CHAPTER IX
THE WHITE PIGMIES
As Burt obeyed it seemed to him that the Scotchman was taking thesituation very coolly. The little thin man sat silently with his eyes onthose of Mr. Wallace and only his quivering nostrils denoted the emotionthat must have consumed him.
"Now, Captain Montenay," resumed Mr. Wallace when Burt was again seated,"let's have a little explanation." Burt saw that his uncle's face lookedas he had seen it on the night when his compass disappeared. "In thefirst place you stole our compasses."
"I did not!" Captain Mac gave a harsh little laugh. "Ye have yer own, orwhat's left of it. I've got the other two in my pocket. I removed 'emtemporarily so to speak. Be more choice in yer use o' words, man."
"Secondly, you've been leading us astray."
"Aye," retorted Captain Mac, "but I didn't give ye the credit forfindin' it out so quick."
"Now you propose to leave us here, on the edge of the jungle country,"continued Mr. Wallace. "There are three things that are open toexplanation, Captain Montenay. I am sorry to use this method ofpersuasion but it seems to be necessary." The little man's face lost itslook of half-malicious mockery and for a moment he did not answer butstared over the head of Mr. Wallace at the afternoon sun.
"If I'm not wantin' to tell, man, I'm thinkin' ye'd have a hard job tomake me," was his answer at last.
"If you won't tell," snapped out Mr. Wallace, "I'll tie you up here andnow and carry you back to Boma. You know what you'd get there."
"Aye. Is that yer final deceesion?"
"It is. Explain or go to Boma."
"Vera good. Gi' me the gun, lad." To Burt's vast surprise his unclenodded and replaced his weapon. As Captain Mac quietly buckled therestored revolver about his waist his face broke into a wrinkled smile.
"It'll be a longish yarn, Wallace." There was no trace of animosity inhis tone. "Let's finish eatin' an' when I get the old pipe between myteeth I'll feel like talkin'."
Their meal was finished in silence. Before Captain Mac gave hisexplanation, however, a startling event happened. It seemed that a dozenmen of the village had remained with the bodies of the elephants toremove more of the meat. Just as Captain Mac was filling his ancient andevil-smelling pipe a native rushed into camp shouting something thatsent the pipe to the ground and the captain to his feet.
The native came up and fell on his face. After a hasty exchange ofquestion and answer Captain Mac turned to the others and Burt saw that astrange light stood in his dark and rather sad eyes.
"Get out the medicines, Wallace. We've got seven dying men on our hands.We may save one or two with serum and morphia."
"Why, what do you mean?" cried Mr. Wallace, giving a shout for John.When the trusty cook had been dispatched for the medicine chop-boxCaptain Mac explained further.
"Those chaps we left wi' the beasts yonder drove off some Wambutipigmies, bein' utter fools and prob'ly ignorant o' what the dwarfswere. They got a shower o' poisoned arrows in return. A bunch from thevillage just found 'em an' are bringin' 'em in here."
John arrived with the medicine case and Mr. Wallace got out his serumsand syringes while the boys stared at each other in amazement.
"That's what them dirty little black arrow-points do," said Critch in alow tone. Just then a band of men came running into the camp. On theirshoulders they bore rude litters which they set down before Mr. Wallacewith gestures of despair.
On the litters lay seven men. All were gray with pain and sweatingprofusely. As they lay there Burt could see their naked breasts rise andfall with the increased palpitation caused by the poison. The matter ofCaptain Mac was forgotten on the instant, as all four went to work in adesperate effort to save the wounded men. The captain hastily loaded thehypodermic syringes and handed them to the other three, who injected thecontents into the arms of the wounded as rapidly as possible. While thiswas going on the camp was surrounded by the villagers, and only theleveled guns of John and the other men held them outside.
One of the men died just as Mr. Wallace was treating him, althoughneither of the boys noticed it until they had finished. Then the woundswere cauterized, a task which was not relished by the boys. In fact, thesmell of burning flesh was nearly too much for Burt, who retiredtemporarily.
"There," and Captain Mac straightened up with a sigh of relief, "I guessthat's all we can do, Wallace."
"Will they recover?" asked the American quietly, washing the syringe.The other shrugged his shoulders.
"Mayhap. Don't let the village people have 'em, John. The witch doctor'dkill 'em sure. They'll sleep till morning. If they wake they can bethankin' us for it."
Critch said nothing. He was pale and his knees felt shaky, for theirtask had been no pleasant one, and he fervently trusted that they wouldhave no more poisoned arrows in future. A few moments later all wereonce more gathered about the table in the dining-tent, where Burtrejoined them. Montenay calmly refilled his pipe and began.
"As I was sayin', Wallace, the yarn is a long one. I'm thinkin' it'll nobore ye to listen, though," and the Scotchman chuckled.
"Fire away," smiled Wallace grimly. "We have time to burn." For a momentthe other puffed away in silence, his eyes fixed on the tent-wall behindBurt. Then he began his story, the strangest story which the twoAmerican boys had ever listened to.
"Two years ago, it was. I started out o' Nairobi wi' the most elegantbunch o' fightin' men ye could find. Took me nigh a month to select 'em.I laid it out as a scientific trip, to the British authorities, but themen knew better. I bought 'em all trade-guns wi' lots of ammunition, forI was after two things.
"Trip before that, I had met up with an Arab dealer called Yusuf BenSalir, what misused me like a nigger. He was a slave-merchant on thequiet, an' would ha' sold me upcountry if I hadn't got away. I was afterhim first, and ivory next. We headed off for the Congo line, baggin' alittle ivory as we went.
"One day we learned from the natives that Yusuf was twenty mile ahead ofus wi' plenty o' tusks and a big trade-caravan. Two days later wecaught up, formin' a zareba near his. He had twice as many men, but minewere picked, ye remember.
"Well, the details o' what happened don't matter. We were busy for threedays, and I will admit that Yusuf had his merits as a fighter. But atthe last his nerve failed him, and when we rushed his zareba, he and hismen made their getaway--leaving everything behind. While I was lookin'over his stuff I found two things wrapped up in oilskin.
"One was a queer shaped bit o' wood which I flung away, like a fool. Theother was a bit o' cloth with Arabic written on it. I can read thelingo, and I made out that Yusuf had been down near the pigmy countryan' had run across some yarn about white pigmies."
"White pigmies!" ejaculated Mr. Wallace in astonishment, while a look ofkeen interest swept across his face. "Then the story was so!"
"What story?" asked Montenay sharply.
"Why, a tradition I heard up in the Sahara, that there was a white raceof small people somewhere down this way. The Arab who told me wasmighty reticent about it, and I gathered that there was some queerreligious feature to the tradition, if it was one."
"It was not," asserted Montenay, betraying signs of excitement for thefirst time, and leaning forward. "Wallace, it was fact! I found thewhite pigmies!"
"What!" A simultaneous cry went up from his three listeners and Mr.Wallace's eagle-face was bent sternly upon the narrator.
"Careful, Montenay!" he said with repressed eagerness. "Remember you arenot talking to green hands!"
"Man, it's the truth!" There could be no doubt of Captain Mac'ssincerity as he leaned forward and met the American's gaze. There wasmore than sincerity in his eyes. There was an appeal for belief, aconviction, that won over the others instantly. "The truth! But that'sonly the least of it."
"And your proofs?" inquired Mr. Wallace crisply.
"Proofs enough," rejoined the other, more calmly, "in their time. Ididn't take much stock in the Arabic stuff, but I thought I'd take ashot at it. I sent half o' the boys back wi'
the ivory and a plausiblestory o' how we came to get so much. Then I asked the rest if they'd gowith me.
"After the way we'd wiped up Yusuf, they were ready for anythin'. Afterall was fixed up we started, fifty boys an' me. We worked down slowlyfrom the high country, takin' it easy an' gatherin' in spoils as wewent. Finally we got down to the jungle an' touched the edge o' thepigmy country. Then it began.
"We had no trouble till we started inquirin' through some o' the pigmiesthat come in to trade. As soon as we asked about their white relationsthe camp emptied like a flash. The last little deevil out turned an' putan arrow through one o' my boys.
"It was just a massacre, man. The boys were fair ragin' at the way theywere shot down, and I pushed 'em ahead fast. We went through that junglelike a whirlwind. Finally there were only seven boys left, an' theyrefused to go any farther. Didn't do 'em any good, for the next day thepigmies rushed us. I was pretty well played out by that time, as ye canjudge. When the smoke blew away five o' my boys were laid out, and Iwas tied up with the other two. If I hadn't been so obstinate aboutpushin' on we might ha' pulled out.
"However, we put a good face on it. They treated us fine, but kept us onthe jump for a week, movin' from place to place through the jungle. Foranother week we were stuck in one o' them pigmy villages. Queerlyenough, they hadn't touched a thing belongin' to us except the guns an'chop-boxes an' general camp stuff.
"'Bout the end o' the second week they routed us out early one mornin',highly excited. When we got outside we found the whole village squattin'around ten new chaps, who were armed wi' trade-guns and seemed to bossthings pretty general. But what struck me was that while they were ofthe same size as the rest, they were white."
"White!" exclaimed Mr. Wallace again. His thin cheeks were dashed withcolor, and his brilliant eyes showed that he no longer doubted the truthof Montenay's story. The latter nodded quietly.
"Not white like us," he continued, "but as white as an Arab orthereabouts. Their faces showed more intelligence than those o' theblacks, an' they seemed to be overlords o' the--"
"Hold on!" Mr. Wallace broke in with a puzzled frown. "Surely you don'tmean that, Mac! There could be no feudal system of that sort here in thevery heart of Africa! The blacks haven't the brains--"
"Aye, but the whites have!" cried Montenay triumphantly. "These whitepigmies ain't fools by any means, as ye'll see later. Now will ye quitinterruptin' me?"
"Go ahead," laughed Mr. Wallace, and the boys saw that Captain Mac wasreally so interested in his own story that he was anxious to lay itbefore them without more delay.
"I meant to tell ye this yarn," he went on, "a bit later on, as ye'llsee also. The party o' whites were in command of a young chap namedMbopo, an' we took to each other first crack. Well, they carried us offthrough the jungle for a week's trip. We must ha' been on the edge o'the pigmy country, for we traveled hard. At every pigmy village Mboposeemed to get reports or somethin' o' the kind, an' also tribute in theway o' slaves. By the end o' the week there were six others besidesoursel's.
"Then we spent a day at the village o' the white pigmies. Man alive, yeshould ha' seen 'em! They seemed to live on the blacks, just like theblacks live on the big tribes around, an' they lived well. Palm huts, o'course, but there seemed to be a system o' government that beatever'thing I ever saw outside the Zulus.
"We passed through two more o' the white villages, then struck a bigstream an' followed that for a day or two. Finally we got into a bit o'higher ground an' struck the biggest surprise of all. Just before sunsetwe came out o' the forest into a stretch o' yam patches along the river.Beyond these an' right ahead of us was the biggest village we had seenyet--three to four hundred huts, I'd say. Outside was the whole tribewaitin' for us. Off to one side, near the forest, was a good sized palmhut, and around it was a zareba."
"What's queer about that?" asked Mr. Wallace, as the narrator paused fora moment. The boys saw a smile flicker across Montenay's face.
"The zareba was made out o' ivory," was his quiet reply. Burt at oncebroke into a laugh, thinking that Captain Mac was joking.
"Pretty good," he chuckled. "What'd they do--cut up the tusks intosquare blocks to make a six-foot wall?" But his mirth died away suddenlyas his uncle made a silencing gesture.
"An ivory zareba," went on Montenay. "Made o' tusks, clear around thehut. They were set with points up, curvin' out. But I didn't get muchchance to see it then. We were taken into the village and I was given ahut to myself. The young chap, Mbopo, reported to an old, wizenedwitch-doctor who was the boss. I judged he was speakin' in my favor, butthe old fellow shook his head an' waved a hand at the separate hut. Thewhole crowd set up a yell o' 'Pongo!' Then they threw me into the hut.
"I stayed there for eight days, too. Ye'll mind that there were justeight slaves an' mysel' in the party. They treated me well, fed me fine,but every night I heard a big jamboree goin' on. On the ninth evenin'they brought me out. The village was surrounded by the usual thornzareba, an' the whole tribe was gathered just inside the gates,feastin'. Mbopo an' three others tied me up an' carried me out halfwayto the separate hut. Here they laid me on the ground beside a smallfire.
"The old wizened chap came out after us with a long iron which he stuckin the fire. Then he pulled off my shirt an' did--this." Captain Macslipped down his shirt collar and exposed the scarred shoulder thatCritch had seen on the boat. As the others gathered around withexclamations of astonishment, Burt could see that the scar was in theform of a cross, except that a long loop took the place of thehead-piece. Besides this, the whole shoulder seemed a mass ofcicatrices.
"Yon's the shape o' the bit o' wood I found in Yusuf's packet," went onMontenay, when Mr. Wallace interrupted him in wonder.
"Mac! Do you know what that symbol is?"
"It's the sign o' Pongo," returned the other. "From what I saw later ithad to do wi' ancient Egypt--"
"I should say it had!" ejaculated Mr. Wallace, sinking back into hischair and staring at Montenay, who slipped his shirt back into position."Why, that sign is the Egyptian cross, or ankh--the symbol of life, andthe peculiar insignia of Maat, the ancient Goddess of Truth!"
"So I found out, if ye'd given me time to finish," replied Montenaydrily. "Mbopo an' the rest staked me out there an' left me. What wi' theburn an' the insects that settled down, I was pretty nigh gone inside anhour. The fire was out, an' just after moonrise I heard a 'pad-pad' o'steps near by. Then a minute later I caught one glimpse of a monstrouslion, just as he sprang an' grabbed me by the wounded shoulder. Thatfinished me for sure, and I fainted."