Then the king took his place upon a carpet spread on the ground, some fifteen fathoms long and broad, made of the fine fabric nsaka, which is a stuff resembling velvet, and sat upon a high throne the height of a man, covered entirely in leopard-skin. He commanded his ndambas to strike up, these instruments being pieces of palm-tree stems, five feet long and split down one side: notches are carved on the edges of the split, and they rub these notches with a stick to make a weird and unearthly sound, like the rasping of gigantic crickets. Also they have an ivory trumpet made of elephanto tusk, called the mpunga, hollowed and scraped light. With these mpungas and ndambas they created a truly hellish noise. After they had sported and shown the king pleasure in this way, he rose and stood upon his throne, and beckoned to the great archer, and received from him his bow and arrows. I thought the king himself would shoot them, but no: he bestowed them on a high priest, or rain-witch, who stood by his side all daubed with paint and feathers. Also beside the king were the four albino monsters, albino being the word the Portugals use for these white blackamoors; and with them were various other witches and mages of the tribe, even the old Nganga Gomberi woman. There was a great awesome sounding of the drums and trumpets, that made me want to cover my ears with my hands, and set the Portugals to work crossing themselves furiously and muttering their Latin, and the high rain-witch aimed his bow toward the sky and fired his arrow with all his might, so that it went up in a great arc and vanished far off.
And then, you will say, nothing happened, and the dearth of rain did continue for another four months, and all the land was turned to desert. So I would myself have expected, from such pagan folly as this. But I must tell you that upon my mother’s soul I speak the truth when I report that within a few minutes a small white cloud did appear in the southeast, and then a darker cloud, and then the sky was thick with them, good black clouds of rain, and before an hour had passed we were having such a deluge as would have sent Noah to cover, for rivulets were running through the streets and dust was transformed instantly to gobs of mud. How does one explain it? One does not explain it. One ascribes it to the dark power of witchcraft. Or else one says that it was, after all, the rainy season, and rain must come sooner or later even in a dry year, and very likely the king had waited until signs of rain could be seen afar, and had chosen that day to hold his great rain-making festival. And was it witchcraft truly? I cannot rightly say. For it is the case that the king did not fire the arrow himself, but gave it to his priest. I think if the king was sure he could make rain, he would have drawn the bow with his own hand; but by giving the task to the priest, he protected himself against the chance that it would have no result. Priests can always be punished if they fail to bring rain; princes, in my experience, are not much interested in taking the responsibility for public failures.
That was the first of the three prodigies.
The second was but three days afterward, when light rains still hovered about the place. I was in the market exchanging a few of the cowrie shells that go for money here for a piece of the palm-cloth brocade, all done finely in green and red and yellow, from which I meant to make a mantle to shield me from the worst of the sun. Of a sudden I heard a shrill music from afar, a sound not unlike the bagpipery of the wild Scots, that punctured my ear in a painful way. At this piercing and frightful sound all activity ceased in the marketplace. Next I did hear men chanting, as men will do when they pull some heavy load or bear some great burden, a deep slow steady grunting song, I think made not of words but of mere sounds. All this came from the west, from the ocean side of the city.
Then there entered into view what seemed to be a coccodrillo of mighty dimension that floated in the air. But of course that was not the case: this coccodrillo, which was as large as any beast I hope to see, easily eight yards in length and perhaps more, was being borne on the shoulders of some eight or ten men. They struggled under its vast weight, chanting their stern rhythm to keep themselves moving forward, oom oom OOM oom oom, oom oom OOM oom oom, staggering and straining, their eyes all but popping out of their shining black faces, while about them danced and capered three or four musicians playing on their pipes and flutes. This uncouth procession came forward into the very center of the market; the black who was the commander of the carriers gave a cry, and thereupon all did kneel to their knees and roll aside, allowing the great coccodrillo to fall to the ground.
Its eyes were open but they had a gloss on them, and the horrid toothy mouth gaped but did neither close nor open further, for the animal was dead. Indeed such a smell came from it that my guts heaved and fairly leaped into my throat: for not only was there in the air the musky reek of all coccodrillos, that is loathsome enough, but also there was from this one the stink of corruption, of deathly decay. I stepped back some paces; but the townsfolk did press forward, crowding around, and setting up such an excited clamor that my thin newly won knowledge of their language was defeated, for I could not make out a single word, so frenzied was their outcry.
This display went on a long while, to my mystification. Was it some custom of the community to bring their slain coccodrillos to the marketplace and crow over their downfall? How, indeed, had this one been slain? I saw no mark on its body, though there was a kind of swelling about its middle, a bloat, that made me think it might have been poisoned. I could learn nothing. But at last came some of the grandees of the city out from the direction of the royal compound, led by a tall and bulky person in elegant scarlet robes, who had the look of a grand minister about him. This individual drew from his garment a long iron blade, which he thrust forthwith into the side of the coccodrillo in the place where the bloat was.
O! and the gushing forth of vile fluids! O, the stink, the foulness! In great calmness this high minister did slash at the monster’s thick hide, cutting it with no small effort, and thereby liberating such a flow of evil bile as to make me gag and choke. Yet did I not turn away, for I have this certain quality that I scarce do understand, of looking with fascination upon certain repellent and frightful things, of being drawn to them by a kind of magical attraction. So I watched; and this functionary of the court, when he was done slashing open the belly of that leviathan, did thrust his arm into the hole, and grope around within, reaching even unto his shoulder, and suddenly, grimacing and grunting, he pulled forth something that I could not at first recognize, and which I then perceived to be a human arm, partly digested and much melted from its true shape. At this sight a heavy cry went up from the onlooking populace. Still did the official tug; and the arm was attached to a body, and the body to a chain, and the chain led to a second body, and a third, and this revelation of horror and death went on and on, passing all belief.
In time there were eight half-eaten bodies lying in a ghastly sequence on the ground, and the coccodrillo, thus emptied of its prey, had a flattened and shrunken look. The court official, satisfied that no more victims lay within, arose and removed all his garments, for he was entirely beslimed with gore and muck, and boys came to him and cleansed him with buckets of water; and, taking on new garb, he strode off toward the palace to tell the tale of this event. Whilst the populace, crowding around, set up a lengthy commentary on all this in low murmuring tones.
I saw a merchant who I knew to have some Portuguese, and I touched his arm and said, partly in that language and part in his own, “Pray tell me what has befallen here.”
And he explained that this coccodrillo was so huge and greedy that he had devoured an alibamba, that is, a chained company of slaves, that had been at work along the shore of the nearby river some days back. As the unfortunate captives did their toil, one had slipped and fallen to the muddy bank where the creature lurked; and, springing upon him with that terrible speed which coccodrillos demonstrate when their appetites are aroused, it had eaten the man whole. But by the suction of its maw it had pulled the next in the chain toward him, and the next, and the next, gobbling each in his turn, there being no escape, each terrified slave watching as his predecessor was
devoured. Until at last the entire alibamba of men was well within the coccodrillo, and I know not how many yards of chain besides.
It was the indigestible iron that paid him his wages, though, and murdered the murderer. For even a coccodrillo, even a giant among giants such as this, has his limits; and it lay sluggish and torpid for days, striving to encompass its formidable meal, and it might in time have absorbed them all, taking some months at the task; but the chain was beyond its capacity. So it weakened and bloated, and boys of the town were assigned to watch him day and night in his final throes, and when his death was upon him these bearers hoisted him to their shoulders and carried him to the public square. The official that had cut him open was the regulator of slaves, who needs must keep a tally, and note down the death of any human property. The which he had done, and the episode was closed. I looked on as other slaves now appeared and cleaned away the eight awful corpses as if they were so much trash—taking them, I think, to the town’s bone-heap and scrap-yard. But the chain that had held the alibamba of slaves and drawn them to their dreadful deaths was most carefully rinsed of all slime, and carried off to be used anew. For some days thereafter it was the talk of the town, that the coccodrillo had had such a capacity for meat, and that it had died of its own gluttony; but not a word of remorse did I hear for the slaves that had perished. Perhaps my understanding of the language was not then perfected enough to register such subtleties. In any case I was haunted by the sight in my troublesome dreams three nights running, and in my waking hours I yearned ever more passionately for England and her good sweet Thames, that holds no such devilish monsters. And where, even if such things were apt ever to happen, the victims would be pitied some, and wept over, and put into a Christian grave for their last repose.
And that was the second of the Loangan prodigies.
But the third, which followed a week after that, had the deepest impact of the three, though it was the simplest event. How, you ask? Why, because although the eating of slaves by a coccodrillo in so great a number was an amazement and a marvel, it meant no threat to those who were yet undevoured. And the drought, grave matter though it might be, was more of a hardship than a catastrophe. But this third thing did portend a universal downfall, though in itself it was so slight. For it was merely the finding of a lone black man dead in the forest of ollicondi trees that lay between the city and the royal burial-ground at Loangiri.
A lone black man! Yea, but rather more than that.
Once again the event came to my awareness through the sounds of pipes and flutes, but this time, instead of playing in wild skirling sounds, it was more like a dark dirge, so slow and mournful that it all but wrung tears from my eyes. It had in it all the sadness that ever was, all the loss and grief and misery that Almighty God ever had sent amongst us to test our faith in Him. Then came a single drummer, beating a dead-march on a drum whose head was covered with the skin of that lovely black and white horse of the plains that they call here a zevvera. This too was so poignant a sound that it pierced the very soul. I was with Faleiro and Cabral when this music was heard, and we turned to one another in shared alarm, and Faleiro said, “I like this not. What calamity do they announce?”
“It could only be the death of the king,” I hazarded, “for what else here would merit such melancholy stuff?”
“God forbid it,” cried Faleiro, making the sign of the cross half a dozen times swiftly. “For if it is so, we are lost. When the Maloango dies the world stands still, and everything is given over to weeping. There is no hunting, the market is closed, the forge and the anvil grow silent, it is forbidden to go out at night.”
“Aye,” said Cabral, “and one may not laugh or cry out or even sneeze or cough, and there is no cooking of meals, and they do not go to the wells. Let us pray the king still lives. In the funeral week if a dog barks it is slain, if a ram bleats it dies.”
But these fears of the two Portugals were not long in troubling us: for the nobility began to issue from the royal palace, and among them came the king himself, borne by slaves atop his high throne. Which reassured us and at the same time increased our concern, since that we knew that the Maloango made no public appearances except when some grave occurrence had befallen his kingdom.
We stood still as stones while the pipers and the drummer went past, and then came the center and cause of this eerie procession. Out of the forest road walked very slowly four warriors of the realm who carried a broad shield of elephanto-hide stretched over a wooden frame; and on that shield lay a naked man, dead, his limbs dangling all asprawl. They brought him before the king and laid him down, shield and all, and backed away, and the musicians were silent, and the entire city was silent.
Then there did burst from the throat of the Maloango such a wailing and outcry as could rend the soul to hear it. You would think that he grieved for his own most dearest son, like David crying for Absalom. Yet was not this the king that had ordered a child of his issue quartered for coming untimely upon him as he drank wine? Now he wept, he moaned, he shredded his headdress and hurled it to the ground. Not even Mary beweeping the Savior could have set up such a vast lamentation.
“What is it?” I asked Faleiro. “Why does he shriek so?”
“This is a prince of the Jaqqas that lies dead here,” replied Faleiro in a hoarse whisper.
I moved as close as I dared, for a better look. Indeed the dead man seemed to be of some tribe other than the Loangan. He was of large stature, slender, with great elongated arms and legs and a high slim neck, yet also he had nobly developed muscles, that lay like cords of metal beneath his sleek midnight-hued skin. He wore nothing but a double rope of white beads about his narrow hips, and on his bare shining chest there was painted, strangely, the sign of the cross in some thick white paint, that gave him the look of a Knight Templar which had gone out to take the Holy Land from the infidel. His cheeks were covered with ridged scars, six down this side, six down that. In the grimace of his dead mouth I saw two of his upper teeth gone and two lower, which seemed done by way of ornament, since his other teeth were strong and good.
From his length and majesty I thought this might be that same Jaqqa prince I had seen standing alone in the clearing along the River Kwanza, that time just before the massacre of the village of Muchima. But no, this was a different man, although somewhat similar of body. For I remembered that that other prince, naked and leaning insolently on his shield, had possessed a male member of phenomenal length, like unto a black serpent hanging halfway down his thigh, and this man was constructed in a more ordinary way, though yet scarce worthy of anyone’s contempt. Even in death a kind of frightsome radiance was about him, a mysterious invisible glow, something like the halo that a devil might have if devils had halos of the sort that saints are widely said to have.
I saw on him the marks of his death. For his chest was somewhat crushed and twisted, and one side of his body was bruised, as though he had been injured by some great beast of the forest. It was Faleiro’s idea that this Jaqqa had been surprised by an elephanto, which had seized him in his long nose and squeezed him and perhaps hurled him against a tree to his perdition, and I think that was the case.
The King of Loango now left off his wailing and began a speech, of which I could understand perhaps every sixth word, and in which the words “Jaqqa” and “Imbe Calandola” were repeated over and yet over. Faleiro struggled to hear, as did Cabral, but I could tell that they scarce understood anything. And though I could follow the words, I knew so little of Loangan customs that I could not easily arrange them into sense. But by conferring among us three, we puzzled out the truth of the king’s speech.
Which was that one Jaqqa generally meant many; that in all likelihood this Jaqqa was a scout, come to investigate the desirability of making war against Loango; and that the death of this man, though it was not the doing of any Loangan, might well bring destruction upon the entire city.
Faleiro spat and kicked against the ground. “We must leave this place at once!
” he said, in a fury.
“Without our cargo?” I asked.
“If needs be. I will not stay here when the Jaqqas come.”
“We are charged to return to Angola laded with elephanto teeth,” I said, “and all the other goods that come from this place. How now, can we flee after waiting so long, and bring back nothing?”
“Piloto, this is no concern of yours!”
“It would be an embarrassment to show such cowardice.”
Faleiro’s eyes went bright with rage at that last heavy word, and he reached toward his sword. I being unarmed except for a small knife, I felt that my last moment might be upon me. And deservedly so, for I had spoken foolishly. What was it to me, if these Portugals prospered or did not prosper? I was but their prisoner, their indentured servant: if they chose to go back to Don João and say that fright of the Jaqqas had driven them off empty-handed, what shame would attach to me? Yet it galled me to have wasted so much time here without making trade, even if I was to have no share in the profits of the voyage. But Pinto Cabral came between us and made peace before Faleiro could strike, and I fell back, coming to my right mind and saying in a low voice, “I beg pardon. These are not my decisions to make.”
“Yea, Piloto. Stay here if you like, and let the Jaqqas stew you alive. But we will leave.”
While this dispute had unfolded, the Maloango had continued to instruct his subjects. I returned my attention to him and found that he was laying schemes for defense, ordering the city to prepare for an incursion of the cannibals, and sending scouts off into the forest to search out the enemy force. And soon everyone was running about in frantic hurry, while we withdrew to plan our retreat from that place.
Yet after this first hour of excitement things grew more calm. Drums sounded in the forest, near and farther away, that were the sounds of Loangan scouts talking to one another, sending back word by a sort of code, and what they seemed to be saying, so I did learn, was that no Jaqqas were near at hand: the dead man had been an isolated wanderer. That eased the crisis somewhat. The next day there was a ceremony of great pomp in which the Jaqqa was buried, at a special burial-place deep within the forest. I think the Maloango, by showing this respect to the Jaqqa’s corpse, hoped thereby to ward off the anger of his fellows.