Lord of Darkness

1

And so that night was I entered into the man-eater tribe, and became one among them: the first white Jaqqa that has ever walked this earth, and, God grant it, also the last.

I had shared their monstrous meal. Within my body now lay shreds of meat that a few hours before had been the flesh of a child of God, a son of Adam. So be it. I made no orations upon that in the inwardness of my soul: for if I had learned anything in this my African sojourn, it was to take each thing as it comes, and ask not to live in English ways in a place that was so alien to all that was English. And thus I might hope to survive until the next morn.

All that raucous evening the Jaqqas feasted and drank and danced, and I among them did the same. They asked me to dance an English dance for them, but I was hesitant at that, it being so long since I had been in England that I had forgot most of their amusements. Then I recalled the dance that is called the hornpipe, that is done by our sailors aboard the ships, and that I had learned of my brothers Henry and John so long ago in Essex by the water.

“Dance!” cried Imbe Calandola.

“Ah, I must fain have music, if I am to dance.”

He waved to his musicians, telling me to take my choice of them, whichever met my need.

I went down the ranks of all those painted and gleaming gargoyles and cacodaemons, and lit upon one that took my fancy, a fife-player, that did play the mpunga, which is fashioned from elephanto-tusk.

“You,” said I. “Give unto me your instrument, so that I can show you the melody I require.”

He laughed and handed me his instrument, and put my hands into the fingering. I found it not hard to bring a sound from this barbarous fife, though what I made at first was doubly barbarous, harsh and awkward, that drew great gawfing bellows of amusement from the man-eaters. But then did I find the tune, and played it most lively, with a nodding of my head and a prancing of my feet, and gave back the fife to its owner so he could essay the same.

And lo! he caught the music by its heart, and delivered it so well in a moment that he displayed himself five times as skilled as any Englishman that fifed. The hornpipe that he did play was of course a strange and most discordant one, the Devil’s own hornpipe tune, but yet it had a wild delightful strength in it. And as the sound of it rose high above the Jaqqa camp all of them fell solemn still, and I did my dance.

Ah, such a dance it was! In the dread frozen silence of these man-eaters I did jig up and down, kicking high my legs, and putting now this hand afore my belly and now that, in the hornpipe manner. The Jaqqas had never beheld its like, and they were thrown into stupor by it, statue-still, amazed, as the long-legged white-skinned man in beads and shells and a palm-cloth loin-clout hopped about amongst them, up one row and down the next, to the wailing melody of that eerie fife.

“Andubatil Jaqqa!” they began to cry, when the surprise had lifted some from them. “Andubatil! Andubatil!”

And they rose, and danced behind me, a band of frightful black apparitions with great long spectral legs and arms. They flung out their limbs, they threw back their heads, they shouted, they cried, they stamped their feet. “Ooom-day!” they called. “Oom-da ooom-day ooom da! Ooom-Jaqqa Ooom-Jaqqa ooom ooom ooom! Andubatil! Andubatil! Ooom!”

When they had had their full share of that, and the fife-man was compelled to stop from soreness of the lips and an excess of laughter, for this was a passing riotous dance, and a most rollicking sight withal, these Jaqqas doing the hornpipe, Kinguri did turn to me and say, “Do you know another dance, Andubatil?”

“Aye, that I do,” said I.

And I bethought me of the dance of our village known as the longways dance, and called forth eight Jaqqas to take part, and tried to instruct them in the movements, while telling certain musicians how best to imitate the rhythm of our tabor and the squirling of the pipes and the shrill sounds of the fiddle. All this brought great merriment, and the huge black men did leap and fling like Bedlam lunatics, in a dance, God wot, nothing at all like anything the village greens of Essex had ever seen. But they danced until they were sore weary, and would have had more. And I saw myself becoming their dancing-master, and teaching them square dances and round dances and maybe even the morris-dance, too, with tuned bells fastened to their legs and a Robin Hood and a Friar Tuck and a Little John, and one of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s heavy-breasted scar-faced wives to dance the Maid Marian. And then in all this high jollity there came a sudden halt. For Calandola had risen from his throne-stool and was handling my musket, that all this time had lain to one side, unheeded.

He fingered it most close, the lock and the stock and the barrel, admiring its workmanship, sniffing it at both ends, hefting it to have the weight of it. I thought then he would put it to his shoulder and mimic the firing of it, but he did not seem to comprehend the holding of it.

Then he looked to me and said, “Show us how.”

I took the gun from him and put the powder to it, and rammed a ball down the barrel, and saw to my match, and looked about for a place to shoot. A night-owl stood perched on a dark-leaved tree high above the camp, and it croaked its ill-omened sound, and I turned my gun to it. It is no small feat to strike an owl from its perch by night with a musket, but in my time as a soldier of the Portugals I had learned some little skill with that weapon. And so I took my aim and pulled my trigger, and the Jaqqas did gasp aloud at the sight of the flash of the powder in the pan, and I struck the owl fair in his breast and knocked him aflutter to the ground.

Again the cry went up, “Andubatil! Andubatil Jaqqa!”

And the Jaqqas did turn outward their hands, and slap against their temples, and cut the air with their elbows, which all are their ways of showing amaze.

This display of killing sank deep in the soul of Imbe Calandola. He stood a long time brooding, looking toward me and then to the shattered fallen owl, and to the musket, and to me again. For he had never seen our weapons in action, and certainly not the musket: for the Portugals are more given to the older instruments, such as the arquebus and the caliver, and muskets are uncommon among them. And a way of striking death from a distance, with so loud a roar and so bright a flash—yea, that caught the Imbe-Jaqqa’s interest, and held it firm!

Then Calandola did make a little grunt and a gesture, and out of the crowd of women about him came one of his wives, a woman of perhaps thirty years, who bore a maze of tribal scars on her body, and whose teeth were few and whose breasts were long and low-hanging. The Imbe-Jaqqa ordered her to take up a stance at some hundred paces from me, or a little less, and there she stood, unmoving, and seeming as uncaring as a tree.

“Do it to her,” said Imbe Calandola.

That command struck me as would a knee in the gut. Cold-blooded slaughter of an innocent woman? God’s eyes, that was worse than cannibalism!

“Nay,” I said. “I cannot.”

“Cannot?” Calandola repeated, turning the word around in his mouth as though it were some rare delicacy. “Cannot? Who says this to the Imbe-Jaqqa?”

Kinguri, closer by me, murmured, “The Imbe-Jaqqa fain would see how your weapon works on such a target.”

“I understand,” said I, “but it is not in me to slay her.”

“She has no life except at the Imbe-Jaqqa’s pleasure,” returned Kinguri. “That has now been withdrawn from her.”

“I am tired, and the weapon is heavy, and I have had so much wine tonight that I fear my aim will be untrue.”

“Your aim was true enough when you shot the owl.”

“God guided my eye then,” said I, “but He will do that but once a night, and before I may shoot again I must make special prayers to Him, that will be quite lengthy.”

In thus speaking of God and long prayer I hoped to divert them, until they forgot this evil enterprise, as my circumcision had been forgotten. It did not thus befall. Kinguri spat and said something to Calandola; and the Imbe-Jaqqa, growing impatient, folded his arms and grunted, and his eyes blazed and a ghastly raging scowl came across his features.

Kinguri said, “Andubatil, why do you wait?”

“This is not easy for me.”

“The Imbe-Jaqqa would see the display.”

“I beg you—”

And all this while the woman stood unmoving, waiting the fatal shot. Whether she was aware of the essence of our talk or no, I cannot say: but I have seen dumb animals in the field look with greater sense upon the huntsman that in a moment will blow out their lives.

Then Calandola, angered to madness now by my slowness, cried out something to me in the Jaqqa tongue, his voice so thick with roarings and snortings that I could not identify the words. He did stamp his foot and spit and pound his fists, and his black face grew blacker still with rage. He appeared at that moment a pure madman, capable of any deed.

While that he raged, I did begin to reload my musket, which is a painful slow business. I was thinking that if he should launch some attack upon me, and in his anger condemn me to the cauldron, or worse, I would at least turn my musket on him, and take his life before he could have mine.

Yet that idea went from my mind the instant I conceived it, for it was the greatest folly: among these cannibals the Imbe-Jaqqa was near to being a god, and if I were to harm him even slightly, I knew, the death that his followers would give me would be the most foul this world doth hold, a slow boiling, perhaps, or something far more terrible even than that. So I banished the plan, and searched for some other way to mollify him, but there was none, save to do his bidding. His rage yet mounted and I feared to defy him, and to my disgrace I could no longer find the will to say him nay in this terrible thing.

Kinguri said, “It will go hard for us all if you do not obey.”

“Shoot!” howled the Imbe-Jaqqa.

“Lord give Thy unhappy servant mercy, and forgive me,” I whispered, and I touched my finger to the trigger and discharged my shot.

Mine arms were trembling and mine eyes were half blinded with tears of shame. Yet did the musket-ball fly true to his target and take the woman between her breasts, and knock her back five or ten paces and drop her sprawling to the ground.

Some Jaqqas ran to her, and danced about her, and held her up bleeding, and lifted her like a trophy. And they did set up a wild howling of glee.

Thus did I for the only time in my life slay a purely innocent person, that had done no harm to me, and promised none, and made me no obstacle. And for that I think I will do penance long years before I am let see Paradise. But yet in the moment of doing it I felt I had no other way, but to gratify the dark demand of the Imbe-Jaqqa.

Who now was entirely at his ease, and smiling, and applauding me for my marksmanship. That crazed wrath of his of only a moment before was altogether gone from him, as though it had never been. He came to my side and wrapped his great arm about me and hugged me joyfully, and gave me warm praise in coarse Jaqqa words I scarce understood, and caressed the hot barrel of my musket, and called for his cup-bearer to bring me a draught of the royal wine that was mixed with blood. And lifted the cup high, and pronounced a long pronouncement, and gave me the cup to drain.

Kinguri and the other Jaqqa lords did circle close about, and I saw their eyes glittering like shining stars, and their faces set in deep expressions, and some of them not amused, nor friendly in the least.

“What is it he says?” I asked Kinguri.

“Ah, Andubatil, he names you to be the chief of all his warriors.”

“Do you tell me so?”

“And makes you the lieutenant of the battlefield, and says all honors will be yours.”

“But I am white! I am Christian!”

“You are Andubatil Jaqqa. He calls you also Kimana Kyeer, that is, Lord of the Thunder.”

And with the saying of that new name the other Jaqqas about us did shout, “Kimana Kyeer! Kimana Kyeer!” But some were joyous and some were scowling, as well they might, if this white stranger had been raised in rank above them in the twinkling of an eye only because he carried a thunder-stick.

Calandola gestured in his impatient way, and made the sounds that I knew now to mean, “Drink! Drink!”

Therefore did I drink. And they backslapped me and handled me, so that the drink did run down my chin and chest, and the wine dripped all the way to my loins, where I felt it sliding over my privities, that wine that was mixed with blood.

“Kimana Kyeer!” they all did cry.

And I all the while could think only of that poor dumb woman that I had blown to Hell with my musket at his cruel inhuman command, the which I had not had the strength to resist.

Kinguri to me did say, “You are fortunate. He will make you great among us, and give you great gladness, for that you have the power to slay from afar.”

I looked to the other lordlings and saw them discussing among themselves, and some nodding and some spitting, and I knew that it was perilous delicate to be elevated to lieutenant and duke among these folk. Yet had I been a prisoner and a pawn overlong, and if my musket did win me acclaim, well, be I then Kimana Kyeer in gladness, said I to myself, and Devil have the hindmost.

But then, to my horror, Calandola did make a signal most imperious, and a second of his wives was thrust forth out of the crowd of them.

What, and was I meant to massacre the Imbe-Jaqqa’s entire harem, one by one? God’s death, I would not! Lieutenant or no, Kimana Kyeer or no, chief of all the warriors or no, I would not! On that I meant to stand firm, and not be swept away again by Calandola’s bluster or by his strange resistless power to command. I looked about in appeal to Kinguri, who even then I understood to be more reasonable a man than his great brother, and I began to frame some words of protest. But Kinguri was smiling; and so, too, was the woman who had come forth out of the group of wives.

“The Imbe-Jaqqa is well pleased with you, Andubatil,” said Kinguri, “and he gives you this favorite among his women, to be a wife to you.”

God’s wounds!

I a cannibal, and a cannibal’s husband! Well, and what was I to say? I looked at her close.

She was of that early womanhood that Matamba had had when first I bought her out of slavery: sixteen years, or perhaps even younger, it not being easy to tell. Her flesh was ripe, with high heavy breasts and great round buttocks, and solid smooth thighs like ebon columns, and everything about her was youthful and firm, with her skin drawn tight over the abundant vigorous flesh beneath. Her eyes were mild and her smile was gentle, but her face was not beautiful to me: for even though her features were sharp and well sculpted, and indeed were graceful and far from coarse, she was so heavy adorned with the cicatrices of their barbarous fashion that she scarce seemed like a human being, but rather some sort of fabulous monster. Ornament in the shape of lightning-bolts and triangles and serpents had been laid upon her cheeks and forehead, and between her breasts, and down the outside of one thigh and the inside of the other; and each of her buttocks, which were bared where her tight loin-cloth passed between them, had a design of circular rings, one within the other, raised amazing high. Then also she was oiled with the grease of the fat of men, which gave her a high shine but made her reek most strangely, and her hair, which was long, did hang in heavy plaits waxed with oil and red-colored clay, and sprinkled with the scent of something much like lavender, but more sour. And this woman, and not Anne Katherine, whom I had all but forgot, was to be my wife, I who had been unmarried since Rose Ullward’s time. God’s bones, such a strange dream has my life been, such a walking sleep of phantasms!

The cannibal woman came to me, all demure, eyes downcast, and knelt, wife-like.

“Raise her, Andubatil,” said Kinguri.

I drew her to her feet.

“How are you called?” I asked.

“Kulachinga,” she said, in a low murmur barely within the range of my hearing.

“She is full of juice, Andubatil!” Calandola cried. “She is soft and tender! A fine wife for the Kimana Kyeer!”

I looked at him and saw that he had brought forth his Romish gear, his cassock and his chalice and his crucifix. He had donned the cassock, and now did bang the crucifix against the chalice most gleefully, to signal a new start to the festival, which now had become my wedding feast. No meat remained, but they brought forth fruits and great store of wine, and there was more dancing—first the wild capering of the old Jaqqa manner, and then a renewal of the hornpipe I had taught them, and the longways dance—and all the while bridegroom and bride stood in the midst, hand in hand, as flowers were showered upon us.

This went on for some hour and more. And then to us came Calandola, and laughed and put one hand to the small of my back and one to hers, and pressed us together so that her breasts did flatten into me, and pushed us back and forth, by way of miming that it had arrived time now for the consummation of our nuptial.

God’s cod, was I to perform it in front of them all?

Surely such a thing would be impossible, I being full of wine, and half dead with weariness, and shaken by all the frenzy and clamor of the evening, so that it would have been hard to couple under any circumstance, but trebly so with a whole tribe of leering cannibals looking on. And also this Kulachinga being so remote from my ideal of beauty, with her oiled skin and mud-thickened hair and the cicatrized scars all over her. And her with her memories of Imbe Calandola’s massive yard in her, so that how could I begin to equal him?

Well, and yet I told myself I would essay it, come what will.

The Jaqqas were already building a bower for us under a vast ollicondi tree, piling high the torn-off limbs of some flowering shrub, most sweet and fragrant both of wood and leaf, arranging them in a roundel, with an open place for us to lie at the center. And they clapped and danced and sang, and pantomimed us into the bower, and pantomimed also the joining of man and woman with the finger-mime. And grinned their jack-o’-lantern Jaqqa grins at me. I was gamesome for anything, I the man-eater, I the bead-wearer, I the woman-killer, I the Kimana Kyeer, I the English Jaqqa, Andubatil.

I took my fair young bride by the hand and I did draw her down upon the soft tender young grass.

Then we made away with our loin-wraps and our shells and our beaded bangles, of which Kulachinga wore great store about her neck and arms and legs. And when we were naked as Eve and Adam we faced each other, and she made a little whistling sound through the places of the missing teeth, and said, “Andubatil.”

“Kulachinga,” said I.

Her skin was bright by the flaring torchlight. I touched her skin and drew my fingers along the greased tracks, over the ridges and hillocks and bumps of her ornaments. I held her breasts in my hand and let the weight of them arouse me, for they had a great merry exuberousness. I cupped the buttocks of her, and touched her hot thighs, with their markings high and strange. And she with great sly skill did caress my arms and my back, and then went lower, to my rump, even sliding her fingertips between my buttocks and into the hole a little way, which felt passing strange to me but excited me. And from there she traveled to my yard, which had not hardened yet except a little, but she took it deftly with the fingers of one hand, and drew upon it, as one draws on the udder of a cow, a gentle firm tug, and with the other, most skilfully, this woman Kulachinga Jaqqa did seize my ballocks, stretching her fingers about to contain them both. And to my amaze I did respond despite all of the challenge of the public moment, and grew stiff and huge to her touch, and she laughed just as a little girl will laugh when presented with a pretty frock, a playful laugh of pleasure in her own attributes, and she drew me down on her and widened her thighs to me and with one good thrust I speared her, while from all about me the jungle resounded with the crying of my name by the Jaqqas, “Andubatil, Andubatil, Andubatil!” In and out, in and out, moving easily and surely, and Kulachinga lay back, her head lolling, her lips slack, her eyes open but the dark of them rolled up far into her head, and I reached down and with the tip of my finger did burrow in the thick hair of her, and found her hard little bud, and touched it only twice and she gasped and moaned and had her fulfilling. Which we did three or four times the more, until at last she drew her knees up toward her breasts and outward, and clamped her heels against my back, and with sudden violent movements of her hips did push me onward to the venting of my seed. After which a heavy sweat came upon me like unto that caused by the greatest heat of the jungle, and rivers of hot fluid did burst from my every pore, so that I was slippery as a fish, and I sank forward onto her breasts and she held me and I dropped into a sleep that was none very different from death itself, I trow, for I did not dream and I did not know I slept, but lay like a stone until morning. And so did I pass the first night of my life among the Jaqqas, and so also did I accomplish myself on the night of my wedding to my African bride Kulachinga.

2

For another two months did the Jaqqas remain at the town of Calicansamba, until they had utterly laid waste to everything that had belonged to those people, and most of the villagers had fled to Cashil and Mofarigosat and other lords, and the town had become an empty thing where those mean beasts the jackall and the hyaena did roam, snuffling for scraps. Then the word came down from Imbe Calandola and his viceroy Kinguri that the tribe was to take up its wanderings again, and they did gather their cattle and their gourds laden with palm-wine and their weapons and make ready to go on the march, inland toward the mountains of Cashindcabar.

These mountains be mighty high, and have great copper mines, which the blackamoors do work, going in and taking the ore and melting it some, and hammering it to use for ornaments and weapons. The Jaqqas do none of this themselves, but only prey on the metal-working tribes. Kinguri explained this to me as a matter more of religion than sloth, saying, “It is forbidden by our custom to draw metal from the earth, this being a shameful handling of our mother. But we must have tools; and so we do allow lesser nations to engage in the commerce of metals on our behalf.”

As we passed toward Cashindcabar, the Jaqqas took the spoil all the way as they went. The towns of the makers of copper bells and chains and bracelets did unresistingly surrender their hoards, out of fear of Imbe Calandola. Also did he take from them their goats and their cattle, and destroyed many of their palm-wine trees, in that manner most wasteful that the Jaqqas practice. And now and then when the hunger for human meat came upon the tribe, they did choose a few townsfolk whose flesh they coveted, and killed and ate them in their great feasts, which were ever a heavy spectacle to behold.

This devouring of men was done not only for the flavor of it, though that was very dear to the Jaqqas, but also because it did strike terror into the nations of this land, being so unnatural and monstrous. Thus it invested the Jaqqas with a mantle of strange grandeur and frightfulness: offtimes a town would surrender without a struggle, so fearful of the Jaqqas were they.

Onward did we proceed, looting and eating, eating and looting. I took each day as it came, and lived easily my life among them, doing as they did by quick nature, the way one breathes without thinking on it. Yet also did I hold myself back in at least one part, that was the observer, the scholar of their doings and the doings of the nations that were about them. For I did know that no man before me had had the opportunity to witness such things, and that if God’s grace ever brought me to a place where I might set down my experiences, I would have such a tale to tell as few wanderers and journeyers before me had had, except peradventure for the great Marco himself, of Cathay.

In the mining country of Cashindcabar I saw how the working of metals is carried out among the Bakongo peoples, who used molds of wax to shape their bangles, the wax melting away and leaving the bracelet or armlet behind, full formed. In the working of iron they are very skilful also, and even amazing. For the blacksmiths do light a fire on the ground and, sitting nearby, practice their art in a most tranquil way, using neither hammer nor anvil. In the place of the hammer they employ a piece of iron large enough to fill the hand, and whose shape resembles a nail. The anvil is a piece of iron to the weight of some ten pounds, that they place on the ground like a log. On this they do their forging. The bellows is made of hollow logs over which a hide has been stretched. They raise and lower this hide by hand, and in this way blow air on the fire; this serves them very well and without difficulty. With these three simple instruments they do fashion all their iron goods, even the most elaborate.

I asked a blacksmith what art of magic he used in accomplishing this, and he replied most blandly, “It is in the arm, the directing of it, the weight of the thrust. Which we learn as boys, and it must be of the soul, of the inner spirit: I mean there is a mokisso in it, or the work is worthless.” And perhaps that is true of whatsoever labor any one does, in any land, that if there is no mokisso in it, and the spirit is not just right to aim the thrust and shape the weight of the task, then it matters not what fine tools you do employ.

These blacksmiths have other special skills. If someone is troubled by a disease, he goes to the blacksmith, makes some payment to him, and has his face blown on three times by the bellows. When you ask them why they do this, they reply that the air that comes out of the bellows drives the evil from the body and preserves their health for a long time. At one of the mining towns under Cashindcabar all the lordlings of the Jaqqas did form a long line, that stretched far out into the country, and one by one all the day long they came forward to have the blacksmith of that place blow air thus into their faces.

Gold is of little interest to all these peoples. At Cashindcabar I picked up a Jaqqa hatchet to admire it and found some gold inlaid into its handle, along with other workings of copper. This I showed to Kinguri.

“Where is this metal to be found?” I asked.

“You mean this copper?” said he.

“Nay, not the copper, but this other bright stuff, which is gold.” I said the name of that word to him both in English and also in Portuguese, which is ouro, for I had never heard any African name for it, they having so little respect for it.

“Gold?” said Kinguri. “Why, this other metal is copper also, but of another color.”

“Aye,” I said, not wishing to dispute it, “and from whence does this other copper come?”

“Out of a river that is to the southward of the Bay of Vaccas,” he said, “that has great store of it. In the time of rain the fresh water drives grains of this metal out on the sand, and we gather it then, for it is not forbidden to us to take metal that we find lying on the surface of our mother’s breast. It has a good shine, but it is soft and useless stuff.”

I pressed him to tell me more precisely where this river lay, but he could only say, southward of the Bay of Vaccas, that is, the bay about Benguela. Certainly I had heard nothing from the Portugals about finding gold there when we made our voyages thither; it was slaves that they sought, only slaves and slaves and slaves. But I may hope that one day Englishmen will scoop up this easy gold of the river-sands, if ever we do displace the Portugals from that part of the globe. And so I set the information down now that it not be forgotten.

Kinguri became my close companion in these first months of my wandering with the Jaqqas. Though he was a frightful man-eater and monster and all of that, yet also was he a person of thought and wisdom, with a far-seeing mind, that would have carried him to a high place in whatever country he was born: it was only the jest of fate that gave him off to spend his life in so barbarous a fashion. In this tribe he was a counsellor and companion to his elder brother the Imbe-Jaqqa, but in no way was he a partner in the government, for Calandola held that absolute unto himself. There was not room in that great tyrant’s soul for a sharing of power, though I know it to be true that he did love Kinguri and hold him in high esteem—while at the same time he was jealous of him, and most watchful that Kinguri should not usurp so much as one shred of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s authority and privilege.

Since in time I came to be close friend, if “friend” is the true and proper word, both to Calandola and Kinguri, I felt the pull of conflict sometimes between these two, and was much torn in my loyalties and strained by their brotherly rivalry. But the extent of that was not apparent to me at first, though of course any man of even slight wisdom knows that there are risks in getting too close to princes, or of seeming to favor the brother of a prince over the prince himself. The prince does love his brother, but also does he fear him, and for good reason, generally: so then does he fear the brother’s friend.

But there was more than mere court intrigue to all this, for the brothers did have a feeling for me that went beyond such simple intrigue. Each wanted for himself the mokisso that was within my white skin; each coveted me, each desired me, almost as rival lovers do, for each thought I had in me that which would illuminate and exalt his spirit.

I had some hint to this early, when the man-witch Kakula-banga, a high sorcerer of the tribe, came to me to paint me with magic signs to warn off the threat of zumbi. Those spirits were much in fear just then. This witch was a small wrinkled man with one eye and a scar that made much of his face seem that it had been melted in flame; but that one eye saw with keen sight. And he said, as he drew his zickzacks upon my skin, “Calandola is fire, and Kinguri is snow, and so Calandola does rule, for fire rules over snow. But yet snow can kill, and it is a passing cold death.”

“What is the meaning of this witch-talk, old man?” said I.

“That you lie between the flame and the ice, and both can burn you, O Andubatil Jaqqa. But you cannot endure both burnings. You will have to choose, some day, between Kinguri and Calandola, as will we all. Give it thought, O Andubatil Jaqqa! Give it thought!”

But these dark forebodings had no substance for me, except in the most broad way, that I knew one must be careful in the proximity of great men. In every realm, and not only that of the man-eaters, does greatness glut itself on the blood and flesh of those who are not so great, and who hope to rise, and die in the rising. Beyond such wisdom I knew nothing here, and resolved to watch and wait, and tread carefully.

From Kinguri I learned something of the history of these dread Jaqqas. They had come, he told me, out of the land known as the Sierra Leona, that is high above and inward somewhere in Africa. But long ago did they leave that place, giving up all settled habitation and wandering in an unsettled course. Thus they dispersed themselves as a scourge, one might say as a pestilence, throughout much of this continent, invading this land and that, and over time drifting southward through the kingdom of the Kongo and onward to the eastward of the great city of Angola, which is called Dongo. Thus they came to infest both these territories that the Portugals have colonized, and to threaten constantly against the little Portugal outposts and the Christian blackamoor nations that the Portugals have made subject to themselves.

As they marched, the Jaqqas in time transformed themselves into the likeness of the tribes they conquered. For they allow the bearing of no children of their own, but adopt into their nation the strongest and best of their foes’ children, as I have already told. Thus in all their camp there were but twelve natural Jaqqas of the true blood, that were their captains, and fourteen or fifteen women. For it is more than fifty years since they came from Sierra Leona, that was their native country. But their camp is sixteen thousand strong, and sometimes more, and all of them know themselves only as Jaqqas, being without any knowledge of the tribes from which they were taken, or concealing it if they do.

This matter of bearing no children is one of the strangest of their ways. Of course they do engender babes, and carry them to full term, and the women are very fruitful, since the Jaqqas are a lewd nation and constantly perform the act of coition. But their women enjoy none of their children: for as soon as the woman is delivered of her child, it is presently taken from her, and placed in a hole in the earth, and in that dark prison of death the newborn creature, not yet made happy with the light of life, is allowed to perish.

Their reason for this cruelty is that they will not in their travels be troubled with such cumbersome burdens as babes, nor do they wish to undertake the education of infants. This is most monstrous. I witnessed it myself many times, the digging of the hole, the placing of the babe, all this done with the greatest ease and calm, as if it were the drowning of kittens. I did tax Kinguri with the manifest evil of this, and he said, “But it lets us grow stronger, for we choose only the best for our number, and discard all others.”

“But since you are so valiant, are not your own children apt to be stronger than those of other tribes, and best suited to become as you are?”

“That may be, Andubatil, but it may also not happen that way. Great kings do engender feeble princes. Did you not tell me yourself that your King Henry brought forth only sickly sons, that all died in youth, so that your kingdom had to be given over to women?”

“It can happen so, aye, but it is not the rule. Have you not had sons yourself, of your wives?”

He looked indifferent. “I have not come to know them. They are of no concern to me.”

“They are of your get, of your blood, of your valor!”

“They are only half mine, and who knows what corruption the other half brings? I tell you, Andubatil, these babes are mere insects, that buzz and drone for a day, and are gone.”

“Nay, nay, nay,” said I, pressing him close. “Strong men with strapping wives do bring forth fine and lusty children, so I believe. And in the murder of your babes you and your fellows have forfeited great strength in your armies, and—”

“Have care, Andubatil!”

“Do I transgress?”

“You transgress in the extreme.”

“I speak from my heart, though.”

“I was told by my brother Calandola that your heart was Jaqqa.”

That did give me a moment’s pause. Jaqqa-hearted, was I, in their eyes? Well, and I had thrown myself most lustily into their festivals, and did ape Jaqqa ways, and now did bear a Jaqqa sort of name: but was my heart truly Jaqqa? In faith, that brought me some amaze, and then some second thought, and I recalled to me the harsh croakings of that white-skinned witch, that demon-eyed madman of a ndundu, that in the city of Loango long ago had moaned and gestured at me and called me “white Jaqqa.” Was his prophecy now fulfilled? Well, and so be it, though this was passing strange to me.

“And is my heart not Jaqqa then?” I asked Kinguri.

“So it seemed to my brother, and so it seems also to me: which is why I took you near, and showed my love to you. But am I mistook? Is your heart still white?”

“I think it is both white and Jaqqa at once,” I said. “I find myself making the voyage between the one life and the other, and taking on new ways, and casting off old ones. But in some things I do find my heart as white as ever. In the matter of the murder of babes—”

“It is not murder!”

“I understand the killing of innocents to be murder.”

“You understand nothing!” cried he most furiously.

“I think I have some little wisdom.”

“None! None!”

There was a blaze in his eye and a froth to his lips. My own brain was heated, and to my tongue there came a crowd of arguments, why it was not right to do as the Jaqqas did with their young. But I caught my breath, and held myself still. For from the fury that was rising upon him, I knew it was the moment to cease plaguing him on this, lest I lose his love entirely, and inflame him into enmity. We had reached our boundary in this discourse, and any crossing of it would be a breach irreparable.

“I will not press you,” said I.

“Nay, best that you do not.”

He still was enraged. And I was yet fevered with the heat of my convictions; but I gave over, I held myself still, and after a time we did grow calm, and restore our amity.

Never did I open that subject again, even for the sake of hearing what mysterious profundity he could bring forth to justify the slaughter of babes. To see into his mind was like a powerful potion to me, so strange and other were his thoughts, but here I kept the boundary. Peradventure there was no profundity to be found there on this matter anyway, but only bloodlust: for I reminded myself that it might be an error to regard this man as wholly a philosopher with whom I could hold unrestricted discourse of the mind, when in fact I dared not forget that what he was was a savage and a cannibal and a killer who gave no quarter, even though his mind be deep and discerning.

Kinguri told me that the first of the Jaqqa kings was a chief of his own name, Kinguri, that when he came south did marry a wife named Kulachinga out of one of the local nations. After him came Imbe-Jaqqas that had the names of Kasanje and Kalunga and Ngonga, all of the same original Jaqqa family of the first Kinguri. These presided over this mixture of many tribes that was the Jaqqa nation. Some of the Jaqqa monarchs fell into friendly relations with the Portugals of Kongo and Angola, and did ally themselves with them in certain battles in return for the privilege of crossing territories unhindered. But these alliances came and went like the shadowy events of a dream, and the Portugals never knew whether the Jaqqas were their friend or their mortal enemy, which was how the Jaqqas preferred it to be.

The Imbe-Jaqqa just before Calandola’s reign was called Elembe, and it was he who conducted the spoiling of the Kongo that led to the great massacres of the last generation, in which so many Portugals and Kongo folk lost their lives. Calandola was a page unto this Elembe, and may also have been his son, for I think the Imbe-Jaqqas do spare some of their own offspring from the general rule of destruction. I believe Cal-andola did overthrow Elembe at some time, much as the god Jove did overthrow his father in a mighty revolution upon Mount Olympus. But this again was a matter that was perilous to explore, and I did not probe deeply in my talks with Kinguri on this, when I felt him withdrawing and sealing himself off. Certain it is that in recent years Calandola was the utter master of the Jaqqas, and the sole architect of their exploits.

They have no feitissos, or idols. That they leave to the other tribes. They do have gods—is there a nation on earth that does not?—but images are not kept by them.

Their gods are two, so far as I know, but I cannot tell you their names, if names they have. One they refer to as “the mother,” by which they mean the earth itself, our sphere of habitation: they do hold her sacred, and abhor any kind of profaning of her wholeness, such as mining or even farming.

Thus it is that they will not plough the earth, and without ploughing it is difficult indeed to raise crops, even in this most fertile honeyed land of Africa. (I think also the Jaqqas abjure ploughing because that they regard farming as fit only for humble peasant folk and serfs, and they look upon themselves as a race of kings; that is, it is more pride than piety that leads them to seize the produce of others and raise none of their own.) The sole violation of the mother earth that they will countenance is the digging of holes for burial, either of children at birth, or the dead of the tribe. But this they see, not as a profaning of the mother, but merely as a returning of her children to her.

Their other god is a dark mokisso or spirit that is the force of destruction, the whirlwind of warfare and killing. But also is he the god of creation, the quickener of life in the world.

This union of destruction and creation was explained me by the witch Kakula-banga, who had appointed himself my ghostly father in this tribe. “In the beginning,” he said, “there was only the mother, and she was empty and shining, like an uncarven piece of stone, pure, void, whole. But although she was perfect, she did not feel complete: so she did stir in her sleep, and roll about, and flail from side to side, until she awakened a mighty wind, which had mokisso in it. And this wind did come roaring down across the face of the land, and cut great gouges in it, which were the valleys and lake-beds, and threw up great ramparts, which were the mountains. And round and round the mother did the mokisso-wind blow, ever more fiercely and deeply. Until at last the wind did set seed inside her, and make her fertile, and quicken the first life. Out from her caverns in time came the first man, and the first woman, and the other creatures each in their turn, and so the world was peopled by the union of the whirlwind and the mother. And when the time comes, it will be destroyed in the same way.”

“When will that wind rise?” I asked.

And Kakula-banga said, “It has already risen, O Andubatil Jaqqa Kimana Kyeer. For the Imbe-Calandola has the summoning of that wind in his hands, and he has summoned it!”

I do believe that this god of storm is in fact the Devil, though the Jaqqas do not know our idea of the Devil as the adversary of God, but rather worship him as a spirit who is a god himself, and worthy of the highest admiration. Yet as always in Jaqqa thought creation and destruction are entwined, and killing is a form of giving life, and I suppose a god can be a devil, too, and quicken the seed of the great mother at the same time that he does great injury to her perfection.

Whenever the great Jaqqa Calandola did undertake any large enterprise against the inhabitants of any country, he first invariably made a sacrifice to his stormy god the Devil, in the morning, before the sun arose. He would sit upon a stool, having upon each side of him a man-witch: then he had forty or fifty women which stood round him, holding in each hand a zevvera-tail, wherewith they did flourish and sing. Behind them were great store of drums and mpungas and other instruments loudly playing. In the midst of everything was a great fire; upon the fire an earthen pot of white powders, wherewith the men-witches did paint him on the forehead, temples, athwart the breast and belly, and on one cheek and the other, with long ceremonies and spells and enchantments. This would continue until the sun was down: thus did they conjure all the day long.

Then at night the witches brought to the Imbe-Jaqqa his cassengula, which is a weapon like a hatchet of great size of shining black metal with fair gleaming crystal set into its handle. This they put into his hands, and bade him be strong against his enemies: for his mokisso is with him, and victory shall be his. And presently there was a man-child brought, which forthwith he would kill with a blow of the cassengula, a weapon too heavy for most men to lift. Then usually were four men brought before him, slaves or prisoners: two whereof he would presently strike and kill in the same way, and the other two to be taken outside the Jaqqa camp and slain there by the man-witches.

Here I was in the first weeks of my stay among the Jaqqas always ordered to go away by the witches, for I believe they did not want a Christian to see a ceremony at which the Devil did appear. Then certain most holy rites took place. And presently after, Calandola did command five cows to be killed within the fort, and five without the fort, and likewise as many goats, and as many dogs, and the blood of them was sprinkled in the fire, and their bodies were eaten with great feasting and triumph. And also too they did eat the bodies of the men and the man-child that they had sacrificed.

Later, when the wind was in my sails and it had carried me much deeper on my voyage into the Jaqqa commonwealth, they decided I was no longer a Christian, and could be indoctrinated into their most secret rites. And so it was done, as I will tell in its rightful place. But never once, though I witnessed all the holiest of their holies, did ever I see the Devil himself, unless that I saw him and did not know him by his face. But I do doubt that he was truly there.

Kinguri did tell me, as we sat in their camp on the moist black earth beneath the great spreading arms of an ollicondi tree, of the many wonders that he had seen through his marchings across these lands. He spoke of a beast called the empalanga, which is in bigness and shape like oxen, save that they hold their neck and head aloft, and have their horns broad and crooked, three hand-breadths long, divided into knots, and sharp at the end, whereof they might make very fair cornets to sound withal. I saw none of these creatures, but I think they are harder to find than the Devil, since he is everywhere around and they are shy and rare.

Then also he told me of the great water-adder called the naumri, a serpent that goes forth of the water and gets itself up upon the boughs and branches of trees, and there watches the cattle that feed thereabouts. Which when they are come near unto it, presently it falls upon them, and winds itself in many twines about them, and claps his tail on their hinder parts: and so it straineth them, and bites so many holes in them, that at last it killeth them. And then it draws them into some solitary place where it devours them at pleasure, skin, horns, hoofs, and all.

Upon hearing this tale I did tell Kinguri of the coccodrillo at Loango that had eaten the whole alibamba of eight slaves, at which he laughed and said, “Nay, it is impossible for one coccodrillo to hold so many!” When I swore I had seen the monster cut open myself, he at first grew angry, and gave me the lie, and I thought would strike at me with the flat of his sword. But then he relented, and later I heard him telling the tale to Imbe Calandola, except that when it was told this time it was eleven slaves that the coccodrillo had devoured, not a mere eight.

From Kinguri I learned of the great bird called the estridge, taller than a man, and with feet that can kill a man with a single kick. It does not fly, because of its immense size. And he told me of certain other strange creatures, which being as big as rams, have wings like dragons, with long tails, and divers rows of teeth, and feed upon raw flesh. Their color is blue and green, their skins bepainted like scales; and two legs they have, but no more. I had heard of these dragons in Mofarigosat’s town, that some were worshipped by the blacks and kept for a wonder in special cages. No dragons did I ever see, neither. But Kinguri promised he would show them to me when we were near some, a promise that he did not keep.

I could tell you many more tales I had from Kinguri, and very likely I shall. For he was a man much traveled and very shrewd; and as we talked often, he came to master the Portugal tongue, and I the Jaqqa tongue, and also we both spoke the Bakongo language, so that we had rich store of words between us and could communicate most easily and well.

Kinguri asked me much about life in Europe, that was of keen interest to him: our kings and our churches, and our way of dress, and our beliefs about the size and shape of the world, and much much else. In this I was often hard pressed to make reply to him, for though I am an educated man in my way, I had not held a book in my hand since leaving England, and much that I had been taught was forgotten to me now over so many years. Nor were his questions easy ones, since that he probed right to the heart of our mysteries, asking such as, Why did we use gold for our money and not iron, when iron was the more sturdy and useful metal? And, Why did we build great stone houses in which to worship our god, when God is everywhere? And, Why had our god created the first man and the first woman pure and innocent, and then let the Devil tempt them with sin, and then punish Eve and Adam with shame and death, when it would have been easier and more just to create them resistant to such temptation, while He was taking the trouble to bring them into existence? All this did I answer, more or less, but inasmuch as these were problems with which I found some difficulty myself, I think I did not give the Imbe-Jaqqa’s brother great satisfaction by the firmness of my reasoning.

I had one question for Kinguri of a similarly deep sort, that was, To what purpose did the Jaqqas travel up and down this land of Africa, consuming all that lay in their path? What fury drove them, what hunger for destruction? To this, Kinguri made no reply for a great long while, so that I feared I had angered him by impertinence; his eyes seemed to turn inward, and he brooded in a chill and far distant way. Then at last he did reply, “I will not answer this. You must ask it of the Imbe-Jaqqa, who is our guide and master in these matters.”

In those days I did not readily approach Calandola for such conversation. He held himself apart from the camp except at feasting-time, and his presence in it was like that of some smouldering volcano, a huge terrible Vesuvio that might erupt at any instant, hurling fiery rivers of lava over those nearby. So I let that question go by, thinking that perhaps it was a fool’s question, inasmuch that the Jaqqas might merely do their killing and destruction out of the sheer joyous love for harm, and nothing underlying. Yet I suspected otherwise. In my study of the world it has seemed to me that there are very few nations that practice mere harm for harm’s sake, but rather always do have some reason for their deeds, that to themselves seems to be the purest light of righteousness sublime.

And so it was with the Jaqqas. But I did not learn that until some while afterward.

We were done now with the spoiling of Cashindcabar, and moved onward toward the north and the east. The Imbe-Jaqqa’s plan now took him across a river called Longa, and toward the town of Kalungu, that lies on the edge of the province of Tondo. Here we stood as it were between two worlds. For Kalungu is a place most fertile, and always tilled and full of grain, and is all a fine plain very level and rich, with great store of honey. But beyond it is that evil desert in which the Portugals underwent their massacre at the hands of Kafuche Kambara, who was also a great enemy of the Jaqqas. We did camp outside Kalungu for some time, while Calandola strived to decide whether to go inward upon that pleasant city, or to strike upward upon Kafuche Kambara. In this time of indecision he did hold many ceremonies in honor of the Devil, and feast greatly, and seek the Devil’s counsel.

Then one time in the night we were all summoned from our sleep. I looked to the north and saw in the air many strange fires and flames rising in manner as high as the moon. And in the element were heard the sound of pipes, trumpets, and drums, most spectral.

I had been told long ago by older mariners of such strange noises, which may perhaps be caused by the vehement and sundry motions of such fiery exhalations in the sky as are wrought by wind and heat: for those fiery exhalations, ascending into the powerful cold of the middle region of the air, are suddenly stricken back with great force, and make a noise not unlike the noise that fire makes in the air, such as the whizzing of a burning torch. But to Calandola it was a great omen. He stood looking out over the plain and said to me, “See, Andubatil, there is heat coming from the beams of the moon! That means we must march and destroy Kalungu.”

In faith the moon’s beams felt as cool as ever, to me. But I would not gainsay Calandola.

He rested his heavy hand on my shoulder and waved the other toward the sleeping town that lay before us. “See, see, Andubatil, the farms, the ploughed earth! Those people have enslaved our mother, and we must set her free.”

“Indeed, enslaved?”

“Yea. All across the land, there are men who would make themselves the mother’s masters. And they scourge her dark warm skin with their ploughs, and they cover her with their houses and their roads. It is not right. Those men spread like a plague of insects across the land.”

I would have said, rather, that it was the Jaqqas that were the plague. But that I held to myself.

Calandola went on, “Do you understand me? Very few understand. We Jaqqas know the truth, which is not given to other men, that this enslaving of the earth through farming and commerce is a great evil. It was not meant for mankind to do thus.” He spoke most gently and softly, like a thoughtful king rather than as a madman. “It is our mission,” he said, “to undo that evil. And so we sweep from land to land, and we rage, and we slay, and we devour; and behind us everything is made more simple, more clean, more holy. We will restore the earth, An-dubatil. We will make it what it was in the first days: green, pure, noble.” And with a laugh he said, “Your Portugals, they build in stone, do they not? Well, and we will drive them into the sea, and give their stone houses over to the jungle, and the vines and creepers will pull the heavy blocks apart. And then will we rejoice, when the motherland is wholly cleansed. Do you understand, Andubatil? So few understand. We are the forces of the purifying. We take into our own bodies those who are the enemies of truth, and we absorb them, and we make their strength our own and we cast forth their weakness. And thus we conquer and prevail. And we will go on in this way from land to land, from shore to shore, to the farthest rim of the sky. Tomorrow it will be Kalungu; and then later it will be Dongo, and Mbanza Kongo, and those other great cities; and in time it will be São Paulo de Loando, too, and when that city is gone, all will be whole again. After that we will see what work remains to be done in farther realms. Do you see? We have the semblance of ones who smash and destroy, Andubatil: but actually what we do, in truth, is make things whole again.”

And we stood side by side all that night, looking toward the desert and watching the witch-fires dancing in the air. And that witchery did enter my brain and inflame my blood, for the words of the Imbe-Jaqqa seemed crystal-clear and reasonable to me, and I made no quarrel with them. I saw the world as swarming with ugliness and treachery and corruption, and the good green breast of the earth encumbered with the ill-made works of man; and it seemed to me most peaceful and beautiful to sweep all that away, and return to the silence of the first Garden.

And when morning came, Imbe Calandola did mount a high scaffold and utter a warlike oration to his troops, inspiring them with the frenzy of battle. Whereupon they did sweep down upon the town of Kalungu and take it, and put its people to the sword and its high slender palm-trees to the axe, and devour many of its folk boiled and roasted, and take its children by impressment into the tribe of Jaqqas. And in that way was yet more of this land returned into its ancestral purity. And in doing this, I truly believe, the Jaqqas were aware of no hypocrisy, but were altogether sincere, in fullest knowledge that this was their divine mission, to smash and destroy until they had made all things whole. Aye, and God spare us from such terrible virtue!

3

I make my full confession. In the warfare that the Jaqqas had launched against all the civilized world, I confess I did play my full part, with much heartiness and vigor.

For Calandola had not spoken in jest, or in idle vaporing, when that he had named me on my wedding night to be his lieutenant, and the chief of all his warriors, and dubbed me Kimana Kyeer, the Lord of the Thunder. For love of my musket or for love of my golden hair had he in a single stroke lifted me to a lordship among these people, I who had been a prisoner and a slave and a pawn for so long with the Portugals. Now that we went into battle he looked to me indeed to act my role, as the right hand of the Imbe-Jaqqa, and act it I did, with all the fervor of my soul.

In giving me this high place he did of course displace others, that might have reason to resent me. There were, I have said, twelve high captains of the Jaqqa nation. Firstmost was Calandola, and then, a long distance behind, Kinguri, by right of blood. I will tell you the names of the other ten, which were Ntotela, Zimbo, Kulambo, Ngonga, Kilombo, Kasanje, Kaimba, Bangala, Ti-Bangala, Machimba-lombo: all of great stature and awesome presence, though in the beginning I could scarce tell one from another. I knew them only as long-legged figures that stalked like spectres through the Jaqqa camp with followings of their own, and stood close beside Calandola and Kinguri at the festivals, and had privileges in the feasting. But of course with time came familiarity, and I learned to know each in his way, and saw that some were mine enemy, and some were friendly in their hearts toward me. But that knowledge came later.

When we went down into the valley of Kalungu to take it, I was with them, with Kinguri on my left hand and Kulambo, who had the longest arms I ever have seen on a man, to my right. Calandola was not with us, for he had had himself borne ahead of us on a great scarlet palanquin in which he sometimes rode, and was directing things from the fore. But the others seemed to be looking to me to see what I would do.

When we came to a high position outside the besieged town, where the ground did rise up into strange little tawny hillocks more than three times the height of a man, and very narrow and twisted, I said, “Here will I take my stand, and show them what a musket is used for!”

And I did climb one hillock that gave me a view into the town, and was within musket range. And with my musket I did set up an uproar of fatal power, that terrified the blackamoors that had come forth from Kalungu to defend themselves, and sent them fleeing in an instant.

“Kimana Kyeer!” came the cry, as I fired me my first shot. I think ten men fell, though in good sooth I could not have hit more than one, and the others dead of fright.

I aimed and I shot again. And again came the cry, “Kimana Kyeer!” from the Jaqqas, but also now it came, not so jubilantly, from the throats of the Kalungu men.

With those two shots did I put the town into rout. Imbe Calandola came from his palanquin, and watched what was befalling; and he grinned a great grin, and hauled forth from his robes his mighty yard, and made water in the direction of the town, with a great yellow stream that was like the outpouring of a giant spigot. For that was his token of conquest, to piddle on the threshold of an enemy that was giving over the fight.

That was the first of my battles on behalf of the Jaqqas; but it was far from the last.

I became so highly esteemed with the great Imbe-Jaqqa, because I killed those many Negroes with my musket, and frightened an hundred for every one I slew, that I could have anything I desired of him: the best wine, the choicest meat, captured maidens, little pretty ivory trinkets. I needed but to name it and it was mine. I confess I took some glee in this. I do not conceal it. After so long not my own master, I was Lord of the Thunder, and I was like some vast force let loose from leash. There was a joy in it, that had me looking keenly forward from battle to battle. And when I fought I was like a king, or like a god. All the same I used my shot with caution and parsimony, not knowing where I would replenish my powder when it was gone, but being skillful in my aiming I made full advantage of my weapon’s force, and slew great numbers, and those who were not slain were rendered helpless out of terror of my weapon.

Terror was a key to the Jaqqas’ success. Their foes were half dead with fear before battle ever was joined. Calandola had seen at once that I was a new kind of terror-wielder, and so it was that he did put me again and again in the fore of his troop, and I would fire, and the battle-cry would go up, “Andubatil Jaqqa! Kimana Kyeer!” And mighty was the weapon of Andubatil, and easy was the conquest of the town that never had beheld a musket before, or a white man. And to protect me, when we went out to the wars, Calandola did give charge to his most valiant men over me, even his high captains. By this means I was often carried away from hard battle in their arms, by giant Ti-Bangala or broad-backed Ngonga, and my life thereby saved: for there was ever a phalanx of puissant Jaqqa swordsmen to shield me and rescue me.

The way of fighting of the Jaqqas was most shrewd. When they came into any country that was strong, which they could not the first day conquer, then Calandola would order them to build their sturdy fort, and they would remain sometimes a month or two quiet. For Calandola said to me, “It is as great a war to the inhabitants to see me settled in their country, as though I fought with them every day.” The houses of the Jaqqa town were built very close together, and outside each the men kept their bows, arrows, and darts; and when the alarm was given, they all would rush suddenly out of the fort and seize their weapons and be ready to do battle, no matter the hour. Every company kept very good watch at the gates in the night, playing upon their drums and the wooden instruments called tavales, and there was never any relaxing of vigilance.

Sometimes some of the most rash of the beleaguered townspeople might come out and assault the Jaqqas at their fort; but when this happened, the Jaqqas did defend themselves most staunchly for two or three days. And when Calandola was minded to give the onset, he would, in the night, put out some one thousand men: which did bed themselves down in an ambuscade about a mile from the fort. Then in the morning the great Jaqqa would go with all his strength out of the fort, as though he would capture the town. The inhabitants coming near the fort to defend their country, the Jaqqas gave the watchword with their drums, and then the men hidden in ambuscade did rise, and fall upon them from the other side, so that very few did escape. And that day Calandola would overrun the country, which in fright and panic yielded itself up without further struggle. I saw this tactic worked many times, and always in success.

Of the courage of the Jaqqas there seemed to be no limit. But there is good reason for this, since like the Spartans of old they are trained from boyhood toward valor. First there is the custom of putting the slave-collar to the newly adopted Jaqqas, that they must wear until they have killed a foe in battle. For a boy to wear this collar is accounted no disgrace, at least when he is thirteen or fourteen. But if he go a year or two beyond that, and still is collared, the men do mock him and the girls will not lie with him, and he will rush forward in battle to slay or be slain, lest he be accounted worthless.

You may readily see from this that only the warlike Jaqqas live to manhood, and the weak ones are culled from the tribe early. But if by some accident of fortune a weakling endures, he will not endure long into his mature years: for those soldiers that are faint-hearted, and are seen turning their backs to the enemy, are presently condemned and killed for cowards, and their bodies eaten. I have seen this.

I asked Kinguri once why they would make the flesh of a coward part of their own flesh, and he looked upon me frowning as if I had asked of him in Greek or Hebrew, and said at last, “The cowardice of them is boiled away in the pot, and what remains is their inborn vigor, which we consume.”

They had many other ways of increasing themselves in courage. One I saw during the time after the conquest of Kalungu, where we remained five or six months, making use of the substance of those farming folk. It happened that some Jaqqa huntsmen did capture a lion of great fierceness, which they took in a very strong trap, using a kid as bait. This lion, which was a she-lion—and they are very much more fierce than the male—they chained down to the trunk of a great red-barked tree in the midst of a spacious plain outside their fort. Nearby, in the top of another tree, the Jaqqas did erect a sort of scaffold, capable of holding the Imbe-Jaqqa and the chiefest of his lords, among whom I was now reckoned.

When Calandola and all his court had mounted this scaffold, the other Jaqqas who had assembled in a great circle began to set up a huge noise, which joined with the untunable discord of a great number of odd musical instruments to compose a hellish concert. Then a sudden sign was given for all to be hush and silent; and then the lion was immediately loosed, though with the loss of her tail, which was at the same time whipped off to make her the more furious.

At her first looking the lion stared about, comprehending that she was again at liberty, but not altogether free, by reason of the multitude of Jaqqas that surrounded her. At once she set up a hideous roar, and then, greedy of revenge, she launched herself into the company of onlookers. Who did not flee, but rather ran toward the lion. She did fall upon them, rending one, and tearing another, and making a fearful havoc among them: all this, while the people ran round her unarmed, being resolved either to kill her with their bare hands, or to perish. I had never seen the like of this bloody event even in my strangest dreams, and I thought for an instant I was at the Circus in old Rome, seeing Christians tossed to the wild beasts. But these were no Christians, and they had gone joyously and willingly toward that ravening she-lion.

In utter amaze I watched as the bleeding beast raked this Jaqqa and that one with her claws, or griped at them with her fangs. She slew more than a few of her assailants, spilling their entrails in the dust with great sweeping onslaughts of her limbs. And all this time the Jaqqas closed their ring, moving inward, and fighting and jostling with one another for the privilege of being of the innermost ring, that confronted the she-lion most closely.

It seemed like madness to me. And yet I was stirred by it: my heart did race, my blood did grow heated, my sweat to flow. I hunched myself forward to the edge of the scaffold, and clenched my fists so that my nails did nigh pierce my palms, and shouted out to the ones below, “Beware! Turn! Jump! Guard yourself!” as the lion worked her rampage.

The other lordly Jaqqas likewise were well gripped by the carnal spectacle. Calandola did growl and roar to himself, eyes half-closed as though he were lost in a dream of gory welter. Ferocious Kulambo, who was a great huntsman, shouted encouragement to those in jeopardy, and clapped his hands and cried out at their bravery. The dark-souled and brooding Machimba-lombo made low sounds in the depths of his throat, and strained in his seat, plainly yearning to be down there with the crowd. Even the austere philosopher Kinguri, who trafficked in such high questions of faith and money and government, showed himself now as bestial as the others, as deep in the sanguinary passion of the moment. Yet were we all but onlookers, constrained to remain in our scaffolding. That was made clear when Machimba-lombo at last could stand no more, and rose, and cried, “I will go to them!”

“You may not,” said the Imbe-Jaqqa, cold and sharp.

“I beg it, Lord Calandola! I cannot sit longer!”

“The lion-circle is no longer for you,” replied his master. “You are of the captains now, and here will you stay.”

There was palpable strain in the air between them: I saw the throbbing in the proud Machimba-lombo’s throat and forehead, like that of a Titan enchained. He moved most slowly, as if through a tangible fog, toward the ladder, and he was trembling with the effort of it. Calandola hissed at him: Machimba-lombo halted. He fought within himself. Kinguri touched his wrist lightly and said in a soft way, “Come, take your ease, and watch the sport. For it is not fitting to go below, at your rank, good friend.” It was like the letting out of air from some swollen bladder. Machimba-lombo, moved by Kinguri’s gentle words where Calandola’s rage had not swayed him, subsided and resumed his place, and the moment passed.

Below, there was scarce any room at last for the beast to make her attack, so tight was the pressing crowd of Jaqqas about her: and they rushed in, with a terrible cry, and seized the beast and forced her down, and by sheer weight and force did crush her and choke the life from her. Each of the Jaqqa warriors strived to outdo the others in the taking of risk and leaping on the lion. And after a time a vast outroar went up from them all, saying, “The beast is dead!” They all did withdraw to the outer edge of the circle, leaving in the midst the dead lion, now looking merely to be a great tabby-cat that was asleep, and about her some members of their own tribe that she had slain.

Whereupon the kettles were heated and they did all greedily devour the dead bodies of the fallen. The choicest parts were handed up the scaffold to Calandola and his nobles, and we did pounce upon the meat like vultures, since that there is much virtue in consuming the flesh of those who have died bravely in this sport. I held back a while, letting them have their fill, for they were so eager.

But when I went for mine, I came in the way of Machimba-lombo, whose lips and jowls were besmeared with grease and whose eyes were wild with hunger and something else, a sort of frenzy. I thought he would strike me as I reached past him for my slice: but again he controlled himself, holding taut, and I heard him rumbling in his throat. For this man was mine enemy, and I was coming now to learn it. Yet I could not let him threaten me before the others. So courteously I said, “I pray you, good cousin, let me have my due share.”

His eyes were wolf-eyes upon me. But what could he do? I had spoken sweet words, yet not in any sweet tone. And he gave ground, and let me eat.

The music now began again, and singing and dancing, and crying, “Long live our Lord Imbe-Jaqqa! Long live our Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.” And some of the strongest of the warriors below commenced a kind of wrestling, that was most graceful and beautiful, like unto a kind of dance, for all its fierceness. This was the first time that ever I beheld Jaqqa wrestling. They twined their long arms, they matched each other’s movements like men in a mirror, they bent forward and backward, and leaped about, and pounced, and cast each other down with the greatest of elegance.

As for the lion, her flesh was not eaten, but her skin and head was taken, and used for ornaments in the Imbe-Jaqqa’s household. And all the week that followed I saw Jaqqas in the camp that were scratched and torn from the rage of the lion; and in this manner did these man-eaters train themselves to greater bravery; as though more of that commodity were needed amongst them.

The other thing they did for valor’s sake was hunting of elephantos to take their tails. This was not done, as among the settled Bakongo folk, to make ornaments out of the dark and glossy tail-hairs. Nay, it was the entire tail of the giant beast that the Jaqqas prized. For when any one of their captains or chief lords came to die, they commonly did preserve one of these tails in memory of him, and to which they paid a sort of adoration, out of an opinion they had of its great strength. They would say, holding up the shrine in which a certain tail was kept, “This is the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Ntotela,” or, “This is the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Zimbo,” or whichever. So to increase the number of these tails they did pursue the elephantos into narrow places, as I have told earlier. But the amputation had to be performed at one blow, and from a living elephanto, or their superstition would allow it no value.

I did not see this elephanto-hunting myself, for it was a most sacred thing that was done privately by Jaqqas to enhance their ghostly stature, and not the sort of quest on which one would invite a companion. But three separate times I saw a Jaqqa come running into camp holding a fresh-cut elephanto tail aloft, and each one of them was shining in the face, and altogether transfigured with radiant joy, as though the bloody thing he carried was none other than the Holy Grail of the Lord.

We saw elephantos often, wandering hither and thither across the land. And frightsome things they were to behold, at close distance, though they are in the main gentle and tractable creatures. As is well for all other creatures, when one considers their great size. For if there were an animal with the bulk of an elephanto and the spirit of a wolf or a she-lion, it should have conquered all the world.

When elephantos came near us, even the Jaqqas gave them a wide way, since, when angered, they are beyond being killed by any weapon, and do great destruction. They have great hanging ears and long lips, and a tongue that is very little, and so far in their mouth that it cannot be seen; but the snout or trunk is so long and in such form that it is to him in the stead of a hand, for he neither eats nor drinks but by bringing his trunk to his mouth. Also can he overthrow trees with it, to eat the tender shoots high up. Once I saw an elephanto take a boy around the middle with his trunk, that had done something idle to annoy him, and hurl that foolish boy far away, flying through the air with arms and legs wildly waving, so that he landed all shattered against a remote rock.

The male elephanto lives two hundred years or at the least one hundred and twenty, the female almost as long. They love rivers and will often go into them up to the snout, wherewith they blow and snuff, and play in the water; but swim they cannot, for the weight of their bodies. I know from reading the Greek and Roman writers that the elephanto can be trained, and made to bear burdens and be a beast of war, but the Africans do no such thing that I ever heard. The eye of the elephanto is very small, and high up along its head, yet it shows great wisdom and even a kind of sadness, and always when I looked at the eye of an elephanto I did feel a little shiver go down my back, for I told myself, This is a deep and thoughtful creature, that lives long and understandeth much, and has something holy in its aspect.

We saw another ponderous famous beast in our wanderings through this district of Kalungu that I had heard much of, but had not previously encountered in Africa. These were rhinocerotes, which are a sort of elephanto, but not so tall, and without the snout or the great ears, but having horns upon their noses. Like elephantos, the rhinocerotes are massive and armor-skinned, and gray or white in color, with heavy flat feet, and they can make the ground shake when they run. I saw two first, that my Jaqqa wife Kulachinga pointed out to me, saying, “They are mother and daughter,” and soon after came the husband, such a monster as I could hardly believe, gigantic, like unto a fortress on four thick heavy legs. They went past without anyone doing them harm, and I stared after them as if I had seen three phantoms out of nightmare.

Kulachinga said, “Do you not have such animals in England, An-dubatil?”

“Nay,” said I, “not rhinocerotes, nor elephantos, nor coccodrillos, nor zevveras, neither.”

“You have no animals, then?”

“Ah, we have cattle,” I said, “and sheep, and goats, and pigs, and dogs, and cats, and the like. And in the forests are great stags, and perchance a unicorn or two, though I think it is many years since one of those was seen upon our shores. But of rhinocerotes not a one.”

“What a strange land,” said Kulachinga.

And I thought to myself, Yea, how very strange, with its green fields like tended carpets, and its little hills, and its cool rainy air, and its oak trees and elms and such that did drop their withered leaves when the first chill blasts of autumn came by. I had by now lived half as long in Africa as ever I did in England, or close upon that, and I was growing used to ollicondi trees and palms and thorny things, and elephantos and coccodrillos. And in time even rhinocerotes would seem as comfortable to me as a roebuck on a hillside, I could readily believe.

I was in these days living in most congenial harmony with this Jaqqa wife of mine, and that of itself was strange. For surely we were not designed to companion one another. At the first we could scarce speak to one another, I having only the bare smattering of the Jaqqa tongue and she no knowledge of my languages. In my usual way I did come to be fluent quickly in Jaqqa-speech, but even that did not by itself augur any true marriage, since there are in England many millions of men and women who speak each other’s language as though they be native to it, and yet would make most woeful consorts to one another. And here was Kulachinga with her scarred and ridged skin, and her body all greased and oiled with strange substances of alien odor, and her hair done up with red clay and yet more grease, and she should have been as unsuited for me, and I for her, as a coccodrillo for a rhinocerote. But yet we did pleasantly together.

This was in part, I think, because she was a lusty wench, and I had always taken such keen joy in the pleasures of the flesh. When there is hot passion between a man and a woman, many other points of great difference can be overlooked, for lust is a bridge that links the most remote of islands. And we did frequently play the game of tangled bodies, and play it well, she in her Jaqqa style and me in my English way. She would not kiss, and often she liked to give herself to me dog-fashion, with her strong rump upturned, but no matter: I thrust, we joined, back and forth I slid in the deep but narrow channel of her, that was so frothing with the sweet natural juices of her, and into her, night after night, I shot my hot tallow and she responded with cries of delight.

It was the case that I had by gradual ways come to be enrolled in the very life of Africa by women who, stage by stage, were ever darker, ever more barbarous. My first instructress was Dona Teresa, who gave the outer appearance of a Portuguese woman, and one of serene beauty that any European would recognize; yet mingled within her somewhere was the seed of her African mothers, that showed only in the hue of her nipples and in the mysteries of her soul. After her had come Matamba, that was pure black, a creature of the jungled interior of the land: still she was Christian, and spoke the tongue of Portugals, and stood midway between savage and white in spirit, if not in appearance. And then had come various tribal women, whose names I could not tell you, that had satisfied my lusts in Masanganu and other places along my pilgrimage, leading me step by step toward the depth of this black world: so that by the time I was given Kulachinga to be my Jaqqa bride, I was ready to embrace without reluctance that woman of the cannibal race, and sleep placidly beside her night after night, and only now and then reflect with amaze upon the journey I had taken to bring me over the arch of the years from Rose Ullward and Anne Katherine Sawyer, so sweet and English, to this my Jaqqa wife.

Kulachinga had no wish to learn Portuguese, and did not even know English existed. Only rarely did she show curiosity about that other world out of which I had fallen. Indeed she was not of a searching and probing mind at all, which set her apart from Dona Teresa and from Matamba, both of whom I remembered fondly as being lively in their wit and perceptions and eagerness for learning. Kulachinga did not know what nation she was native to, though it could have been no more than a few years since she had been adopted into the Jaqqas. Nor would she speak to me at all concerning her marriage to Imbe Calandola, except to say, “He was a good husband to me,” and not a word of what the carnal ways of that dark lord might be, or what it was like to have been one of so many wives. Soon I saw that I would learn little from her, and learning has ever been one of my passions. Yet was I content simply to dwell with her, and let her comfort me after I had been a troublesome day on the field of battle, and to take from her the bowl of palm-wine and the meat she had roasted for me at nightfall. And often did I reach for her in the night, and take her breasts into my hands, and slide my stiffened yard into her ready entryway. So when I was with her I was a happy man.

4

When we had done with the sacking and consuming of the town of Kalunga, which we did entirely ruin, we arose and entered into the province of Tondo, which was a deep way to the north and east. To be sure, this was the direction opposite to that in which I most wanted to go, which was toward the coast. But I could no more then influence the Imbe-Jaqqa in the movements of his army than I could control the surge of the tides. And also I was finding life among the man-eaters uncommon pleasing, which was the last thing I would have expected. To run free with them in pagan revelry was like the throwing off of tight garments and constricting boots, and going naked and easy of spirit. Among the Portugals, whom I had found to be generally a people of deceit and petty treacheries and little mean betrayals, I had been a captive and a slave; but among the Jaqqas, who were monsters but yet bore themselves with a certain lofty nobility, I was a prince. So I was in little hurry to depart them. I abided my time in the forest without distress, becoming more Jaqqa in my ways each day, and thinking, I had already waited a dozen year and some to see England again, I could wait a little more.

We came to the River Kwanza, that I had sailed many times in going between the coast and the presidio of Masanganu. Both those places now were far to my back, we being a long way inland, beyond even the supposed silver-mining place called Kambambe. Following along the south side of the river and continuing ever eastward, we entered the domain of a lord that was called Makellacolonge, near to the great city of Dongo.

Here we passed over mighty high mountains, and found it very cold, we being near naked in the manner of jungle folk. In these steep passes the air was very blue and sharp, and there was frost on the ground at morn, like a little white crust; though by midday in the full blast of the sun we were greatly hot, and remained that way until twilight, when all the heat fled from the world. The things that grew on the high country were different from those of the lowland, there being no palms or vines or creepers, but instead certain things without stems, with fleshy thick leaves that bore pale stripes and spots, sprouting on the earth, and out of the heart of them came high spikes trimmed with a myriad little red flowers, that was most beautiful and strange.

On the other side of these passes the Imbe-Jaqqa did camp his forces for some days, making no attack on Makellacolonge. We sent out our scouts and our outriders, to get the lay of the land, but we did not move forward, nor did we give our enemy any hint that we were in their territory. Calandola often consulted his man-witches, and most particularly the nganga Kakula-banga, that was oldest and holiest of that kind. The Imbe-Jaqqa looked solemn and distant much of the time, but did not share with us his captains the nature of his fears.

Yet he had it in his mind to attack Makellacolonge when the omens were right. For we did gather a score of times to plan our strategy, Calandola and Kinguri and the ten other high captains and I. And the Imbe-Jaqqa did shape and reshape his plan, so that it shifted like a running stream in a shallow bed; but one thing was always constant, that I was to be the center of the thrust. “You will take up your post with your musket,” said he, “and when the trumpet sounds, you will give your fire, five times into the town, and then—then—then—”

It was the and then that was always changing. I had never seen Calandola to be so indecisive. For his mind was altogether scattered and would not come into clarity.

It was at this time that often he took me aside, and walked with me, saying little, but I think carrying on some sort of colloquy with me in his mind, a long discourse that he did not deign to share with me, but which satisfied him. Plainly I was the favorite, now. I saw his brow knitting and his jaw working, yet he gave me little hint of what occupied his soul. I came to feel close to him, withal, and there were moments when he appeared to be not some kind of titan and monster, but only a man, albeit of great size and strangeness, with a man’s cares on his spirit.

And finally he told me in one of these long walks together, “I think they are planning my overthrow. Do you think that also, Andubatil?”

“Who could overthrow you, O Imbe-Jaqqa!”

He glared at me most fierce and said, “Give me no courtier talk now! I have enemies in this nation.”

“They are unknown to me.”

“And unknown to me also,” said he darkly. “Yet I feel them crowding about me in the shadows. There are men here hungry for my place. There are men who would cast me down.”

I knew not what to say; I said nothing.

He leaned toward me, his eyes near to mine, and muttered, “It would be a great wrong. They cannot achieve my tasks. They lack the strength within their souls. Do you know what I say, Andubatil? There is strength of body—” and he snatched up a stout log, that lay before us, and snapped it in half as though it were a straw—”and there is strength in here, which is a different strength.” He pounded upon his vault of a chest. “I have that strength, and they do not, and so I am the one Imbe-Jaqqa! And so I must remain!” His eyes grew wilder, his face became slick with sweat. He was moving from a solemn brooding humor to one of mad intensity and rancor, and I felt the huge force of him gathering like a great rock rolling down the side of a mountain, to crush all below. “Look, there is the world, Andubatil! Fouled! Stained! Corrupted! And it is given to me to cleanse it! Not to them is it given, but to Calandola, to go forth into that rotten and debased and unsound world, and make it clean and holy. They do not understand that. They think of power, not of purity; they think of ruling, not of cleansing. And I will not allow them to displace me. An’ I know them, I will break them, as I break these.” Whereupon he dropped to his knees, and seized on all sides the fallen wood of the forest, and bundled it into thick faggots, and broke those faggots with no effort, and scattered the pieces aside. “I will break them!” he cried.

You will say, from my account of his words, that he was mad. And yea, there was madness in him. But also was there a terrible strength, and a force, and a burning heat of conviction, that you could only have known, had you stood close beside him as I stood close beside him.

“Who is it that opposes you, O Lord Imbe-Jaqqa?” I asked.

“I do not know,” said he. “But if you hear things, come to me with what you hear. For it would be a wickedness and a criminal deed, if I am overthrown before my time, and before my work is accomplished. Will you? Will you come to me with the names of the traitors, Andu-batil?”

I pledged him that I would, for how could I say him nay? But I knew no traitors, not then.

The planning of the new war proceeded, and went on endlessly, as if the enemy that Calandola faced was Portugal itself, and not just some little lord of the inland. I think he was held immobile by his own doubts, he who all his life had been a stranger to doubt and hesitance. So still he embellished and enhanced his plans, which always exalted the part of the Kimana Kyeer and his peerless musket, and made the white Jaqqa ever more central to the conquest that was seemingly never to be begun.

I noticed that after these goings off with Calandola for such private discourse, I began to see less of my first friend Kinguri, who now hung back, and sought my company rarely. I remembered the warning of Kakula-banga, that I would have one day to choose between Calandola and Kinguri, between fire and ice, and I bethought me that perhaps I was being maneuvered now toward making that choice. But I could do nothing in that regard except watch, and wait.

Also did I watch, at Calandola’s behest, the ten captains of the nation. But although I now knew them one from the other, and had some idea of each man’s soul, I saw little enmity in them toward Calandola. In the wranglings of the high council, I did perceive that certain of the lords always disposed themselves at once toward any measure that Calandola proposed, and some frequently took issue, and gave their support of times to counter-measures suggested by Kinguri. The ones most solidly with the Imbe-Jaqqa were Kasanje and Kaimba and Bangala, and the adherents to Kinguri they were Kulambo and Ngonga and Kilombo. But that of itself said nothing: for frequently a king’s most loyal and loving advisers are those men who dare to offer him independent judgment, and the traitors are those that feign total submission. Of the other lords, Zimbo and Ntotela were men both old and wise, who did not seem to have the stuff of treason in them, and Ti-Bangala was a mighty and lion-hearted hero, and Machimba-lombo, though full of pride and often trembling like an overtuned harpstring from some hidden rage within him, had so many times on the field of battle risked his own life in the defense of the Imbe-Jaqqa that I could not imagine him false. So it seemed to me that Calandola, like many a Caesar before him, was inventing conspirators and enemies out of moonbeams and cobwebs, for his rule here did seem absolute to me, and maybe only a torment of his soul did require him to contrive such fears. Yet I remembered that the first Caesar had had conspirators indeed about him, and not mere moonbeams; therefore did I keep my eyes open.

But perhaps not open wide enough, or I would have been more on guard myself.

We were in the third week of our hesitation before Makellacolonge, and a kind of tautness did grip all the Jaqqa camp, like the tight silence before a great storm, or before a quaking of the earth. We Jaqqa lords had feasted well, and Calandola had shown great favor to me, giving me the choicest cut of the meat, and pouring blooded wine for me with his own hand. Afterward I went to my sleeping-place and took my will most joyously and noisily of my wife Kulachinga, and then I toppled into sleep like a stone statue overturned by a tempest.

And woke some time in the darkness to hear a little whimpering sound, like the cry of a cat in pain, and felt Kulachinga’s hand, or someone’s, against my shoulder, shoving me most vehemently to the far side of the mat. And looked upward, and by cold clear shafts of moonlight saw a figure great as a mountain looming over me, and a weapon raised high and descending; and I rolled aside just as it fell and cleft deep through the mat.

Though I had been strong gripped by sleep, and almost drugged, I might say, by overmuch wine and the venting of lust, yet there is nothing quite like the crashing of a vast sword into one’s pillow to clarify one’s mind and bring it awake. I came to my knees, and saw my assailant striving to pull his weapon free of the ground into which it had cut; and when I put my hand to his wrist to stay him, he flung me aside like a bundle of rags. Now I saw his face. It was the captain Jaqqa Machimba-lombo.

“Aye, and will you kill me?” I said. I grasped about, and found a spear, and my sword; and Kulachinga, unbidden, knelt to fan the fire, so that I could have clearer sight. Machimba-lombo left his sword where it lay, and went for his dagger, which he raked against my right arm, lightly cutting it. I thrust my spear between his legs and twisted, putting him off his balance, but the stratagem was a faulty one, for he fell forward atop me instead of, as I had hoped, broadside into the wall. We went down, losing all our weapons in the turmoil, and rolled over and over, fighting not in the graceful dance-like manner of Jaqqa wrestling, but in the bloodiest of coarse brawling, intending to do a lethal injury upon one another.

I heard Kulachinga shouting, and running for aid.

Now Machimba-lombo held the upper hand, and now I. He was a heavier man, and some years younger; but I was quick and no weakling, and the knowledge that I was fighting for my life gave me an added power. His hands were at my throat, but I forced them back, and got my thumbs against the sides of his neck: this hold he broke by swinging his shoulders clear of the ground, and then he brought his knee up to my loins, which stunned me and made me choke with pain. But that very action liberated a torrent of puke that sprang from my injured belly and spewed out upon him. He grunted and, in his disgust, gave over for an instant, turning from me just long enough for me to drive my elbow crashing into his gut, and then the side of my other hand across the back of his neck as he rolled away. It was done with such force that I felt it through my whole shoulder, and I dare say he felt it worse, for he writhed as if I had smashed his every bone with that one blow. I took his shoulders in my grip and forced his face hard into the ground and cried, “Will you yield?”

“You must not live!”

“Come, Machimba-lombo, give over. Give over!”

“Filth-Jaqqa! Thief-Jaqqa! Offal-Jaqqa!”

“These names have no force,” said I.

But there was force left in him: that I soon learned, for he pried himself upward, and gave me a great buffet of his rising shoulder against my chin, that left me with my head spinning. Then he reached past me for the dagger he had dropped. I caught his arm just in time, chopping at it with the edge of my hand so that it was numbed, and mine fair numbed also. I took him arm in arm and rolled him over, so that he went through the fire of our hearth and was singed of the face, and howled. But on the far side of the hearth he landed against his sword, that was still stuck in the ground, and this time, such was the direction of his movement, it came free when he pulled at it. He sprang up like a demon and brandished it and swung it in a wide circle through the air, making it hiss and sing.

I saw my spear and snatched it up, and waited for him. For all his dire attack on me, I did not wish the slaying of him; but now I knew I must do it, or perish myself. It was a great loathly sharp sword he had, but a sword is not a good lunging weapon, nor a throwing weapon, and I could stick him from afar, and I would.

I readied myself for the cast. But then suddenly there were torches everywhere, and the place was full of warriors, that swarmed on us and seized us both, and took from us our weapons; and Imbe Calandola himself came to the scene an instant afterward, demanding to know the cause of the uproar.

“I awoke to find him over me with his sword poised,” I said. “And we fought; and we were stopped from fighting. I beg you, Lord Calandola, let me finish this thing.”

And I glowered at Machimba-lombo, all grizzled on one side of his head from the flame in his hair, and battered, and enraged. The full anger was upon me, too, now, and my chest was full of it so I could scarce breathe, for that this man would have done me cowardly to death as I slept, butchering me like a calf. I felt fifty pains from our wrestling, that I had not noticed two moments before. There was across my eyes a mask of hot red rage.

He too was enfuried. He spat toward me, and cried, “Slave-Jaqqa! Pig-Jaqqa!”

“Night-creeper!”

Machimba-lombo did struggle to break free. As did I, and nearly I succeeded, but I was restrained.

Calandola said, “What is this treason, Machimba-lombo? This is the Kimana Kyeer you do menace! Explain your attack.”

But now Machimba-lombo said nothing.

Kinguri and Ntotela and Ti-Bangala and one or two of the other lords entered. They conferred in whispers; Imbe Calandola summoned them to him; after a moment Machimba-lombo was bound with thick plaited withes, and taken off, still cursing and muttering. Only then did the warriors who held my arms pinned behind my back release me. I rubbed at the bruised places I felt all over me, and Kulachinga most timidly came to me, and stroked me to soothe me.

I said, “I know not why he did this ambuscade upon me, for I have done him no injury never, unless my rising so fast in your esteem did enrage him.”

“It was nothing else than that,” said the Imbe-Jaqqa. And he looked dour and thoughtful, that by his ennobling me as Kimana Kyeer he had driven this valued prince of his to despair, and to treason. “He could not abide your triumphs.”

“And would he kill, out of envy alone? Ah, that is it! I should have seen!”

Kinguri said, “He has been greatly angered by your high repute among us, Andubatil. Before you came, he was the most valiant of our warriors, but your musket has darkened his light. We have seen him change in recent weeks. But I had not thought him changed so much, that he would come to slay in the dark.”

Though he would have killed me most foully, I felt a sadness for this lord Machimba-lombo. My anger was passing. I am a man of even temper, as you know. Yet what pain there must have been upon Machimba-lombo, to see me climb so swift in his people! For I knew these Jaqqa lords to have a nobility, that would not permit them so shameful a murder, were they in their proper minds.

To Calandola I said, “What will be done with him now?”

“He will be tried and slain.”

“And is there no sparing him?” I asked.

The Imbe-Jaqqa looked perplexed. “What, you would spare him?”

“It is the Christian way,” said Kinguri quietly to him. “They do love their enemies, by command of their great mokisso”

“Ah,” said Calandola to me, “you love him, then?”

“By God’s feet, I love him not, O Imbe-Jaqqa!” I cried. “When he was in my hands on the floor, I would have had the life from him if I could, for his treachery on me. But now I am more calm. I think it would be a grievous waste to slay him, for his strength is great, and his valor huge.”

“He is worthless now,” said old Ntotela. “He is an animal now, a wild beast.”

“He will recover his wits,” I said. “Look ye, it was only that he was jealous of my honors among you, as the Imbe-Jaqqa has said, because I am newly come and already risen high. But he can be led out of his wrath.”

“Nay,” said Calandola. “This is foolishness. Defend him not to me, Andubatil. He will never leave off his enmity to you now. There is only one way to end this enmity, and that is to put an end to the one who dares attempt murder upon the Kimana Kyeer. Come.”

It was dawn now. A great red blaze of light, that looked like a giant bonfire, was rising over the eastern mountains. The air was soft and heavy, with the hint of a later rain. All the Jaqqas were up, and all appeared to know of Machimba-lombo’s invasion of my sleeping-place, for they were agitated and vehement.

Kinguri, falling in alongside me, said, “This is never done, the striking of one Jaqqa captain by another. It was noble of you to speak in his favor, but you ought not to persist. He is doomed.”

I shrugged. “It is nothing to me, if he die,” I said. For my outburst of mercy had gone from me as swiftly as my earlier red rage had. I felt now all the pains that Machimba-lombo had inflicted upon me in our struggle, and also I felt the strange belated dismay that comes over one when one has had a near thing with death, and has had no time to comprehend it for the first while. But for Kulachinga’s warning I would be cleft halves painting the earth-mother’s breast with my good blood now.

They had Machimba-lombo in the midst of a circle, like the lion-circle of before, and Zimbo and some of the older men were speaking with him. His bonds had been undone, and indeed he seemed quieter now, almost reflective, even saddened. But it was only his failure to slay me that made him downcast. The sunrise fell upon him so that his deeply black skin did shine with a bronzy brightness, and I saw my marks upon his flesh. When he beheld me he glared with new fervor, and I think if he had been freed he would have leapt me all over again.

Imbe Calandola said, approaching him, “Speak, Machimba-lombo, tell us what was in your mind.”

“It was in my mind. O Imbe-Jaqqa, that this man is not one of us, and does not deserve his rank.”

“And so you would slay him?”

“If not I, then who? For I knew you would not remove him. And he should not be what he is among us, for he is not of our kind, I think.”

“Then you are wrong. He is truly of our kind, Machimba-lombo.”

I found it passing strange, to hear the man-eater king say this of me. But I kept my silence, and chewed inward a little upon those words.

“How, of our kind?” cried Machimba-lombo. “His skin is white! His hair is gold! He is Christian!”

“He is taken in with us, and adopted into our number.”

“Aye, and made a captain, even! But he is not of the blood, O Imbe-Jaqqa!”

“I say that he is blooded with us by his soul,” replied Calandola. Then impatiently he said, “I will not dispute this with you. You know that it is treason to raise your hand against a high Jaqqa.”

“He is no Jaqqa,” stubbornly said Machimba-lombo.

“Yet I say he is. And you have done treason; and therefore you are put down from all your high place, and we grant you only this one mercy, that you will have an elephanto-tail dedicated for you as though you had died in honor. For you were a man of honor before this.” To the captain Ti-Bangala he gestured, and said, “Bring to us the tail of the elephanto of the Jaqqa Machimba-lombo.”

At this, the face of Machimba-lombo turned stony and ashen, for he knew that his death was upon him. And I think he heard his mokisso singing to him out of the ground, which soon would draw him down to Hell.

I felt some sorrow for him, though he would have felt none for me. But I kept it locked within my breast, and only glared at him like an enemy. For I was Kimana Kyeer, and he had done treason against me and all my adopted nation.

Ti-Bangala returned. A great heavy hairy elephanto-tail was in his grasp. Calandola took it, and draped it like a whip about his shoulders. Then to Machimba-lombo he said, “We grant you the death of honor, Machimba-lombo Jaqqa.”

What next befell filled me with stupefaction and amaze. They did not put Machimba-lombo to death with weapons, as I had expected, nor any poison. Merely did Calandola lay the coiled elephanto-tail at the condemned man’s feet. And Machimba-lombo nodded, and looked downward most somber at it a moment; and then he swayed and went sinking down upon the earth like a puppet-doll whose strings had been let loose. For he simply did release his life, and let it from him upon a wish, and that was an end to him. It is a trick these Africans have, that I do not understand, that when they grieve extremely, or are dishonored and must die, they can do it by willing it alone, and saying to themselves, “Depart this world,” and they do depart.

Six of the high captains bore Machimba-lombo’s body away, and there was a ceremony that I did not attend, and they laid him to rest. And afterward another Jaqqa that was named Paivaga was named to be captain in his place, being slender and swift, with the thin lips and narrow nose of a Moor, though his skin was jet. For some days Calandola did keep to himself, thereafter, brooding on the death of Machimba-lombo, for he had been a great warrior. But his life had been forfeit, since it is forbidden for one high Jaqqa to harm another. And in the eyes of all in this nation, now, was I recognized to be a high Jaqqa: I Andubatil, I Kimana Kyeer.

5

Four days after the death of Machimba-lombo, Kinguri the Imbe-Jaqqa’s brother did summon me quietly, and say, “Tell no one, but make ready for a journey, and take nothing with you but a knife and a sword.”

“Not my musket?”

“Nay, it will be only a hindrance.”

Though I knew not what he had in mind, I did as he said, and at his orders I arose in the night and said to Kulachinga that I would return, but I knew not when. I went to the edge of the camp by dawny mists, and there I met Kinguri.

He and I left camp stealthily together, only us two, and made our way eastward across a broad open plain. By the sunrise hour we halted, and he said, “You told me once of the city of Rome, that is the Pope’s house, and sits on seven hills beside a river. Is it a splendid city?”

“So I have heard, though I have never seen it.”

“Is it as splendid, do you think, as that?”

And he led me a little way around a low grassy hill, and I looked beyond it and saw a city perched atop a stony mountain some seven leagues in compass, that had been hidden from my view by the winding of our path. Between that city and us lay rich green pastures, fields, and meadows, that surely did yield God’s own bounty of provision for everyone who dwelled therein.

Kinguri said, “It is the city of Dongo, that is the residence of King Ngola. Tell me, Andubatil, do you know anything so splendid in all of Christendom?”

What could I say? That Dongo is a mere squalid town of thatched cottages, and Rome is the capital of the world? Nay, I would not hurt him so. Besides, in its way this Dongo was a fair wondrous place, perched so high, like the habitation of the former gods upon Olympus, and in the early light it did shine with a pale beauty quite unearthly.

“Is it the Imbe-Jaqqa’s thought to assault that city now, instead of Makellacolonge?”

Kinguri smiled and shook his head. “Not yet, Andubatil, not yet! You see there: there is but a single passage into the mountain, and that is well fortified, so that in the forcing of it we would suffer great loss of life. The Imbe-Jaqqa is not ready for that forcing. First we must grow our numbers, threefold beyond what we are now; and then we will camp below Dongo, and cut its road to the fields, and starve it a little. And when it is enough starved we will burst into it, and take it, and remove it from the world. And that will be the end of King Ngola and his nation, whom we have hated a long while.”

This he said most calmly, seeming without blood-lust. It was much like Calandola’s talk of a divine mission to purge the world of its cities and farms: this did Kinguri also share, and in a dispassionate way he longed to turn everything back to the fashion of the beginning, to render Africa a new Eden of simple naked shepherds.

Well, and I suppose that is no worse a reason to go to war than any other, and better than some. For what profits it to march into a land simply to force Papistry upon its people, or to take Papistry from them, or to make a change of government that puts one lecherous greedy prince in place of another? And the war that the Spaniards did carry against the people of the Indies, stealing their gold from them and giving them poxes and plagues in return: was that any more noble than the Jaqqas’ dream of cleansing the world of everything that mankind had builded upon it? I was still under Imbe Calandola’s spell, and his monstrous ambition, though I did not truly share it, had substance in my eyes. I saw in it a kind of strange poetry, and a stark simplicity, that seemed to me to be in its way most deeply felt. Aye, clear them off, those who profaned the earth! Pull down the cities, push the perfidious Portugals into the sea! Why not? It had a merit. Dongo tomorrow, and São Paulo de Loanda the day after that: aye, why not, why not? And then the land would be at peace, and sheep might safely graze.

Kinguri now drew me onward toward the city of Dongo. I wondered if he meant to enter it, which would be sure death for us, I being as conspicuous in this land as a three-headed calf, and he with his Jaqqa stature and ornaments being scarce less visible.

But that was not his plan. When we neared the place where the path to Dongo turned upward into the mountain, he gestured to the left and said, “In that meadow live the sacred peacocks of King Ngola, that he prizes above all else. To take a single feather from one is to forfeit your life, if you are seen. Let us enter that meadow, Andubatil, and gather us some feathers.”

“And if we are caught?”

“Then we will die. But we will do it bravely.”

I could not see the sense of this effort. I had had one touch of death’s wings already this week, and the soreness of my struggle with Machimba-lombo was still upon my limbs. But it seemed most urgent to Kinguri to enter here, and having come so far with him I would not turn away now.

So we did steal into the meadow, which was moist and bordered by thick-columned plants of a bluish hue in stem and leaf. Before us lay the royal birds, flying up and down the trees, and spreading their tremendous tails and making wild shrieking sounds. The place seemed to be unguarded, which was strange to me, these birds being so precious to the king. But Kinguri said there were guards hidden about, and charged me to stand watch for them.

From his pouch he drew a strip of leather with two round stones attached to its ends. Most warily he walked toward the peacocks, meaning to cast this thing at them and entangle the legs of one. On his first two casts he failed, the birds being faster-moving than they appeared; but on the third he did snare one, that set up a vast squawking and rioting as the leather wrapped itself by the deftness of Kinguri’s throw about its body. “Come!” he cried, and we rushed forward, and with our knives we cut the beautiful bird’s throat, that gleamed with many colors.

Then he caught me by the upper arm, and did make a deep but narrow slit in my flesh, very swiftly, before I could pull back, and the same to himself. And took the throat of the peacock and let its blood run over his wound, and put his arm against mine, rubbing it so that our three bloods did mix, his and mine and the bird’s, and as he did this he glared into my eyes with wild savage glee, behind which I saw his subtle intelligence burning brightly.

“We are brothers now, you and I, Andubatil Jaqqa!” he said in a hoarse thick voice.

“Brothers of the blood, is it?”

“Yea. And if we had done this earlier, Machimba-lombo would have feared to touch you, knowing your mokisso and mine were joined. But this will guard you now against other such enemies, for I think you do have some yet, Andubatil.”

“And who do those be?” I asked, staring in wonder at the bleeding place on my arm.

“Ah, we can talk of that another time. Come, now.”

In haste we did gather tail-feathers of the peacock, and thrust them into the bands of beads we wore, and cast aside the carcass of the bird and made ready to go. Just then the sentry of the place, making his early rounds, came upon us, and stood in surprise, his mouth opening and closing like that of a fish on land, at the sight of a white man and a Jaqqa looting together one of the holy peacocks. He was a short blackamoor, past middle years, in a brocaded green robe and a high turreted hat, and he pointed at us and made a little choking sound without voice to it, so great was his amaze. At once Kinguri sprang toward him, knife in hand.

The guard took a heavy breath, as though at last preparing himself to utter a great outcry: and the Jaqqa slipped his blade very easily into the man’s throat, so that all he let forth was a tiny bubbling sound, and went to his knees, gushing blood like a fountain. And had he walked first to the other side of the meadow that morning, he would on this day yet be alive, I think.

“We must hurry, brother,” said Kinguri.

Through the dawn mists we fled that place, clutching our brave peacock feathers in both our hands, and my arm did throb and tingle where the alien bloods had entered it.

On the return journey to the Jaqqa camp Kinguri was most animated and alive. He walked with such bounds that I could scarce keep pace with his long-legged stride, and he overflowed with new questions for me, asking, What is the color of the sky over England, and, How big is the Queen’s palace at London, and, Does God ever visit the kings of Europe, and more like that. And he demanded also to know who it was that decided how much grain a piece of gold would buy, and why it was that God had let His only Son be slain by men, and was it true that English were born black and turned white upon exposure to the cold air of our land, and such. I could hardly finish the answer to one question when he was upon me with the next, or two or three others, like a man in fever of knowledge: and this the man who had grown furious when I made objection to the killing of babies, and told me I was a fool for not seeing the obvious wisdom of the custom, this who now interrogated me like a hungry scholar. Only as we reached the camp did he grow more quiet; and at the end he turned to me and looked me close in the eye and said, “This is no small thing, what you and I have done. A Jaqqa takes a brother but once or twice in his life, and not without much considering of it first. And almost always it happens on the field of battle.”

“Why did you choose me, then, Kinguri?”

“Your blood has wisdom in it, Andubatil. And now we are sealed to one another, and the wisdom of the whites streams in my flesh. I tell you, I could not abide not having it within me!”

And therefore the ferocity of the Jaqqas now streamed in my own flesh, I thought, but did not say. I took their food in my gut and their blood in my veins, and step by step was my life flowing in the river of their life, and mingling indistinguishable.

I grinned at him and said, “I hope I am worthy of the choice, brother!”

“So will you prove to be,” said he. “Of that I am sure.”

We entered the camp together, bearing our dazzling feathers held high; and some boys of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s court saw us, each with our bloody slices on our arms. Within an hour every Jaqqa knew what had passed between Kinguri and me in the meadow under the city of Dongo. All that day long was there whispering, and furtive glances at me. Kulachinga herself, although my wife and a former wife of the Imbe-Jaqqa, looked upon me from afar, as if I had attained some sublime new ennoblement beyond what I already had, that made me awesome to her.

For this was one of the highest customs among the Jaqqas, that two men who respected and loved one another should go off in the night on some long journey that had an aspect of peril to it, and perform some unusual deed such as the stealing of King Ngola’s peacock, and celebrate the rite by a mixing of blood. And thenceforth were those two sealed to one another in a way that transcended the ordinary kind of kinship, since that in a tribe that got its members by stealing them, kinship of the ordinary kind meant very little, there being no descent from known mothers or sharing of a common father. I was bonded now to the second man of the realm, who was natural brother to Imbe Calandola himself, which made me in a way a member of the royal family.

Like all such honors this carried a heavy price; for it plunged me even deeper into the rivalries of the court, which already I knew to be strong and severe.

These Jaqqas, like the Turks or Tartars or anyone else, like even us English with our wars of York and Lancaster, are jealous of high rank, and do intrigue and maneuver mightily among themselves to surpass one another. That I perceived only slowly, for at first they were all alike to me, and all seemed united in a war against mankind that joined them into a single being. That was but an illusion, which the falling of Machimba-lombo’s sword upon my sleeping-mat had dispelled in me forever. United they might be, yet they had rivalries among themselves, and factions, like any other nation.

So my elevation to blood-brotherhood with Kinguri won me the safety of his own greatness, that extended over me like a glow, but it ran me the risk of gaining other foes such as my late enemy had been. When I pressed Kinguri to name those I must be wary of, he slipped away from the theme like quicksilver, and said there was no one special. But yet he urged me to keep my eyes sharp for signs of resentment. I watched; and I saw that among the high Jaqqas, the three who were most loyal to Kinguri, that is, Kulambo and Ngonga and Kilombo, seemed to hold the same love for me. And those three who ever basked in the close favor of the Imbe-Jaqqa, that were Kasanje and Kaimba and Bangala, now gave me glances, and scowls, and sidewise glares, that made me uneasy. But though I thought often of it, I did not again ever awaken to find an assassin raising his sword above me.

I wondered, having mind of the witch Kakula-banga’s warnings, what Calandola’s feeling toward me would be, since my joining of blood with Kinguri. I did not think Kinguri would have dared do such a thing without the Imbe-Jaqqa’s consent, but I did not know. And because the essence of his nature was so unlike that of other men, never was I sure how he responded to what we had done. On the day of my bonding to Kinguri, the Imbe-Jaqqa did embrace me in that crushing way of his, causing my new-healed wound to open, and he cried most roaringly, “The brother of my brother is my brother!” And called for blooded wine, and had me share it with him. Yet afterward I saw his face most somber and thoughtful, as though he brooded upon this matter, and did not like the new union between Kinguri and me.

In the days that followed, Calandola often had me by his side hours on end, and would not let me go from him. Sometimes he did not speak a word, only stared and drank; and I was silent alongside him, feeling the powerful emanations of his presence, that worked secretly and silently upon my spirit. Other times was he most garrulous, and boasted endlessly of past conquests, saying he had ruined this city and that, and roasted this chief and that, and laid waste this province and that. And still other times did he speak in a more reflective way, almost as deep as the wise Kinguri, on the purpose of his wrath, and on the hope he had of ending wickedness on earth—by which he meant settled civilization, that is—and on the differences between Africa as he perceived it and Europe as I described it. I think he had no real understanding of such places as England and France and Spain, and thought of them just as somewhat more busy places much like Angola and the Kongo. For he could not easily grasp my talk of roads and highways, of great harbors, of cathedrals and palaces, and all such things unknown to this land. He imagined he saw them when I spoke of them, but his own vision of them, as I understood it from his words, was very much smaller than the reality. Or did I misjudge him? Never truly do we see what is in another’s mind, but we must stumble about, doing our best to make our thoughts known, and always failing, until we come to Heaven, where all is transparent.

Often now did I go hunting with certain princes of the tribe, most usually Kinguri, but also sometimes his comrades Kulambo and Ngonga. These men were valiant and fierce, and said little, but moved with the strong and lethal speed of huge deadly cats. We would go apart from the tribe, taking with us lances or bows or swords, and for our pleasure fall upon the beasts of the field, the gazelles and zevveras and antelopes, and now and again a leopard prowling the treetops by night, or a young lion. Never did I use my musket in these exploits, the powder and shot being too difficult of replacement. But there was one time when I did regret its absence, when I hunted alone with great wide-shouldered Ngonga.

We had gone into the thickets to the east, pursuing the track of some swift creature, and getting ever closer to it, for its scent grew greater. But then suddenly we made our way into an opening between two thick vines that twined like angry serpents, and there was our beast fallen, and five men of some inland tribe gathered round it, pulling from it their spears.

Upon the sight of us they pointed and shouted in unknown jabber. I think they came from so far away that they knew not what a Jaqqa was, for they showed no fright of Ngonga for all his size and majesty and his Jaqqa emblems and his Jaqqa teeth. But any forest folk who knew they were with a Jaqqa would have fled at once. As for me, they were more perturbed, I suppose thinking me a spirit from the next world; but they displayed no fear of me, neither, so either they were most mightily valiant or else more than passing silly.

Still crying out their garboiled noises, thick-tonguedly, “Yagh ghagh ghaghyagh,” or the like, they rushed toward us with their weapons drawn. But their valor was not matched by their skill. I parried a thrust with my spear, and pushed the man away to Ngonga, who sliced him lustily upon his shoulder with the edge of his sword and cut him downward in two. And in the same moment Ngonga did jostle an attacker toward me, within range of my own blade, and swiftly I took the man’s head from his shoulders. The three remaining would not flee, but stubbornly renewed the onslaught: to their great cost, for that we cut them to pieces. All was done in a moment. The clearing was a charnel shambles, with heads here and legs there and blood bubbling everywhere, and Ngonga’s body and mine soaked and crimsoned with it, though we had neither of us been injured.

We looked toward one another, breathing hard, but joyous in the fine heat that comes from fighting well accomplished.

“Who are these foolish folk?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “They are meat,” he said. “That is all they are, and nothing more than that.”

“Do you think there are more of them nearby?”

“Most certainly I do,” said he. “They hide behind every tree. Come, let us show them what we are!”

And to my amaze he did slash open the belly of one of the dead men, and forage most expertly into that tangle of glistening various-colored gewgaws that we all of us carry in our middles. From amongst those things he plucked forth the man’s liver, and held it high, so that any concealed onlooker might have a good look. And then most coolly this Ngonga did sever the raw red liver into some smaller pieces and hand me mine, and he began to devour the fresh meat, which I did also. Slippery was it on my tongue, and hot and strange, but I bolted it down as though it were breast of partridge, or something even finer.

I think we were a most terrible sight to the unseen watchers. For in a quick while we heard rustlings out there, and saw a swaying of some treetops, and then all was silent: they were fleeing those eaters of human gore that had fallen so fiercely upon their fellows. It would not astonish me to hear that they were fleeing even unto this day, not daring to look back behind them lest we be following in our monstrous hunger.

In such ways did I pass the time as we camped outside the land of Makellacolonge. We did not attack, neither did we depart, and the air was troubled among my Jaqqa brothers, who grew tense and suspicious. They did not understand why we waited so long. Nor did Calandola give any clue: he was guided by his witches, and by the stars and the things he saw upon the horizon, and he kept his own counsel in these matters. So we diverted ourselves in whatever ways we could. But the death of Machimba-lombo overhung our minds, and created much unrest.

In this uncertain time there was revived in the Jaqqa camp a practice of which I had heard much, but had not yet witnessed here, which was, the trial by ordeal. I had seen such things among the people of Mofarigosat, where trial by poison was the customary measure. But that was only one of the many devilish forms of this manner of justice that the Jaqqas favored.

Moreover, they did not hold their trials merely when some issue at law had to be decided. Nay, they did them as general signs of innocence, as a grand show of bravery, to prove their loyalty to Imbe Calandola.

Perhaps ten days after my brothering with Kinguri came the first of these events, when all the Jaqqa lords marched before Calandola as he sat upon his high throne. The Imbe-Jaqqa did demand of them a renewing of homage, by means of the ordeal called chilumbo, which was done with fire. In this, a red-hot iron was passed over the thigh of each man, the reasoning being that any who are faithful to the Imbe-Jaqqa will be unharmed, but those who harbor secret discontents will be blistered and injured, and thereby their treachery exposed.

Thereupon the old wizard Kakula-banga, wearing his finest feathers and paints, and a coat of shining grease over his whole skin, did take a kind of holy hatchet which he had, and laid it in the fire. Then one by one every great man of the tribe did step forward, while musicians did make a horrid drumming to excite everyone the further.

The first of these was Kinguri, who cried out, “By my mokisso, I do vow I love the Imbe-Jaqqa Calandola before all else in the world!” And the wizard did take the hot iron from the fire, and pass it across Kinguri’s leg, not touching the skin but coming close upon it. During this, Kinguri held high his head, and his arms outstretched, and he smiled broadly without the least show of fear or pain. And lo! when the wizard stepped back, there was not the merest blister upon Kinguri’s skin.

The trial of chilumbo proceeded now to examine the Jaqqa generals Kasanje and Kaimba, who came forth from it unscathed, which I could not comprehend, the fire being so hot and the head of the hatchet glowing full ruby red. After them came Kulambo, who was so dear to Kinguri, and he, too, was unharmed, smiling throughout his ordeal. The wizard now plunged his hatchet back into the flame to renew its heat, and I looked about to see who would be next, and was much surprised and amazed to see that Kinguri was beckoning to me that I should join the line.

I stood frozen a moment, not knowing what to do.

“Go, Andubatil!” Kinguri did command.

I had thought me exempt from these sports, being a foreigner and no native of the tribe. But that was folly: I was Andubatil Jaqqa, blood-brother to the great Kinguri, and the Imbe-Jaqqa had named me Kimana Kyeer, and had proclaimed me to be a true Jaqqa when he condemned Machimba-lombo. I could not have the high privilege of my rank without accepting its perils.

I would lie if I told you that great fear did not pass through my guts, at Kinguri’s command. For I knew not by what magic this ordeal was conducted. Nor did I think myself fully loyal to Calandola, as these men were: I still stood with one foot in Christendom and the other in the Jaqqa nation. When the hot metal came near to my skin, would it reveal the secret Englishness that I still held within, the part of me that was not yet wholly given up to revelry of the cannibal sort? And if I blistered, what then would befall me?

Yet had I no choice. If I failed to come forth, I would proclaim myself traitor and coward, and this was a nation that knew not mercy.

So I put the best face on things, and marched me forward, and cried out to the Imbe-Jaqqa, proclaiming my loyalty to him, and trusted to God to bring me through this ordeal as He had carried me through so many others. And the witch Kakula-banga did lift the glowing hatchet, and bring it close, pressing his scarred and wrinkled face upon me and staring into mine eyes with his one blazing brilliant eye. I could not tell if he were mocking me or giving me assurance that all was well, so strange and intense was the look of that eye.

He passed the hatchet-head near enough to me so that I felt its heat on my naked thigh, and did smell the burnt smell of the fine hairs that sprout on my skin. Throughout which, I did compel myself to smile securely and stretch out my arms, as though for all the world I was being given some great new honor, some Jaqqa dukedom.

Then the hatchet passed from me, and still I stood for an instant, not realizing the ordeal was over for me and I was unharmed: and I at length eased my stiff pose and joined those who had succeeded in the test, to drink some palm-wine with them.

“Ah, I had no doubts of you, brother,” said Kinguri, laughing.

Thus it went, man after man, and no one of them being touched by the heat. Which left me thinking that the ordeal was a mere hollow mummery, done to amuse the Imbe-Jaqqa. But then a certain Nbande, a deep-chested warrior of the second rank, with a dry and sullen manner about him, had his turn in the line; and when the hatchet came to him he howled and clutched his leg, which was singed and well-nigh cooked in a great red patch. This man Nbande then did fall to his knees and implore Calandola, claiming that this singeing was some mistake and that he stood higher than any man for love of the Imbe-Jaqqa, but it was no use, for justice was swift, and five or six of the Jaqqa lords did stick him with their lances, and cut the life from him.

“It is no surprise,” said Kinguri beside me. “He was ever untrustworthy, that one.”

That night the Jaqqas did feast on the flesh of the traitor Nbande, with many lewd remarks about the dead man’s wickedness; and the wives of Nbande, five of them, were brought forth weeping, and were offered as concubines to several of the Jaqqa high ones. Bangala had him one, and Paivaga chose a woman also, and old Zimbo took two; but I declined when they offered me the last, and she was taken by Ngonga. Afterward there was a wrestling, between Paivaga, the newest of the high lords, and Kaimba. This was done most gracefully, with many a fall made to look like a simple feint, and even when they did much harm to one another, they did it without crying out by the injured man, but only delicate incatchings of the breath. Paivaga was proclaimed the victor, and he threw his arm most warmly over Kaimba. This Jaqqa wrestling, I thought, was one of the most beautiful things about these people. When the match was done, they called for others to come forth, and some looked toward me.

But I was still sore from my blooding with Kinguri, and the injuries done me by Machimba-lombo had not altogether healed, either. Nor were my spirits so high that I welcomed this exuberance, for the ordeal trial had darkened my soul some, and the slaying of the man Nbande. I declined the wrestling-match, saying I was not ready for it, and sat back, somber somewhat. I thanked God for my narrow escape, thinking, This might be my flesh that is being eaten in banquet this evening, had the heat raised my skin. And it might be my wife Kulachinga who was offered about for the pleasure of others. And I saw, that among these man-eaters one lived always on the edge of the sword.

6

There were trials of other sorts on the days that followed. These were not large spectacles for the sake of demonstrating loyalty to Calandola, but rather the settling of disputes between one Jaqqa and another. For they were in sooth a quarrelsome and contentious lot. A way they had of dealing with such disputes, that seemed most strange to me, was the trial by sea-shells, which occurred between the Jaqqas Mbula and Matadi, when they quarreled over the ownership of a fine sword. Kinguri did summon both to appear before him, and when they were come he fixed to each of their foreheads a grand yellow and purple sea-shell, and at the same time commanded them to bow down their heads. The shell did stick to the forehead of Mbula, but fell from that of Matadi, and he was taken for the liar.

Another was the trial by boiling water, the which I saw upon a dispute concerning possession of a woman, that two men both claimed as his own captive wench. Here each of them took an oath, the oath note fianzumdu it was called, and then a wizard did heat an iron red hot, and quench it in a gourd of water. This boiling water was immediately given to the two who took the oath. One swallowed it without labor, the other could not easily get it down: and the woman was awarded to the first.

Also did I see the trial by poison again, that was here practiced with the fruit of a certain palm called embd, which yields much oil. Here, one Jaqqa had accused another of a treachery toward Calandola, that is, even planning the Imbe-Jaqqa’s murder. “This I greatly deny,” the accused man cried, and such a clamor burst out between them that they were taken up for the ordeal. Then were all the great Jaqqas called together, and a bowl of the embd fruit was brought to Calandola, who held it on high. The Imbe-Jaqqa then did have one of his man-witches select a fruit from the bowl, and bite of it himself, to show that it was harmless and innocent. After which, three other fruits were chosen, and into one of them a poison was injected by means of a long thorn. Then the poisoned one was mixed with the other two, and the bowl was offered, after certain prayers by the wizard, to the two Jaqqas.

The accuser chose first, and he did bite a fruit and find it harmless. That one was thrown away, and a new fruit from the bowl was added, so that the second man might have the same risk of one out of three. He took his bite, and instantly began to swell at his throat, and to choke and make horrid gurgling sounds. And within three moments he had fallen down dead.

“Thus die all traitors,” said Imbe Calandola, and the body was carried away.

All this I found most sinister and disagreeable, for I could not see how justice was discovered with hot irons and poisoned fruits and the like. I reminded me that even in England we had known the trial by ordeal, such as the carrying of red-hot irons, or the ordeal by combat. But all of that had been abolished long ago, in the reign of Henry III or even before him, as something not worthy of a civilized people: except only the trial of witches by ducking them in a pond, for it is known that a witch cannot sink in water, which will always cast her up. But that applies only to witches, who are a special case, and not to ordinary matters at law.

After these trials, there was some quiet among the Jaqqas for a time. We did gather our strength once again to make our long-postponed onslaught against Makellacolonge, but at the last instant Imbe Calandola decided once more against it, saying the omens were not right. What fear he had of attacking that lord, I never knew, and perad venture neither did he. But we closed our camp, having never made battle from it, and marched to the westward again.

Coming along the River Kwanza once more, we reached the city of a lord that is called Shillambansa, uncle to the King of Angola. We burnt his chief town, which was after their fashion very sumptuously builded. This place was very pleasant and fruitful. Here we found great store of wild peacocks, that were everywhere about. Also was there great store of tame ones. In the middle of the town was the grave of the old lord Shillambansa, father to the present one, and there were an hundred tame peacocks on his grave-site, that he had provided for an offering to his mokisso. These birds were called Njilo mokisso, that is, the Devil’s or Idol’s Birds, and were accounted as holy things. He had great store of copper, cloth, and many other things laid upon his grave, which is the order of that country.

By command of Imbe Calandola we touched none of the Njilo mokisso birds, nor did we injure the goods on the old king’s grave. In this I had me in mind of a certain other time when a Portugal had not hesitated to plunder the dead: but a Jaqqa had more respect for the departed, or more fear of his mokisso, one or other.

The town itself we did destroy utterly, and of the wild peacocks we captured many, the tail-feathers of which we plucked as ornaments.

In the festival to celebrate the sacking of Shillambansa the palm-wine did flow most freely, and we danced and ate and greatly rejoiced ourselves. It seemed as though the time of the trials by ordeal was well behind us. To Kinguri, as we sat passing the cup one to the other, I said, “Now there is peace among the Jaqqas. It seemed a good war was all that was needed, is that not so?”

“Ah,” he said, “war is always a delight to us. But there will be more trouble, I think.”

“And more trials?”

“More trials. Always more trials.”

“They are so strange to me, so different from our English way.”

“And what way is that?” Kinguri asked.

“Why, that the accused is put forth before a judge and a jury, that are picked from among the citizenry at large, and they hear the evidence, and decide the rights and wrongs by vote.”

This did startle him. “Why, then, is anyone at all allowed to serve on these juries?”

“Anyone worthy. That is, he must be a man, and neither low nor base. But we are most of us called out to serve, and listen and weigh the tale, and make our decision.”

“But how then can the king be certain of the result?” I did not understand. “He is not,” I said. “First the rights and the wrongs must be discerned, by examination of what has befallen, and testimony of witnesses, and the like.”

Kinguri shook his head. Plainly he was astonished. “That is no way,” he said. “It is madness. There is no government, where justice is left to chance.”

“Not to chance, but to investigation.”

“It is the same thing,” said he. “For the king has no voice in the outcome, and he is not king if he cannot rule his people.”

Though I was well gone in my cups, I tried some several times more to explain how justice derives from the facts of the case, and not from the king’s wishes. But this seemed stranger and stranger to Kinguri the more ways I expressed it. And finally, being deep in his cups himself, he did impart to me certain truths about the workings of the Jaqqa system of trial, that did make very much clear to me that had been obscure before. For I had been fool enough to think there was some witchcraft involved upon it—if ever there was a place where witchcraft could thrive, and magics of all kinds, it was among these Jaqqas—but, as I had in part already guessed, there was a much more ordinary scaffolding to these ordeals.

It was not justice that the trials served, he said, so much as it was the overarching will of Calandola, that shaped all the destiny of the Jaqqa nation. In the general trials of loyalty, those suspected of being unloyal were chosen aforehand by Calandola; and the wizards, Kinguri declared to me, were put on notice to deal with those men. And then it was done by sleight of hand that the hatchet is put closer to the skin of the victim than of any others, and held there longer, so that he alone is burned, though it is made to seem that all are having equal treatment. So justice becomes an instrument of policy by the Imbe-Jaqqa, who pretends that it is divine will speaking, but it is merely his own plotting. To Kinguri this seemed a most wise way of maintaining order.

“And the trial by shells,” I said, “is there some special trickery to that as well?”

“Trickery? Who speaks of trickery? I speak of assuring that a proper verdict is reached.”

“It is all the same,” said I wearily.

“In the case you witnessed, I knew whose sword that was, and who was the false claimant. We all of us did know. But we must make the outcome seem a holy decree. Look you, Andubatil: there is a special way of fixing these shells to the forehead, with a little twist of the hand, so that it will stick there a moment, while the other man’s falls off. This did I do, giving that twist to one, stinting it to the other that was the liar.”

“So I wondered,” said I.

I did not ask him about the trial by boiling water, for I thought I understood that one through my own reasoning: since that it sometimes happens that by apprehension alone a man is unable to swallow, it can be that guilt will close the throat of one petitioner but not the other, who is the innocent one. And I saw no way that that could be arranged aforetimes by the judge, so perhaps in this instance Jaqqa justice provided true justice.

“And the poisoned palm-fruit?” I said. “How is that done?”

Kinguri laughed. “Why, it is simplicity itself. In the saying of the prayers over the bowl, the nganga does conceal palm-fruits in his fingers, and move them about very quickly and cunningly. So that when he offers the bowl to the accuser, all three of the fruits are free of poison, for the nganga has taken the poisoned one away. Then when he gives the bowl to the accused one, he drops back in the poisoned one, and secretly puts two more poisoned ones in the place of the harmless ones. Thus all three are deadly, and there is no unsureness of the outcome.”

“Ah,” I said. “Simplicity itself, as you say.”

“Indeed. Is it not?”

“But why does anyone submit to these trials, knowing that the result is foredoomed, and not flee at once?”

Kinguri, looking troubled, replied in a dark voice, “But they do not know what I have told you.”

“Ah.”

“You understand, these are high secrets of the Imbe-Jaqqa, that I have told you because you are my brother.” He seized my wrist. “They must not be revealed, brother.”

“I understand—brother.”

“They must not be revealed,” said he, tightening his hand on my arm so that I could feel the bones moving about within, though I made no motion to withdraw from his painful grasp. “Must not, brother.”

“Brother, they shall not be,” said I.

Nor have they been, until this moment, when any pledge I might have made to Kinguri Jaqqa is long since cancelled and voided by the passage of time and the turning of events.

Having been made privy to such great secrets, though, I began to fear anew for my life, thinking that Kinguri might regret what he had confided in me even more, when the wine had burned from his brain. So when I went to my sleeping-mat, I slept that night with one eye open, and both my ears. But no dark figure came upon me in the night, and in the days that succeeded Kinguri showed me only cordiality, and gave no hint that he was uneasy with me.

It was the warm and rainy season, and several of the Jaqqas fell ill of fevers. For these sick ones, wickerwork houses were built at the far side of the camp, and they were made to dwell there, untended except for the bringing of a little food. No treatment were they given, though the man-witches of the tribe went to them and chanted prayers from a distance. The Jaqqas are generally very kind to one another in their health; but in their sickness they do abhor one another, and will shun their company.

Some of the sick recovered, and some did not. Of these there were burials. To bury the dead they made a vault in the ground, and a seat for him to sit. The dead one had his head newly embroidered with beads and bangles, his body washed, and anointed with sweet powders. All his best robes were put on, and he was brought between two men to his grave, and set in seat as though he were alive. Then two of his wives were set with him, looking most solemn and in terror, as well they might be: for they were to be buried alive. The arms of these wives were broken, I suppose so they might not dig their way out of the grave. And when they were seated, the vault was covered over on the top. After this, comrades of the dead man mourned and sang doleful songs at his grave for the space of three days, and killed many goats, and poured their blood upon his grave, and palm-wine also.

In the fullest of the season of the rain, when it came like greasy warm bullets out of the gray sky and turned the land to a quagmire and a mud-sea about us, this outbreak of fevers did become something like unto a great plague in the Jaqqa camp. Fifty, one hundred, two hundred fell ill, and perhaps more, with new victims every day. On the rim of the camp were whole villages of sick-houses, and the sound of moaning and retching was a hideous counterpointing of harsh symphonies under the drumming of the rain.

The two great men of the Jaqqas took exceeding different outlooks upon this calamity. I saw Kinguri going each hour through the encampment with his shoulders hunched in despair and his black face even blacker with grief. With desperate energy did he strive to halt the spreading of the malady. He conferred often with the witches, and set them to work beating on drums to drive off the spirits, and when the rain permitted it he caused great fires to be lit, with powders hurled into them to send blazes of violent crimson and yellow hues into the air. Every death seemed perceptibly to diminish him. “These are valiant warriors perishing,” said he to me. “This is a curse upon us, and I cannot abide it!”

“It will pass with the rain,” said I by way of consoling him, though I had no more idea of the truth of that than I did of the sort of birds that do live on the moon.

“It is a curse,” said Kinguri again most gloomfully.

He brooded and paced and boiled within as the outbreak became wholly epidemic amongst us. With ever more intent purpose he sought for some remedy. But meanwhile his brother Calandola held himself aloof, like a great mountain looming high above the mists and fogs, that dwelled in utter serenity in the midst of the chaos and the dying. From time to time I saw him moving through the camp among his special followers, observing in a most cool dispassioned way the downfall and wracking of his own armies. But at other times was he encloistered most placidly within his own dwelling, holding court amid wives and witches as if nothing untoward did progress. It was as though his view of the world, that was something that needed purging and cleansing and much destruction, did extend even unto his own nation: that he regarded this plague as a cooking away of needless impureness and dross from the hard gleaming core of the Jaqqa force. But that is only my own speculating; I could not tell you truly what enfolded in Imbe Calandola’s mind during this dark time.

One thing I greatly feared, as the dying proceeded, was that there would be some in the Jaqqa camp that would lay the plague to my door, saying, “He is a stranger, he is not one of us, he is white-faced, he has brought a pestilence upon us.” And that they would insist on the placating of their mokissos by my death. If such an outcry went up, would Calandola yield me up in sacrifice? I lived in daily caution of this.

So I did tremble when a day came on which Calandola summoned me to his inner sanctuary, sending me the word by Kasanje and Kilombo. And I thought, Ah, they have resolved at last that I am the cause, and I am to be slain.

I found the Imbe-Jaqqa sprawled on his great throne, toying with bangles of bone, and only some four or five of his wives about him. His face was somber but yet calm, and out of that dark glistening mask his terrible eyes did shine like beacon-fires as he looked down upon me and said, “I must have a service from you.”

“Ask it, O Imbe-Jaqqa.”

“I would have you end this sickness that is among us.”

“Ah, I am no surgeon, Lord Calandola.”

“You are more surgeon than you think,” replied the man-eater king. “And it is you must cut the heart from this plague lest it devour us all. For I have given it its free run, and let it to blaze like a healthy fire, but now a finish must swiftly be brought to it.”

“And I am to be the finisher?”

“Only you can do what is required, my Andubatil, my Kimana Kyeer.”

He did explain to me that in his prayers and meditation he had identified the causing of the disease. Which was, that certain members of the tribe who lay ill but neither regained their health nor died were the centers of the infection. From their wicker-house shelters they did pump the taint of their souls into the tribe, said he, and corrupted new victims every day. Therefore must these plague-bearers be eradicated. And that task he did assign to me, because the ngangas had decreed that the slayer must be one whose heart is Jaqqa but whose body is not, and that man could only be me.

“How am I to know which those persons are?” I asked.

“You will be shown,” said he.

He heaved his vast body from his throne, and descended, and walked out into the rainy deluge. I followed him, and a throng of witches and courtiers behind me. Kinguri too came to him, and a great witch of the tribe with his hair painted scarlet red, who carried upon a heavy palm-frond a long shining sword polished most brilliantly.

“This is your instrument of surgery,” Calandola declared.

Then did we march across the whole width of the encampment to the place of the sick-houses; and the hangers-on fell back, leaving only Calandola and Kinguri and me. Those two and I did enter a certain sick-house where the chieftain Ti-Bangala lay suffering. I had not come to know this man well, who was a great hunter and wielder of the bow, but I respected him greatly. Though he was of formidable stature and majesty, now he was huddled and shivering, and half drowning in his own pouring sweat. Upon our entry he looked up and said in a small tired voice that was scarce his own, “Imbe-Jaqqa? Lord Kinguri? Ah, I suffer, I suffer: when does this end?”

“It ends now, Ti-Bangala,” said the Imbe-Jaqqa.

Then the two brothers moved to the side, revealing me standing there like the angel of death, with the great bright weapon in my hand. Ti-Bangala did not show fear of my sword, only a kind of mild surprise, and he feebly smiled to me, saying, “Ah, Andubatil, will we ever hunt together again?”

“Nay, I fear not,” said I.

“Are you the death-mokisso, then?”

“That is what I am, Ti-Bangala.”

And at a signal from Calandola I thrust him through, and he made a soft outrush of air and gave up his ghost.

From there we went to the sick-house of the Jaqqa Paivaga, who looked to me near death unaided, but I despatched him with the blade all the same; and from that to the chamber of Nzinga-bandi, a master of music, who took my thrust in silence; and then onward to another, and one more, and some eleven beyond that. All of whom did I send from the world without giving a second thought to it. Most were so ill, with a glassy look to their eyes and the gleam of shining sweat to their skins, that they scarce perceived what was upon them until my sword descended. But one, Mbanda-kanini, that was a man near as massive and huge as Calandola, looked upon the weapon and drew himself up to his knees, and cried out, “Smite me not, Andubatil! What is this, that you would do me to death?” And with his eyes he did both implore me to let him live, and glare his defiance at me. But I ran him through all the same, and it was no easy task, for there was such a wall of muscle about his belly that it was like pushing the blade through a band of stone. Yet did I do it well, with a sharp fatal twist to my arm at the end, and he fell back and expired with a great rush of dark discolored blood from the wound.

I think I would have gone on serenely all day, striking down these certain Jaqqas that were fancied to be the causes of the plague: for my arm grew hot and supple from this use, and I made an art of seeking the vital places, so that I needed not to thrust a second time with any of them. I did not question the need for this work. It was simply my office, this surgery, this eradication. I did it well. I was in the service of the Imbe-Jaqqa.

At last Calandola said, “It is enough. We have slain them all.”

Then he and Kinguri and I did go down to the river and strip forth our clothes, there in the rain, and march into the muddy swollen coccodrillo-infested stream and bathe ourselves, as if to sweep away any pestilence that might have attached itself to us upon these deadly errands. After which, we repaired to the lodgings of the Imbe-Jaqqa, where his servants did restore our body-paints, that we had washed away; and I yielded up the sword, which was a holy one, to its witch-keeper.

That night the rain came to its termination. By the morning sun, when steaming banks of yellow fog did rise from the baking earth, a grand ceremony of burial was begun. And from that day the pestilence began to leave us, and life returned to its usual state among the Jaqqa nation.

7

When the dead were buried and the sick were recovered and the elephanto-tails dedicated to the fallen lords had been placed into their shrines, we marched westward, along the south side of the River Kwanza. This brought us right against the mountains of Kambambe, which the Portugals call the Serras da Prata, or Mountains of Silver. Now were we not far east of Masanganu, so I was coming back at last to the region that was frequented by Portugals. And I prayed me that I would not encounter any. For they were become odious to me, those men of jerkins and doublets and breeches and cuffs, of stone houses and noisy taverns, of garlic and saffron and sugar. They had the reek of perfidious civilization about them: I wanted no whiff of it. The forest life was cleansing me of all that grime and stench of Christendom.

I had not been to Kambambe before, though I had been within some leagues of it, years earlier. Here there was a great fall of water on the river, that falls right down a vast distance, and makes a mighty sound that is heard thirty miles, a noise that swallows all other noises like a great greedy mouth. We visited this plunge, Kinguri and I. The place is sacred to the Jaqqas, I think because the torrent of falling water dropping vehemently into that great chasm does put into their minds some image of their mother the earth. When we departed from it, its deafening roar remained in my head for some hours, and I felt as though swathed in thick wool over my face and ears.

Kinguri asked me why Portugals came to this place so often, wondering if it might be holy also to them. “Nay,” I said, “not holy in any way you would understand, for the god they would worship there is called Mammon, and you know him not. At Kambambe they do seek a white metal that is said to be found there.”

“There are no white metals,” said Kinguri.

“There is one, that we call silver, very precious to the Portugals and other Christians. And it lives in the ground here.”

He shrugged, and said again that there were no white metals, and certainly none at Kambambe. But that led us into talk with some other Jaqqas, and none of them knew aught of silver-mines here. However, the lord Kilombo, who had fought many campaigns in the province of Matamba, told us that a white metal was plentiful there, and was fashioned into bracelets.

This talk of the province of Matamba did touch me at the heart, for it put me in mind of a cherished person that had been far from my mind and soul.

“I knew a woman of Matamba when I lived among the Portugals,” I said. “She never spoke of such a metal. But if ever I see her again, I will ask her.”

“Where is this woman?” asked Kinguri.

“In São Paulo de Loanda, if she still lives.”

“Then I think you will see her soon, Andubatil.”

“What?”

He smiled, and stretched himself back, preening himself on his lordliness among these folk. “I have spoken this day with the Imbe-Jaqqa, and he has disclosed his plan to me. We are shortly to aim our war against the Portugals.”

This news did make my heart pound fiercely in my breast, and my skin to turn chill.

I said, “What, will you attack São Paulo de Loanda, when you did hesitate to invade the city of Dongo?”

“It is not the same. Dongo is sealed tight, and is not simple of approach; and King Ngola knows our ways, and how to defend himself from them. We will deal with Dongo, aye, but at some farther time. The Portugals will not be so difficult. Imbe Calandola has come to believe we must destroy them now, before they have done more grievous harm to our mother, and before they are so numerous that we will be hard put to defeat them. They are the true enemy: and so we have believed for these ten years past. And their time now draws nigh.”

These words gave me some deep pause. Yea, and I detested the Portugals for what they were and all they had done to me; and there had been moments of late when I wished their utter destruction as fervently as Calandola himself, a sweeping clean of all of them from the African land. But yet, would I let myself truly be part of this war against São Paulo de Loanda, or no? Was I become that much a Jaqqa? To partake of butchering and eating those folk, and putting their city to the torch?

The Christian within me cried, “Nay, it is monstrous, you may not do it!” But the Englishman in me did shout most lustily, “Aye, take your fiill revenge upon the oily bastardos, Andy-boy!” And then also the Jaqqa that was in me, coursing dark and hot in my veins, whispered hard and tempting, “Strike, strike deep, for the mother must be cleansed of such vermin!”

Kinguri said, “You look sore troubled, Andubatil.”

“A passing griping of the gut,” said I, with a shrug. “Those small yellow fruits we plucked yesterday were not ripe, I think.”

“Ah. I wish you a proper heaving of the belly, then, brother.” He laughed. “There is a leaf I could give you, that would make you puke out all your torment in an hour.”

“Would that there be such a thing,” said I.

“Let me show you, good my brother!”

But I waved his help aside, and said, “It will pass, Kinguri. The weight will lift. I feel it already clearing.”

Which was untrue. But I was able then to put the matter somewhat from my mind, for it emerged that Calandola’s scheme of war was no more ripe than the imagined fruits upon which I had blamed my malaise. The Imbe-Jaqqa, said Kinguri, did not propose to attack the Portugals until he first had dealt with the army of Kafuche Kambara. That great blackamoor chieftain, whose fury I myself knew well, was a mighty rival to Calandola, being just as fierce, and just as shrewd in battle, though no man-eater. The Imbe-Jaqqa intended now to slay Kafuche Kambara and then to press his strong army into his own, and with joined forces to march upon São Paulo de Loanda for the destruction of the Portugals.

So entered we into the province of Kisama, which I remembered well but not fondly from long ago, and in that drab wasteland we presented ourselves to one of its greatest lords, which was called Langere. This black prince wanted no war with Calandola, but came out from his town most hastily and paid homage to the Imbe-Jaqqa, bowing low and making offerings of meat and drink. Kinguri stood to one side of Calandola and I to the other, holding my musket as a kind of staff of office, and Langere did grovel and pray for the love of Calandola, until the Imbe-Jaqqa did say, a little disgusted, “Rise, Langere, we would not eat you.”

The chieftain rose trembling, and asked what was the Imbe-Jaqqa’s bidding, and Calandola said that he wanted Langere’s warriors, to employ in a war he proposed to make against Kafuche Kambara. At this Langere looked pale. If one can speak of a blackamoor going pale, then pale is what he looked, or more yellowish, from dismay. For Kafuche Kambara was not only a mighty warrior, he was also the high prince of the province, and Langere’s own master. Caught between one doom and the other, Langere chose the more remote one: the Jaqqas were already at his town, and would punish him cruelly if he did not yield to their will. So then Langere obeyed, and gave his army over to the Imbe-Jaqqa, and we all marched onward to the city of Kafuche Kambara.

Before we were there, Imbe Calandola drew me aside, and smiled most fondly upon me, and said, “This will be the largest battle you have fought since you came to us.”

“Aye. That I know, for I have seen the troops of Kafuche Kambara at work, and they show no quarter.”

“We must destroy their prince, but not the warriors, for them shall we need in our campaign against the Portugals. Take you your musket, Andubatil, and aim it for the high ones of the city, and if it goes well for us they will surrender when their chiefs are all fallen.”

“I will aim my sharpest,” said I.

“You are a great treasure to me,” Calandola said. He was fully greased with the grease of human fat, and his body gleamed like some terrible idol, and he was a giant even sitting down, so that I felt the waves of power emanating from him, beating steady upon my soul like the heavy surf. And he said, “You are a true Jaqqa, in all but your skin, and we can do nothing about that. But before this battle we must admit you to our deepest mysteries, so that you will fight with the highest loyalty.”

“My loyalty could not be higher.”

“Ah, that I know. For are you not blood-brother to the wise Kinguri? But still—still, Andubatil—there is one rite, there is a further closeness—”

I knew not what he meant.

He did frighten me somewhat by this talk, for he was speaking most quietly, and by this time I was aware that when Imbe Calandola roared and stamped his feet and pounded his fists together, it was mostly for show, to cow and humble the foolish; but when he spoke quietly, it was because he had some dark and devious plan, most subtle and perilous. And his talking of my being blood-brother to Kinguri—why, I knew that was a sore thing with him, and did fester within the murky fevered caverns of his devilish soul, in that it was a source of jealousy and private pain to him. He never spoke outwardly of it, and now he had, and so very calmly at that.

What, then, was his scheme? To make me his blood-brother as well, and equal Kinguri in making a bond with me? Well, and if he did, I could give him that, for what would it cost me? A bit of pain, but there was room on my skin for one more scar, even now. Yet that was not his plan. What the Imbe-Jaqqa had in mind by way of bond was something far more intimate, a full initiation into the core and heart of the Jaqqa nation.

To me he said, “These rites are such as no Christian has ever beheld. We guard them even from slaves of other tribes. But I have spoken with my witches, and they are in agreement that you are fit to share our secrets.”

Imbe Calandola had his head close to mine and his eyes staring into my eyes, that had ever overwhelmed me, and his voice was low and deep and persuasive, and he said, “Come, then, will you be one of us, Andubatil?”

“Aye,” I said, “that I will, and gladly.”

And so I did, and monstrous things did I undertake, and I think you will condemn me for them. Nevertheless will I tell all. I say to you only that you were not there, and I was; that you had not traveled the long journey I had traveled; that you are you, turning these pages safe in safe England, and I was who I was, the sum and essence of all my perilous and toilsome adventures. And so I was willing at that moment to partake of whatsoever the Imbe-Jaqqa chose to offer me.

I will tell all.

Once it was openly agreed that I would have the rite, the news was published generally in the Jaqqa camp, and from that instant on I was regarded in a special way, as one who had taken on a high radiance. Certain slaves that the Jaqqas did keep at once commenced the building of a ceremonial house apart from the main camp, by the riverbank, hidden from view by a tight-woven wall of palm-fibers. I watched them building it, until I saw that they were looking upon me with fear, and could not work well. In my own place, Kulachinga took a sleeping-mat apart from me, and said she could not embrace me until I was initiate: which I regretted, but I abided by the rule. In fact no one touched my skin in all those days, as if I would burn them with some god-like fire from within: those who passed me by took pains to walk far around me, and I was not let play in Jaqqa games or dances.

On the day appointed for the rite, I was summoned and taken to the house of ceremony by Imbe Calandola himself, and led within, and the wall of palm-fibers was woven closed behind me.

Some dozen Jaqqas were already in the house, sitting crosslegged awaiting me. The Jaqqa Ntotela was among them, and Zimbo, and Kasanje, and Bangala, and also the witch Kakula-banga; the others I did not know except distantly. Kinguri was not there: I had not expected him to be.

Calandola took his place at the head of the solemn group. A music began, from outside the house: a low thick beat of drums, and then a winding high sour outcry of the ivory fife, a sound that reminded me of the weaving of the serpent from side to side as it readies itself to strike.

There was a great bowl of palm-wine, mixed in the royal fashion, that is, stiffened with human blood. We all did drink of this, as the first step of the rite, and we drank freely of it throughout.

Also was there the wicker vat that contained human grease. I removed my ornaments and my loin-cloth, and Calandola nodded to two of his man-witches, who begreased me thoroughly with this stuff, leaving no inch of my nakedness unoiled. All the others in the group also submitted themselves to this greasing. At the first I found the reek of it loathsome, and the slipperiness disagreeable, but after some short time I ceased to notice it.

Now the Imbe-Jaqqa turned to me and said, “Swear to me, by wind and sky and the bones of the great mother, that what occurs here will remain forever secret. And if you violate this oath, your body will crumble and you will be eaten upon forever by ants, but you will remain eternally alive while they do eat. Swear upon this!”

And he did put into my hand a talisman, that was carved from some ebon-black wood of great weight, and was in the form of a yard and a pair of ballocks. This I gripped by the middle of the yard, and he said, “Do you swear?”

“I so swear,” I replied. “By wind and sky and the bones of the great mother, that I will divulge to no man what occurs in this house today.”

So did I swear. Yet am I telling all, in setting down these words. And if I am to be eaten forever by ants, so be it, but I have sworn unto myself a higher oath, to be true in all that I relate of my adventurings. I think that oath does take precedence above my oath to Imbe Calandola. And I shall tell you all.

Having sworn, I was given to drink a cup that contained some bitter fluid, a potion made from certain dried roots and leaves, I know not which. Swallowing this stuff was not easy. Before long I grew flushed and mine eyes refused to serve me properly, but showed me everything in double or triple. And I felt a great strange uprushing with my brain, as though I had become a copious waterfall that rose heavenward, and poured and poured into the sky. And my hearing grew more sensitive, so that the drums and fifes outside grew swollen and immense, and I could detect also the little harsh chittering sounds of insects, and—so I thought—the whispering noise made by the growing of the grass. And flaming colors streamed in the air, a wild blazing torrent of red and green and purple banners that had no substance, but only hue.

As I sat muddled and dazzled by these things, all the others began to dance most threateningly about me and about Imbe Calandola, who sat by my side. They waved their arms and shook their fists and lifted their feet as though to kick me, but they never once touched me, and only kept churning round and round me. This part lasted some long time.

Then I drank again, a cooling draught out of a new cup of high burnish, that had the figure of a male member rising from it on the one handle, and the shape of the female parts on the other, with long lips extended. When I had had my drink of it, Calandola took it from me, and drank also. This beverage we had had, he told me, was a kind of strong wine into which the dried powder of the sex parts of a dead witch had been sprinkled. What, you recoil? Aye, so do I, now. But I tell you I did not find it strange just then, or in any way displeasing.

Now everyone danced once more, and I with them, hard put to keep my legs from tangling; but they gripped me by my wrists and drew me along as we pranced around the circle, faster and faster, to louder and louder music. They sang all the while, in a language I did not know, which I took to be some holy kind of Latin that these people spoke in their rites.

At the end of the dance we fell down exhausted to the ground. The man-witches lit a fire, and threw powders on it to make colors rise like ghostly phantoms in the air, and for a long while there was a chanting in a low mumbled way. Their voices never left the same one or two tones, as they said again Yumbe yumbe nimbe hongon, or words much like that. By the ten thousandth repeating of it I was saying it along with them, Yumbe yumbe nimbe hongon, and they did smile and encourage me to do that by gestures of their hands. And then they stood, still doing the Yumbe, and lifted me to my feet, and rocked me back and forth a bit, and led me into an inner room of the same house.

It was entered through a broad arch that was draped with red and raw entrails, that I thought quite calmly were probably human ones. But they were only the intestines of a sheep. Beyond, decorated with the shining bluish leaves of a sacred bush, were the sexual organs of that sheep, which was female, and other parts of the sheep attached. And kneeling beside the sheep were two of the wives of Calandola, naked except for the abundance of beads they wore. I thought I could see even beyond the sheep, and it was an open shadowy place, a great blue space stretching far to the horizon and over the sea; but perhaps I dreamed that.

I was by now very uncertain on my feet. Calandola came behind me, supporting me by his arms under mine, and holding me up as easily as though I were a babe. He walked me to the center of the room and put me down kneeling before the sheep, and stayed crouched just behind me.

I smelled many smells. There was the odor of a dry hillside overgrown with rare herbs, and the charred musky perfume of seared flesh, and the sweet heavy scent of oils of Araby. There was a wine-smell; there was a meat-smell; there was a woman-smell. All these fragrances went to the roots of my soul, and tugged at them, and hauled me loose of my moorings.

The two women held bowls, one of blood and one of milk. With these they proceeded to lave me, first my arms and my legs, and then most lovingly my private parts, doing it so cunningly with their wetted fingers that most swiftly my yard did rise. The potions I had drunk were at their height in me now, so that I scarce knew whether I waked or dreamed, and did not care.

“Forward, and enter the gate,” murmured Calandola, and tipped me toward the mounted parts of the sheep, so that my member did penetrate the swollen hole of the dead beast. I rocked back and forth in it, while the Imbe-Jaqqa sang a low song that was much like a long groan, into my ear. But also he whispered, “Be of great care not to spill your seed just yet,” and so I strived to withhold it, though I was in great excitement from all the wine and potions and throbbing music and the hands of the women upon me. As I coupled with that dead sheep’s cunt, other Jaqqas did place rings of sheepskin about my wrists and ankles, and about those of Calandola.

I thought for sure the Devil would appear in that room, out of the smoke and haze. I thought also that he would have my soul from me, and I was lost forever, damned by my willing entry into these diabolical rites. Yet did I take those fears most lightly. If I was become a slave of the Devil, so be it. If I was now enrolled in the company of witches, so be it. Prudence had fled from me. I was a Jaqqa of the Jaqqas in all truth, at that moment. I do confess before God and His Son that I felt no shame in what I did, though I suppose it was because I was so mazy with their strong potions. But peradventure it was not that, but only that I had lived so long in the Devil’s jungles, far from the realm of the good Jesus. In such places even a saint could turn by easy passages into a witch, and I had never been a saint.

There was more. I have sworn to tell all.

They withdrew me gently from the sheep before I had spilled my seed, and a ram was brought into the room and slain with a great sword. The blood of this animal then they poured over me and over Imbe Calandola. The male member of the ram was cut loose, and it was thrust some several times into the hole of the female sheep, and taken from it, and roasted upon a sharp stick; and the meat was divided into morsels, and each of us did eat a morsel of it. And the blood of the ram and the ewe were mixed together, and pounded fruits and grains were put into it, and of this porridge we all ate, except for the two women. When we had done with it, the remainder was poured into the laps of the women, and Calandola and I came forward and knelt, and licked it all from their thighs and bellies and from their private parts. And then the women were sent from the room. I had supposed that we would couple with them, but I was wrong in that.

Night had come, I do think. Certainly I perceived the world to have grown dark, but by this stage of the ceremony I could not have told the sun from the moon. My memories of it now become confused. One of the women did return, I believe, bearing an ivory box that held two shriveled worms, and I was told to take one of those worms and thrust it into her arse with my finger, and Calandola did put the other into her cunt; but perhaps it was I that gave her the front worm and he the rear, I can no longer remember. And I think there were other such rites, using objects of witchcraft such as dried leaves and amulets, but I am not sure. It may be the case that my mind has expunged from itself the most horrid and dreadful of these witcheries, by way of protecting me against mine own doings: but I am concealing nothing, God wot, of what I can recall. I gave myself fully up to all of this, the way one surrenders oneself fully to the experiences that come in a dream.

Though I have forgotten some of these latter events, there is one I cannot forget. Nor do I dare shrink from imparting it here, though it be the worst of all. It was far into the night, and I had had other drugs to drink, and more of the blood-wine, and fires were lit all about the room, and low chanting went forward, when suddenly I did feel a hand upon my yard. The touch was light and supple, and in my bemusement I thought it must be one of Calandola’s wives returned to caress me, and I moved in slow thrusts against its grip, deriving great pleasure of it.

“Mine,” said a thick heavy voice. “Do the like to mine.”

The voice was Imbe Calandola’s, and the hand on my yard was Calandola’s also, sliding up and down the shaft of it with great skill. And he sat alongside me, his huge body pressed close upon mine, and as I sharpened my eyes in the dim smoky haze I came to see that his member did stand upright like a giant black scepter, frightsomely thick and high.

I did not draw back from that which he offered.

I put my hand to his yard as he had to mine. I opened my fingers wide to span that immensity, which seemed to me as thick as an arm, and I wondered fleetingly how any woman ever could take him into her without being split by him. And I stroked him up and down, having no more sense of sin about it than if I had been stroking mine own yard, or the railing of a stair. This was the deepest point of my voyage toward that Lord of Darkness, the Imbe-Jaqqa Calandola: for I was wholly his creature, totally in submission to his will, entirely unknowing of the existence of myself as an independent being. My hand was to him, and his was to me, and nothing else did I perceive. And the last shred of that innocent English boy who had set to sea on the seventh day of May of Anno 1589 was lost now in the beating of the drums and the rising of the many-colored smoke and the wild swirling of the drug in my veins. I had become altogether a thing of the jungle. I was swallowed up in this mystery. I was truly Andubatil Jaqqa, that never had had a former life as anyone other.

Ah! The spurting of my seed did come, with a power and an intensity I had not known since I was a rammish boy. It wrung from me a great shout, that must have sounded none too different from a cry of pain, though it sprang from the supremest of pleasure. I felt myself covered with my hot outpouring from belly to mid-thigh.

And still my hand moved in its unchanging motion, grasping that mighty black rod; and soon from Calandola came a deep rumbling sound, something like the sound that I imagine a volcano-mountain to make as it prepares to loose its molten rock. And then I felt the heavy quiver and shake of his flesh, and the spurt, and his outcries split the air most thunderously.

He cried my name, and I cried his, and we let go of one another and fell backward against the warm moist earth, and lay there unmoving. I think that was the end of it. At any rate, I remember no more.

I was as one stunned. The fires died down, the music trailed away into silence, and all was still.

Whatever happened in the late hours of the night, if there was anything, it was without my knowledge, for I lay in the deepest of slumber. I have told all that I know of that night. So did I vow; so have I done. I have told all.

8

It was midday before I awoke, and found myself still in the house of the ceremony. Two Jaqqa warriors sat beside me as a kind of guard of honor, but Calandola was not there. I looked at them the way a man looks when he has been half drowned, and comes to himself. They said nothing, neither Kasanje nor old Ntotela. I rose, feeling like the merest burnt husk of myself, and with an uncertain stride I made my way out of that place, and down to the river’s edge, and washed myself free of all the greases and stains of the night’s revelries, and washed and washed, scrubbing myself most thoroughly in that fast-rushing stream.

At the first I had no clear memory of what I had done, but then gradually at first, and then in a torrent, it all came back to me from the first to the last. And I did feel a kind of numb frosty amaze, that I had done such things, and especially that I had done the last thing. But I gave myself no shame over them. It was too late for shame. Some while back, so I knew, I had passed a certain boundary within my soul, and I lived now, in the inner sense, in a land other than my native one.

Only one thing that troubled me, and that was that I might henceforth be expected to be Imbe Calandola’s constant paramour. I was not yet so wholly transformed that I was ready to reckon myself a willing catamite, gladly given over to sodomy. I am well aware of the evils of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, and I have never known any inclination toward the same within my soul. Many times aboard ship during long voyages I have been covertly approached by men of that sort, who did risk their lives to offer me invitations, saying they would give me pleasure with their hands, or their mouths, or their bums, any part I liked, and would I peradventure care to play some buggery with them as well? It was easy enough to say them nay, for that was not my game: it is the soft moist hole of women that draws me, and for the rest, why, it is all so much dead meat, that interests me not at all. I would not burn the buggers upon the stake, or skewer them from the rear as is often done, or hurl them into the sea, for that also is not my way. And I know many great men have had that vice and still been great, aye, some even being King of England. But it is not my pleasure. I did not wish to indulge it again. But there my fears proved needless, since the Imbe-Jaqqa was no more dedicated to buggery than I: what had passed between us was a ritual deed, of some high spiritual meaning, and it portended no change in our relations. He went back to his many wives, and I went back to my one.

But other things had changed.

Kinguri came to me that morning, and said, looking remote and much cast down, “Well, and so he has taken you for his own, brother.”

“It was for the making of me into a deeper Jaqqa.”

“Aye, so it was. And are you the deeper Jaqqa now?”

“I have seen new things, brother,” said I. “But look you: nothing has altered between us, and I am still your brother, and your nearest friend, and we will spend long hours still speaking of the laws of England and how they differ from the laws of France, and such matters.”

“We are brothers still, but you are now his.”

“He is the Imbe-Jaqqa. I had no refusal.”

“That is so,” said Kinguri. “You had no refusal. And you are one with him now.”

“We are all one with him,” said I, finding this conversation most awkward and discomforting, like the conversation a man might have with his wife after he has left her for a new lover. “Come, Kinguri, reproach me not! I had no refusal.”

“So I am given to understand.”

“Have you had the same rite with him?”

“It could not be. I am his mother-brother.”

“But you have had the rite?”

“I have,” said he.

“And with whom?”

“With Ngonga, once. And with a man who is dead.”

“But yet they did not become your brothers?”

“Nay,” said he, “I have only Calandola for my brother, and you.”

“Then the brother-rite is a closer one than this other, so why do you reproach me? I am dearer with you than I be with him, even afterward.”

“Ah, so you are,” said he. “But what you had with Calandola, no one else has had with him ever.”

And therefore was he sulky and wounded, and felt betrayed and cast off. It is like all lovers, and in a way that was not of the flesh we were surely that: he had shared me with another that was more powerful, and felt now that something had been spilled that could not be put back in the bowl. All the same he could not have been greatly surprised that it had happened, knowing that Calandola did hold him to be a rival, and thus that he coveted all that Kinguri did have; and from the first I had to Calandola been something most precious, a giver of light and brightness in the dark of the jungle, as I had seen from his handling of my fair hair. So there was no repairing it: I was the plaything of these two powerful brothers, and I had to take care for myself, that they did not tear me asunder in their struggle for me.

So thereafter Kinguri was polite with me, and I with him, but we were cool, and did pretend that nothing had changed while both aware that a great change had come. And no longer did he invite me to go hunting with him, or come to my cottage to draw me into deep discourse, which I lamented. But we sat side by side at the feasts, and smiled, and gave outward show of warm brotherhood, even so.

With the other Jaqqas was I altered also, in another way. Owing to my golden hair and white skin they all had taken me to be some kind of ndundu-creature, an albino of a new sort, with warlock powers. That had been greatly heightened by my becoming blood-brother to Kinguri, and now was elevated even more by my having shared this deep rite with the Imbe-Jaqqa. So I walked among them now like a man eleven feet tall, whose feet did not touch the ordinary ground. They made a hand-gesture to me of obeisance, and cast down their eyes, these swaggering devilish cannibal lords and princes. And at their feasts I had the finest morsels and all the wine I chose to drink, and I am certain I could have taken any woman, too, though I was content with Kulachinga.

In a day or two after my initiation with Calandola, we resumed our march toward the city of Kafuche Kambara. Shortly we drew up our position on high ground to the northeast of it. I saw it far below, dry and dusty, the color of a lion in the hot sunlight, and crouching like a lion at the base of low dark hills. The city was a great one, but it seemed a swarm of ants and nothing more, from here.

I cleaned my musket thoroughly and made ready my remaining shot and powder. And on a day of great heat and some little rain the Imbe-Jaqqa did mount his lofty scaffold, and utter a long and most ferocious oration, and we did sound our battle-drums and mpungas and other musics of war, and with a great rush we swept down on Kafuche Kambara.

It was Calandola’s stratagem to terrify Kafuche, and break his spirit on that first day by a sudden onslaught. But it did not happen that way. This lord did stoutly withstand the Jaqqas, and we had that day a mighty battle, but neither side had the victory. In this warfare I was placed upon a wooden engine that the Jaqqas had constructed, so that I could shoot my musket downward upon the enemy, and perhaps slay the opposing general. Three bold Jaqqas stood before me with great shields of elephanto-hide, to form a phalanx in my protection, and again and again they parted at a signal, and I did thrust my weapon through the opening, and discharge it with a terrible roar.

But Kafuche Kambara did not fall. At sunset we withdrew with many of our men dead on the field, and made ourselves a palisado of trees in the Jaqqa fashion behind which we might encamp. And the next day it was the same, and the next, a battle without outcome.

We remained close on four months in the wars with them, to great cost. Some days we had the better hand, some days they did; but it mightily perplexed Calandola that he could not shatter the forces of Kafuche Kambara no matter what tactic he employed. Never had a blackamoor lord withstood him before in this way. We held a long council to discuss it, at which I was present along with Kinguri and Kulambo and Kasanje and the other great Jaqqa princes, and I could see the wrath of Imbe Calandola smouldering within him. And he did look toward me from time to time, as though I might offer some plan to break the stalemate. But the only plan I had was one I thought he would deeply mislike, so I did not voice it.

And at length it was Kinguri, after we had talked for hours, that put forth the same idea that had come to me. “Since it seems we cannot defeat them, let us make alliance with them against the Portugals.”

At this, Imbe Calandola’s eyes blazed with fury, and he snarled like a jungle beast and clenched his fists tight. Peradventure only Kinguri could have made that proposal without giving mortal offense. For alliance with an enemy was not Calandola’s way; and he was not eager to admit he had failed against Kafuche Kambara.

Yet around the council-house the other princes did nod and give assent to Kinguri, first old Zimbo, and then others, in a cautious manner, for they knew how perilous it was to support that which the Imbe-Jaqqa opposed.

Calandola turned then to me, and said, “What say you, Andubatil, shall we parley with Kafuche Kambara?”

His eyes did gleam most craftily. Clearly it was a test, to see whether my love lay more with him or with his brother. So I chose my words with some care, and said, “What is our greater goal, O Imbe-Jaqqa? To destroy Kafuche Kambara, or to wipe from our soil the Portugals of the coast?”

“That question does not answer to my question.”

“Aye, but it does! If Kafuche is the higher foe, why, then we must stay here until we break him. But if our greater thrust is destined to be against the Portugals, Lord Calandola, then it behooves us not to slaughter many more of Kafuche’s warriors. For we will need them in the attack on São Paulo de Loanda.”

I saw a keen smile quickly cross Kinguri’s face, and knew that I had spoken myself rightly.

Calandola, too, showed pleasure. “Yea, that is so. Each day do we kill great number of his men.”

“And also do they kill great number of ours,” said Kasanje, but not so loud that the Imbe-Jaqqa might hear.

Kulambo, that was a wise and bold commander, now said, “The Andubatil Jaqqa speaks sooth. Let us spare Kafuche Kambara’s army, and put it to our own uses. And when the Portugals are destroyed, why, then we may turn again against Kafuche, and deal with him as he deserves.”

Calandola did ponder this a long while in silence, and I saw his face change from moment to moment as he weighed this argument and that. And then he did brighten, as though he had weighed it all, and saw the truth.

“So be it, as Kulambo proposes,” he said at last.

And so it was that on the next day a negotiation commenced, under a flag of truce, between the Jaqqas and their foes. I say “a flag of truce,” that being the way we do understand such things, but in fact the way it was done was quite other: for a pig was slaughtered, and turned so that its entrails were on the outside, and this was carried into the open ground by six of the Jaqqa women, with two dozen Jaqqa warriors behind them as a guard. By this display was signified a willingness to parley, which Kafuche Kambara did comprehend, and he did send forth by way of agreement a slaughtered calf, similarly opened, so that there was blood and entrails all about. These meats were cooked and shared by the ambassadors of both sides, and after that it would have been unholy to make war, so that truce was struck.

I was not present at this parleying, though all the other Jaqqa high lords did attend. As I was making ready to set forth with them Calandola said, “Nay, not you, Andubatil.”

“And why is that?”

“Because of our skin that is dark, and yours that is white.”

“This I do not understand,” said I. “Am I not a Jaqqa?”

“You are Jaqqa within, by right of initiation, and blood-brothering, and marriage. But yet are you still a white man to the outer semblance, and I fear you will give dismay to Kafuche Kambara on that score.”

“Do you, then? Even though I wear Jaqqa emblems?”

“Even though,” said he, and I knew there was no appeal from that. So I withdrew my pleading, much as I did resent to be excluded from the meeting. And in this I think Calandola was not wrong. This Kafuche was a man of quick suspicions, who was known to have no liking for whites, and I would be far too strange an article for him to accept with ease. Therefore did I yield, although feeling shamed by my having to remain behind.

I did have one glimpse of the formidable Kafuche, as he came out from his city to meet with the Jaqqa lords. He was a splendid figure indeed, being very tall and strong, though old, with whitened hair, and when he came forth it was in such state as befitted a king. For he did ride upon an elephanto in great pomp and majesty, and on either side of the elephanto he had six lordly warriors, and there were slaves who carried a high golden canopy as it were a cloth of state above his head, and some five hundred archers as his guard came before him.

More than that I did not see, for Calandola had another task for me, that took me into new and grievous adventure. This was that we were to prepare the way for the invasion of the Portuguese territories, and so I was sent to explore the lands that lay between this place and Masanganu, and be a spy against the number of Portugals who defended the presidio there.

To accomplish this the Imbe-Jaqqa gave me for my protection some ninety fine warriors, of whom one, a tall and slender man that was called Golambolo, came to me with a great laugh and said, “Do you not know me, Andubatil?”

“Aye, you are the warrior Golambolo,” said I.

“So I am. But does nothing else concerning me come to your mind, now that we are about to cross this dry wasteland together?”

“I do not take your meaning,” I said.

“Have you no remembering of five Jaqqas that found you wandering in this same desert, after the Portugals had been smashed by the army of Kafuche Kambara?”

“That escorted me safe over the dry lands to Masanganu?”

“Indeed,” said Golambolo.

I looked close at him, and feigned that I recognized him; but in truth I did not, since that in those early days one Jaqqa had looked much like another to me.

“My gratitude is great,” said I. “To you I owe my life.”

“The life of Andubatil is precious to us all.”

“But I was not then Andubatil. Why did you save me, then?”

He smiled and pointed to my hair, and said he had thought me to be some powerful mokisso, or at the very least an important witch belonging to the Portugals, and he had not wanted to risk the enmity of the spirit world by letting me come to harm. Which was the confirming of what I had long suspected. I took from my neck the beads I was wearing, white with inlays of jet, and placed them about his throat, and he took both my elbows in his hands, which is a Jaqqa embrace of loyalty and affection, and we smiled upon one another for the sake of that other time.

With Golambolo and my ninety warriors did I now set forth to the direction of the River Kwanza, across Kisama province by way of a place called Agokayongo, where a lord subject to Kafuche Kambara did reign. At this town we were greeted with a hospitality of an uneasy sort—for none of these villagers relished the sight of Jaqqas ever, be they one Jaqqa or ninety-one—but they fed us and gave us to drink, and then they told us that a party of Portugals had passed just that way, traveling from the presidio of Ndemba to the west, and heading for Masanganu, where they proposed to take ship back to the coast.

This news gave me some alarm. “How many were there?” I asked.

“Not many,” replied the lord of Agokayongo. “Less than the fingers of two hands.”

“And said they anything about events in the Kisama province? Of a Jaqqa army, or of warfare in the south?”

“I heard from them not a thing of such matters,” answered that lord.

But the Portugals, had they known Calandola was moving through the province, might not have deemed it important to share that news with the lord of Agokayongo. Nor, even if he did know it, was he necessarily telling me the truth. And if there were Portuguese travelers moving through these regions, who knew of Imbe Calandola’s movements, it would go hard for us if they conveyed word of this to the forces of Masanganu. So I did summon Golambolo and my other lieutenants and say, “We must overtake these Portugals and make them prisoners, and keep them from bearing tales of us to their countrymen.”

At once did we set forth in their pursuit. Which did not seem to me to be any easy matter, for there is no fixed road in this part, and the terrain is much broken. But when we were only a league beyond Agokayongo we came upon the first sign of them: a dead horse by the base of a cliff, most pitiful to behold, for it was shrunken and withered and lying flat with sprawled limbs, like some cast-off doll out of which all the straw has fallen.

“They travel by horse?” Golambolo said. “Ah, then they are undone!”

I felt the same. For it is a risky thing to travel by horse in this torrid country; there is sparse forage for the poor beasts, and the air itself does suck the life from their lungs. Better by far is it to go afoot, and be light of burden, for there are some places, and this is one, where a man can go and a horse is only a drain and a disadvantage.

Indeed that had been the case amongst these Portugals. For we proceeded onward, and surmounted a steep rise in the valley, and looked down a short way to the west into a deep cleft between two sharp hills, and there they were. They sat gathered by the shade of a broad-spreading tree that was rooted in a small brackish pond. There were six of them, and four horses, and one of the horses looked to Golambolo’s keen eyes as being near unto death, and the other three not much more vigorous. Plainly the Portugals had made camp to allow their steeds to regain strength: and a somber error it had been for them, since that it had delivered them up into our hands.

“I will take them,” Golambolo said.

“Aye. Choose nine men, and ride down there and seize them, and return them to Lord Calandola for safekeeping. Tell him that upon my coming back from Masanganu, I will question them and get from them valuable information about the dealings of the Portugals in this province. And when you have done that, proceed onward and meet me by the town of Ndala Chosa.”

“So shall I do,” answered Golambolo.

With his nine men he moved out and down into the valley where the six Portugals lay. I knew I could trust him to accomplish the task with ease; therefore I did not wait, but continued on northward with the remainder of my force. We saw nothing of note in the bleak country ahead, until that we came to the place called Ndala Chosa, which lieth on the south side of the River Kwanza a few leagues upstream from Masanganu. For a day or two I rested in this village, for I had had the misfortune of twisting my foot and injuring it most sorely, so that I could not walk. While I lay in this fashion I sent forth scouts, who came back to me swiftly with news of the district that runs from Ndala Chosa to the great waterfall. There was a Portugal army ahead, they said: not just the usual complement of Masanganu, but some hundreds of troops camped outside that place, as though they were contemplating a war.

“Take me thence immediately,” said I.

It is not in the Jaqqa nature to carry men in a litter, after the servile manner of the Bakongo folk, but there was no choice in that now. So they did cobble together something by which to bear me, and took me forth toward Masanganu, until I came to a sloping low hill that gave a prospect of the hot tableland ahead. And indeed the Portugals were drawn up encamped there, with much weaponry and a great force.

“What is this?” I asked. “Are they patrolling, or do they plan some conquest of Kisama?”

To this no one could make answer. And as I looked down upon them I felt within me a pounding of the heart, and a swaying of the soul, and a great overwhelming urge to reach out with the tip of my finger and brush those Portugals aside, or grind them into the earth like offensive insects. Aye, that was the Jaqqa rising in me! By what right did they camp there, I asked myself, with all their gear and their tents and their refuse and trash? Let us wipe them aside, I thought! And all like them, even to São Paulo de Loanda! Let there be war between Jaqqa and Portugal, and let us drive them into the sea!

Even as those savage war-like feelings did course within me, and loose the blood-thrill in my soul, so also did I calculate in a more civil way the practical merits of such a campaign of extermination and expungement. For when Portugals were gone from this land, the English might enter. Through my dazzled mind floated a vision of myself taking ship to England aboard some Dutch trader, and organizing a company of adventurers, and returning to Africa to lead a venture that would wholly supplant the Portugals here. Aye! Strike up a treaty with Calandola my brother, and pledge him never to offend against our mother the earth as the Portugals had done, and then drive the slavers from São Tomé, and build a new England in this hot West African country!

You can see in my words the conflict, the contradicting. For how could I think both of destroying and of building, and each equally holy? But there were two souls in my breast just then, one English and one Jaqqa; and the wonder of it was that I encompassed them both and did not go altogether mad. I stood there a long while dreaming of Portugals abolished and English established here, with the blessing of the Imbe-Jaqqa my lord and kinsman. Madness? Aye, madness! But within the madness, I tell you, lay a core of the soundest reason; and within that core, another core yet, of the dark madness that Africa does kindle in the soul.

“Come,” said I finally to my men, “we must bring news of this army hastily to the Imbe-Jaqqa.”

So turned we back southward. On our return journey we did spread ourselves out in a wide company over several valleys, so that we would have a better chance of meeting with Golambolo, as he came northward to rejoin us. But we saw him not, though we gave every attention to noticing him. I continued onward into the south, as far as Agokayongo. Approaching that place, I looked down into the cleft where those six Portugals had been camped, and saw their horses lying dead beneath that wide-crowned tree. But of the Portugals themselves, or of Golambolo and his nine Jaqqas, I saw nothing. That perplexed me, for I did not care to have part of my force wandering in search of me in this land, but I saw no help for it other than to go on into Agokayongo.

And as we came in view of the town, I beheld a vast and unexpected sight: not the little Jaqqa party of Golambolo, but uncountable thousands of men, the entire force of Imbe Calandola, and the troops of Kafuche Kambara as well, laid out upon the plain in immense array, with banners flying most jubilantly. I sent one of my fleet Jaqqas forward, to discover what event was unfolding, and he came back soon with the word, “Alliance has been made between the Imbe-Jaqqa and Kafuche Kambara, and they have begun the march northward upon Masanganu.”

Well, and there must have been some swift and cunning bargaining in my absence, that the two enemies were so cozily merged so soon! I regretted me not having been there to take part. But that mattered only lightly now. I was the bearer of significant news; it behooved me to bring my tale before Calandola forthwith.

My injured foot by this time was largely healed. So at the head of my men I walked swiftly into the heart of the Jaqqa encampment at the sunset hour, when the sky was richly stained as though by spreading blood the whole length of the horizon. And I discovered that a festival was being begun, with much beating of drums and chanting and dancing. This wild noise gave me pause, for I recognized it as the cannibal-feast music. There would be dining on human flesh tonight: but what foes were these, that would be the Jaqqa dinner?

The great kettles were in their position, and the raging fire was already lit. And the drummers were pounding, and the dancers were dancing, and the nganga-witches were crying out their screeching blessings, with old Kakula-banga hopping about to the forefront, and the water was just coming to its first boil. Under the gathering darkness all the high lords of the Jaqqas were assembled for their grim festivity: there was Imbe Calandola proud upon his great tall stool in all his shining ornament, and there was my solemn-faced blood-brother Kinguri beside him, and Ntotela and Kaimba and Kasanje and Ngonga and Zimbo and Kulambo and Bangala, which were the totality of the great ones yet living, since none had been named in the place of Ti-Bangala and Paivaga, that had died by my sword during the pestilence.

At the sight of me they all did give salutes and cheers, and Calandola raised his hand toward me and cried out, “What, Andubatil, back among us just in time for dinner?”

“Aye, and what feast is this?”

“Why, we shall dine well tonight, on plump white meat! Come, take your place with us, and swiftly!”

He laughed and gestured, and I looked toward the other side of the clearing. On the ground behind the kettles lay the dead bodies of three white men, naked and bloodied, with their torn clothes in heaps about them. And three more, in Jaqqa manacles, did huddle together in terror and fright against a thick tree. Because the air was dark with smoke and the encroachment of night, I could not see those three clearly from the distance at which I stood, but it was plain from their garb that they were Portugals, and surely they were the ones Golambolo had caught, and brought back to be prisoner here. Prisoner: not dinner.

To Calandola I said, bluntly and forgetting all diplomacy, “This is a great wrong, O Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.”

“What do you say?” he answered, in a growl and a snarl.

“There is a new army of Portugals camped beyond Ndala Chosa, and I know not why. I have come all this way from Ndala Chosa to speak with these Portugals, and interrogate them on the movements of that army, which is why I plucked them from the desert and had them borne here. And I find you cooking them, O Imbe-Jaqqa, as though they were mere beasts!”

“Ah, is that the reason you are so angered? Not that you mislike the boiling of Portugals?”

I shrugged. “Boil them, roast them, do as you like. But not before I have spoken with them!”

Calandola’s great booming laughter floated downward to me like the white water that tumbles down some mighty waterfall-cascade, and he said, “Ah, we have saved a few for you to give questions to, Andubatil! Feast with us tonight, and you can speak with them tomorrow, and then another night we will feast on them as well, Eh? Does that suit you, Jaqqa prince?”

The butcher-Jaqqas were already at work readying the dead men for the kettle. Well, and that was beyond any remedy: whatever information I might get from them was perished, and would not rise to the kettle’s skimmings when they were cooked. My anger at Calandola was extreme, and another time I might have suffered for reproaching him this way before his people, but it seemed that tonight he was in high good humor. Yet I had best master my fury, since that even in good humor Calandola would accept only so much reproach, even from me, and then he would grow ugly.

I said, “I will join you in a moment, Lord Calandola. I ask leave to speak with the captives first.”

He nodded and turned from me, to take a bowl of wine from one of his wives. I walked to the far side of the kettles to inspect the prisoners, whether I knew any of them from my days amongst the Portugals.

And when I went to them I had a mighty surprise, that shook me to the foundation and base of my soul: for two of the Portugals were men, but the third, that I did not expect, was a woman. It was unmistakable, even though she had her hair bound tight in back, so that it looked no longer than a man’s. Her garments were in shreds and tatters, and by the coppery gleam of the firelight I was able to see her bare breasts rising steeply, full and round and most beautiful, and dark tipped. Aye! and those were breasts I knew most excellently well, by my faith. I knew the feel of them in my cupped hands, and the taste of them to my lips. For this woman was that dark-souled witchy creature Dona Teresa, that I had loved and been loved by when I was Andrew Battell the English seaman of Leigh in Essex, and by whom, also, I had been most shamefully betrayed, what seemed like half a lifetime ago. I could not have been more dumbstruck nor appalled to find her here, than had that woman chained to the tree been my mother.

In the dimness of the heavy twilight she did stare at me, and her reddened eyes grew bright, and she made a gesture of amaze. And in a voice choking with astonishment did she say, “Andres? Andres, is it possible? Is that who you are? Andres, in those savage beads?”

“Aye,” I said. “I am Andres.”

Her lips trembled. “You are much changed, Andres!”

“Aye,” said I. The Portugal words came hard and uncouth to my mouth, after these long months of speaking the Jaqqa tongue. “I am much changed, indeed. I am scarce Andres any longer.”

“If you are not Andres, then what are you?”

“I am Andubatil Jaqqa,” I answered her.

“Mother of God,” she said softly. “I am lost, then!”

9

I came close to her, this woman who had done me so much wrong, and who before that had given me such pleasure, and I let her have a good look upon me by the light of the leaping blazing fire.

And I saw the wild panic fear in her eyes, that was as revealing to me as the most costly of polished mirrors. How frightening the man that she beheld must have been! For what stood before her was a kind of man-monster, near naked, with paint on his body and barbarous beads and bangles and a host of battle-scars, I must have looked like something out of the wild dawn of time. She stared at the certain tribal marks that I had let the Jaqqa witches carve into my skin with most excruciating pain, and a new brightness of horror shined on her face. My hair hung well past my shoulders and was a tangle of great snarls; my beard was as rough and shaggy as a goat’s; my hands and feet were unkempt; and though I had not had any mirroring of my own face for more months than I had counted, I knew I must now have a savage countenance, with fierce hard eyes and sparse flesh and all the corners hard and sun-baked by that merciless tropic orb, so that my Englishness was fair roasted from me. Dona Teresa shivered and made to cover her breasts with the one arm of hers that was unfettered. Such a gesture of shame never had I seen before from the haughty and imperious and lustful Dona Teresa.

And I, what did I feel, looking upon her?

Hatred, first and primary, and the craving for revenge. For I might have been at sea to England, but for her, who had plucked me from the Dutcher’s ship on that false libel of a rape, and sent me off for six years of soul-breaking torment at the presidio of Masanganu. And all for jealousy, a petty spitefulness over my living with Matamba: for that she had stolen my life from me, as much so as Cocke that had abandoned me to the Portugals, and all those perfidious whoreson Portugal governors that had made me their servant in my long years of Angola. I am, God wot, a man of even keel: but yet I have feelings, I am no stone statue, and I do hate those who give me over to injustice, and I did rejoice just then to see this Dona Teresa in peril of her life, with the kettles already heating for her companions and her boiling soon to come.

But that was the first moment only, that hatred: for her beauty melted my heart, withal how long I had yearned to be revenged on her. That seemed so long ago, her crime against me. I could not, try as I might, hold my vengefulness in my grasp that long. It did slip from me, like some writhing eel, even as I glowered at her and tried to take pleasure in her downfall.

How, and am I so light of resolve? I think not: but it was her beauty undid me. I tell you, her beauty melted my heart, for all that she was soiled and disheveled and tear-streaked, and for all that she had given me into that terrible six-year servitude out of petty spite, and that there was the brimstone reek of witchcraft somehow about her.

She was magnificent in my eyes.

That time when first she came to me in my prison cell in São Paulo de Loanda, she had even then been queenly in her poise. But in the thirteen or fourteen years that intervened she had grown superb, a woman of imperial splendor, and not even her present sad state could disguise it.

Standing before her, peering eye to eye, I found myself trembling and unmanned with the surprise of resurgent love. Yet had she no inkling of this, seeing as she did only the strange Jaqqa-monster that I had become. And another thing began to happen, which was that the wondrous beauty of her began to wash from me not only my long-cherished anger toward her, but also the strangeness that I had put on, the Jaqqa self within which I had cloaked myself: I had come before her as An-dubatil, but I heard the voice of Andrew Battell within my skull, speaking with her in English most playfully, such words as “scavenger” and “stonemason” and “turnip-greens,” in our games of love. Which brought a confusion over me, a slipping and a sliding of my soul, so that I felt like one who is battered and pummeled by heavy surf, and knocked to his knees whenever he tries to rise, and loses his strength in the struggle and begins to drown. What was I, Jaqqa or Englishman? And did I hate her or love her? I was drowning in the contraries and antitheticals of mine own bewildered soul. But as one who feels himself drowning may begin at the last to swim upward to salvation, so, too, did I out of that maelstream of fuddlement commence the ascent toward some measure of understanding. For I knew that I was more English than Jaqqa, for all my journey into the man-eater’s ways, and that I held more love than loathing for this woman. And I swore then a mighty vow within myself, by God the Redeemer and by every mokisso of this somber jungle, that I would see her spared from the cannibal kettle, or go into that kettle myself. Nor was this any witchcraft at work upon me this time, but mine own free decision.

Yet was I slow to reveal that to her. Merely did I circle her from side to side, like leopard contemplating trapped prey, and study her in all regards. She hovered on the borderland between fear and boldness, mastering with wondrous strength the terror that she must feel.

“Well,” she said at last, “have done with it, drag me to the pot and hurl me in, Andres!”

“Do you think I will do that?”

“You are so rigged and geared for savagery that it would amaze me if you did not.”

“Ah, you are fierce, fierce, Teresa!”

“Am I, then? But not fierce enough to gnaw through these bonds, I fear.”

“How has this befallen you? To be in captivity here?”

“Don Fernão and I were journeying through the interior,” said she. “From Ndemba to Masanganu to Kambambe, to inspect the presidios, at the behest of the governor.”

“Don João de Mendoça still?”

“Nay,” said she. “He is long dead, poor sweet man, and there is a new one come from Portugal, Don João Coutinho by name, that is very bountiful and well loved. He is to build new castles in this land, and conquer it supremely, by order of the King of Portugal. And so are there armies marching now through all parts of the province.”

Ah, I thought. That explained the troop I had seen beyond the city of Ndala Chosa.

She went on, “And so this governor sent us outward here—but our horses perished, and the Jaqqas came upon us in the road—” Her lips trembled, and her strength broke a moment, and she began to snuffle and weep, which was strange to behold in that regal woman. But only a moment, and then she had her strength again. “Don Fernão is slain, and we are to be eaten,” said she bitterly. “And are you to feed upon us as well, Andres? Are you transformed into a man-eater? For that is what I believe you now must be.”

“Which is Don Fernão?” I asked.

She indicated, with a gesture of her head, one of the dead Portugals, that even as we spoke were being quartered and thrust into the bubbling kettles. And as she looked that way, such a revulsion and terror came upon her that her gorge did rise, and she writhed in nausea and turned her head from me to choke back the tide of vomitus that was surging upward in her. I felt nigh the same way, to think of that finely garbed vain foppish man Souza, that had had little real harm in him, cut to pieces by my Jaqqa brothers and put up to boil like so much mutton; for though he had been weak and trifling, he had been Dona Teresa’s husband these many year, and for that long companionship she doubtless felt a deep pang to see him perish so before her eye.

Then once more she regained herself and said, “How much longer am I to live? And can you bring me a swift death, so I need not endure this limb of Hell in which I am?”

Most gently I did say, “I mean to preserve you from doom.”

“You? The capering painted jigging naked man-eater?”

“I am indeed much changed, as you see, Dona Teresa. But something in me remains, of the man you knew.”

“This is no moment to mock me, Andres.”

“I do not mock. I will save you from this feast.”

Her eyes went wide. “Jesu Cristo, and can you do it?”

“I have much power among these people, for I am become close kin to the Jaqqa king, and to his brother as well.” I put my hand to her arm, and gripped it most fondly; from which touch she shrank away at first, but then yielded and softened against it. Aye, how could I let her be slaughtered? That were too heavy vengeance for the wrong she had done me: and she had done me much benefit, ere that one betrayal. I would right then have pulled free her bonds and taken her against my bosom to comfort her, in the midst of all that cannibal nightmare. But first I needs must beg her liberty from the Imbe-Jaqqa.

Softly I said, “I cannot save your comrades. But your life I will at once make venture for. Fear no more: you shall be spared from the kettle.”

On the far side where the lords of the Jaqqas did sit, all was wild and merry. They swilled their blooded wine and laughed most uproariously and showed much joy over their feast. I approached the Imbe-Jaqqa. He looked upon me with a little display of anger or at least displeasure, and said, “I told you, Andubatil, you might interrogate the prisoners tomorrow. Come, now, join us, and share our wine!”

“By your pardon, my Lord Calandola, but I was not interrogating the prisoners.”

“Only the woman, eh! I saw you at it.” He slapped his great thighs and merrily rubbed his hands over his greased body and said, “She is fair and juicy, that Portugal! I will have her breasts, and Kinguri her rump, and the thighs, Andubatil, will you take the thighs?”

His callous words did strike me to the quick.

“Nay!” I cried in sudden heat. “Nay, Lord Calandola!”

“Not the thighs, then?”

I shook my head most vehemently. “No part of her! She shall not be eaten!”

“What is this you say?” he asked, in his curious way, for it always amazed him much to have his will gainsaid, and he would stare at the gainsayer the way he might at a flea the size of an elephanto, or at an elephanto the size of a flea. “Not eaten, Andubatil, by your command?”

“Good my lord,” I said, with more humility, “I crave a great boon. I ask you not to slay this woman.”

“So that you may have her, is that it?”

“O Imbe-Jaqqa, that Portugal woman was my wife, when I did live in São Paulo de Loanda.”

“Ah, your wife,” said he, the way he might have said, Your boots, your cap, your drinking-mug. “Well, what of that? You have another wife now. You can have three or four more, or seven, if it please you.”

“Nay,” said I, sweating freely and struggling to conceal my unease. “I loved her dear, and I preferred all other women before her. I beg you speak not so hungrily of her.”

“Your wife, Andubatil?” said he, musing on the idea.

“Aye, we were joined in the highest way before our God,” I lied most fervently, “and greatly did it amaze me just now to see her among your captives. For we have been parted these some years past, since my betrayal into the hands of Mofarigosat. But all this time have I yearned keenly for her, and now she is reunited to me.”

Kinguri, leaning close, said in a dark voice, “You should know, An-dubatil, that she clung very near and familiar to one of those Portugals, that now is dead and being readied for the feast.”

“Her brother,” said I hastily.

“Ah.”

“Aye. Don Fernão da Souza: I knew him in my old life, a man of much fantastical taste in garments. They were very dear, the brother to the sister, the sister to the brother. Lord Imbe-Jaqqa, let me go to her now, and cut her free of her bonds.”

Kinguri did say to his brother, but I was able to hear it, “The woman is dangerous. I saw her with the other Portugals, and they did look to her as though she was their queen. There is great strength in her. I feel it, I see it clear. If we let her live, she will bring us harm.”

“She is the wife of Andubatil,” Calandola did rejoin.

“He has another wife now.”

I saw that this was becoming a dispute between the royal brothers, that had questions of power at the root of it, and perhaps also some question of my turning away from love of them toward the woman I said was my wife.

Stretching forth my arms to Kinguri, I did cry, “Brother! How can you speak so callously before me?”

With a frosty smile Kinguri did make reply, “I would not imperil all our nation to save one woman, even if she be your woman.”

“And one woman, naked and frightened, imperils all the grand nation of Jaqqas? Fie, Kinguri, I thought you to be a man of wisdom!”

“That I am, Andubatil Jaqqa, my wisdom and yours that mingles in my blood, and that shared wisdom tells me to fear this Portugal woman. I say, smite her while she can do no mischief.”

I turned from him.

“I appeal to you, Lord Calandola—”

“You do cherish her?” the great Jaqqa asked me, still most curious, as if this sort of passion were a vast mystery to him.

“That I do. I cherish her close upon life itself. I could not abide seeing her slain for this feast.”

“My brother Kinguri dislikes her, and he is rarely wrong in such judgments.”

“I tell you she will work no evil, Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.”

Calandola shrugged. This was becoming tiresome to him, I saw. He lowered his face into his wine-cup, and took a deep draught, and when he emerged his cheeks and mouth were slavered with the purplish bloody fluid, that made him look ten times the monster he was. Yet was there now a benevolence to his smile, and he nodded amiably to his brother, saying, “Andubatil has served me well, and I would not deny him, brother. He craves the Portugal woman. I see the heat of him for her, and I would not deny him.”

“I am uneasy, brother,” muttered Kinguri.

Stretching my hand to that devilish shrewd Jaqqa I did say, “I pledge myself as surety, brother. She will do no harm to our nation. I would have my wife restored to me, and I ask you withdraw your opposing it.”

“So be it,” said Calandola, with an imperious wave. “Take her, then.”

“A thousand thanks, mighty Imbe-Jaqqa,” I said, making a low bow. When I looked up I saw the cold enmity on Kinguri’s face, for plainly he did not want me to have her, and even more did not want my pleading to triumph over his words to the Imbe-Jaqqa.

Calandola said, “As for the other two Portugals, they will be tomorrow’s feast. Mark that you speak with them before then, and learn what you may from them.”

“That I will do,” said I.

I went then to Dona Teresa and ordered the Jaqqa who guarded her to strike her fetters from her. He made a move to do it, out of respect for me, but then a doubt did smite him, and he glanced across toward the Imbe-Jaqqa. Calandola nodded, and the guard set her free.

Dona Teresa, gathering her rags about her to hide her breasts, gave me thanks with a squeeze of the hand, and said, “How was this thing accomplished?”

“I swore to them you were my wife, and they have given you back to me.”

“Ah. There is no penalty for perjuring here, then?”

I leaned close to her and said, “Your case was desperate. Shall I cling to niceties of truth, and let you be stewed?”

“So I am to be your wife in this place?”

“Either that, or offer yourself to the fetters again,” said I.

“Ah. Ah, I see.” There was mischief in her eyes, and a little anger, and also much amusement, I think. “Well, and I suppose I can play at being your wife, then, Andres.”

“You will do more than play,” said I.

“You are very blunt, now that you are a man-eater.”

“Lady, I have won you your life back. But I have pledged mine own as security, that you will work no trouble in this camp. So therefore you will bear yourself less imperiously, and carry me along in this pretense of our marriage, or I will in this instant revoke what I have done. Is that understood?”

“Ah, Andres, Andres, I mean no difficulties! I but jest a little.”

“Jest at another time,” said I. For I was much angered, and newly cold toward her, for this pride of hers. It had cost me something with Kinguri to have saved her: but I need not explain that to her, only be assured of her consenting in the falsehood that had saved her life.

After a moment she said, “And these two?”

“I have no grasp on their lives. They will be slain.”

“Ah,” she said. “Well, and then I suppose we must pray for their souls.” She did not look deeply grieved. “You are kin to these man-eaters, you say, Andres?”

At this I hesitated some. “They have taken me as close companion,” said I finally. “It is for my hair and skin, that I think they revere for its color. And my musket, which I have put to strong use in their service.”

“You do battles on their behalf?”

“Aye,” I answered. “I am one of their great warriors.”

She stepped back a bit, and stared at me as though I had sprouted a Satan-tail, and breathed fire. Behind us, the sound of the drums and other musics grew more fierce. It was altogether night now, and a heavy heat was descending, with droplets of moistness hanging in it, and creatures cried most raucously beyond the zone of our fires.

She said, hushed and strange-voiced, “You speak to me in good Portuguese words, and I think you are the man I knew in São Paulo de Loanda, that was so straightforward and upright. And then I look at you, and see these marks of paganism on your body, and I hear you say you fight in Jaqqa wars and do them great service, and I know you to be a changeling, Andres.”

“A changeling. Aye,” said I. “I think that is what I am, that has had some other soul slipped in behind my face. And the face is much altered, too, is it not?”

“I barely knew you when you first came close,” she said. There was a trembling in her arms now, and perhaps elsewhere, and her eyes were fixed and harsh with fright. “I said, What is this creature, that has the skin of a white man, but the bearing of a Jaqqa? And I was sore affrighted. And I am sore affrighted now.”

“Are you, then?”

“Listen. Listen! The fifes, the drums, the singing. They are devils, Andres, all about us!”

“Aye.”

“And you: you are half devil now.”

“More than half, perhaps. But why would that trouble you? You are of that kind yourself.”

“Nay,” she said, making the sign of the cross. “Nay, you do not understand me.”

“You, with your idols, and your witchy incantations?”

“I am a Christian, Andres. I but use the other older things, when I feel the need. But I am no witch!”

“Ah,” I said. “It must be so, if you do say it.”

“Mock me not. I am not the witch you think me, and I am sore affrighted. I think this is Hell we are in. But where are the fires? Where are the imps?”

“See the fires, there?”

“Those?” she said, shivering. “Will they leap higher, as the night goes on? Are they true Hell-fires, Andres? And are these demons about me, or only men and savages? O Andres, how have they conjured you so?”

I thought she would weep again, from her quivering and pallor, but she did not. But she plainly was smitten to the core of her soul by all she beheld about her, and even by what she could read in my face.

“Come,” I said, “let me take you to the Jaqqa lords.”

“What, and shall we dine grandly with them, as though we are all lords and ladies here?”

“We dine with them,” I said, “or they dine upon you. Which is your preference?”

“And we will eat the flesh of—”

She could not say it. She was yellow-faced with loathing.

“You are not compelled to do it. But they are the masters of this place. We must make a show of friendship.”

“Yes. Yes. I understand, ft is for the sake of staying alive.”

“Exactly.”

“And for the sake of staying alive, have you on such occasions also eaten—”

“Come,” said I. “Ask fewer questions, and take my arm, and be you my true wife, if you would save yourself from the pot.”

Yet did she shrink back from me. I offered arm to her anew, and she shook a little, but then recovered herself once more, standing tall, making her shoulders squared. Averting her eyes from the kettle and its bubbling contents, those floating disjointed limbs that surged now and again to the surface, she walked with me like a veritable consort to the other side of the fire. All about us were hordes of frenzied Jaqqas, flinging their knees high in the capers of their dance, who paused in their wild leaping to salute me, which did not fail to have its measure upon her.

We went up to the banqueting-place of the high ones. Quite as if I were presenting her at the court of Her Majesty, I did show Dona Teresa to Calandola, and felt the taut grip of her hand on my arm as he turned his blazing and chillsome eyes upon her, penetrating her to the veriest mysteries of her soul: she breathed in bursts, her breasts rose and fell most vehemently, so keen was her terror. And yet I think if I had put my hand to her loins, in the moment of her meeting Calandola’s diabolic gaze, I would have found her hot and wet, in the lustful way of one who finds the monstrous most arousing.

I offered her next toward Kinguri, who smiled most frigidly upon me and scarce more warmly to her, and then to the other lords; and we were seated, and given wine; and they placed before us vegetables and porridges, which we both did toy at much uninterestedly, neither of us having great appetite under these pressures; and the witches did their dance, and lit fires of strange colors, and sang their screaming hymns in praise of the Imbe-Jaqqa.

And Dona Teresa looked out upon all this quite as if she had been transported to the nether Pit, and was witness to the terrible celebrations and rites of Belial and Beelzebub and Moloch and Lucifer. Yet did she remain outwardly calm, though tautly held and trembling like the tuned string of a harp.

She said at length, “How many months have you dwelled among these creatures?”

“I think close upon two years. It is not easy to retain account of the passing of the time.”

She held her wine-bowl, and looked into it as though into a wizard’s sphere, and swirled it about.

“Why have they not slain you, Andres? They do slay everything in their path.”

“It is not so,” said I. “They are philosophers—”

“Ha! Are you drunken, or only mad?”

“Philosophers,” I said again, “and follow a great mission, to bend the world to their way.”

“That much I know, but it is not philosophy.”

“I tell you it is!” I cried.

“You are mad, then.”

“Listen to me: they mean to reshape the world into something that is holy by their way of seeing. They slay as need and appetite demand; but they do not slay indiscriminately. They serve a higher cause than mere destruction.”

She looked about her, at the riotous roaring Calandola, at cool scheming Kinguri, at the dancers, at the witches.

“Then they are greater devils,” she said, “than even I had thought.”

“I think you are right in that, Teresa.”

“And yet you serve them.”

“I serve them, yes.”

“What use have they for you? Strong though you are, you are nothing next to a demon Jaqqa.”

“Ah, I have a musket,” I said.

“That is it. I had overlooked it. They desire you for your musket, Andres.”

“Aye, my musket, and me for myself, also. I am the white mokisso with golden hair, and they think I have divine force within me.”

She looked me inward long and steady. A server came by with wine, and offered us; and she took, making him fill her bowl to the brim, and drank of it deep, and asked for more. It was not the blooded wine. I think I would not have told her, had it been that stuff. But here only Calandola was drinking it.

After a time she said, “I am much astounded by all this, Andres.”

“For a time, so was I. But I am alive: that is the justification for everything.”

“Sometimes it may be preferable to accept death.”

“Sometimes,” said I. “But I have not met that sometimes yet.”

“How came you to them?” she asked.

I laughed a sour laugh, and replied, “By the usual treacheries of your brothers the Portugals, who left me as pawn to a blackamoor king, and did not redeem me. Then the blackamoors would have slain me, and I slipped away, and gave myself up to the man-eaters, who seem the most honest of the peoples of this land, since they alone pretend to no virtue they do not possess.”

“Ah. And so you enrolled in their number.”

“I was welcomed gladly there. They gave me a place, and a rank, and one of the king’s own wives for my own—”

“A wife?” cried she in amaze. “But now I am your wife!”

“Then I have two.”

“Ah,” she said. “I understand. You are heathen through and through, deeper ever all the time.”

“I could have had more wives. I took only one. I would still have only one, Teresa, but that I saw a way to save your life. If you prefer, you need not be wife to me. As you said only a moment before, sometimes it can be preferable to accept death. And death is waiting for you in those kettles. Eh?”

“I am your wife,” said she sullenly.

“Then cry me no shame, for having two of them here.”

“Where is this first wife of yours? Why is she not at your side, then?”

“She is dancing, there, with the other women. See, the young one, with the reddened hair?”

Dona Teresa followed my pointing finger, and squinted some in the smoky dark, until she spied Kulachinga, who did prance and leap most grandly, her breasts swaying, her body shining with sweat and oils. To me did Kulachinga seem quite fine; but an instant later I saw her through Dona Teresa’s eyes, with her cicatrice-scars, her thick lips, her heavy rump all crying forth her jungle birth.

“That one is your wife?” said Dona Teresa. “You lie with her, Andres?”

“Aye, that I do.”

“When first you came to this African land, you held yourself proudly apart, and thought even me to be too foreign for you. Yea, and now you couple joyously with greasy cannibal wenches that put red clay in their hair.”

“I came to this land many years ago, Teresa.”

“How you are transformed!” And in a lower voice, husky, quavering, she said, “I cannot put aside my fright of you. And I cannot abide feeling fear of you.”

“Am I so frightening still, then?”

She turned to me, and her nostrils were aflare, and her eyes hard and bright, and I knew that she feared me, and that she hated herself for fearing her old dear Andres that could be so easily led about once by the nose. “I am part African, you know,” she said after a moment, “although I pretend that I am not, and hide that side of my blood even from myself, and put on the airs of a Portugal lady. But you! You, who are pure fair-skinned English: you have become three-quarters savage, and most devilish savage at that. I knew you when you had a boy’s way about you, a kind of schoolboy honor that was most charming in you, if a bit foolish. It is a metamorphosis most terrifying.”

“Is it? I did not ask it. I could have been living quietly in England years ago, and doing none of this.”

“Is there anything left of England in you now, Andres?”

“It is deep below.”

“Do you think so?”

“It is my hope,” said I, not sure at all. To her most intently I said, “I adapt to my surroundings, Teresa. It is my way of surviving, and surviving is a high goal for me, as I think it is for you. We are more alike than different, I think, and that is why we were drawn once so close, and that is why you struck at me that time, when you thought you had lost me.”

“Speak not of that time, Andres. You said we would not be enemies over that.”

“Ah. So I did. And we are not enemies, eh? Are we? Now you are my wife, are you not?”

“Truly?”

“Truly,” said I.

“I and also the cannibal woman, your wives.”

“Two wives, aye. The king has some forty. I can have two.”

“In England, do they take their wives two at once?”

“This is not England.”

“I think you speak sooth,” said she. And she smiled, and seemed to ease a little, withal. “You are so strange, Andres, as you are now. But I think I grow used to it. I will be your wife here, though you frighten me some. I will lie on the one side of you, and the man-eater woman— what is her name?”

“Kulachinga.”

“Kitchlooka. She will lie on the other. And we will press you close between us, and smother you amongst our flesh. Is there any better way to perish?”

“I think your spirits are returning, Teresa.”

“It is this wine,” she said. And smiled again, but it was a dark and sharp-angled smile, for dead Portugals did boil in the kettle, and live ones were chained to the far tree, and man-eaters roared and pranced all about us. And those were realities that could not lightly be thrust aside by jest.

The meat now was served, to the Imbe-Jaqqa first, and then to Kinguri, and then to me. Teresa hissed a little when the platter was brought to us, and looked away, and much of her fragile newly-won ease went from her.

“I will have none,” said I to the servitor. For I would not let Teresa see me partaking of such stuff; and in truth, though I had grown casual to Jaqqa fare in my long time among them, I could no more have made a meal of the flesh of Don Fernão da Souza, which is what most likely was being served us, than could I have taken my own right arm to my mouth, and bite off a gobbet of myself to gnaw. So the joint was passed, and we drank our wine and ate our porridge. It was an ordinary evening’s amusement among the Jaqqas, that I had known many times before, but tonight I saw it as Dona Teresa did see it, and I think it brought me to my senses somewhat to perceive these festivities with her eyes.

She stayed contained, and held back her tears and her fright. The feast became too mad and noisy for the exchanging of words, and we sat side by side saying little. At our high table there was much pounding and laughing, and great abundance of wine being consumed.

Yet also were there some frictions apparent between the Imbe-Jaqqa and his brother: I saw them whispering, and glaring hotly, and once the witch Kakula-banga came to them, and seemed to play the role of a mediator in a hard dispute. I think, from the words I could catch, that they quarreled over the sparing of Dona Teresa, which Kinguri still thought to be an error. Cunning Kinguri, to see in her the force that lay coiled there! To know, almost by second sight, that she was a woman of power and purpose, which it was wisest to slay out of hand while yet she was fettered! I admired the keenness of him, and I feared the consequences of having thwarted him; and in a way I knew that by wheedling the life of Dona Teresa from Imbe Calandola against the strong counsel of Kinguri, I had widened the wedge that was opening between the two brothers, and had increased the difficulties of my own position in the Jaqqa camp.

At length the brothers put the matter aside, and Calandola diverted himself by commanding a wrestling match. My man Golambolo came forth in the first, and one named Tikonje-nzinga, and they faced one another and reached forth their long arms and began the slow and stately dance that was the praeludium and introduction to their combat.

Such wrestling had I seen many times at these man-eating feasts, and always was there a fierce beauty to it. The essence of the sport was in the display of agility and suppleness it afforded, not in the winning or losing: little heed seemed to be paid to victory, but only to excellence of performance, and one who displayed grace in the manner of his defeat often was hailed as warmly as his conqueror. So now did Golambolo and Tikonje-nzinga go artfully through their pavanes and allemandes of combat, until in the press of the struggle Tikonje-nzinga was thrown, and fell most serenely, which won him acclaim.

The next pair to wrestle was Kaimba and Ngonga—for high lords of the Jaqqas did eagerly take their turns in the arena—and after them, the venerable Ntotela, with a man nearly his age, much muscled and brawned, by name Kulurimba. And they all were elegant and splendid in their movements, and I did envy and admire them, thinking, Lord, give me the grace and skill to wrestle as they do! And I wondered what would befall me if I were to go into the arena, which never yet had I done.

I looked to Dona Teresa, and in faith she was moved as I was moved by the beauties of this sport. Her eyes did gleam and her face was held fixed and her breathing came slow, and her lips were a little apart, and as one man or the other gained briefly the supremacy, she did clench and unclench her hands in silent concern. And at last turned to me, when Ntotela knelt upon his opponent’s chest, and said in a thick whispering voice, “Ah, they are like angels, when they wrestle! How can that be, that devils may be like angels?”

“It is the great art amongst them, this combat.”

“And have you learned it?”

“I? I have watched, but I have never fought.”

“But would you, Andres, if you were called out?”

“That I would, and most gladly,” said I. “And God guard me well, for I fear the callowest of these Jaqqas would be my master at it, but yet would I joy to engage with one.”

“Why, see, then, the high lord devil is looking about for the next wrestlers, this moment. Go you, Andres!”

“Ah, not this night,” said I, and would not meet Calandola’s questing eye.

For indeed I had a different sort of wrestle in mind. Now I had me two wives, and my mind did dwell uncomfortingly on what would occur when I brought Teresa together with Kulachinga. We are not trained in England, after all, in the keeping of harems.

“Will you not fight, then?” Teresa asked, and I saw her blood stirred by the battles that had been enacted.

“I tell you, not this night. Come: the festivity is entering its late hours, and I would have you meet my Kulachinga.”

I took her by the arm, and led her down into the midst of the Jaqqas. And lo! there was no chill between them. My Jaqqa wife only smiled without rancor, for it was the custom for these people to take wives by the score, and perhaps she had thought me overdue. And Dona Teresa, who once had given me grief enough over her rival Matamba, now greeted Kulachinga most graciously. Though neither spoke a word of the other’s language, they seemed instantly to enter into a communication.

Together we went to the habitation the Jaqqas had set aside for me in this new camp of theirs outside Agokayongo. It was a fine fair wicker-work cottage, with straw strewn over the ground, and some brocaded scarlet-and-purple draperies on the wall that I had carried with me since being given them by Kinguri in the town of Shillambansa that we sacked. I was weary with long travel and much excitement of the evening and the heavy wine, and upon entering the place I sank down upon my knees to the ground. My two women did come to me then and ease me with caresses, which was passing strange to me, to be with two at once. For there they were, the handsome Portuguese woman in her torn finery, and the strong-bodied black woman with her skin all greased and her hair thick with clay. One could scarce conceive a stranger tripling of souls than we.

There was a difficult moment at the outset, when I did feel the closeness of Dona Teresa by me. For there had been a great gulf of years and feeling between us since our fiery early love, and such gulfs are not readily bridged. So many seasons had swept through time’s great brazen gate, since last our flesh had met in this sort of embrace, that I felt sore estranged from her, and uneasy at resuming our lovemaking.

But old skills well learned do swift return. I put my hands to her breasts, and my lips to her lips, which drew a giggling burst of laughter from Kulachinga, to whom kissing was strange. And then Dona Teresa and I were pressed body to body from thighs to chest, and her fingers did dig deep into my flesh, and mine into hers, as though with one great seizure of one another we could atone for all the years apart.

Yet was there also Kulachinga, and I would not spurn her. So I did ease my grip on Teresa after a bit, and turn to the Jaqqa woman, and we embraced also in our different manner. During this, Dona Teresa did stroke her oiled skin most familiarly, most lovingly, with no show of shame at the handling of another woman’s body.

The two of them then drew me down together with them.

Ah, I was hard put to know what to do, I having but one member and they each a hole! But the wine and the weariness made my head swim, so that I gave no heed to difficulties, but merely allowed myself to float on the flow of the instant, going whithersoever I found myself journeying, just as a mariner cast into the sea gives himself over to the bosom of the water, if he be wise, and makes no attempt to direct his passage.

God’s blood! It was a wondrous time! Their hands were upon me, here and there and everywhere. Their bodies, so various of shape and sensation and odor, encompassed me close. I had one hand between these thighs, and one hand between those; my fingers moved busily; there was warmth and wetness upon them; I heard sounds; I closed my eyes; fingers traveled the length of my yard, and back again; someone bestrode me and impaled herself upon me; someone else put hard-tipped breasts to my lips; I fondled one woman and futtered the other; and withdrew, or was withdrawn from; and futtered one and fondled the other; and my senses were engulfed, and my mind dissolved, and my soul was swept away, and all the universe became but a sea of action, of gasping and thrusting and laughing and writhing, with streams of hot sweat making slippery our skins; and a moment came when I discharged my lusts with a ferocious explosion, into the one or the other woman and I could not, for all the gold in Peru, tell you which; and I dropped into sleep as though I were a man drugged, and when I awoke, on account of the whimpering, or so I thought, of some jungle animal prowling near by me, I beheld by dawn’s thin light the two of them in one another’s arms, breasts against breasts rubbing, and legs intertwined like those of wrestlers. But they were not wrestling. And I smiled, and watched Teresa and Kulachinga at play for a while, and shook my head in wonder, and turned from them and closed my eyes, and fell into a heavy sleep from which, God wot, the arms of Venus herself could not have pulled me.

10

On the morrow I found me Golambolo, and asked him if he had heeded me, in telling Imbe Calandola that the Portugal prisoners he had brought were to be held for questioning. Most aggrieved that I should suspect him of a default, he swore by the mother-mokisso that he had done so, and begged me to slay him if I found it was not so.

“Why then were some killed?” I demanded.

“Ah, it is the hunger of Calandola, that brooks no check,” said he, and I knew that to be the case, so I dismissed him with my pardon.

Then went I to the surviving pair of Portugals. They were not men I knew: one was named Benevides, and the other Negreiros, and they had only lately come to São Paulo de Loanda, in the retinue of this new governor Coutinho. From what they had witnessed the night before they were well-nigh dumbstricken with fright, and the sight of me in my Jaqqa ornaments gave them no great ease. I knelt down beside them and offered them some comfort, telling them I would see to their freedom if they could tell me of the army that was gathered near Ndala Chosa, how many men it contained and for what purpose it had assembled. But they knew no more of it than that it was there, though they strived most piteously to invent a few scraps of news that would be of value to me. They wept, and begged for their lives, and implored me to spare them from the stew-pot. But I could only offer them the hope of God’s mercy, and a swift release from suffering. And they saw there would be no salvation for them forthcoming of me, and turned away, and said no more, and they were silent still until the last. At the next feast did they perish for the fulfillment of Jaqqa appetites.

I lived in those days in strange double matrimony, and there were no discordancies out of it, miraculous to relate. Why it was that Teresa and Kulachinga should have found so easy affinity, I cannot say, except perhaps that there is some innate lubriciousness of womanhood, that came to them at the time our first mother did accept the apple from the serpent in Eden, by which they glide easily and without reluctance into such amorous interknottings. Or else it was only a happy combining of traits, Kulachinga being a natural child of the jungle, and Teresa being wanton and insatiable in passion, and thus the two of them did conjoin out of wholly separate motives, one from sheer innocence and the other from deep craft. Whatever it was, they seemed to enjoy one another as powerfully as either of them did me, or I either of them.

In the early days of reunion Dona Teresa and I did strive to span the gap of event that had opened between us over the years. Of my own adventures it was swiftly told, for she knew of my voyages south to Benguela by order of Don João de Mendoça, and after that I had naught to tell but my captivity under Mofarigosat and my going to dwell among the Jaqqas. What she had to tell moved me deeply, for it was the death of Don João, that had already been ill when last I was in São Paulo de Loanda. “He came upon a bloating disease,” she said, “that turned him into a swollen ball, and we could not recognize his features. Toward the last he did lose his mind, and hold long conversations with his fathers, and with King Philip and many others, and with you.”

“With me, forsooth?”

“Aye, he spoke in his ravings with you about England, and said he would send you there by the next ship, as his ambassador, for he would be King of Africa. The poor man! And then he died, in the dry season of 1602, and it took a coffin fit for an elephanto to hold him, and ten strong men to carry it.”

“The dry season of 1602,” I said, in a wondering way, for I had given the numbers of the years little thought in my Jaqqa time. “And what year does this be?”

“It is the mid-part of the year 1603.”

“Ah,” said I, revolving that in my mind, and striving to make some sense of it. “It was fourteen years this season that I left England, though it seems fourteen hundred, betimes, to me. The boy-babes who were born that day have beards now, and the girl-babes are sprouting breasts! And Queen Elizabeth is an old woman, if still she hold the throne. And if she do not, who has come to take her place?”

“I know nothing of that,” said Dona Teresa. “But King Philip is dead in Spain.”

“What, that old monk? I thought he would live forever. How long since?”

“Five years,” said she. “It was in 1598.”

“But why did I not hear, then? No one spoke of it in São Paulo de Loanda, and I was there at that time.”

She shrugged and replied, “The news was slow in coming. And then another Philip his son came to take the crown, and for a time we thought it was the same Philip as before.”

I laughed at that, seeing now Angola as a place at the end of the world, where the mightiest king in Christendom might die and his own far-off subjects not get the true report for years. Well, and I had no illusion that we were at the heart of things here. In sooth I scarce cared about these matters: they were white man’s business, Europe-man’s business. Some other Philip was on the Spanish throne, and he was said to be a weak and silly man when he was prince, and might be a weak and silly king as well, which would allow England to make an end of the war with Spain that was such a waste of English substance. I gave that some moment of thought. But it was like a filmy thing blowing in the gale, a mere inconsequential tissue, all this talk of kings and nations. I could find no fullness of texture in them now. My world was bounded by cauldrons and drums and ollicondi trees.

“Tell me of events in São Paulo de Loanda,” I asked, to be cordial.

“The city is much enlarged. There is a grand new church, and the governor has made his palace greater.”

“This governor is your Don João Coutinho, you say?”

“That is the one. When Don João fell ill, the new King Philip sent him to us, with authority to conquer the mines or mountains of Kambambe. To perform that service, the King of Spain has given him seven years’ custom of all the slaves and goods that are carried from Angola to the West Indies, Brazil, or whithersoever, with condition that he should build three castles—one in Ndemba, where the salt mines are, another in Kambambe, and the other in the south, at Bahia das Vaccas.”

“And will he come to Kambambe, while these Jaqqas lurk so close?”

“He knows nothing of the Jaqqas. It was Don Fernão’s commission to investigate these provinces, and report to him. Well, and I see there is large report to make.” She leaned near, and plucked at my arm. “What is this army the Jaqqas have formed, in league with Kafuche Kambara?”

“It is as you see: an army.”

“To what end?”

“The usual end,” said I. “War.”

“But who is left for Calandola to conquer, if he has made peace with Kafuche? Will he march against King Ngola in Dongo?”

“I think not,” said I.

She was silent a time. Then she said, “But there is only São Paulo de Loanda otherwise.”

I made no reply.

“Is that the scheme? Will they march westward, and attack the city, as in my father’s time they attacked São Salvador of the Kongo?”

I could not lie to her. “I think they will,” I said after some troubled hesitance. “It has been discussed.”

“More than discussed! It is determined, is it not?”

“That it has,” I said.

“How soon?” said she fiercely. “When will they march?”

“I cannot tell you this, Teresa.”

“Come, come, hide nothing from me! How do you say, you cannot tell me?”

“Because I do not know,” I did reply. “We will march when the auspices are proper, by Calandola’s lights, and no man knows that but Calandola. I do swear it, Teresa. I conceal nothing in this. There will be a war: but the time of it is not yet chosen.”

“Ah,” she said, and looked most solemn. After a moment she said, “You know that these are the Jaqqas that slew my mother, and put her in their kettles. And they have slain my husband now also.”

“Your husband, yes. But these are not the same Jaqqas as long ago slew your mother.”

“That matters little. Jaqqas they be, all the same. I dread these folk, Andres. I would banish them to the dankest caverns of Hell, and be rid of them.”

“They are much maligned, I think.”

Her eyes went wide and she laughed most scornfully. “What? You defend the man-eaters? Are you altogether mad, Andres, from your jungle wanderings? They are monsters!”

“Aye,” said I.

“How can you speak aught that is good of them?”

Softly and sternly I said, “This land is a den of monsters, both white and black, that do steal each other’s land, and take each other’s lives. The more I saw of Portugals, Teresa, the less I did loathe Jaqqas.”

“And so you are become one of them, then? And will you fight beside them against my people, when they march on São Paulo de Loanda?”

To that I gave her no answer.

“Will you? What will you do, in that war? What have you become, Andres? What have you become?”

As we exchanged these words, we did move along the perimeter of the Jaqqa camp, that did spread like floodwaters over the dry plain outside the town of Agokayongo. And on all sides preparations for war were going forth, the fashioning of blades and the stringing of bows, which Dona Teresa did not fail to note. Beyond us lay the second army, that of Kafuche Kambara that was joined with us in alliance, nearly as strong as ours. This, too, Dona Teresa did observe, and I knew that in the eye of her mind she was seeing this barbarian horde pouring in a torrent into São Paulo de Loanda, to the number of ten savages or more to each Portugal, and unleashing there a hecatomb and holocaust of terrible slaughter and rapine. I noted the somberness on her face, and comprehended the fears in her heart: yet did I proffer her no comfort then.

Not far away from us I spied a towering figure moving slowly through the camp. It was the Imbe-Jaqqa, taking some survey of his men, alone but for a bodyguard that lingered some paces behind him.

“Andubatil!” he called, upon the sight of me, and beckoned.

“It is your king summoning you,” said Dona Teresa in a bitter way. “Go to him!”

“Let us both go.”

“I will not,” said she, and drew back, and lingered near a tree of great coiling roots like swollen serpents on the ground.

I found Calandola to be in a reflective and somewhat tranquil frame of mind, with none of his great roaring manner about him; yet even so did he give forth that manifest sign of grandeur, of barely controlled power wound and ready to spring forth, that I think was the most terrifying thing about him. He rested his hand upon my shoulder and stared deep into my eyes with his cold glistening diabolical stare, and said, deep-voiced, awesome, “Well, Andubatil, and are you pleased to have your wife with you once more?”

“That I am, and greatly, Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.”

“It has cost me much fury out of my brother Kinguri, who dislikes her with a heavy disliking.”

“This I know,” said I. “I would see Kinguri, and ease his fears of her, but he avoids me.”

“You and he were deep friends, so I thought.”

“So thought I as well, Lord Calandola.”

“He is very wise, is he not?”

“His mind is a searching one,” I said.

Calandola smiled, and looked away, putting his hand to his vast bull neck and squeezing it, and after a moment he declared, “Kinguri is also a great fool.”

To this I replied nothing.

“A fool,” said Calandola, “because his mind is thick with thoughts of Portugal, and England, and Europe, and other places that are of no importance. And he wants to know of your God, and your Devil, and the other Christian mokissos. Why do such things matter? They are unreal. They are trifles.” All this still calm, though I sensed, as ever, the smouldering furnace within this man, or demon, or whatever he might be. He continued, just as calm, “All these things I will sweep from the world. And then will come a time of happiness and simplicity. There will be only one nation. There will be only one tongue. There will be only one king. It will be better that way.”

I met his terrible gaze, and I nodded when he spoke, and gave him no gainsaying. And he did go on, expounding his vision of the purity and virtue of the Jaqqa realm when extended to every nation of the world, that I had heard before, but he said it much grander this time, with the zeal not of a demon but of an archdemon. I was engulfed in it. You may laugh, to think of the cities of Christendom blotted from being and replaced with wild forests full of dancing painted cannibals, and you may say it can never be; yet I tell you that as Calandola spoke, painting for me once again that vision of all our vices abolished, all our crooked streets and soiled lanes ploughed under, all our encrustations upon the skin of the earth purged away, saying all this in the most level of tones in that deep and magical voice, it seemed to me almost as if it would be mankind’s great gain to surrender all that we had built since Caesar’s day, and yield ourselves up to the whirlwinds of pure nature. It was madness. I felt the philosophy of Imbe Calandola running anew like quicksilver in my veins, and it burned me like fire, for that it was foreign to my nature but yet had impinged itself deeply into me. I knew it to be folly. I knew he could never extend his sway beyond the forests of this wild land. Yet out of the dusty plains of deep Asia had come the Khan Genghis of the Tartars with much the same dream, riding down upon the settled nations of the world like a whirlwind of scimitars, and had he not made all of Europe tremble in his day? And who could rightly say but that it would not all happen again, under this Calandola? For the moment, if only for the moment, I saw the Imbe-Jaqqa marching in triumph at the head of his black legions through the streets of London, and on to Canterbury for wild bacchanal amid the tumbled paving-blocks of the cathedral, and I did feel the hard chill of that dread fantasy, and the frosty beauty of it.

Then he said, “Would you have another woman, Andubatil, or do two serve you sufficiently?”

“Quite sufficiently, Lord Calandola!”

“Good. Good. I would not have you suffer for the lack. You are most valuable to me, Andubatil, you are cherished deeply by me. When we march on São Paulo de Loanda, you will lead the column beside me, and I would see your hair gleaming like a beacon in the hot sunlight. Is your musket in good repair?”

“Aye, that it is.”

“And with powder, with shot? I gave orders that the weapons of those Portugals were to be given unto you.”

“That has been done,” I said. “I have enough powder now for all my uses, and great store of ammunition.”

“Good.”

“And when, Lord Calandola, does the march begin?”

“In four days’ time, I think. Or five. I must consult with Kakula-banga, whether it be four days or five, and have him read the omens.”

He turned, and took my hand in his, and squeezed it in that ferocious way of his, that conveyed his love; and once more the Imbe-Jaqqa’s eyes met mine and had my measure; and then he strode away.

I stood looking toward him, wondering. What power was it he had, that was so compelling over me? Not just his size, for there are many big men that are but oafs, and not just his voice, and not his visage alone, nor the vision that possessed him, of world dominion and destruction; but it was all of those at once, I suppose, that drew into one thick cable that could bind entire nations. Certainly he did bind me, though I have never otherwise felt myself to be a man easily led; this Calandola did ever impress his will into me in a way most mysterious, and reduce me to something far less than my true self, so that I moved often not of my own accord but in the general frenzy and thrust of a larger and irresistible mass. And so I give my thanks to God Almighty that He made Calandola an African, and kept him far from our shores. But one day, I do fear, a man of that sort will arise closer to home, and take all the civilized world in his grip and do the Devil’s own work with it, and it will go hard for us. May God preserve us from the coming of that man’s day.

When Calandola was gone from me, Dona Teresa returned.

“That is Satan himself,” she said.

“Perhaps. Or Satan’s own son.”

“Why do you not slay him while he stands so comradely beside you, and spare the world from this monster?”

“I would not live an hour, an’ I do any such thing,” said I. “And I think he is less monstrous than he chooses to appear.”

“You have become a fool, Andres.”

“Have I, then?”

“You defend him ever, him that is indefensible. Which marks you as a fool, and a gull.”

I shook my head. “Beyond doubt he has a sway on me, yes. But I think I see him more exactly than most. It is easy to say, He is a monster, He is a monster, and in some ways indeed he makes himself monstrous. It takes a keener perception to find the philosophy beneath the frightsome surface.”

“Philosophy!” cried she most scornfully. “Aye, I know his philosophy. Kill and eat, kill and eat, carve and gorge, carve and gorge! It is a wondrous thoughtful philosophy! Have you come to like the flavor of man-meat, Andres?”

“You are wife indeed, if you beshrew me this way.”

“I seek only to know your soul. Are you yet a Christian? Or do you give yourself over fully to these cannibal revels?”

“Let me be, Teresa,” I said wearily.

“You have eaten of the forbidden flesh, have you not?”

“By whom forbidden?” I asked.

“By the mouth of God and the laws of man,” said she. “But you have dined of it. That I know. And you will again, and the love of its savor does possess you, and make you mad.”

“Nay, Teresa, I am no madman at all, but only a poor lost sailor, who longs for his home.”

“You delude yourself.”

“It is so. I ship myself under whatever flag I must, until the day I am free of Africa.”

“So you have been saying. But I think a deeper sea-change has come upon you, and your talk of homegoing is now mere talk, that you repeat because you have long repeated it, which has lost its urgency for you some years back.”

“That is not so,” said I, but I did not say it with conviction.

With much fire she said, “That man is no man, but a devil, is he not? And you are ensorcelled by him, I think, and transformed into something accursed. And you do not see it, but believe you are only pretending to serve him, while biding your time. Or else you lie to yourself as well as to me.” She glared into my eyes, and I compelled myself not to flinch. “Of what were you and he talking, I ask you, pray?”

I said, “Of his brother Kinguri: for I have caused a rift between them. And we talked also of the war that Calandola would make against all the world, and his hopes for conducting it. He dreams of invading Europe.”

“Which is madness.”

“So I would not deny. He will never achieve that. But soon will he march against São Paulo de Loanda, at any rate.”

She grasped my arm. “How soon?”

“I cannot say.”

“So you told me before. But that was because you did not know. Now you know. How soon, Andres?”

I drew deep my breath. “Four days. Or maybe five. The time depends on the horoscopes his witches cast.”

“We must send warning!”

“We will do nothing of the sort,” said I bluntly.

“It is monstrous, that he would burst into the city. Fie, Andres, let us escape this place, and carry the word to the governor, before everyone is slaughtered!”

“There is no escape from here. They would have after us, and we would be in the kettles by nightfall of the day we are caught.”

“But we cannot stand idly by, and let the city be destroyed,” she said.

“We will.”

“This war must not be!”

“I am not convinced of that,” said I. “I think it might be well, if São Paulo de Loanda perished.”

“What, Andres? Now comes forth the truth! You are wholly of them!”

“I have my reasons for what I say.”

“Reasons of madness!”

“I have no cause to love the Portugals. What love did they ever show me, except Barbosa, that is dead? And Don João, who spoke sweet of one side of his mouth, and traitored me with the other? And you, Dona Teresa, who did the same?”

“I have had forgiveness for that.”

“Aye, so you have. But the others? Those who chained me, those who beat me, those who mocked me, those who kept me from my home for all these years? Am I Jesus, that I should embrace them, and ask God to spare them?”

“You need not destroy them, though.”

“Ah, but perhaps I welcome such a vengeance.”

She stared long at me. “You are not a man in whom such hatred is natural. Of that am I certain.”

“Perhaps I have changed, Teresa.”

“Then it is a mighty change indeed, I think. Come, Andres, forget this wrath, and join with me to save the city. We must do something! I will devise a way.”

“I remind you, Dona Teresa, that I have pledged myself for your good behavior. Whatever you do, it will bring down catastrophe upon me. Will you betray me a second time?”

“The city, Andres, think of the city!”

“Aye,” said I. “I do think of the city.”

She scowled at me, and tossed her head, and strode away in the direction of our cottage. I did not follow her thence, but paced like an anxious lion, throughout the Jaqqa camp, and my mind did swim and flutter with the chaos that was in it. I scarce saw where I was going; but as I wandered freely I came to a place where the musicians of war dwelled, and they were tuning of their instruments, or whatever it is they do with them. These men grinned at me most amiably and offered me their fifes and viols to play, but I shook my head, and walked on, and from behind me in ten discordant tunes at once came the wild and jangling sounds of Jaqqa harmonies.

11

For some several days the preparations for war went on at an increasing fervor. Weapons were gathered and made ready; war-chiefs met in council to construct their web of stratagem; Kakula-banga the high witch did busy himself in the casting of omens and the lighting of foul-smelling witch-fires on the borders of our camp. In this time I had my role to play as lieutenant to Calandola, and spent much time with him, sketching for him maps of the city of São Paulo de Loanda, showing the approach routes, the location of the citadel, the quarters where the soldiers dwelled. I saw little of Dona Teresa except at night; but she was more calm now, with that wrath and anxiety gone from her, and a new serenity over her countenance.

Then on a night a few days thereafter was I awakened suddenly in mid-sleep, and pulled roughly to my feet, and caught from behind by both my arms. Greatly did I struggle, but it was useless: I was held fast, a prisoner, still half befogged by slumber.

“What is this?” I cried. “Help! Assassins!”

Our cottage was full of Jaqqas. By their torches I saw their scarred and gap-toothed faces, and they were men I knew, Golambolo and some others who had served me in the wars. But now they seemed forbidding and hostile, and as much like demons as were the first Jaqqas I had ever seen, long ago, when I had known nothing of these folk but their fearsome repute. They gripped me so I could not break free, and gripped Dona Teresa, too, whose face in the torchlight was a stark mask of fear. Kulachinga lay untouched, at my feet, on the straw couch that the three of us had so cozily shared together until just moments before.

They swept me off, and Dona Teresa as well, through the camp to the inner fortification behind which the Imbe-Jaqqa dwelled. And there I saw all the high ones of the man-eater tribe already assembled, with their visages seeming most grim and somber. Imbe Calandola sat upon his high throne, garbed in a necklace of whitened bones and holding in his hand a scepter that was of bone also, a shin perhaps, and beside him was Kinguri equally solemn, and other lords. And on the ground before them, trussed and bound so that his body was arched most painfully in the manner of a bow, was a blackamoor I did not know, one of the Bakongo slaves that the Jaqqas did keep about them in their camp. At the sight of this man, there came from Dona Teresa a little hissing sound, and then a deep groan of pain or of sorrow. The which served to provide me with the unraveling of this mystery that encumbered us and with a melting feeling in my legs I came to understand what must have occurred. In shock and anger did I look toward Dona Teresa, but she did not meet my gaze. Then those who held us did lead us to separate sides of the council-hearth, far opposite one another. My heart beat with frightsome force and I glared across the way at her, knowing she had betrayed me yet again and not being willing to believe that of her; but she would not look at me.

Kinguri said, “There has been treason here.”

Ah, then it was so! Yet was I determined to separate myself from the deed, for I had had no part of it.

“Good brother, what has happened?” I asked. “And why am I restrained this way? I have done no wrong.”

“That shall we discover,” said Kinguri. He gestured toward the Bakongo slave. “Is this man your creature, Andubatil?”

“Never have I seen his face.”

“Aye. But perhaps you have spoken with him through some intermediary, to give him a commission on your behalf.”

“I do not take your meaning,” I said. I looked toward Calandola, who sat above this assemblage as remote as Zeus, and seemingly as uncaring, his eyes far away, and I said, “Mighty Lord Imbe-Jaqqa, I ask you what this proceeding may be.”

“Address yourself to me,” coldly said Kinguri, Calandola making no response to my words.

“Then I ask you again—”

“You have not hired this man to undertake some task for you?”

“I have not.”

“Nor your Portuguese woman?”

In sore rage I looked across to Dona Teresa, who met my gaze for an instant, and her eyes were hard and bright with terror.

“I do not know what dealings she has had with this man, if she has had any,” I said. “I have, as you know, been preoccupied of late with the planning of the war.”

“Ah,” said Kinguri. “Of course: how could I have overlooked that? But there has been treason here, Andubatil.”

He made gesture to a hulking Jaqqa, who stepped forward and tightened the bonds on the Bakongo slave, the which did draw a yelp of distress from the tormented man. Then Kinguri said, in the slave’s own tongue, “Tell us once again what you were hired to do, and by whom.”

“To go—to São Paulo de Loanda—” the man said softly, for he was so bent and strained that he could scarce get out the words, this being the Jaqqa approximation of the rack upon which more civilized folk do stretch their inquisitions.

“For what purpose?” demanded Kinguri.

“To warn—Portugals—Jaqqas coming—”

“Ah. To give warning! Do you hear, O Imbe-Jaqqa? Do you understand the man’s words?”

Calandola scowled most darkly.

Kinguri leaned close by the slave, and signalled for another twisting of the trusses, and said to him, “And by which persons were you charged with this message?”

“Woman—Portugal woman—”

“The one you see there?”

“That one.”

“And by which other person?”

“Woman—the woman—”

“The woman, yes, but who else?”

Naught but moans and whimpers came from the slave.

“Ease him a little,” said Kinguri, and this was done. Then, as severe as any Cardinal of the Holy Office, the longshanked Jaqqa did hover above the sweat-drenched man and say again, “What accomplice did the Portugal woman have?”

“Spoke—only with—woman—”

“Name the other!”

“Don’t—know—”

“Tighter again,” said Kinguri, and the cords were pulled, and the slave did cry out.

“Enough,” said Imbe Calandola.

“He has not yet confessed fully,” Kinguri did protest.

Calandola waved impatiently. “It is enough. He knows no more. Destroy him.”

“My Lord Imbe-Jaqqa!” cried Kinguri.

But there was no halting the order of Calandola. A Jaqqa that was one of the headsmen of the tribe stepped forth, and with a stroke of his immense blade, that whistled as it fell, he cut the hapless slave in twain. There was a sharp sound of metal against bone, and a dull sound of metal against earth afterward, and the severed parts of the dead man, released so instantly from the taut strings that held him, did fly apart most horridly, with a scarlet spraying going most wondrous far, even to the feet of Calandola’s throne. Kinguri, at this, did whirl around and throw up his arms in expostulation, for he was maddened by this hasty slaughter of his source of confession.

Calandola looked downward toward Dona Teresa and said, “You are named by this slave as treasonous toward us. What statement do you make?”

“None,” said Dona Teresa, when the words were explained to her in the Kikongo tongue; but she said it with throat so dry that no sound emerged, only the silent mouthings of her lips, and perforce she had to say the word again.

“You will not deny the charge?” asked the Imbe-Jaqqa.

“Why waste the breath?”

Even now I could not let her so doom herself by acquiescing thus in the indictment. Even now I felt constrained to defend her, though she had put my life in jeopardy.

“Lord Imbe-Jaqqa!” I burst out. “I pray you, forgive this foolish woman! Whatever she may have done, it was done rashly and without thought, and was only an idle thing, for she has no understanding—”

“Silence, Andubatil. This nonsense ill becomes you.” To Teresa he said again, “You stand accused of treachery, by the words of this dead bondsman here, that we all did hear several times over since we captured him by the edge of our camp. He said you promised him many shells, to carry your message to the Portguals. Is this so?”

“I say nothing,” she replied, with a flash of wrath in her eyes, and an imperious look, for her courage seemed to be returning even though to me it was plain that all was lost.

The Imbe-Jaqqa now turned toward me. “And you, Andubatil, you are charged with conspiring also with her in this treason.”

“I know not a thing of it, O Lord Imbe-Jaqqa.”

“He lies,” said Kinguri.

“Do I, now? And did the slave name me? Did he speak of me before I came, yet in my presence did not know me?”

“Your guilt is known to us,” said Kinguri.

“Not so, brother, not so!”

“You are no brother of mine.”

“By this scar I bear, and yours also, Kinguri! What, will you reject me now, that you fondly once spoke with so late into the night, about the kingdoms and laws of Christendom, and so much else?”

“I am no brother to a liar and traitor,” said he, all ice and contempt. To Calandola he did cry, “You who are my brother of the flesh, do you not see the guilt of Andubatil?” “I see it not,” said Calandola.

“They had conspired together, the woman and the man! They both must die, O lord!”

“Andubatil has done no treason,” the Imbe-Jaqqa said.

“Nor has my woman!” I said, perhaps too rashly. “There is no proof! The slave was paid to perjure upon her!”

“The woman,” said Calandola, “surely has hatred for us. You take grave risk by defending her, except if you do it out of love. We think her guilt is certain, and we will put her to the trial to demonstrate it.”

“I beg you, good my lord, by all that passed between us on that night you remember, spare her!”

This I said in a low voice, to him alone. But he did not look pleased at being conjured by the force of that rite we had shared. Glowering most saturninely at me, he did continue, “She is a traitor. You stand accused by my brother of the same offense, the which you deny. It is a heavy charge, that may not be ignored. This must we examine with care, and there will be consultation of the witches. You will be prisoned until we arrive at our proper path.”

He lifted his hand, and Teresa and I were dragged away from that place, I to a wickerwork enclosure not far from the place of the great kettles, which was not a cheering sight unto me, and she elsewhere, beyond my vision. There I was left to ruminate in solitude upon these latest turns of fate.

It enraged me that she had forsworn me so, and, after I had given pledge she would do no harm, had tried to send word to her people of our attack on São Paulo de Loanda. For such a thing could only work my downfall along with hers, if it miscarried, and it had miscarried.

Of her guilt I had no doubt. Plainly she had hired that man to bear the warning to the Portugals; and plainly she would die for it. She stood incriminated and had no defense, nor would she attempt to devise one, whether out of overarching pride or a submission to inevitable destiny. She was in the hands of Jaqqas, and no claim of innocence would save her. She would die. And for all the pain she had given me, I found myself sore stricken with grief over that. How could she perish? She was so vital, so deep with life, so magnificent of beauty: if she was not a witch, then she was some sort of goddess. And yet she would die, nor was I at all sure I would survive this attainder of treason myself, with Kinguri now become my implacable foe. Surely he saw me as rival for Calandola’s affections, and enemy to his own ambitions; and with so potent an enemy at the court of the Imbe-Jaqqa, I would be hard put to come forth of this with my life.

For a day, and half a day more, I did remain in my cage, guarded all the while by silent Jaqqas and giving myself over to the most melancholy of thoughts, and to occasional moments of prayer. Then was I summoned once again to the council-hearth, where the same great Jaqqas as before were in their positions of state. And thither also was Dona Teresa brought, with her arms bound behind her, though I was unchained.

She looked to me, and in her eyes I saw no fear, but only strength, resignation, courage.

Imbe Calandola said, “My brother Kinguri has spoken with the nganga-men. They are of the verdict that treason is likely here, and must be searched out by the trial of ordeal.”

“Ah, then I am a dead man!” I cried.

“If there has been treason, then that is so,” replied Calandola most serenely.

“And which of us is to have the ordeal first, the woman or I?”

“There is only you to be tried,” said the Imbe-Jaqqa, “for the woman’s guilt is certain, and her doom is fixed.”

At this, Dona Teresa did utter the smallest of sounds of despair, a mere issuing-forth of air, quickly cut off; and then she did resume her staunch demeanor.

And I, seeing myself standing at the veritable brink of extinction, with the earth crumbling before me and bidding fair to pitch me into the abyss, what then did I feel? Why, once again I felt nothing at all, no fear, no dismay, I who had been at the same fatal brink so many times before: I was cold in my heart, numb like one who has clasped himself to the great ice-floes of the north, but I was wholly still at the center of my soul, and calm. For one can face death only so many times, and then the fear of it is gone from the spirit, and one becomes void and wholly at ease, like one who is so fatigated by constant warfare that he takes no notice of the deadly arrows singing past his cheeks. They would give me the ordeal by poison, which I knew from the testimony of Kinguri, when his lips were unsealed by wine, to be concocted aforehand by the will of the king. So the only question to be answered was whether the fraudulence of the ordeal would be the fraudulence of Kinguri, who wished me dead, or that of Calandola, who I believed did not associate me with Teresa’s treason, and meant to preserve me. Calandola was mightier; Kinguri was craftier; I had no notion which of them would prevail. But though I had not lost the love of life that has imbued me deeply since my first years, though I longed as passionately as ever to go on and on, and see what lay beyond the next headland and the next, yet was I untroubled by distress over the outcome of this test: whatever would befall would take its own course the same way, whether I fretted and worried over it or no. And so I was wholly tranquil.

“Bring now the fruit of the embd” said Calandola.

So it was to be the poisoned fruit, and not the snailshells to my forehead, nor the boiling water that I must drink, nor the singeing of my flesh with the red-hot iron.

A nganga in heavy paint and glistening grease did step forward, carrying with him the bowl of the fruits of these palm-trees, which were about the size and shape of a small peach-fruit, but smooth and shining of skin, with a golden hue and faint red streaks in it. As I had seen that time before, the witch-man did draw from the bowl one of these fruits and eat it himself for show, and spit out the hard kernel of it, and stand before us unpoisoned and hale, and smiling. Then did a second of these witches advance to him with a flask made of highly polished dark wood, that was meant to contain the poison, and he did dip a great lengthy black thorn into the flask, bringing it out dripping with a fluid, and this he thrust deep within one of the embá-fruits, and a second, and a third.

Imbe Calandola did extend his scepter of bone to me from his high throne to say, “You are accused, Andubatil, of treasonably betraying our intent to the Portugals of São Paulo de Loando. What say you to this charge?”

“This I wholly deny.”

“Make an oath upon this rod.”

I did touch his scepter, just at the tip. Which made me faintly shudder to think that next week someone might be swearing by some bone of mine. I said most loudly, “Be it known by this that I have done no treason ever against the Jaqqa nation, nor against Imbe Calandola its master, nor Kinguri his brother and mine.”

And so saying, I looked deep at Imbe Calandola and then at Kinguri, who looked back at me with eyes that were like fiery coals, all blazing and hateful.

Calandola gestured. The witch who held the bowl did say to me, “We have mixed within this bowl three fruits that bear a killing poison. Seek, and take, and eat, and if you have done no crime your mokisso will guard you from harm.”

And now my strange tranquility fell from me like a discarded cloak, and I felt great fear from crown to toes, I that had thought I had outlived the sensation of mortal dread; for I did remember that time I had seen this oath administered to Jaqqas, and how the man designated for death had made terrible noises, and had swollen in his throat and died choking, which is a horrible way to die. But I did present myself boldly as I advanced to select the fruit. The nganga-man held the bowl high, to give me no clue by way of mark or puncture on the fruit, and I reached in, and again I grew calm and easy, saying to myself that I had been ready many times to pay God the death that is owing by me, and if this were the moment, so be it, since that if it were not now, it would merely be later. And took a fruit and put it to my mouth, and found it passing sweet and comforting to the taste, with no hint of venom in it, and ate it down and spat forth the kernel, and grinned most widely and said, “There, it is shown now that I had no complicity.”

“Draw another,” said the witch-man.

“I have drawn!”

“The trial calls for three,” said Kinguri.

“It was not so the other time, when three fruits were presented,” said, I, “and only one was poisoned, and the accused did take the jeopardy but once—”

“This is a trial of another sort,” said Kinguri, and when I looked in appeal to Imbe Calandola, he met my gaze without response, and waited like a stone statue for my next taking of fruit.

The nganga did proffer me the bowl. And I did choose again.

I was sure now that they would do me to death this day, that Kinguri would have me go on choosing until I hit one of the venomed ones; and to make a haste for the outcome I bit and spat kernel and swallowed, and stood, and wondered, and felt no murder in my veins.

“Again my innocence is proven, Imbe Calandola!”

“Draw one more,” said the witch most inexorably.

Ah, then, so the sleight of hand would be practiced on me now, and they had saved the poison for the last, to heighten the game for themselves! The bowl was on high. I reached to it and made my choice.

“Jesu guard me,” I said. “The Lord bring mercy upon me. The angels defend me.”

And took the third fruit into my mouth.

This time did I have the pure certainty that I had come to my final moment, and would soon be gathered to my last repose, and walk in Heaven with my father and my dead brothers. And I knew no tremor of fear, but only the greatest assurance that the Savior is the Resurrection and the Life, and that my Redeemer liveth, and that although now I did walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I need fear no evil, for He was with me, and His rod and His staff did comfort me. I consumed the fruit and spat forth the kernel, and looked toward Kinguri, my dark brother that was now become mine enemy, and saw the fire of his eyes, and the sternness of his gaze that did run like a cable taut between his soul and mine. And a moment passed, and I did not fall, and I did not choke and swell, and I did not perish; and there was a snapping of that cable between Kinguri and me, for he sat slumping backward in the greatest of disappointment and the deepest of dejection, snarling a little to see that I lived. From Calandola came a thundering laugh, and the Imbe-Jaqqa did stand and clap his hands, and cry out, “It is done, Andubatil! Thy mokisso is with thee, and proclaims thy innocence!” And taking the bowl of palm-fruit from his witch, he hurled the remainder into the bushes, and reached out his arm toward me in jubilance of fellowship.

12

Thus was I returned back into the good graces of the Imbe-Jaqqa, and lay no longer at risk of my life. I was set free, and carried up beside Imbe Calandola to share his wine, and all men of the Jaqqa nation hailed me once again as one of their lords. All save Kinguri, who drew apart, sulking, as had Achilles in his tent; for Kinguri’s former love for me now was turned entirely to enmity, and he could not bear that I was a favorite of his brother.

There was still the matter of Dona Teresa to be played out: for she was under mortal sentence, and that could not be appealed. Nor did I have enough credit with Calandola to win her free, since that she had committed indisputable treachery, and would have worked the ruin of his scheme of war, had her slave managed to bring the warning to the Portugals. So she would perish, without further trial, but not until the nganga-men said that it was an auspicious moment for the execution.

Calandola’s plan of marching upon São Paulo de Loanda had been entirely put into abeyance and suspension by these recent events, and now was further suspended, for the moon had passed into an improper phase. No heavy action now might be taken until the sorcerers gave their consent. The moon does have great import to these Jaqqas, who think it has forcible operation in the body of man, and is the planet most prejudicial to his health, and to be shunned. On nights when the moon is fullest they do utter special prayers to their mokissos, and postpone any major deeds. Indeed, Kinguri once did tell me that he had forgotten his prayer of a certain time, and the moon shining upon his shoulder left him with such an extraordinary pain, and furious burning in it, that he was like to run mad, but in the end, with force of medicines and cures, after long torment was he eased. The slaying of Dona Teresa required a grand feast, and the feast could not just then be held owing to the moon, and the war could not begin until the feast, and therefore all stood still, held unmoving upon the brink.

God’s blood, but I would not have her slain!

She was huge in my mind, and for all that she had done against me, I could not forget how she had cared for me in that ancient illness of mine, and our early love, and the closeness we once had had; nor was I unmindful of her beauty and the fire that it kindled in me; and I think that even though I had hurled her carven image into the river, yet even now it still held a power over me, reaching forth across many leagues to impinge upon my soul. How could I let her perish? I had vowed to protect her; that vow still bound me; and if I stood idly by and let her die the death, I should be no man. Yet she was doomed, and she was well guarded, and it would be worth both our lives for me to make any sort of rash attempt at freeing her. Nor could I win her pardon from the Imbe-Jaqqu. So I did brood a day and a second day, without reaching a resolution, and time was running short for Dona Teresa. Soon I should have to act, or know that I had failed her. He that is in the dance must needs dance on, though he do but hop.

At this time Golambolo did come to me, who had command of the scouts that occupied the outlying districts. He made his obeisance and said, “News, O Andubatil, of the Portuguese army!”

“And what is that, Golambolo?”

“That it has left Ndala Chosa, and begun to move through the countryside.”

“In which direction?” said I, much excited.

“They seem not to know themselves. First they go toward the great waterfall, and then they turn westward again, and south as if they would march upon Langere. I think they have no plan except to move across the land and hope to encounter enemies.”

“Ah. We must keep close watch on them.” I closed mine eyes, and summoned up the image of the region, and the place of each town alongside the River Kwanza, and of our own position well south of it. And said to Golambolo, “Send forth double the number of scouts, and check their movements every hour. And when there is a change in their march, send your men running in relays, that is, one runner bearing the news to another who is fresh, and him to the next along the route, so that the tale comes to me swift as the wind. I must know at once.”

He saluted and hastened to obey. And in the next day and the next the reports that he brought me were frequent, that the Portugals were moving swiftly though still without evident purpose, a large force of them marching in the territory that formed a triangle on the points of Ndala Chosa, Langere, and Agokayongo. There was no indication from this that they were aware of the force we had gathered at Agokayongo, nor had Golambolo’s men seen sign that the Portugals were scouting in this direction. Yet something was brewing, for now they were only a day’s march from us, or perhaps just a little more than that. Again I doubled the number of scouts under Golambolo’s command, so that we might have exact knowledge.

Calandola at this time was preoccupied by meeting with Kafuche Kambara, at a midway point outside Agokayongo between his army and that of the other lord. I was not privy to these meetings, nor were any of the other Jaqqa generals: it was just the two high masters, coming together to discuss their tactic for sacking São Paulo de Loanda. But I think there was some dispute of policy between them, and rising tempers that grew hotter with the continuing negotiation; for rumor did journey in the Jaqqa camp that the other force was going to sever its alliance with us, or even to renew an onslaught against us, and that Imbe Calandola was hard pressed to hold Kafuche to his treaty. Certainly the Imbe-Jaqqa was morose and distant when he returned to us, and closeted himself with some several of his wives, and we saw nothing of him.

Thus I did not report to him the movements of the Portuguese force. I took it purely as my province of authority, to keep watch over that force by means of Golambolo’s men, and to reserve all decision concerning it until its movements were clear. It was but a few hundred men, and we were many thousands: if they blundered within our neighborhood, we would easily be able to overwhelm them.

Then—the moon being still inauspicious—Calandola suddenly did summon me and declare, “Load your musket, Andubatil, for we will go to the wars tomorrow.”

“Lord Calandola, is this not hasty?”

He swung about on me like an enfuried coccodrillo, and gaped and bared his teeth. “What, do you tell me my own mind?”

“We have relaxed our fine edge of readiness,” I replied. “Surely we cannot regain it so swiftly!”

“We must,” said he. “I feel necessity rolling down upon us. If we make not the war against São Paulo de Loanda this day next, we will lose our moment entirely. Tonight we feast; tomorrow we break camp. I am making the order generally known.”

“The moon—”

“The moon will turn in our favor,” said he.

I dared not dispute with him further.

This was the time to tell him that a Portuguese army was not far away, and that we must enter it into our planning. But something held me from giving forth that news at just that instant, and in the next he drove it utterly from my mind by saying most offhandedly, “And also, we will deal with the Portugal woman tonight. I give you leave to pay your farewell to her, if you so desire.”

That struck me most heavily, for in recent days it had seemed to me that under the press of circumstance Calandola had forgotten Dona Teresa entirely, or else was no longer set on having her life. The force of his words must have had its conspicuous effect in my features, for he noted my look and said more gently, “She must die, Andubatil. There is no other way about it. Have you not resolved yourself to it?”

“That woman is most dear to me.”

“Aye, but she is a traitor, self-confessed. I cannot let her live, or it would be the end of all government among my nation. Kinguri cries for her blood.”

“And who is lord here, Kinguri or Calandola?”

“Calandola is lord!” he howled. “Calandola will have her slain! And take care, Andubatil, lest he take your life, too, for insolence if not for treason!”

“I meant no offense, my lord. You see how strong I regret her slaying, that I would speak that way?”

“She must die,” said he more calmly, though I knew I had wounded him deep and would not be soon forgiven. “Speak no folly, Andubatil. Go to her, bid her be resigned, comfort her, take what comfort you can yourself; for it is sealed.”

“There is no sparing her?”

“None.”

“I will go to her, then,” I said.

And as we parted he called after me, “Andubatil? Attempt no desperate treason, when you are with her. I pray you, do not do any foolish thing. It would grieve me to see you slaughtered beside her at the festival.”

“I shall not be rash, O Imbe-Jaqqa,” I did reply, though he had read my heart.

I went at once to the place where Dona Teresa was kept; and her guards, knowing that it was Calandola’s will, admitted me freely to her cage. Thus was it that our first meeting was reversed, she now being the prisoner and I the visitor, whereas in the presidio of São Paulo de Loanda upon my coming to this land it had been the other way.

Her captivity had gone severely with her. They had not starved her, for I saw food and drink within her cage; but she must have eaten little of it, and she was most haggard and diminished, as though the flame within her did burn low. Her garments, that had been in rents and tatters before, now were loose and soiled and she made no show of fastening them, so that her breasts and belly were all but bare, and her skin seemed slack to me, her bearing feeble, her nobility and beauty in retreat. When I entered I found her bent over, crouched over some small thing of twigs and straw, and muttering words to it, and she looked up, alarmed, and hid it behind her back.

“What is that, Teresa?” I asked.

“It is nothing, Andres.”

“Show it me.”

“It is nothing.”

“Show it.”

She shook her head; and when I reached for it, she hissed like an angry cat, and backed away from me to the corner of the cage.

“It is some idol, is it not?” I asked. “Some mokisso-thing that you have fashioned, and that you are praying to?”

“It does not concern you,” said she.

“This is no time for idols and witchcraft. This is a time for true prayer, Teresa.”

She looked toward me with dull and somber eyes and said, “They are to slay me tonight, Andres, are they not?”

“So the Imbe-Jaqqa declares.”

“And will they eat me afterward?”

“Speak not of such things, Teresa, I pray you.”

“They will eat me. It was as my mother died. I will go into their pot, and they will carve me, and this one will eat my breasts, and this one my thighs, and—well, and what does it matter, when I am dead?” She stared me cold in the eyes and said, “And will you eat your share of my flesh?”

“It is a sickening thing you have said.”

“Andres—O! I would not die, Andres, not so soon! Is it to be tonight?”

Softly I said, “That is their intent.”

“And will you not save me? Is there no way? You are brother to these Jaqqa lords: go to them, plead for me, ask a pardon, tell them they can banish me instead, that I will go to the Kongo, to Benguela, to any place they choose, an’ only they let me live, Andres!”

“I have pleaded for you strongly. It has not availed.”

“But you have power with them!”

“I count myself lucky not to have been drawn down into your guilt, as Kinguri would have had it befall me. For I did stake my honor you would not do a treason. They would be within their rights to punish me for your deed.”

“What could I do, then? Allow the city to be sacked, and send no warning?”

“It was folly. They were on their guard against some such thing from you.”

“Well, and what does it matter now? I am to die,” she said, wholly dejected and defeated. “You cannot save me? You will not?”

“I cannot. Though I have tried, and will try again, at the very last. I will speak again with the Jaqqa king, when he has had some wine, when he is easy among his women, and perhaps then at last he will give you pardon.”

“You do not sound hopeful of it.”

“I will attempt to save you. I can give you no promise I will succeed. I will attempt: I will ask again, Teresa.”

She said, “Let them not eat me, at least.”

“If I cannot have your life spared, I will beg the Imbe-Jaqqa to allow you a Christian burial, if it come to that. But I hope it will not come to that.”

“O Andres, I am not ready for this! I loved my life. I was a great woman in Angola, do you know? I was like a queen in that city. Look at me now! I am ten years older in a single week. My beauty is destroyed. I am afraid, Andres. I was never afraid of anything, and now I am a column of fear, and naught but fear, the whole length of my body. Will I go to Hell, Andres?”

“You should not fear it, if you die a Christian.”

“I have sinned. I have done sins of the flesh—”

“They were acts of love, which are not sins.”

“And other sins, of pride, of avarice, I have been treacherous to you whom I loved, Andres, I have told lies of great evil nature to work harm on you—I did love you, is that known to you?”

“Aye, Teresa. And I had love for you. Mingled with a certain fear, I think, for you were so strong, so frightening in your strength.”

“My strength is all gone from me now. I will beshit myself with fright when I walk out to be slain.”

“I think not. I think if it must come to that, you will do it well. Like a queen.”

“Like an English Queen? What did your King Harry’s Queens say and do, when they came forth to lose their heads?”

“Why, I was not born then,” said I, “but the tale is that they were most courageous, and faced their doom without the least quiver. As also did Mary the Scottish Queen, that was done to death just in the years before I left England. And you will be bold and strong like all of them, for you are queenly too. If it must come to pass that way.”

“Hold me, Andres.”

I took her into my arms. She was trembling, and folded herself against me like a frightened child.

In a voice I scarce could hear, she said, “When first I saw you in São Paulo de Loanda so long ago, I said within myself, He is beautiful, he shines like the sun, I want him. You were a pretty plaything. And then I came to you in the fortress, and I nursed you when you were sick and gone from your rightful mind, and as you slept I looked upon you and loved you. And when you healed, and I bathed you with the sponge, and your manhood rose, I wanted you as I have wanted no other man, and so we became lovers, and would have been lovers all the years since, but for circumstance. I dreamed of you. When I was in bed with Don Fernão I pretended he was you. When you got yourself that blackamoor wench as your slave and concubine, I thought of killing her—or you— or myself, so strong was my love. Well, and so I felt, and I could not help myself for it. And did you love me, Andres?”

“That I did, most deeply, Teresa. For I think you have been the great love of my life.”

With a little laugh she said, “And the wonderful Anne Katherine of whom you spoke so much?”

“Long ago. A ghost that flits in my mind. I knew her only a little, when I was a boy. You have been at the center of my heart these fourteen years.”

“Andres—”

“Aye, Teresa. It is true.”

“I am afraid of dying now.”

“We will pray together.”

“I am afraid of praying, also,” said she, with a glance behind her, where she had dropped her little magic-thing of straw and twigs. “I have fallen away from the true God, Andres.”

“He welcomes always the strayed sheep,” I said. I reached past her and took the little pagan thing in my hand, and said, “You must not damn yourself, so near the end. Put this witchcraft aside from you, and spurn it, and give yourself over to the loving Son of God.”

“Will you pray with me, now?”

“That I will.”

She shredded her idol, and strewed its fragments on the ground.

“Pray in English. Pray what prayers you would pray for your English wife,” she said.

“If I remember the words, I will do that,” said I.

And the words were slow to come, but come at last they did, and I knelt beside her and I did say, “The Lord is my light, and my salvation; whom then shall I fear: the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?” And I said the words then in Portuguese also, and she said them with me. And also I said, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help. My help cometh even from the Lord: who hath made heaven and earth.” And she said this after me. And I said, “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.” Which she the like did say.

Then Dona Teresa on her knees alongside me did begin to speak to me as though I were her confessor, and to tell me her sins, which I had no right to hear, I being no priest and scarce even of the same faith as she. But I listened, since that she had a need of telling, and I would not ask of her that she go unshriven to her death, if this night were indeed to be her last. And the sins that she told me were some of them trifles, and some of them not such trifles, and some that gave me great amaze. But though I have spoken in such fullness of all that befell me in Africa, I will not speak of Dona Teresa’s sins here, since they were hers alone, and if I was her confessor then I must respect the sanctity of the confessional, and let God be the only witness to my knowledge of her heart. So I heard her out, and when she was done she spoke the Credo to me, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,” saying it in Latin while I spoke in English with her, and at the last I did say to her, this one last thing, “Good Lord, deliver us, in all time of our tribulation; in all time of our wealth; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, Good Lord, deliver us,” which she did pray most fervently.

Then we rose and we embraced, and through my mind there rolled as though upon an endless scroll all the images of my life with this woman, from first unto last, our great carnality and high joyous lusts, our sorrows and disturbances, our partings and our reunions, and I felt tears within the threshold of mine eyes, and I withheld them lest I induce grief in her. But at last I could withhold them no more, and we wept together. And I kissed her tenderly and she said, “Go now. I am ready for what must come, Andres.”

“We will have faith, and you shall be spared.”

“I do not think so, Andres.”

“We do not abandon hope, lady, until hope is rendered hopeless.”

As I turned to go, she reached for my hand, and pressed something into it, and folded my fingers over it, as once she had done long ago with that carven love-idol of hers. I opened my hand and saw that she had given me a little golden crucifix, that often I had seen between her breasts.

“Take it,” she said. “To remember me.”

“You should keep this upon you.”

“I will have no need of it soon. Take it, Andres.”

I could not tell her that to me this piece of gold was as much an idol as that other one; indeed, at that moment, strange to tell, I did not entirely feel that way, but recognized in it a kind of power, which I suppose meant that Africa had seeped into my soul a little, and had made of me not a Papist but an idol-worshipper to some degree. But I think mainly it was because it came from Dona Teresa that I felt the power in it. So I took it and placed it safe about me, and thanked her.

And I went from her, and the cage was closed behind me, and I walked me a long while around the Jaqqa camp, listening to the strange and barbarous sounds of it, the chanting and the singing and the playing of instruments, and the sharpening of knives, and when I came to the place of the kettles a fire was already lit, and the water was aboil. And at the sight of that, a vast rage rose in me, so that I pondered seizing Calandola and holding him as hostage for Teresa’s life, and breaking forth from this camp with her beside me and the Imbe-Jaqqa at my sword’s point; but I knew that to be folly.

Yet was I beginning to draw away from my immersement in the Jaqqa way, and commence my voyage back toward civilization. For I did boggle at this purposing of theirs to slay Dona Teresa, and all the rest of their intent did now begin to take on the taint of blood, and I pulled myself back from it, and stood hesitating, drifting between the side of God and the side of Satan. For I did see that God is the spirit that cries Yea, and Satan is he that cries Nay, and I in my African captivity had become as great a crier of Nay as the Fiend himself, willing to tear down anything to ease mine own pain. For a time I had been mad, I think, or adream. And in that time had I given myself unto Calandola, for whom the act of destruction was the act of creation: I had for a time seen the poetry within that strange pairing of ideas. But no longer. And now I wandered, desperate, lost, between one world and another.

In that moment Golambolo came to me, running, breathing hard, as though he had run a great distance. He lurched to me on his long legs and gasped before he could speak, and finally the words tumbled from him.

“The Portugals! They are advancing, O Andubatil! They are coming toward us!”

“Is it an attack, then?”

He shook his head. “I think not. I think it is but by chance that they move in our direction. But when morning comes they will surely stumble upon our outlying forces.”

“How far are they now from us?”

“An hour’s march, perhaps, or two or three. They have camped for the night.”

“Ah. And where are they?”

“In the direction of Langere, between the two gray hills.”

“The Imbe-Jaqqa must be told,” said I. “I will go to him at once.” Then did I take Golambolo by the wrist and look him close in the eye and say, “Speak nothing to anyone else of what your scouts have told you, not to Kinguri, not to Ntotela, not to anyone, until I have been to the Imbe-Jaqqa: for I would not have the news going running wild through our camp, until the high council has met to resolve on a plan.”

“I understand. I will obey, O Andubatil.”

“You do well, Golambolo,” I told him, and sent him on his way.

Now all fate was in my hands; and I stood poised on the knife’s-edge, between this way and that; and I did make my choice.

To Kulachinga my Jaqqa wife did I go, she who was so sturdy and reliable, and strong of leg and wind.

“I have urgent need of you,” I said. “Go now, run eastward, toward Langere way, to a place of two gray hills, that we have seen in recent days. There will be an army there. Take this, and give it to the high commander.” I put into her hand the golden crucifix that Dona Teresa had bestowed upon me. “And tell him these words, that you must repeat to me until you have them by heart.” And I told her the Portuguese words that meant, “Come at once, strike tonight!⁷’ These she said after me, and on the fifth time she had them perfect, though she had no idea of their meaning. “Show them by signs where our camp is located, and lead them to us: for it is the Imbe-Jaqqa’s plan to deceive them, and fall upon them when they least do expect it. Go now!”

“I will go,” said she, and turned from me, and sank herself into the forest like a stone into the depths of the sea, and was lost to my sight.

So it was done. I had made me my choice.

And night descended; and the Jaqqas did gather for their grand festival of death.

13

The princes of the man-eater nation bedecked themselves in their finest finery, their paints and beads and ornaments of bone; and I who was a Jaqqa prince did do the same, it being incumbent upon me to play my part. So certain servants to my naked body applied white circles of paint, and stripes of red and blue, and on my face where certain tribal scars had been incised I did color myself with the special Jaqqa powders, and I wrapped palm-cloth over my loins and put on my jingling necklaces of honor, and donned my sword on the one hip and my dagger on the other. All this while Kulachinga was running through the darkness, with Dona Teresa’s little golden crucifix clutched in her hand and the words, “Come at once, strike tonight!” going over and over in her mind. And would they come? And would they come in time? And what price would I pay for my treason, when they came? Those questions I could not answer. In my grand insignia of office, then, I went me down to the festival to sit beside Imbe Calandola and my brother Kinguri.

When it was full dark they brought forth Dona Teresa.

Her rags were stripped away and they had bathed her body and painted it somewhat, too, and given her nothing more than a ringlet of some animal’s teeth about her loins to wear, that hid nothing, so that she came forth as I once had come to a place of execution with all her privities laid bare, the high round breasts and the dark curling mat of lower hair put on exhibit.

Yet was she tall and proud and queenly as she strode, for all her nakedness, this Christian woman whose most secret places were displayed to ten thousand savages. I think I might rather have seen her feeble and frightened; for the sight of her so regal awoke on me sharp memories of the woman of São Paulo de Loanda that I had loved, that soon would be lost to me forever unless some miracle came, and time was growing monstrous late for miracles. And I did feel a powerful sense of onrushing disaster impending over this place, and not for Dona Teresa alone. And I bethought me of those words of Master Marlowe’s play of Faustus, when the clock is striking eleven, and Mephistophilis approaches to claim the soul of the damned man:

Now the musicians did play, now the nganga-men did dance and shout and invoke their mokisso the Devil. And the slaves of the Jaqqas brought forth great leathern sacks of palm-wine, enough of the stuff, God wot, to set afloat the entire Spanish Armada, and they passed among the Jaqqas, filling their cups again and yet again. And all this while did Dona Teresa stand naked in the midst of this barbarous multitude, awaiting her death most calmly with her hands together behind her back.

Let it be a lengthy ceremony, I prayed. Let them dance and prance for hours and hours, so that the rescuers, if they are to come, will have time to come. I put great faith in that rescue. I was confident of God’s own providence that would spare Dona Teresa from her death.

But yet—what was that speech of Faustus?

They will not understand Kulachinga’s message, I thought; or they will not believe it, thinking it to be a deceit; or they will ignore it. Why did I not go myself? Why did I not send to the Portugals earlier? I belabored myself with a thousand such whys, every one of them futile.

My brooding was broken by the touch of the Jaqqa Kasanje against my arm, and he said, “Calandola would speak with you, O Andubatil.”

Terror! O mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me, and hide me from him! For I was sure he knew of my betrayal: that Kulachinga was taken, that she had confessed all, that I would be reproached for my treason and sent down below to die beside the Portugal woman.

I did make my face firm and unrevealing, and went me down the high table to the Imbe-Jaqqa. Who greeted me in somber fashion, most stark and grim; and when his eyes met mine it was needful that I call into play all my strength of will, so that I did not go down to kneel before him and babble forth my contrition.

To me he said, “When this festivity is at an end, Andubatil, I must speak most urgently with you.”

Ah, then, he knew my treachery!

But no: it was another matter entirely. For he said, as I so stonily faced him, “I have learned much that is important to me, this day. The conspiracy against me that I feared, and of which I have spoken to you: it is real, it is ripe. Its leader is known to me. He is planning shortly to strike. But I will strike first, Andubatil, and you will be at my side in the slaying of my foes.”

Then he knew nothing at all of my betrayal, for which I felt vast relief.

“Ah, then, who is the enemy?” said I.

“Afterward will we talk, in private.” He clasped my hand between his great paws. “You alone can I trust. You alone are my brother.”

Which filled me with shame, that he should have such love for me and I having done such treason against him. And also it made clear to me who the enemy must be, from Calandola’s words, “You alone are my brother.” So this night would be a night of many reckonings.

But one above them all was primary. Thinking that out of need of me, or out of love, he might yet grant me that one great boon, I said in a low voice to him, “May I ask you now one more time, O Imbe-Jaqqa, to relent toward the Portugal woman, and—”

“Nay!” he roared, like an angered lion.

“I beg–”

“Nay,” he said again, more quietly, shaking his great head to and fro. “It may not be, Andubatil. I ask you, plague me not on this score. She is doomed. Nothing can save her. Nothing! She has done treason against us; she must die, or my power will be wholly without credit here.”

“Ah.”

“Forget her. She is lost to you. Go, now: to your place. But afterward, come to me, and keep ready your sword, for tonight I think you will need it.”

There was no hope. He was fixed upon her death.

And what now, how did I halt time? Of Portugals there was no sign. There was no one to whom I could turn but Calandola, and he had refused me, and short of some madman’s deed that beyond doubt would cost me mine own life, I could do naught but stand and watch, and pray, and wait. Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! Yet could I not turn back the striking of the final hour, which was all but upon us now.

The wine-bibbing had reached a high moment, and the Jaqqas did mill about, spilling the stuff down their chests and bellies in their wild surfeit. Imbe Calandola arose, and gave his signal, and the giant black headsman of the tribe stepped forward with his titanic blade, and the drums went still and the fifes ceased an instant, long enough for me to hear Dona Teresa say most sorrowfully, ^uSancta Maria ora pro nobis” and some other like phrases.

Now, Portugals! Now erupt, and fall upon this heathen band!

But they did not come. And, I came to see, they would not come, and the clock could not be halted, and the last moment was at hand. And I was helpless.

I looked toward Dona Teresa and had my final sight of her bare supple body, still so beautiful and full of life, and I thought me of Anne Boleyn the Queen’s mother, and of Katherine Howard, and of many another whose death had early been inflicted in this fashion, for truly this is a vale of tears: and there was a sudden frightened cry, “Andres!” and she bent forward.

And the huge Jaqqa did strike from her her head. I did avert mine eyes for the pain of it in my soul, but I heard the terrible sound of it; I cannot ever forget that sound. And when I looked again I would have rejected the awful evidence of my vision, but I could not.

So it was done, the which I was witness to, and yet even after I saw it carried out I did not fully believe it, so sharp was my memory of her in my arms, so warm was the impress of her upon my soul. I could not associate the sundered thing lying bloody in the clearing with the slender girl who had come to me in my prison, or with the noble woman who had gone striding so queenly through the avenues of São Paulo de Loanda, or with the companion of my arms of only a few days past. It was done.

“Give me wine!” I cried, and pulled a cup toward me, and gulped it down to ease my pain.

“So it will be,” said Calandola, “with all the Portugals of that city. You will see it, Andubatil: we will take them prisoner while they slumber, and we will cut from them their heads, and we will swallow them back into us and they will be gone from the land. You alone will wear the white skin on these shores, Andubatil. We will have no others here.”

And he did call for wine, and pound his cup until he had it. And when he had it he poured for me, and then for him, and for Kinguri; and I saw Kinguri smiling with special joy for the pain he had brought upon me by the death of my beloved.

“We will wrestle, you and I,” said Kinguri, “after we have eaten. Eh? Will you face me in the match, Andubatil?”

“With the Imbe-Jaqqa’s leave, that I will,” said I.

He turned to Calandola. “What do you say, brother? Am I to wrestle the Christian tonight!”

Calandola stared at him a long while, and finally he said, “Yea, you will wrestle with him, Kinguri. So be it, you and Andubatil.”

Kinguri’s eyes gleamed. “I have waited long for this, Andubatil.”

“As have I, brother,” I said to him.

“Ah,” said he. “You will call me brother no longer, after tonight!”

I shrugged and turned away. My soul was still stunned by the death of Teresa, and I wanted no bickering with Kinguri to intrude on my grief, not now: there would be time later to wrestle him, and, if God gave me the strength, to break him in pieces, and pull his long limbs from his trunk, and cast him like offal into the bone-pit. But that would be later.

Because that there was a cold place now beneath my breastbone like a lump of ancient ice, I drank heavily to warm it, a stoup of wine perhaps and then another, a bucket of it, a hogshead, a barrel. Yet it barely moved me and did not stir my soul; the coldness within burned it all away.

Some Jaqqa servants meanwhile gathered up Dona Teresa’s body and took it to the kettle, and her head they did remove from the scene, to give it interment and prevent the mokisso of her from molesting their souls, I suppose, or to keep her zumbi from haunting their sleep. To all this I paid little heed. For I was sunk deep in gloom of her death, that cut me so deep. And I thought me of her ambitions to greatness, her dreams of glory and lust for high place, and all those other aspects of her, reduced to nothing now, for that she was mere dead meat, and that gave me great sadness, at the injustice of her death and the injustice indeed of all death.

Yet as the wine entered at last upon me and lulled my sorrow, I came to be more accepting. Truly what did it matter that Dona Teresa had died now instead of then, since that it was foreordained that one day she must die? I remembered me the words of one of the wisest men that ever was, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose book of meditations I had pored over as a boy, and his words now floated through my soul, that were, “Do not act as if thou would live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee.”

Aye! And where today is Marcus? And where are all those who stood beside Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field an hundred year ago, so proud as they were then at the winning of the commonwealth from King Richard Crookback! So why feel torment for the death of a woman now, or fear indeed for mine own death to come, when our lives are like unto that of a butterfly? Everything is only for a day.

These thoughts did ease me some, and also the wine. But I did sit morosely while those about me were in wild frenzy. There were Jaqqas making festivity as far as my gaze could encompass, all of them heavy gone in drink, and rolling about with their women, and coupling on the warm bare earth. Slaves went among them, bringing slabs of meat from the slaughtered cattle, and all manner of fruits, and other dainties.

And then came the monstrous moment when the banquet was at its fullest and the flesh of Dona Teresa was deemed to be ready, and they did bring this most awful food to the high bench for the delectation of the Jaqqa lords.

Kinguri rose, and smiled a cold savage smile upon me, and addressed his royal brother, saying loudly, “O Imbe-Jaqqa, since that this woman was Andubatil’s wife, it is fitting that you surrender unto him the choice of all the meat of her, though it be your right to take the first selection.”

Calandola did at that look startled, for he had not expected it, and I supose was not sure whether Kinguri meant some mischief toward him from it. But then he considered, and I think it did seem proper to him. Turning to me he declared, “Aye, that is the fitting thing. I grant you the Imbe-Jaqqa’s portion, O Andubatil!”

I gaped at him in amaze. “You would not have me do that, my lord!”

“It is honor most great.”

“Nay,” I said, deep in my throat. “I will not eat of it!”

But this enraged the Imbe-Jaqqa, for he was not accustomed to refusal, nor was he practiced at being told by Kinguri how he should comport himself, and all this had put him in a whirl. His eyes grew furious and veins stood out upon the great thickness of his neck, and he cried, “Take her and make her into you.”

“I beg you, Lord Imbe-Jaqqa—”

“I command you, Andubatil!”

To which Kinguri said, “Would you dispute the command of the Imbe-Jaqqa?”

“Give over, brother,” I answered him. “I want no part of this festivity.”

“Ah, we should have slain you at the first,” said he. “Instead of cherishing you, and nurturing you, and feigning that you were of our own kind. A white Jaqqa! What madness! You are the cause and root of all our woe! Take and eat!”

And Kinguri did seize and shove into my face the broad green leaf of a jungle tree, wide as a platter, upon which lay steaming a cut of meat, a section that—nay, I will not write it, my mind rebels, even now my gorge rises—

But this dreadful meat the Imbe-Jaqqa’s brother did most insistently offer to me, exclaiming all the while in stentorian voice that high acclaim was being done to me by this, and urging me to have it for the good of mine own spirit. I was steadfast in my refusal, and he in his insistence, and he pressed the steaming meat upon me, and I did force it back. Both of us were shouting most furiously. I did not fear Kinguri’s wrath. I did not at that moment fear even death: but I would not die with the shame of this bestial meal upon my soul.

Calandola, too, was in outrage that I had refused the meat.

“You will not say nay!” he cried. “Eat! Take, eat!”

And he held me and shook me, and I fought back at him, which made me indeed feel like a butterfly in his mighty grip; but the wine and my grief and rage did arm me, and with a strength I did not expect I pushed myself back from him a bit. Yet did he seize me again.

“Eat! Eat!”

And from behind him came Kinguri, cackling with delight at the strife he had let loose, crying, “Eat, Andubatil! Eat!”

Calandola’s strength was diabolical and could not be resisted. He held me and forced me backward, and that loathly fillet of once-beloved flesh he did most terribly bring into approach of my mouth, though I resolved I would not open for it, no matter how frightsome the torment he applied. His face hovered an inch from mine; his sweat fell upon my skin and scalded me; his eyes were great beacons that burned into my skull; truly he was the incarnation of the Dark One, truly the authentic Diabolus, and in that nightmare noise of shouting and battling and musicking my spirit began to reach the limit of its tether, all but overcome by the dread force of this cannibal chieftain.

I know not what would have happened then, save the Imbe-Jaqqa would have had the flesh of Teresa into me to satisfy his crazed need to overmaster me; but at the moment of it, as the meat neared my lips, Calandola did utter a sudden great cry of surprise and pain, and released me. I beheld Kinguri standing behind him with a war-hatchet raised, having struck at his brother and cut him deeply.

So the insurrection had begun, and the enemy had had his first blow. I saw that all this was a ruse on Kinguri’s part, a diversion, this business of the meat, to enrage Calandola and cause him to put aside his prudence so that he could be slain. Now blood poured down the Imbe-Jaqqa’s back and he looked dazed and stunned by his wound, and Kinguri was making ready to strike a second and fatal time.

At the sight of this, the Jaqqas below and around us began to shout also, and caper, and strike one another; the dissension at the high table seemed to act very like a kindling, that struck into the dry tinder of the camp, they being so far gone, all of them, in wine, and so wrought-up from the long delay before marching into battle. And the striking of Calandola by Kinguri was, I perceived, the signal for a general affray, a war between two Jaqqa factions, one faithful to the monarch and one loyal to his brother.

The Imbe-Jaqqa’s bodyguard, stupored somewhat by wine but not yet altogether incapable, rushed toward Kinguri and pulled him some dozen feet away before he could strike the second blow. All was engulfed now in madness. Thousands of drunken Jaqqas roared and thrashed about like ape-creatures, scarce human, more like hairy baboomas or wild pongos and engecos, smashing whatever lay in their way, tipping over the kettles of scalding water, hacking at trees and at cattle and at one another. I looked to escape, but no escape was possible, for that a turbulence of berserk men surged on all sides, a stew of flailing crazed humanity, and it was like the great maelstrom or whirlpool of the northern waters, that becomes so irresistible a vortex as to swallow everything, and there is no fleeing from it. So was I buffeted about, and swept here and there. There was killing everywhere; and I saw the bloody Calandola roaring and bellowing and fighting a dozen men at once.

Then in the general upheave I found myself nose to nose with Kinguri. Blood did flow along his scalp and forehead in torrents, and his eyes were a wild man’s.

“You!” he cried. “The peril, the curse among us!”

“Let me past you, brother,” said I.

He struck at me with the butt end of his hatchet, and laid bare my cheek almost to the bone, cutting athwart the older scars of my tribal ornamentation. I felt the streaming of my blood, but there was no pain, not then, not yet. He came to me with a second blow, but there was good frenzy upon me also, the kind that in battle does arm a man to surpass his own power. And as his hatchet descended did I catch his wrist and hold it high over me, so that neither of us could move.

We stood there maybe five hundred year, or maybe five thousand, frozen, wholly stilled, with all the drunkard Jaqqas circling about us and none daring to come near. Kinguri could not bring his great long arm down upon me to do injury, and I could not push that arm above me back to shake the weapon from it, so well matched were we, and so thoroughly equal in force. But if hatred alone had heat, I would have fried to a sizzle beneath his gaze.

To me he said, as we stood in that way, “You will die now, and you will join your Portugal witch in our banquet.”

“Ah, nay brother, nay, not so! I will have my vengeance upon you for her death!”

And with a surging of strength, such as comes upon a man perhaps once or twice in his life when he is at his greatest need, I took his arm and drew it down, and twisted it so that it snapped: for we were wrestling at last, but it was not the graceful dance of the Jaqqa sport-wrestling, but rather a wrestle for life or death, and the contest was to me. I heard the bone yield in his arm; his lips drew back in a horrid scream; the hatchet fell, and I snatched it up, and made ready to have his life from him.

Then there came above us a great spreading darkness, like unto some vast bird that had opened his wings over us to blot out the glitter of the stars. I did not understand. But after a moment I perceived it was vast Calandola that loomed over both us twain as an avenging-demon.

“He is mine,” said Calandola to me, and from my hand he plucked Kinguri’s hatchet, the very hatchet that had wounded him, taking it as lightly as it were a straw; and Kinguri, hissing, crouched down to shield himself with his hands.

“Slave!” the Imbe-Jaqqa cried. “Go! Go from me! Go from the world!”

And with a fearsome blow of the hatchet he did maim his crouching brother, lopping off an arm, and then struck again, the blow the second time being dire and the blood of Kinguri leaping forth to spew us both.

“Nugga-Jaqqa!” Calandola exclaimed. “Shegga-Jaqqa!” And spat upon his brother’s corpse, and trampled him into the reddened earth.

Then did he turn, and confront me once again, and a more hellish sight I hope never to see. His own blood and Kinguri’s painted his body utterly, that also did shine with the grease of slaughtered men, and his eyes were lunatic eyes, for that he had seen his kingdom dissolving about him in this war of brothers that had sprung up so suddenly.

“Come, we must kill them all!” he cried.

“Kill them yourself,” said I. “I want no part of your warfare.”

“What say you?”

“I am no longer of your kingdom, Calandola!”

“Ah, and is that so?” Advancing upon me, he did say in thick half-strangled tones, “You will fight when I tell you to fight, Andubatil, and you will eat what I give you to eat, and you will obey me in all things. You are my creature, you are my toy!” And then he did cry out in a language I did not know, perhaps no language at all save the language of madness, or the language of Hell, some belching coarse mazy gibberish, the language of coccodrillos, the language of dream-warlocks. And leaped high and brought down the hatchet, but I lurched aside, and went unharmed, and he leaped again, and swung, and came near to trimming my beard, and cried out in his coccodrillo-crazy jargon anew. I was sure I would die at his hand, so berserk was he, but I meant to make him work at it. Thus he pursued me about in the narrow space we had to move, chopping at me and cursing me and weeping and moaning, while blood poured over him, and all his followers did battle drunkenly amongst themselves. I longed for a pistol, that I could thrust it into his face and explode him to Hell; but of pistols I had none, and my musket was in my cottage, that would have been useless here anyway in such close quarters. A sword I did have, and was able finally to hoist it out, and for an instant we faced one another as equals. But only for an instant, since that as I lunged at him with my blade he struck downward upon it with his hatchet in such force that my arm was made numb, and I dropped the weapon, not knowing whether I still had an arm or not.

“Jesu receive me,” I cried.

“Inga negga hagga khagga! cried Calandola, or some such wild garboil.

And he readied himself to come upon me and make an end of me. But in that instant came a thunderclap and a burst of flame in our midst, and a second such uproar, and a third. In mid-stride the Imbe-Jaqqa halted, and looked about.

Cannon!

Aye, Christian weapons erupting from all sides! For we were surrounded, the army of Portugals having come at last, and setting themselves up in surround of this place while the maddened Jaqqas did blind themselves with wine. Too late for Dona Teresa, alas, but in time, in time for my salvation, the forces of the Masanganu garrison had appeared, and were making deadly war into the Jaqqa multitude.

Imbe Calandola did look at me most melancholy at this onslaught, much as Caesar must have looked upon Brutus: for I think he guessed that it had been I who brought this army onto him. “Ah, traitor, traitor,” said he in a low sad voice, and reached out to grip my shoulder, and held it tight a long moment, as brother might hold brother in a dark time, so that I felt the full flow of his powerful soul rushing from him to me. And having done that, I thought he would slay me, but merely did he scowl, and he spat upon me and turned on his heel without one more word to me. Then did he cry for his lieutenants by name, “Kasanje! Kaimba! Bangala!” Fully sobered was he by this invasion of the Portugals. I think he would fain have had Kinguri by his side now, and Andubatil as well; but Kinguri was tatters in the dust, and Andubatil was Andubatil no longer, having repudiated altogether his Jaqqa allegiance and taken on once more the name of Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex.

Calandola, like a thwarted Lucifer, went running off one way, and I went the other, thinking to tunnel down into darkness in the bush, to strip from myself the beads and bangles of the man-eater nation; better to be naked now than a Jaqqa. As he vanished I saw old Ntotela and Zimbo come toward me, both of them wounded and looking more than half dazed. They hailed me and cried out, “Andubatil! Imbe-Jaqqa Andubatil!”

“Ah, nay, I will not be your king,” I said, for that was their purpose, to offer me the Jaqqa crown, I think, with all else fallen into turmoil.

“Imbe-Jaqqa!” said they again, sadly, in bewilderment, but I shook my head and ran past them.

Fires were blazing, clouds of dusty smoke were rising. From their fortifications around us the Portugals fired again and again, exploding a sunrise on the darkness, and the Jaqqas did stampede most wildly, all their brave courage peeled away by the confusion of their leadership and the surprise of the assault. They went this way and that, a headless mob. Some rushed into the adjoining camp of Kafuche Kambara, where I think they were slaughtered; some stood their ground, and made war against one another while the Portugals in regular formation sent them to Hell; some went into madness, and screamed and raged into the trees; and I know not what the others did, save that the camp of many thousands was dissipated, and reduced within an hour or two to nothing.

There came at last the dawn. I stood alone in a field of dreadful carnage. Black bodies lay everywhere, and a very few white ones in armor. The great kettles of the man-eaters were overturned; their banners were down; their shrines were all trampled. Mists drifted over the ground, and streams of blood ran like wine, and streams of wine alongside the blood, so that they mixed in hard mockery of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s own favored tipple. Of Calandola I saw nothing. He had slipped away; he had surely not been slain. I do not believe he could have been slain, nor that he will ever die. He is too dark a force, too deep in league with Satan his master, whose incarnation I do think him to be. Search I did for that great body, and I did not discover it. It would have surprised me much had it been otherwise.

And at sunrise the Portugals found me. I was naked but for shreds; I was bloodied and injured; and I sobbed, not out of grief nor fear but of simple relief and ease, that this eternal night was over, and the demons were fled, and I still alive.

Three soldiers that were little more than boys came upon me and pointed their muskets at me, and I threw up my hands to show I meant no harm.

“What is this?” they asked. “Is it Jaqqa, or demon, or what?”

“English,” said I in their own Portuguese tongue. “I am Andres the Piloto, of São Paulo de Loanda, captive among the Jaqqas these past years, and you have freed me.”

“Go you to the governor,” said one Portugal to another, who rushed off at once. And to me he said, looking wide-eyed upon me, “I have heard tales of you, but I thought that they were all but fable. What has befallen you, man? Are you hurt?”

I replied, “I have been in the Devil’s own paw, and he has squeezed me some. But I am whole, I think, and will go on breathing some while longer. Jesu Cristo, it has been a dream, and not a cheerful one, but now I am awake. Now I am awake!”

And I did fall to my knees, and give thanks for my deliverance to Him who guardeth me.

Through the forest now came more Portugals, and at their head was the Angolan governor, João Coutinho, of whom Dona Teresa had spoken. This man looked at me long, without belief, as if I had a second head beside mine own, or wings and a tail. At last he said, “It was you, then, that summoned us.”

“Aye. But I had given up all hope of your coming.”

“We came as swift as we could. There were tales of a massing of the Jaqqas, so that we were poised for the attack, and needed only to know the place. What is your name, Englishman? Andres, is it?”

“Andrew, in good sooth. Andrew Battell.”

He gave me his hand, and drew me to my feet, and ordered up a cloak to be thrown over me, and sent for his surgeon to examine my wounds. This João Coutinho was a man of perhaps four-and-thirty, very sleek and handsome of face, with a warm and kindly way about him; I saw by the mirrors of his soul that were his eyes, that he would use me well, and that he felt great compassion for me in my long travail, so that perhaps my betrayals were at their end.

He said, “And the Portugals who were prisoner with you?”

“Dead. All.”

“Dona Teresa? Don Fernão?”

“Dead,” said I. “Dead and eaten.”

He looked away, choking with a deep revulsion.

“They are monsters,” said he after a moment. “We will hunt them down, and they shall all perish. Did they torment you greatly?”

“Nay,” I answered. “They treated me like one of themselves. I think it was for my golden hair, that made me seem as some kind of spirit to them.”

“Golden hair?” said Don João Coutinho in wonder. “Is it golden, then?”

“Is it not?”

He put his hand to it, and ran his fingers gently through it, and said, “It is white, Senhor Andrew, it is most altogether and entirely white.”