Part 28 (1/2)
The witch doctor entered it from the opposite end, to the beating of many drums. The first thing Walker noticed was that he wore a square-skirted eighteenth century coat and a tattered pair of brocaded knee breeches on his bare legs; the second was that he limped--ever so slightly. Still he limped and--with the right leg. Walker felt a strong desire to see the man's face, and his heart thumped within him as he came nearer and nearer down the street. But his hair was so matted about his cheeks that Walker could not distinguish a feature.
”If I was only near enough to see his eyes,” he thought. But he was not near enough, nor would it have been prudent for him to have gone nearer.
The witch doctor commenced the proceedings by ringing a handbell in front of every hut. But that method of detection failed to work.
The bell rang successively at every door. Walker watched the man's progress, watched his trailing limb, and began to discover familiarities in his manner. ”Pure fancy,” he argued with himself. ”If he had not limped I should have noticed nothing.”
Then the doctor took a wicker basket, covered with a rough wooden lid.
The Fans gathered in front of him; he repeated their names one after the other and at each name he lifted the lid. But that plan appeared to be no improvement, for the lid never stuck. It came off readily at each name. Walker, meanwhile, calculated the distance a man would have to cover who walked across country from Bonny river to the Ogowe, and he reflected with some relief that the chances were several thousand to one that any man who made the attempt, be he black or white, would be eaten on the way.
The witch doctor turned up the big square cuffs of his sleeves, as a conjurer will do, and again repeated the names. This time, however, at each name, he rubbed the palms of his hands together. Walker was seized with a sudden longing to rush down into the village and examine the man's right forearm for a bullet mark. The longing grew on him.
The witch doctor went steadily through the list. Walker rose to his feet and took a step or two down the hillock, when, of a sudden, at one particular name, the doctor's hands flew apart and waved wildly about him. A single cry from a single voice went up out of the group of Fans. The group fell back and left one man standing alone. He made no defence, no resistance. Two men came forward and bound his hands and his feet and his body with tie-tie. Then they carried him within a hut.
”That's sheer murder,” thought Walker. He could not rescue the victim, he knew. But--he could get a nearer view of that witch doctor. Already the man was packing up his paraphernalia. Walker stepped back among the trees and, running with all his speed, made the circuit of the village. He reached the further end of the street just as the witch doctor walked out into the open.
Walker ran forward a yard or so until he too stood plain to see on the level ground. The witch doctor did see him and stopped. He stopped only for a moment and gazed earnestly in Walker's direction. Then he went on again towards his own hut in the forest.
Walker made no attempt to follow him. ”He has seen me,” he thought.
”If he knows me he will come down to the river bank to-night.”
Consequently, he made the black rowers camp a couple of hundred yards down stream. He himself remained alone in his canoe.
The night fell moonless and black, and the enclosing forest made it yet blacker. A few stars burned in the strip of sky above his head like gold spangles on a strip of black velvet. Those stars and the glimmering of the clay bank to which the boat was moored were the only lights which Walker had. It was as dark as the night when Walker waited for Hatteras at the wicket-gate.
He placed his gun and a pouch of cartridges on one side, an unlighted lantern on the other, and then he took up his banjo and again he waited. He waited for a couple of hours, until a light crackle as of twigs snapping came to him out of the forest. Walker struck a chord on his banjo and played a hymn tune. He played ”Abide with me,” thinking that some picture of a home, of a Sunday evening in England's summer time, perhaps of a group of girls singing about a piano might flash into the darkened mind of the man upon the bank and draw him as with cords. The music went tinkling up and down the river, but no one spoke, no one moved upon the bank. So Walker changed the tune and played a melody of the barrel organs and Piccadilly circus. He had not played more than a dozen bars before he heard a sob from the bank and then the sound of some one sliding down the clay. The next instant a figure shone black against the clay. The boat lurched under the weight of a foot upon the gunwale, and a man plumped down in front of Walker.
”Well, what is it?” asked Walker, as he laid down his banjo and felt for a match in his pocket.
It seemed as though the words roused the man to a perception that he had made a mistake. He said as much hurriedly in trade-English, and sprang up as though he would leap from the boat. Walker caught hold of his ankle.
”No, you don't,” said he, ”you must have meant to visit me. This isn't Heally,” and he jerked the man back into the bottom of the boat.
The man explained that he had paid a visit out of the purest friendliness.
”You're the witch doctor, I suppose,” said Walker. The other replied that he was and proceeded to state that he was willing to give information about much that made white men curious. He would explain why it was of singular advantage to possess a white man's eyeball, and how very advisable it was to kill any one you caught making Itung. The danger of pa.s.sing near a cotton-tree which had red earth at the roots provided a subject which no prudent man should disregard; and Tando, with his driver ants, was worth conciliating. The witch doctor was prepared to explain to Walker how to conciliate Tando. Walker replied that it was very kind of the witch doctor but Tando didn't really worry him. He was, in fact, very much more worried by an inability to understand how a native so high up the Ogowe River had learned how to speak trade-English.
The witch doctor waved the question aside and remarked that Walker must have enemies. ”p.u.s.s.im bad too much,” he called them. ”p.u.s.s.im woh-woh. Berrah well! Ah send grand Krau-Krau and dem p.u.s.s.im die one time.” Walker could not recollect for the moment any ”p.u.s.s.im” whom he wished to die one time, whether from grand Krau-Krau or any other disease. ”Wait a bit,” he continued, ”there is one man--d.i.c.k Hatteras!” and he struck the match suddenly. The witch doctor started forward as though to put it out. Walker, however, had the door of the lantern open. He set the match to the wick of the candle and closed the door fast. The witch doctor drew back. Walker lifted the lantern and threw the light on his face. The witch doctor buried his face in his hands and supported his elbows on his knees. Immediately Walker darted forward a hand, seized the loose sleeve of the witch doctor's coat and slipped it back along his arm to the elbow. It was the sleeve of the right arm and there on the fleshy part of the forearm was the scar of a bullet.
”Yes,” said Walker. ”By G.o.d, it is d.i.c.k Hatteras!”
”Well?” cried Hatteras, taking his hands from his face. ”What the devil made you turn-turn 'Tommy Atkins' on the banjo? d.a.m.n you!”
”d.i.c.k, I saw you this afternoon.”
”I know, I know. Why on earth didn't you kill me that night in your compound?”
”I mean to make up for that mistake to-night!”
Walker took his rifle on to his knees. Hatteras saw the movement, leaned forward quickly, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the rifle, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the cartridges, thrust a couple of cartridges into the breech, and handed the loaded rifle back to his old friend.