The caravan taught me all the horrors of the African slave-trade: over a thousand men and women, yoked by pairs and loaded down with sixty or eighty pounds of ivory each. The younger girls and boys had been reserved; only the older folk were used as carriers to the coast; but many of the women were not more than twenty or twenty-five, and I was horrified to find that three out of every four of the men and many of the older women were suffering from recent wounds.

Suleiman had organized two or three slave-raids in order to get his carriers. I was relieved to find that the caravan was to take another road. We should be close to them, Abdulla informed me, but not with them. In the half-hour they were grouped in front of the Sultan’s kraal I saw such brutalities that I was glad to lose sight of them for ever, and to try to forget. I may as well give here one incident that struck me at the time and hardened my heart for the separation and deception.

While I was talking to Abdulla one of the pairs of women came towards us, and I saw that one of these was a mulatto, pretty and young. She stretched out her hands to Abdulla imploringly and fell on her knees, beseeching him. I caught the words “Sultan” and “forgive, sorry, sorry, I love him,” and then a flood of tears and sobs shook her slight, nearly nude frame.

Abdulla glanced at her indifferently:

“Get back,” he ordered harshly.

I was surprised. “Does she want the Sultan to forgive her?” I asked. “Surely he will? Why, the poor girl can’t be more than sixteen.”

“She was a fool,” remarked Abdulla sententiously; “she didn’t want to yield to the Sultan at first, and he never forgives that sort of thing; that’s why she’s in the slave-gang now and is to be sold at Mombasa.”

As the girl looked from one to the other of us, seeing, I suppose, some hope in my pity, Abdulla grabbed her by the left breast, dragged her to her feet and threw her back in the row.

“Get back,” he growled, “and keep quiet or you’ll have a hot back to-night.”

With lips parted in a gasp of pain and staring wild eyes of fear, the poor girl stood drooping, held up by her yoke-mate.

I don’t know why, but the whole scene sickened me. Abdulla’s act was so unconscious in its brutality, the girl’s fear and pain so unaffected, that I turned away and could hardly speak when a minute later the Sultan came out of his kraal to give the final directions. I hated all of them and wanted to get away.

Sultan Suleiman and Rachel in her French frock, accompanied by a guard of honour, went with us through the belt of forest by a way until then unknown to me—a broad road well defended. At the edge of the clearing they halted and we said “Good-bye!” Sultan Suleiman’s eyes shone with a certain kindliness, and Rachel did not hesitate to put her arms about my neck and kiss me again and again.

“In a month I shall be here expecting you, my husband,” she whispered. Not a word of love—“my husband”—strange pride of possession.

Two hundred yards lower down the road wound round a clump of trees and bush, and we waved them “Farewell”—the last “Farewell.”

I never saw either of them again; but all through the trip, which took me to the shores of the Great Lake and afterwards down the Nile to Khartoum, the memory and image of Rachel pursued me. Often I’d awake with her blue eyes looking into mine and hot kisses on my lips.

THE EXTRA EIGHT DAYS