In the evenings, they anchored in midstream to keep away from insects that bred in reeds along the banks. They often had dinner on the top deck and remained there afterward while Johann named all the constellations. He became thinner by the day, and at night his cough deprived him of sleep, and it wasn’t long before he became too weak to oversee the noggurs at all. Since the cabins were hot in the daytime, he lay in a hammock on the upper deck.
One morning they anchored at Kosti, and Richarn took three men ashore in the rowboat to buy grain. At sunset he rowed back to the boat alone and reported that the men had been drinking with traders in the market and slipped away. Sam paced the deck, cursing and devising ways to teach them a lesson when and if they tried to slink back on board. Florence suggested that if the men didn’t return, it was a small loss, but Sam did not listen.
The next morning Sam poled the tin bathtub ashore and when he returned to the shore with six sheep, he called out to Richarn to bring the flat-bottomed boat. After that, it took the rest of the morning to get the frightened sheep into the boats and then aboard the dahabiah. Sam muttered in exasperation while on the shady deck, Florence and Johann watched with amusement.
“You may well laugh,” Sam grumbled, “but we’ve lost precious time, and there’s no sign of the bounders. After they bid good bye to their drunken friends, they’ll come crawling back. Then, by God, they’ll enjoy a steady assignment to mucking out the stalls. Two months of manure will teach them duty.”
“Yes, Sam, we laugh, but we know you are right. Discipline is necessary,” Johann agreed, “and I am no help. You need a strong second officer.”
“We’ll manage, Johann. Richarn is strong and able, and he will learn to be stricter.”
When Sam went to the stern with orders for the men on the noggurs, Florence looked at Johann and shrugged.
“You see, Hannie, you’re not needed any more than I am. Sam can do it all.”
“Don’t believe it, Florence. He needs you for yourself. Your presence is a gift. He needs you the way he needs the sun, moon and stars.”
“Your German romanticism! It doesn’t apply. Sam quotes poets, too, but though my heart wants to agree with you, I do believe it’s nonsense.”
“Be careful, Florence. You have a steely streak in you that may be hard for a man to accept. I don’t know if Sam sees it yet, but if I were in love with you, I would worry.”
“It may be what kept me alive before I met Sam. And it may be what sustains me now sometimes.”
“I know what is hurting you, dear friend, but believe me, Samuel Baker needs you far more than you need him.”
“No, no, that isn’t true. I am utterly dependent on Sam. I owe him everything.”
“Everything? Surely not. In a partnership, you must not think of owing.”
There was little about her life Johann didn’t understand. He didn’t pretend to wisdom, yet with a story or a diplomatic comment, he could alter her perspective. Even though Sam had called her stoic, she wasn’t sure what Johann meant by “a steely streak.” She had learned early on to expect losses but only recently to feel strong, but steely? She did like the thought that Sam might need her.
The winds were fitful, dying, and the boats scarcely moved. Broken, half-submerged tree trunks, floating islands of green and yellow spurge scraped and thudded against their hulls. The rocky fields became clay, then gave way to swamps and scrub, and in place of Arabs, naked blacks worked the fields. Now and then smoke rose from a copse to indicate dwellings, and at night they heard drums. The crew waded in the reeds on the sandy east bank to cut firewood and locate strong timber for the constant repairs. Saat and Osman went along to pick fruit from tamarind trees along the marshy banks.
Florence helped Achmed make plum pudding with tamarind pulp, dried dates and raisins. She declared fish inappropriate for their Christmas dinner, so Sam paddled the bathtub into the shallows among reeds and tree roots. He was away for hours but came back with twenty grouse-like birds.
Florence’s plans for Christmas provided a good lesson for Achmed, for whom Christmas was puzzling despite stories Florence told him. With the help of Saat and Osman, they had a joyful time preparing dinner for the entire crew, who then spent the day lounging on the decks and playing flutes and drums. On the top deck, Florence and Johann watched Sam light a cigar and pour Madeira for a toast to friendship. As daylight faded, they saw a pure white crane pose briefly on one leg before lifting its broad wings and soaring away. It disappeared over a rise where two antelopes stood silhouetted against the purple sky.
Although evening breezes cooled his cabin, Johann wanted to sleep on deck. He told Florence he couldn’t bear to stare into blackness, but on deck he could watch the stars. Sam and Achmed brought a cot and Florence added extra pillows before settling herself on a chair at his side.
“What does the blackness hold, Johann? Ghosts of the past, regrets? Are you afraid?”
“Afraid to die? No, my dear. Afraid of not being able to die. The blackness is not dying, it is emptiness. I want to die while I love life and am able to see the stars and your face and hear Sam’s warm, confident voice.”
“Oh, Hannie. Is there someone who should know where you are, what has happened to you?”
“I turned my back on people when I came to Africa. I had nobody who mattered, only the girl I told you of, but she does not need to know. Her life is full. You and Sam are my first friends in years. So good. Good to take in an old alley cat needing a home when he is about to die.”
“I know you’ve lost everyone along the way. It’s why you understand my fears. But we have all found one another. You are not alone, Hannie.”
“And you have nothing to be afraid of, Florence. I tell you, you will not lose Sam.”
She believed him, sometimes. This life was theirs, but Sam had another life to return to. But now Johann needed peace; she wouldn’t argue with his prophecy. She sat by him until he slept.
In the morning his breathing was harsh and shallow, and he could scarcely blink his eyes when she spoke. Florence stayed at his side through the day, bathing his brow, reading to him from his German Bible, Matthew 2, Luke 1 and 2. Then turning to John 1:5, she read, “And the light shineth in darkness,” and thought about her mother dying under the clear, cold northern sky with a promise on her lips: “The morning will come but so, too, the night – “ Those last words, meaningless to her then, still held no comfort, for it seemed that mornings brought only loss. Yet for Johann, perhaps morning would bring peace.
She took both of his hands and prayed it would.
After midnight his breathing eased, and she went below. Sam lay sprawled on their bunk, and she pulled off her clothes and lay next to him. Though not expecting to sleep, she stared only a few minutes into the darkness.
During the night she awoke to feel the boat moving and Sam gone. She heard lines rattling in the wind, a good sign, she hoped, and she fell back to sleep until the noises of the crew woke her.
Springing from her bed, she hurried to wash and dress, but when she reached the upper deck, Johann still slept. She laid a hand on his feverish brow, and he opened bleary eyes but did not reply and couldn’t drink the water she held to his lips. All day she sat at his side, bathing his face and wrists. Occasionally he stirred and muttered a word or opened unseeing eyes, and then Florence murmured assurances that he was not alone.
That night the wind blew hard, and the boat plunged wildly as roiling water swamped the main deck. Florence dressed and sat beside Johann, keeping him covered and out of drafts. Sam and the crew worked ceaselessly bailing and pumping water from the holds. At dawn when they could see the flat tops of acacias near the banks, Sam took men ashore to cut wood to repair the masts. Florence stayed at Johann’s side. She would read and drowse, then jolt awake and feel for his pulse.
The next night the boat rode in quiet water, yet in his sleep Johann twitched and moaned, and Florence left his side only briefly while Osman took her place. In the morning Fl
orence saw that Johann didn’t move when a fly walked across his face, but the commotion of the sail being raised woke him. He began a series of coughing fits, each lasting until a paroxysm brought forth a black clot. Then as a flow of red stained the pillow, he sighed deeply and closed his eyes. Florence ran to fetch Sam, who counted Johann’s pulse and studied his face.
Florence changed the pillow case and continued to bathe his face. Hours later he whispered their names. She called Sam and, together, they heard Johann’s words.
“Ich bin sehr dankbar.”
Johann Schmidt died on the last day of 1862 on the Nile river 350 miles south of Khartoum, in the heart of Soudan.
They had seen no natives since picking up the grain and animals, but knowing that slavers roamed the land and natives feared every stranger, Sam posted sentries on the boats. Achmed, Osman, and Richarn helped him get Johann’s body onto the small boat, and Saat ferried Florence in the tub. On the west side of the Nile, they shrouded Johann in a blanket woven by Sofi women and buried him by the light of a full moon. To the tamarind cross, Florence fastened the epitaph Sam had written on a sheet of heavy paper which he had encased in isinglass made from a blowfish Johann had caught:
No useless coffin o’er his breast, No sheet nor shroud to bind him; Here lies a pilgrim at his rest, Where only his God shall find him.
Back aboard, though the wind was cool, neither Florence nor Sam wanted to go below. Clouds hid the stars, letting black land blend with black sky and black water. Sometimes they heard a small creature break the water’s surface or a crocodile thrashing through the reeds, a hippo flopping in the mud. At the close of their third year together, Florence and Sam held each other close in the palpable darkness.
Chapter 18
Over their morning coffee, Sam confessed to feeling glum. “I’ve been sorting through Johann’s belongings, and I keep wishing we could notify someone somewhere.”
“He said he had no one but us, no one at all to notify. He didn’t want to die in alone Khartoum or on the desert. What mattered was he was not alone.”
“I know. Yet it’s like erasing his life.”
They found no mementos, only his clothing to give to the crew. Sam carried his charts and books from cupboards in the main room and stacked them in the room, and Florence went up to the top deck. Saat had taken the cot below, and she sat in her chair now and looked out at the river, staring at geese and some tall wading birds at the river’s edge. Shillook men knee-deep in the river speared fish while others poled a raft upstream, giving the boat a wide berth. But when Florence lifted her hand in a wave, they waved back.
Amid tilled fields, windowless huts with smooth thatch roofs sprang up like mushrooms. Near them in the dirt, women squatted, pounding grain and tending pots on smoky fires. Florence had seen them earlier carrying water from the river in jugs on their heads and didn’t see why cattle couldn’t carry the water. The men drove them twice a day to the river, and Sam said cattle were too valuable for work. She thought about women being of small value, yet working the fields as well as taking care of families.
Within a week, they came to the mouth of a river that flowed from the east, the Sobat, by Sam’s calculations. He steered the dahabiah half a mile up its clear water and filled their tanks. Achmed and Osman set fishing lines and the crew gathered fodder. Later the men bathed in the river and Florence in the tin tub.
Back on the Nile in the early morning, they glided westward into a bend where the river widened and spread into the reedy shallows. The current vanished and at sundown the wind died. They spent the night under netting as insects sung around them. In the faint morning light, the sound of creaking timbers woke Florence and she saw Sam was by the bed pulling on his trousers.
He leaned over for a kiss and told her to go back to sleep, but after a few moments she arose and went to the galley to make tea and took a mug to the wheelhouse.
“Thanks, Florrie. With this good wind we may make headway today.”
At the end of the monotonous day, however, the wind failed them and another sluggish tributary, the Gazal, brought clumps of floating vegetation into the Nile. Papyrus and reeds obscured the water’s edge, and above it the banks rose sixteen or eighteen feet. On the upper deck, Florence focused her eyes on landmarks to gauge their progress and perceiving none, looked down for a bow wave and saw none. In the thick, moist air only plovers and swifts moved, perching on islands of brush, then suddenly rising in agitated flutters to descend onto similar clumps. Crocodiles lay like logs among the reeds, and hippos kept only their eyes and snouts above water. She envied their perfect escape from swarming gnats that drifted across the water and into her hair and eyes.
As the sun sank, a few naked natives poled rafts among the reeds and speared fish. The men were heavy and muscular compared to the scrawny desert tribesmen, and their ritual scars lay like strings of beads across their chests and backs and threaded their way down to buttocks. Their hair was coifed into helmets by mud and painted maroon and white, and the same colors on their pubic hair emphasized their genitals. Florence looked on with the same curiosity she turned on birds and animals. If she could draw, she’d include details Sam chose to obscure with a leaf or frond.
* * *
For four days the boats wallowed in the swamp while the men worked the lateen hoping to catch a stray breeze. The odor of stagnant water and rotting vegetation hung in the air, and the men grumbled and argued as they caulked leaking hulls. Sam shared their frustration and before dark dropped the sail and handed over the helm to Richarn, telling him to hold course and wake him at any sign of trouble.
Florence was already asleep when Sam stripped and lay beside her under the netting. Later he snapped awake, amazed to have slept, and besides the usual creaking, he now heard scraping and thudding noises. In the pitch black cabin, he fought his way out of the limp netting and Florence awoke.
“What is it, Sam? Why are you awake?”
“Noises. I need to investigate.”
“Trouble?” Florence sat up in bed, fumbling with her shift.
“There’s no light but I’ll try to see what’s going on.”
He groped his way out of the room and through the passage way to the dim lantern at the ladder. Neither moon nor stars shone in the murky night, but the scraping was less loud on deck.
He saw the wheel was unmanned but secured with ropes, and heard Richarn at the stern calling to men on the noggurs. Leaning on the taffrail, Sam could make out clumps of water hyacinths matted together, looking solid enough to walk across, but no noggurs were in sight. When he turned, Saat was beside him, rubbing his eyes and saying Richarn had awakened him to share the watch. “There was a moon, Captain. Then it was gone.”
“Secure the rudder, Saat, we’re not moving.”
“I know that, but not know what to do.”
“Go get some rest until sun-up. What to do is to call for help. Next time you don’t know, just stamp hard on the decking. I’ll hear you.” Sam called out to Richarn, “When did you lose sight of the noggurs?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Richarn mumbled, his head lowered.
“Asleep, were you? Expecting Saat to do your work?”
“Yes, sir. I called him. I couldn’t keep awake.”
“We might have run aground,” Sam growled, but he was relieved to feel the decks were still level. “Launch the pinnace. We’ll find the damned barges.”
Sam called Achmed to wake Osman and start breakfast for the crew. Then he and Richarn tried to pole the little craft through the vegetation and failing, they stepped into the shallow muck and slogged a few yards along the bank. They saw the noggurs still afloat and shouted to wake the watch. Sam was furious and ordered the watchman to get men into the water to hack away the clumps of grass and reeds.
“Now, it’s up to you,” he said to Richarn. “Work them in shifts and get them moving.”
The sky was pink when he climbed back on board the dahabiah. Florence was at the
rail and Achmed was bringing pails of clear water. As Sam stripped off his muddy clothes, they poured water on him and searched his body for leeches.
Crews worked in the turbid waters, shift after shift, until they had slashed away the putrid vegetation. Insects swarmed into their ears and eyes and stuck to the sweat and mud that glazed their bodies. Achmed and Osman sloshed water over the men and handed out bowls of oats and stewed fruit. When Sam decided the work was futile, he called for a round of grog and admitted to Florence he had no plan but to wait for a wind.
Difficult as doing nothing seemed, he assured everyone that at any moment a current might find them and they’d feel the boats float free. He’d been told the Sudd was navigable and, lacking other evidence, believed it was so.
“It has been done,” he declared. “And we will do it. Slow and choked as it is, it is still the Nile.”
And as if to support his claim, a mast came into view down stream from them, and by dinner time, a trim dahabiah overtook them. On its deck an Arab crew wielded long, stout poles to fend off clumps of vegetation, and at the prow stood Koorshid Aga. He waved and smiled as his vessel gently nudged their stern and he climbed aboard. His glowing eyes suggested he might be almost as happy to find them as they were at his arrival.
“My English friends! Ya salaam! It is splendid to find you in this morass!”
“Ahlan wa sahlan,” Sam said to welcome him.
“Khod rahtak, zaifi berak!” Florence said, “Be at home.” Koorshid was delighted. “Ha! tetkkalam Arabee.”
“Aiwah,” Sam replied. They had been practicing their Arabic.
However, Koorshid liked to show off his own precise English and did so, offering a roasted turkey and a bottle of brandy. He had been bored on his journey, he said, and was eager for stimulating conversation.
“We haven’t been bored, but nearly desperate. We welcome you to our table.”
“Oh, yes, and we also welcome your turkey,” Florence added, not mentioning how long they had been dining on boiled buffalo.
They lingered at the table talking of the year-and-a half since they’d been in Berber. Sam expressed gratitude for past help and present comfort, and in particular for encouragement, which no one but Koorshid had given them. He hadn’t merely sounded warnings, but provided useful information.