Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 26).djvu/17



night. Hospitality like that’s a bad trait in a cannibal, Anson.”

I sat up. This was disquieting news.

“ Then we can’t get away to-day ?”

“Well, no. You see, there are several they tell me, are cannibals from religious con- viction ; others because they can’t get over their liking for missionaries’ brains. But there’s another sort here, a witch-doctor. He’s got a name like a sneeze that was born blind. This Tchk-tchk goes in for telling the chief’s good luck or bad, and when rain’s coming, by the look of a man’s inside. Nasty sort of fellow.”
 * kinds of cannibals,” Tammers said. ‘ Some,

‘“ He'll want to prophesy from us,” 1 suggested, with an inward squirm of anticipa- tion. ‘Then they’ll eat us.”

Tammers nodded. - ‘ The chief said we’d come without asking his leave, but we mustn’t go without it. But I took some of the pleasure out of the hat for him. I said the devil in the hat would bite his head if he harmed us.”

““And then?”

Tammers looked across at me with his queer half-smile.

‘“ He gave it to his old chief wife to wear.”

“1 expect it will be the old chief wife who will do the biting in the end, as far as we are concerned,” 1 observed, ruefully.

‘““ She was weeping into the hat when they took us away,” said Tammers, “because the King said she’d got to sleep in it and shout when the devil began to chew.”

“Were in a tight place, Tammers.” 1 shook my head in deep despondency.

“We're that,” he agreed, ‘ but 7

There was a world of hope in that ““ but.” It could not raise my spirits, however. There remained no ghost of a chance of escape. Even Tammers must be defeated by forces so enormous as those now arrayed against us. He sat silent, with his brows knit, thinking hard, while I brooded over much that might have been, and regretted— many things.

It was full daylight when the screen of grass and wattle that served as a door was pulled open and half-a-dozen of Ruora’s big warrtors appeared. Plenty of food was shoved into the hut, which was left open, the negroes squatting about close at hand to prevent escape.

“They don't mean to starve us. looks well, anyhow,” I remarked.

T'ammers made no reply, and the fact came sickeningly home to me that lack of food was the last thing we need fear. I sat down by the door. I have seldom felt less appetite for breakfast.

“ Better eat,” Tammers advised. ing won’t help us, you know.”

‘““ Ask for your gun,” I retorted ; ‘“shoot me first and then yourself. It will be better.”

“I’d shoot you right enough if the time for shooting had come,” Tammers answered, in his matter-of-fact way, ‘“but it isn’t now.”

““Where do you suppose help is to come from ?” my irritability broke out.

“ From ourselves, that’s certain.”

Though no echo of his self-reliance stirred in me, I grew ashamed of my attitude. In Tammers’ company it was hard to be a woe- begone coward. His splendid spirit stiffened to courage even such poor material as I am madeof. I joined him at his meal and ate with what zest I could. The hut we occupied stood with its back to its neighbours, the opening facing a large lagoon which lay almost under the shelter of the forest rim.

“Tammers !’ I exclaimed, fired by a happy notion, ‘“let’s make a bolt for it. We're at the end of the village, and once in among the trees 7

“The trees are half a mile off,” he answered, “and we’d have five hundred trained runners at our backs throwing shovel- headed spears, you know. I'm afraid it wouldn’t be much use, Anson.”

I fell silent again. There was no other loophole of opportunity in view. I tried, therefore, to settle my mind with firmness to the idea of being killed and devoured. The thought that worried me most, I remember, was that we were destined to feed such repulsive savages as were the Bahongas.

The noontide heat, under the shelter of the forest and shut off from every breeze, was suffocating. Tammers and I passed the hours each according to his character. 1 lay prone and, perhaps, feverish, watching the lagoon that shimmered in the glare. Now and then its oily waters would be stirred by a monstrous snout thrust out of the slime or the slow movement of a serrated tail. I can recall as in a nightmare seeing the guards bring down big cow-bones to throw to the crocodiles, and the furious rush and battle

“ Fast-

‘'which ensued ; the nauseating odour of the

upstirred mud dominating for a time the other rank smells that seem to appeal so temptingly to African senses. During those long hours I must have passed into delirium.

Presently Tammers persuaded our guards to bring us water, and he bathed my head, tend- ing me like a woman. And while he fanned me with his hat T dropped from feverisb