Lord of Darkness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Come,” he said. “There is still a moment for fleeing.”

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

  ELEVEN

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

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

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

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