Lord of Darkness

1

Northward aye I went, in quick course, on my second trading voyage in behalf of Don João. Loango was my destination, which is a kingdom that has its beginning fifteen leagues to the north of the River Zaire.

Do you wonder at the ease with which I became an officer of the Portuguese maritime? That I should have no qualms and pangs of conscience, that I should take so swiftly to piloting of their vessel and earning them their tons of richly valued elephanto teeth? Nay, but I did not see myself as any traitor to Her Majesty by so doing. My choice was to serve, or to lie and rot in dungeon. If I proudly chose the second of those, and if perchance some venomous creature did creep upon me in my cell and bite its poison into me, would I then ever again see England or serve the Queen? But by undertaking these voyages along the coast I could preserve my life, I could increase my health, I would gain in knowledge of piloting that might some day be of use to Her Majesty— and I stood at least a chance of regaining my liberty. Or so I told myself, over and over a great many times, whenever this debate erupted within my soul, until a time came when it erupted no longer and I did my duties without self-inquest.

This land of Loango was an easy voyage from Angola, with no terrible river-mouths to enter as on the last one. Upon the appointed day I did go down to the port at São Paulo de Loanda and I found the same ship as before ready for me, the Infanta Beatrix, and much the same crew. This was comforting. Already on board were Faleiro the master and other men I had come to know, whose names I remember well after these many years, and they were Andrade and Pires and Cabral and Oliveira, who did clap me on the back and give me good grinning smiles and freely offer me the harsh thin wine that they keep in leather sacks. These men had seen me do brave service piloting them into the maw of the Zaire, and now all prejudices owing to my being English were forgot among them. They called me “Andres” or more often “Piloto,” that is the Portugal way of saying pilot, and I got from them no further stares or hard glowering looks. The only time I held myself apart from them was when they were at their devotions, for I would not take the Mass or sing their Latin songs, or venerate the crucifix and image of the Madonna and other holy idols that they had brought on board. Instead at such times I went off quietly and knelt and talked to God in good plain English words, unburdening my soul and sometimes saying what words I could recall of the offices of matins or evensong. The sailors took no offense at this, for they no more expected me to transform into a Papist than they would expect a blackamoor to begin turning white of skin.

So we sailed up the coast with good breezes past the awful Zaire and to a point called Cabo do Palmar, where Loango commences. Here there are many palm-trees, giving the place its name. Five leagues beyond it is the port of Kabinda, which many ships use to water and refresh themselves. The terrain is one of woods and thickets. And seven leagues northwards of that place is the River Kakongo, a very pleasant place and fruitful. This is a strong river whose waters discolor the sea for seven miles, though that is nothing to what the Zaire achieves. At its mouth is the town of Chiloango: here is great stock of elephanto teeth, and a boat of ten tons may go up the river.

I tell you these places because I was the first Englishman to behold them. At four leagues from Kakongo is the river of Luiza Loango. Its depth where it meets the sea is only two feet, owing to a sand-bar, but once your vessel is within, it finds a fair waterway for over an hundred miles. Ten miles upriver is the town of Kaia, one of the four great seats or lordships of the kingdom of Loango. I did not go there on this voyage. And two leagues northward along the coast is a sandy bay, where a ship may ride within a musket-shot of the shore in four or five fathoms. Here is the port of Loango, the capital city of this kingdom.

“Come, Piloto,” said Pedro Faleiro as we cast down our anchor and made ready to go ashore. “You will accompany us to the city, which I think you will find different from such places as you may already have seen.”

“Tell him about the king and the bell,” said our boatswain, Manoel de Andrade.

Faleiro laughed. “Aye! The king and the bell! Listen well, Andres, for it could cost you your life to be careless in this.”

And he said that it was forbidden in this land to behold the king taking food or drink, on pain of death. When the king drinks, the bearer who carries the royal cup of palm-wine also holds a bell in his hand, and when he gives the cup to the king, he turns his face away and rings the bell. And then all that be there fall down upon their faces, and do not rise until the king has drunk. “Which is very dangerous for any stranger that knows not the fashions,” said Faleiro, “for if anyone sees the king drink he is straightaway killed, whosoever he may be.”

“Whosoever?” I asked.

“Aye. There was a boy of twelve years, which was the king’s son. This boy chanced to come into the chamber when his father was in drinking, and beheld him. Presently the king commanded the boy should be dressed in fine apparel, and given food and drink. This was done; and afterward the king commanded that he should be cut in quarters and carried about the city, with proclamation that he saw the king drink.”

“It is not so!” I cried.

“You would give me the lie?” said Faleiro, looking angered.

“Nay, nay, good Pedro,” I said, touching his arm. “I mean only that my mind will not accept such horror.”

“Accept it, and accept it well. For if we are so lucky as to be granted audience with this king, listen ye sharp for the bell. We are not exempt from the rule.”

“Would they cut one of us in quarters, then?”

“We are few and they are many. I know not whether they would attack us, and if they did, we have our muskets and they have none. But we ought not put it to the test.”

“And so we must grovel on our faces when the king is in his cups?” I asked.

“Turning away the face is sufficient, for us,” answered Faleiro.

Andrade said, “It is the same when the king eats, but there it carries less risk, for the king has an eating-house that he enters alone, and the door is shut behind him, and he knocks before he comes out. Yet even so, sometimes a fool will stumble into this house and spy unwitting on the king, and for this he always perishes.”

I felt a shivering, despite all the heat of the day. “This sounds devilish to me, or mad.”

“It is their belief,” said Manoel de Andrade, “that the king will shortly die, if ever he is seen at his food or drink. And so he protects himself. For if he slays the one who sees, then his own life is spared, they do think.”

“Ah!” I cried. “Now I understand, and in sooth it makes goodly sense!”

But I was speaking with deep irony—which my Portugal companions did not notice, I suppose, for they gave me odd looks, as though to say the English must be as mad as the Loangans. I did not trouble to explain myself. Indeed it did make a sort of sense, that if one believes a certain thing, then it follows naturally that one must take proper action to ward off its evil. The trick is in believing. To the Papist the actual and real blood of Christ is in the chalice from which they sip, and I think the King of Loango would have difficulties believing the truth of that. By God, I do!

Hearing such tales as these, I was in a taut and most sensitive mood as we went toward Loango. We entered the city on foot, leaving a small band of men to guard the ship. And entering that place was for me like entering a land of dreams, a place where phantoms did walk abroad in open daylight. The strangeness of those first moments there was something I could taste in my mouth, as if I had taken some piece of metal against my tongue, and I can remember that taste of strangeness to this day.

Yet the strangest thing about that strangeness is how swift it passes. I have entered many places as alien from my native land as Loango, and each time I have felt as though I am passing into another world, where light and sound and all else have different qualities. But yet I adapt and assimilate most speedily. Is that,some special aspect of my own character, I wonder, or is it universal? The former, I think. There are those who never adapt to anything unfamiliar, and go through life speaking only their native tongue and eating only their native foods, and if they are exposed to other foods or climes they sicken quickly and die. Yet I do adapt. I never came to like the heat of these African lands, which is severe: the heavy wet air hangs about you like a woolen cloak that may not be shed. But since there is no escape from the heat, it becomes unremarkable. One lives with the heat the way one lives with the ache of an old wound, and takes no notice of it. And wherever I found myself, I incorporated into myself whatever I could not shrug away. I spoke the language of those about me, be it Portugal or Kongo or Jaqqa. I ate— God save me!—the things they ate. I breathed their air. Thus it was that Loango, which I entered as if I were entering the domain of Belial or Moloch, lost its strangeness early for me, and came before long to seem most comfortable, and pleasing, as though it were some cozy town along the Thames. And in after years, when I needed refuge, I took my refuge there and found it much to my liking. I think this is a curious quality of my soul, but I make no apology for it. For if I had not had it, I trow, I would have gone to feed the worms many years ago.

The main town of Loango is three miles from the waterside, and stands on a great plain. The streets are wide and long, and always clean swept. The place is thick with people, more than can be numbered, though you might not know it because the plantain-trees and palms and other vegetation are so profuse that they hide the dwellings that are built among them. On the west side of town are ten great houses that belong to the Maloango, as the king is known, and outside the door of his main house is a broad open space where he sits, when he has any feastings or matters of wars to deal with. I found it not easy to imagine Queen Elizabeth squatting outside her front gate to debate with the Privy Council. But, then, I found it equally hard to imagine the Privy Council pressing their faces into the dust whenever the Queen’s cupbearer came to her beck.

From this open place goes a great wide street that runs the length of several musket-shots, and at the other end of it there is a great market every day, that begins at twelve o’clock. Here they deal in victuals, hens, fish, wine, oil, and grain, and in the excellent cloth they make from palm-leaf threads, fashioning it into velvets, satins, taffetas, damasks, sarsenets, and such like. Here also they deal in copper bracelets and in a wood that makes a very fine scarlet dye. But though Loango has an abundance of elephantos, the teeth of them are never sold in the marketplace, but always by private treaty.

The people of Loango are pagans. They wear fine garments of palm-cloth or woven grass that drape them from waist to feet, like a sort of kilt, of fine workmanship. They go circumcised after the manner of the Hebrews, as is true of all the peoples hereabout except the Christian folk of the kingdom of Kongo, who keep their members intact as Europeans do. The King of Loango is an ally with the King of Kongo, and in earlier days, when the King of Kongo was very powerful, the King of Loango was his vassal.

It was the middle part of the afternoon when we came into the city. Few people were about, under the horrid glare of the sun, but as word passed that the Portugals had come, the numbers of those in the streets increased. And once again the presence of a blond Englishman doubled and redoubled their curiousness: they whispered, they pointed, they crept forward almost unto touching range. With my hair and skin gleaming in the brilliance of the sunlight I felt that I was become Apollo of the Greeks, and I did smile and stretch forth my arms to the multitude and pretend to be giving them solemn blessing, until Pedro Faleiro tapped my ribs and said sourly, “Spare us this comedy, Piloto.”

Through these gathering throngs we made our way to the royal compound so that we might present our compliments and credentials. The Loangans parted before us with that awe and deference that the colored folk of the world show so readily to Europeans, and by which the Spaniards and Portugals have been able to conquer so much territory with such small expenditure of lives. Is it that they take us indeed for gods, I wonder, or do our white skins persuade them that we come from the spirit-world and must be obeyed? Certain it is that if the Mexicans and the Peru folk and all the other conquered nations had risen up, and had been willing to sacrifice fifty of their lives for each of the invaders, they would have hurled King Philip’s troops to perdition and preserved their empires unto their own keeping. But they did not do it.

As we came upon the royal buildings Faleiro showed me one group to the south side, all encircled with a palisado of poles, and said, “This is the harem.”

“I know not that word,” I replied.

“It is Moorish, and means, the place where the king’s wives are kept. No man may enter that zone and live.”

It was so many buildings that it looked to be a village of itself. I felt amazed. “God’s own passion,” I cried, “how many wives does the man have?”

“One hundred fifty and more,” said Faleiro.

“Jesu!”

“That is a trifle. The old king that was here before him had twice that number. And four hundred children by them. Or was it four thousand, eh, Andrade?”

“Four hundred, I think,” said the boatswain.

I shook my head. “Quite enough. One hundred fifty wives! Jesu, if he visit one a night, it would take him half the year to tup them all!”

Faleiro gave me a leering look. “And would such a regimen be to your liking, Piloto?”

“Nay,” said I most truthfully. “Better one wife, and clasp her dear body a hundred fifty times a year, than a hundred fifty and embrace them once apiece.”

And that set me thinking of home, and house, and wife, and awakened the sadness and homesickness that lay always not far beneath the surface of my soul. And also did all this talk of women and tupping arouse in me dark hot thoughts of Dona Teresa, that I did miss most intensely from my life. Ah, then, was it the loss of Anne Katherine I mourned, or my absence from the witching Portugal woman? I did not know. I did not know at all, and that threw me into a new despond. For I would not then admit that Anne Katherine and all our plans had entered into the realm of vapors and mist for me, and that it was the silken thighs and hard-tipped breasts of Dona Teresa that I craved. But yet had I brought Dona Teresa’s little witching-statue with me, and kept it close beside me at all the time, and rubbed it now and again, as if I were rubbing her own flesh; and the touch of it made my ballocks heavy with desire and fiery recollections. This much dismayed me, for it was witchery, and witchery I do dread greatly: but though I had thought often of hurling that little idol into the sea for the sake of Jesus, yet had I not done it, and could not, for Dona Teresa’s sake. And all these thoughts did roar through my head just then, that stirred me into confusion.

The rough Portugals did not have the wit to see that I was brooding, but jostled me and joked with me about what it would be like to be a king, and own such an abundance of wives. But I felt no gaiety and my mind was on other matters that they could not comprehend.

And then they told me that if any man be seen trespassing in the royal harem, if he be taken in a woman’s arms or merely speaking with her, they both are brought into the marketplace and their heads are cut off, and their bodies quartered, and for all that day they lie thus sundered in the street. Faleiro had seen just such an execution, and Andrade also at another time.

A man of our company named Mendes Oliveira, that had the best command among us of the language of this realm, spoke with some grandee who came out to meet us, and arranged for us to attend the king at his court-meeting. This happened every day between one in the afternoon and midnight, and was about to occur now; so we were quickly conducted to the main palace. Which was no true palace, but only a large arching-roofed building of wickerwork and straw and mud, hung with carpets and crimson tapestries to make it look more grand. It was full of noblemen, sitting upon white carpets upon the ground. That they were noblemen was clear certain, for they were most nobly dressed, in the garments of palm-cloth most splendidly worked, of the brightest yellow and scarlet and blue, and they also had hanging in front, apron-style, pretty and delicate skins, such as the skins of panthers, civets, sables, martens, and the like, with their heads left intact. For even greater show they had flung about their bare shoulders a kind of round surplice called in their language nkuto, the which fell below the knee and was woven like a fine net, out of palm fibers: the links were bordered with fringed tufts, making a very graceful effect.

There was a long time when no one spoke. Then the king entered and went to the upper end of the house, where a sort of throne was set for him. Unlike his nobles he was dressed in extreme simplicity, in a short loin-cloth of the purest white, and another band of white cloth about his head. The blackness of his skin and the whiteness of these stark garments gave him an overwhelming kingly radiance, a brilliance, that far outshined the gaudiness of the others.

He was a strong-built man, going somewhat to fat. When he took his seat all the others clapped their hands and saluted him, crying, “Nzambi! Ampungu!” Which I learned afterward means, “O Most High God.” For this king of Loango is thought by his people to be God Himself, and I suppose if he were to meet the Pope, he would expect the Pope to kneel to him, the Maloango being of a higher rank.

The king accepted this homage pleasantly until he had had enough. Then he looked toward us and uttered a greeting, or so we thought, that went, “Byani ampembe mpolo, muneya ke zinga!”

“He is bidding us welcome,” murmured Oliveira, who replied loudly in Portuguese, “In the name of His Most Catholic Majesty Philip the Second of Portugal and Spain, we thank thee, O King of Loango, and may the blessing of God and His Son descend upon thee and all thy kingdom.” Or words to that effect, said most resonantly, which he then repeated in the native tongue.

It was not for many years that I came to understand the real import of the Maloango’s greeting, when I did hear it again, with time having given me a fluency in his language. For the words Byani ampembe mpolo, muneya ke zinga have actually the meaning there, “My companion, the white face, has risen from underground and will not live long.” A strange greeting indeed! But not at all meant as a threat, though Oliveira, had he comprehended its sense, might well have construed it so. Its meaning rises from the belief of the blackamoors that the white man is a ghost that ascends from the bottom of the ocean with his ship, and so long as he keeps to shipboard he will live forever, but once he comes ashore, he is doomed to an early death. This, I suppose, because so many Portugals have succumbed to fevers and fluxes in this land. And that perhaps explains why they give us such deference, since we have the holiness of imminent decease overshadowing us like dark gleamings.

These formalities and others like them ran on for some hours. Oliveira interpreted for us, but I think not very well, for he frowned and strained to hear, and muttered to himself as if not understanding, and when he translated for us, I think he was inventing the half of what he told us, for it made precious little sense to me. I listened with care, of course knowing nothing of what I was hearing, but I did succeed in learning some five or six words simply from having them repeated in certain contexts that left me no doubt. It seemed not a difficult language, once your ear be attuned to it, and privately I considered that I might win more safety and privilege among the Portugals if I came to know the native tongues better than they did, they apparently having little aptitude for such things.

After long and wearying parley, coming to no purpose that I could discern, the king did call for drink. There was on either side of him an official to serve this purpose; the one on the right it was who handed him the cup, and the other on the left gave warning to the assemblage, by means of two iron rods about the bigness of a finger, and pointed at the end, which he did strike one against the other. Straightaway the whole gathering dived for the ground, as Faleiro had said they would do, and hid their faces in the sand so long as the irons continued making their noise. It was an astounding spectacle to behold those grandees in their fine robes, every one groveling down on his nose while the monarch took his wine. We did not, but all of us spun around and looked another way, and I closed my eyes besides, lest some reflected bit of the king’s image glance into them while he drank and cost me my life.

When all of that was done, the nobles rose up again, and according to custom did signify that they wish him health, with clapping their hands, that being a sign of respect, as with us in Europe the putting off the hat. Wine now was distributed generally to the house, and a meal was served also, of fried fish with a sauce of honey, and a thick porridge made of the ground-nut, which is a pea, somewhat bigger than ours, the pods of which grow in the roots, underneath the ground. This last stuff was improved by the juice of a hot pepper, the pili-pili, that was like eating fire. It produced in the mouth an intense burning sensation and made the sweat stand out all over my skin. I thought I would perish of tasting it, and even the Portugals, who eat a lustier diet than we English do, were hard put to swallow much of the stuff. But I did eat my fill and gradually accustomed myself to it, and in time, over the months and years ahead, I would come so much to dote on the pili-pili that food without it came to seem devoid of taste, as it still does for me.

There was some obstacle toward our buying the elephanto teeth we had come here to purchase. I know not what it was, for the Portugals would not confide with me on so delicate a matter, and I was not privy to the urgent conferences between Faleiro and the officials of the Maloango’s court. Perhaps it was a religious problem—the season not being right for commerce—or perchance the Loangans were seeking to increase the price of their goods; but I was not told, and I did not ask. These matters did, however, create a delay of many weeks in our leaving Loango.

We lived in small rude houses built especially for us, and were fed on the native foods. We talked often of going hunting for game, but we did not do it, on account of the great heat, which I think made us all lazy. Likewise we did not touch women. Faleiro told me that women were available to us—not citizens of the city, who were jealous of their virtue just as Christian women would be, but slaves, who were abundant here. But I had no hunger for them, and I think none of my companions either, except possibly one or two of the lustiest, and those not often.

Mostly did we spend our days resting, playing games with dice or knives, and drinking the heavy sweet palm-wine, and talking of our homelands. These Portugals were generally coarse folk, and I never once heard them speak of anything but gaming or wenching or drinking or fighting or gathering treasure. Not a word came from them concerning poetry or plays, that any Englishman who was more than a common churl would have been brim-full with discussing. One day when I told them of the richness and joy of our theater, and of Master Marlowe’s play of Tamburlaine that I had seen, and the wonderful play of Hieronimo and the Spanish prince that was done by Thomas Kyd, they looked upon me as if I were speaking in Greek, and paid me no heed. And one of them that was named Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, that seemed to have a special dislike for me, did scowl and hawk up a great wad of spittle almost at my feet and say in his idle lolling way, “These English sailors would have us think they are all poets and scholars, to shame us. But I think they do but feign their poetry, and give themselves high airs, for that the English have long been only a race of peasants and clod-grubbers, and are shamed by it now, and do lately pretend to a finer breeding.”

“Ah, and are you so finely bred, then?” I demanded hotly, with a rage beginning to pound in the vault of my head, for it was only by heavy effort that I could rein in my temper.

“You have heard my name,” said he disdainfully.

“It means nothing to me.”

“I am not at all surprised,” replied this Caldeira de Rodrigues, and turned himself from me as though I had been dissolved into air.

I might have called him out for a brawl, but that I still had some mastery over myself, knowing that whether or no I be pilot for these men, I still was in a subservient place. And yet it was a close thing, my fury being so strong at his mockery: only the touch of a hand on my arm—Cabral’s, I think—kept me at the last from leaping at him.

I learned from others, a little after, that this snotnosed scornful jay was the son of one of Portugal’s great dukes, and close kin to the old royal family that had fallen from power: and so he was far superior in birth to almost anyone else of Angola, except perhaps for Don João de Mendoça, that was also of high origin. Caldeira de Rodrigues and his elder brother Gaspar, they said, were exiled from Lisbon for their ruinous high living and stark criminous pastimes, which went too far even for men of their great standing, and were sent to Angola to sweat themselves into some semblance of virtue. He was a man of eighteen, very slender, pretty almost in a womanish way, though there was an ugly and hard glint in his eye, and a dagger at his hip that I knew he would be quick to use. His face was marred by a purple blemish of the cheek that took back some of the prettiness, and his beard grew only in places, with foolish barren patches between. All in all I liked him little, and was sorry to have him among my shipmates.

During this time of delay I sometimes did wander about the district, either by myself or with one or two of the more amiable Portugals, and rarely without some blackamoor guards also following us to see that we did not cross into holy ground. That thing we nearly did, one time, when we walked back toward the harbor and spied one of their idols, a little black image that is known as Kikoko. Kikoko is a mokisso, that is, a witch-spirit, that lives in a little house along the main highway, and everyone who goes by him claps hands, or makes a gift, as an offering.

I knew these mokissos had great power over the blacks, and I thought that power might extend even to us: for who knows how long the reach of the Devil’s arms may be? All that I heard led me to tread cautiously in the witch-world. In Loango, they said, this mokisso will sometimes take possession of a person in the night, and he babbles frantically for the space of three hours. Whatever the frantic person speaks, that is deemed the will of Kikoko, and all the tribe obeys it, and they make a great feast and dancing at the house of the one who speaks.

Though I had much respect for this evil being, yet did I want, out of curiosity, to look upon Kikoko in his little house. But the blacks stood before him and made a frightful gesture at me with their spears, and I weighed anchor swiftly and went elsewhere.

There was one diversion concerning these idols. A new one had been carved and was arriving by sea from a town to the north, when it slipped from the hands of its bearers and fell into the water. Though they sought mightily for it, they could not uncover it below, which was deemed a great calamity. The king of the land sent for us, and told us what had befallen, and asked if we had some way of bringing up the statue. Very few of the Portugals were able to swim at all, but I had that skill, so I stripped off my garments and went down, and thought I had sight of the mokisso, but the water was too deep and my breath not sufficient, so that I came to the surface empty-handed.

“I will try again,” said I.

“Nay,” said Faleiro, “do not drown yourself on behalf of these pagans, Piloto, for we do have greater need of you.” And I did not dive a second time.

On another occasion Cabral and Andrade showed me the burial grounds of the kings of Loango. This was at a place called Loangiri, two leagues without the town. Here the teeth of elephantos were thrust into the ground all about, to make a great shining white palisado, and the whole burying-place was ten roods in compass, that is, a fine estate for anyone. Cabral said, “These elephanto teeth alone, if we could but have them, would be worth half a kingdom. But also, beneath those mounds, they have buried with their kings all manner of treasure, pearls and jewels and such, of a value too high to count.”

I stared at him wide-eyed, this Cabral having seemed to me to be a man of honor, as honor is reckoned among the Portugals.

“But surely you will not covet the things of a cemetery!”

With a shrug he said, “But this is not consecrated ground. They are but pagans, and if they choose to waste their precious things by burying them, why, it is our duty to God to unbury them, and carry them off for some use.”

“Your duty to God,” said I in wonder, “to rob the dead?”

“They are but pagans,” Cabral repeated.

And he and Andrade spoke of a time to come, when Christianity would be spread into this land of Loango, and the priests intended to persuade the king at that time to have his ancestors reburied in a Christian graveyard. “And at that time,” said Andrade, “we will take all these heathen treasures from the ground, to our own great profit and the saving of the peoples’ souls.”

“Aye,” I said, but not aloud, “save their souls by stealing out of graves. Look to your own souls, Portugals!”

But we did not trespass that day upon the royal burying-place. We only stared in awe at that great wall of lofty elephanto teeth that ringed the place, and I smiled to see the greed that glistened in the faces of my friends Andrade and Cabral, and after a time we returned to the town.

2

By slow and easy stages Faleiro began to prevail in his negotiations, and it seemed sure that the Loango folk would trade with us at long last. I was heartily glad of that, for this idleness wearied me, and I was eager to feel the sea-breezes against my face. I confess with no little shame that I longed also to return to the arms of Dona Teresa in São Paulo de Loanda: for although I had managed to be virtuous enough for several years of chastity after leaving England, I had had my slumbering lusts reawakened by her, and it was not easy now to return them to their disciplined repose. So betimes at night I imagined her satin-smooth breasts in my hands and her thighs wrapped tight about my hips, and I played such fantasies with her in my mind as previously I had been wont to do with Anne Katherine. Anne Katherine herself, I fear, was becoming only a shadow in my memory by this season, for it was four years now and some months since my leaving England, and all my prior life was growing pale and unreal to me, like something I had once read about in a book. The bright sunlight of Africa did eclipse for me the poor pale gleam of England. Africa was become my only reality now. So I dreamed of Dona Teresa’s tawny nakedness and I gobbled the fiery stews and porridges of Loango and I roamed the town to study its ways, learning a bit of its language and discovering of its customs. I found another mokisso-house near the port, where an old woman dwelled named Nganga Gomberi, which means the priestess of the spirit Gomberi, and the blacks told me that once a year a feast is made there, and Nganga Gomberi speaks from underneath the ground, giving oracles. I asked to be let to see this old witch, hoping she would cast a horoscope that would waft me back to England, but they would not show her to me.

I saw an even stranger thing, that is, a white Negro, as white as any white man, but with curling hair and thick lips and a flat nose. This was in the marketplace, when I heard a great stir and a murmuring, and there he came, with the crowd giving way on all sides. Oliveira was with me, and he said, “Hsh! Keep care! That is a holy man!”

“God’s blood, what is it?”

“It is called a ndundu, which is born white and stays that color all its life. They are always brought up to be witches, and serve the king in witchcraft. He has four of them, they say, and no man dares meddle with them.”

Indeed, this ndundu was passing through the market sampling this food and that, taking a bite and a bite and tossing away, and all this while he was allowed to go as he pleased. He came within five yards of me and turned to stare, for I with my blond hair was as strange to him as he was to me. Our eyes met, and his were red, red where mine were blue, the red eyes of a demon from Hell, that I have never seen otherwise.

Toward me he did make certain holy gestures, that were like the writhing of a madman, with much waving of the arms and crooking of his fingers. And in a hissing voice he cried out, an evil croak, saying, “Jaqqa-ndundu! Ndundu-Jaqqa!” The meaning of that is “white Jaqqa,” which even then I understood, though I could not fathom the sense of the appellation. And he did say other things, just as mystical, which left me sore bewildered. We looked at one another a long while, and then I looked away, unable to meet that diabolical gaze any more; and I felt a chill even in so much smothering heat, as though the gates of the Inferno had opened before me and released a blast of the icy wind of Satan. White Jaqqa! What madness was that? Ah, and I would learn; but how did he know?

While we were thus becalmed at Loango there were three special prodigies, that is, things that were out of the ordinary even for the people of Loango.

The first of these was a miracle of the king, to make rain fall. It was the rainy season then, but all had been dry for some weeks and the people were suffering, for the crops could not thrive. So according to the custom and usage of the land they came to the king and begged him to bring the rain, and he did decree a great rain-making festival, which we all attended. On that day all the lords and armies of the surrounding districts came to Loango and held a tournament and display before the king, brandishing their spears, dancing and leaping about, and showing their skill with the bow and arrow. The best of these was an archer who would have put Robin Hood and all his men to shame, and did such wonders of splitting one arrow with another, and bringing down birds on the wing, that I did not think were possible except in storytellers’ tales. When he had done his feats he came forward and spoke with the king, who embraced him and gave him food and drink with his own hand.

Then the king took his place upon a carpet spread on the ground, some fifteen fathoms long and broad, made of the fine fabric nsaka, which is a stuff resembling velvet, and sat upon a high throne the height of a man, covered entirely in leopard-skin. He commanded his ndambas to strike up, these instruments being pieces of palm-tree stems, five feet long and split down one side: notches are carved on the edges of the split, and they rub these notches with a stick to make a weird and unearthly sound, like the rasping of gigantic crickets. Also they have an ivory trumpet made of elephanto tusk, called the mpunga, hollowed and scraped light. With these mpungas and ndambas they created a truly hellish noise. After they had sported and shown the king pleasure in this way, he rose and stood upon his throne, and beckoned to the great archer, and received from him his bow and arrows. I thought the king himself would shoot them, but no: he bestowed them on a high priest, or rain-witch, who stood by his side all daubed with paint and feathers. Also beside the king were the four albino monsters, albino being the word the Portugals use for these white blackamoors; and with them were various other witches and mages of the tribe, even the old Nganga Gomberi woman. There was a great awesome sounding of the drums and trumpets, that made me want to cover my ears with my hands, and set the Portugals to work crossing themselves furiously and muttering their Latin, and the high rain-witch aimed his bow toward the sky and fired his arrow with all his might, so that it went up in a great arc and vanished far off.

And then, you will say, nothing happened, and the dearth of rain did continue for another four months, and all the land was turned to desert. So I would myself have expected, from such pagan folly as this. But I must tell you that upon my mother’s soul I speak the truth when I report that within a few minutes a small white cloud did appear in the southeast, and then a darker cloud, and then the sky was thick with them, good black clouds of rain, and before an hour had passed we were having such a deluge as would have sent Noah to cover, for rivulets were running through the streets and dust was transformed instantly to gobs of mud. How does one explain it? One does not explain it. One ascribes it to the dark power of witchcraft. Or else one says that it was, after all, the rainy season, and rain must come sooner or later even in a dry year, and very likely the king had waited until signs of rain could be seen afar, and had chosen that day to hold his great rain-making festival. And was it witchcraft truly? I cannot rightly say. For it is the case that the king did not fire the arrow himself, but gave it to his priest. I think if the king was sure he could make rain, he would have drawn the bow with his own hand; but by giving the task to the priest, he protected himself against the chance that it would have no result. Priests can always be punished if they fail to bring rain; princes, in my experience, are not much interested in taking the responsibility for public failures.

That was the first of the three prodigies.

The second was but three days afterward, when light rains still hovered about the place. I was in the market exchanging a few of the cowrie shells that go for money here for a piece of the palm-cloth brocade, all done finely in green and red and yellow, from which I meant to make a mantle to shield me from the worst of the sun. Of a sudden I heard a shrill music from afar, a sound not unlike the bagpipery of the wild Scots, that punctured my ear in a painful way. At this piercing and frightful sound all activity ceased in the marketplace. Next I did hear men chanting, as men will do when they pull some heavy load or bear some great burden, a deep slow steady grunting song, I think made not of words but of mere sounds. All this came from the west, from the ocean side of the city.

Then there entered into view what seemed to be a coccodrillo of mighty dimension that floated in the air. But of course that was not the case: this coccodrillo, which was as large as any beast I hope to see, easily eight yards in length and perhaps more, was being borne on the shoulders of some eight or ten men. They struggled under its vast weight, chanting their stern rhythm to keep themselves moving forward, oom oom OOM oom oom, oom oom OOM oom oom, staggering and straining, their eyes all but popping out of their shining black faces, while about them danced and capered three or four musicians playing on their pipes and flutes. This uncouth procession came forward into the very center of the market; the black who was the commander of the carriers gave a cry, and thereupon all did kneel to their knees and roll aside, allowing the great coccodrillo to fall to the ground.

Its eyes were open but they had a gloss on them, and the horrid toothy mouth gaped but did neither close nor open further, for the animal was dead. Indeed such a smell came from it that my guts heaved and fairly leaped into my throat: for not only was there in the air the musky reek of all coccodrillos, that is loathsome enough, but also there was from this one the stink of corruption, of deathly decay. I stepped back some paces; but the townsfolk did press forward, crowding around, and setting up such an excited clamor that my thin newly won knowledge of their language was defeated, for I could not make out a single word, so frenzied was their outcry.

This display went on a long while, to my mystification. Was it some custom of the community to bring their slain coccodrillos to the marketplace and crow over their downfall? How, indeed, had this one been slain? I saw no mark on its body, though there was a kind of swelling about its middle, a bloat, that made me think it might have been poisoned. I could learn nothing. But at last came some of the grandees of the city out from the direction of the royal compound, led by a tall and bulky person in elegant scarlet robes, who had the look of a grand minister about him. This individual drew from his garment a long iron blade, which he thrust forthwith into the side of the coccodrillo in the place where the bloat was.

O! and the gushing forth of vile fluids! O, the stink, the foulness! In great calmness this high minister did slash at the monster’s thick hide, cutting it with no small effort, and thereby liberating such a flow of evil bile as to make me gag and choke. Yet did I not turn away, for I have this certain quality that I scarce do understand, of looking with fascination upon certain repellent and frightful things, of being drawn to them by a kind of magical attraction. So I watched; and this functionary of the court, when he was done slashing open the belly of that leviathan, did thrust his arm into the hole, and grope around within, reaching even unto his shoulder, and suddenly, grimacing and grunting, he pulled forth something that I could not at first recognize, and which I then perceived to be a human arm, partly digested and much melted from its true shape. At this sight a heavy cry went up from the onlooking populace. Still did the official tug; and the arm was attached to a body, and the body to a chain, and the chain led to a second body, and a third, and this revelation of horror and death went on and on, passing all belief.

In time there were eight half-eaten bodies lying in a ghastly sequence on the ground, and the coccodrillo, thus emptied of its prey, had a flattened and shrunken look. The court official, satisfied that no more victims lay within, arose and removed all his garments, for he was entirely beslimed with gore and muck, and boys came to him and cleansed him with buckets of water; and, taking on new garb, he strode off toward the palace to tell the tale of this event. Whilst the populace, crowding around, set up a lengthy commentary on all this in low murmuring tones.

I saw a merchant who I knew to have some Portuguese, and I touched his arm and said, partly in that language and part in his own, “Pray tell me what has befallen here.”

And he explained that this coccodrillo was so huge and greedy that he had devoured an alibamba, that is, a chained company of slaves, that had been at work along the shore of the nearby river some days back. As the unfortunate captives did their toil, one had slipped and fallen to the muddy bank where the creature lurked; and, springing upon him with that terrible speed which coccodrillos demonstrate when their appetites are aroused, it had eaten the man whole. But by the suction of its maw it had pulled the next in the chain toward him, and the next, and the next, gobbling each in his turn, there being no escape, each terrified slave watching as his predecessor was devoured. Until at last the entire alibamba of men was well within the coccodrillo, and I know not how many yards of chain besides.

It was the indigestible iron that paid him his wages, though, and murdered the murderer. For even a coccodrillo, even a giant among giants such as this, has his limits; and it lay sluggish and torpid for days, striving to encompass its formidable meal, and it might in time have absorbed them all, taking some months at the task; but the chain was beyond its capacity. So it weakened and bloated, and boys of the town were assigned to watch him day and night in his final throes, and when his death was upon him these bearers hoisted him to their shoulders and carried him to the public square. The official that had cut him open was the regulator of slaves, who needs must keep a tally, and note down the death of any human property. The which he had done, and the episode was closed. I looked on as other slaves now appeared and cleaned away the eight awful corpses as if they were so much trash—taking them, I think, to the town’s bone-heap and scrap-yard. But the chain that had held the alibamba of slaves and drawn them to their dreadful deaths was most carefully rinsed of all slime, and carried off to be used anew. For some days thereafter it was the talk of the town, that the coccodrillo had had such a capacity for meat, and that it had died of its own gluttony; but not a word of remorse did I hear for the slaves that had perished. Perhaps my understanding of the language was not then perfected enough to register such subtleties. In any case I was haunted by the sight in my troublesome dreams three nights running, and in my waking hours I yearned ever more passionately for England and her good sweet Thames, that holds no such devilish monsters. And where, even if such things were apt ever to happen, the victims would be pitied some, and wept over, and put into a Christian grave for their last repose.

And that was the second of the Loangan prodigies.

But the third, which followed a week after that, had the deepest impact of the three, though it was the simplest event. How, you ask? Why, because although the eating of slaves by a coccodrillo in so great a number was an amazement and a marvel, it meant no threat to those who were yet undevoured. And the drought, grave matter though it might be, was more of a hardship than a catastrophe. But this third thing did portend a universal downfall, though in itself it was so slight. For it was merely the finding of a lone black man dead in the forest of ollicondi trees that lay between the city and the royal burial-ground at Loangiri.

A lone black man! Yea, but rather more than that.

Once again the event came to my awareness through the sounds of pipes and flutes, but this time, instead of playing in wild skirling sounds, it was more like a dark dirge, so slow and mournful that it all but wrung tears from my eyes. It had in it all the sadness that ever was, all the loss and grief and misery that Almighty God ever had sent amongst us to test our faith in Him. Then came a single drummer, beating a dead-march on a drum whose head was covered with the skin of that lovely black and white horse of the plains that they call here a zevvera. This too was so poignant a sound that it pierced the very soul. I was with Faleiro and Cabral when this music was heard, and we turned to one another in shared alarm, and Faleiro said, “I like this not. What calamity do they announce?”

“It could only be the death of the king,” I hazarded, “for what else here would merit such melancholy stuff?”

“God forbid it,” cried Faleiro, making the sign of the cross half a dozen times swiftly. “For if it is so, we are lost. When the Maloango dies the world stands still, and everything is given over to weeping. There is no hunting, the market is closed, the forge and the anvil grow silent, it is forbidden to go out at night.”

“Aye,” said Cabral, “and one may not laugh or cry out or even sneeze or cough, and there is no cooking of meals, and they do not go to the wells. Let us pray the king still lives. In the funeral week if a dog barks it is slain, if a ram bleats it dies.”

But these fears of the two Portugals were not long in troubling us: for the nobility began to issue from the royal palace, and among them came the king himself, borne by slaves atop his high throne. Which reassured us and at the same time increased our concern, since that we knew that the Maloango made no public appearances except when some grave occurrence had befallen his kingdom.

We stood still as stones while the pipers and the drummer went past, and then came the center and cause of this eerie procession. Out of the forest road walked very slowly four warriors of the realm who carried a broad shield of elephanto-hide stretched over a wooden frame; and on that shield lay a naked man, dead, his limbs dangling all asprawl. They brought him before the king and laid him down, shield and all, and backed away, and the musicians were silent, and the entire city was silent.

Then there did burst from the throat of the Maloango such a wailing and outcry as could rend the soul to hear it. You would think that he grieved for his own most dearest son, like David crying for Absalom. Yet was not this the king that had ordered a child of his issue quartered for coming untimely upon him as he drank wine? Now he wept, he moaned, he shredded his headdress and hurled it to the ground. Not even Mary beweeping the Savior could have set up such a vast lamentation.

“What is it?” I asked Faleiro. “Why does he shriek so?”

“This is a prince of the Jaqqas that lies dead here,” replied Faleiro in a hoarse whisper.

I moved as close as I dared, for a better look. Indeed the dead man seemed to be of some tribe other than the Loangan. He was of large stature, slender, with great elongated arms and legs and a high slim neck, yet also he had nobly developed muscles, that lay like cords of metal beneath his sleek midnight-hued skin. He wore nothing but a double rope of white beads about his narrow hips, and on his bare shining chest there was painted, strangely, the sign of the cross in some thick white paint, that gave him the look of a Knight Templar which had gone out to take the Holy Land from the infidel. His cheeks were covered with ridged scars, six down this side, six down that. In the grimace of his dead mouth I saw two of his upper teeth gone and two lower, which seemed done by way of ornament, since his other teeth were strong and good.

From his length and majesty I thought this might be that same Jaqqa prince I had seen standing alone in the clearing along the River Kwanza, that time just before the massacre of the village of Muchima. But no, this was a different man, although somewhat similar of body. For I remembered that that other prince, naked and leaning insolently on his shield, had possessed a male member of phenomenal length, like unto a black serpent hanging halfway down his thigh, and this man was constructed in a more ordinary way, though yet scarce worthy of anyone’s contempt. Even in death a kind of frightsome radiance was about him, a mysterious invisible glow, something like the halo that a devil might have if devils had halos of the sort that saints are widely said to have.

I saw on him the marks of his death. For his chest was somewhat crushed and twisted, and one side of his body was bruised, as though he had been injured by some great beast of the forest. It was Faleiro’s idea that this Jaqqa had been surprised by an elephanto, which had seized him in his long nose and squeezed him and perhaps hurled him against a tree to his perdition, and I think that was the case.

The King of Loango now left off his wailing and began a speech, of which I could understand perhaps every sixth word, and in which the words “Jaqqa” and “Imbe Calandola” were repeated over and yet over. Faleiro struggled to hear, as did Cabral, but I could tell that they scarce understood anything. And though I could follow the words, I knew so little of Loangan customs that I could not easily arrange them into sense. But by conferring among us three, we puzzled out the truth of the king’s speech.

Which was that one Jaqqa generally meant many; that in all likelihood this Jaqqa was a scout, come to investigate the desirability of making war against Loango; and that the death of this man, though it was not the doing of any Loangan, might well bring destruction upon the entire city.

Faleiro spat and kicked against the ground. “We must leave this place at once!” he said, in a fury.

“Without our cargo?” I asked.

“If needs be. I will not stay here when the Jaqqas come.”

“We are charged to return to Angola laded with elephanto teeth,” I said, “and all the other goods that come from this place. How now, can we flee after waiting so long, and bring back nothing?”

“Piloto, this is no concern of yours!”

“It would be an embarrassment to show such cowardice.”

Faleiro’s eyes went bright with rage at that last heavy word, and he reached toward his sword. I being unarmed except for a small knife, I felt that my last moment might be upon me. And deservedly so, for I had spoken foolishly. What was it to me, if these Portugals prospered or did not prosper? I was but their prisoner, their indentured servant: if they chose to go back to Don João and say that fright of the Jaqqas had driven them off empty-handed, what shame would attach to me? Yet it galled me to have wasted so much time here without making trade, even if I was to have no share in the profits of the voyage. But Pinto Cabral came between us and made peace before Faleiro could strike, and I fell back, coming to my right mind and saying in a low voice, “I beg pardon. These are not my decisions to make.”

“Yea, Piloto. Stay here if you like, and let the Jaqqas stew you alive. But we will leave.”

While this dispute had unfolded, the Maloango had continued to instruct his subjects. I returned my attention to him and found that he was laying schemes for defense, ordering the city to prepare for an incursion of the cannibals, and sending scouts off into the forest to search out the enemy force. And soon everyone was running about in frantic hurry, while we withdrew to plan our retreat from that place.

Yet after this first hour of excitement things grew more calm. Drums sounded in the forest, near and farther away, that were the sounds of Loangan scouts talking to one another, sending back word by a sort of code, and what they seemed to be saying, so I did learn, was that no Jaqqas were near at hand: the dead man had been an isolated wanderer. That eased the crisis somewhat. The next day there was a ceremony of great pomp in which the Jaqqa was buried, at a special burial-place deep within the forest. I think the Maloango, by showing this respect to the Jaqqa’s corpse, hoped thereby to ward off the anger of his fellows.

There was one especial surprise for us. When the king became aware that Faleiro had ordered our departure, he sent word that he wished at last to conclude some trade with us. And after all this long delay, we did indeed engage in active bargaining, buying from them with our rugs and our beads and our looking-glasses the elephanto tusks that we had come there to obtain. This exchange, too, may have had some mystical significance, the king thinking to please his gods by obtaining our shiny merchandise from us and putting it on their altars: at least, I can find no reason otherwise for this sudden willingness to have commerce, after that we had been kept waiting so long. We filled our hold with ivory and with palm-cloth, and also with something else of high value, that is, elephanto tails. These were of no worth to the Portugals, God wot, but were much prized by the blacks of Angola, who wove the hair of them into necklaces and girdles; I learned from Faleiro that fifty of the coarse hairs of the tail were valued at a thousand reis of Portugal money, which is the same as six English shillings. So we were obtaining these tails from this land rich in elephantos in order to trade them elsewhere for slaves, and thus the circle of merchandising doth go in these territories.

Within two days we were fully laded and ready to go. In that time we slept very little, remaining vigilant always against the Jaqqa attack, for we thought the man-eaters might come like ghosts from any direction, without warning.

The same thought was in the minds of the blacks, and they were constantly on guard, their faces so drawn and fearful that I thought sure they would soon begin to die of their own timidity. These Loango folk were more terrified than if an army of giant coccodrillos were heading toward them.

At this time one of our number took advantage most shamefully of the disarray of the Loangans. I had my first clue of this when I saw two of the lower Portugal sailors trading among themselves, and haggling over a fine knife of African manufacture, with great green jewels set in its hilt. I happened upon them and took the thing from them to admire it, and turned it over in my hand, and said, “Where did you come by this? I saw nothing like it in the marketplace!”

“Ah, it is an old one,” said they, “which a poor ancient woman was selling, to pay some high expense of hers.”

That sounded believable enough; but soon after I saw the same thing, a bargaining between two of the most common men upon a disk of splendid ivory carved most strangely. And I asked some questions, and then some more, and what I learned was this: that the sly and shameless Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, under cloak of night and at a time when the Loango people were too concerned with Jaqqas to expend men properly on guarding their holy places, had crept out to the sacred cemetery-place at Loangiri and had despoiled one of the finest of the graves, carrying away a sack of treasure for his private enrichment, and selling off a few pieces to the others to cover certain gambling debts of his.

I suppose it was my place to bring the matter to Faleiro, or to ask counsel of Mendes Oliveira or Pinto Cabral, and not to take it into my own hands. But already had I my choler aroused by this worthless young man, and fate brought him across my path just then before I saw any of the others. And so I taxed him with his crime, and asked if the tale I had heard were true.

He gave me a saucy glare, as though to say, “How dare you reproach me, English clod-grubber, English ruffian!” And shrugged, and would have walked away.

But I took him by the wrist and said, “Answer me, is it so?”

“And if it is, what is that to you?”

“It has great import to me.”

“Ah,” he said, “you are co-religionist with these blacks, and take it as a sacrilege. Eh? But let me tell you, Englishman, if you touch me on the arm again, or anywhere else, I will put the point of my dagger into your privates, if you have any.”

“You talk boldly, boy. Let us see how bold you are, when the demon-mokisso of these blacks reaches out, and hurls you into the sea for your impiety.”

“What, and do you believe that?” he said, seeming genuinely astounded.

“That I do.”

“Nay,” he said. “You are a fool, Englishman! There are no demons here! There are no gods! There are only treasures for the taking, and ignorant naked savages who must surrender them to those who are their betters.”

I regarded him with much coolness and said, “They tell me you are the son of a duke, and I am only the son of a mariner, so I should not lesson you in matters of courtesy. But I tell you this, that we English peasants, dirty and ignorant though we be, have sufficient respect for the dead, whether they be white or black or green of skin, to let them sleep unperturbed, without going among them to filch away their treasures. That is one matter, and not a trifling one, but it is merely a matter of courtesy, which may not be of importance to you, for you are a duke’s son and above all such little fine punctilios.”

“Indeed,” said he, “I will hear no instruction from you on points of breeding.”

“Nor should you. But hear at least this: these people have gods and demons, even as we, and surely those dark beings do guard their holy places. And we are about to undertake our voyage southward in troublesome seas. I tell you, sirrah, that your greed here may well bring a curse upon our voyage, and cost us all our lives: and I will not be pilot on a doomed voyage.”

At that he looked somewhat sobered, though his glare was chilly as ever, and the purple birthmark on his cheek did blaze in bright token of his fury at my interfering with him.

I said further, “I will go straightaway to Master Faleiro, and tell him I will not sail, and I will tell him why.”

“Will you, now?”

“And if he has also plundered, and cares nothing for what you have done, then so be it: I will remain here, and have my chances with the Jaqqa hordes, and let you all sail pilotless out into whatever fate awaits you.”

Caldeira de Rodrigues now did shift his weight from foot to foot, and look most discomforted, and say, “A curse, you think? On an old yard where ancient bones do moulder? Come, Piloto, this is foolishness!”

“Not to me, and I know something of the sea, and I will not go venturing on a ship that bears a man that is marked for the vengeance of the spirits.”

“And you will tell this to Faleiro?”

“That I most assuredly will.”

He was silent a long while. Then he said, with the gleam of the seducer upon his eye, “I will share with you, half and half, if you will be silent.”

“Ah, and allow me to share the curse as well?”

“But who can be sure that there will be a curse?” he cried.

“And who can be sure that there will not?” said I.

Again he considered. And it seemed to me that I had struck deep to his shabby soul, and frighted him: for callous he might be, and airy and mocking, and guided only by his own greeds, but no man can wholly ignore the power of the unseen world, save at his deadly peril. Thus I think a dispute went on within Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, in which he did balance his great avarice against his love of life, and bethought himself of the perils of the sea, and, I believe, considered for the first time that there might truly be witch-fires protecting the treasures of the Loango-people’s dead ones. I saw all this moving about on the face of that worthless youth, his anger at me for interfering with his theft warring with his own fear of perishing by shipwreck. And I believe also another thing did hold high urgency in his mind, that he was intent on keeping Faleiro from knowledge of his crime, either because he thought he might lose his stolen goods to the master, or that the terms of his exile in Angola were such that he dared not be taken in the act of performing such looting, out of fear of heavy punishment.

At any rate, he did much calculation in very few moments; and then he said, giving me the thoughtful eye, “If I return to the cemetery that which I have taken, will you swear to say nothing to Faleiro?”

“That I will, most heartily.”

“And may I believe such an oath?”

“Do you take me for a villain? I have not the fortune to be a duke’s son; therefore must I make do with mine honor alone.”

“You are a troublesome meddler, Piloto, and a fool.”

“But not a rogue, sirrah.”

“Keep a civil tongue, or I’ll have it out with my blade!”

His threat gave me no unease.

“We were speaking of your returning what you had stolen,” quietly I said.

“Aye. And I will put back everything, since you leave me no choice. But I will exact some kind of payment from you for this. And I will not conceal from you that I despise you sorely for forcing this returning upon me.”

“Despise me all you like, good friend,” said I, for I saw that he was a coward, and this was all bluster and bravado, and that he was compelled to yield to me. “But at least no curses will be brought down upon my ship for your sake, while I am at sea.”

He drew himself up tall, which was not very tall, and put his nose near mine, and said, “I give not the smallest part of a cruzeiro for your fear of curses. I think that is woman-folly, to fret over the vengeance of blackamoor-ape spirits. And so far as the matter of respect for the dead is concerned, why, I have no respect for these monkeys living, so why should I respect the dead ones? But there is this to reflect upon, that your fear of witchcraft is so great you cannot be dissuaded from running to Faleiro with your tale, and if you do that, it will go badly for me. So I could kill you where you stand, or I must return what I have rightfully acquired by my courage and skill. I should kill you, in good sooth. But I think I will not do it. I will take back the treasure.”

“I will accompany you,” I said.

He glared fire at me then. “Is not my word sufficient?”

“It is a dangerous thing, slipping into that holy place. I will go with you, and stand watch for you, while you restore what you have taken.”

I thought then he would indeed make an attempt on me; and I saw his fingers quivering, as though to go to his dagger. I was ready for him. I think he knew that. So although his hatred for me did smoulder and reach almost to the flashing point, yet did he subdue his wrath, which was most wise of him. Together we went to his quarters, where he had secreted in an oaken chest an astonishing array of marvels, all manner of precious gems and little splendid carvings of ivory and the like. Most sullenly did he gather these things, and in my company he took them back to the graveyard, and would have dumped them without ceremony on the open ground, but that I urged him most menacingly to put them below the earth. Which he did; and I think even then he toyed with the idea of murdering me in this lonely place ringed by vast elephanto teeth, but that he was too craven to make the venture. Give him five or six bravos, and surely he would have had them hold me while he slit my gut. But he would not face me alone, and wise of him, aye.

So I had earned his double enmity, both that I was a mere crude Englishman, and that I had compelled him to give up his purloined treasure. I cared nothing for that. One does not go to sea with a man who has called down upon himself the wrath of the invisible world. Those sailors who took the prophet Jonas onto their ship in ancient times, when Jonas had been disobedient unto the Lord, found themselves in the midst of a tempest, that did not subside until they cast forth Jonas into the sea; and so, too, in this instance was I certain that Caldeira de Rodrigues’ plunder of the dead would cause us all to suffer. Therefore had I risked the loathing of that shoddy and shameless young man, for it affrighted me far less than the anger of the unknown deities of this place.

As we took our leave of Loango the city was hectic with concern, and barely saw us go. The four albino ndundus of the king were mounted in a high station to chant prayers, and various witch-women went about making sacrifices to the powerful mokissos of the nation, and so on, just as the cathedrals of Europe must keep busy when an onslaught of the Turks is predicted. Everywhere it was incense and bonfires and drums and pipes and chanting, with somber-faced Loangan soldiers striding up and down drilling with their weapons, and so on and on, everyone active in the preparations for defense against the imagined attack of the on-rushing anthropophagi.

Thus we left Loango with our rich cargo of goods and sailed back toward São Paulo de Loanda. Which had been a very fine voyage for me, and exceeding instructive in the ways of that foreign land.

3

We started us southward in high good spirits, for our hold was full and the profit would be great, and there was not one of us but yearned to be in the capital city again. But though I had gone myself to the graveyard with Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues to make him undo his impiety, yet did it soon become clear that we still had a reckoning of the most heavy sort to pay for his crime, and that our sturdy little ship was indeed now accursed.

The wind was good, if strong sometimes beyond our needs, and the sky was fair as we made our way down the coast. But we were still some distance north of the mouth of the Zaire when we had an omen of an ill-fated journey, for at the noon hour one day we came across a fish, and no one knew what fish it might be. It was like a whale of no great bigness, somber-looking and evil-countenanced, that frightened away all the other fish that traveled with the ship. It stayed with us all day, and the next it was still there, and it left us not at all, but stayed in front of the vessel throwing up great spurts of water, and peering at us from its small baleful eyes.

Then a dry sour wind did come from the south, very hard, like water rushing down a gulley, or like a river of air coursing fierce through the air. This wind made us all most impatient with one another, as though it excited a morbid action in our veins. And then there were flashes of lightning above us, but no rain, only a greater and greater dryness.

The Portugals were all much alarmed by that, as was I, for we had only rarely seen lightning without rain, and always it was a boding of nothing fortunate. The air was now so hot and parched that one felt as if one could strike blue sparks by the snapping of the fingers, and that if one were to turn too quickly into the wind, one’s clothes would burst into flame.

Faleiro came to me and said, “We must be prepared to strike sail quickly, for this wind could become evil.”

“Aye,” I said. “If it shifts to westerly, I would fear it, and I pray it does not.”

We were vigilant; and still the wind came out of the south, hotter and harder, standing us stock-still in our track. We were well out to sea now, with the coast only a thin faint line. There was much praying aboard the Infanta Beatrix, the men dropping to their knees at every slight change in the intensity of the air, and crossing themselves and doing their game with their beads. I also was no stranger to prayer at that time, and I saw even the vile Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues at his devotions. I looked to him as if to say, “You see? The demons of Loango are searching for the one who did profane the dead!” But he would not meet my gaze at all, and shifted guiltily away. I think he feared I would denounce him to Faleiro, and have him thrown overboard as a Jonas in our midst. In truth the idea did cross my mind. And also it crossed my mind that Rodrigues might forestall such a move on my part by slaying me; so I did not sleep all that night, and kept my weapon close beside me in case he came creeping like an assassin.

Another thing that I considered, but only briefly, was that I might be the root and cause of this terrible wind. For was I not carrying a little witchcraft statue that Dona Teresa had made for me, and did I not, from habit, rub it from time to time, which was a kind of veneration? I thought that might have incurred upon me the anger of God, that I should be praying to a heathen deity, and invoking a lust-charm. Once again, as I stood by the rail of the ship, I contemplated throwing my little Teresa-mokisso into the water, to spare us from the menace of the sea. But I could not do it. The thing was precious for having come from her hand, and summoned to my mind all the passionate hours we had spent entwined in one another’s arms. To cast it overboard was to cast Dona Teresa overboard: I could not. She held me in her unbreakable grasp.

And had I not already made voyages with this idol by my side, and were we wrecked then? If I were to be punished for idolatry, surely it would long since have happened. So I kept the carving by me, and prayed that I was not thereby taking upon myself the guilt for the death of others.

And the wind rose and rose and rose, and the air grew yet more dry and hot, and then befell what we had all feared, for it shifted and blew out of the west, and drove us willy-nilly across a wild and lurching sea toward the unknown coast. In this violent veering our sails bellied out like the cheeks of Boreas, so that we thought the fabric might not hold, and began to lower them. But before we could, the strong wind ripped the mainsail off its yard. When we saw that we had lost our sail, we all ran to take in the foresail, before it be stripped also. Now the waves which bore down from the west and those which mounted up in the east so swamped us that each time she rocked we thought the ship was going to the bottom; but yet we preferred to risk the waves striking the ship athwart to being left without any sails.

God’s blood! How we toiled!

We had not quite finished lowering the foresail when the sea did strike the Infanta Beatrix athwart. At the same instant three waves broke over her, so huge that the lurches she gave burst the rigging and the mast beams on the larboard side.

“Cut down the mast!” Faleiro cried.

His words were all but lost in the wind, but no matter: we each of knew what had to be done. We found our axes and set to work felling the mainmast, when it broke away above the rings of the fiddle-blocks, as if we had felled it with one stroke, and the wind threw it into the sea to starboard, as if it were something very light, together with the top and the shrouds. Then we cut the rigging and the shrouds on the other side, and everything fell into the sea.

Being now without our mast or our yards, we made a small mast out of the stump which was left us of the old one, by nailing a piece of a spar to it, and made a yard for a mainsail out of another spar, and so on. But all this was so patched up and weak that a very slight wind would have been enough to carry it all away.

All this happened so swiftly, and amidst scenes of such chaos, that I had scarce any time to reflect on the sad mutilation of our lovely little pinnace, nor on the perils that were mounting about us. But we had some respite after a time, the wind relenting a little; and while we worked, we exclaimed on the turns of fate, that had had us so rich with cargo at one moment, and wondering at the next if we would survive at all. But that is the true life of the sea.

They came round with rum for us as we worked. The man who gave me mine was Caldeira de Rodrigues, and I leaned close and looked him eye to eye and said, “What now, duke’s son? Is there not some force striving to repay you for your crime?”

“Keep your voice low.”

“Ah, you still worry about your skin! Well, and I think we may all be swimming, before long. Finish your rounds, and go you and ask Jesus for forgiveness.”

He gave me a cold look and said, “When this is done, I will have your life from you, Englishman.”

“Ah, indeed, I brought the storm to cause you inconvenience, is that it? Go to, scoundrel: anger me enough and I’ll send you over the side, and then, I think, the storm will abate! But look at the injury we have suffered for you!”

He moved away, fearing I meant my words, which to some degree I did. But worse injury was coming. For now we were helpless in the sea, though we had cobbled together masts and sails of a sort; and we were being driven onward, and night was coming, and who knew what shoals might rise from the sea to harry us? I went to my charts, but they gave me little news. We were still many leagues out to sea, but these were tropic waters, often shallow where one least expected it, and the charts were sketchy, and there was no pilot alive who knew all these waters, least of all me, so hastily impressed into my office.

Darkness fell. The wind seemed more quiet, and the sea a little still. We talked of the repairs we would make in the morning, and the resumption of our voyage. Some men went to their berths. I remained on watch, with Faleiro the master, and Pinto Cabral. Then the wind rose again, and the sea began to foam, and in the very pit of the night we heard suddenly the terrible sound of the waves breaking on nearby rocks. Then, for our sins and by God’s equable and hidden judgment, the Infanta Beatriz that we had no way of controlling did run upon a shoal.

“We are lost!” cried Cabral, and I thought he might well be right.

When the ship struck, it gave three great frightful knocks, and at once the bottom of the vessel was cast up above the water because of the extreme roughness of those submerged rocks. I heard the sound of shattering timbers, an awful grinding and splitting sound, and felt the spume and spray pour over me.

The most evil aspect of this wreck was that it befell by night, in such darkness that we could scarce see one another. Men came rushing from the depths of the pinnace, crying out in fear and confusion, for they faced death in the roaring seas with no knowing where safety might lie. The breaking up of the ship, the cracking of the wood which was all being ground to splinters, the falling of masts and spars, made so hideous a clatter and noise that it fair to burst our brains.

Then came another flaring of that rainless lightning, which gave me a moment’s vision of our surroundings. We were flung up upon rocks that jutted partly from the sea at this tide, though by the sliming and seaweed of them I could see that within some hours they would be wholly submerged. By a second flash of God’s bolt I managed to jump to the nearest of these rocks, and cling to it; and by a third I looked back and saw that though the ship was altogether destroyed, the longboat of her still was intact.

We were thirty or forty men, though, and the longboat would hold perhaps a dozen, and we were some leagues yet from the shore. I turned to gather men to salvage wood for rafts, and stumbled over a figure who lay upon the rocks, groaning: a mariner who had been flung free of the ship in the wreck, doubtless. As I groped for him in the darkness, to which now my eyes were growing a little used, a wave splashed us both, and he began to drift away, and in another moment would have been lost in the night. Though my own life was at risk by so doing, I slipped into the water and, swimming with the greatest difficulty in my heavy boots, did make after him, and catch him by a leg, and draw him in my arms toward the shoal. The lightning came again, and told me that this was Pinto Cabral I had saved, which pleased me, Cabral being a good man. It might just as readily have been Caldeira de Rodrigues for whom I had risked my life, and I was not so fine a Christian that I would have cared to do such a thing.

“The ship is in danger,” Cabral did murmur, coming awake now that he breathed air instead of water.

“The ship is entirely destroyed,” said I. “But the boat survives. Come, put your arm over my shoulder.” And, slipping and sliding upon the sharp rough slimy rocks, we found our way back upon the broken decks. I saw some men striving to lower the boat, and others crowding about it, fighting to get on. There was no sight of Faleiro, which left me in command, as pilot. At once I rushed to the ones who struggled, and cried, “Are you mad? If you all enter the boat, it will go down, and all of you with it! Hold back, let us consider. We are safe here, for the moment.”

Yet did they continue to fight like mad wolves to enter the boat. I seized them one by one, and hurled them back, calling upon them to regain their wisdom, and I took some hard blows as I fought to help them keep their lives. But then Faleiro appeared, with a great bloody bruise on his forehead, and stood beside me, and together we were able to bring order.

Though the wind still howled and the sea raged like a ravenous beast, we kept command and took stock of our situation. It seemed that some eight or nine men were dead: some killed in the breakup of the ship, which lay impaled and sundered upon the shoal in the saddest way, and others thrown free like Cabral, and swept off into the night before they could be aided. The others clung to the sides of the boat and we waited for morning. The waves broke very fierce over the reef and fell off at once with great violence to the south-east, in which direction the sea appeared to be running.

In the last hours of darkness there were many tears, and signs of contrition and repentance for sins. I heard them at their litanies and rituals, and asking for God’s mercy, which I also did in my own English words. Some waved crucifixes on high, or pictures of the Virgin, and in great weeping asked her to save their souls, for they thought their lives were doomed. But by first light we saw there was some hope. We found the ship’s ropes, and out of the planking of the deck commenced the construction of some small rafts, a task that took us less time than I thought it would. Now the storm was gone away, and the day was hot and fair. What was most sad was that the ship was burst open, and some of the vast elephanto teeth were strewn upon the shoal like match-sticks, and our fine fabrics and other good articles of trade; and the rest of the cargo was in the water, beyond all salvaging. Yet were we still alive, most of us, and for that we gave thanks.

When the rafts were built, Faleiro looked to me and said, “Well, Piloto, and can you lead us to shore?”

“I will do my best,” said I. “Come, let us take the tide while it is running high, and leave this place at once.”

It was agreed that I was to ride in the longboat, since that I was the pilot and must not be lost. Faleiro would command one raft, and Pinto Cabral another, and the third, that was the largest, would be led by a man named Duarte Figueira, who had shown great coolness and strength in the wreck.

The others drew lots, for who was to have the safety of the longboat. Nine were chosen, and they did rejoice greatly, with a kind of crazy jubilation. Also did we stock the boat with such things as we could rescue from the ship, weapons and ropes and tools, but not much. Of food-stores we had scarce any. The tide was now at its fullest, and the shoal was altogether submerged, which freed the rafts and boats, and let us get away: and a good thing, too, for at that moment a great wave came up, and split the ruined Infanta Beatrix in sunder, so that the two halves of her fell off and were swiftly carried down, leaving only some part of her hull that was impaled on the rocks.

At the last moment there occurred something that would return to trouble me sorely in after times. For the wave did sweep Cabral’s raft close alongside our longboat, and suddenly Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, that had a place on the raft, did stand up, looking like a madman with that purple mark of his ablaze on his face, and cried out that he did not intend to die in an uncovered raft that was at the mercy of the sea.

I saw him making ready to jump into the longboat, which was overfull as it was.

“Nay, you may not!” I shouted. “You will swamp us!”

But he was already in mid-leap. We could not have him with us, for we would all be lost. Though Caldeira de Rodrigues was a man of slight build, he carried a sack in his arms, doubtless containing things that in his greed he had saved from the ship, and from the look of his effort it was of great weight. His lunatic leaping would up-end us for sure.

So I did not hesitate. It was no mark of my dislike of him, that which I did: I would have done the same had it been Cabral, or Faleiro, or anyone else, for we could not afford the loss of the longboat. I seized the handle of my oar, and as he sprang through the air I rammed him hard in the belly with it, and thrust him back toward the raft.

He hung in mid-air for a moment like one suspended by a rope, which was a fate I think he richly deserved. His eyes were round with amaze, his mouth was gaping, his birthmark flashed like a beacon-light. Then he fell and dropped beneath the waves, still clutching that sack of his. The longboat, at the same time, tipped far to the side and shipped some water, but righted itself in a moment. I looked down, and thought I saw a glimpse of Caldeira de Rodrigues, and waited for him to bob to the surface. But he did not. Mayhap my blow had knocked the wind from him and stunned him, yet even so he should have floated up in a little time. I think, though, that he held his sack in such a deathly grip that he would not release it, and the weight of it drew him downward and drowned him.

“You will suffer for that if ever we see São Paulo de Loanda again,” said a man at my elbow. “His brother is certain to have vengeance.”

With a shrug I made reply, “I will face that problem when the time for it comes. If he had reached the longboat, we would all be in the water now with him.”

“Aye,” said another. “There is truth in that.”

We waited a moment or three more, but there was no sign of him. I believe I do know what was in that fatal sack: for I suspect that when he agreed to return his stolen booty to the graveyard, he did keep some of it back without my knowing, and carried it upon the Infanta Beatrix, and had it safe in his arms during the wreck, and it was that stuff, so precious, that carried him down to his death. Well, and a proper death it was, if so be the case: for I think it was the curse on the grave-robber that brought the storm onto us, and caused the loss of our ship and all its treasure, and took the lives of some innocent men.

4

And such was the piteous end of our joyous and prosperous voyage to Loango. Now, under a cloudless and merciless sky that gave us no surcease from the terrible hammer of the tropic sun, we made our way landward in our distress. But some worse horrors even were yet awaiting us.

By God’s great mercy, the wind was out of the west, and not an evil one, and we rowed our boat and poled our rafts in brisk order. Soon the shore was clear in view. From the look of it, and my memory of the coast as we went northward, we were perhaps midway between Loango and the mouth of the Zaire, and how we ever would get back to São Paulo de Loanda I did not know. But I gave that question little heed: sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.

Though we managed to remain in close formation most of the journey, the raft commanded by Duarte Figueira veered somewhat to the northward as we neared the land, and, try as he might, he could not make headway back nigh to us. At the time that seemed of little consequence, for we thought we could reunite on the shore: but in fact that separation of his raft from us led to a sore and tragic calamity in a little while.

The current now ran swiftly north-easterly, and our rowing and poling were no longer of avail. We were simply swept up and carried toward the shore, and had no say in our going, and merely prayed that we would not be cast up on some fanged rocks. Nor did that befall us, for when we were close we saw that the shore here was flat and sandy, with a good many little spits and islands and peninsulas of low stature, the product of some inner river, much like the isle of Loanda in the harbor of São Paulo de Loanda. So we glided to an easy landing, the longboat and Faleiro’s raft and Cabral's at one such spit, and Figueira’s at another, with perhaps three hundred yards of open water separating him from us. We unloaded our pitiful little goods, and cried out to them, “Come over! Let us all be together!” But when they attempted to pole their raft to our place, they could not achieve it: the water was too shallow, and the pole became mired as it were in a quicksand. And when they tried to come about to us from the landward end, it was the same thing. The landward side of their spit was all muck, and they could not pass.

So there we were in two parties, come to land on a pair of sandy spits that jutted out like the two prongs of the letter V from the true shore, with shallow open water between them, and impassable swamp at the inner end. Well, and we could rest awhile, I thought, and then return to our rowing, and move on along the coast to some more hospitable place.

Meanwhile we foraged on our little spit for anything that might be useful to us, for we had salvaged not much in the way of edible stuffs from the wreck. Some flagons of wine, a bit of cheese, some quince jelly, some waterlogged bread: that was about the whole of it, and it would not last two days.

“What do you find?” I asked Cabral and Faleiro, when we came together from our foraging.

Their faces were dark. “Small serpents,” said Cabral. “A kind of rat. Some crabs.”

“And a few sprigs of bush,” said Faleiro, “with no fruit upon them.”

“Well, then we will be eating snakeskins and toasted bones before long,” Cabral said, making a smile on it, though we all knew it was no jest but the truth.

“And after that,” said I, “we will be eating one another.”

“Ah, and are you a Jaqqa, to say such a thing?” Faleiro demanded sourly.

“God forbid,” said I. “Let us take our lives, before it come to that!”

Yet sometimes in jest the most frightful things are foretold.

We made a melancholy cold meal, and wandered our little kingdom, and waited for night, and slept poorly, and waited for morning. And morning, when it came, revealed a monstrous thing. For although it had not been possible for us to reach the land by crossing the quicksand, certain folk had been able to come the other way, at least on the adjoining point where Figueira and his seven or eight companions were. I was looking idly out to sea, and dreaming of a vessel that would come to rescue us, when Cabral grasped my arm most fierce and cried, “Look! Across the way!”

“Jesu preserve us,” I said.

For a demonic band of dark naked figures now surrounded our companions on the other spit. Like revelers out of Hell had come some dozens of long-legged graceful men, who pranced and capered in a weird dance, throwing out their arms and legs with evident glee, and circling round and round.

“Mother of God!” said Faleiro, in a voice like that of one who is being garroted. “They are Jaqqas!”

And so they were, and now a true nightmare unfolded before our eyes, nor could we wake from it, but must witness every grisly ghastly moment.

How the man-eaters had come out onto the point, God alone can say. Perhaps they knew some path through the quicksanded pitfalls, or else they had come swimming up from the other side, or in boats: I never knew, I cannot tell you now. But they were there, and as our hapless shipmates knelt and prayed most fervently, the cannibals fell upon them, one by one slitting their throats.

We could do nothing. Our only weapons were knives and swords, that were of no use at such a distance.

“Blood of the saints!” roared one grizzled old Portugal of our band. “We must save them!” And he went struggling out into the water, brandishing a blade in each hand; but he got no more than a dozen yards, and found himself mired up to the knees, and it was all he could do to return to shore. At which the Jaqqas looked up from their slaughter, and gestured mockingly to us, and laughed, and called out as though to say, “Wait ye your turn there, and we will come and have you next!”

And so we watched. And cursed, and raved, and shook our fists, and were utterly helpless.

Our friends were entirely slain. Figueira himself was the last, a tall and noble-looking man of silvered hair, who called upon Heaven to avenge him, and then the long knives went into him. And after the killing came worse, the butchery and the cooking. God’s truth, it was a terrible sight, much more grievous than that other cannibal feast I had witnessed long ago in Brazil, for these were men I knew by name, that had only just survived a dread ordeal by sea, and did not merit such a fate as the next thing. From scraps of wood and old dried seaweeds and the like the Jaqqas did build a fire, and cut our men into several parts, some three or five of them, and roasted them before our eyes, and sat crosslegged in a merry way, gnawing at haunches. God’s death! I was thankful only that some hundreds of yards of open water separated us from them, not so much that it gave us safety, but that we did not see that dread feasting at any closer range. For it was vile enough, at that distance.

It went on and on, the roasting and the eating. And I think that the worst of it all was that in our starved state, the aroma of that roasting meat did arouse in us a hunger despite our horror, so that our mouths ran with rivers of spittle and our stomachs griped and yearned. And what monstrousness was this, to stir with such famine at the smell of man’s cooking flesh? But so starved were we that we could not tell ourselves it was unholy to yearn for some of that meat: it could have been mere pork, for all that our ignorant noses were able to tell.

I know not how many hours the ghastly feast proceeded. But at length it was over; and the Jaqqas rose, and slung over their shoulders the bodies of those men whom they had not consumed, and in their ghostly way did steal away, over a little rise in the sandy spit, and vanished on the other side.

“They will come to us next,” said Faleiro in gloom.

“I think they are sated for now,” I said.

“Ever looking on the brighter side, eh, Piloto?” said he. And it was true, in good sooth: for what value is it to take ever the darkest outlook? We placed guards, and for all the rest of the time we dwelled in that place we looked out day and night for the coming of the Jaqqas. But they did not come, either because they could not reach our shore as readily as they had the other, or because they had satisfied their needs here and now were journeying to some far destination to perform the next of their foul celebrations.

Yet it was hard enough, living there, to walk about with the memory so bright in us of what we had witnessed. A thousand times I wished I had looked away, and closed my eyes, while that feast was happening. But I could not; none of us could; we had witnessed every terrible instant of it, and it blazed now, and for long afterward, in my soul.

After a few days, though, it began to seem to us that our fallen companions were the fortunate ones. For there was next to nothing to eat in that place, and if we had not had the good luck to locate a spring of fresh water we would have died a death even more frightsome than theirs. As it was, we were hard put to live, and Cabral’s jest was amply fulfilled, for we were reduced to such things as gnawing on bones, and chewing scraps of snakeskin, and sucking roots. I thought often of the hardships I had known since leaving England, and nothing seemed worse than this, though perhaps I was mistaken in that: but the hardship of the moment often seems far greater than those endured in other days. I lay staring out to sea, much, and dreamed of home, and sometimes of Anne Katherine and sometimes of Dona Teresa, whose amulet I took from my pocket and studied long. But the sight of it, its breasts and cleft of sex and smooth shining buttocks, did stir distressing desires in me that I could not fulfill, and I regretted bringing it forth. And also did I continue to wonder whether I should be carrying such a talisman at all, it being forbidden by my church and by God Himself to place faith in idols.

Well, and that evil time ended, as all evil times of my life have late or soon come to their end. A vessel out of São Tomé, going south on business to São Paulo de Loanda, passed that way and saw the timbers of the Infanta Beatrix upon the shoal; and, thinking there might be survivors, approached the shore, where the hand of God directed it to us. So were we rescued, and given food and clothing, and a place to sleep, and bit by bit we began to recover from our ordeal. And as we neared São Paulo de Loanda I felt almost myself again. But within my mind now forever were certain images and pictures I would gladly have scraped out. I saw, and still see, Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues hanging suspended in mid-air after I had struck him with my oar; and I saw the dark teeth of the shoal by lightning-flare, with our tight little pinnace wrecked upon it; and I saw, most bitter and painful of all, the demon Jaqqas dancing about our crewfellows, and slaying them, and falling to most heartily on their flesh. Ah, what a world it is, I thought, that has such wolves in human guise loose upon it!

So I was of somewhat a brooding mood by the end of that voyage, which had begun so well. But it is not my nature to dwell morosely on darker things, and I was glad enough to be alive, when I came stepping ashore at São Paulo de Loanda.

I found that much had altered in that city during my absence.

The new governor, Don Francisco d’Almeida, had begun to put his mark upon the place. The slopes of the hill leading up to the high fortress were bustling with fresh constructions. Thousands of blacks did toil under the terrible blaze of the torrid sun, building a palace for the governor far more majestic than the old one, and homes also for the governor’s brother, Don Jeronymo d’Almeida, and for the various other great fidalgos who had accompanied this governor out from Portugal. All these were very grand structures of lime and stone hauled from great distances and covered with tiles of Lisbon, very dignified and awesome, much enhancing the look of the city; for the whiteness of the lime and the merry blue and yellow of the tiles did dance most playfully upon the eye in the bright sunlight. Down below there were many other dwellings a-building, and barracks for the hundreds of new soldiers that Don Francisco had brought with him to Angola. This work had been accomplished at no little cost of native lives. For although all seasons are hot in that place, the rainy season often is more hot and evil than the dry one, and d’Almeida had compelled his people to work regardless of any heat, so that many of them fell in their tracks and died, for all that they were accustomed to such a clime. This I learned from Don João de Mendoça, who by now had taken me as a sort of confidant. “They bury a dozen blacks a day,” he said, with a scowl, “and still d’Almeida shows no restraint. He wants his palace done by winter.”

“Is the man mad?”

“Nay, Andres, not mad, only stupid. Very, very, very stupid.” Don João looked at me long and deep. “That is no way to treat one’s workmen.” I remembered that Don João was the man who had in an angry moment dashed a bowl of spiced sauce into the eyes of a careless slave. But then he added, “It is wasteful to work all those men to death, for some of them have skills that will be not easy to replace,” and I understood that Don João’s objections were objections of economy, not of morality. He laughed and said, “Still, one day Don Francisco will be gone from here, and his palace will remain for the using of his successors. I suppose that’s something good to come out of this.”

Don João did not need to tell me that he had great hopes of dwelling in that palace himself. Anyone with eyes would know of the rivalry between him and d’Almeida: Don João the stronger and shrewder man, Don Francisco the holder of the royal commission. That the governorship should have gone to Don João upon its last vacancy, no one in Angola did doubt; but Don Francisco was higher born, and he had the better connections in the mother country. It was cunning of Don João to make no show of resentment at having been passed over for the governorship, yet must it have been bitter for him, since suddenly Angola was full of new men, the satraps of Don Francisco, and these must also stand between him and true power in the colony. This Don João concealed from me, for he was not one to protest openly his dissatisfactions.

When we were done with these matters, the talk turned to my sorrowful voyage. Here he had lost grievously, since he was a major owner of the cargo that had gone down with the pinnace; but again he made light of that matter.

“There will be other voyages,” said he. “And I trust you will play a great part in them, for I have heard much from Faleiro of your valor and skill.”

“The skill is what I inherit from my father,” I answered. “As for the valor, it was only what was needful to save my life.”

“And the life of others, so I am told. All the men do speak highly of you.”

“Glad am I to have earned their respect.”

“Their respect, and more. For on your next sailing, you shall have a share in the proceeds. It is not right, to send a man off at risk of his life to be pilot for us, and not let him claim his just part of the return.”

This surprised me greatly, that the Portugals would divide a share for me. But I gave him only warm thanks, and not a hint of any ungracious thought.

He said, “Tell me of the events of your voyage, Andres, before the wreck.”

The which I did, in much detail, dwelling hard on the strange things that had occurred while I was in the land of Loango. Of the rainmaking and the great coccodrillo he took but light notice; it was the tale of the dead Jaqqa that most aroused him. He had me describe it in every detail. When I mentioned the white cross that was painted on the cannibal prince’s chest, he slapped the table, and roared out loud, crying, “By the Mass! They are jolly devils, those Jaqqas!”

I saw nothing jolly about them: to me they were devils, and hyaenas, or wolves in human form. But peradventure Don João had never seen them feeding on his shipmates.

I said, “What meaning has the cross to them? Surely they be not Christians.”

“Why, no, surely not. And it has no meaning for them, I suppose, but they find it a pretty thing. Or else they mean to mock us. Or perhaps they are become Jesuits, and that is their new sign of office. No one understands why the Jaqqas do the things they do. I think they are not human. But none of these blackamoors have any much sense of real Christianity, no matter what they babble in the church of a Sunday. Do you know, Andres, that when I was in Kongo I often saw good Christian Negroes putting the holy cross to pagan use? In one place there was a pile of horns of wild animals surrounded by branches, a sort of altar, and a cross was mounted above it. It is an ancient superstition of theirs that they can witch their animals when hunting them, with piles of horns, and it must have seemed to them that the cross would be an even more powerful mokisso, so they added it to the pile. I thought it clever of them.”

“And I, too, Don João. Why not use all the superstitions one can find, when one is hungry?”

He raised his eyebrows at me and I thought he would be angry, but then he eased somewhat.

“The cross is to you a superstition, then?”

Uncomfortably I said, “We are taught in England that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, even as it is taught by the Roman way. But we believe that it is Jesus who is holy, and not the wood on which He died. We have cast aside our old images and idols.”

“Have you now,” said Don João. “And does it not frighten you, to live without their protection?”

“It was but false protection, sir. For when we destroyed our holy relics, our images of the saints, and the like, there was no plague come upon England, nor any vengeance of our enemies, but rather we have prospered and grown far wealthier than we were in the old days, and when King Philip sent his Armada, we were not harmed, but—”

“Yea,” said Don João darkly. “I wonder why it is, that the Lord encourages such heresies as England’s. But be that as it may: we are far from such quarrels here. I showed the hunter’s cross to a priest, who grew all indignant, and broke it and burned it to pieces, saying it was blasphemy to use it so, and perhaps it was. Well, let the priests burn the Jaqqas as blasphemers, too, if they can catch any. Have you seen these Jaqqas, Andres? Other than the dead one at Loango?”

I looked upon him in amaze, and cried, “Have they not told you, that they devoured some of our men, after we had been cast up on shore?”

“Nay, not a word!”

I found myself atremble from the recollection. “It was the most frightsome thing I ever saw. They appeared like phantoms, in a place ringed round by quicksand, and fell upon the stranded men, and slew them, and—” With a shudder I said, “I saw it all. But need I paint it for you now?”

“I was told only that many men were lost in the wreck.”

“That was how half the dead man perished, to the appetites of Jaqqas, after they had escaped the wrath of the sea.”

And I looked away, that he might not see how pale I was, nor how shaken by the dread memory.

He seemed unaware of my emotion, for he went on talking in the lightest way, saying, “They are bold fellows. Perfect savages, with not a trace of humanity in them. I saw some, once, that we hired to do a battle on our behalf—for they will hire themselves out, you know, when the mood takes them. They were like a band of devils, so that I kept looking to their shoulders, to see if the black wings did sprout there. Yet were they well behaved and quiet. I hear they keep a market in their territory somewhere inland where man’s flesh is sold for meat, like sheep and oxen, by the weight. By the Mass, I wonder what method they use for its cookery, whether they stew it, or roast it, or bake in an oven!” He patted his ample stomach. “God forfend it, Andres, but sometimes— sometimes—I am curious about its flavor. I confess that thing to you that I would not tell even my confessor, and I know not why, except that I think you are a man to my humor. Would you eat man’s flesh?”

“I have seen it done, Don João, when I was a captive of wild Indians in Brazil. I was not tempted.” I would tell him nothing of the effect that the smell of the roasting meat had upon me, when I was so hungered on that sand-spit.

“And if your life depended on it?”

“I think it would not,” said I staunchly. “I could live well enough on roots and leaves and berries, and the small beasts of the wilderness.”

“Nay, I mean, if you were told, Eat this meat or we will slay you, and the meat were man’s flesh?”

“A strange question, Don João.”

“I do put it to you.”

With a shrug I said, “Why, then, I think I would eat of it, if I must! May God spare me from that choice, though.”

“You are to my humor!” he cried. “Wiser to eat than to be eaten, ever! Come, Andres, have some wine with me. And then to your own amusements.” He poured me a brimming goblet of sack and said, handing it to me, “Will the Jaqqas attack Loango?”

“I cannot say. The Loango people fear it greatly.”

“You have heard the tales of that time when the man-eaters struck at São Salvador in the Kongo, have you not?”

“The time when the king of that land was fain to flee to the Hippopotamus Isle?”

“Aye. In ‘69, it was. They will come here some day, Andres. They will come everywhere, in time. They are God’s own scourge, loosed upon the world.” He said this mildly, as though he might be talking about the coming of a breeze from the west, or a light shower of rain. “I think they mean to eat their way from nation to nation, until they have devoured all the world. They have a king, Imbe Calandola by name, whose appetite is said to be limitless. Why is it, do you think, that such destroyers are spawned among us again and again? The Turks, the Mongols, the Huns of old, the Assyrians of whom the Bible tells us—now the Jaqqas, and their grand devil Imbe Calandola, are the latest of that sort. They speak for something that exists within us all, do you not think? Eh, Andres? That love of destruction, that joy of doing wrong? God’s own scourge! There is a beauty in such evil. Eh, Andres? Eh? Here: have more wine.” He sat back, laughing to himself, scratching his belly. He was very far gone in his cups, I did perceive. His speech was thickened, his meanings monstrous. I did not know what to reply in the face of such amazing words. We were silent a time, and then he declared, “I will find me a few tame Jaqqas, Andres. And I will feed them on some useless Portugals to make things more quiet in this city. I will let them take a meal of Jesuits first, I think. And then the whoreson fool d’Almeida and his poxy friends. Hah! And my own cook shall brew the sauces for them, that is a master of his art.” He laughed, and drank, and laughed, and drank. I watched, wondering. Before long, I did feel certain, he would fall asleep of his own drunkenness. But instead Don João did quite the opposite, sitting up in his chair and pushing his wineglass aside, and saying to me in altogether a sober voice, no longer slurred nor strange, “There is much trouble here between Don Francisco and the Jesuits, and it will grow worse. I tell you, the man is stupid. He does not know how to handle those priests, and soon there will be open warfare between him and them.”

“Will priests take up arms, then?”

“Nay, I mean no actual war. But some kind of struggle is sure, and it will disrupt our lives. You know, the Jesuits came to Angola in the days of Paulo Dias, and they have always had a hand in governing here. Dias was strong and wise, and he kept control over them by consulting them in all matters of state, and letting them believe that they were high in his councils. Serrão, when he was governor, and Pereira after him, had so deep a barrel of other problems that they paid the Jesuits no heed, which let the priests collect new powers unto themselves. This, d’Almeida has tried to curb, and he is doing it the wrongest way, as he does everything. He threatens the Jesuits, and he should be seducing them.”

“In what way,” did I ask, “do the priests seek power?”

“Why, by claiming that the blacks are their spiritual flock, and they must be the sole shepherds of them. Already they make intrigue to construct themselves the only intermediaries between the governor and the native chiefs, so that in a short time the chiefs would do the bidding of the Jesuits, and not the governor.”

“But that would mean that the Jesuits would command this country!”

“That is my meaning in precise, Andres. They would relegate to the governor the power to make war and defend our frontiers, and keep all else of substance to themselves. And soon we would need no secular authority here at all, for the holy fathers would have builded themselves into the great power of the land. Well, and d’Almeida does not like that, and for that I applaud him: but now he schemes to forbid the Jesuits to meet with the chiefs at all. That is not the way. They must gradually be taken out of power, so gradually that they do not themselves understand what is happening to them.”

“Is such a thing possible, to cozen a Jesuit?” I asked. “We are taught in England that there is no one subtler nor more crafty than a member of that sly confraternity.”

“Yea. They are diabolical, Andres. They are veritable Jaqqas of the Church. Still, they can be controlled. Paulo Dias knew how to do it. I know how to do it.”

“And how do matters lie now?”

“We have had a meeting of the governing council. D’Almeida announced that the Jesuits have been using their spiritual influence most shiftily to induce the friendly chiefs to withhold obedience from the civil powers, and he did call for authority to deal with that. Which was granted him, by a vote of his brother and his cousins and other such leaders, I voting contrary. Now will he proclaim, this day, that any Jesuit seen entering the camp of a chief or holding conference with one is to be hanged.”

“What, hang a priest?” I exclaimed.

“It will not come to that. The priests are too strong for him. They will break him, Andres. Which would not be so bad except that we are surrounded by enemies in this land, and we have wasted years since the death of Dias, gaining no advantage for ourselves. Leadership is what we need here, not poltroonish squabblings of this kind.”

“Aye,” I said, knowing what leader he did have in mind.

“But if d’Almeida falls, there will be months or even years of fresh turmoil before order is restored. We can ill afford that. Let me explain to you, Andres, how I do believe we must conduct ourselves, if we are to achieve our purposes here.”

And so he expounded, at some great length. But I had lost interest in the details of all these intrigues. The moment he had spoken of the wasting of years, I was most forcibly and poignantly brought to reflect upon my own waste of years as a captive here, and I fell to brooding, paying him no heed. He did drone on and on about the iniquities of Don Francisco, and the remedies he proposed for them, and I listened little, so that he took me by surprise when suddenly he said, “And what is this, Andres, have you committed murder?”

“Sir?” said I, startled.

“There is to be an inquest upon you, I am told. You are charged with the wanton slaying of Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues, that was a man of high birth.”

“He was a scoundrel, and a thief!”

“Well, and if he was? His blood was royal, or close to it. Come, Andres, what is this crime? You may be open with me. I knew the man a little: there was no merit to him. Yet if you have indeed slain him—”

“I took his life,” said I wearily, “but it was to save the lives of many other men. It was not murder. When that we were wrecked, he essayed to force his way into a longboat that was already too crowded, and I drove him back, and he fell to the water and drowned.”

“Ah,” said Don João, pouring more wine.

“Drowned, furthermore, because he would not let go his hold of the treasure-sack he clutched in his hand, that was full with the precious goods he had stolen from the grave-site of the kings of Loango, and weighed him down, so that he went under. It was the stealing of these things, moreover, that I think did lead to the downfall of us all: for angry demon-gods did send hot dry winds upon us, and rip away our sails and drive us onto a secret shoal, all in the midst of a fair and pleasant day.”

“Ah. Ah,” said he. “Ahah.”

And for a long while he sat with his eyes closed, and held his wine-cup close against his chest, and I thought he had fallen to sleep, so sluggish and slow was he from all his drinking. But then he looked about at me and said, “Was it truly as you say?”

“Upon mine honor.”

“Then it is true,” he said. “Be there witnesses?”

“Ample, unless their fear of the dead man’s brother brings them to lie against me.”

Don João nodded. “The brother. Aye. It is the brother who brings this charge: Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues. Another worthless man, a pestilent rogue. He will cause you much difficulty, for he is bent on vengeance.”

“And will I be prisoned again for this? I tell you, sir, if I am, I would rather die first: and take this Gaspar with me, when I do go.”

“Prison? It could be, if the inquest finds against you.”

“Then I will slay him!”

“Soft, soft, Andres. There is the inquest, first. Over which I think I shall preside.” He stretched out his hand toward me and smiled and said, “We must arrive at the truth. But I think I know it already: for I do know you, and I somewhat know Gaspar. And I would not readily part with my Piloto.” He yawned most broad, and belched, and rubbed his swelling belly. “Go, now, Andres. I grow.torpid now, and would rest. We will talk on these matters another time. Go: and beware. This Gaspar makes an evil enemy, and he may not wait for the inquest to have his vengeance.”

I left him and returned to the small house that they had given me, a pleasant one on the seaward side of town, where good winds often blew. Mine eyes I did keep sharp, lest Brother Gaspar and his comrades spring out at me with drawn swords, but it did not happen. I was in a troubled mood, over this inquest, yet I was not greatly surprised, knowing the influence Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues wielded here. Yet the truth would be my defense, and I had the support, so I fervently hoped, of Don João de Mendoça, and though truth alone might not be sufficient, the strength of that most powerful fidalgo might perhaps see me through.

As I made my way to my dwelling I saw some proclamation being read in the great square, with soldiers standing to attention, and much ceremony. I neared it and discovered that it pertained to intercourse between the Jesuits and the native chiefs. But I was tired, and did not care to hear more just then on that subject. Turning homeward, I lay down and slept a time, and then came a soft rapping at my door, in the night.

I parted the curtain and saw Dona Teresa in the darkness.

“You come so late?” I asked, for it was not like her.

“Don João is elsewhere.”

“Nay, I saw him only at midday.”

“That was at midday. Tonight he is in conference with the governor and the council, and it will last for hours. Oh, Andres, Andres, will you not ask me in? I feared so much for you! When they said your ship was lost, how I grieved, how I mourned! And how I prayed!”

“To Jesus and Mary, or to your mokisso?”

“Mock me not,” she said sharply, half wounded, and half angered. “Let me in!” And she thrust herself through the door and into my arms.

In the short while since my return we had not been alone together even once, though I had passed her one time on the plaza, and at a distance we had exchanged a cautious glance and a secret smile. Now she slid against me and greeted me with a tigerish hungry kiss. She wore only the lightest of wraps, moist from a gentle rain that was falling. She raked her fingers fiercely down my bare skin, and drew her breasts across my chest. There was heat coming from her. I cupped her round teats and found her nipples swollen and firm, and she made a little hissing noise as I did tenderly squeeze them.

“Andres!” she cried. “Oh, I prayed! I longed for you so!”

“As did I for you.”

“Truly?” said she, and her eyes held an inquest most severe. “Did you think on me at all?”

“Constantly.” I brought forth her little statue, that I had stroked so often, and held it high. “A thousand times did I touch this witchy thing, and tell myself it was your breasts I touched, and not a piece of wood!”

“Ah. I feared for you, all the time you were in Loango. It is a dangerous place.”

“It seemed not like that to me.”

“They are not Christians there. They hold to strange ways.”

“And you, the maker of idols, you are Christian?”

“Yes!” she cried, in deep wrath. “Never say I am other!”

“But the idol—”

“A precaution,” she said. “I am Christian, but I discard nothing valuable.”

We stood only inches apart, both so crazed with desire that we could not move, but went on chattering. She told me fifty times how she had died deaths for me, and prayed to every god of Africa as well as all the saints and the Madonna that I would not be harmed in Loango or perish on the sea, and I told her how I had tossed and twisted in desire for her. And yet we did not move. Until at last she let her light wrap fall to the ground, and she urged me impatiently toward my rumpled bed, and I followed in haste.

The rain became less gentle, and drummed the thatch of my dwelling with much vigor. In my nostrils was the scent of Dona Teresa’s body, harsh, acrid, the lust-scent that all animals do have, and at that moment she seemed no more than an animal, sleek, quick, a thing of the jungle. She lay down and planted the soles of her feet upon the bed, and flexed her back so that her buttocks were in the air and her body arched. By the dim light of my single candle I saw her taut and spread for me, a dark foreign creature with every muscle quivering, the strength of her thighs showing in the contours of them, and the jet-black hairy diadem between them pulling me like a lodestone. I went to her and fell on her and into her in almost a single motion, and she relaxed the torsion of her frame and eased us both down to the surface of the bed, and there we lay motionless a moment, content merely to have our bodies joined again after so long a sundering. Her eyes gleamed with a wantoning.

Now that we were united some urgency went from her, and slyly she said, holding her hands to my hips to keep me from movement, “Had you many black maidens whilst you were north?”

“Nay, not a one.”

“Ah, perfectly chaste, Andres!”

“I was not allured by what I did see.”

“Swear it by God’s Mother!”

“I will swear by God Himself, I entered no woman’s body.”

“You lie,” said she coolly and pleasantly, beginning now to pump her hips in a slow, steady, maddening way. “You had a dozen of them, little ebony wenches with sweet hard breasts, and you never thought once of me. I can still smell the smell of them upon you. I can see the marks of their little bites on your shoulders.”

“Then you see with witch-eyes, for there are no marks.”

“What are these?” she asked, and touched me in a place where I had scraped my arm on barnacles when scrambling upon the rocks of the shoal that had wrecked us.

“I fought with a coccodrillo last week,” I told her, “and it nipped me once or twice before I split his jaws in twain.”

“Ah,” she said. “I am relieved of all my fears. Better you hug a coccodrillo than a wench of Loango, eh?” And she laughed, and I laughed with her, though this pretended jealousy of hers seemed something more than mere pretense to me, beneath its outward playfulness, and that was discomfortable to me. But she moved her body in a changing rhythm now, ever swifter, and I ceased thinking of anything at all save the conjunction of our flesh. I drove deep to the center of her and the little quivering motions of her ecstasy did begin within her and a new scent arose from her, a sea-scent, musky and tangy, as the discharge of her pleasure commenced. Though it had been many weeks since I had known such discharge myself, I held myself in check, waiting her out until the highest moment of her ascent, and then, releasing all control, shouting out into the low strange bestial growl of her delight, I did give myself up to the completion of our loving, which went through me like the force of a hammer’s blows. And I fell athwart her, panting, sweaty, laughing giddily, and we held one another, and rolled from side to side, and lightly slapped each other and kissed and pinched. The world seemed calm and full on her course now. For when man and woman love, and pass together through the fulfillment of that loving by the flesh, they enter out of the world of turbulence into a new and silent realm of tranquility that might almost be of a higher sphere of existence, so I do think. Would that we could remain there forever, as the angels do in their crystalline abode! But then, I suppose, we would never know the joy of the ascent, if we dwelled always above the clouds.

After a time we slipped our bodies apart and Teresa, rising from the bed, stepped naked outside the house to douse herself in the rain. She returned clean and glistening and said, “I must leave now. When Don João sends for me tonight, I must be in my own bed as his messenger comes.”

“This conference you spoke of—”

“It is about the Jesuits,” she said. “You heard this afternoon’s proclamation?”

“Very little of it. Don João told me there is strife between the governor and the Jesuits.”

“Indeed. D’Almeida has decreed that any Jesuit who meets with a soba must die.”

“So was I told.”

“There is more. When the decree was read, and nailed to the door of the priests’ residence, the Jesuit Prefect Affonso Gomes did tear it off, and burn it. And sent word that he would excommunicate the governor, if he persevered at this.” She frowned and said, “Is that painful, to be excommunicated ?”

“It means only to be cut off from the sacraments of the Church,” I said.

“Yes, that I do know. Forbidden to take the Mass, and no confession, no absolution, none of the rites of birth or marriage or death. But is that all? I have heard of this excommunication, but I have never seen the thing done. Is it done with whips?”

“It is done with words alone,” I said.

“Ah,” said she, and peradventure she was a trifle disappointed. “Then there is no peril in it?”

“But there is,” said I. “It is not only that one is deprived of the whole rigmarole of piety that the Catholic faith does adhere to. But all Christians must scorn the excommunicated one, and turn away, and give him no aid, even if he lie bleeding and broken in a ditch. Did you not know that?”

“I have been taught these things, but when I was a girl. We have had no excommunication here, Andres. Why, even if there be no whips, still it sounds like a very grave thing!”

“So I do suppose. But much depends on the effectuality of the powers of the excommunicator. When our King Henry denied the authority of the Pope, in the matter of putting aside his first wife Catherine, the King was indeed excommunicated, but we in England paid no heed to that. And again another Pope did excommunicate our good Elizabeth, when I was a boy, for issuing us a prayer-book and giving us Protestant bishops. But once more it was like the mere blowing of the wind to us, and had neither meaning nor substance.”

This bewildered Dona Teresa, who after all was a Catholic if she was any sort of Christian, and knew nothing of our heretical ways, excepting that we had contempt for the Pope. I suppose she could not rightly be called a pagan, for she had been reared truly in her Church and had received its sacraments and all of that, but yet I knew, from her faith in idols and witchcraft, that it was only skin-deep to her, as it is to all these converted folk of tropic lands. She knew which was the Virgin Mary and which the Savior, and other grand things of the creed, but I suspect that the nice points of doctrine were cloudy and murky to her, and had no real essence, other than that her mother and father had told her to hold God in awe. Perhaps I do her an injustice: perhaps the priests of the Kongo had made a true and deep Catholic of her. I know not. Could she hold that faith and the pagan one of her black grandmothers with equal force? I think she was capable of that: nay, I do know it! I think she had as much doubt of my faith as I did have of hers, and admitted me to be a Christian only because she did not know what else I might be deemed. For I appeared to believe in God and His Son in a right Christian manner, yet the Pope, that was her grand mokisso, was only the blowing of the wind to me.

At my door she said, “They tell me there is a quarrel between you and Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues.”

“So it appears.”

“And is it true, that you slew his younger brother?”

“I caused his death, that I admit.” And I told her how it had befallen. “But I accept no blame for it. Do you know this Gaspar?”

“A little,” said she.

“Is he as cowardly as his dead brother?”

“Of that I know nothing. He is a clever man, and ambitious. Walk carefully until this matter is resolved, for I think he would harm you.”

“Then pray for my welfare, as though I were in peril on the sea.”

Her eyes glistened. “I will do more than pray. I will use all the unseen forces at my command, against his malevolence.”

“Ah, then you admit to witching!”

She put her finger to my lips. “Not a word of that! But I will guard you.” Then most shamelessly did she caress my manhood with her wanton hand, so that I would have drawn her back to the bed, but she would not let it. “Until next time, my love!” And she was gone.

I thought for some while of all these troubled matters, the inquest, and Don João’s struggle with the new governor, and the doings of the Jesuits. But then it all fell from my mind, this squabbling among tricksome and quarrelsome Portugals, this Papist tug-of-war for power over the pitiful blacks whom they had so cozened and gulled and enslaved and exploited. I dropped into a sound sleep, and was gone from the world well into the morning. And when I awoke I did know at once, from the uncommon silence of the city, that something notable had occurred.

I dressed and took my breakfast, which was brought me by one of the slaves assigned me by Don João—I, a miserable prisoner, did have three slaves as servants!—and went forth into the center of things and looked about. The grand plaza was all but empty. A platoon of soldiers marched back and forth before the compound of the Jesuits, on which some new proclamation had been nailed. High above, at the presidio, other soldiers drilled. All work had ceased on the new constructions along the slopes, and very few natives could be seen anywhere. I thought to go to Don João’s palace to discover the turn of events, but I was halted by the captain of the guards, Fernão da Souza, who emerged suddenly from the commissary and said, “You would do well to stay to your house today, Englishman.”

“What has happened?”

“The governor has confined the Jesuits to their quarters, and says he will put to death any of the priests that comes into view. Father Affonso is said to be preparing a writ of excommunication against the governor, and shortly may appear to proclaim it in the plaza.”

“Madness!” said I.

“Which, the governor’s decree, or the prefect’s?”

“Both. What will be done when the priest steps forth. Is he to be shot down on his own doorstep?”

Captain da Souza—credit him with that much—did look dismayed greatly. “No one knows, my friend. We do not shoot priests. We do not disobey our governor. But we cannot hold faith with both factions at once.”

“If you were a common soldier,” I said, “and you were told to shoot down a priest, would you obey?”

“I think not,” he said after some pause.

“Well, then, Governor d’Almeida is lost.”

“So do we believe. But there may be deep dispute before that becomes clear to him, and I think there will be fighting, for the governor, when that he came from Portugal, brought troops who may be more loyal to him than to any Jesuits. We shall see. I advise you to keep yourself out of the path of the shot, eh?”

Which was not advice that I needed to hear twice over. I withdrew to my own place, and passed the time there, and during that day nothing of consequence happened, nor the next, nor the one after that. The Jesuits held to their compound, the governor to his palace, and soldiers were the chief occupants of the plaza. When I grew weary with the game of watching and waiting, I went down to the harbor, and fished and waded, and talked with the port officials, who were expecting the arrival of a ship from Brazil and held little concern for the matters going on in town. I fancied myself boarding that ship and seizing her captain and forcing him to sail me to England, but it was only the idle folly of a hot moist afternoon.

Then it came to be Sunday, and I wondered if the church would remain sealed, with no Mass offered. But on this day events began to occur. I peered into the plaza and saw troops here and there and there, all in some anxiety and suspense. Don João de Mendoça rode by, passing from the governor’s palace to his own, and though he saw me he did not speak, nor did he gesture. Then the governor himself emerged, in a group of his kinsmen. I had not yet ever spoken with this Don Francisco, though of course I had seen him many times from afar: he struck me just from the look of him as a coward and a weakling, with a soft face and heavy-lidded sleepy eyes, and a long thin beard that did not hide the outlines of his chin. He dressed in the most amazing fantastical way, a costume that might have seemed too pompous for an emperor, too gaudy for even Prester John, with yards of gold braid and a glittering helmet inlaid with rows of precious stones. This morning he strutted about, gesticulating grandly and showing the greatest animation as he inspected his troops, examined their weapons, spoke words of encouragement. Some dispute within his own advisers seemed to be in progress also, and from time to time men did come to him, and there were angry words shouted back and forth.

Dona Teresa appeared. She greeted me with high formality, and I the same to her, neither of us showing any hint of an intimacy. And she said, “They are going to do the excommunication this day. The Jesuits will come forth at noon.”

“And will Don Francisco defy them, d’ye think?”

“Would you? Defy the power of God? Aye, I guess you would, in that you are heretical.”

“I would not defy God, nay. But what proof have I that these Jesuits hold divine authority, other than they say they do?”

“Why, they are anointed priests!” she cried.

“They are but men. When they leave their proper province of sacred matters to meddle in affairs of state, they must set aside such cloak of holiness as they claim to wear. If I were Don Francisco and I meant to govern here, I would not let the Jesuits usurp my authority.”

“Now they will put the curse of God on him, though, and all will be lost for him.”

“Do you think King Henry of England feared the curse of God when he cast forth the Roman faith from our land in a similar struggle? Or did his daughter Elizabeth, when she did the same?”

“They were very rash. Unless they did so for reasons of state.”

“Indeed!” I said. “They were wise princes, and knew what was needful to defend their people against foreign tyrants. And so they feared not the curse, for God alone knows who He means to curse, and not any priest. And the dispute was not truly a question of forms of worship, that involved things of the spirit, but rather it was of matters temporal.”

“How so, do you say?”

“The Pope was making league against us with the Holy Empire, to hurt our trade, when Henry was King. This did Henry thwart by making Protestant alliances, and ridding our land of spies and traitors. And in my own time were we greatly threatened by Spain, and King Philip sought to rule over us, and wreck our England the way he has drained his Spain and now Portugal, too. We were full of conspirators in priestly robes, scheming to kill our Queen and give the land over to him. God’s death, woman, do you believe that these quarrels we have with the Papists are truly over niceties of prayer-saying? That we care so deeply whether we speak our service in English or in Latin? It is politics, Dona Teresa, it is politics, it is national interest that governs the way we church ourselves!”

She nodded. “So I do begin to understand.”

“And thus is it here. Don Francisco must fight, if he would remain governor. If he do not prevent the priests from denouncing him, then will his government here be broken.”

“That is what Don João believes is to befall. The power of God is too great for Don Francisco.”

“And is the power of a musket-shot not too great for the Jesuit prefect?” I asked.

“Don Francisco will not attempt to harm the priests,” said Dona Teresa calmly. “They are God’s messengers, and God would destroy him if he lifted his hand against them, and he knows that. Politics is not everything. There are false faiths and true faith, and when the true faith speaks, only a fool would offer defiance. So do I believe, Andres.” She smiled and took her leave of me, and moved on across the plaza to her dwelling-place.

To which I made no response but a shrug. I had heard before from believers in true faiths, and I knew better than to dispute with them. That disputation is folly. They will have no argument; their minds are set. If the number of our breaths is fixed at birth, it is wanton to waste any precious two of them on such debate as that.

As I stood alone at the edge of the plaza, though, meseemed me I had spoken some too strong on the political side of our break with the Church of Rome, and had not given enough weight to matters of faith. Not that I would ever hold that our faith is the true faith, and all others be wicked heresies. I merely feel that ours to be the better faith, the more effective one in yielding up the bounty of godly life. For I do believe the Papists long ago became deeply corrupt, and turned away from the way of Jesus, with their incense and their bright brocaded robes and their jeweled thrones and palaces for their Cardinals and Popes, and that we in our Protestant revolution have swept aside all such foulnesses, clearing a straight path between ourselves and God. I never knew Popery at home, born as I was with Queen Mary already in her grave, but my father did, and he spoke often of how under the old religion people were kept ignorant and helpless, not knowing how to read, not permitted even to know the Bible save as the priests would teach it, which was not always as it was written. That was a religion that did not let us speak outright with God, but forced us to go through intermediaries. That is not good: it discourages thinking. Why is it that we English are so bold and venturesome, and the Papist peoples in the main so sheeplike, so willing to obey even the falsest and most evil of leaders? I think it is because we have chosen a better way, that gives us a deeper comfort of the soul. And I know we were right to free ourselves from whatever ties of faith there were that put our England at the mercies of our enemies. Our change in religion does serve our national interests well; it also well serves our souls. It is no accident that all the seagoing men of England are staunch Protestants, and do so fervently hate Papistry: it is because we are patriots, and also because we have spirits that are clear and free, unfettered by superstition, that we have gone out to rove so widely in the world.

It was nigh upon noon now. The day was dry and windless and the huge sun gave us a killing heat. At the stroke of the midday hour the gates of the Jesuit compound were thrown open and into the plaza did come four priests in the fullest uniform of their profession, not simple monkish robes but the complete vestments and sacerdotal ornament, so that they did shine like beacons on the brilliant sunlight.

At their head was the prefect of their Jesuit order in Angola, Father Affonso Gomes. He was a tall and wide-shouldered man with the look and bearing of a warrior: very dark of complexion, with fierce blazing angry eyes and great mustachios jutting outward and a hard tight face with cheekbones like knifeblades. There was nothing of the sweet mild Jesus about this man. He had the face of a great Inquisitor, one who would not only be joyed in the roasting of heretics but who would turn them gladly on the spit with his own hand. The other three priests were far milder and gentler of demeanor, with that scholarly and inward look that Jesuits often have; but even they were at this moment solemn and bleak-faced, like soldiers on the eve of battle.

They were accompanied by some dozen or more of their followers and associates, that is, acolytes, altar-boys, incense-bearers, and other such supernumeraries. These bore with them a sort of portable altar, in the form of a broad bench or table of massive design, that they carried to the center of the plaza and proceeded to cover with robings and draperies of samite and red velvet and such, and to place heavy silver candlesticks upon it, and vessels of incense, and all the related trappings and appurtenances of ceremony, as if they were going to perform a coronation before our eyes, or a royal marriage. They brought from within their church also their holy images, of the Savior and Mary, and two great crucifixes of silver inlaid with gold and pearls, each of which was sufficient in value to have paid a whole English county’s duties and imposts for half a year. I watched in wonder as all this holy treasure was arrayed arid configured with marvelous enormous patience and care in the midst of all the town under that great heat. The plaza, which had been nigh empty, now began to fill. Every Portugal in Angola appeared to be there, Don Francisco and his party gathered in this side, and Don João with Dona Teresa there, and soldiery, and merchants and slave-dealers and tavern-keepers, and some thousands of the native population both slave and free, all standing like sheep in the fields, still and silent.

I understood now why Don Francisco was helpless against these Jesuits. How. could he dare order his troops to open fire, as he had threatened, and slay the fathers before all the town? This Father Affonso was so fearsome that he did seem capable of brushing aside the musket-shot with some sweeps of his hands, as we might dismiss a buzzing mosquito. And in all this Romish pomp even I felt a tremor of awe, and could well imagine the terror such show would inspire in one who shared the faith. This was no mere business of politics and a struggle for power, though that was at the root of it: the very armies of God seemed drawn up at Father Affonso’s back, and this say I, to whom Jesuits have always seemed more villains than men of holiness. If a heretic Englishman could be so moved, what then would a Portugal feel, or a credulous black?

Then Don Affonso began to speak, and as he did so my awe gave way to scorn and angry contempt, for I knew myself to be among foolish barbarians.

His voice was deep and rolling, and his words were in Latin, slow and somber, so well laced with special words of churchly use that I could scarce understand any of it. But I think it was not meant to be understood, only to terrify. On and on came the grand torrent of sonorous incantations—for incantations is what they were, a solemn magicking most repellent—and as he spoke he sometimes turned and took a silver bell from a silver tray, and lifted it high and tinkled it, and put it down and seized two mighty candlesticks and raised them aloft, and so forth, a whole pompous theater of rite and pageantry. I heard the name of Don Francisco d’Almeida mentioned several times, and when I looked toward the governor I saw him pale and twitching, with sweat glistening on his white forehead, that just now was several degrees whiter than its normal swarthy shade.

There was furthermore a great show of turning to the other priests and taking from them certain books and chalices and I know not what other items of Papist equipment, and passing these things one to the other in some preordained sequence. I marveled at how intricate this ceremony was, and how well rehearsed. Again the two candlesticks were held high and lowered, again the bell was tinkled, again the Latin words boomed forth, all this accompanied by any number of signings of the cross, and now and then a frightful stretching forth of the arms as though lightnings were about to shoot from the Jesuit’s fingertips.

Then—and he spoke in the Portugal tongue now, so that everyone could understand, even the blacks—Father Affonso declared:

“Whereas thou, Don Francisco d’Almeida, hast been by sufficient proof convicted of contumacy and blasphemy, and defiance of Holy Mother Church, and after due admonition and prayer remainest obstinate without any evidence or sign of true repentance, therefore in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and of His Father and of the Holy Spirit, and before all this congregation, do I pronounce and declare thee, Don Francisco d’Almeida, excommunicated, shut out from the communion of the faithful, debar thee from all churchly and temporal privilege, and deliver thee unto Satan for the destruction of thy flesh, that thy spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”

And with those terrible words he dashed the lighted candles to the ground and extinguished them, and did ring his bell, and brandished the holy Bible and slammed it shut, and seized a chalice and bore it high and marched off toward the Jesuit compound, followed by his three colleagues and all his company of underlings, who carried the altar and its rich gear along with them.

There was shrieking and uproar among the blacks. There was consternation among the Portugals. I caught sight of Don Francisco, looking apoplectic and his face all a mottled red, whirling around and striding toward his palace, with his brother Don Jeronymo and other close associates all very grave following at his heels. I saw Don João de Mendoça standing placid, his arms folded and an odd little smile on his face. I saw Dona Teresa with her eyes wide and her mouth parted, as though just now she had beheld Satanas Mephistopheles flying across the face of the sun. I saw Captain Fernão da Souza in hot discussion with some other of the soldiery, all of them looking stunned and amazed. And so it went about the plaza: everyone had expected the excommunication, and yet most were as sundered from their senses as if they had been taken entirely by surprise, and did not know what now to think or do.

And I? I, who had felt that tingle of awe at the setting up of that portentous altar under the sun’s blazing eye?

I felt sick with grief at the foolishness of mankind. This did seem altogether insane to me, this waving about of bell and book and candle, this chanting of frightsome words, this throwing of spiritual thunderbolts in the name of God’s tender Son. It was as magical to me, and as heathen, as those doings in Loango with albino witches and houses of mokissos and the blowing of trumpets to bring rain. Why, the very coccodrillos that lie roaring and blowing on the river-banks would never be so shallow as give credence to such stuff; only mortal men, hokusing themselves soberly with noisy formulas and sacred gibberish, could swallow it down. Did Father Affonso believe he had truly separated Don Francisco from the mercy of God? Did Don Francisco believe it? Or was it all for outer show, to frighten the foolish and strip away from him the power of the governor by making the ordinary folk feared to approach him, lest they, too, be sent to Hell? I do not know. But this one thing is sure, that the blacks of this country have fallen between two sharp mouths, if they are to be governed either by corrupt and venal authorities civil or by these ferocious priests, and which government is kinder for them, no man can say. And a second thing also, that I was unable to see little differences between this high Christian ceremony I had witnessed and all the various heathen rites done with masks and wild dancing and painted skins. It is all equal madness. It is all folly. Bells, books, and candles have no power. There are true unseen forces, but not nearly so many as we believe, nor would they rule us so sternly if we did not admit them to our souls. We would not be assailed half so often by devils, had we not taken the trouble to invent so many of them.

5

As I made my way homeward from the excommunication, I found my path blocked by a slender and agile-looking man in tight blue velvet breeches and a flaring scarlet jerkin, who looked at me most evilly, while rubbing his hand up and down the shaft of his sword as though stroking his lustful male member.

I knew him at once to be Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues. He had his brother’s shifty whoreson eyes and weak scornful smile, and the same sort of poxy beard that grew in patches on his face. But he was taller, and more robust, and somewhat less cowardly and slippery of bearing. Behind him stood four more of his sort, ugly and dour, and I moved instantly into a readiness to defend myself, fearing an attack and determining to send at least half of them to Hell before they despatched me.

He said in a cold way, “Hold your place, murderer. I would speak with you.”

“I am no murderer,” said I. “But I am able to slay, as you will find out if you test me.”

“My brother did you no harm.”

“Let the court be the judge of that, Don Gaspar.”

“I have spoken with those who witnessed your killing of him. The court will hang you, if you live long enough to be hanged.”

“Ah, and will you add murder to the crime of suborning witnesses, then?”

“I would not soil my blade on you,” he said. “But my brother had other friends, of less noble birth than I, who may not be so finicking nice.”

“Yes, your brother was indeed noble. Nobly did he plunder graves, and nobly did he attempt to enter into a longboat that had no room for him, and nobly did he clutch stolen treasure to his breast even if it drowned him. Are you equally noble, Don Gaspar?”

His wrath blazed high. He strutted toward me, and stroked his sword all the more flagrantly.

“Noble enough not to slive you apart in the street, which is what you deserve, Lutheran dog! I will let the court have its rightful turn with you. But I tell you this, Englishman: if you come free away from the inquest, through some chicane of your master Don João, then you shall have me to answer to!”

“And your friends as well, I suppose? Or will you challenge me man to man?”

For reply, he spat at my feet, and made a snorting in his nostrils, and whirled, and most pompously marched away.

My first impulsion was to laugh: for he was so comic, so puffed with pride, with his strutting and his caressing his sword and his threats, and his “Lutheran dog” and other such ponderous menacing expressions, that it was tempting to take him for a clown. Yet I knew that to be error. It is just such men—inflated like pig-bladders, puffed with pride of their own breeding and merit—that are most dangerous, for they are weak, and do cover their weakness with such action as they deem to look bold in the eyes of other men. One who is truly strong can shrug, and laugh, and walk away from strife that is beneath his honor; but the weakling who must feign strength has no such wisdom, and it is he who strikes the coward’s blow in the dark, he who pursues his enemy with mean vindictive whining persistence until, by deceit or malign conspiracy, he attains the triumph he must have. Another man, learning how his brother had perished, would grieve for the loss of his kinsman but hold no malice against the slayer. But I had in sooth won me a perilous enemy here. One oftimes must fear the hornet more than the lion.

Yet if I guarded myself, I might not for a time need to face warfare with him. Like his brother, he was vain and idle and craven, and also I think was in so precarious a state of exile that he could afford no more crimes on his hands. He hoped the inquest would condemn me and save him the trouble. But afterward, if I emerged with my acquittal, it would be a different matter, and I could expect much trouble from him.

I put him for the moment from my mind.

The inquest now was delayed. For, as Don João de Mendoça had predicted, the authority of Governor d’Almeida was wholly shattered by the excommunication. It was not at all the same thing as a King Henry or a Queen Elizabeth having been condemned by a distant Pope, while yet remaining secure and powerful in England. São Paulo de Loanda was then a small city; everyone in it professed to be a loyal Catholic, save for those blacks who were secret pagans and the one English Protestant unwillingly in residence; it was impossible for d’Almeida to carry out his civil functions while he remained outside the communion of his faith. Anyone who dealt with him or did his bidding risked the same dread excommunication: therefore was he isolate. If he emerged into the city he would seem an unapproachable figure, like some leper, or a carrier of plague: therefore he remained immured in his palace. And a governor who may not go forth, and who cannot lawfully be served, is no governor at all.

For several weeks the city was nigh a city of the dead. No business was conducted and the streets were empty. Neither the Jesuits nor the governor were seen at all. There were meetings of the powerful men of the place, one faction led by Don Jeronymo d’Almeida and the other by Don João, but what took place at these conferences, I know not. My only news came from Dona Teresa, but even she was little apprised of what was happening, except that a negotiation was in progress to determine who should be the new governor of Angola, Don Francisco’s rule being entirely ended.

I went quietly about my business, taking care not to involve myself in the fractions, and keeping a wary eye out for Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues and his friends. Now and again I crossed their paths, and there was sour glaring aplenty, but they took no action against me.

The ship from Brazil arrived in the midst of this, bearing some few new colonists and also none other than the gentle Barbosa, who had returned to oversee the taxation of the colony. By chance I was at the docks as he came ashore, and he looked at me with such amazement as though he beheld a ghost.

“What, Battell, here still, and alive?”

“Aye. Would a small thing like a shipwreck injure my health, d’ye think?”

“Shipwreck? What shipwreck? It was the bloody flux I thought would carry you off. They said you would not live.”

“Ah, but I did, and much has happened since that time!”

We embraced each other warmly. It was two years since last I had seen him, this now being the April of ‘93. He seemed leaner and more than two years older, but he was as elegantly dressed as ever, in sea-green breeches and a fine light cloak of lavender hue, and a high-crowned narrow-brimmed hat.

He drew back and inspected me and said, “You look healthy enough. What is this, now, have you been to sea?”

“Aye. When I came forth from my illness I went to prison awhile, and was forgotten there, and then was drawn up from oblivion and hired by Don João to pilot his pinnace along the coast, in the ivory trade. The which pinnace was lost in my most recent voyage, coming home from Loango, but as you see I stayed afloat, and I think will be sailing again before long.”

“This is not the fate I thought was marked out for you,” said he. “You have your freedom, then?”

“Freedom of sorts,” I answered. “I have a house and servants, and they tell me that on my next voyage I am to be given a share of the profits, which be kind of them, though not a tenth so kind as simply letting me go home to England. That thing will they not do, although they have made airy promise of it, if only I undertake a few more voyages for them first. But I think there will be neither voyages nor profits this season, owing to the civil war that we soon will have.”

That startled Barbosa. “Civil war?”

“Aye,” I said, and told him of the troubles between Don Francisco and the Jesuits, and now this maneuvering between Don João and Don Jeronymo. All this he heard with much show of dismay and distress, for Barbosa was a decent man, and strife among Portugals gave him much pain. At the end of my recital he shook his head most sadly, and walked about in a small circle.

Then he said, “They are fools to do these things. With so many enemies gathering outside the city, they cannot allow themselves the luxury of contending for power within. I will speak with Don João.”

“Telling him what, may I ask?”

“To give over, and wait his time. The faction of d’Almeida holds the royal commission, for the moment. Don João is the best ruler for this place, but only if he come to power by legitimate means.” Barbosa seemed journeying in thought a moment. Then he smiled and took his arm and said, “How strange it is, and how fine, that you who came here as a scorned prisoner should live, and even thrive, and have servants! I am greatly joyed to see your good fortune. Will you dine with me tomorrow night?”

“Most gladly,” said I. “I would take high pleasure in your company, and I hope you will share with me such news as you bring from the world without. For I am mightily curious about events.” And I did laugh. “How strange it is, yes, Senhor Barbosa, that I endure here, and prosper, and now am even invited to dine with an official of the Portuguese court! It was not what I imagined when first I set sail for America. There are times, senhor, when this adventure seems but a dream to me.”

“From which you would readily awaken, I venture, and find yourself in your bed in England.”

“Aye, perhaps. But instead when I wake I feel the heat and moisture close against my skin, and see the strange heavy trees of scarlet blossoms beyond my window, and hear the beasts of Africa bellowing in their jungle. And I know it is no dream.”

“Say, then, it is a dream within a dream. You are in England still.”

“That is a pretty fancy, Senhor Barbosa,” I said, smiling with it. “Would that it were so!”

Barbosa’s goods now had been unladed from the ship, and slaves were come to fetch him into town, carrying him in a sort of litter made of cords, much like a hammock. Throughout Angola and the Kongo it is the custom for great personages to be borne in such hammocks when they go about, especially in the rainy season, when the paths are muddy underfoot. Barbosa asked me to accompany him; but there was no other litter to hand, and we did not care to wait while the blacks returned to town to fetch a second one, and Barbosa would not have me walk alongside whilst he was borne. Then the head slave proposed that I be carried in the arms of two or three of the strongest blacks, but that seemed absurd to me and most objectionable. So in the end we dismissed the carriers and walked to the town upon our own legs, which I suppose was not the proper deportment for a man of Barbosa’s rank.

While we were still some distance out, a young Portugal of the militia appeared, running, who halted when he saw Barbosa. He was in full armor and did stream with his sweat. Looking somewhat surprised to discover us going by foot, he saluted and said, much troubled by hard breathing, “I seek the fiscal registrar Lourenço Barbosa, newly arrived from Brazil.”

“I am he,” said Barbosa.

“I am instructed to tell you that Governor Don Francisco d’Almeida has resigned his post this morning, and that you are to report with the most extreme swiftness to his brother Don Jeronymo, who at the urgent request of the council has taken up the reins of government.”

“Ah,” said Barbosa, and he and I did exchange glances. “Is all peaceful in the city, then?”

“All is peaceful,” the soldier said.

“And how fares it with Don João de Mendoça?” I asked.

The soldier looked toward me as though I were some serpent with legs. “I have no instruction to speak with you, Englishman.”

For that disdain I would readily have slain him, were I not unarmed and he encased in leather and steel. But Barbosa diverted my sudden rage by mildly saying, “His question also has interest for me. I pray you speak.”

“Don João has been detained for his own safety, since there are those of the d’Almeida faction that have made threats against him. But he is unharmed and in no peril.”

“Ask now about the Jesuit fathers,” I requested of Barbosa.

But the soldier now deigned to reply to me direct. “The Jesuits are within their compound. Don Jeronymo will meet with them tomorrow to discuss a reconciliation of the civil and spiritual powers of the city.”

“Then all is well,” Barbosa said. “Come: let us proceed to the new governor and pay our respects.”

“Have you no bearers?” asked the soldier.

“They have been dismissed. I have spent these many weeks past aboard a small vessel; my legs need stretching.” With this Barbosa smiled most graciously, and we continued onward, escorted now by the soldier and by half a dozen other Portugals who, I discovered, had been waiting a short distance along the road.

The city was peaceful indeed. Soldiers stood posted at each corner of the plaza and outside every of the municipal buildings, and in front of the Jesuit compound as well, and before the palace of Don João. No one other was in sight, nor was there any sign of any strife. Whatever upheaval had taken place in São Paulo de Loanda that morning had been swift; and, I learned shortly thereafter, it had as well been entirely bloodless, which was an amazement to me.

The situation was much as the soldier had described. Disgraced and most utter disheartened, Don Francisco had resigned his governorship that morning, or had had it taken from him. He was now in seclusion and did make ready to leave Africa for Brazil upon that ship that had newly arrived. There had been a brief but somewhat stormy meeting of the council, at which the names of Don Jeronymo and Don João had been proposed for the office, and it was made clear by the supporters of Don Jeronymo that they held a stronger position. Don João had caused his name to be withdrawn, but not before there had been angry words and even a brandishing of knives between a cousin of Don Jeronymo, Balthasar d’Almeida, and a certain João de Velloria. This Velloria, a Spaniard, had been a soldier in Angola for many years and was deemed one of the most valiant warriors there, having distinguished himself greatly in battle against the natives. He was, as well, a devoted ally of the Jesuits. For that reason he abhorred the entire clan of d’Almeida and had thrown his support to the side of Don João de Mendoça, to no avail; and in the words that followed, either he or Balthasar, it is not known, did curse each other’s mothers, and the like. Don João, urging Velloria and Balthasar most strongly to put their weapons by, had stopped the quarrel and, for the sake of tranquility in the city, did offer his allegiance to Don Jeronymo. Now Don João was confined to his own residence under guard, João de Velloria was under more grievous arrest in the fortress, and Don Jeronymo d’Almeida held control of the city.

My own condition, I saw, was precarious. From the harsh tone of that soldier’s voice to me when I was walking with Barbosa, it plainly seemed that I was listed as an adherent to the side of Don João, and therefore I must be far out of favor. Which proved to be the case. When I reached my little cottage I found all my servants gone, and two dour Portugals posted as guards on my doorstep.

“Do you keep my house safe from lions for me?” I asked in a pleasant way.

Not so pleasantly they made reply, “Get ye inside, and remain within, English!”

I did as they bade me. This was no occasion for heroism. Officially I was yet a prisoner of war in this place, for all that I had been allowed to live in the semblance of freedom for a long while. My privileges had grown out of the happenstance that Governor Serrão had taken me into Portuguese service by first using me as a pilot, and Don João had renewed then those privileges by sending me on my two trading voyages northward; but Serrão was long dead, Don João now was fallen, and quite likely I was fallen with him. I counted it fortune that I was merely under house arrest. It might well be, I thought, that by nightfall I would be back in chains, in the familiar old dungeon on the hill. Don Jeronymo had no great reason, after all, to take to his bosom an Englishman, most especially one that was affiliated in loyalty to his enemy Don João.

That I did not go to the dungeon was entirely the working of the good tax-collector Barbosa. All that afternoon and night I did remain in my house, visited by no one and without food or drink; and in the morning I was summoned forth, in tones less rough than before, and conducted to the hall of government. In the room of the tax-roll keeper I found Barbosa, looking weary and unaccustomedly shabby in yesterday’s clothes, as though he had not slept at all. He beckoned me sit and said, “Have you been mistreated?”

“Other than some starvation and thirst, I would not say so.”

“They have not fed you?”

“Not even prisoner slops. I’ve been penned in my own home, or what I call my home, in this land.”

Barbosa gave signal to a slave that he should bring a meal for me.

“It has been a busy night,” he said. “I am supposed to be a financial officer and not some keeper of the peace. But I think I have drawn all these contending sides together. Do you hold any hatred for Don Jeronymo d’Almeida?”

“I know the man not at all. I have had no dealings with any of the d’Almeidas.”

“Nay, you are Don João’s man. Well, and that must be at an end. You must swear yourself loyal to Don Jeronymo, or I cannot protect you further.”

Somewhat overzealously I did reply, “I will swear loyalty to anyone, so long as it will keep me out of that dungeon!” And I said, “Was it you, then, that had me set free this time?”

“It was.”

“Again I must thank you. I have from you a great overplus of kindly treatment, Senhor Barbosa.”

He shrugged my thanks aside. The slave entered with a tray of food and a beaker of palm-wine for me, and whilst I ate Barbosa said, “This colony can afford none of these disputes over the holding of power. During the quarrel of Don Francisco with the Jesuits, the sobas of the province of Kisama, which lies to the south and the east of us, have broken themselves free of their allegiances, and we must pacify them anew. Don Jeronymo knows this. At this moment he is closeted with the Jesuit Father Affonso, repairing that breach. When he has Father Affonso’s blessing, he will gain the allegiance of Velloria and the other soldiers who are respectful of the Jesuits, and everything will be healed, so that we can send armies into the field.”

“And what role have you designed in this for me?” I asked.

“Why, you are the pilot of our navy! Don Jeronymo means for you to sail to the island of São Tomé, and obtain fresh soldiers to aid him in his warfares.”

“Then I am to be trusted, even though I am known friendly to Don João?”

Barbosa said, “Don João is to be leaving Angola shortly. He has agreed to undertake a mission to the court at Lisbon, to seek more troops for this colony, and weapons and horses.”

That news was most disagreeable to me. I had not thought Don João could be dislodged from this place. It was still my hope that he would come into the government, and show favor to me, and permit me to take my departure for England. His going from Angola could only be a calamity for me, especially in that the inquest over the death of Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues still awaited me.

I said, “Don João allows himself so easily to have Don Jeronymo rid himself of him? I am surprised.”

“There is no room in São Paulo de Loanda now for Don Jeronymo and Don João both. Yet Don Jeronymo dares not raise his hand against Don João, who has many friends. Therefore he finds a pretext for Don João to take himself to Portugal, and Don João finds an honorable way to leave a place where he has lost all his power, and both men are spared further conflict.”

“And when Don João returns? Will there not be strife all over again, then?”

“Ah, that will not be for many months, or even longer. Much can happen in that time, and it is idle to speculate upon it so soon.” Barbosa put his thumbs to his eyes and stroked them, and delicately yawned. “It is agreed, then, that you will serve the new governor most faithfully?”

“It matters not to me who is governor,” I said. “Only that I do remain alive and out of the dungeon, until such time as I can find my passage to my own country.”

“You are a wise man, Andrew Battell.”

“Be I, now?”

“You live not by pride but by good sense. You see your true goal far in the distance, and you make your way toward it shrewdly and without confusion. That I do admire.”

“No sailor ever reached home by sailing into the jaws of a storm,” said I. “I try to keep my sheets aligned so that I will move ever foward, or at least not find myself capsized. Shall we dine tonight as we first discussed, Senhor Barbosa?”

“Another night, I beg you, good Andrew,” said Barbosa with great sweetness. “Tonight I must confer again with Don Jeronymo. Am I forgiven this default?”

“Indeed you are,” I replied. “Let us meet another night, when you be less sorely pressed by these urgent matters.”

6

Within a few days all was restored to calmness in the city of São Paulo de Loanda. Don Jeronymo did make his peace with the Jesuits; the excommunication of Don Francisco was raised, and that unhappy fidalgo took ship for Brazil, glad, I trow, to see the last of Angola. João de Velloria was released from prison and given again the rank of captain-general, that he had had formerly. Don João de Mendoça also was relieved of all restraints, although he did choose to remain in seclusion. And I, too, was freed from my house arrest. A lieutenant of Don Jeronymo’s bore me a message from the governor, saying that I was to make ready for a voyage to São Tomé, and would receive my more specific instructions from Don Jeronymo in a short while.

The matter of the inquest now demanded a disposal. But this, which I had feared so greatly, proved in the event to be a hollow formality. Such great affairs had taken place in the city that the slaying of an unruly mariner, even if he be a duke’s son, had become a trifle, forgotten by everyone but the aggrieved Don Gaspar. And though I had no longer the hand of Don João raised above me for a shield, yet were my services required by the new governor Don Jeronymo, and so I could not be expended in such vengeful doings.

Thus a court was summoned, before a judicial officer of the faction of Don Jeronymo, Don Pantaleao de Mendes, much wrinkled and glum of face. The thing was done in an hour. Don Gaspar rose and denounced me for slaying his brother, saying I had coveted certain valuable goods of his, and reminding Don Pantaleao of the dead man’s high ancestry. I spoke my piece. Then Pinto Cabral did rise, and Pedro Faleiro, and Mendes Oliveira, all my companions of the voyage, and say how it was that the late Caldeira de Rodrigues had attempted to force his way into the longboat, and had been kept from it by my quickness and valor, to which they all swore by solemn oath. And that was all.

“Death by misadventure,” Don Pantaleao decreed, and assessed the costs of the inquest against the plaintiff, and the case was closed. But as we left the room, Don Gaspar did pluck my sleeve, and hiss and scowl, and vow his vengeance.

“I am not done with you,” said he.

“I beg you,” said I, “fry other fish, and let me be.” And put him from my mind.

The upheaval being ended, I had me my dinner with Senhor Barbosa. There was a fine house at his disposal while he was in São Paulo de Loanda, and we were served by a multitude of slaves, some in good liveries, for Barbosa was ever a man who cherished fine dress. We ate splendidly of many meats, partridge and pheasant both, and the wild boar called here mgalo, and little oysters of a great succulence, and the strange fruits of the land, such as the mandonyns and beynonas and ozeghes. All this was cooked most elegantly in the European style, with fine sauces, and accompanied by a plenitude of excellent wines of Portugal and the Canaries. I did stuff myself shamelessly like one who has been long in desert lands, though Senhor Barbosa was himself content but to taste a trifle here and a trifle there, the merest of morsels.

I heard from him, at this grand feast, of some doings in the world: such that Drake was still harassing the shipping of King Philip. “He has gone into the port of Coruna in Spain, and destroyed a new Armada that was under construction,” said Barbosa. “After which, he took up with Don Antonio, that is the pretender to the throne of Portugal, and landed with him at Lisbon, intending to establish him as king.”

“Brave Sir Francis! But to what result?”

“Ah,” said Barbosa, “very little, for we Portugals seem not eager to die to have back our former dynasty, and the expedition did fail. Now Drake lies under disgrace in England, the Queen being angry at him for having provoked King Philip so, and for not having succeeded at what he began. He is off raiding the Azores and the Spanish coast, and fears to return home.”

“He is much mistreated. And what else is the news?”

There had been, he said, another great voyage by Thomas Candish, who had sailed around the world commencing in Anno 1586. I knew somewhat of this Candish, who was of the Suffolk gentry, and was trustworthily said to be one of the crudest and least loving captains ever to take ship. Barbosa told me that he had sailed from Plymouth with five vessels some two years past, and had raided Brazil, attacking the town of Santos by surprise when its people were at Mass, and taking everyone prisoner within the church. “Yet this invading was a failure,” said Barbosa, “owing to the negligence of Candish’s deputy in charge of the attack, one Captain Cocke—”

“Cocke?” I burst in, feeling an angry hammering of my heart at the hearing of the name. “A small sour-faced man, is he, with one eye askew?”

“That I know not, for I never saw the man. During this time I was at Rio de Janeiro.”

“Tell me what negligences he did work.”

“Whilst he was in possession of Santos,” Barbosa said, “he paid no heed to the Indians of the town, who did carry out from it everything in it, all kinds of necessaries and provisions, leaving the place bare. So that the English found themselves shortly in extreme want of victual, worse furnished than when they had come into the town, and after five weeks were forced to quit the place.”

“It sounds much like the Cocke I knew, that abandoned me on a desert isle four years back, and sundered me thereby from all the life I led.”

“Ah, so that is why the color rises to your face at his name, and anger enters your eye!”

“I wish scarce any man ill, except this one Cocke. Who I see still thrives, and marauds in American waters, and does carry himself as foolish and foul as ever.”

“Perhaps no longer,” replied Barbosa. “For under the command of Candish this entire fleet proceeded south to Magellan’s strait, but it was now past the season for navigating that region, owing to the delay at Santos, and the English ships were scattered by extreme storms. We heard no more of them thereafter. So perhaps your foe Captain Cocke lies at the bottom of the Southern Sea.”

“I would sooner have had God blow him to Africa,” I said, “and waft him into this harbor of Angola, and give him into my hands.” And I curved my fingers most fearsomely, thinking what joy it would be to have them around the throat of Abraham Cocke. Which strong feelings gave me great surprise, for I am not usually of so vengeful a humor: but it must have been Barbosa’s generous pouring of the wines that had set me into such a fever of hatred.

Of worldly events, the making of wars and the changing of princes, Barbosa could impart little that was recent, owing that he had been in remote colonial regions these past two years. But there was some news for telling. He had heard that there had happened a vast coming and going of Popes, no less than four of them in that time, one reigning a mere twelve days. But that mattered little to me.

There was strife, too, in Spain, where the people of Aragon had rebelled against King Philip, but had been put down by Castilian troops. Whatever distressed Spaniards did give me keen pleasure, but I did not say that to Barbosa. In England the Queen still reigned most gloriously, though her treasury was hard pressed for funds, on account of the expenses of maintaining armies in the Netherlands and in Brittany to keep the ambitions of Spain in check. There were, he said, a good many burnings and hangings for reasons of religion in England still, and those who died were not only Catholics who did intrigue against the Queen, but even some Protestants who had gone too far in the Puritan direction, and called for the abolition of the bishops. To speak against the Church of England from either direction now was deemed sedition, if Barbosa told me true; and I think he did, for these holy slaughters were, I believe, as repugnant to him as to me.

At length all the news was told, and I could eat no more and drink no more, and Barbosa summoned slaves to take me in a hammock back to my cottage. As I rose to depart he caught me lightly by the arm and said, smiling, “It cheers me that you have fared so well in this land. When first I saw you and the other Englishman lying chained on the deck, as we set out from Brazil to this place, I grieved for you, for your lot seemed dark, and I did not think you had the look of a rogue. I hoped you would withstand your pains, and I said a prayer for you; but I did not think you would achieve what you have achieved in your captivity.”

“It has been God’s blessing, and mine own very good fortune.”

“And so may it continue. But beware: there are true villains all about you here.”

“The Jaqqa man-eaters, d’ye mean? Or Don Gaspar?”

He laughed. “The Jaqqas! They are but bad dreams, nightmare-monsters that will do you no harm if only you stay out of their jungles. Nay, I mean closer to hand. I know not how much substance there is to Don Gaspar’s threats. But there are many here who would sell you for their own advantage. This is no city of saintly men, nor saintly women, neither. Watch your steps.” And so saying, he released me and let me be borne away into the night.

His parting words did trouble and alarm me as I crossed the city under a sliver of a moon. A veil of warm air draped me heavily; great green moths and dark hairy bats and the strange birds of the night fluttered close past my head; I heard a distant thick sound that might have been the trumpeting of an elephanto, or the bray of some ugly hyaena, I knew not which. I reached my cottage weary and much jangled, with my mind full of Barbosa’s talk of enemies, and of assassins and lost ships and hangings and the deaths of Popes and kings. What had been a delightful evening had somehow ended in quite another way. But though I lay down troubled, the wine soon mastered me and I fell into a heavy sleep, and when I woke I was cheerful once more, with gratitude toward God for having spared me nigh unto thirty-five years, and humbly did I entreat Him to grant me thirty-five more, and show me all the lands and wonders of His great empire.

It was many days before the new governor summoned me. In that time a ship arrived from Portugal, bearing letters and parcels and casks of wine, and other pleasant things, and also some priests and a few soldiers and a supply of muskets and shot. When its cargo of ivory and hides and copper and such had been put aboard, it would return to Lisbon, and Don João de Mendoça would sail with it.

As well as one other person, whose leaving gave me great grief.

This other voyager was Dona Teresa da Costa. I had not thought that she would accompany Don João, since that it might seem improper for him to appear in Portugal with a woman of mixed blood who was his mistress. But Don João had other thoughts on that.

I learned this from Dona Teresa herself. Her visits to my cottage had been fewer and farther between in these days of uneasy politicking in the city, with spies everywhere on the governor’s behalf. But on the eve of the sailing of the Portugal ship, almost, she came to me at midday, and as we made ready to lie together she said, with a strange and mischievous look to her, “Let us take our pleasure slow and cunningly today, Andres, for I think it will be a long while before we embrace again.”

“And why is that?”

Her lips trembled and her eyes sparkled, and she could barely get her words out, until finally she said in a wild blurting way, “I shall be in Portugal! I travel with Don João!”

That news unmanned me, and I could not conceal my misery. I rolled free of her and gaped at her.

“What, will you leave Angola?”

“It has ever been my dream to see Europe. I begged most piteously, and Don João granted it. I will behold true cities, and great cathedrals, and the high fidalgos of the court in their fine robes.” At these prospects was she all aglow. “Perhaps we will visit Rome, or Paris! Have you been to these places? Are they greatly distant from Portugal? Why, Andres, why do you look so downcast at this my great joy?”

“Because I shall never see you again.”

“Nay, I will be back! Six months, seven—the time will go by like a moment!”

“Not for me,” I said. “I would not gladly spend even six days without you. And I think you will never return.”

“That is untrue.”

I shook my head. “Don João has fallen from power here, but he is so great a man that Don Jeronymo cannot allow him to remain. You do not realize it, but this journey is intended to take Don João forever from Angola. He will be permitted to come back never. And if you go with him, you will be exiled all your life.”

“None of what you say is true,” said Dona Teresa coolly.

“They have kept the truth from you. And what will become of you, in Portugal? You will be a curiosity, a nine-days’ wonder, and then be forgotten. And the first winter will kill you, for even the mild winters of Portugal are like nothing you have ever known. I pray you do not go, Teresa!”

“You are ignorant of our purposes,” said she, all self-possession and confidence.

“Which are?”

“Do you not think we know why Don Jeronymo wishes Don João to make this journey to Portugal? That is, not to obtain reinforcements for the armies here, but only to be rid of him: yea, we understand that. But can you not see what value there is to Don João to be in Portugal, and how he can turn it to his own uses?”

“I see it not,” I said.

“Why, Don Jeronymo has no royal commission to govern, but was merely elected by the council in his brother’s place, after the folly of Don Francisco had put an end to his rule. When we are in Lisbon, Don João will apply to certain powerful allies he has there, and gain for himself the royal warrant to hold authority, so that when we return he will at last be governor. And Don Jeronymo will be the one to fall.”

I had not thought of that.

“It is an excellent plan, Teresa.”

“So we think. He who is closest to the throne is the one who emerges with the highest rank. That was Don João’s mistake, when he did remain here before, after Governor Pereira fled, and let Don Francisco come from Portugal bearing the royal seal. Don João does not make a mistake twice. So we will be back, I assure you, and it will not go well for Don Jeronymo when we are.” Her eyes flashed with the familiar wickedness. “Come, now, take me in your arms, Andres!”

“I cannot,” said I.

“And why is that?”

I indicated my lap, and the limpness of my member.

“All this talk of your going has discouraged him,” I told her.

“Pah! A moment’s work!”

And she bent over me, so that her breasts did hang like heavy moons above my thighs, and drew them swaying from side to side, laughing, and I felt her hot breath on my belly and the tips of her teats on my yard. And it rose at once, as always it did in Dona Teresa’s proximity. And when it did she mounted me, sitting astride, lowering herself to my spear until I was altogether engulfed in her, and crying out jubilantly. I cried out also, and seized her smooth buttocks in both my hands and rode her up and down on my shaft, until the sweat poured in rivers from both of us, and the natural oils of her body did flow and mingle with mine, and the gaspings of pleasure began in her. She was splendid to behold, with her head thrown back, her dark hair streaming long, her back arched, her breasts aimed high. In each our turn we took our pleasure, and rested, and began again, and more slowly brought each other again to ecstasy, lying now on our sides in the close warmth of the day, staring eye to eye. How precious she was to me then, in her alien beauty, her tawny dark-eyed glory! I could not bear the thought of her making so long a voyage away from me. I would burn for her all the while.

I could not tell you how many times we did the act of love that long afternoon, but it was a creditable number, I assure you, and I was not the first to weary, though I was nigh on being twice her age. We lay back at last.

She said, then, “Oh, and one thing more. When we are in Lisbon, Don João and I are to be wed, by a Cardinal of the Roman faith, in full pomp and majesty. But nay, be not so dejected! The governor’s wife will not be too proud, I pledge you, to keep an Englishman as her lover, when she returns to São Paulo de Loanda. Am I not faring finely, Andres? Am I not faring finely?”

7

Her ship embarked for Portugal. Governor d’Almeida made a great public show of going to the harbor and bidding Don João and Dona Teresa farewell, displaying more anguish over Don João’s departure than he had shown when his own brother Don Francisco had crept off into shameful exile. I saw that such mariners of the colony as Pedro Faleiro and Manoel Andrade, that had sailed with me on my two voyages along the coast before, were on board the very same ship, as overseers of cargo. Seeing Faleiro thus depart was a puzzle to me, for if he was not here, who was to be the master of the pinnace that soon would sail for São Tomé?

I had the answer swiftly to that. For soon after the sailing of the Portugal ship I was sent for by Don Jeronymo the governor, to interview with me on the subject of the São Tomé enterprise.

This Don Jeronymo was the younger brother of Don Francisco d’Almeida and could not have been more than five-and-twenty years of age. Nevertheless he appeared a far more consequential person than his brother, being tall and imperious, with a princely bearing about him. It seemed to me that Don João would have a formidable task in displacing this man from the governship, royal commission or no.

He stood throughout our entire meeting, and though I am a man of more than middle height he well overtopped me, so that I felt somewhat ill at ease. Briefly he questioned me on my willingness to serve his government: to which I replied truthfully enough, that my continued welfare depended on my loyalty to my masters here, and therefore I was entirely at his service. He stared at me long and hard, as if trying to read my soul and see if I meant to betray him in some fashion for the advantage of Don João; and his eyes were as fierce and penetrating as those of the Jesuit Father Affonso, who had pronounced the excommunication. But the intent of treachery was not in me, and so how could Don Jeronymo find it there?

He said, “Are you able to read, Piloto?”

“Aye.”

“Read this, then.”

And he did hand me a document, all beautifully lettered on a piece of white parchment. I had some trouble with it, both because it was written in so fine a hand and because my knowledge of the language of the Portugals was only a speaking knowledge, not a reading one; but I made my way through it well enough and looked up all amazed, saying, “Am I to be captain of the pinnace, sir?”

“This is your credential to present to the governor. You are pilot and master. We have too few men to spare: you will be short of crewmen, and you will have to play two roles yourself. Have you commanded before?”

“Never.”

“Only piloted?”

“Aye,” I said, not volunteering to tell him that even my piloting experience was limited but to two voyages on this coast and one up the river to Masanganu.

“Many pilots have become masters after,” said Don Jeronymo. “They tell me you are very capable. I count on you to carry yourself well.”

I was honored by this; but also it gave me thought that I might be doing treason against England, to be taking command of a Portuguese vessel, which was a new and higher degree of service for me. It was one thing to serve as pilot, and another indeed to be the master of a ship, Portugal being formally at war with my own land. Yet I told myself it could make no difference what cap I wore aboard my vessel, so long as I committed no hostile acts against England. And I had no further time to think upon these things, because Don Jeronymo was drawing forth other documents that I was to present to the governor at São Tomé, one that set forth the problems of the Angola colony and requesting a force of some hundreds of soldiers to aid in pacifying the restless sobas of the outer provinces, and another that pledged that the São Tomé men would be permitted to harvest here as many slaves as they felt was proper, in payment for their assistance. When I had read these things Don Jeronymo’s secretary came, and sealed them all with thick brown wax, and so it was settled, that I should have charge of the voyage.

They had built a new pinnace, or rather had rebuilt one, taking an old wreck that was sitting off the isle of Loanda and putting her seaworthy. She was the Dona Leonor, not quite so tight and pretty as the Infanta Beatriz, but not vastly different in general, and she would do. But my crew was shorthanded indeed, owing to the losses by shipwreck and Jaqqa ferocity, and I had barely half the complement there had been on the Loango journey. Some of the men were known to me, such as Mendes Oliveira and Pinto Cabral and Alvaro Pires, but most were newcomers to Angola, having arrived off the recent ships from Brazil and Lisbon. If they were startled to find themselves having an Englishman as their captain, they said nothing about it; but perhaps they took it easily, thinking it was no more strange than anything else they had encountered thus far in Africa. I made my preparations swiftly and we took ourselves out to sea on the fifteenth day of June in Anno 1593.

This isle of São Tomé lies in the Gulf of Guinea some two hundred leagues northwest of the mouth of the River Zaire. Four years previous I had paid a brief call there, when I had been shipping with Abraham Cocke aboard the May-Morning, and the current or else the ignorance of Captain Cocke, or his greed, had carried us very far south of our course. Now, coming upon São Tomé from the other side, we had a hard time of it, for dry northerly winds were blowing in our teeth all the while, and we beat our way up the coast with no little expenditure of effort.

To avoid the outflow of the Zaire I took the pinnace a fair way out to sea, and that went well, but I was almost discomfited very badly in going back toward land, when I intended to halt for water and provisions at Loango. The great merit of being both master and pilot is that you are accountable to no one save God and your conscience; during our difficult passages I kept my own counsel, made a brave face of it, consulted much with my rutters and charts, and did such a shortening and lengthening of sail, such a shifting about of ropes and lines, that no one dared say me nay. We had one very bad moment when the wind veered violently from north to west in devilish gusts, a wind so strong it seemed to have a color, a light purple hue, and I was painfully reminded of the wind that had heralded my late calamity. It kicked up a high roughness of the sea as we wallowed about. Three great green waves broke over the ship and the lurches she gave burst the rigging and the shrouds on the larboard side, and one of my men was swept away and lost. But then it grew quiet, and we made repairs and continued onward to the coast, where soft waves beat mildly against the white line of the sands. At Loango we discovered the town safe: the Jaqqa encroachment that they had feared so greatly had not fallen upon them, and all was prosperous, for which they gave high credit to the mokissos that guarded them against all demons.

Beyond Loango the waters were new to me, but my charts provided me good guidance and it was only a matter of battling the contrary winds, which a sailor finds as much a part of daily routine as is pissing or putting on boots. In all these slow weeks, though, the hardest time for me came when the wind was gentle and we were making good passage. For at that hour I was standing on the bridge with Mendes Oliveira my lieutenant, both of us idle and looking toward the west, where the dark blue bowl of the sea seemed to curve away into emptiness for a thousand thousand leagues. I turned to Oliveira, a man of forty years with a weatherbeaten ugly face and a long narrow white beard, and said lightly, “This sailing goes slow. I think Don João will be in Portugal before we get ourselves into São Tomé.”

“Nay,” answered Oliveira. “That will be not.”

I pointed north-west, vaguely toward Portugal, and said, “His ship departed in May. If it be not in Lisbon by now, it cannot be far from there.”

“That much I grant you, Piloto. But though the ship may be near Lisbon, Don João is not.”

“I cannot comprehend you.”

Oliveira leaned close. “Shall I tell you a secret, that I had from Pedro Faleiro before he embarked on that same ship?”

“Speak it.”

“Don João is already dead. The order was given by Don Jeronymo, to certain agents of his aboard the ship, that on the seventh day out to sea they were to seize Don João and hurl him over the side, and report him lost by mischance.”

“What?”

“Aye, I swear it! Faleiro was drinking with the men who were hired to do it, and Andrade also, and in the tavern the two did boast that they had been paid in gold to do Don João to death, and also his mulatto concubine Dona Teresa, who—”

“Nay!” I cried, in a voice so great that it made the masts quiver. “Nay, it cannot be!”

And indeed I believed in that moment it was impossible, that Don João was too wise and well connected to fall victim to such a plot, and that my dark and dark-souled Dona Teresa, so luminous of intelligence and guided moreover by her mokisso-witching, would surely be proof against all such villainy. In the deepest pit of my soul did I deny their deaths: but then, as the tide will flow inexorably back upon rocks that have been laid high and bare, so too did fear and doubt come to sweep onto that denial and flood it with uncertainty, and after uncertainty came terror, all in the next instant. For even the mighty and the well guarded can be undone by a determined enemy, or else kings would never fall to assassins; and after my first refusal to accept their deaths came the sudden reversal of that, the agony of doubt, the dread that it was so, that my ally Don João was gone forever and that Dona Teresa, whose witchcraft had insinuated so deep into my heart and loins, would never again return to me.

Oliveira, not knowing why I was so moved and not yet realizing that I was already half berserk, said in his same quiet way, “Aye, the two of them would be given to the sharks, so it was arranged, and thus Don João never would trouble Don Jeronymo again. A pity, I did think, for Don João was a shrewd man and also a just one, and might well have—”

“Jesu!” I bellowed, and hurled myself against Oliveira as though he were Dona Teresa’s own murderer. My hands went to his throat and dug deep, so that his eyes began to start from his face and his cheeks turned purple, and I shook him and shook him and shook him, making his head loll on his shoulders like the head of a child’s straw-stuffed poppet, and he made thick gargling sounds and slapped without effect against me, feeble as a babe. As I throttled him I continued to roar and cry aloud, and nearly the whole ship’s company came running to see what was the matter, forming a ring round us but no one at first daring to intervene in this dispute between master and second-in-command. Then Pinto Cabral, who was a wise and thoughtful man, laid a hand to my shoulder and said a few words in a gentle way, believing me mad, and in that moment I regained my senses enough to release Oliveira and hurl him from me. He went sprawling across the bridge and fetched up in a corner, trembling and gagging and stroking his throat. I too trembled, and more than trembled: I shook, I convulsed as though in a fit.

Never before had I experienced any such earthquake of the soul. I crouched against the planks, pounding my knuckles into them while tears hot as burning acid did roll into my beard and drip between my knees. To the eye of my mind came a hideous vision of ruffians seizing Dona Teresa in the night, all soft and bleary of her slumbers, and taking Don João, who slept beside her, and carrying them to the rail of the ship and hurling them swiftly and silently into the dark, perhaps slitting their throats first so that they could not call out for aid, and then Dona Teresa entering into the maw of the sea, Dona Teresa vanishing forever from sight, Dona Teresa food for the sharks—she who had spoken of being married by a Cardinal in Lisbon, she who had yearned for Rome and Paris, she who had dangled her lovely breasts across my thighs to wake my manhood, a day or two before she had sailed, she now wholly rapt into that dark and cold and enormous watery shroud—no, no, no, it was beyond thinking! I was wholly broken by it.

I know not how long I did crouch there, shaken and dazed and numbed, whether it was ten seconds or ten minutes, but at last I conquered my grief to some degree and arose, and in a low growling voice did order the seamen back to their duties, gesturing at them with my elbows and not meeting their eyes.

I went to Oliveira, who still rubbed his throat, where marks of my hands were beginning to show. He looked at me in terror, thinking perhaps that I meant to finish the job. I knelt by him and said, “Are you badly harmed?”

“Piloto, you all but slew me!”

“It was a sudden madness that came over me. I am much abashed. Can you rise?”

“Aye.”

“Come, then.”

I helped him up. His eyes were still wide and his face very red, and he was shivering as though we had passed into Arctic seas. Even now he was uncertain of me, and stood poised to run from me if my present softness were only a prelude to another attack.

Most of the crew still watched. I whirled to them and cried, “Away from here! Back to your tasks!” To Cabral I said, “You are in command for this hour.” And I said to Oliveira, “Come to my cabin with me. I will make amends to you with some good brandy-wine, and we will talk.”

“You frightened me greatly, Piloto.”

“It was a madness,” I said again. “It will not return. Come with me.”

In the narrow space of my cabin I uncorked the dark smoky brandy-wine and poured a strong dose for him and another for me, my hand still shaking so badly that I all but spilled it in the pouring, and his the same, so that he all but spilled it in the drinking. In silence we had our liquor, and at length I said, “The tale you told me gave me a deep disruption of the soul, and for the moment drove me wild with grief. I greatly regret this attack on you: I hope you will forgive me.”

He ran his finger about his sweaty collar. “I will survive, Piloto.”

“You understand how it is, when a man hears terrible news, how sometimes he strikes out at the closest at hand, even if it be someone entirely innocent?”

“Such things happen,” said Oliveira.

We drank us a second drink.

Then he looked at me and said, “May I speak with frankness, Piloto?”

“Indeed. Say anything.”

“We are not close friends, are we, but only men who have sailed together twice or thrice. And you are English, and I a Portugal, so there is little in common between us. But yet I would not want to see you come to harm, for I think you are a skillful pilot, and a man of good heart, and moreover—”

“To the point; if you will.”

“I approach the point, Piloto. It is quite plain to me that you were powerfully stricken with grief at the news I gave you, and your great emotion speaks much for your loyalty to Don João, who was your especial protector, I am aware. But nevertheless—”

“You misunderstand.”

“By your leave, let me to finish. I urge you to master your grief and put aside all feeling for Don João; for to mourn him too openly is unwise. It marks you as the enemy of Don Jeronymo, and I know in truth that there are those on board this ship who have been told by Don Jeronymo to watch you closely, lest you prove in some way a traitor to him. Any show of despair over Don João, or continued loyalty to him now, is perilous and rash.”

“I thank you for that warning. But my despair was not for Don João.”

“Not for Don João?” he said, blinking.

“If you can relive in your mind that moment when I sprang upon you, you will know that you had just told me Dona Teresa also had been marked out for death. Do you recall that? I am slow sometimes to calculate consequences, and I had not realized at the first, hearing from you of the plot against Don João, that it did extend to her as well.”

“Ah.”

“And thus when you told it to me—why, something snapped in me, d’ye see?”

“So it is true, then,” said Oliveira.

“What is?”

“That you were the lover of Dona Teresa.” And so saying, he cowered back, expecting me to leap upon him again. But all I did was laugh, in my surprise.

“You knew of that?”

He looked me slyly and, I think, a trifle enviously. “It was rumored in town. She visited you often, both when you were in the fortress and after your release, and we thought perhaps it was not merely to discuss the weather, or to play at dice. We talked much of your good fortune, to come here as a slave and then to find yourself at once in the arms of Dona Teresa.”

“Do you think Don João heard those tales, too?”

“I know not what Don João heard and what he did not, for we were not close companions, after all.”

I closed my eyes and gripped my brandy-wine flask tightly, and took a gulp of it, down deep in a single swallow. It calmed me some, but behind the burning of the brandy in my gut there was another sore fire of anguish, over Dona Teresa and over Don João, too, though that in a different way. It amazed me that I should grieve so keenly for a Portugal and for a halfbreed woman, I who was English and betrothed to fair golden-haired Anne Katherine of fading memory, but so it was, and I saw the depth of the change in me, how fully I had been thrust into this African world. And I saw, too, how frightful a place it was and how many perils loomed on all sides, reefs and bergs and floes, with these plots and counter-plots all unsuspected by me, and even myself the subject of rumor, secret surveillance, and, for all I knew, fatal conspiracy. I thought long on all of this, while Mendes Oliveira stared at me, too frightened of me to speak or to withdraw. At length I corked the bottle and arose and said, “We will talk no more of these things, eh? But I thank you for all you have said, and I beg you once again to pardon me for my madness against you. And I will be grateful for any other guidance you can give me, if I be in further danger. Agreed?”

“Agreed, Piloto.”

And he backed out of the cabin, glad, I suppose, to be gone from there.

8

Very often in the remainder of that voyage to São Tomé did I think of Dona Teresa, and often, too, of Don João de Mendoça, and the knowledge of their fates lay upon my bosom like a cold stone lodged between my ribs, and would not ease. Never did I lose hope of their survival, but my conviction that they were lost was stronger. As the days went by, though, that dull heavy pain of the knowledge of loss moved to a lesser zone of my awareness: it did not diminish, it did not pass, but it no longer was in the forefront of my mind. I think that is a natural process of healing. I had experienced it before, in deaths much closer to my soul, those of my father and brother and early wife Rose. We never forget the dead or cease to lament our losing of them, but the sharp edge of the pain is quickly blunted, and we learn to live with the absence that has entered our lives.

Moreover the work was fearsome hard, this beating against those ill and most contrary winds, and I had no time to give over to sorrow. Some nights I slept not at all, and others only in winks and snatches, for that a dry harsh wind from the north threatened always to turn us about, and set us catercorner to our true direction. I could not abide the risk of losing another ship. And these Portugals of mine were surprising foolish sailors, who knew everything about the sea save how to out-think it, and it was needful that I instruct them at all times what they were next to do. I told myself often that if these men were the sort of mariners who had served in the ships of Prince Henry the Navigator and the other great Portugals of ancient high repute, why, they would have scuttled themselves out of folly ere they had sailed as far as Cadiz. But that was a hundred and fifty years gone, that time when the Portugals discovered the depths of Africa and first rounded the Bona Speranza, and I suppose a hundred and fifty years is duration enough for a race to decay and grow simple, though God grant it happen not to England.

But by one way and another I did bring the pinnace safe into São Tomé, a place of dark repute, for which I bear no love.

This island is the capital of the slaving industry that the Portugals do operate in Africa. It is a small place, oval in shape or almost round, about fifteen leagues in length from north to south, and twelve in breadth from east to west. It stands out from the mainland one hundred eighty miles, right opposite the river called Gabon. The chief port-town of São Tomé lies in the northerly part of the island, directly under the equinoctial line.

The Portugals have owned this place over a hundred years. The climate of it is very unwholesome, and an abundance of men died here in making the early settlement. But when those Jews who would not accept baptism were expelled from Portugal in the year of 1493, thousands of them were exiled to this São Tomé and forced to marry with black women fetched from Angola, producing, in the process and fullness of time, a brood of mulattos that is the present population of the island. Half-Jew and half-blackamoor in ancestry, they yet are Christians now and boast of being true Portugals; but their constitution is by nature much fitter to bear with the malignity of that air than that of Europeans. There are a number of Portugals here, too, making a race so mixed as to be beyond any easy understanding.

I took the Dona Leonor into the harbor of the town, which lies betwixt two rivers in a low flat ground. It is a town of some four hundred houses, most of them two stories high, and all of them flat-roofed, built of a sort of hard ponderous white timber. A rampart of stone protects it on the sea-side, and on a high point above it rises the well-fortified castle of the place, which I remembered well, since its guns did fire most heavily upon us when the ships of Abraham Cocke passed by here in Anno 1589.

We had come in an unkind season; but all seasons are unkind here. There are two rainy and two dry seasons at São Tomé, the rains beginning at each equinox, when the sun, standing straight overhead, draws so much water from the sea that when it drops down again as rain it is like Noah’s deluge. The vapors rising from the black marshes under the violent heat create thick stinking fogs that make the air malignant, and compel the natives to lie at home at such times. But the deep clouds do at least shield the place from the worst furies of the sun, which in the dry seasons is intolerable, as it was when we arrived: the soil we found so burning hot that it was scarce possible to walk upon it without cork-soles to the shoes.

This is a most fertile place. The soil is generally fat, mixed with yellow and white earth, which by the dew of the night and the extreme rain of the wet seasons is rendered very proper to produce many sorts of plants and fruits, and, in swampy grounds, prodigious lofty trees in a short time. They plant ginger here, and manioc that grows as big as a man’s leg, and four sorts of potatoes, and much else. A principal crop is sugar: there are in this island above seventy houses or presses for making of sugar, and every press has many cottages about it as though it were a village, and there may at each be some three hundred persons that are appointed for that kind of work. All together these places make about fifteen hundred tons of brown sugar. The canes grow exceeding tall, but for all that do not give so much juice as they would in Brazil, perhaps because there is too much rain for proper ripening. Another thing they grow is cotton, and also wheat and grapes and such.

But the mainmost crop of São Tomé, that they harvest with great zeal, is sprung from the seed of Adam.

This is a place where they deal in the souls of men and women and children, which is a most frightful trade, and keenly cruel. Slavery is an old thing in Africa, far antedating the coming of the whites, and as it is practiced among the Africans it is no more reprehensible, I trow, than many another habit of the world. But the Portugals have refined it, here at São Tomé, into something most monstrous.

Slaves are a simple commodity to the folk of Angola and the Kongo and Loango. They are taken in wars between tribes, or are sold by their own tribesfolk to settle debts or to guarantee loans or in payment of blood money, or are placed in servitude as a punishment for theft, murder, or adultery. Once in slavery, the slave has no rank in the land, but is a mere piece of property, transmitted by inheritance or disposed of as his owner wishes. Yet other than in lack of freedom the condition of the slaves is hardly different from that of the free men. They must by law be treated properly, fed and housed, cared for in all ways. They are permitted to marry, even to marry those of free rank, and if they are diligent they can save enough to purchase their freedom, though only a few are known to do so.

All this have I seen with mine own eyes. I would not be a slave to anyone, at any time; yet will I attest that these slaves who are slaves in Africa to other black folk do not have a severely harsh life, and are more like the serfs and peasants of our older times in Europe. But how different a matter the Portugals have made of this custom of slaving!

I think they do not understand that the slaves are human beings. They regard them as mere articles of commerce, like the stacked tusks of elephantos or so many bags of pepper: something to be brought swiftly to market and sold for the best price. Strong slaves are valued, weak or sickly ones are discarded like lame horses. The demand for this merchandise is immense, for there are great plantations to be worked in the New World, and the Indians of Brazil and the Indies are poor laborers, who die or run away rather than serve their masters. But the Negro folk are good workers, and are sent by thousands upon thousands over there. The slavers of São Tomé rove all the coast, and go far inland, rounding up their human chattels and herding them toward the island. Where there are established slave-markets, the Portugals buy, exchanging liquor and gunpowder and such things for men and women. But also do they take by force, going into the jungle and stealing harmless folk away from their lives. And I have told you already how, when the Jaqqas did raid the Kongo and cause famine there, the Portugals of São Tomé went down to the isles at the mouth of the Zaire and bought children away from their own starving parents, for a few grains of food. But that is not the worst of it. For then—naked, badly fed, chained together— these people once they are enslaved are conveyed in great discomfort to the island, and laded upon evil vessels, and sent off to America with no regard for their welfare or comfort.

While I waited for my audience with the governor of São Tomé, I had me a good observing of the workings of this slave trade, and it sickened me mightily. Each day new hordes of slaves did come in from the mainland, and were stood in a certain shed to be branded, as we do brand sheep with a hot iron. I saw a branding one day, with slaves standing all in a row one by another, and singing a song of their nation, something like mundele que sumbela he kari ha belelelle, for all the world as if they were about to enjoy some happy festival. And one by one they were taken off by Portugals who put the hot metal to their flesh, stamping them on the buttock or the thigh, the men and women both. Most did not even cry out at this, though some fell from the pain. I watched this many minutes in horror, hearing the sizzle of the iron against flesh and smelling the smell of the burning, and finally I asked a Portugal, “Why do they show no fear? Why do they not cringe away from the iron? Are they so childish ignorant that they cannot know it will hurt?”

And he laughed and said, “Nay, they know it hurts. But we tell them that they that have not the mark will not be deemed persons of any account in Brazil, and so they are eager for the branding.”

Ah, the poor beguiled blackamoors!

And then they must wait for the next slave-ship that will depart. So they lie on the bare ground every night in the open air, without any covering, which makes them grow poor and faint. Some from the inland that are not used to the terrible climate of São Tomé fall ill, and they are allowed to die without medicine, which seems to me a very poor husbandry of one’s crop; but the Portugals say it is just as well that those die here, for if such inferior workers were shipped and sold and then they died, it would give the slave-sellers a bad reputation, and this culls the weaklings before they come to market. I suppose that there is some degree of sense in that, though I think there would be greater merit in preserving and strengthening the slaves, and curing and feeding them, than in allowing some by negligence to perish. That is, if one ignores all matter of human consideration and approaches this thing purely in business ways.

The time of waiting may be only a week or two, or maybe many months, if the seas are stormy. But then the ships come for them. The Portugals have constructed great dreadful slave-vessels, and it is pitiful to see how they crowd those poor wretches, six hundred and fifty or seven hundred in a ship. The men were standing in the hold, fastened to one another with stakes, for fear they should at last rise up and kill the Portugals. The women were between the decks, and those that were with child in the great cabin, and the children in the steerage pressed together like herrings in a barrel, which in that hot climate occasions an intolerable heat and stench. The voyage is generally performed in thirty or thirty-five days, the trade-wind carrying them; but sometimes they are becalmed, and then it is longer, often much longer, and I think then the suffering must be horrible. Before any ship departs, the Portugals cause the slaves they load to be baptized, it being forbidden under pain of excommunication to carry any to Brazil that are not christened. This, too, I witnessed, the forcible making of a great many new Roman Catholics, who by whips and hunger would be taught to love the mother of God and all the saints. On the ship I saw, all the men were given the name of João, and all the women the name of Maria, and the priest did exhort them all every one to confide in the mercy of God, who never forsakes those who sincerely rely on him, adding, that God sends afflictions to punish us for our sins. Well, I cry amen, for I also believe that God does not forsake those who love Him, though I hold that He sends us afflictions not as punishments but as a discipline, to make us stronger. But I do wonder how much those blacks understood of all that. They were no longer singing mundele que sumbela and the rest of that cheerful sound, but now were putting up cries that made a dismal harmony indeed.

This trade does profit the Portugals extremely much. Yet I trust they will pay it all back with full interest thereon, at the final Judgment, when they must look into the faces of their Maker and perhaps all their saints besides. And yes, I know that we English have carried our share of slaves, even such great men as Drake and Hawkins partaking in the trade. But those slaves were all bought fairly, I trow, not stolen by us from their homes and families, and they were not treated near so cruel in shipment. I do not like slavery and if I had the running of the world I think I would not encourage it; but I recognize it to be a part of life, like illness and mortality, and I cannot truly say I oppose it, only that it should be done with some regard for the welfare of the enslaved, and not in the way of the Portugals.

There was a certain delay in seeing the governor of the island, in that he had gone to the mainland of Guinea on some matter of importance. So we were obliged to take up residence until his return. This was alarming to us, São Tomé being so unhealthful a place, almost as terrible as Masanganu, that had nearly been the slaying of me from fever. That same fever is common on the island, and I am told it usually carries off newcomers from Europe in less than eight days of sickness. The first symptoms are a cold shivering, attended with an intolerable heat or inflammation in the body for two hours, so as to throw the patient into a violent delirium, which at the fifth or seventh fit, or the fourteenth at most, makes an end of most persons seized with it. I feared this daily, but Cabral told me I would not take it, for I had had it before, as had all the men of my crew. This Cabral, who was a short and supple man with one leg a trifle longer than the other, had been in Africa many years and was wise in its way, and I did rely on him greatly for matters of such advice. “If one takes the Masanganu fever,” said he, “and one survives it, one is thereafter proof against it, if he live a temperate life. But only the fortunate few survive it. You are robust of constitution, Piloto, and I think the gods do favor you.”

“Aye, they must,” said I, “or they would not have given me the benefit of so much exile from my home, and other little gifts of that kind.”

“We are all far from our homes,” said Cabral. “But I think you have known some joy mixed in with your harms, in your wanderings abroad.”

“That I have, good friend. I will not lament.”

The island also suffers of smallpox, Cabral did warn me, and also a colic that is attributed by some to the excessive use of women, and by others to the morning dew; and there flourishes there a bloody flux of great deadliness. But the thing I most dreaded, in that suspended and discomfortable time of waiting, was one malady called bichos no cu, which is a sort of dysentery very common there. The nature of it is to melt or dissolve men’s fat inwardly, and to void it by stool, so that one dwindles and goes. The symptom is an extraordinary melancholy, attended with a violent headache, weariness, and sore eyes. As soon as these things manifest themselves, said Cabral—for, seeing that I was hungry for knowledge of the lands I entered, he did regale me with all manner of tales—they take the fourth part of a lemon peel, and thrust it up the patient’s fundament, in the nature of a suppository, which is very painful to him. If the disease is not inveterate, this certainly cures him; but if this remedy proves ineffectual, and the disease so malignant that there comes away a sort of gray matter, they infuse tobacco-leaves in salt and vinegar for two hours, and pound it in a mortar, and administer a clyster of it to the patient; but because the smart of it is violent, they have two men to hold him. “Even two,” said he, “may not be sufficient: I saw once a man break free of three, and rush to the water to cool himself, where he was straightaway devoured by a coccodrillo.”

“Which eased his pain of the fundament, at the least.”

“Aye,” said he. “But it is a drastic remedy, Piloto.”

Cabral having filled me with such harrowing news, I feared this disease much, but neither that nor any other malady befell me in São Tomé. No man of my crew fell ill, either, except one that took the venereal pox, but it was cured with mercury, not without giving him great pain.

One thing that I did acquire, though, while waiting in the island, was a female slave.

This happened greatly to my astonishment, for slave-owning is foreign to my nature. In truth I did as you know have three slaves in São Paulo de Loanda, but they had been bestowed upon me without my seeking, and I regarded them only as servants, not as property. I have never thought it fitting for an Englishman to own the life of a fellow human being. Yet did I make purchase of one in São Tomé. But it was for good and proper reason, I do believe, and I did not hesitate or scruple to do it.

It befell in this way. There was a sort of pen for slaves, called by the Portugals a corral, in the main plaza of the town hard by one of the churches. One morning I was going past this corral, which was well laden with slaves, when a voice from within it called out to me, “Senhor, em nome de Deus,” which means in Portuguese, “Sir, in the name of God!” I had not expected a prisoner of that slave-corral to cry out in Portuguese, nor to talk of God. Therefore I halted and did scan that close-packed mass of black naked flesh, until I saw who had spoken to me. She was a girl of no more than sixteen years, altogether bare with not even a scrap to hide her loins, which some of the women had. She was tall and well fashioned, with good clean limbs and high breasts that stood out straight forward, as the breasts of African girls do until they have had a child. Her skin was smooth and unblemished save for certain tribal scars that the Negroes do inflict upon themselves, and for the tattoo of slavery freshly applied, that blazed like a scarlet stigma upon the inside of her thigh just below the crotch. She was not so much black in color as a warm brown, with almost a tincture of red underlying it, quite unlike the hue of the people I had seen along the coast, and her eyes were bright and clear, with a distinct look of intelligence in them. Beckoning to me, she continued to talk in the Portuguese tongue, saying, “Jesu, Maria, the Holy Ghost, saints and apostles,” and the like, and came so close to the fencing of the corral that she could thrust her arms through. “Sir,” she said, “save me, for I am a Christian.”

At that a guard did appear within the corral, a foul squat one-eyed Portugal with a whip in one hand and a cutlass in the other, and he shouted at her and cracked the whip in the air, so that she turned and cringed before him. With a rough gesture he ordered her away from me, which wrung from her a look of such sorrow as did cleave me to the heart.

“Wait,” I said. “I would speak with her!”

“And who be you?”

“Emissary from His Grace Don Jeronymo d’Almeida, Governor of Angola,” said I with a flash of lightning in my eye to cow him. That sort is cowed easily enough. “I am inspecting these slaves, and I pray you give me no interference.”

He glowered sullenly at me, and in a low surly voice said, “What business does Angola have with our slaves?”

“I need not discuss such matters with you, friend. Get me this girl from out of your pen, so that I may talk properly with her, or it will go hard with you.”

“Will it, now?”

“By the Mass, I’ll have your other eye cut from you!” I roared, and had difficulty keeping myself from laughter at hearing myself swearing a Roman oath.

My sword was out and my face was red with fury, but I was still outside the corral and he and the girl within, and he could have chosen to leave me there, looking a fool. But it seemed that he had tested my resolve as far as he dared, for he signalled me around to the side of the corral where the gate was, and unlatched it, and sent the black girl through it to me, saying in no very gracious way, “You must not keep her outside for long.”

“Long enough to learn what I wish to know,” I said, and drew her a little aside, away from the gate. She was staring at me in wonder and awe, as though I were some deliverer come down from Heaven. And, looking upon her as she smiled so shyly, I found myself thinking it would be a pity to send her back into that cage of slaves from which I had plucked her. I think it was in that moment that the wild idea of buying her began to form itself in my mind.

To the girl I said, “How did you come to be in there?”

But she was not fluent enough in Portuguese to understand me readily. I realized then that she knew only a scattering of words, and had been rehearsing those most carefully, in the event that anyone drew close enough to the corral to pay heed to her. So I said my question again, more slowly, and doing a little dumb-show and miming with my hands to help convey the meaning. This time she comprehended, after some moments. She said a few words by way of reply, and I nodded and encouraged her, and she spoke again, more clearly, her confidence at the language increasing as she saw that I was inclined to be gentle and patient with her. And by slow and painful exchanges we did manage a fair degree of communication.

She said, squatting down to scratch a map of sorts in the soft earth, that she came from an inland province of the Angolan territory, a place called Kazama in the land of Matamba, that was tributary to the King of Angola. Jesuit missionaries had passed that way and built a small church and converted the people to the Roman faith, or more or less, and she had been baptized by them under the name of Isabel. She told me also her native name, but for once my ear for strange sounds did fail me, for the name was so awkward on my tongue, such a twisting sneezing clicking thing, that I was unable to say it after her, though she told me three times. I could not even put it down rightly on paper. So I called her Isabel, though I found it not easy to do, Isabel being so European a name and she being such a creature of the dark African interior; afterward I usually called her “Matamba Isabel,” and then just “Matamba,” which she accepted as her name even though in truth it was the land from which she came, and not a person’s name at all, as if she had wanted to call me “England.” But all of that came later.

She had fallen into slavery by double mischance. Two years before— so I think she said—a marauding band of Jaqqas had stolen her from her village, and would have made her one of their own kind—it being the Jaqqa custom to adopt into their tribe the boys and girls of thirteen to fourteen years of the villages they plundered, as I had already learned at the time of the massacre at Muchima. But she had slipped away from the cannibals in the darkness of the jungle and, wandering most boldly by herself, had drifted westward into some part of Angola where the folk of a settled village found her. These, to pay for certain goods that they desired, had sold her to an itinerant slave-trader. He in turn had brought her to the coast and conveyed her to the Portugals; who had branded her and had penned her here in São Tomé until such time as she could be crammed aboard one of those stinking abominable un-healthful slave-ships to be sent into servitude and early death in America.

“God’s blood!” I cried. “They shall not have you!”

I suppose it was wrongful of me to single out one girl from all these others and say that she should not be enslaved. Were the others not human as well? Did they not also have hopes, fears, pains, ambitions, and all that human cargo? Was not each of them the center of his own universe, a proud and noble creature of God? Why say, this one should be spared, this one is not deserving of such bondage, but those must remain.

Yet this one did seem superior to the others, and of such qualities that it was an evil thing to enslave her. I know there is an error of thinking in that. Slavery is not a condition to be imposed only upon the inferior. If it must be imposed at all, it should be handed round impartially to anyone, and if God has decreed that blacks be shipped in chains to America, why, then we should not pick out certain blacks that catch our favor and say, You are exempt, you are too fine for such service. And yet the injustice of turning this girl into a sort of pack-animal did cry out to me with a hundred tongues. She held herself so high, she seemed obviously to have such unusual qualities of mind and spirit, she appeared to be so far beyond the savages with whom she shared the corral, that it was most wrongful to my mind to let her be enslaved. I could not save them all; I did not even see the need or the worth of sparing them all; but I wished to spare just this one. That she spoke some Portuguese and professed herself to be a Christian already marked her, in my view, as someone to be exempted from slavery: for if we countenance the enslaving of Christians, why, there would be no end to it, and soon we would all be enslaving each other, as the vile Turks and Moors do enslave captive Christian mariners to row the oars of their galleys.

I think also I should confess it that I had noticed the beauty of the girl, her sleek limbs and high breasts and bold bright eyes. Yea, give forth all the truth, Battell! But though that surely did influence me in her favor, I swear that I did not purchase her with the idea of making her my concubine. It was only that beauty in a woman makes a powerful argument of its own in any debate, just or unjust though that may be. And although in my early days in Africa I had failed to comprehend the presence of beauty in black women, and had not had any sort of sexual commerce with any of them up to that point, I had by now spent more than four years under the hot African sun, and it had worked changes in my blood, no doubt upon it. In the Book of Solomon that is called the Canticle the bride of Solomon sings, Nigra sum, sed formosa, filiae Jerusalem, which is to say in English, “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,” and so was it with this Matamba Isabel, black but comely to my altered way of seeing. But by God’s teeth I vow I did not have the use of her body in my mind at that time.

The one-eyed churlish guard returned and said, “Have you had enough conversation with this slave yet? She must return to the corral.”

“Nay, she will not return to it.”

“And will you prevent it, then?”

“I intend to buy her. What is her price?”

The girl knew enough Portuguese to understand that, plainly: for she threw me a look of amaze and gratitude. But the Portugal only made a shrug and said, “It is not done, selling like this. You may not have her.”

“I am in need of a slave. Slaves are sold through this island. Tell me the price, and I will pay it.”

“I tell you, it is not done.”

Again my choler rose, and this time I seized him, bunching up his shirt in my hand so roughly that the flimsy sweat-soaked fabric tore away. I shook terror into him, making his one eye roll about in his head, and threw him from me and pulled free my sword, ready to use it if he swung that evil cutlass of his. But he did no more than to glare me his venomous glare, and slink a few steps back and attempt to restore his disarranged clothing. And at last he said, not meeting my gaze, “This is no domain of mine. Wait ye here, and I will inquire after her price.”

He limped away. The girl trembled beside me, all astonished and frightened. For a long while we stood together saying nothing. Within the corral, arms did wave desperately at us and voices cried out in half a dozen African tongues; for others in there had concluded that I was taking her out of that detention, and they prayed me to do the same for them. During this time three members of my crew came along, Oliveira and Cabral and a third whose name I do not remember, and, seeing me standing with a naked blackamoor girl, they came toward us, with many a lascivious leering expression. “A sweet piece!” cried that third one. “Let us borrow her, and take her to our camp tonight!” And he did put his hands to her, stroking the curve of her buttock and squeezing her breast. At once I caught him by the shoulder and spun him around, and gave him a cuff across the cheek with the back of my hand that knocked him four or five paces, and when he was finished reeling and staggering he turned to me looking both surprised and angered, with his hand on the hilt of his sword ready to draw.

“Go you easy,” I said. “I am buying this slave, and I would not have you handle her.”

“I knew not that she was yours,” he muttered.

“You know it now.”

“Aye,” said he most sullenly, still looking wrathful, but putting down the hand from the sword-hilt. He rubbed his cheek and gave me a sour look. But clearly he wanted no quarrel with me, for word had gone about the ship of my treatment of Oliveira and they knew I was dangerously strong and perhaps a trifle mad.

Oliveira said, “Are you truly buying the girl, Piloto?”

“She is Christian, and speaks Portuguese, and is unfairly taken into captivity. I would not have her suffer the fate of these savages. She will come to me to São Paulo de Loanda, and look after my domestic matters, and woe betide the sailor who fingers my property thus lewdly.”

“Aye,” said the man who had touched her, again. “I knew not she was yours, Piloto.”

“Mark that these slave-mongers do not cheat you.”

“I pray you tell me what a fair price would be.”

He conferred a moment with Cabral and the other, and said to me, “At most, ten thousand reis.”

Ten thousand anything would have been too great a strain on my purse, in that I was in truth a prisoner still, and had no money of my own. But I gave that no heed. When I am set on a thing, I pursue it until it is mine.

Shortly the one-eyed one returned, the ugly monoculus having with him a second Portugal of the slave-pen just as swart and unwholesome, who first told me I could not buy a slave in so irregular a way, and then, seeing me determined and backed up by three members of my crew, decided not to make a great issue of it, and with an air of extending upon me a supreme courtesy, did say, “Well, it is improper, but I can accommodate you out of regard for your master Don Jeronymo. The girl is yours for twenty thousand reis.”

I laughed him to scorn. I cried out that the girl was weak in the knees and had three times coughed a cough that spoke of consumption. “Five thousand,” said I. On this we went round and round a bit, he looking injured and disdainful, and at length we came to terms at ten, as both of us had known from the first. Ah, these poxy Portugals, that are but rabble, and haggle at you like a street-peddler!

“Give me your invoice,” I said, “and I will have the money sent to you by morning.”

This did not please him, but again there were four of us and fewer of them, and he scribbled me a bit of paper and off I went with my companions and Isabel Matamba the slave. We were all lodged in the hostelry by the harbor, and great was the outcry when I appeared with a naked black girl. The sailors crowded round as if they had never seen female flesh before. Quickly I let it be known that she was mine and not to be trifled with; and then I gave her into the custody of the slaves of the hostelry, so that she might be fed and cared for and clothed. Within an hour she was in the courtyard with a strip of red fabric around her waist, the which seemed to comfort her and give her much security: for the African women prefer to keep their private parts covered, even if it be only by a leaf or a bit of straw or a string of beads, though they care not in the slightest about hiding their breasts or their buttocks from view.

I drew Pinto Cabral aside and said, “How am I to obtain ten thousand reis, now?”

“Why, do you not have it?”

“I have not been paid so much as a single cowrie-shell in all my time in Africa.”

“Why, you must borrow it, then.”

“Where? How can I find me a Jew moneylender?”

He laughed and said, “You need no usurer, Piloto. I can lend you that sum, with some aid from Oliveira and a few others, and you can repay us from the profits we are to make trading at Loango on the journey south.” And he went about to one and another and another, and swiftly assembled the ten thousand, which seemed to me miraculous—for ten thousand reis at that time was the equal of three English pounds, which is no trifle. But I would learn that money in these African colonies is easy to come by, when one can trade worthless beads for the equally worthless hairs out of elephanto-tails, and then trade the hairs for slaves, that can be sold for ten thousand reis each. So it was that I lightly undertook an indebtedness of the size of three pounds, that would have burdened me greatly in England, and eased myself of it in scarce any time at all.

And in that way I came to obtain a slave-girl. Truly, my life had become passing strange, flooded with novelties one after the other in such numbers that I was beginning to feel no jolts from all this strangeness, but simply took each thing as it came, accepting it as the normal flow of life.

9

The Portuguese governor at São Tomé returned at length from his business on the mainland and received me and endorsed my credential, and had from me the letters of Don Jeronymo asking for military aid. In a few days’ time he handed me an answer, that he would supply Angola with three hundred men now and three hundred more when the equinoctial rains next arrived, in return for the license to collect slaves within the territory that was subject to Don Jeronymo. I said I thought that would be satisfactory, and took my leave of him.

We were now discharged of our duties in São Tomé, and we made our departure from that place, which none of us felt the least reluctance to do.

On our southward voyage I had a new difficulty with which to contend, that was the presence of the girl Matamba among a crew of lusty men. The pinnace was small and there were only two cabins, one of which was mine and one Oliveira’s. The others slept on the open deck, to which they were accustomed. But I dared not let Matamba sleep among them, or they surely would use her most shamefully no matter what instruction I gave that she was to go unmolested: it would be only human nature for them thus to do. I could not give her over to them in that way to be their plaything. What then? Why, I had to take her into my own cabin.

My cabin was long and narrow, with my sleeping-place to the left, and an oaken chest for charts and maps opposite it, and some space between to walk. I rigged a hammock for her in that space, but she looked at it with a long face, and by pantomime told me that she feared being thrown from it by the swaying of the ship. So I got woven palm-cloth mats and laid them on the floor beside my place, which was acceptable to her.

That night I stood the early watch, and when I came in after my four hours Matamba was already asleep, curled on the floor with her knees to her bosom and her thumb thrust in her mouth, like a babe. Indeed she seemed like nothing so much as a child, peaceful there, reposing her spirit after the long horror of the slave-corral. By candlelight I looked down upon her, seeing with pleasure the smooth rich dark-hued skin of her, and the strong fleshy limbs, the firm breasts: for all the torment she had been through she was healthy and robust with the vigor of youth, like a sturdy young filly that could canter many a furlong un-winded. I smiled at her and snuffed my light and lay down in the darkness, and said a prayer or two, and dropped into swift sleep.

For two or three nights thereafter it was the same: she lay naked by my side, and I never touched her. The temptation did come to me, but I did not act upon it. By day she chastely donned her scant loin-wrap, and did simple duties aboard the ship, helping in the serving of the meals. The men favored me with their little envious knowing smiles and smirks, thinking that I was making free with her by night, to which I gave no heed.

But the natural attraction of the sexes is something that arises automatically in us, nor have I ever been notably proof against it. There came a night when I looked upon her and felt the strong pull of it. It was as I came from my watch and disrobed for sleep, and stood above her as she slept, lying on her back with her legs apart a little and not a stitch covering her, and I did think, Why not? She would not refuse me. I was without a woman. Dona Teresa was likely dead—how that panged me!—and Anne Katherine might as well be dwelling on the moon— that panged me, too, but not in any immediate close way, not after so many years—and I had my lusts like anyone else, and did I mean to live like a monk all the rest of my days in Africa? Here was a woman. She was handsome, after the fashion of her kind. Nigra sum, sed formosa. She was Christian, more or less. At least she was something more than a savage. And she was close at hand. Why not? Why not, indeed? Yet I did not. Some nicety of compunction held me from it, she being a slave and a blackamoor.

So I entered my sheets and lay awake a time, somewhat sore with need, debating these matters endlessly with myself, telling myself that I had only to reach down beside me and draw her to me, or lower myself to her and ease myself into her and that would be that. But I did not, and though sleep was slow in coming to me, it must at last have come, for I fell into troubled dreams full of teeth and claws and dark waters bubbling with hidden monstrosities.

And in the night came a spear of lightning that turned darkness to day, and a roll of thunder that was like the heavy crack of doomsday falling upon us, and such a lashing of rain as to make the sea boil and go white in its frenzy. At once I woke, and thought to go out on the deck and look to the masts and sails, although it was Oliveira’s watch and I knew him to be capable in such matters. But as I sat up, blinking in the darkness and kneading my eyes, there was a sudden flutter and mutter in the cabin and Matamba did hurl herself into my bed, whispering, “I am afraid! I am afraid!”

Again the lightning. Again the thunder, more terrible.

She trembled like unto one who was on the threshold of a seizure, and did thrash and kick and leap about, so that I had to take her in my arms to protect us both from injury. And I said soothing things, and stroked her back, which was moist from the fear-sweat that had burst from her every pore. The pinnace meanwhile rocked and wallowed and slapped its sides against the great waves, and I heard men running about on deck, and knew that it was my place to be there with them. God forgive me, but I could not go. For as I gave comfort to poor frightened Matamba, gently holding and shielding her, the bareness of her body against mine became a fiery provocation to me, the twin solid masses of her breasts announced themselves irresistibly to my chest, my stroking hands did slip downward from her back to her rump, and to the hot place between her thighs. My member stood out in urgent want, pressing so hard against her belly that there was no room for it between us except if we were to insert it where nature had meant it to go. She made little panting sounds as an animal might when in heat, and scrambled about, all legs and arms, and suddenly there she was clasped tight astraddle me with my yard sunk deep in her body. It was for the mere taking of comfort, I think, a kind of primordial linking of flesh in an alliance against the great fright of dying. But, God’s death! it felt good to me, that soft wet secret woman-mouth of her belly grasping and containing me and sliding back and forth over me. And she had another trick, too, that Dona Teresa also had known, that I think is general among these African women, a trick of an internal quivering of the female channel, a tightening and loosing, tightening and loosing, that gave me the most extremest pleasure.

How could I have broken away from her to go on deck, at such a time? Master of the ship I might be, but in good sooth I am a mortal man and no angel, and a male of hearty lust, and I could no more have flung Matamba from me and gone about my duties than I could have stepped outside of mine own skin. So we did the little love-wrestling on that cramped couch, lying on our sides, she half atop me, my hands clutching her buttocks and my fingers digging deep, she moving with the strange fury of one in whom terror has been transformed into desire with scarce a perceptible boundary twixt one and the other. And then from her did come a high-pitched wailing sound like the lament of some spirit of the dark misty fens, so piercing that it must have carried from one end of the ship to the other, and which affrighted me at first until I comprehended that it was only the outcry of her ecstasy, and into it I spent myself with hard hammering strokes that left me weak and whimpering. Thus drained we clung to one another in the dark, and gradually I perceived that the storm had abated, the sea had grown quiet.

She was sobbing softly.

God’s bones! What does one say, when a woman sobs at you after the act of coupling? Does she weep from joy or shame or fear, or what? How can one know these things, and how can one speak without being clumsy?

Well, and sometimes it is best not to speak. I merely held her, as I had before, and she grew calm. My body slipped out of hers and she drew back a bit, but not far. I took her hand between mine to give her reassurance.

“Please,” she said. “Forgive—”

“Forgive? And forgive what? There’s naught to forgive.”

Tears still did gleam by her cheeks. “D’ye understand my words?”

“Frightened—”

“Yea, the storm was a scary thing. It’s over now.”

“Frightened—now. Not storm.”

“Frightened of what we did? Nay, girl! It is the kindest thing a man and a woman can do for one another! D’ye understand my words? Do you?” She made no reply, and I had no way of knowing how much she followed my speech. But then I said, “I must go on deck, and see if there is damage,” and she understood that well enough, for she asked me in a whisper not to leave her. I told her it was my duty; and the leaving of her was ever so much easier now, with the magnetical pull of fleshly desire no longer holding me in its unshakeable grip. I drew on my cloak and patted her to show I meant no coldness by this withdrawal, and went without.

The sea was still high and water was sluicing over the deck, and the men were busy under Oliveira’s command doing their tasks of battening and belaying. But all was well enough, the rain nothing more than a fine warm spray, the lightning having moved off to the east where we could see it marching through the dark humps of the coastal hills, and the thunder a mere distant reverberance. To me Oliveira said, “I’ve an hour more of my watch, Piloto! No need of you on deck now!” And he grinned his toothy grin, as if to say, Go back to thy doxy, lad, have yourself another merry roll with her. I did think of him most kindly for that carnal but well-meant grin.

Yet did I make my rounds all the same, and only when I was certain that everything was secure did I return to my cabin. Matamba had not left my bed, but now she was tranquil. I lay down beside her and would have kissed her, which I had not done in that sudden and wild conjoining of ours; but she turned her head away, saying, “Nay, the mouth is for eating.”

At that I laughed. For who would find aught to object to in a sweet kiss? But I saw the great gulf that lay between us, that were two people out of different worlds.

We came close together and soon we were coupling again. And this time we did enact the rites of love no longer merely because we had been flung close together by the suddenness and violence of the storm— which I think was only the pretense we both had used, anyway—but now for sheer desirousness of it. And afterward of nights in my cabin on the homeward voyage we were unhesitating in our joinings, and did send the high wail of her pleasure and the answering rumble of my own through the ship again and yet again.

Though Matamba was scarce more than a girl she clearly had had much experience of these sexual matters. Her skills were considerable, yet in her way of going about the act she was wholly African, with practices most unfamiliar to me. I have already told you that she would not kiss, the meeting of mouths being deemed unclean in her tribe, lest there be an exchange of spittle from tongue to tongue. Nor did she care to have her private parts much caressed by my hand, nor to touch my own, except when as a particular favor to me she would rest her fingers lightly upon my member. And by no means would she countenance the putting of my mouth to her female zone, and I think she would sooner have died than do the like to me. In these things she did follow the customs of all her sort, rather than any private finicking fastidiousness, for never in African lands did I find a woman who was much fond of kissing or the other kind of mouthing: it is not their way, and they look with distaste upon Europeans who do such things.

On the other hand she was much given to tickling me, notably beneath the arms and along the thighs. The which startled and displeased me, both that it seemed frivolous in the making of love and that it was in itself not a likeable sensation to me; but when I asked her to desist, she burst into tears, thinking herself found unworthy. I learned afterward that such is the practice of her tribe, to tickle, that is as solemn to them as kissing can be among us, and is core and essence of their loveplay. Since she knew that I disliked it she attempted not to do it, but it was too deeply ingrained in her, and when the full heat of the game did come upon her she could not refrain from working her fingertips slyly into my sensitive places, the which I learned to accept from her.

So far as the manner in which coupling was achieved, there, too, she had her own strong preferences. Her favored way was to crouch above me, like one who squats by a riverside washing garments in the stream, and to lower herself until her loins were positioned above mine, and thus to impale herself. Then, too, she liked to lie alongside me and slide herself over me until I was imprisoned by her legs, as she had done that first time when the storm drove her into my bed. And often she turned and knelt with her back to me, so that I had her in the dog-fashion. What she did not care for at all was our familiar English way, the woman on her back with her legs drawn up and the man between them; this she found smothering and perilous, and somehow awkward. It was not the usage of her tribe, in fact, but I think the prime reason for her not wanting it that way was a deeper one. For during her time in slavery she was forcibly had by Portugals any number of times—they violating any handsome slave-wench without shame, whenever the fancy took them—and in such rapes they customarily flung themselves atop her, through which she came to loathe that manner of union. I may add that she loathed Portugals as well, despising everything about them, their faces and their smell and their filthiness of body. When she cried out to me from the corral that I should save her from the slave-masters, it was on account of my yellow hair and English face, for although she had no idea what an Englishman might be, she knew at first sight that I must be something quite different from a Portugal, and chose therefore to cast her lot with me. And when she discovered that I was indeed different, that my skin was not rancid with old stinks and grimes and that I would not shove my yard into her unheated slit at the first chance I got, her devotion to me manifested itself most touchingly. She followed me about the ship, as loving and tender as a puppy; and though she was courteous enough to the Portugal men, they being my comrades, she kept a cool distance between them and herself as far as such was possible in close quarters.

Thus it fell out that I did go to São Tomé a solitary man, and returned as a man of property, with my own private slave that was also the companion of my bed, and, in the best of ways between men and women, my friend.

For we were both lost souls set adrift from our native soil, two wanderers, two victims of seizure and imprisonment, and we clove to one another. It had been my first plan to set her free in Angola and allow her to return to her own land; but swiftly did it become evident to me, as I guided the pinnace down the coast from port to port, that I had no wish to dismiss her. Nor was she eager to leave me again, since in the journey back to her native province she would surely be taken in slavery again, if she were not devoured by Jaqqas or torn asunder by lions or gulped by coccodrillos. As we came to these conclusions we found ourselves rapidly drawing nigh in spirit, which charmed me greatly. I began to instruct her more fully in Portuguese, and she to teach me some African words, so that we needed no longer to be limited to the cumbersome business of miming that was the chief means of communication between us. She was a quick learner. I even taught her a few words of English, telling her that this was my private language, the language of my true nation, that was enemy to these Portugals among whom I did find myself. It was a joy, God wot, to feel good English syllables on my tongue again! Once in jest I had pretended with Dona Teresa a game of talking English to stir the fires of lust; but now with Matamba I did the like in earnest, for the hearing of mine own language in her mouth aroused me greatly.

So we lay together and she said, “God bless Her Protestant Majesty Queen Elizabeth,” and I laughed and caressed her and would have kissed her, if she had let me.

And she said, “Essex, Sussex, Somerset, York.”

“Northumberland, Suffolk, Gloucester, Kent,” said I.

And she said after me in her way, “Northumberland, Suffolk, Gloucester, Kent.”

It was a joyous time. Let the Portugals strive among themselves like serpents and basilisks for power, I told myself: let them lie and cheat and betray, and excommunicate each other with bell and book and candle, and scheme feveredly for advantage. It was not my way. I had carved out a small isle of solace for myself within their dark and tempestuous Africa. I had an occupation; I had my good health; now I had this Matamba of mine, too. It was my purpose henceforth to continue to live carefully and quietly until I could contrive somehow to effect my escape and my return to England, which was the one great canker in the sweetness of my life, that I was so far from home.

There was still the matter of the debt I had incurred in the buying of Matamba out of slavery. But that was easily enough dealt with, in the trading we carried out at the coastal depots. For by order of Don João de Mendoça—an order sustained and confirmed by Don Jeronymo—I stood a full partner with the Portugals of my crew in any enterprises we might conduct by way of commerce. And when we stopped once more in Loango on our southward way, those people did greet us cordially and relate that there had lately been a great hunting and slaughter of elephantos there, so that they had much merchandise to offer us, the which we were able mightily to profit upon.

The elephanto, I should say, is the most awesome of all the African beasts, the same colossus that accompanied the armies of great Hannibal that time he came to conquer Rome. It is found wandering free all over the Kongo land and Loango, and to a lesser extent in Angola, where also the dwellers are not so assiduous in the hunting of him. They are immense beasts, like unto houses that move. I have seen the imprint of their feet in the dust, in plain diameter four spans broad, and their ears are like great gray wrinkled cloaks, in which a man could hide himself. I was told in Loango that the elephantos do live one hundred and fifty years, and until the middle of their age they continue still in growing. Certainly have I seen and weighed divers of their tusks, and their weight amounted to two hundred pounds apiece, and more. These vast teeth are of course prized in civilized lands for the ivory that is cut and polished out of them.

But in Africa it is their tails that are richest valued, and from which much later I did create the fortune that for a time I assembled. They use these tails to beat away the flies that trouble them, and on their tails they have certain hairs or bristles as big as rushes or broom-sprigs, of a shining black color. The older they be, the fairer and stronger be the hairs, and they fetch a fine price, as I say, fifty hairs getting a thousand reis, that is, six of our shillings. The blacks of all these kingdoms braid the tail-hairs very finely, and wear them about their necks, and also the blackest and most glossy ones about their waists, displayed most proudly.

In the hunting of the elephantos there are several methods. They trap them by digging deep trenches in the places where they accustom to graze, which trenches are very narrow at the bottom, and broad above, so that the beast may not help himself and leap out when he is fallen into them. These trenches they cover with sods of earth, and grass, and leaves, and when the animal walks over them he falls into the hole. But another way is for light and courageous persons, that trust much to their swiftness in running, to lie in wait all smeared with elephanto dung and urine, so that the elephanto will not smell the human smell of them. Then when the beast ascends some steep and narrow place, they do come up behind them, and with a very sharp knife cut off their tails, the poor beast not being able in those straits easily to turn back to revenge himself, nor with his trunk to reach his enemy; and the hunter flees. It is a swift animal, because it makes very large strides, but in turning round it loses much time, and so the huntsman escapes in safety with his prize. And we in the marketplace of Loango did buy these things for our paltry beads and other gibcrack gewgaws that we had acquired in São Tomé, which we knew we would sell in São Paulo de Loanda far more valuably. If the Africans of this coast were seafaring folk, or had some skill at the merchant trade, it would not be so simple for the Portugals to turn such easy profits from them. But as things be, the wealth is open for the plucking, since that the native folk do not trade much with one another beyond their own borders, and leave a vacancy for enterprising Europeans to exploit them of their treasure. Well, and the race was ever to the swift; and so be it. So be it!

10

When we had returned to São Paulo de Loanda we did indeed hawk our cargo most beneficially, and I was able to put aside enough out of my share to repay the ten thousand reis I had borrowed of my shipmates, with some left over, the first money of my own I had possessed since leaving England. I installed Matamba at my cottage and showed her to my other slaves, who I think did resent her coming, inasmuch as she shared my bed and held other such privileges with me. They gave her evil looks and often played cruel tricks on her. But I dismissed one of them from my service, a Bakongo woman who had contempt for the tribe from which Matamba sprang; and the other two, a boy and an old woman, gave no more trouble.

The city was quiet. If there were any adherents to the former faction of Don João yet remaining, they were all now loyal to Don Jeronymo, and indeed I never heard Don João’s name mentioned. Whenever I passed the palace that had been his—which still was guarded and maintained, there being an official pretense that Don João would soon be returning from Portugal—I felt the sharp pricking of sorrow over the cruel murder of that man, who had been so generous with me. And of course I lamented also and always the slaying of Dona Teresa, and prayed that the assassins, at the last, might have spared her for beauty’s sake, though I did not think it very likely.

I comforted myself with Matamba, a simpler and warmer person than Dona Teresa, and good to be with, who was Teresa’s equal in matters of the flesh, I think, and whose sweet and eager nature had a charm not to be found in the other woman. Yet I do confess that I preferred Dona Teresa’s beauty. Though Matamba was ripe and supple of body, she was nevertheless a pure blackamoor, and I was not then so much of an African myself that I was able to find the highest joy in her flattened nose and her full lips. And when my caressing hands passed over the rough coarse slave-brand on the softest part of her thigh, or when I stroked her face and encountered the double row of tribal markings incised as cicatrices into her skin by way of ornament, I found myself against my will yearning for the satin perfection of that woman who was lost to me.

I had yet by me the tiny wooden idol that Dona Teresa had given me long ago, the which had survived all the hardships I had undergone. This thing I regarded as most private, and displayed it not, but kept it about me in my clothes, or beneath my pillow. But with Matamba dwelling at my side, it was certain she would discover it, and one day she did. She laid back my pillow and stared at it in solemn silence, so that I heard her hard breathing. Then she crossed herself five times running and whispered, “Mokisso! Mokisso!”

“It is nothing, Matamba.”

“Why do you have this?” she demanded.

I might have lied, and said I had found it in my wanderings, and was keeping it only as a curiosity-piece. But I saw no need to lie to a slave, and I cared not to lie to Matamba. So said I then, “It was given me by—a friend.”

“Throw it away! It is witchery!”

And she trembled, as though she had found the Devil’s hoofprint in the earth outside our door.

“Well, and if it is?” I said. “It has no power over me.”

“Do you know that?”

“I am my own man, and suffer no witching force.”

“Then throw it away,” she said again.

“But I find it pleasing. It is smooth to the touch, and well carved. And the friend who gave it to me is one that is dead, or so I think, and this is all that is left to me of her.”

“Of her?” said Matamba, and there was a very wifely something in her tone, that amused and angered me both.

“Dona Teresa da Costa was her name,” said I. “A very fine and noble Christian woman of high bearing, who—”

“She is no Christian, if she gives you this. She is a witch!”

“Come, Matamba, you are too harsh!”

“I know witching. I know mokisso-things. This is peril!”

“A harmless little carving.”

“An idol,” said she.

And now my wrath did rise, for I knew that she was right and I was wrong, which always angers one when one is determined not to give way; and I would not, by my faith, part with this gift of Teresa’s, if six Archbishops were to insist upon it. She tried to take it from me, I holding it in my hand, and I pushed at her and thrust her back, not gently, so that she fell to the edge of the bed. And when she looked up at me, her breasts rising and falling hard in her upset, there was a new look to her eyes, that said she was reminded I was still her master, and a man, for all that I seemed gentler than the other men she had known.

I said, “I meant you no harm. But this you must understand: the carving is mine, and it is precious to me, and I will not destroy it, and I will have you do it no harm.”

“Then it will do you harm. I would not have that.”

“Let me be, Matamba. I ask that you let me be.”

“If you will keep it, then keep it. You are the master. But it has mokisso in it. It is not Christian. It can harm you.”

“I will risk that,” said I, and I ended the matter. And for some days I carried the carving about so she could not get rid of it; but then I saw she respected my wish, and I returned it to its place in the cottage. Whenever she saw it she crossed herself many times, but she did not raise the issue again.

Some few days after my homecoming Don Jeronymo d’Almeida sent for me, to offer me a new task. To him I did go in an ill grace, knowing him to have treacherously conspired the deaths of those two my friends, and wanting to have no warmth between me and such a Judas. But yet I had to swallow back my qualms, for he was governor and I was at his mercy; I could upbraid him all I liked over Don João and Dona Teresa, and still at the end of it he would only have me flogged, or buried away in the dungeon and forgotten, and what would that have availed me, what would it have availed Don João, Dona Teresa?

Don Jeronymo greeted me brusquely and in his usual harsh and fierce way. He was intending now, he said, to launch his expedition into the troublesome province of Kisama, that had altogether thrown off Portuguese rule. That province has its beginning on the south bank of the River Kwanza, and runs southward from there in the direction of Benguela, where there is an important stopping-place for the refreshing of Portuguese ships headed around the Cape of Bona Speranza.

It was perilous in the extreme to allow that province to remain in rebellion, and so, as soon as the São Tomé men arrived, Don Jeronymo meant to lead a large force into that land. His plan was to go by ship up the Kwanza to the former presidio of Muchima and rebuild it, and then to march overland due south to a place called Ndemba, where rich salt mines were. At Ndemba he would found another presidio, and garrison it with one hundred men: this would become his base for the reconquest of Kisama Province.

My role in all this was simply to serve as ferry-pilot. I was to take troop-ships up and down the Kwanza, delivering his soldiers to Muchima and to the larger presidio farther up the river at Masanganu.

Well, I had no great craving to go anywhere near Masanganu, where I had contracted that terrible fever that had me raving and feeble for the better part of a year, and like to have cost me my life altogether. But I reminded me of Pinto Cabral’s words, that once one has survived such a fever, one does not take it again, if one has a sturdy frame. So a new voyage to Masanganu seemed to me more bothersome, on account of the awful heat, than in a real way dangerous to me. Yet I did hate the place and would gladly have been sent elsewhere, even to that salt-mine town of Ndemba. But that could not be reached by water and in Don Jeronymo’s mind I was reckoned to be a pilot, not a soldier.

I was put in thought once again, also, of Don João’s promise to let me go home to England after I had done him some months service as a seaman here. Already that promise was some two years old, or nearly, and I saw no sign of its fulfillment. For it had been cast in abeyance during the strife between Don João and the d’Almeidas, and surely it was suspended entirely by Don João’s death, or rather made entirely null and void: Don Jeronymo would hardly release a useful pilot in time of war. That gave me great bitterness. But I dared not bring the issue to Don Jeronymo, knowing his ferocity and the precariousness of my position. I had no choice now but to go on serving my Portuguese masters in all that they demanded of me, while awaiting God’s grace in a change of my fortune.

So once again I did voyage to Masanganu, with a flat-bellied frigate that seemed to me more like the ugly boats that the Dutch call scows. We loaded it up with Portugals who looked most gloomy and distraught, for they felt sure they were going to their deaths, if not from native spears and arrows then from the plagues and black fluxes of Masanganu; and up the river we went, past the sluggish evil coccodrillos snoring on this shore and that, past the thick green walls of vegetation that concealed God knew what terrible mysteries and horrors, past the places where the hippopotamuses yawned and the long-legged water-birds stalked about like things of ill omen.

Into the zone of heavy foul stinking wet heat we traveled, and indeed the men began to sicken. But that was no business of mine, and I delivered them dead or alive at Masanganu or at the restored fort at Muchima, and went back for more, and did it all again. The chief thing that I remember of this onerous and dreary shuttling is my first sight of one of the gigantic serpents of this land, the which I would not have credited had I not seen it with mine own eyes.

This monster I did behold at Masanganu, when we were unloading our cargo of soldiers. The blacks of the place gave a great shout of a sudden, and waved their arms and did a kind of dance in their fright, and then we saw it coming through the low bushes along a foot-path much used by us. It was, without any hyperbole, twenty-five feet in length, I assert, and it had a head as big as a calf, and when it moved from side to side in its coilings it disturbed the bushes as much as though twenty people were advancing through them. We drew back in alarm at the sight of it, fearing that it might gobble one of us with a sudden lunge, or smite at us with its immense yellow tail; but then some among us took their muskets and fired bullets into it, which halted its advance.

It was a monstrous long time in dying, too, beating both its great head and its nether end against the ground in a slow hammering way. I think it did not know it was mortally wounded, but thought only that it had been set upon by some kind of stinging flies, or angry bees, if it thought anything at all. But at last its life left it and the natives, jumping forward most boldly now, hacked from it its head, after which it convulsed anew and continued to move for some minutes.

The meat of these serpents is eaten with great enjoyment by the blackamoors, who claim it to be a delicacy. They offered a share to us, but found no takers. Afterward I saw the bones of it, amazing delicate and beautiful, littered out over what seemed to be half an acre of the town. One Portugal who had had experience with these beasts told us a tale of a somewhat smaller one, but still immense, that was encountered near São Paulo de Loanda in the early days of its founding. A soldier did cut this one in two pieces by a lusty stroke of its scimitar, he said, but even that did not kill it, and both pieces crawled away in the thick bushes. And soon afterward, two other people happening by, the half that bore the head did crawl out again and seize upon them, devouring them almost whole. I cannot attest that I saw such a marvel with mine own eyes, only that the tale was told to me; but I am inclined to believe in its verity, knowing what I have come to know about the strength and persistence of these animals. The same Portugal told me that the Jaqqas, when they took one of these serpents alive, would urge it to gulp down one of their prisoners, and then would eat snake and man themselves, together at a single feast. This, too, I never witnessed, though I witnessed plenty else among the man-eaters.

I did my Masanganu service, finding the place plaguey hot and discomforting, as always, though I suffered not at all from its fevers. This took me all through the late months of Anno 1593 and the early seasons of ‘94.

Meanwhile reports came to us that Don Jeronymo, supplemented by soldiers of São Tomé, had carried out a great sweep through Kisama and had reduced nearly all of the rebellious sobas to submission. The work was done and I was looking toward an end to my river-shuttling, and a return to São Paulo de Loanda and the arms of my sweet Matamba. It would be a joy again to breathe the sea-breezes of the coast, I did tell myself, for even a torrid place like São Paulo de Loanda seems but a jolly holiday-place when it be compared with such an outpost of Satan’s realm as Masanganu.

But then came messengers with deep disheartening news. Don Jeronymo, having completed his military work and founded his new presidio at Ndemba, had elected to go in quest of the silver mines of Kambambe in the east. Many a brave fool had been broken in the search for these mines, which for all I know are mere myth; and on his way toward them Don Jeronymo was smitten down by an ague, and had been taken back to São Paulo de Loanda gravely ill. Upon making this hasty retreat the governor had placed command of his soldiers in the hands of Balthasar d’Almeida and Pedro Alvares Rebello, two men whose judgment was not highly praised by their fellow Portugals; and those two, seeking, I suppose, to win quick fame through some independent exploit, had gone hallooing off into most bleak and inhospitable terrain in search of a certain wild native chief, Kafuche Kambara by name. That determined rebel was roving somewhere southward of Masanganu; and in the better hope of snaring him, they were summoning nearly all the garrison from that town, leaving only a small force there.

In the hasty assembly of soldiers no one healthy was spared from the service. And to my surprise and dismay I found myself compelled to take part in this rash expedition. There on the list was my name pricked out:

Andres Battell, Piloto.

Of the arts of foot-soldiery I had never known much. That is not a great English skill, we being an island race. When enemies have come to our shores we have fought valiantly but, I do admit, with little success, which is why the Romans of Caesar were able to subdue us, and the Angles and Saxons who came later, and the Normans of William. We are a brave folk—the bravest, I think, in all the world—but we have never given heed to mastering the drills and maneuvers of combat by land, that require us to march like a single animal with many heads that think alike, for that is not the English way. We are too much independent. And therefore, knowing this weakness or fault in ourselves, we have since King William’s time taken good care that no enemy shall ever reach our shores again, and none ever has, and I suspect that by God’s grace and the strength of our bold seamen we will be protected forever in England against further invasion.

In my own family they say there was a grandfather of my father who fought well in the wars between Lancaster and York, but other than that one we have been all of us men of the sea, as befits a family of the Essex shore. So it was a new and most unwelcome thing to me to find myself decked out in Portugee armor, with a gleaming polished casque to keep my head asweat and a great hulking breastplate and all those other foolish massive things, and then to have to go marching in one plodding step after another over an interminable wasteland. God’s bones, how repellent unto me! Yet had I no choice in the matter. I could not say, “My contract with you Portugals is to be a sea-pilot for you.” I had no rights whatsoever among these people. I lived by their sufferance alone. I was a prisoner of war, that could be clapped in dungeon by any commander at any time. So when I was told to march, why, I did march, and no grumble of it.

And O! the grievous dismal land we marched into! Here were no lush and leafy jungles, here were no steaming heavy vapors rising from ponds and swamps. This was a dry land in a dry season, a place where it was easy to believe that rain had fallen last in the time of King Arthur, and before that perhaps in Julius Caesar’s day. The soil was a parched orange thing, cracked like old plaster where the sun had riven it, and it was all but barren. Bleached skulls and bones of animals lay scattered on the ground as omens of mortality. On that seared plain terrible crookbacked thorny trees did sprout, and other low vegetation that might have been engendered in the troubled dreams of some disordered deity. It was an empty land, except here and there where the earth was less brutal and a few native settlements clung to a sort of life: dome-shaped huts of flimsy branches and leaves, arrayed in circles of seven or nine, occupied by sad-eyed scrawny blackamoors who fouled their own territory with scatterings of bones and seeds and broken calabashes and other rubble, and hung withered chunks of smoked meat in the leafless branches of the trees.

Only once was there during that dreary miserable march any moment of beauty or joy, and that was when we entered a zone of grassy pasture that was grazed by the animal called here the zevvera, which is wondrous to behold. This beast is like a horse, but that his mane and his tail and his body is distinguished by streaks of black and white that are most highly elegant, and look as if it were done by art. These zevveras are all wild and live in great herds, and will suffer a man to come within shot of them, and let them shoot three or four times at them before they will run away. When they do run, it is in huge number, and the sight is something that not the most doltish dullard would ever forget, for they dazzle the eye with the movement of their white and black stripes, that seem to have an inner motion of their own beyond the motion of the animal itself.

We startled these zevveras and brought down a few with our muskets, and the rest fled, so as to create that miraculous effect of a river of stripes moving away from us. No man has ever tamed one of these striped horses to ride upon him, and I think no one ever will. For they do have a fierce independence of spirit, that I admire greatly.

I had one other pleasure on this journey, most unexpected, which was the companionship of my gentle friend Lourenço Barbosa, the tax-collector. Certainly he was no military man. But when I arrived of Masanganu on that last voyage in the scow I found him already there, to make some sort of enumeration or survey of Portuguese settlement in the inland region; and when generals Alvares Rebello and d’Almeida sent forth their request for an assembly of troops to conquer Kafuche Kambara, Barbosa chose to go with them instead of to remain in Masanganu. I believe he simply wished to taste a little of the excitement and fury of war, after having spent all his days traveling about the borders of the realm making lists and registers and entries in his ledger.

I did not even know until the second day out of Masanganu that he was among us. But then I saw in the column just before mine a distinguished older man with an elegant purple plume to his hat, instead of a metal helmet, and though scarce believing it could be he, I hurried ahead and found him. And we did have a cheering reunion, each being greatly surprised to find the other in such an unlikely place.

We shared wine, which he had brought with him in a hamper, and we spoke of what had befallen us in the ten months or thereabouts since last we had met. Barbosa had been all over the inland, into such provinces as Malemba and Bondo and Bangala and Matamba, where scarce any Portugal ever went, and I marveled at his diligence in making surveys of such remote places. He told me many a tale of these lands: such as the great province of Cango, fourteen days journey from the town of Loango, which is full of mountains and rocky ground, and full of woods, and has great store of copper. The elephantos in this place do excel, and there are so many that the warehouses do overflow with the teeth of them being stored to go for market in Loango. And I heard from him of certain monster apes of the inland, the great one called the pongo and the smaller one named the engeco, which are much like wild hairy men, but cannot speak and have no more understanding than a beast.

When he told me this and much else, that astonished me beyond words, I related of my voyage to São Tomé, and that I had acquired a slave-girl from Matamba who was a Christian and had become my bedfellow, and such. Then Barbosa asked me what news I had from São Paulo de Loanda, for that he had not been in the capital of the colony in many months. In particular he craved to know whether Don João de Mendoça had returned from Portugal, and if so what had befallen between him and Don Jeronymo d’Almeida.

At this I grew most downcast, for I had not yet come round to telling him of this matter owing to the painfulness of it to me. Gravely I said, “Nay, I think Don João will never return, for Don Jeronymo has plotted to do him to death.”

“What is it you say?”

“So I heard it from one of my sailors,” I declared, and repeated what had been said to me by Mendes Oliveira, that two rascals had been hired to throw Don João and Dona Teresa overboard in the voyage to Europe. At that, Barbosa did cross himself several times and looked much moved, with the beginnings of tears in his eyes just showing.

He said, “Don João was the only hope of this land, to govern wisely and with effect.”

“Aye. So I felt also.”

“But can it truly be? He is so shrewd, surely he would have guarded himself against such an attack!”

“I do pray so,” I replied. “I know only what was told me, that the scheme was so ordered by Don Jeronymo, and that when I departed last from São Paulo de Loanda there was no word of the return of Don João.”

“But none of his death, either?”

“Nay, no news of that.”

“Then there is still hope for him,” said Barbosa. But that hope seemed scant to me.

Having this man by my side as I marched made the burden of it much more light. Within a few days more we arrived at the camp where the main body of the Portuguese army had assembled, and a fine grand force it was, filling half the plain. There must have been seven to eight hundred Portugals there, along with an army of their black allies that I could not count, it was so huge, to a number of twenty thousand or even thirty or forty thousand. All these were arrayed in a long confused mass, the Portugals in their tents with some horse grazing about, and , the Negro auxiliaries to the side.

The way it is done with these auxiliaries is that the Portugals have out of Kongo a black nobleman, which is known to be a good Christian and of good behavior. He has brought out of Kongo some one hundred Negroes that are his followers. This Macikongo, as he is known, has the rank of tandala, or general, over the black camp, and has authority to kill, to put down lords and make lords, and has all the chief doings with the Negroes.

So now the loyal sobas and their armies and the black tandala who was their high master and the Portugal troops all were drawn up together getting ready to go in quest of that unruly and powerful soba Kafuche Kambara. It seemed beyond possibility to me that that chieftain could withstand the Portugals, owing to the vast size of the army that would take the field against him, with all these blackamoors and the many Portugal troops.

But God in His wisdom doth prepare many severe surprises for those who go too proudly upon the world.

The surprise that befell the Portugals on the twenty-second day of April in Anno 1594, which I did witness and which came near to taking from me my life, had the form of a sudden and most terrible ambush as the Portugals and their allies went their way through the countryside. For a great army may sometimes be so great that it is cumbered by its own size, much as those elephantos are of which I spoke, that venture into narrow places and cannot turn around, and have their tails lopped off by a cunning hunter. As we moved into a deep gorge, so long and narrow that one might scarce insert a picktooth into it, I felt a sudden sense of utter alarm over just such a likelihood, I know not why. Balthasar d’Almeida and Pedro Alvares Rebello were leading the way as if they were Alexander the Great and Hannibal, and the black tandala did spur his immense Negro horde along behind them, when in a trice the armies of Kafuche Kambara sprang upon us out of nowhere, the same manner as in the old Greek tale the armed men did mysteriously arise around the hero Cadmus when he sowed the earth with dragon teeth.

This was my first view of land warfare, and a wild and barbarous scene it was. In Angola and also in the Kongo they do fight more by cunning than by direct onslaught, depending much on surprise. All about us had secretly been created paths armed with thorns, and stakes tipped with the strong and hard nsako wood that the Portugals call iron wood, and traps consisting of ditches covered over with earth and branches. And when the enemy fell upon us there was immediate panic, with large numbers of our force behind driven into these traps at once, and either perishing straightaway or else suffering such injury that they were useless thereafter.

The native armies here do always fight on foot, this land having no horses except the wild and unmanageable zevveras. They divide their force into several groups, fitting themselves according to the situation of the field. The moves of their army are guided and directed by certain several sounds and noises, that proceed from the captain-general, who goes into the midst of the army and there signifies what is to be put into execution, that is to say, either that they shall join battle, or else retire, or put on forward, or turn to the right hand, and to the left hand, or to perform any other warlike action. For by these several sounds distinctly delivered from one another, they do all understand the commandments of their captain, as in European armies we do understand the pleasure of our general by the sundry strokes of the drum and the sounds of the trumpet.

Three principal sounds make these messages of war, and they were horrid and frightening in my ears as they burst upon us. One is uttered by great rattles hollowed out of a tree and covered with leather, which they strike with certain little handles of ivory. Another comes from a three-cornered instrument made of thin plates of iron, which are hollow and empty within. They make them ring by striking them with wooden wands; and oftentimes they do also crack them, to the end that the sound should be more harsh, horrible, and warlike. The third instrument is the mpunga that I met in the land of Loango, that is the fife made from the hollowed tusk of the elephanto, which yields a warlike and harmonious music. With these devices they signal and encourage one another from one part of the battlefield to the other, and some valiant and courageous soldiers go before the rest, and strike their bells and dance, and stir up the emotions of battle, and by the notes they play do signify unto them what danger they are in, and what weapons face them.

The military dress of our attackers was frightful. The high lords wore headdresses garnished with plumes made of the bright feathers of the peacock, and those of the ostrich and other birds, which made them to seem men of greater stature than they are, and terrible to look upon. From the girdle upwards they were all naked, and had hanging about them from their necks and down to their flanks certain chains of iron, with rings upon them as big as a man’s little finger, which they used for a certain military pomp and bravery. From the girdle downward they had linen breeches, and wore boots in the Portuguese style. The common soldiers did not wear much, except that they were garbed about the loins. For weapons these people use bows and arrows with barbed iron tips, and clubs made of ironwood branches, and daggers, and lances that exceed the height of a man. The sword is not a weapon of battle among them, generally being carried only by kings and nobles as a mark of their office. Nor do they have the use of musket and shot, for which God be praised, though by the folly of some Portugal and Dutch traders, and some French lately, these most deadly weapons are being now sold into their hands. I do not see how the civilized races of the world will withstand the onslaught that is sure to come, once all the black and red savages do comprehend the use of firearms, that are the most terrible weapon ever loosed in the world.

But that day it was enough for Kafuche Kambara and his men to employ arrows and clubs and daggers. Like a shining black tide did they spew down upon us, making their ghastly music and shouting their war-cries, and they did cause a river of blood to flow from us. They came in waves, one group fighting until weary, then being called back by the drums and fifes and bells and fresh warriors fighting in their places.

Our black auxiliaries at once entered into panic, for all that the brave tandala and his sobas tried to form them into fighting array. It was no use, for surprise is fatal to them, and whole legions of them began to flee, trampling others and breaking down all order.

At the very midst of this the Portugals formed a stout group, back to back, shoulder to shoulder, and with their muskets tried to blow an opening in the ranks of the attackers. And sure indeed the firing did great harm. But fighting with musket is a slow business at such a wild melee, when one is loading and firing and reloading and all: in a proper formation the musket cannot be bettered, with defenders properly placed, but we were caught unprepared and we died by the dozens. They came in upon us jabbing with their lances and slashing with their daggers, and if we shot one down, two more confronted us, and all the while their deadly arrows soared above us and struck us most sorely.

This killing was a new thing for me, at least at such close range, so that I knew the face of my victim and smelled his sweat as I despatched him. It is true that when I did ship aboard the Margaret and John in the campaign against the Spanish Armada I took part in warfare that was no child’s sport, indeed killing of the most real kind. At that time I loaded heavy shot into the guns and jumped back and watched the balls smash into the sides of Spanish ships, that promptly went up into flames and were shattered: that surely is warfare. Certainly many Spaniards died then, and I had my share of the sending of them to Hell. But there is a difference—O, a very great difference!—between toiling in a gun crew on a ship to fire balls at faceless enemies some hundreds of yards away aboard another vessel, and reaching out with your own hand to snuff the life of one single man who stands right before you. The one is a remote deed, the other a killing most intimate. So this was a baptism of slaughter for me here that day. I did not think of the death of Tristão Caldeira de Rodrigues as my killing of him, but only as his perishing by his own folly, that would not have happened but by his greed.

In the company of some two score Portugals I fought my way through the mob of howling ring-jangling blackamoor warriors to a low rise east of the main encounter. On the top of this pale sandy ridge there grew tall many-armed leafless plants whose limbs were bright green and fleshy and armed with most terrible black thorns. We squeezed ourselves between the ranks of these close-packed little trees, in the doing of which their thorns did cut me most cruelly, so that trails of blood ran down my skin in thirty places. But once we were behind them, these formidably armed vegetations formed a secure palisado that shielded us from the furious advance of the foe. We lay down or crouched, and aimed our muskets with care, and sent our shot into their hearts or into their heads by one and one and one, which created a heaping mound of fallen blacks below our ridge.

And while we did this killing, we also ventured out, a few of us at a time, to locate and bring to safety such other Portugals as passed our way. When we saw any, we slipped through that evil thicket and waved to them with our arms and cried out in the Portugal tongue until they heard us over the din of the battle, and if they were wounded we went to their side to fetch them, while our companions aimed their muskets at any enemy that periled us.

I myself went out four times in these forays, and on the fourth it was Barbosa whom I found and brought safely in. He had been skewered by a dart in the fleshy part of his arm; but he refused my attentions and called for fresh shot for his musket, and lay down beside us to fight.

So it went for perhaps the half part of an hour. We scarce had time to draw a peaceful breath, but that a new wave of the attackers came toward us. The hideous sound of their little ringing bells that dangled from their bodies did fright us terribly, and the music of their battle-orders screeched and thundered above all other sounds. Little flying insects no bigger than midges hovered over me like a buzzing cloud, settling in my sweat and most especially in the rivulets of blood, thickening and sticky, from the many gashes and gouges the green thorn-plants had inflicted upon my skin.

So long as we held safe behind our natural palisado, they could not reach us. But we had only so much powder and so much shot, and no matter how loud we called upon Jesus and the Apostles, they were not likely to supply us more.

First this Portugal and then that one exhausted his ammunition, so that our position became hopeless. The savages did crawl low and try forcing their way through the thorns, which gave them less trouble than they did us. Some worked on the outside, in the undermining of the bushes with their clubs and lances, but the doing of this they found most difficult. Yet others were able to hack entry, chopping at the limbs of the plants and cutting them apart, from which sundered places a strange milky blood did flow.

Barbosa, beside me, seized the first of them who penetrated our refuge, digging his hands into the thick wool of the man’s hair and pulling him down.

“Yours!” he cried to me, and I smote the man with the butt of my empty musket, so that his head cracked and he pitched downward into the sand, blood gushing from his ears. Barbosa did seize the foeman’s lance, and thrust it robustly into the next who ventured through the breach in the shrubbery, while I in turn dragged his body inward and piled it atop the first, to repair the breach. And so we fought on and on for long minutes, that seemed days to me.

In the meanwhile archers of the enemy did aim their shafts toward us in our place of sanctuary. Most of these struck the plants and were embedded therein, making more of the milky fluid gush forth—some of which, striking my lips and one eye, did sting me most fiercely, and my eyelid swelled so great that for a time I was hard put to see. For these were poison-plants, whose milk had the very fire of Satan in it, and whose deadly nature did manifest itself by the outgrowth of thorns on their skins.

A few of the arrows finding their way between the tight-laced branches worked damage among us. Shielded as we were, we suffered many injuries, and now we no longer dared venture out to recover others of our company. It seemed only a brief while before we must needs be overwhelmed. I cursed the inanity of our generals, that had led us into this impasse, and I wished a thousand times for the snugness of the dungeon at São Paulo de Loanda, where there were no ungodly plants to bathe me in their searing milk nor wild savages to threaten me with arrows. But as I thought such thoughts I also fought most strenuously, using my musket’s butt until the weapon cracked in two and I tossed it aside, and then employing a lance that I took from a fallen African, opening with it the guts of more than several of our enemies. Yet were they hundreds to our dozens, and their arrows came whistling and singing in through the increasingly large openings in our palisado, and how long could we endure?

There was yet another thorny rise a fair distance behind ours. Someone among us proposed that we effect a retreat to that, and attempt thereby to lose ourselves in a parched forest that lay on the far side. If we withdrew far enough, it might be that no pursuers would detect us, and we might escape, for winning this battle was hopeless and merely surviving was our chief goal. This seemed the best of a host of unsatisfying stratagems, and we began it, some of us crawling backward while others guarded the thorny barrier before it.

But as the rearward movement commenced, three Africans did succeed in breaking open a fair gap in the thorn-plants, and a pack of them came rushing through. We struck down the first, but more were after, and we had not enough men to deal with them all. To my distress I saw Barbosa struggling with two at once, and he no hearty bravo, only an old man of gentle demeanor unused to such brawls. I made toward him.

“Nay,” he cried. “Flee! Flee! I will hold them!”

That I could not countenance. So I came upon his foes, which now numbered three, and seized by the hair one great blackamoor with his cheeks painted all crimson and purple, and drew his face across a row of thorns, which wrung a hellish cry from him and sent him reeling away, blinded, and his face newly colored even further now with a mix of milky fluid of the plant and blood from his wounds. A second enemy I did catch on the tip of my lance and haul away from Barbosa, and then with a shift of my weight I spitted him through like a lamb, so thoroughly and well that I was not able to withdraw my lance, it being snagged on some interior part of him. Barbosa meanwhile had drawn his dagger and was keeping the last of his attackers at bay, chopping the air at him and defying him to come nearer. That one I did smite in the back with my fist and across the temple with the side of my other hand, a blow that I think took the life from him, for he fell like a clubbed ox.

For a moment all was tranquil in the place where we stood. My friend did turn to me with warm gratitude in his eyes, and he began to speak. But such calm on the battlefield is both deceptive and perilous, for oft it leads to worser things. All of a sudden a shower of arrows burst upon us in our clearing. One of them pierced me, taking me high in the back just where my left arm grows from my trunk. It passed through the flesh while not hitting vital parts. But so intent was I on other matters that I think I did not take the trouble to feel the fire of it; for in the same instant another arrow caught Barbosa through the throat, standing out on both sides of his neck like some new kind of ornament that I hope unto God does not become the fashion in any land where I may end my days. He said something that was only half a sound, all bubble and gurgle, and his eyes went very bright and then lost their sheen. I caught him as he fell, but there was no saving him: his wind was interrupted and he was already choking on his own phlegm and blood, or perhaps even then dead. All I could do was lower him gently to the ground.

In so doing I perceived for the first time the pain of my own wound. It burned like the stinging of a thousand thousand bees all biting in the same place. The shaft was slender but long, and jutted cumbersomely about me. But one of the Portugals, running up, employed some trick of chopping off the feathered end and driving the main part of the shaft swiftly through the wound, which knocked the breath from me but freed me of the arrow.

“Come,” he said. “There is still a moment for fleeing.” I looked about. Barbosa was wholly beyond my help. The archers were aiming elsewhere at the moment, for other bands of Portugals were deployed on the far side of the crest. Most of our people had begun their flight to safety, and now I would do that also. I turned me away from that place of horrors and ran, stumbling and falling, rising again, stumbling, rolling once headlong into the warm sand, getting up, stumbling onward. I did not think I would live another ten minutes; and just then I was so weary and so sick at heart that I almost welcomed my release.

11

I reached the far crest; I dropped to the ground and wriggled once more through an infernal hedge of those leafless thorny plants; I arrived to the far side, where all was quiet, and looked back and saw the battle raging in the distance. It was moving ever onward away from me, and now was only a muddle of distant shouts and bells and drums, an event seen through a haze. I crouched there and suddenly I began violently to weep—not from grief, I trow, nor from fear, but only from the complete black weariness of my body and spirit, in every bone, in every fiber. But I took some kind of healing from the tears.

When that fit was done, and it was only a brief one, I did examine my wound and I found it to be ugly and raw but not in a large way damaging: there was a numbness about the place where the arrow had ripped through the flesh, and I knew that later on I would feel a pain and an aching where now I could feel nothing, but it would not otherwise hamper me. For the moment I was in more of discomfort from the hundred fiery cuts and gouges in my skin than from that wounding.

I scouted about and found seven Portugals, all wounded in great or slight fashion, that were hiding nearby in the sands. We gathered ourselves together, a sad and battered remnant. I knew none of them, for they all were the soldiers of São Tomé; but two of them recognized me, having seen me during my visit to that island. One, that had a horrid wound to his jaw, did a sort of grin with half his face and said, “We could use that slave-girl of yours here now, English, to bind up our injuries, eh?”

I made a shrug my sole reply. At that time I did not think I would see my Matamba ever again, and I was heartsore over the death of Barbosa, who of all the Portugals I had encountered in these years of my captivity had been the truest and gentlest of friends, and whose body I had not even been able to rescue from the vultures that already were darkening the sky.

Shortly afterward came two more Portugals to us, men of São Paulo de Loanda, who told us that Balthasar d’Almeida and his fellow general had made their escape by horse, but that nearly all the other Portugals had been slain by the remorseless warriors of Kafuche Kambara.

“The dead ones are the happy ones,” said one of the São Tomé men. “Theirs was a swift going. Ours will be slow and very thirsty, I wager you.”

With that he commenced an uttering of gloomy prayers.

“Wait,” I said. “In five days we can be at Masanganu, can we not?”

“Do you know the way?” asked another Portugal.

“And where will we have food or drink?” said another.

“The blackamoors will hunt us down,” muttered one other. “We are already dead men, only we still do move about, and deceive ourselves thus that we live.”

I wanted to make some inspiring speech, as I had long ago made when I was a castaway in Brazil and found myself also with men of melancholy and defeated aspect. But I could not force the words past my lips. I was too morbid of soul myself just then, too close to mine own defeat. Even though the heart of the battle now had passed us by, and we were not likely again to be molested by our enemy, we now faced a task beyond all possibility, of marching back without supplies and without knowledge of the route across this terrible desert, having no weapons to fend off beasts of prey, and bearing wounds that from day to day were sure to sap such little strength as now we had. I did not intend to give myself up to despair, for giving up is not my style and despair is not my favored tipple. But neither am I prone to embracing folly, and folly it did seem indeed to think we would come alive out of this place. And so I had little to say or think by way of good cheer.

The Portugals went at their praying. They passed around some beads that one man had, and a crucifix of another. I did not partake of the comforts of those objects.

For all their devotions, though, these men had little true faith. For one did declare, “God hath forsaken us,” and the others nodded and took up the theme and embellished it, with many a somber statement that we had for our sins been cast into this valley of the shadow. And at this sort of dark talk something rose up in me that I think is wholly English within me, that does not like to rush forward and claim defeat as a bride, and, though I had not changed my own estimates of the chances of our surviving, I burst out with, “Nay, what good do such words do us? We are alive thus far, are we not? When all our comrades are dead? Rejoice in that much, that we yet live.”

“Not much for rejoicing am I, Englishman, when I know I have but days to live.”

“Fear not,” I said. “God will provide.”

“Aye,” said the Portugals bitterly. “He will provide more torment, and He will provide more pain, and a lingering slow brutish death.”

There was no use disputing it with them. We sat and stared and waited in silence for the day to end, for in our weakened state it seemed best to move about only in the cooler night hours. One of the Portugals, who had some skill as a surgeon, moved among us, binding wounds and offering bites of fruit from a pouch he carried. I marveled at that—that he would share his food and not save it all for himself, as I imagined a Portugal would do; but that was not right of me to think, for Portugals are not vile people, even if they have not in every way our English notion of honor. The sweetness of the fruit did refresh me, and I stood and walked about, though my head was swimming with my tiredness.

The chief center and tumult of the battle was altogether gone from us now. I saw in the distance only the bloody bodies of the fallen, and the vultures flapping about them, seeking out the most choicest titbits.

And then I saw an even more sinister thing: five naked black men that came out of another direction, the south-west, that had been quiet all the day. Three were very tall with elongated tapering limbs, and two were short and broad and exceeding powerful of frame, and all that they wore were the weapons strapped about their waists, except that one had a collar fastened around his neck, and every one had his body painted in white with certain symbols and emblems. They moved in a single file, very silent, like cats, with the tallest in the front and the second tallest at the end of the file.

I had seen such as these before, and I took no joy in seeing of them now. For I knew them to be Jaqqas, and my heart sank within me. God will provide, I had said, and God had indeed provided. But, I thought, what He has sent us are demons to hurry us to our last repose.

And yet, and yet, something within me was aroused with a fascination. As I have said before: I find myself drawn to the darkness, to the strange obscure subterraneous mysteries, I know not why. The great coccodrillo that had come out of the river to me on that desert isle where I was cast away in Brazil had worked a magnetism on me, and so also had the Jaqqa prince standing by himself in the forest on the first voyage to Masanganu, and the dead one in Loango. And now I stared at these five emissaries of Satan as they marched across the horizon and I could not take my eyes away, for they exerted an irresistible pull on my soul.

They moved through the battlefield shambles, examining the dead, prodding this one and that, turning him over, feeling his flesh the way one might poke and scrutinize meat in a butcher-shop, seeing how much fat there was and how much sinew, and how firm the texture. I that had seen cannibals before, in the forests behind the town of Rio de Janeiro and after my shipwreck, knew what these men were about here, and it did chill my blood.

With great calmness and in no hurry they chose out of all the hundreds and hundreds in that field of gore three corpses, all of them blackamoors, as though white man’s flesh was inferior upon their palates. These three they hoisted to the shoulders of the three Jaqqas in the midst of the file, the one that wore the collar and the two that were short and very muscular, and, looking well satisfied at their scavenging, they continued onward, crossing from south to north.

Then did they notice us.

We had not moved nor spoken all the while that they were prowling about. We huddled in our little sandy declivity, praying not to be observed; for although we were ten men and they were five, we were all of us spent and wounded, and we had no weapons other than empty muskets and broken lances, and there was not a man among us who had the least further taste for fighting that day. So shrank we down from view; but the Jaqqas paused, they sniffed the air like troubled leopards, they turned in circles to scan the terrain, and then, without a word, they put down their burden of dead men and commenced moving toward us.

“We are lost,” said the Portugal surgeon. “These are the man-eaters, the Jaqqas.”

I said, “And why should they trouble to slay us, when enough dead men do lie before us to feed all their nation for half a month?”

“That meat on the ground will spoil in days,” the surgeon answered. “We remain fresh until we are slaughtered. We will be captives, and when their appetites require it we will be eaten.”

But none of us made a move to flee. We were all so feeble and frail with strain, and they all looked to be as fleet as zevveras. And a time comes to every man when his death is upon him and he knows that there is no escaping it, and so he merely stands and waits.

I confess that of, all the deaths that I had imagined for myself in the idle hours of my boyhood, when one thinks much on death and strives to understand its nature, the one death I had never envisioned was that of being roasted and devoured by my own fellow men. Which was not a pleasing notion to me; and yet how does it matter, when you are dead, whether you become food for worms or fishes or ants, or Jaqqas? You are dead; that is the essence of the thing; and it seemed to me now that I would very soon be coming to the end of my journey.

The Jaqqas neared us and stood in a ring around us, with their hands resting lightly on the hilts of their long daggers. And I saw a gesture pass from the collared one to the very tall one that seemed their leader, and it was plainly a gesture of inquiry, without accompanying words, to which the leader made quick silent reply with a single shake of his left hand. I suspected that the collared one was asking permission to kill us, and the permission was denied. In this afterward I found out that I was right, for among the Jaqqas the young men do wear a collar about their neck in token of slavery, until they bring an enemy’s head slain in battle, and then they are uncollared, freed, and dignified with the title of soldiers. This one was asking if he could earn his freedom by slaying us. But clearly we were too contemptible to slay, and it would not be fair battle, and he was refused.

For a long while they studied us, and we them. They went round and round us, in strange contemplation, never once uttering a sound. Their silence was the most frightening thing of all, for it made them seem like dream-creatures, nightmare-things.

But there was much else that was frightful about them. For their eyes were bright as sizzling coals, and their bodies gleamed beneath their paint so that every muscle stood out like a statue’s, and they did have two teeth above and two below knocked out, Jaqqa-fashion, which made them look like evil jack-o’-lanterns when they grinned. We remained silent, too, as they surveyed us, out of fear or perhaps out of mystification, for one does not chatter when one is in the presence of devils.

At last they reached a decision concerning us. By pantomime gesture they had us remove our battered bloodstained armor and toss it aside, leaving us only clad in the light linen surplices and such that we wore below it. Then they beckoned, indicating with a tossing of their heads that we should follow them, and led us up out of our sheltering-place toward the path they had been following before they discovered us.

They arrayed us in a line, and disposed us within their own formation, one of them followed by two of us, and again one of them and two of us, so that we all were in the single file, now three times its former size. And we began to march toward the north, they again carrying the three blackamoor corpses slung over their shoulders, we lurching along as best we could, considering our wearied condition.

“Ah, Madonna, where are they taking us?” asked one Portugal behind me.

And another replied, “To their main camp, so that they can feast on us with great celebration.”

A third said, “Should we run?”

And a fourth did answer, with a laugh, “Better to take wing and fly, methinks. That way we might escape them.”

I kept my peace. Night was coming on, and I was beginning to recover my strength, and I wanted to waste none of it in idle conversation. The arrow-wound in my back now was giving me extraordinary pain, that came in waves like a series of bombard-blasts that did explode within me, but I knew myself not to be badly injured for all of that. And the other exhaustions of the battle, the pounding in my chest and the soreness in my legs and the throbbing of my eyes and the cuts of my flesh, were starting now to leave me as the deep natural recuperative strength of my body asserted itself. So I thought I might wait until darkness was complete and then try to slip away from these Jaqqas, with one or two of the Portugals if they cared to come, and find my way back to Masanganu.

But it was not to be. When darkness arrived we halted at a hot dry low place where the brush was heavy and more of those abominable thorn-trees of the milky green flesh abounded. The Jaqqas drew us into a little clearing from which there was only one exit, and made us lie down, which indeed we gladly did. Two of them guarded us, standing casually before us with their arms folded, and the others went on a foray, from which they returned with a few handfuls of fruits and seeds. These they distributed to us, with a gesture that we should eat.

The fruits were bitter and the seeds were hard fare to crack and chew, yet it was good food withal, and there was a clear spring near at hand from which we were able to drink, which we had not done all the day long. The Jaqqas meanwhile busied themselves by building a fire, which they did most cleverly, by twirling one slender stick against another over a bunch of the dry straw that passed here for grass, until a spark flew forth and ignited it. Soon a goodly blaze was roaring.

We witnessed then an unholy feast, for they did take one of the three cadavers they had filched from the battlefield and most dexterously did lop its legs from it. Thereupon they carved his thigh-flesh into cubes of meat, which they affixed on skewers that they held into the tips of the flames, twisting them deftly so that the meat cooked while the skewers did not take fire. All this they did in the most absolute calmness, as if it were an extremely ordinary daily thing to butcher a dead man and make morsels out of his thighs. But in good sooth such was the case for them, it being the most daily of events, this grim anthropophagy. During their cooking they laughed and chanted, but I saw no talking between them, and as the fat dripped down and sizzled it did give them passing great delight, so that they clapped their hands like children.

They ate their fill, and then some; and when they had done with the meat, they did crack the skull, and scoop out the brains with a sort of spoon fashioned from a rib, and dine themselves with a high pleasure on that; and afterward they turned to us, who had looked on in deep horror at it all and most extremely at the serving of that final pudding, and they did make broad generous gestures to us, as though to be saying, “Join us in our banquet, comrades! There’s meat enough for all!” But of course we shrank back from this kindly offer the way we would from the embrace of the Devil’s dam.

The fire burned all night, and the Jaqqas sat by it, nor did they ever sleep, so far as I could tell. I was now in great discomfort from my wound and I lay sometimes awake and sometimes lost in a mazy disorder of the mind, but every time I opened my eyes I saw our five diabolical guardians sitting together, unsleeping. Now and again one of them would arise and cut for himself a piece of fresh meat and cook it to eat. All during the night the gruesome reek of charred flesh and human grease did hang over our encampment, sickening at first and then becoming merely another smell, of which one took no special notice.

Morning came. The Jaqqas prodded us awake and buried their smouldering fire in sand. We assumed our formation and moved onward.

I saw now that escape was plainly impossible. They were too shrewd in the ways of the desert, and kept us ever in check, whether on the march or in camp at night. And if I did manage to slip away it would be folly, this being an inhospitable place and I not knowing the whereabouts of the water-holes, or the plants whose fruits were safe to eat, or any such; I should be clawing at my own guts in extreme agony within two days, if I successfully fled from them into this awful wilderness. So I abandoned that plan utterly. Some of the Portugals with whom I marched made a different assessment of the situation, and on the third day of the journey two of them suddenly broke from the line and began to run, clumsily and with much staggering, across the arid waste. They had not gone ten yards before one of the Jaqqas had his bow down from his shoulder and an arrow in the ready, and I thought sure there would be a dead Portugal or two an instant later. But the tallest of the Jaqqas made one gesture and the archer put down his bow, and then he made another gesture and two of his fellows went sprinting after the fugitives I have never seen mortal man run so fast. The leopard, when he hunts, can in a short distance outpace even the fast-footed gazelle; but I think those two Jaqqas could have left even a leopard behind. In no time at all they caught the two Portugals, and seized them with an arm slipped round their necks and dropped them easily to the ground, and then lifted them, not roughly, and got them to their feet. The Portugals were shivering with fear, expecting to be slain on the spot for their temerity. But no, they were not harmed at all, they were merely sent back to their places in the line, and we continued as though nothing whatsoever had occurred.

That was the only escape attempt any of us made.

But on the fifth day north we began to perceive something amazing, that made us all rejoice we had not been more assiduous at getting away from our captors. For we took notice of certain familiar tokens on the landscape, that led to only one conclusion: the Jaqqas were not captors but rescuers, for they were guiding us in the direction of Masanganu!

“How can this be?” asked a Portugal. “Have they conquered the whole place, and is their main camp there now?”

“Nay,” said another, “Masanganu is of no interest to them.”

“Who knows what interests a Jaqqa?”

“Are we truly going that way?” I asked.

“Look, there, Englishman. That row of palm trees on the horizon— what else is it, but the forest at the edge of the River Kwanza? There are no rivers here, except the Lukala that comes in from above, and we are below. And there, those hills to the east—it is Kambambe, the silver-mining land!”

“But why bring us to Masanganu?” I said in wonderment.

“Why, indeed?” replied the Portugal surgeon.

And that was all the answer we ever had. You know how it is in dreams, that things take place that will not answer to the test of reason; and you know I have said again and again that these Jaqqas did seem to me to be creatures out of the misty land of sleep, like walking nightmares set loose upon our world. One does not ask questions of dream-creatures, or, if one does, one must know that one has no right to a sensible answer.

The Portugals were right that the trees had their roots in the waters of the Kwanza. Another day passed and then we were in truth within sight of the fortifications of Masanganu. Here the air did change, becoming moist and fever-laden in the horrid Masanganu way, which told us that we had come at last out of the desert where so many Portugals had left their bones. The Jaqqas did not accompany us farther. They had eaten all three of their dead men, to every last scrap of flesh, in their nightly feasts, and they had done their mysterious self-appointed task of saving our lives, and now they vanished as suddenly as they came, without a word, without a hint, and left us to find our way the last few miles into Masanganu.

A sad and sorry lot we ten were, as we struggled and tottered into the presidio. We were near naked, clad in grimy rags, and all gaunt and bulging-eyed from a diet of shabby bitter fruits and hard seed. Our wounds had begun to fester despite the best offices of our surgeon. But yet we were alive. We had neither perished on the battlefield in Kafuche Kambara’s terrible ambush, nor had gone into the bellies of the Jaqqas, and that we had avoided both these fates seemed miraculous now, so that we did fling ourselves down at the outside of Masanganu and give thanks to the Lord in our own ways and languages, crying out to Him for what surely was His own compassionate intervention on our behalf.

God rest me, but I never thought I would weep with joy at entering Masanganu again. Yet this time it was as welcome to me as the shores of Paradise.

12

At Masanganu the Portugals did make much over us, for they had not expected any survivors of the massacre to come among them.

News of that disaster had reached them five or six days previous, when the first who got away had come into the presidio. These were the ones who had escaped by horse, mainly the ranking officers, who had galloped valiantly toward safety, leaving all their infantry to be slain behind them. Such men as Balthasar d’Almeida and his captain-major Pedro Alvares Rebello had already left Masanganu for São Paulo de Loanda, to confer with Governor d’Almeida, but others who had come safe away were still in the town, and great was their amazement when they learned that we had managed to bring ourselves alive from the place of battle.

We were taken to the hospital and given food and drink and medicines, and our wounds were treated, and an officer named Manoel Fonseca, who had the charge over the Masanganu garrison, visited us to learn how we had achieved our escape.

“Why,” said our Portugal surgeon, “we were rescued by five Jaqqas, who guided us thither and provided us with food along the way.”

To which Manoel Fonseca responded with loud laughter, and cried, “You are mad with fever, man!”

“No,” I said, for I lay on the next bed, “it is the truth, by God’s eyes! They spoke not a word, those Jaqqas, but said with gestures, Come, follow; and they kept us close by them until we saw the palm-trees that stand by the river’s edge.”

“I will not believe that. Jaqqas? How do you know they were Jaqqas, pray tell?”

“Because that they had teeth knocked out above and below,” said I, pointing to my own front teeth. “And because that while we were with them, they did roast and eat three dead blackamoors that they hauled off from the battlefield. Is that not proof enough?”

Fonseca still could not believe it, though, and not until he had had the same tale from all the others of us did he credit it to be truthful. Which caused all the more amazement, since no one could recall the Jaqqas doing the like in all the time of the Portugals in Angola. Yet there was no denying that we were here and safe, and it had not been angels that wafted us here.

I was in Masanganu some weeks healing. That is no place to heal, with its foul air and poisonous climate, but I was too weak then to travel further, and in any case there were no ships there to make the journey to the coast. After a time I left my bed and walked about, and regained some strength. The town at that time was closed tight like a turtle in its shell, with sentinels posted night and day, for the Portugals were badly frighted and did not know what disaster might come upon them next. They had suffered the most terrible defeat in their African history at the hands of this Kafuche Kambara, having lost hundreds of men and much equipment and nearly the whole of their black auxiliary force, and they believed Kafuche might try now to finish them off, or peradventure that the other sobas, emboldened, would rise and overthrow their yoke. But none of these things happened, and in July of ‘94 a ship finally came to Masanganu bringing reinforcements. When it returned to São Paulo de Loanda I was aboard, and did pilot it on its voyage down the river.

Vast surprises awaited me in the capital city.

There was a great huge new galleon of Portugal riding out in the harbor, a 600-ton vessel at least, and when I entered into the city proper I saw all the buildings amazingly decorated in banners and ribands and brightly colored flags, as though the Portugals had not just suffered a monstrous defeat at all, but rather were celebrating some colossal victory. Streamers in scarlet and green flew in the breeze, and the palace of the governor was especially bedecked with buntings and velvets of great gaiety.

I asked the bearers that were taking us to town, what had befallen to merit such brave decoration, and they replied, “It is in jubilee of the new governor that Portugal has sent.”

“New governor? Where is Don Jeronymo?”

And they pointed most somberly toward the presidio, toward the very same grim fortress where I had been held prisoner four years before. So there had been great reversals and transformations in the colony, it did seem, during my many months of absence.

But I knew less than the half of it.

I went first to my cottage, which I found all in order and well kept. Matamba was there with my other slaves. She gave forth a little gasp as of fright and shock when she saw me, and ran to my side, tears starting from her eyes, and she dropped to her knees before me and looked up troubled, saying, “You are so changed! You are so altered!”

“Am I, now? Come, stand up, girl.”

I drew her gently upward and sent the slaves away, and embraced her, and she ran her fingers over my cheeks.

“You have been ill,” she said.

“Aye, and a little damaged, too. But I am the same man.”

I went to my chamber, where I kept a dim old looking-glass, and peered at my image. And in truth it startled me some to see what I had become, for my face was five years older at least, with deep lines cut alongside my mouth and about my eyes, and a general shrinking of flesh, and a rising of the cheekbones. The heat of the interior and my exertions there and the wound I had suffered had all worked to boil and distill me down to the hard essence: I looked gaunt and fever-eyed, and dangerous of spirit, like some wild brawling bravo of the city taverns. Why, I trow, if I had met a man looking like me on the streets of London I would have been struck with fear of him, so mean and piratical of face had I become!

I removed my clothes, that were sweaty from voyaging, and Matamba sponged me clean. Water is always scarce and most precious in São Paulo de Loanda, since that there is no source of it in the city, but all must be brought in from the island through a trench, and that is much contaminated by the nearness of the ocean. As she bathed me Matamba did finger and inspect my new scars, both the angry one in my back that the arrow had left me, and the lesser ones, fading but not yet wholly gone, that I had taken by crawling around in those murderous thorny plants. In her thus fondling me and making much of me I had new proof of her devotion to me, and once I was refreshed I thought to take her to my bed, I having had months of abstinence in my soldiering and she looking most desirable to me, wearing a simple white shift with her breasts bare, and a blue circlet about her throat, and her eyes shining with eagerness. But then came a knock at the door and a messenger from the governor, saying that I was summoned at once to his palace, and the man handed me a writ to make it more official.

I opened the paper and read it and I like to have choked in my astonishment, for the writ was signed most boldly with the name of the new governor, and the new governor’s name was Don João de Mendoça.

“But he is dead!” I cried out. “How can this be?”

The messenger, who was only a slave, looked at me as though I had gone mad, and Matamba knew nothing of governors except that the Portugals of the town had lately done much marching about in the plaza, with pompous changings of the guard and raisings and lowerings of flags, but that was all Greek to her. So, consumed with curiosity, I got me into my best clothes and bade her wait there until my return, and hurried to the palace. I could not comprehend this, for how had Don João escaped the assassins? I thought me that perhaps he had had a son of the same name, who had come from Portugal to avenge his father’s murder, but I wondered much at that.

Then I was ushered into the same high-vaulted audience-chamber where I had several times met with Don Jeronymo d’Almeida, the former governor, and there, seated at the governor’s great polished desk of brilliant red wood, was Don João himself, not any newly arrived son by that name, nor any ghost neither, I trow. He looked plump and hearty, and scarce a day older than when I had last seen him in the days before the Jesuit troubles, and although he did not rise from his chair of office he favored me with a warm good smile and a broad gesture of greeting, and exclaimed, “Andres! Andres, my friend, my Englishman, my Piloto!”

“Don João, it gives me joy and amaze to see you.”

“And joy do I take in this meeting also. How we are all changed, eh? I am governor at last, and you—you look as if you have fought hard, and suffered no little.”

“It was a difficult campaign. But by God’s grace, and some help from the Jaqqas, I was spared. And you also have been spared! I thought you long dead, Don João.”

He gave a little startle. “You did? Why so?”

“They told me a tale, that Don Jeronymo had plotted to have you hurled into the sea when you sailed to Portugal.”

Leaning forward, he said, “Knew you of that, Andres?”

“Aye. But my knowledge came too late to help you, for I was already halfway to Loango when I learned of it, and you well out toward Portugal. But was it as I heard?”

“It was,” said he in a low dark voice. “There were three men of Don Jeronymo’s pay, who planned to carry it out. But I had warning, and I took care to be well guarded, and we found out the men and questioned them. And they did confess, and their scheme was blocked.”

“God be thanked. I grieved much for you.”

“For that I am much moved, Andres. But you see, I was prepared. I had known Don Jeronymo for what he was, and I placed no trust in his words.”

“And now you are governor!”

“Yea. It was simple enough, arranging the appointments, once I spoke before His Majesty, and showed how we were in danger of losing our hold here if the rule of the d’Almeida brothers continued. It was already known that Don Francisco had fled to Brazil. Don Jeronymo’s appointment had no legitimacy to it. And so I received the royal assent, and returned here with four hundred soldiers and thirty horses, and now I am putting things to right. We will go forth to punish the lawless sobas, and we will do a better job of it, if God wills, then Don Jeronymo did. You were at Masanganu when Kafuche Kambara made his massacre?”

“Nay. I was at the massacre itself.”

“And survived? God’s grace indeed!”

“And luck, and some skill. Alas, among those slain was the good Barbosa, that was like a second father to me.”

“His loss is sad. I knew of that, and that hundreds of others had perished with him. Well, and well, Andres, these are the risks of empire. Were you wounded?”

“I took an arrow. It was not so bad.”

“Why were you in the war at all?”

I shrugged. “Don Jeronymo had me ferrying troops to Masanganu. When he took ill, his generals ordered everyone out to fight against Kafuche, and I could not refuse.”

“I meant for you only to be a pilot for us,” said Don João. He looked close at me and said, “Do you think I have forgotten my promise to let you go home? Eh? I said, Serve me a little while in voyaging along the coast, and I will put you on ship to England. Eh, Andres? How long ago was that?”

“I think it was in June of ‘91, or the July.”

“Three years. A longer service than either of us expected. The promise still stands, Andres. But I have more need of you. Will you renew your pledge a little longer?”

“I do yearn for my homeland, Don João.”

“Yea. I comprehend that. But give me a little more, Andres, only a little more. Will you do that?”

He looked at me, his eyes on mine, and suddenly I saw the truth that lay behind his warm and friendly pleading words, which was that he was not pleading at all: he was commanding me. This was his method, to be kind and insinuating, as it had been Don Jeronymo’s method to be fierce and domineering, and either way the result was the same, that I was compelled to remain in this land of Angola. I had mourned Don João most keenly when I had thought him to be dead, and we had taken meals and wines together many times as though we were truly friends, but at the bottom of things the reality was that I was a slave and he my absolute master, the which he softened and concealed with gentle words. But what could I say? Could I refuse service, and demand instant passage to England? I had no claim. If I did any such thing, he would, with the greatest sadness and sweet professions of friendship, commit me to his dungeon, and then I would rot there for ever.

I do not think Don João was insincere. I believe he had true regard for me, and a fondness. But he had need of me to sail his ships for him, and that need was paramount. Perhaps one day he would indeed let me go, but not now, not yet. And I could do nothing but yield.

“Aye, since you ask me, I will serve,” I said. “But once the rebellion is put down, and you are secure in your power here, will you release me, Don João? Five years is a long time to be away from one’s native land.”

“It will be only a little,” said Don João, “and then you will be on your way thither.”

Which he said with such warmth and such clear profession of good will that I could not for the moment doubt him. Yet I knew that when he said, “Only a little,” that little might be two months, or six, or a year and a half, or eternity, according to his changing needs of me, and that as those needs changed he would ask me again and again, with the same warmth, with the same good will, to extend my service to him. I think I would rather be compelled without deceit than cozened with such beguiling, but no matter: in Angola I would have to remain.

We talked for a time of the voyages he required of me, in sailing his pinnace along the coast in various trading missions. And when we had done with that, and as he was making ready to dismiss me, only then did I ask the question I had held back in my mind all this while, the question that I had not thought seemly to introduce in any earlier part of our meeting.

Quite casually I said, “The same who told me of the plot against you did say that Dona Teresa was to have been slain in the same manner. I trust it is not so.”

Don João smiled. “Nay, she is well, and was never at jeopardy. O, she thrived in Lisbon! Her eyes were wide all the day and all the night, as she soaked up the wonders of the place. Yet the winter weather was harsh on her, and she was gladdened to return to São Paulo de Loanda. She is a married woman now, you know.”

“Married?

I did not conceal my shock; I could not, for the surprise was too great. Dona Teresa had told me, before she set sail for Europe, that she and Don João were to be wed in Lisbon, so I was not altogether taken unawares by his statement. But yet the phrasing of it was not right, for if he had married her he would have said, “Dona Teresa and I now are married,” and not, “She is married.” So I looked at him with bewilderment and I think, through showing so strong a response, I might have revealed to him that my interest in Dona Teresa went beyond mere polite curiosity.

But he gave no sign of seeing that. He said only, “Aye, she lost no time taking a husband when she came back here. Father Affonso performed the ceremony himself, and I stood up there beside her almost as a father would.”

“And the husband?”

“Why, it is that man of fantastical costume, Captain Fernão da Souza. You know him, do you not? The commander of the presidio guard? I think they have long been—ah—friends, and now they are man and wife, this fortnight past. You should call on them, once you are reestablished in your life here.”

He rose—standing, he was so very short!—and gave me his hand, and I thanked him for all his mercies to me, and went out from there in a veritable daze of stupefaction. Dona Teresa married! And not to Don João, but to Fernão da Souza!

Well, and I had known she carried on some long intrigue with Souza. For when I had asked her how she had gained access to me so easily whilst I was imprisoned in the fortress, she had quite forthrightly explained that Souza was her friend, and that could only have meant her lover. But Souza surely had known that what went on between Dona Teresa and me in my prison cell was not merely a chaste discussion of geographical matters; and beyond any question he knew she was Don João’s mistress, for all the colony was aware of that. Why, then, would he want to marry her? Had he no pride? Could he take to wife a woman who had openly been had by the governor of the colony for some years, and one whom he knew furthermore to have been had by the English prisoner Battell? I think I might not have cared to marry Anne Katherine if all of England knew she was some cast-off mistress of Sir Walter Ralegh’s, say, and if I had helped pimp her as well to a Spaniard captured in the defeat of the Armada.

But the situations were not equal, I realized, upon giving the matter some further thought. This was not England or any other civilized place, but merely a remote colony at the edge of a pagan and barbaric land. There were many men here, and few women, at least few who might be taken for Europeans, as could Dona Teresa. Those rules of chastity and propriety that might apply at home were of no substance here, I supposed. Don João, for some reason I did not fathom, had not in fact married Dona Teresa when they were in Portugal; now she did see some merit in marrying Souza, who was ambitious and of a growing importance here, and doubtless Souza saw merit in it, too, perhaps because it would bring him the enhanced favor of Don João. Perhaps. I did not know how such matters were worked. But I was shaken by the surprise of it, I who had had no small passion for Dona Teresa myself. My own embroilment with her now must certainly be ended, for as a captain’s wife she could not sneak around, could she, and spread her legs secretly here and there for old lovers such as I? Or could she? Well, and I had Matamba now anyway; the cases were altered for us all.

As I moved through the town that day I found other surprises, namely, several women strolling about that seemed pure European, and protecting themselves from the sunlight by paper shades stuck to long handles. Each of these was young and handsome, and had her little following of the men of the town, who moved in close formation around her, like a cloud of gnats. I made inquiries and learned that upon Don João’s return from Portugal he had brought twelve such women with him, the first pure-blood European women ever seen in Angola, to provide a gentler touch in the life of the town.

“Do you mean they are whores?” I asked.

My informant, who was a merchant of grain, laughed broadly and said, “Nay, nay, they are respectable women! They are Jewesses, but they are respectable!” And he told me that there was in Portugal a place called the Casa Pia, founded by a former queen, where unfortunate women dwelled. Some of them were criminals that had been reformed, and some were Jewesses who had been converted to Christian ways; and it was twelve of those latter, all of them now rigged out with crucifixes at their breasts and other signs of high piety, that had been introduced into this rough and harsh frontier.

And indeed they did soften and beautify the place, for each was like a little sun, giving off a bright radiance in her perambulation through the streets of São Paulo de Loanda. At another time I might have sought a closer touch of that radiance myself; but other men were ahead of me in ample number, and I had no wish to struggle through such crowds. Moreover did I have Matamba to console my nights, and that night she and I took such a reunion of the flesh as allowed me no sleep, but provided us both the most intense of delights, with many a moaning and a gasping, and making of love in this position and that, she tickling me and clipping me until I thought I would go mad of it, and then turning and crouching to present her ebony buttocks to me whilst I did thrust my stiffened wand into the hot place below them, and afterward taking me the other way around, kneeling above me in her manner, and still later even granting me the rare favor of letting me have her in the European custom with her body beneath mine, and so on and so on all through the night, in a frenzy of quivering breasts and flashing thighs and moist slippery loins and bright laughing eyes and agile thrusting hips. Which made me weep from sheer gladness of it, that I was here alive in São Paulo de Loanda in the loving arms of this good-hearted Negress, and not lying dead with vulture-picked eyesockets on the field of Kafuche Kambara.

13

It was some days before I encountered Dona Teresa, for now that she was a married woman certain constraints were upon her, and I could not merely go to visit her, nor she come to me. But I did see her in the grand plaza of the city on the arm of Captain Fernão da Souza, she all elegant in veil with cap of black velvet, and chains of gold, and a silken robe, and he thrice as splendid as ever in crimson breeches and a brilliant yellow coat. The sight of her gave me a sharp pang and thrill, to remember how I had grieved for her rumored death. As I passed them she nodded to me and smiled through her veil, all with the greatest dignity, as if she were a lady of the court of Her Protestant Majesty Elizabeth, and Souza, too, gave me his most formal salutation. But we went on beyond one another without exchanging words.

Again the next day I saw them together, but from a greater distance, and as she went by I suddenly had a vision of myself in my prison-cell days, and Dona Teresa with me, both of us naked and she lying with her face against my thighs, and taking the tip of my yard into her mouth as she had several times done, and sliding it deep to the inner part of her throat, and moving back and forth along it until I was ready to cry out with ecstasy. That vision striking me in the public street all but smote me down. My heart began to pound and there was a dryness in my nostrils and my eyes did go bleary, and I craved her with all the craving in the world, and nothing else mattered. Then I caught my breath, and turned away, not willing to look upon her for fear of seeming a fool. The power of the moment released me and I turned again, and she was gone from my sight.

From that I learned how strongly Dona Teresa still held me in her grasp. Which I feared; for these Portugals take the chastity of their wives most serious, and I craved no quarrel with Captain Fernão da Souza, nor did I care to be drawn yet again into Dona Teresa’s mischievous spells, beautiful though she was. She was too sly and perilous for me: I would remain content with Matamba, I told myself, until I could quit this place forever.

The day after that, as I was setting forth to the harbor to inspect the pinnace, Dona Teresa came by without her husband, carried by a team of bearers in a corded hammock, and she did command her bearers to halt beside me, and spoke with me from aloft, as a great lady would have done. She said she was surprised to find me still in Angola, having thought I would have obtained my release by now. To which I replied that I appeared to be of value here, in that the several governors constantly found new tasks for me, and I much doubted I would ever go home. And she said, still in that same distant way, that she had heard good report of my valor in the battle with Kafuche Kambara; and she remarked somewhat on the changes in my appearance that those hardships had worked in me. We exchanged another some few pleasantries of this kind, at the end of which she invited me to attend her at her residence that afternoon: she would send bearers to fetch me.

Her manner was altogether different when I came to her, at the handsome new dwelling that she dwelled in now with Souza. Still was she clothed in great finery; but that lofty style, that high and distant condescension, had been put aside. Now was she the woman I remembered, whose body had been coupled to mine in every several position of the act of love, and whose each inch I did know with mine eyes and fingers and lips and tongue. She glistened at me with memory of lust and desire yet unfulfilled; and I in turn responded with tremors of yearning that I controlled only barely.

Yet control it I did, as did she, for we were in the formal drawing-chamber of her house, with slaves all about us bringing us little cooked morsels and wines and the like. What passed between us, to the eyes of those onlookers, was as proper and seemly as anything that might occur between some old dowager and a decrepit monk. Only Teresa and I could detect the searing currents of powerful attraction that flowed from her eyes to mine, and mine to hers.

She proffered me a tray of sweetmeats and said, low and throbbing, “All the while I was in Europe I imagined you atop me, Andres, and I was sick to the heart from being so far from you.”

“And I, lady, sick to the heart that I thought you were murdered.”

“It was a near thing. Who told you of it?”

“One of my sailors, as I went toward Loango. He had heard in a tavern, rogues talking too loud of the plot. How I raged, how I pounded the staves of the ship in fury over the loss of you, Teresa! A near thing, you say?”

“We learned of the scheme only a day or two before it was to happen. Three men meant to come to us in the night and cut our throats and put us over the side, but Don João had loyal servants who scouted out the murderers, and made them admit their plan, and it was they who went into the sea instead, with their hands tied in back.” She filled my goblet a second time. “It was the worst moment of the voyage for me, hearing how close I had come to dying. Nay: the second worst.”

“And what was the worst, then?”

“Seeing Don João greet his wife in Lisbon.”

“His wife? But I thought—”

“Yea, so did I. A promise of marriage made unto me. But he had never said it in so many words. He had planted the idea in my own mind, and let me think it, and embellish upon it, and imagine great things of it, but he had never said it himself. He is subtle at such twistings of the truth, is Don João. But as I sorted through my memories of our dealings on that theme, which were not many, I saw that he had not pledged me anything, but merely had allowed me to trick myself into thinking us betrothed. For how could he wed me, if he has a wife already in Portugal? The Church will allow him only one, and he cannot put her aside as easily as your English king did dispense with the queens he no longer required.”

“I am sorry for your pain,” I said, seeing the flaring of her nostrils in anger, and the sheen of withheld tears in her eyes.

She said, “He married her when they were very young. She is of a noble family, yea, I think of royal blood, and wealthier than he, with powerful connections in the government, and he does not dare break with her, though he has lived in Africa these many years and has had no commerce with her all the while. When we arrived in Lisbon he at once sent his messenger to her, and in the time we were in that city they did consort themselves as man and wife, with much public show of it. Although they spent their nights in separate chambers, I think.”

“Then why bother to bring you to Portugal at all?”

Dona Teresa smiled a bitter smile. “Because he had truly pledged it to me, without equivocation, that if ever he returned to Portugal I should go with him. I think he never expected that pledge to be redeemed, for he planned no more to set foot in that land. But when circumstances here required him to go, why, he did not cheat me of the journey, knowing that I desired so much to see Europe. In that regard he is an honorable man. And then also it is a long voyage, and Don João is not one who cares to spend weeks and weeks without a woman in his arms. And also I think he wanted to display me at court, as his beautiful African concubine, for men take pride in such show, do they not, Andres? And even among good Christians there is no evil in taking a concubine when one has a wife already, if one is a man of high position, or so I understand it. The wife herself did not seem jealous of me. She praised me, in sooth, for my beauty, and I think gave her husband congratulation for having chosen so well.”

“And is this why you married Captain da Souza?” I asked. “By way of revenging yourself?”

“That is too simple a reason.”

“But Don João had done you a great injury.”

“Nay, Andres, my own hopes and follies had done me the injury. I hold no grudge against Don João.”

“He is most marvelously fortunate, that he can injure people and they will still love him.”

“He has promised you a return to England, has he not? And not by subtlety and indirection, either, but in most straightforward outright words. Yet he has not made good the promise, and still you serve him, and still I think you love him.”

“It is not the same,” I said. “He has no reason nor obligation ever to release me. It is only his gift to me, which he can bestow whenever he chooses, or withhold forever, and I have nothing to say in the matter. But to allow you to think he would wed you, knowing all the while it was impossible—”

“I have told you, it was self-deception on my part. Mine eyes were blinded to the truth. I will not deny I am greatly disappointed, and that it was painful to learn how far I was from an understanding of the actual situation. But I do not hate him for it. I remain his friend.”

“But you are now the wife of Souza.”

“Indeed.”

“Why Souza?”

“He is handsome. He is ambitious. I was eager to wed, and if I could not have Don João, why, it was time to choose another. And I chose Souza.”

“And he does not object that you’ve been the mistress of Don João?”

“Why should he? Men do not seek virgins here. And it does him honor, to have all know that he has captured so high a prize as Dona Teresa da Costa.”

“And how does Don João feel about all these matters?”

Dona Teresa said, smiling slyly, “His conscience is eased toward me, now that I am truly wed. And he has lost nothing.”

I stared at her. “You intend still to—”

“He is the governor, is he not? If he still finds me attractive, is there not advantage for me in gratifying his desire? Is there not advantage for my husband, also?”

It was much like the court of England, I thought, this pandering of wives for preference, this winking at adultery. It is the same everywhere, I do suppose.

After a moment I said, “It amazes me that Souza will let himself be cuckolded before the whole community for the sake of gaining a little power. Has the man no shame?”

“Ah, it will not be so public as you seem to think. We will be circumspect. There are decencies to consider, are there not?”

“Are there?”

She laughed now. “Andres, Andres, you look so stern!”

“This kind of business is not comfortable to me, this handing off of a discarded mistress to a younger officer to be his wife, and then this sneaking around behind the new husband’s back, and—”

“Ah, you are so pious! And when I thought I was betrothed to Don João, and I came secretly to you, did you find it so uncomfortable that you did refuse me, Andres?”

“That was different!” I cried.

“Was it? Not so far as I can see. I do brand you hypocrite, dear Andres, and false moralizer.” She offered me the sweetmeats again, like a proper hostess, and then she leaned close to me and said in a low rich voice that went through me like a hot blade, “Nothing has changed, except that I am now called wife. I use Don João to my benefit. I use Fernão the same way. So has it been, so shall it be. What passes between them and me is a kind of business, a transaction, do you understand? It is not the same between you and me. And we remain as we are. Do you remember how it felt, when I was in your arms? Nay, you have not forgotten that. I have not forgotten, neither. And it has been a year, has it not? That is much too long. I remember your body, the size of it, the taste, the feel. I remember everything about you. I hope you will not tell me in your pious English way that I am too sacred to touch, now that I am called wife. Eh, Andres?”

Her eyes were upon me. Her skin was flushed, her lips were gleaming and parted. I think if she had asked me to take her right there, on the thick green carpet, in front of all her slaves, I would have done it. I could not have resisted. Then and there, had she bade me, would I have spread her and tupped her, without a thought of saying no. Such was her hold on me.

But of course that could not happen, and it did not happen. She leaned away from me, she let the throb and tremor go from her voice and the fire from her eye, and we did talk again like dowager and monk, all calm and innocent, until the visit had its end.

When I was outside in the full blaze of the day, though, a sweat came over me that had nothing to do with the heat of the murky air, and I was hard put to steady myself. Jezebel! Messalina! She was terrifying, that woman: she was an irresistible force, that swept down upon a man like the River Zaire.

And yet must I resist the irresistible.

Her design was perilous for me. It had been bad enough in the times gone by for me to be cuckolding Don João with her; but either Don João had not known, or he had known and had not cared, or else Don João peradventure had known and found it amusing and flattering to have his favorite concubine futtered by the valiant Englishman. For that was truly all he saw her to be, his concubine, his plaything; or he would not have acted out the cruel game of letting her travel in pomp with him to Europe and then producing upon her his proper wife.

But now that she was Souza’s, it was another matter. Souza was proud; he was young; he carried a sword, and looked for the chance to employ it. I did not care to trifle with a hot-blooded young Portugal in his early manhood. Souza might choose to close his eyes if his wife did swive the governor from time to time, and would tell himself that by so doing she advanced his own position in the government: that was vile, but it gave him vantage. But I doubted much that he would accept the horns from anyone less mighty than Don João. For my part I craved no quarrels, no duels, no gangs of angry bravos setting upon me by night; I wanted only peace, safety, security, until I could get me out of this land. For the satisfaction of my desires I had the pleasant and indulgent Matamba. Dona Teresa, though I lusted for her vastly and always would, to the end of my days, could bring me only trouble, and I resolved to steer clear of so risky a shoal as she.

But easier would it have been to steer clear of the continents of the Americas, if you were making your voyage westward toward the Indies.

Twice did she send messages to me in the next few days that I should come to her at such and such a place. The message was most careful not to say why; but I knew. The first time it was an inspection of my pinnace that she desired, but I replied to her that the ship had been careened for the removing of its barnacles, and was not ready to be boarded. The second time, she begged me to convey her to the isle of Loanda in our harbor, so that she might visit the factory where the money-shells were heaped; but that island has many empty places and few Portugals on it, and it was not hard to imagine what would befall between us the moment we were alone there. Again I extended an excuse. I hoped she would take her clue from that, that I loved her no less but did not dare to embrace her. For some days I did not have word from her, which gave me heart that she had understood my meaning. To refuse a woman like Dona Teresa was not easy for me, yet I must; and I prayed she would comprehend that I was not spurning her for any reason other than that of safety, my own and even hers.

During this time a new chore descended upon me that took my mind away from these intricacies. For there appeared in our harbor a merchant-ship out of Holland, who had come to trade with the Portugals. And I was pressed into service to be the interpreter, for the Dutchmen spoke but feeble Portuguese, and the Portugals of Angola spoke no Dutch whatsoever. So Don João, greatly mystified that a Dutchman should be here at all, called me to the task, since the Dutch skipper, like most men of his kind, had a fair quantity of English, and I knew a shred or two of Dutch from my early voyaging days to Antwerp and such places.

This ship of the Dutch was of the kind they call a fluyt, or flyboat, and a great hulking thing it was. I would call it no more than a floating cargo hold, practically flat on her bottom, with simple rigging and no guns to speak of and the masts stepped well apart, and the length of the ship maybe five times her beam—just a big barge, really, that could carry God’s own tonnage of cargo at the cheapest possible cost. I had heard that the Dutch had built many such vessels of late to fetch goods between Europe and the Americas, and were in their busy Dutch way prospering mightily by selling cloth and slaves in Brazil and buying sugar, and bringing salt from Venezuela to Europe, and such.

But it was surprising to see Dutch traders come to Angola. The Dutch they are a maritime people, and do voyage hither and yon with great success, but also are they Protestants, and enemies of King Philip of Spain, that very King Philip who also had become ruler of Portugal and thus had sway over Angola, too. Philip once had been sovereign over the Low Countries, by some trick of inheritance from his father the Emperor Charles, but the Protestant folk of Holland, so I recall, had rebelled and set up their own republic, an endeavor into which we English had given great aid. Had that republic fallen, I wondered, so that Holland was again Philip’s fief? If not, what were Protestant Dutch merchants doing on a venture into Papist Africa? Had they no fear of being seized and imprisoned, as I had been seized and imprisoned by the Portugals of Brazil?

Some talk with the Dutch merchant captain, one Cornelis van Warwyck, and I had a better understanding of the complexities of the situation. The Dutch republic had not fallen; indeed in these past few years of my absence the Hollanders had expelled Spain from all their seven United Provinces. So they were as much King Philip’s enemies as ever. But I had been merely privateering, going into the Brazils hoping to steal Philip’s gold, the which made me forfeit to him if caught. These Dutch had come to trade, though, a thing which brings prosperity to both sides if the trading be done with skill. And so although there might be a state of war between Spain and Portugal on the one hand and the United Provinces on the other, it was a purely European war, and took second place to the necessities of profit-making out here in these distant colonies. The Portugals, moreover, had not been enemies to the Dutch before Anno 1580, when Philip came to take the Portuguese crown, and had not learned the hatred for them that the Spaniards had. Then, too, the Hollanders did bring good guilders and ducats to pay for the spices and silks and ivories and other such exotic merchandises they desired; guilders and ducats are neither Protestant nor Papist; and so these bold merchants and Don João both chose to ignore, for the sake of everyone’s merry enrichment, the quarrels that divided their nations at home. Such things, I understand, were common in Africa and the Indies. Why, there were even a few Portugals who sailed in Captain van Warwyck’s crew— shabby scoundrel rogues with flittering shifty eyes, that I would not have had in any crew of mine, though Warwyck did maintain that they were hard workers.

I busied myself deeply in this commerce, which involved much meeting with the Dutch skipper and with Don João, and speaking both English and Portuguese with some of my little bastard Dutch mixed in. That was hard work, but what a joy to frame good English phrases again! To hear from my own lips such words as “invoice” and “quantity” and “rate of exchange,” and even such humble things as “but” and “and” and “thereunto”—what delight! Why, it was like downing a flagon of good cool brown ale, to speak forth such words!

This Warwyck was a tall round-faced man with reddened cheeks and blue eyes and white hair, who dressed in dark sober Dutch clothes, all rough and woollen in our tropic heat, and puffed away on a long clay pipe as the Dutch are so fond of doing, making heavy use of that foul weed tobacco that is the mania in his country and mine these days. He had an odd sweetness to his English, as though he did put honey on his sounds before they left his tongue, which is the Dutch accent. I liked it greatly, and, strange to tell, the more I talked with him the more the same tones did creep into my own speech. I think this was because I had scarce uttered any English aloud since Thomas Torner’s disappearance years before, and I was readily swayed by his manner of speaking, English now having become almost an unfamiliar language to me.

I demanded of him news of England, he having been in London as recent as the spring of ‘94. For England was by this time only a sort of vague dream to me, and I needed reassurance that it yet existed.

“The Queen,” I said, “how fares it with her?”

“They say that she is strong and healthy, and that her beauty it is undimmed.”

“And my country, does it prosper?”

Warwyck did puff deeply on his pipe and surround himself in a great swirl of white smoke, and at length he said, “The harvests have been poor these few years past. Her Majesty has spent much on the wars in France, and in my own land. I think some Spanish treasure-carracks have been seized in the Azores, which much aided the royal funds—”

“Ah,” I said, “does the Queen now take a share in such adventures?”

“Indeed. They all go partners, the Queen and her brave captains, and divide the plunder. Which she would deny if asked, but we know it to be true. Yet I think England grows poorer, despite such raids. You cannot live by piracy, my friend. Trade, yes, colonies, yes—the Engenders should settle foreign lands, and build themselves into them, as these Portugals do, and the Spaniards, and as we intend to do.”

“The Dutch will colonize also? Where, I pray you?”

“In places where there are no Portugals: in the Indies, the Spice Islands, and such places. We are sailing; we are learning; we will do well, I think. Better than the Spaniards and Portugals, for they are but shallow settlers, and we will sink ourselves deeply into those lands, and export from them cloves and pepper and nutmeg and other useful things, instead of merely filching gold from the natives and giving them diseases. And we will do better than you English, too, for you seem interested only in piracy, and there is no profit in that over the long term, however glittering the rewards of snatching this ship and that one may be. Eh, friend? Do you see?”

Indeed I did see; for I had had a close view of what the Portugals did, which was more slaving than merchandising, and I knew our own maritime enterprise from within, and I was aware also of the shortsighted cruelties of the black-hearted Spaniards. And I knew that these Hollanders, if they did keep faithfully to their task, would build for themselves a great machine of perpetual money-spinning, for they are diligent people that do understand where the truest pot of gold doth lie. And I swore to myself that if ever I returned to England I would preach the gospel of colonizing and commerce, and urge my countrymen to give over piracy and slaving, as being not the best ways toward national wealth.

Warwyck and his gossiping did much enhance my longing for my own cool green country. He talked on and on! Ralegh had fallen, he said, for having got with child one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, and secretly marrying her, which displeased Her Majesty highly. The great man at court now was the Earl of Essex, son-in-law to old Leicester. Lord Burghley still was the Queen’s most trusted adviser, but his crook-backed son Robert was rising now in esteem. There were plots on the Queen’s life, which was nothing new, some Portugal living in London accused of conspiring to poison her at the behest of King Philip. And so on and so on. Food was dear, rain fell constantly, hunger was general. People died in the streets from want, but the Queen ordered grain given out to the populace from her private stores, and was widely loved for it. And so on; and so on. He told me endless things of England, that kindled in me a keen biting desire to behold thatched cottages and winding country lanes and the white line of surf licking at the fog that lies upon the coast. Only in one area did he fail me, this Dutchman Warwyck, when I did ask him of the world of plays and poetry, what new and wonderful things had been put on the stage. For the world of words has always been hot in my mind, and I had read much, as sailors go, and it seemed to me that there were in England in my time a great host of new men who would write miracles. But of all that the Dutchman knew nothing and told me nothing. So I was left all unknowing of the high deeds of our poets, though he could tell me the price of a peck of corn on the London docks. Well, and well, I could not expect everything from the man, and he had told me much. Aye, so much that it left me churning with a powerful bitter yearning to quit this torrid Angola and get myself back to the pleasant island of my birth before old age did wither me altogether to a husk. God’s blood, but I had had my fill of Africa, and then some!

For day after day I did my interpreting while the Portugals and Dutch haggled over the prices of their commodities. Warwyck was not interested in slaves, but the sumptuous fabrics of Angola seemed to attract him, and he bought also goodly measure of ivory, and bales of certain medicinal herbs most sharp against the nostrils. When not occupied in these transactions I whiled away my hours happily with Matamba, or went off quietly angling, or simply strolled alone and reflective through the city. I was not living badly, that is clear; but it was not the life I wanted for myself. From time to time I did see Dona Teresa off at a distance, but there were no encounters between us. Yet I sensed there would be trouble from that quarter ere very much longer.

And so there was. I returned to my cottage one afternoon from my negotiations with the Dutch, and as I entered it I had a premonition of ill fortune, a tingling of the ballocks and a cold knot in my stomach’s pit. When I looked within I saw Dona Teresa in my chamber. She had laid aside most of her garments and wore only a thin cascade of the native weaving, brightly dyed in yellow and green, a kind of damask that they do make here from the fibers of the palm. That one garment was draped so that it did reveal the supple curves of her body, with a hint of thigh and a hint of breast artfully disposed for my endazzlement.

None of my slaves were about. The house was silent; the air was stifling hot. Teresa seemed posed, as if she had struck an attitude and waited a long time so that I would find her precisely thus. Her eyes had their keenest gleam and there was an odor in the room, that musky cat-odor of her body that I knew to be the surest token of her lusts.

She said, “Since you will not come to me, Andres, I have come to you.”

“Ah, you should not have done this!”

“No one has seen me. Give me an hour, and then I will slip away, and who will be the wiser?”

“For the love of God, Teresa—”

“Have I grown ugly?”

“You are more beautiful than ever. But the case is altered with us, Teresa, the case is altered! You are a wife!”

“I told you that that means nothing.”

“Well, and let Don Fernão tell me that himself, and then I might feel safer,” I said.

“Are you such a coward, then?”

“I will fight Jaqqas if I must,” said I, “or stick lances in the bellies of Kafuche Kambara’s warriors. But I have no wish to do combat with a rightfully angered husband.”

“Andres —Andres —”

She gave me a look both of desire and of fury, that made me fear her very much.

Slowly she arose, and came flowingly toward me, and I did see the unconfined globes of her breasts swaying beneath her thin draping, and the darkness at her loins was apparent, too, and I felt myself losing all resolve.

“Andres,” she said, “give me no more talk of angered husbands. You and I are lovers, and nothing else is significant. Come: you want me as much as I do you.”

“I will not deny that.”

“Then come.”

I shook my head. “It is too dangerous. I tell you, we must make an end of this union.”

“Nay,” she said. She drew nearer, and rubbed herself against me most unsubtly amorous, with a pressing and a thrusting of her loins on me that made my yard stand out fair to split my breeches. “Do not compel me to beg you, Andres,” said she.

“I beg you, Teresa—”

She backed off and there was rage now smouldering in her eyes.

“I cannot believe this! I crawl to you, and you refuse me? What have you done? Have you renewed your vow to that English wench of yours, and returned to your chastity?”

“She has not entered my mind often in recent times,” I did declare, to my shame, for it was the truth.

“Then why do you shun me? I cannot believe this fear you claim to have of Fernão. He will not know. And if he did, he would look the other way, I swear it! Nay, it must be something else that keeps you from me.” She stepped back one pace more, and the look upon her face changed, growing harder, growing colder. “They tell me that in Loango you did buy a slave-girl, a young one, and that she is your bed-toy. When I heard it I laughed at it, for I know the African women are not what you desire. You want no flat noses, you want no thick lips and heavy rumps. Or so I did think. But is it true, Andres? Do you use your little black slut, and care no more for me? Do you? Do you?”

Her words came at me like daggers. I could say nothing.

Yes, yes, I did sleep with Matamba, and yes, I took great pleasure of her, and yes, all that Dona Teresa had heard was true; but that was not the whole story of my refusal of her. It was not Matamba that had come between us, but rather the conjoining of lust with politics in this city, and my fear of letting a new embroilment with Teresa’s body embroil me also in some fatal tangle of ambitions. But I had told her all that already, and she had brushed it aside, seeking a more elemental motive. I searched my brain for some new argument that might sink to the core of the matter, and prevent it from seeming a mere jealous squabble between women, but I found no reasoning worth offering her. And so I stood, silent, gaping, while within me came the insinuating devilish temptation to put all this word-spinning behind me and throw myself atop Teresa’s body instantly in a willing embrace, that any other man in half his right mind would give a year of his life to enjoy.

Yet did I not do that, nor anything else, but remained as it were paralyzed. And then the worst of all possible things befell, for in that moment did Matamba enter the cottage, all unaware, and come lightly onward into my inner chamber, calling out my name in a cheery voice like a familiar lover, “Andres! Andres!”

Oh, God’s bones and shoulders, what I would have given to have her choose any some other different time to appear!

In the year when I lived with my wife Rose Ullward so long ago, we did keep two cats as pets, a grizzled tabby tom and a sleek old black-and-orange female, both of them amiable and easy-tempered animals, that stood and made a purr most vociferous when I rubbed them behind the ears. They were Rose’s cats, but they liked me well enough, and I them. One ghastly windy rainy winter day, when I was within the house with them and they were squatting together in the window-ledge, asleep in the warmth, some stray cat did come by outside, and perched on the sill, and peered in at them, as though yearning to join them out of the rain. I know not why, but the coming of that stray did set my two cats’ fur on edge, and they rose like beasts that had seen an evil spirit, and began upon the moment to fight with one another, squealing terribly and leaping about and sending clouds of their fur flying into the air. I would not have these animals, both so dear to me, injuring each other, and so, without giving the matter any thought, I went to them and seized them to hold them apart. Which was a most grievous mistake, for with a single accord they turned on me as their enemy, and so clawed and bit and furrowed me that within moments was I bleeding amazingly along my arms and both my ankles, and stood in sore pain. This taught me two things: one being that the cat of your hearth, though he be old and tame and sleepy, is nevertheless a hunting animal with ferocious fangs and claws and sturdy sinews; and the other being, never set yourself as umpire between two cats in combat, for you will be the chief sufferer in that. Yet I did not learn those lessons sufficiently well, I do believe, since something of the same story now replayed itself in my cottage, and with something of the same result.

By which I mean that the moment Matamba did enter my chamber, Teresa pulled back, crouching, drawing her lips away from her teeth, shaping her hands into fearsome claws as though she meant to destroy her rival straightaway. Matamba, though wondrously startled at finding Dona Teresa here and she near naked at that, needed no time to comprehend that she was in menace.

“Ah, you are the witch-woman,” said she. “You are the sorceress! I know you, idol-maker!”

“Slave! Trash!”

“Ah,” said Matamba, hunching forward, extending her arms with her hands held in the same claw-fashion. “Ah, Jesu Maria, God is with me!”

And from Teresa came words in the Bakongo tongue that I had never heard her speak before, black mingo-jango words out of the souls of her grandmothers, a hard gibbering magical stuff that amazed me to hear it out of her beautiful lips. And for each word she spoke in that dark incantation, Matamba did call forth the name of a saint, though I did see the terror in her eyes, and I felt no little fright myself at this witchery magicking that poured from Dona Teresa.

For a half minute, perhaps, they circled one another, poised, taut, the one woman crying curses and sorcery, the other answering with her holy names, and I looked on stupefied, thinking I must hold them apart from one another.

But I waited an instant too long. For Dona Teresa, with a hellish shriek, suddenly leaped upon the waiting Matamba.

“Nay!” I cried. But it was like shouting commands to the wild hurricane.

They rushed together with a loud clashing of flesh and grappled one another and entered into the most unloving of hugs, tugging and pulling each to knock the other to the ground, and all the while snarling like enraged beasts. They were of about one size, Matamba being a few years younger and somewhat more sturdy of build, but Dona Teresa having a lithe leopard-like strength to her. They grasped and struck at each other while I stood by for the moment all frozen, never having seen women fighting before.

Dona Teresa’s flimsy garment soon was a shred, and a reddened row of scratchings ran across her front from one shoulder over the breast to a side of her rib-cage. While at the same time she grasped Matamba’s thick woolly hair and did tug at it to rip it from her head, and brought her knee up to the black girl’s crotch, whereupon Matamba clawed her again, and this time flung her down, Matamba’s own garment coming undone at that. Teresa rose and launched a new assault, the air being all full of shrieks and sweat.

And I, forgetting the lesson of the two quarrelsome cats, could stand no more to see these two women, near naked and so vulnerable, harming their beauty in this way. So before the gougings of eyes commenced, and the breaking of noses, and such like mutilations, I flung myself against their slippery bodies and did strive to separate them.

God’s death, the foolishness of it! Ah, the silly man I was!

In the fury of the moment they turned each on me, just as had the cats, and I found myself assailed and beleaguered in a madness of bounding breasts and raking nails. They did not know nor care who it was they attacked now, but only wished to vent their rage. Aye, and vent it they did! I know not how long our triple combat lasted, but that we smashed everything in the room, as thoroughly as if we had turned a brace of bull-elephantos loose in it, and my shirt hung in rags and the hot rivulets of blood did run in channels on my arms and chest, and I was so kicked and pummeled and bruised that I feared destruction altogether, until at last I flung them into opposing corners of the room and stood panting between them, periling them with my arms lest they come at each other again or at me.

In that first moment of calmness, the three of us breathing hard and dazed from the violence, Dona Teresa did begin to cry out some new vituperation, which I silenced with a command; and Matamba muttered something dark in her own language, which also I cut off. “I will hear no more,” said I. “I have had enough of this uproar!” I remained as a wall betwixt them, and beckoned to them to rise to their feet. They were both of them all but stripped bare, and sweat made their bodies shine, Teresa’s dusky one and Matamba’s black one, and I saw the blood all over them, but more of it on me. Yet no one was badly injured.

“Clothe yourself,” I said to Dona Teresa. “And you, Matamba, stand back, let her take her leave. And not a word from either of you!”

Wearing only her outer garments, Dona Teresa went from my cottage, glaring most murderously at us both. Matamba stood rigid until she was gone, and then did begin to tremble and shake with a violence that astounded me.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“Blessed Virgin!” she cried. “I am bewitched! She has put the Fiend upon me, and I will wither, I will shrivel!”

“Nay, it was only words,” said I, though without the fullest conviction.

I went to her and took her in my arms and comforted her, and she me, and she stood sobbing a while, and then went to fetch the sponge, so we might cleanse our bloody scratches. But the terror remained in her. I had never seen her so pale, a new color of skin altogether, the ruddiness wholly gone from her. “It is the Devil’s own mokisso she has called down on me,” said she.

“God is stronger, Matamba. God will be your shield.”

“So I pray.” She clutched at my arm. “I beg you, burn that idol of hers, today! Render it into ashes!”

“It is but a carved thing,” said I. “It has no power.”

“Destroy it! Hurl it into the sea!”

“Ah, Matamba, I would not do it.”

“Even now? Even after what you have seen?”

I stroked her back, and the nape of her neck. Even now, I knew, I could not bring myself to part with that little statue, though its maker had shown herself to me in all her deep darkness of soul. And it shamed me to reveal to Matamba how fond I was of that idol, and of its maker. Yet did I say, “I have no faith in the strength of idols, and neither should you, if you be a Christian. It is but a trinket. Give it no mind. Come, let us bathe, and clothe ourselves, and put all witchery from our minds.”

But she still trembled, as did I. I found myself more frighted by what had just befallen than I had been all during the attack by the warriors of Kafiiche Kambara. For now Dona Teresa was my sworn enemy, and she would be no hollow braggartly foe such as the brothers Caldeira de Rodrigues had shown themselves to be. She would, I feared, cause me more grief than either of them and a whole regiment of painted savages with lances, if she did put her subtle mind to the task.

14

In the whole of my stay in Africa I had given no serious thought to escaping. That had never seemed in any way possible, there being no English ships passing within hundreds of miles of this coast, and the interior of the country being wild and unknown. Better, I had thought, to wait and serve, and have faith in Don João’s pledge to free me, or in some favorable alteration of conditions between England and Portugal, that might bring me my freedom.

But this grave new breach with Dona Teresa threatened me utterly, and I felt dear need to protect myself from her; and under that necessity I did suddenly see that God’s providence had given me a way to take my departure from this madhouse of a land. If I acted now, I might well be saved. If I let the moment pass, I would be at Dona Teresa’s mercy: and if she persisted in her sudden hatred of me she would be an implacable foe that could do me much harm. So when I was washed and clothed and rested some, I summoned my bearers and went down to the harbor, and sought out the Dutchman Cornelis van Warwyck, that I had appointed to be the agent of my salvation.

He greeted me with warmth, a lusty clap on the back, a hearty laugh, an offer of tobacco and the good strong Dutch genever spirits that he carried in casks in his cabin. I declined the pipe but gladly took the spirits, being in severe need of its potency. We drank in the Dutch fashion, tossing the clear fiery stuff down our gullets in a quick wrist-flipping gulp, and gasping our delight and filling the glasses again.

Then Warwyck said, “You are troubled, Battell?”

“Is it so easy to see?”

“Two hours ago you looked at your ease. Now storms do rage in your face, and contrary winds rush about your head.”

“Aye,” I said. “You judge me shrewdly. There is trouble.”

“With the Portugals?”

“With women,” I said.

At which he smiled, and seemed greatly relieved, for I think he had feared some overthrow among his hosts, and his own position in this city was a delicate and easily unbalanced one.

He puffed his pipe and contemplated me in his unhurried way, and I studied him close, weighing him, for I meant to make a heavy request of him.

After a time I said, “Have you wondered at all, captain, what an Englishman is doing among these Portugals in Angola?”

He looked amused. I saw a twinkling of his eye through the vile clouds of pipe-smoke.

“It did cross my mind that you were unusual here,” he said most calmly. “I thought it was not my place to ask questions. I am here to do trade, not to conduct inquiries into matters which do not concern me.”

“Of course.”

“Yet I did wonder. Be you some sort of renegado?”

“Nay, captain. A prisoner.”

His eyebrows lifted a small part of an inch. “Are you, then?”

“Taken captive off the Brazils, while privateering. Shipped here in irons four years past.”

“Ah, you English! You do love piracy so!”

“It was my first voyage in that line,” I said. “And, I think, my last.”

He puffed some more. “You have landed comfortably enough here, I trow. You wear no irons these days. I see you travel about on the backs of slaves when you go through the town. They tell me you have commanded their vessels in sailing along the coast and up their rivers.”

“I did not go gladly into the service of the Portugals,” I replied. “It was either that or stay in their dungeons. As time passed, they gave me employ and came to trust me, which is fair enough, for I am not a devious man.”

“Ah. Certainly not.”

There was silence between us a long while. He poured me yet another genever, and one for him, but held his glass in his hand, studying me. Nor did I drink then, either.

I said finally, “I can scarce tell you how much joy it gives me that I can speak with someone again in my own English tongue, Captain van Warwyck.”

“It is a pleasing language, yes. It has much music to it. Next to Dutch I like it best.”

“I would fain go, captain, to a land where English is more commonly spoken than it is in Angola.”

“Ah.”

“It has been a comfortable imprisonment here, for the most part. But it is imprisonment, all the same.”

“Ah. Of course.” Much judicious puffing of pipe.

“Captain,” I said, “when do you set sail from here?”

Again the small raising of the eyebrows. “Three days hence.”

“And for what port, if you will tell me?”

“We are not decided. Perhaps Sierra Leona, or Cape Verde, or the islands off that cape. Thence to the Azores to take wood and water. And to Holland.”

“You will pass greatly close to England, as you make for your home port,” I said.

“I take your meaning, Battell.” He let his eyelids droop in a thoughtful way, and fiddled most damnably long with the embers in the bowl of his pipe, and said at long last, “There are risks in this for us.”

“I comprehend that.”

“And no reward, that I can perceive. You know, it has never been my custom to take risk without hope of reward.”

“I have no wealth. I own a black slave-girl, but nothing else.”

“Ah. Yes. I would not want your slave.”

“We are both Protestants, captain. Take me from these Papists if only so that I can go properly to my church again, for it is too many years since I have heard a true blessing.”

He did look indifferent to that.

“I am a Protestant, yes, but not so godly, Battell, that it matters much to me how long you have been unchurched. To snatch you from the terrible Papists is not reason enough to hazard a breaking of my courtesies here, where the Portugals have been so good as to let me trade, although I am their foe. God can spare one Protestant here and there, but can Holland spare the income of my voyaging?”

I felt some rage at being thus entered among the profits and the losses, but I throttled it back.

“Then you will not take me?” I asked.

“Did I say that, Battell? Here, we hold full glasses in our hands, and the stuff will evaporate off and be wasted in this damnable heat. Drink, man, drink!” He hoisted his genever and saluted me with it, and said, “Of course I will take you,” and did gulp down his glassful as if it were water.

“You will?”

“How many thousands of men has England sent to the defense of liberty in my country, eh? How many hundreds of thousands of pounds has your Elizabeth poured into the saving of Holland from the Spaniards, as though into a sieve? And one Englishman comes to me and says, ‘Cornelis, take me home, for I am sore weary of serving these Portugals,’ and I shall say him nay? Do you think so? Drink your genever, Battell! Drink!”

My hand trembled so that I near spilled the stuff, which he had filled into the glass clear to the brim. But I drank most lustily, and said, “If ever I can be of some service to you or to your country—”

“I understand that. Aye.” He leaned close and said, “Wednesday at sundown do you come to the harbor, and we will take you on board and hide you deep in the cargo, which is so plentiful that they will never find you, though they look all month. And at sunrise we will pull ourselves out of this place and put to sea, and that will be that. We will not discuss this thing further, eh, Battell?”

“I am most eternally grateful.”

“Of course you are! I’m saving your life, man! I say we should waste no words on such talk. Shall we drink another?”

“I think we should not.”

“I know we should not,” said Warwyck. “But that was not my question. Shall we drink another, is what I asked.”

And we did, and I think there was one more after that, and we may have sung a few Protestant hymns, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and something else, he in Dutch and me in English, and then I think both of us in Dutch, to much laughter. And then he put me into his longboat and I was taken to shore, where my bearers waited like a team of patient mules, and thus onward to my cottage.

A great joy did sweep through my soul at the thought of returning to my true home, and an end to this close heat and this servitude and this speaking the Portugal tongue and all the rest.

In the few days remaining to me in Angola I walked about as though I were already halfway to England. I feared nothing, and no dismay entered my spirit. Even Dona Teresa and her vengeful intent meant nothing now to me; she was a mere harpy at a vast distance, who would not have time to strike. I did feel some sadness at abandoning Matamba, for plainly I could not bring her with me, and I could not come to tell her that I was leaving, because of the pain it would cause us both. And even for Dona Teresa did I suffer, the losing of her, though that had already taken place; but yet I remembered our hours of coupling, and all the great joy of that, and also the deeper union we once had had, when we spoke of our lives and our inner selves in the days of our first love in São Paulo de Loanda. All that did burn in my memory. But I comforted myself with the knowledge that I could carry her with me wheresover I went, her breasts and her thighs and the taste of her lips and the scent of her body and the feel of her rump in my hands, as vivid and as real to me as if were still together, and also the sound of her voice, that was so rich and musical and melodious. But I did not have to remain mired forever in Angola in order to enjoy such pleasures of the remembrance.

For all of Africa, now that I was going from it, I do confess I felt an odd kind of yearning. In my years here I had drunk deeply of this land, though barely a sip off the surface of that colossal goblet that Africa is, and to my surprise a part of me wished to remain and drink even deeper. I was drawn to the wild jungle that I had not really closely seen, and to the great cities of the blackamoors of which I had only heard, and even to the Jaqqas that were such devilish mysteries. I thought fondly of the coccodrillos and the zevveras and the strange and beautiful birds of many colors and the great-mouthed gaping hippopotamuses, for never would I see such things again. It is curious how, when one is at last going from a place, it can become suddenly dear to one, even though it was not so before. And I had not detested Africa, ever. I was not so much fleeing Africa as I was being drawn back to England, I think. The only deep fault I could find in Africa, other than such bothers as the heat and the insects that crawled everywhere about, was that it was not England; and for that fault, I was quitting it. But all the same I had had great adventures in this place, I had commanded a pinnace and I had fought hand to hand with savages and I had journeyed with cannibals and I had loved two women that were very little like unto the women of England, and much more, without which I would have been far the poorer in experience. And though I now was closing the African chapter of my life, yet did I feel a shadow of regret for the going forth from this place.

In my dealings with the Dutch merchants I gave no hint, by secret wink or smile, of the compact I had concluded with Captain van Warwyck, I went about my work of interpreting in a wholly businesslike way, concealing my joy and my anticipation. Yet within me I was all in ferment, madly counting the hours, telling myself that in forty-eight hours more I would be on my way out to sea, in forty, in thirty-seven, and so on, and that at such and such a time so many days hence I would be a hundred leagues off to sea, and the like.

Then it was the Wednesday, and the Dutch ship had finished its trading here, and made ready to depart. As did I. I think my heart did beat in double time all that day long. The hours crept on snail’s feet, but I danced through my chores.

In late afternoon I went to my cottage, and took Matamba to me, and in my chamber did draw her clothes from her, and look for the last time on her youthful vigorous body, her high full breasts and sturdy thighs and sleek dark skin, and the tribal marks on her face and the brand of the Portugals on her thigh and the scratches of Dona Teresa here and there.

She smiled and said to me, “You are strange of mood today, are you not?”

“Nay, I am most jolly.”

And O! it was not easy to hold back the truth from her.

I cupped her and caressed her and we did hold close and I begged from her a kiss, which she gave, seeing, I think, that something out of the ordinary was about to befall. And then her body opened to me and I went in unto her and we thrust and grappled and played the game of pleasure, which brought me close to weeping, for the knowledge that I was to disappear from her without favoring her with a word of explanation. Yet did I tell myself that I owed her nothing. I had bought her out of slavery and spared her from shipping to the New World, which was no small favor, and though I knew not what would happen to her in São Paulo de Loanda after I was gone, at least she was within range of her native land and might again return to it. So my account with her was balanced in my favor. And I did not want her lamentations, nor her pleas that I remain, which I was sure she would utter most piteously.

Almost did I tell her the truth, as we clothed ourselves after that lovemaking, that I was leaving that night on board the Dutch vessel. But I thought me of all the tears and sorrow, and forbore. Also I thought it was best she knew nothing, for the Portugals would surely question her about my vanishing, and they would easily see she was ignorant of it, but if she tried to conceal something they might torture it out of her: better that I planted no knowledge at all in her.

Darkness came. I summoned no bearers. I took my last look at São Paulo de Loanda and, by a roundabout route, went in the shadows through the back streets, and out the pathway to the harbor, where, in the sudden and complete blackness of night, I made out with joy the lights of the Dutch ship standing out by the roadstead. I whistled: it was the signal. There was the splashing of oars, and the longboat came for me, and soon I was on board the ship and Warwyck embraced me and himself took me through the vast cargo hold of that huge vessel, and we had one more round of genever to celebrate. And then I crouched down between the casks and bales of merchandise, all that stuff that I had helped to tally on the register-sheets in the days just past, and secreted myself in a hiding-place to wait for sunrise and the departure.

England! Home!

I bethought myself how strange a figure I would seem, with my scars and my sun-darkened skin and my gaunt hollow face well weathered by exploits, as I went sauntering through the streets of my native town. And I imagined conversations with the friends of my childhood, telling them tales of man-eaters and giant coccodrillos and the mines of King Solomon. A few hours more, and it all would have come to pass, too.

But then I did hear oars lashing the water, and a commotion on deck, with Captain van Warwyck loudly shouting in Dutch, and Portugals shouting back at him just as loudly, and no one understanding the other, but I understanding all: which was that they knew I had stowed away, and they had come here to look for me.

How was it that I had been betrayed?

I did not know. I made myself small and did crawl into the least visible place that I could see, while the dispute raged above me. And then were thumping footsteps, and torches, and the sounds of men prowling and poking nearby, and Warwyck still grumbling and protesting, and at last the lights were bright in my face and I saw six Portugals, all armed, staring down at me.

“Here he is,” they cried. “The traitor, the renegado!”

They dragged me to my feet. The torches gave such a raging light as to blind me, but when I shielded mine eyes a little from the hot glare I saw that Captain Fernão da Souza himself had led the arresting party, and he was dressed now in no fancy breeches, but with armor and helmet, and his face was steely set and harsh with rage. And beside him was none other than Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues, who had given me no trouble worse than sour glares at a distance for a long time, but who now was puffed up with triumph and vindictive joy. For it was he—so I did learn afterward—that had discovered the secret of my escaping, by talking with some Portugals in the crew of Captain van Warwyck— those rogues, those poxy bastards!—who had overheard the preparations being made to stow me on board the vessel. And it was he who had denounced me to Captain da Souza. So it was that the hornet had had his sting into me at last, and revenge was his, for I was undone.

Souza, maddened with fury, struck me across the face with such force it nearly twisted my neck apart, and struck me again that split my lip and cost me a tooth, and he called me dog and traitor and more, and said, “Is this how you repay our kindness, with this treachery? Oh, you will be repaid yourself, for this!” And when he had done with me it was the turn of Caldeira de Rodrigues, who did punish me most severely for the death of his brother, striking me in the ribs and the gut while others held me, and in other shameful craven ways tormenting me, so that I became a mess of blood and puke everywhere on me.

Then was I taken and bound both hand and foot and pulled to the deck, and most ungently cast into the Portuguese longboat. When we reached the shore there was waiting, instead of native bearers with hammocks, a party of horses, and I was flung across the back of one as if I were nothing more than a sack of beans. They trussed me down, and into the city we rode, giving me such a jouncing and jostling as was like to break every rib. Up to the presidio we went, and into the dungeon was I conveyed, with many a kick and a slap.

It was the same filthy beshitten loathsome hole of a place where I had been when first I came to São Paulo de Loanda—I the brave pilot, I the useful interpreter, I the heroic survivor of the Kafuche Kambara massacre, I the this and I the that, now all of it wiped out, and back to the miserable starting-point for me. I lay sleepless all night, astounded by this reversal of my fortunes. And when morning came, the time of the departure of the Dutch ship, I knew it was gone although I could not see the harbor, and I felt such pain in all my vitals as could scarce have been caused my beating, or even by the thrust of a spear. For Warwyck and his Dutchmen now were standing out to sea, and I was still here, and all my hope of England was torn from my grasp just as I had been within a few hours of setting forth. That was the greatest agony, to have been so close, and to have failed.

What would become of me now?

From the severe anger of the mild and courteous Fernão da Souza I knew I was in high trouble. I wondered if my friendship with Don João, such as it was, could aid me now. For I had betrayed his trust by fleeing. I had promised to serve, and he had had need of me, and then I had slipped on board the Dutch ship after all, and that must have wounded him. And yet, and yet, he could surely understand my longing for England. He was kind of heart; he liked me; he did not need to have it explained that a homesick man would take any opportunity to depart, no matter what pledges he had given. During that long bleak night I told myself this again and again, that Don João would have me freed in the morning with no more than a reprimand, and return me to my former pleasant life among the Portugals.

But then I thought it might not be so easy. For I did remember Don João hurling the sauce into the eyes of that slave, and I remembered Don João casually deceiving Dona Teresa in the matter of their marriage contract, and I knew that I did give the man credit for being more generous of soul than he really was. So I began to fear once again. I had betrayed my trust, who had seemed trustworty to them; why then should they be soft with me?

In the morning I was brought a bowl of water and a plate of cold porridge, and nothing else, and no one came to speak with me. And so it was the next day, and the next. It was worse than my first captivity in this dungeon, for then I had the company of my shipmate Thomas Torner, and sometimes Barbosa also to visit and encourage me, and later Dona Teresa; but Torner was long since fled and Barbosa had perished and Dona Teresa had become my enemy, and who now would stand advocate for me?

I grew weak and suffered much from hunger. On the fourth day there was a clanking of gates and there came to me a priest, Father Gonçalves, one of the Jesuits. I trembled with terror when I saw him, for I knew they had years ago given up hope of converting me to their Romish way, so if they sent a priest now it must mean I was in some grave peril, perhaps even of execution. And indeed he set up his candles and began his Latin mutterings and invited me to join with him in prayer.

“How now,” I said, “am I to be put to death?”

“I do not know, my son,” said the priest in most gloomy tones, that brought the dark shadow of the gallows into the room.

“It cannot be, to slay a man for no more than trying to return to his homeland!”

“Your soul is endangered. Add no more sins to your score by uttering lies.”

“Lies?”

“You are guilty of grave crimes,” he said.

At which I cried out, “A grave crime? What? To cherish my native soil, to yearn to see my family again?”

“To force your lusts upon a married woman is no trifling offense.”

“What, did I hear you aright?”

“You stand guilty of rape, or will you deny it?”

I began then to shout forth my protests, all outraged by this scurvy and unwarranted attack on my innocence. And then my head did begin to swim with dismay, for in an instant I understood which woman it was that I was accused of ravishing, and what kind of trap had been woven about me. And I feared that I was lost.

I said, when the pounding of my heart had quieted some, “Speak the truth, priest. Am I to be hanged?”

“You are a runaway and a Lutheran and a forcer of women. What hope can there be for you?”

“That I am a Protestant has been known from the beginning, and no one has greatly chided me for it in this land. That I am a runaway I do not contest, but it was a natural deed that anyone would have done, and no sin. And that I am a forcer of women is an abominable falsehood. I would wish to see my accuser take an oath before God that I have done any such crime.”

“These words will not save you.”

“Then the governor will! Does Don João know that I am imprisoned here?”

“It is by his express command,” said the priest.

“It is a lie!”

Dourly he did hold high his crucifix and say, “Do you demand an oath from me on it?”

Then I knew all was lost. I fell to my knees, and in my own way did implore God to spare me. At this the priest brightened greatly, and dropped down beside me and offered to place the crucifix in my hands as I prayed, the which I did not accept, and he said, “If you will but embrace the true faith, I will crave pardon of the governor for you, and perhaps he shall yield.”

I closed my eyes. “My life then depends upon my turning Papist?”

“Your soul, rather.”

“Yea. You will fill me with Latin and then hang me anyway, and think yourselves well accomplished, for having sent another good Catholic soul to Heaven. I do see the size of it. But I will not have it. If I am to hang, I would rather hang as a Protestant, I think. For whether I go to Heaven or Hell makes little difference to me, but to die as an honest man is very much my intent.”

“You speak on honesty, with such crimes on your conscience?”

Turning on him angrily I did cry, “By the God we both claim to love, I have done no crimes!”

“Peace. Peace.”

And he muttered some more in Latin, with many signings of the cross over me. I think he was as sincere in his hunger for my soul as I was in my denial of guilt. So I allowed him to pray for me.

And then I said, “I will not turn Papist, for it is a matter of scruple with me. But if you are as godly as your robes proclaim you, then I beseech you do me one service: go to Don João and tell him I maintain myself to be unjustly prisoned, and ask him to grant me an audience that I may defend myself against these charges.”

Father Gonçalves looked at me long and steady. At length he said, “Yes, I will speak with Don João.”

He departed then. His final words did give me hope, and for a day and a half I listened intently for the sounds of my jailers coming to fetch me and take me to the governor. But when next anyone came to me, it was not the jailers, but rather a certain venerable member of the governing council, one Duarte de Vasconcellos. This stooped and parch-cheeked old lawyer, with the dust of ancient lawbooks all over him, told me that Don João had sent him to explain to me the nature of my iniquities.

Which were vast, for I was accused of plotting with the Dutchman Cornelis van Warwyck to overthrow the royal government of Angola by force and seize the city of São Paulo de Loanda for Holland, and also was I charged with going to the chamber of the lady Dona Teresa da Souza in the dark hours before my boarding of the Dutch ship, and attempting a carnal entry upon her chaste body.

“And who are my accusers?” I asked.

Dona Teresa herself was the accuser in the second offense, he told me. As for the first, it was Gaspar Caldeira de Rodrigues who cried treason against me, and swore upon his royal forebears that I had gone about town boasting that I would convey the city to the possession of the Dutch, who meant to sell it to England. Thus did he avenge his brother.

“Well,” I said, “and let me be confronted with these accusers! For the deceitful Rodrigues knows that there was no plan of hostility against this city in me, but only that I sought to return to mine own homeland. And Dona Teresa, God wot, will not be capable to stand up before my eyes and swear that I had her by force, when it is well known in São Paulo de Loanda that she has many times given herself freely to—”

“Nay, say no slanders, Englishman.”

“Slander? Slander? Come, old man, you know yourself that she—”

“I will not hear it.” He looked at me sternly and said, “The Portugals who denounced you cannot testify, for that their ship has sailed, and they are gone with it out to sea. And I do tell you it is beyond all imagining that Dona Teresa can be put to the torment and ordeal of an appearance in court, so shaken and disrupted is she by your attack on her. But her husband Don Fernão has seen the bruises and other damage on her body, and he has entered the plea against you, by which you are found guilty and sentenced—”

“God’s death, am I guilty already, and no trial?”

“—to die by hanging in the public square, at the pleasure of the Governor Don João de Mendoça.”

“Those bruises on Dona Teresa’s body were made by my slave-girl Matamba, when they two did fight, after Dona Teresa in jealous rage attacked the girl: she being angered that Matamba and not she herself was now my bedpartner. Examine the slave! Take her testimony, and see the wounds Dona Teresa inflicted upon her!”

“A slave’s testimony is without value. And in any event the verdict has already been rendered.”

“Ah,” I said. “The famed Portuguese justice!”

“I am here to make formal notice to you, and to ask if you have requests we may fulfill.”

“I do appeal my sentence to Don João, and demand an audience with him, to make show to him of my innocence.”

“That will avail you nothing,” said Vasconcellos. “But I will do as you say.”

That afternoon four Portuguese warders came for me, and without one word took me from my cell. I thought joyously that I was indeed now to be brought to Don João, and it gave me heart, since that I had spent some hours resigning myself to death for these phantasmical crimes of mine. But it was a cruel disappointment, for the Portugals conveyed me only as far as the courtyard of the presidio, where they fastened me to their whipping-stake and did beat me with knotted cords, so that by the time they were done there was not a spot on all my body that was not swollen and aching, and in some places bleeding. After this punishment they did return me to my cell, and a keeper entered, and, saying he was doing this at the governor’s command, did clinch to my legs great bolts of iron of thirty pounds’ weight, that dragged upon me like the Devil’s own grip. “This is done because that you are a known escaper,” he said, and left me.

Enfeebled, shackled, sore with my whipping, I lay like one benumbed and bereft of all will. Each morning when I arose I expected to be taken out and put to death; and each night when I lay me down to sleep I tallied one more day of life, with gratitude and despair all at the same time, for what was the use of living if my remaining few days were to be so empty? I thought of Warwyck’s ship, that must be halfway to Holland by now, and I wept from rage. I thought of Matamba, and wondered sorrowfully what had become of her, now that I was condemned. I thought of Dona Teresa, by whose jealousy and treachery this had befallen me, and I meditated much and deep on how love could turn to bitter enmity. And I gave my thoughts greatly to England, to my friends there and such family as I might still have, to the Queen Her Majesty, to the soft mists and gentle rains and green fields full of sheep and all that I would never see again. In this way I passed through despair to resignation, and grew calm, telling myself that I had lived some thirty-five years, which was more than is granted to most, and had known much delight in that time along with a proper measure of grief. If I had to die now, why, I would accept that judgment, for it is true beyond quarrel that we each owe God a death, He who gave us life, and I was merely paying the debt a little earlier than was my preferred time. Furthermore there are many ways to die that are more hideous than hanging, and now I would suffer none of them.

But as it happened I was spared the gallows as well. For two months I did languish in that foul stinking prison awaiting my doom and thinking, whenever a warder approached my cell, that it was to take me to the gibbet. But then came the one that had fastened the iron hoops to my legs, and he did cut them from me; and then the lawyer Vasconcellos entered my cell and said, “I bring you happy tidings, Englishman.”

“Aye, that I am to be drowned slowly in good wine of the Canary Islands, instead of being hanged, is that it?”

He looked displeased at my levity and said most soberly, “His Excellency Don João has taken mercy upon you despite your great crimes. Your sentence of death is raised.”

“God be thanked!” I cried.

But my jubilation was misplaced. For Vasconcellos went on to tell me that I was not pardoned, but merely given a new sentence: which was to be banished for ever to the fort of Masanganu, and to serve for the rest of my days in that place of fevers and monstrous heat, to defend the frontiers of the colony. My first impulse upon hearing that was to call out for hanging instead, as being greatly more preferable. Which I did not say; but I did tell myself inwardly that Don João had earned little thanks from me for this show of kindness. For he had sent me into a suffering beyond all measure, to a Hell upon earth, from which death was likely to be the only release.

As I went on board the pinnace that was to take me up the river into imprisonment, I drew from my pouch the small woman-idol that Dona Teresa had given me long before, and I looked at it most long and hard. Still did it seem to embody the sinister irresistible beauty of that woman, and still did it cling to my hand as though by some secret force in the wood. I drew my breath in deep, and clamped my jaws tight closed, and with all my strength did I hurl that idol into the dark waters, and stood staring as it dropped from sight.

The which deed gave me some measure of comfort and release from constraint. I braced myself against the rail, and stood sweating and gasping in the aftermath of it, until they hurried me onward with a rude jostle onto the ship. But the discarding of that idol was the only action I was able to take against those who had brought me to this pass, and precious little good did it in truth do me. For even if I had broken free of Dona Teresa’s witch-spell at last, yet still was I condemned inexorably to torment most extreme, at Masanganu the torrid, Masanganu the terrible.