CHAPTER IV.

We were joined on the 20th July by a small troop of Akkas, who had taken advantage of Munza's presence on their frontier to come and pay to him at one and the same time their homage and their annual tribute. As soon as the audience was at an end, the Akkas, as curious to see the white people as we were eager to set eyes on the pygmies, came to where we were.

After having got over their first feelings of timidity and alarm, they became by degrees more familiar with us, and de Morin turned their amiability to account by taking likenesses of several of them, whilst I jotted down in my memorandum-book the following particulars. Head, large and round, set on a thin, weak neck; height from 4 feet 5 inches to 4 feet 9 inches; arms long; upper part of the chest contracted, but widening out downwards to the huge stomach—paunch would be a better word; knees round and plump; hands small and elegant enough to excite the envy of Europeans even; a waddling-gait, owing to the centre of gravity being shifted by the size of the stomach; skull wide, and with a deep indentation at the base of the nose; chin receding; jaw pointed; hair short, and no beard whatever, notwithstanding the fable which endues the Akkas with flowing white beards, descending to their knees. After having pencilled down this portrait, I added these words—in spite of all their imperfections, these tiny beings do not resemble in any way the dwarfs exhibited amongst us at so much per head. Their deformity is, if I may so speak, natural, neither the result of any accident, nor phenomenal.

I closed my note-book, and did the honours of the tent, to the best of my ability, to our little visitors, so as to leave them a pleasing recollection of the celebrated white men, whose renown had penetrated even to them. Madame de Guéran gave them a few presents, Delange set himself seriously to work to study them from a phrenological point of view, and Miss Poles even, terribly severe on her own sex, but ever indulgent towards ours, treated these diminutive personages with all respect, declared that they were not at all bad in their way, and was especially eloquent on the intelligence of their expression.

As the Akkas, taking advantage of their diminutive stature and our kindness to them, very soon were guilty of certain indiscretions, we left them to themselves and our servants. Then it was that Joseph, emerging, theatrically speaking, from the wings, appeared on the stage. Full as ever of importance and presumption, inflated with his own personal advantages, proud of his physical superiority, and deeming himself, as a white man, to be far above all the Africans put together, he took it into his head to hold an inspection of the Akkas.

He walked to and fro amongst them, did the very heavy swell, stroked his whiskers, and looked down with lofty contempt upon all these funny beings, the tallest of whom was about the height of a child of ten years old. From time to time he stopped in his perambulation to cast a contemptuous glance on those around him, grinning, as he did so, in an idiotic, imbecile manner, and here and there bestowing a back-handed slap, intended to be encouraging.

Several of the Akkas, serious old gentlemen, very grand personages, perhaps, in their own little way, speedily came to the conclusion that the white man was making fun of them, and they began to betray signs of impatience. Joseph was utterly blind to all this; not content with his promenading and grinning, he showed an inclination to play with his little companions, like a fat schoolmaster with the small urchins of his village. The game he invented to take the place of a ball or a hoop was not a very happy idea, for he took it into his head, after the manner of Gulliver, to convert himself into a triumphal arch and make the newly-discovered Liliputians pass underneath it.

Some of them, good-tempered and entering into the spirit of the thing, joined in the game, but, all of a sudden, a man of about thirty, who had previously shown symptoms of annoyance at being treated like a child, and was now rendered positively furious by this final indignity, instead of passing beneath the triumphal arch, jumped on Joseph's back, clasped him round the neck with his arms, and bit his shoulder until it bled.

The pain was excessive, but it was nothing to the fear experienced by Joseph. The unexpected attack, and savage bite, conjured up all the ghosts of cannibalism which had haunted his troubled spirit for some time past. The Akka dwarfs, whom he had looked upon as harmless, disappeared; he saw before him only gigantic cannibals; they were not biting him, they were not eating him up bit by bit; he was being swallowed wholesale.

He uttered the most piercing shrieks, and begged for mercy, but the Pygmy was quite comfortable pick-a-back, relished the flavour of his steed's shoulder, and gave himself up to it with all his heart, or, rather, with all his teeth, whilst the whole of his companions, with their little hands holding their fat stomachs, laughed all over their tiny faces, as they had seen Joseph do.

The more our servant struggled, the more he curvetted about in order to throw the Akka, the tighter the latter held on to his neck with his arms, and to his shoulder with his teeth. He used Joseph as a steed, spurred him with his heels, and made him run or stop as he pleased, clasping him round the neck more and more firmly, and digging his teeth into him with increasing ferocity. Joseph wanted a game, so that he had no right to complain. He was playing at horses, only he was the steed, and the Akka the rider.

And what a rider! It was impossible to unhorse him. His steed, recalling the way a donkey has of rolling on his back, with his four legs in the air, lay down at full length and attempted to crush his jockey under his weight. But the skilful cavalier was quite up to that move; he slid round in front, and when Joseph got up the Akka was face to face with him, with his little eyes glistening, and every pointed tooth showing.

At last Joseph's piercing shrieks attracted the attention of some Monbuttoo soldiers. Seeing what was taking place, and having themselves, possibly, marked Joseph down as a toothsome morsel in case provisions should run short, they rescued him from the grinders of the dwarf, so that at all events a little bit of him might be left.

On the day after this occurrence, Joseph, whose head had been troubling him, was seized with a raging fever, accompanied by contractions of the muscles, and severe cramp. In the height of this fever, he imagined that he had been bitten by some mad animal, and that he had himself gone mad in consequence. "Get away," he shouted, "get away, I shall bite you!" Dr. Delange, though he did not fear rabies, which is nearly unknown in Africa, was at first alarmed by the violence of the delirium, but Nassar informed us that it was almost an invariable feature in the disease from which Joseph was suffering, peculiar to this climate, and called _kichyoma_.

The sorcerers and fetish-mongers of every description who followed the army, hastened to offer their services on behalf of the sufferer, but we sent them away, after overwhelming them with thanks and presents, for in Africa it is indispensably necessary to keep these quacks, often more powerful than even the chiefs, in a good humour.

Delange is quite equal to the task of restoring his patient to health, but if he is so restored, he will not be cured. He is sure to meet with some fresh disaster; indeed, he appears to be making a collection of them.

August 2nd.—We are in a hostile country, amongst the Domondoos. The inhabitants took to flight at our approach, abandoning all their possessions to the rapacity and, above all, the voracity of the Monbuttoos, who laid violent hands on fowls, goats, glass beads, ivory, skins, and tobacco. We are on a regular thieving expedition.

Munza is nearly always close to us, grave, thoughtful, often taciturn. He takes no part in the lawless proceedings of his army; but, though he appears to repudiate them, he does nothing to stop them.

"If I were to forbid them to rob and eat," said he one day to Madame de Guéran, "they would think I was mad, and would refuse to follow me. For your sakes I must not choose this time to reform the manners of my people."

He was wise in his generation, and he might have added that to bring about any reformation in African manners would be a task of considerable difficulty. The further we go the more disheartened we become on the subject. When we reflect that this people, old as the hills, has stood still for centuries—nay, that, on the contrary, it has gone backward to the utmost extreme of barbarism! For one man possessed of intelligence, and displaying more civilization than the remainder, such as Munza, for instance, we see every moment of our lives scores of brutes, neither more nor less. From a tribe like that of the Monbuttoos, considerably ahead of their neighbours, we pass suddenly to the Domondoos, who differ from animals simply in their power of speech.

If they had only an idea of fighting, by which they live, or, more truly die, but they have not even that. For countless years past the Monbuttoos have been in the habit of making a descent upon their territory at certain fixed periods, when they rob them, plunder, kill, and eat them, and not even yet have they been able to see that nothing would be easier than to exterminate and get rid, once and for all, of their dreaded invaders. Five or six hundred men hidden in the high grass, which in this country would afford cover for a whole army, screened by the gigantic trees, sheltered by the rocks on the Keebaly, or posted on the rising ground, which the enemy must skirt, would be ample to protect a country such as this, admirably adapted for defensive operations, and almost impregnable. But no—no sooner do they catch sight of the enemy than away they run, abandoning everything they possess, without even thinking of carrying off their most valuable treasures and hiding them in the mountains. Then all the fugitives collect together, and in a compact body engage the army of the Monbuttoos on open ground, where their bodies are just so many targets. The fight begins, it lasts for a few hours at most, and all is over; the Monbuttoos march off with their plunder and a thousand prisoners, to return in the following year at exactly the same period, and once more leave their cards on their neighbours.

This description was verified to the letter, and we came upon them in number about five or six thousand, in close order like ears of corn in a field, gesticulating, shouting, and beating their drums. We had only to open fire upon them with our sixty rifles, every bullet from which would find a billet in the ruck, and we should have laid the whole army low in ten minutes.

But they need not be uneasy; we are not going to take part in the massacre. It is a matter entirely between the Monbuttoos and the Domondoos, and we Europeans have nothing whatever to do with it. Nevertheless, the Nubians and Dinkas of our escort were eager to fight. Neither our society, which they had enjoyed for six months, the examples of moderation and humanity we had given them, nor their own semi-civilized state could subdue their warlike nature; the old original African blood rushed to their heads, and they felt impelled to put themselves in motion, to shout, strike, and kill.

They came round us and begged permission to fight. "What will the Monbuttoos think of us," said they, "if we do not help them?"

"Fight away, my friends, fight away!" replied de Morin, and he served out to each man ten rounds of blank cartridge, which he had prepared on the previous evening expressly for this purpose. They could thus make plenty of noise and not hurt anybody.

We ourselves, armed with telescopes, followed from a distance the varying fortunes of the battle. If it went against our allies, then, and then alone, would we interfere. We did not consider that we could well do otherwise.

The arrows began to whiz through the air; the battle had begun. Attention!