Standing with the rifle lifted protectively, sweat starting to prickle his forehead and upper lip in the cool of the night, his eyes watering with the intensity of his gaze, Sebastian was suddenly aware of massive movement ahead of him. A solid shape through the bank of dancing leaves, and he looked up. High above him it loomed, black and big so that the night sky was blotted out by the spread of its ears, so near that he stood beneath the forward thrust of its tusks, and he could see the trunk uncoil like a fat grey python and grope forward blindly towards him; and beneath it the mouth gaped a little, spilling leaves at the corners.
He lifted the title, pointing it upwards without aiming, almost touching the elephant’s hanging lower lip with the muzzle, and he fired. The shot was a blunt burst of sound in the night.
The bullet angled up through the pink palate of the animal’s mouth, up through the spongy bone of the skull; mushrooming and exploding, it tore into the fist-sized cell that contained the brain, and burst it into a grey jelly.
Had it passed four inches to either side; had it been deflected by one of the larger bones, Sebastian would have died before he had time to work the bolt of the Mauser, for he stood directly below the outstretched tusks and trunk. But the old bull reeled backwards from the shot, his trunk falling flabbily against his chest, his forelegs spreading, and his head unbalanced by long tusks sagged forwards, knees collapsed suddenly under him, and he fell so heavily that they heard the thump in the village half a mile away.
‘Son of a gun!’ gasped Sebastian, staring in disbelief at the dead mountain of flesh. ‘I did it. Son of a gun, I did it!’ Jubilation, a delirious release from fear and tension, mounted giddily within him. He lifted an arm to hit Mohammed across the back, but he froze in that attitude.
Like the shriek of steam escaping from a burst boiler, the other bull squealed in the moonlight nearby. And they heard the crackling rush of his run in the corn.
‘He’s coming!’ Sebastian looked frantically about him for the sound had no direction.
‘No,’ squawked Mohammed. ‘He turns against the wind. First he seeks for the smell of us, and then he will come.’ He grabbed Sebastian’s arm and clung to him, while they listened to the elephant circling to get down-wind of them.
‘Perhaps he will run,’ whispered Sebastian.
‘Not this one. He is old and evil-tempered, and he has killed men before. Now he will hunt us.’ Mohammed pulled at Sebastian’s arm. ‘We must get out into the open. In this stuff we will have no chance, he will be on top of us before we see him.’
They started to run. There is no more piquant sauce for fear than flying feet. Once he starts to run, even a brave man becomes a coward. Within twenty paces, both of them were in headlong flight towards the village. They ran without regard for stealth, fighting their way through the tangle of leaves and stalks, panting wildly. The noise of their flight blanketed the sounds made by the elephant, so they lost all idea of his whereabouts. This sharpened the spurs of terror that drove them, for at any moment he might loom over them.
At last they stumbled out into the open, and paused, panting, sweating heavily, heads swinging from side to side as they tried to place the second bull.
There!’ shouted Mohammed. ‘He comes,’ and they heard the shrill pig-squealing, the noisy rush of his charge through the millet.
‘Run!’ yelled Sebastian, still in the grip of panic, and they ran.
Around a freshly lit bonfire at the edge of the village, waited the rejected Askari and a hundred of M’topo’s men. They waited in anxiety for they had heard the shot and the fall of the first bull – but since then, the squealing and shouting and crashing had left them in some doubt as to what was happening in the gardens.
This doubt was quickly dispelled as Mohammed, closely followed by Sebastian, came down the path towards them, giving a fair imitation of two dogs whose backsides had been dipped in turpentine. A hundred yards behind them the bank of standing millet burst open, and the second bull came out in full charge.
Immense in the firelight, hump-back, shambling in the deceptive speed of his run, streaming his huge ears, each squeal of rage enough to burst the eardrums – he bore down on the village.
‘Get out! Run!’ Sebastian’s shouted warning was as wheezy as it was unnecessary. The waiting crowd was no longer waiting, it scattered like a shoal of sardines at the approach of a barracuda.
Men threw aside their blankets and ran naked; they fell over each other and ran headlong into trees. Two of them ran straight through the middle of the bonfire and emerged on the other side trailing sparks with live coals sticking to their feet. In a wailing hubbub they swept back through the village, and from each hut women with infants bundled under their arms, or slung over their backs, scurried out to join the terrified torrent of humanity.
Still making good time, Sebastian and Mohammed were passing the weaker runners among the villagers, while from behind, the elephant was gaining rapidly on all of them.
With the force and velocity of a great boulder rolling down a steep hillside, the bull reached the first hut of the village and ran into it. The flimsy structure of grass and light poles exploded, bursting asunder without diminishing the fury of the animal’s charge. A second hut disintegrated, then a third, before the elephant caught the first human straggler.
She was an old woman, tottering on thin legs, the empty pouches of her breasts flopping against her wrinkled belly, a long monotonous wail of fear keening from the toothless pit of her mouth as she ran.
The bull uncoiled his trunk from his chest, lifted it high above the woman and struck her across the shoulder. The force of the blow crumpled her, bones snapped in her chest like old dry sticks, and she died before she hit the ground.
The next was a girl. Groggy with sleep, yet her naked body was silver-smooth and graceful in the moonlight, as she emerged from a hut into the path of the bull’s charge. Lightly the thick trunk enfolded her, and then with an effortless flick threw her forty feet into the air.
She screamed, and the sound of the scream knifed through Sebastian’s panic. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the girl thrown high in the night sky. Her limbs were spread-eagled and she spun in the air like a cartwheel before she dropped back to earth – falling heavily so that the scream was cut off abruptly. Sebastian stopped running.
Deliberately the elephant knelt over the girl’s feebly squirming body, and driving down with his tusks, impaled her through the chest. She hung from the shaft of ivory, squashed and broken, no longer recognizable as human, until the elephant shook his head irritably and threw her off.
It needed a sight as horrible as this to rally Sebastian’s shattered nerves – to summon the reserves of his manhood from the far places that fear had scattered them. The rifle was still in his hands, but he was shaking with fear and exertion; sweat had drenched his tunic and plastered his curly hair on to his forehead, and his breath sawed hoarsely in his throat. He stood irresolute, fighting the driving urge to run again.
The bull came on, and now his one tusk was painted glistening black with the girl’s blood, and gouts of the same stuff were splattered across his bulging forehead and the bridge of his trunk. It was this that changed Sebastian’s fear first to disgust, and then to anger.
He lifted the rifle and it weaved unsteadily in his hands. He sighted along the barrel and suddenly his vision snapped into sharp focus and his nerves stilled their clamour. He was a man again.
Coldly he moved the blob of the foresight on to the bull’s head, holding it on the deep lateral crease at the root of the trunk, and he squeezed the trigger. The butt jumped solidly into his shoulder, the report stung his eardrums, but he saw the bullet strike exactly where he had aimed it – a spurt of dust from the crust of dried mud that caked the animal’s head and the skin around it, twitched, the eyelids quivered shut for an instant, then blinked open again.
Without lowering the rifle Sebastian jerked the bolt open, and the empty case ejected crisply, pinging away
into the dust. He levered another cartridge into the breach and held his aim into the massive head. Again he fired and the elephant staggered drunkenly. The ears which had been cocked half back, now fanned open and the head swung vaguely in his direction.
He fired again, and the bull winced as the bullet lanced into the bone and gristle of his head, then he turned and came for Sebastian – but there was a slackness, a lack of determination in his charge. Aiming now for the chest, handling the rifle with cold method, Sebastian fired again and again, leaning forward against the recoil of the rifle, sighting every shot with care, knowing that each of them was raking the chest cavity, tearing through lung and heart and liver.
And the bull broke his run into a shuffling, uncertain walk, losing direction, turning away from Sebastian to stand broadside, the barrel of his chest heaving against the agony of his torn vitals.
Sebastian lowered the rifle and with steady fingers pressed fresh cartridges down into the empty magazine. The bull groaned softly and from the tip of his trunk, blood hosed up from the haemorrhaging lungs.
Without pity, cold in his anger, Sebastian lifted the reloaded rifle, and aimed for the dark cavity that nestled in the centre of the huge ear. The bullet struck with the sharp thwack of an axe swung against a tree trunk, and the elephant sagged and fell forward to the brain shot. His weight drove his tusks into the earth, burying them to the lip.
– 27 –
Four tons of meat delivered fresh to the very centre of the village was good value. The price paid was not exorbitant, M’topo decided. Three huts could be rebuilt in two days, and only four acres of millet had been destroyed. Furthermore, of the women who had died, one was very old and the other, although she was almost eighteen years old, had never conceived. There was good reason, therefore, to believe she was barren and not a great loss to the community.
Warmed by the early sun, M’topo was a satisfied man. With Sebastian beside him, he sat on his carved wooden stool and grinned widely as he watched the fun.
Two dozen of his men, armed with short-handled, long-bladed spears, and divested of all clothing, were to act as butchers. They were gathered beside the mountainous carcass arguing good-naturedly as they waited for Mohammed and his four assistants to remove the tusks. Around them, in a wider circle, waited the rest of the villagers, and while they waited, they sang. A drum hammered out the rhythm for them, and the clap of hands and the stamp of feet confirmed it. The masculine bass was a foundation from which the clear, sweet soprano of the women soared, and sank, and soared again.
Beneath Mohammed’s patiently chipping axe, first the one tusk and then the other were freed from the bone that held them, and, with two Askari staggering under the weight, they were carried to where Sebastian sat, and laid with ceremony at his feet.
It occurred to Sebastian that four big tusks carried home to Lalapanzi might in some measure mollify Flynn O’Flynn. They would at least cover the costs of the expedition. The thought cheered him up considerably, and he turned to M’topo. ‘Old one, you may take the meat.’
‘Lord.’ In gratitude, M’topo clapped his hands at the level of his chest, and then turned to squawk an order at the waiting butchers.
A roar of excitement and meat hunger went up from the crowd as one of them scrambled up on to the carcass, and drove his spear though the thick grey hide behind the last rib. Then walking backwards, he drew it down towards the haunch and the razor steel sliced deep. Two others made the lateral incisions, opening a square flap – a trapdoor into the belly cavity from which the fat coils of the viscera bulged, pink and blue and glossy wet in the early morning sunlight. In mounting eagerness, four others dragged from the square hole the contents of the belly, and then, while Sebastian stared in disbelief, they wriggled into the opening and disappeared. He could hear their muffled shouts reverberating within the carcass as they competed for the prize of the liver. Within minutes one of them reappeared, clutching against his chest a slippery lump of tattered, purple liver. Like a maggot, he came squirming out of the wound, painted over-all with a thick coating of dark red blood. It had matted in the woolly cap of his hair, and turned his face into a gruesome mask from which only his teeth and his eyes gleamed white. Carrying the mutilated liver, laughing in triumph, he ran through the crowd to where Sebastian sat.
The offering embarrassed Sebastian. More than that, it made his gorge rise, and he felt his stomach heave as it was thrust almost into his lap.
‘Eat,’ M’topo encouraged him. ‘It will make you strong. It will sharpen the spear of your manhood. Ten, twenty women will not tire you.’
It was M’topo’s opinion that Sebastian needed this type of tonic. He had heard from his brother Saali, and from the chiefs along the river, about Sebastian’s lack of initiative.
‘Like this.’ M’topo cut a hunk of the liver and popped it into his mouth. He chewed heartily, and the juice wet his lips as he grinned in appreciation. ‘Very good.’ He thrust a piece into Sebastian’s face. ‘Eat.’
‘No.’ Sebastian’s gorge pressed heavily on the back of his throat, and he stood up hurriedly. M’topo shrugged, and ate it himself. Then he shouted to the butchers to continue their work.
In a miraculously short space of time the huge carcass disintegrated under the blades of the spears and machetes. It was a labour in which the entire village joined. With a dozen strokes of the knife, a butcher would free a large hunk of flesh and throw it down to one of the women. She, in turn, would hack it into smaller pieces and pass these on to the children. Squealing with excitement, they would run with them to the hastily erected drying racks, deposit them and come scampering back for more.
Sebastian had recovered from his initial revulsion and now he laughed to see how every mouth was busy, chewing as they worked and yet at the same time managing to emit a surprising volume of noise.
Among the milling feet the dogs snarled and yipped, and gulped the scraps. Without interrupting their feeding, they dodged the casual kicks and blows that were aimed at them.
Into the midst of this cosy, domestic scene entered Commissioner Herman Fleischer with ten armed Askari.
– 28 –
Herman Fleischer was tired and there were blisters on his feet from the series of forced marches that had brought him to M’topo’s village.
A month before he had left his headquarters at Mahenge to begin the annual tax tour of his area. As was his custom, he had started in the northern province, and it had been an unusually successful expedition. The wooden chest with the rampant black eagle painted on its lid had grown heavier with each day’s journey. Herman had amused himself by calculating how many more years service in Africa would be necessary before he could resign and return home to Plaven and settle down on the estate he planned to buy. Three more years as fruitful as this, he decided, would be sufficient. It was a bitter shame that he had not been able to capture O’Flynn’s dhow on the Rufiji thirteen months previously – that would have advanced his date of departure by a full twelve months. Thinking about it stirred his residual anger at that episode, and he placated it by doubling the hut tax on the next village he visited. This raised such a howl of protest from the village headman that Herman nodded at his sergeant of Askari, who began ostentatiously to unpack the rope from his saddlebag.
‘O fat and beautiful bull elephant,’ the headman changed his mind hastily. ‘If you will wait but a little while, I will bring the money to you. There is a new hut, without lice or fleas, in which you may rest your lovely body, and I will send a young girl to you with beer for your thirst.’
‘Good,’ agreed Herman. ‘While I rest, my Askari will stay with you.’ He nodded at the sergeant to bind the chief, then waddled away to the hut.
The headman sent two of his sons to dig beneath a certain tree in the forest, and they returned an hour later with mournful faces, carrying a heavy skin bag.
Contentedly Herman Fleischer signed an official receipt for ninety per cent of the contents of the bag – Fleischer allowed hi
mself a ten per cent handling fee – and the headman, who could not read a word of German, accepted it with relief.
‘I will stay tonight in your village,’ Herman announced. ‘Send the same girl to cook my food.’
The runner from the south arrived in the night, and disturbed Herman Fleischer at a most inopportune moment. The news he carried was even more disturbing. From his description of the new German commissioner who was doing Herman’s job for him in the southern province, and shooting up the countryside in the process, Herman immediately recognized the young Englishman whom he had last seen on the deck of a dhow in the Rufiji delta.
Leaving the bulk of his retinue, including the bearers of the tax chest, to follow him at their best speed, Herman mounted at midnight on his white donkey and, taking ten Askari with him, he rode southwards on a storm patrol.
Five nights later, in those still dark hours that precede the dawn, Herman was camped near the Rovuma river when he was awakened by his sergeant.
‘What is it?’ Grumpy with fatigue, Herman sat up and lifted the side of his mosquito net.
‘We heard the sound of gun-fire. A single shot.’
‘Where?’ He was instantly awake, and reaching for his boots.
‘From the south, towards the village of M’topo on the Rovuma.’
Fully dressed now, Herman waited anxiously, straining his ears against the small sounds of the African night. ‘Are you sure … ?’ he began as he turned to his sergeant, but he did not finish. Faintly, but unmistakable in the darkness, they heard the pop, pop, pop of a distant rifle – a pause and then another shot.
‘Break camp,’ bellowed Herman. ‘Rasch! You black heathen. Rasch!’
The sun was well up by the time they reached M’topo’s village. They came upon it suddenly through the gardens of tall millet that screened their approach. Herman Fleischer paused to throw out his Askari in a line of skirmishers before closing in on the cluster of huts, but when he reached the fringe, he stopped once more in surprise at the extraordinary spectacle which was being enacted in the open square of the village.