Lord of Darkness

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

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

  With that he commenced an uttering of gloomy prayers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Then did they notice us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  A third said, “Should we run?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  That was the only escape attempt any of us made.

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

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

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

  “Who knows what interests a Jaqqa?”

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

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

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

  “Why, indeed?” replied the Portugal surgeon.

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

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

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