Part 8

Moonlight was flooding the forest beyond the native village of Moumbossa on the Upper Gambia, but where Dr Koomadhi was walking no moonbeam penetrated. The branches formed an arch above him as dense with interwoven boughs and thick leaves as though the arch was a railway tunnel. Only in the far distance a gleam of light could be seen.

At times the deep silence of the night was broken by the many sounds of the tropical jungle. Every sound was familiar to Dr Koomadhi, and he laughed joyously as one laughs on recognising the voice of a friend. The wild shriek of a monkey pounced upon by some other creature, the horrible laugh of a hyena, the yell of a lory, and then a deep silence. He felt at home in the midst of that forest, though when he spoke of home within the hearing of civilised people, he meant it to be understood that he referred to England.

When he emerged from the brake he found himself gazing at a solitary beehive hut in the centre of a great cleared space, A quarter of a mile away the moonlight showed him the village of Moumbossa, with its lines of palms and plantains.

He walked up to the hut without removing his rifle from his shoulder, and stood for some moments at the entrance. Then he heard a voice saying to him in the tongue of the Ashantees--

“Enter, my son, and let thy mother see if thy face is changed.”

“I cannot enter, mother,” he replied in the same language. “But I have come far and in peril to talk with you. We must talk together in the moonlight.”

He retained among his other memories a vivid recollection of the interior of a native hut. He could not bring himself to face the ordeal of entering the one before him.

“I will soon be beside you,” came the voice; and in a few moments there crawled out from the entering-place a half-naked old negress, of great stature, and with only the smallest perceptible stoop. She walked round Dr Koomadhi, and then looked into his face with a laugh.

“Yes,” she said, “it is indeed you, my son, and I see that you need my services.”

“You are right, mother,” said he. “I wondered if you still retained your old powers. That is why I stood for some minutes outside the hut. I said, ‘If my mother has still her messengers in the air, and in the earth, they will tell her that her son has come to her once more.

“You should not have doubted,” she said. “Do you fancy that such powers as have come to me by the possession of the Sacred Khabela can decay by reason of age or the weight of days?”

“If that had been my belief, should I have come to you this night?” he asked. “I have need of all your powers. I have need of all the powers of the Khabela.”

“You shall have all that I can command: are you not my son?” said the old woman. “But have you found the Sacred Ear to fail you?”

“Never, mother,” said Dr Koomadhi. “You told me what it could do, and it has never failed me within its limits. But I must have the more powerful charm of the Sacred Mouth. My need is extreme.”

“It must be extreme, and I will not deny it to you,” said his mother. “You know what it can do. No man or woman can withstand it. If any offspring of woman should hold that Sacred Mouth to his ear, or her ear, as the case may be, the words which you whisper into the Sacred Ear will seem the truth, whatever those words may be. You know that. But the magic of the Khabela is far greater. It will work at a distance. But if it is lost you know what the consequences will be. You know the decree of the great Fanshatee, the monkey-god?”

“I know it. The stone Khabela shall not be lost. I accept the responsibility. I must have command over it until the return of the moon.”

“And thou shalt have control of it, whether for good or evil. It told me that thou wert nigh to-night, so that thou must have the Ear charm in thy possession even now.”

“It is here, mother, in this pocket. I have shown it to no mortal whose colour is not as our colour, whose hair is not as our hair.”

“The white men laugh at all magic such as ours, I have heard.”

“Yes, they laugh at it. But some of them practise a form of it themselves. I have seen one practise it in a great room in England. Without the aid of a mystic stone he told sober men that they were drunk, and they acted as drunk men; he told rough fellows that they were priests, and they preached sermons as long and as stupid as any that we have heard missionaries preach.”

“And yet they say that our magic is a thing accursed.”

“Yes; that is the way with the white men. When they have said their word ‘damn’ on any matter, they believe that the last word has been said upon it, and all that other men may say they laugh at.”

“They are fools, my son; and thou art a fool to dwell among them.”

“They are wise men up to a certain point. They are only fools on the subject of names. They say that magic is accursed; but they say that hypnotism is science, and science is the only thing in which they believe.” He had some trouble translating the word hypnotism into the native speech. “Enough about them. Let me have the mystery, and then let me have a cake that has been baked in the earth with the leaves of the betel.”

“Thou shalt have both, ray son, before the morning light. Enter my hut, and I will dream that thou art a child again.”

But that was just where Dr Koomadhi drew the line. He would not crawl into the hut even to make his venerable mother fancy that his youth was renewed like the eagles.

He returned to Picotee the next day, and as he walked through the forest each side of the bush track was lined with monkeys. They came from far and near and put their faces down to the ground, their fore-hands at the back of their heads.

He talked to them in simian.

“Yes,” he said. “Ye know that I am the holder of the Khabela, intrusted to me by my brother Fanshatee; but if I lose it your attitude will not be the same.”

XII.

Two days had passed, after his return to Picotee, before Dr Koomadhi found time to call at the Residency. He found Major Minton lying on the cane settee in a condition of perspiration and exhaustion.

“I’m sure Dr Koomadhi will bear me out in what I say,” said Mrs Minton, as the Doctor entered the room. “I’ve been lecturing my husband upon the danger of taking such violent exercise as he has been indulging in,” she continued. “Just look at the state that he is in, Doctor. The idea of any sane man on a day like this entering into a climbing contest with a monkey!”

“Great heavens! Is that what he has been about--and the thermometer nearer a hundred than ninety?” cried the Doctor.

“I admit that I was an ass,” muttered the Major. “But somehow I felt that I should show Jacco that I could lick him on his own ground,--not exactly his ground--we were never on the ground.”

“And when I went out I found them swinging on the topmost bough of one of the trees,” said Mrs Minton. “Upon my word, my father will feel scandalised. Such a thing never occurred at the Residency before.”

“Apart from the social aspect of the incident, I am bound to say that it was most indiscreet,” said Dr Koomadhi. “Nothing precipitates sunstroke like over-exertion in a high temperature. Major, this must not occur again.”

“All right: don’t make a fuss, or you’ll soon be as hot as I am,” said the Major, rising with difficulty and crossing the room--he was bent almost double--to his wife’s tea-table.

“Hallo,” said the Doctor, “what have you been doing to yourself?”

“It is not what I have been doing but what I’ve left undone that you notice,” laughed the Major. “The fact is that I couldn’t be bothered shaving for the last few mornings. That’s what you notice.”

That was precisely what the Doctor did notice. He noticed the tossed hair of the Major’s head and such bristles of a beard and whiskers as had completely altered the appearance of his face. He also noticed that when Mrs Minton turned away for a moment her husband deftly abstracted two lumps of sugar from the bowl and began eating them surreptitiously.

“No nuts,” he heard him mutter contemptuously some time afterwards.

“Nuts?” said Mrs Minton. “You’ll ruin your digestion if you eat any more nuts, Dick. Dr Koomadhi, will you join your voice with mine in protest against this foolish boy’s fancy for nuts? You speak with the recognised authority of a medical man. I can only speak as a wife, and I am not so foolish as to fancy that that constitutes any claim to attention. If you continue rubbing your chest in that absurd way, Dick, you’ll certainly make a raw.”

Dr Koomadhi did not fail to observe that the Major was rubbing his chest with his bent-up fingers.

“I’m quite surprised at your imprudence,” said he, shaking his head. “You told me some time ago that though you had been for seven years in India, you never had a touch of fever, and you attributed this to the attention you paid to your diet. Now you know as well as I do that if a man requires to be careful in India, there is double reason for him to be careful on the West Coast of Africa. How can you so disregard the most elementary laws of health?”

Major Minton laughed.

“There’s nothing like exercise,” he said, “and the best of all exercise is climbing. Why, my dear Koomadhi, haven’t the greatest intellects of the age taken to climbing? Wasn’t Tyndall a splendid mountaineer? I don’t profess to be superior to Tyndall. Now, as I can’t get mountains to climb in this neighbourhood I take naturally to the trees. I think sometimes I could pass the rest of my life pleasantly enough here. Man wants but little here below. Give me a branch to swing on, a green cocoa-nut, and a friend who won’t resent a practical joke--I want nothing more. By the way, it’s odd that I never saw until lately--in fact, until two days ago--what good fun there is in a practical joke.”

“His perception of what he calls good fun deprived me of my brushes and comb this morning,” said Mrs Minton. “I must confess I fail to see the humour in hiding one’s brushes and comb.”

“It was the most innocent lark in the world, and you had no reason to be so put out about it,” said her husband, leaning over the back of her chair. Dr Koomadhi saw that he was tying the sash of her loose gown to the wickerwork of the table at which she was sitting, so that she could not rise without overturning the tray with the cups.

“My dear Major,” said the Doctor, “a jest is a jest, but your wife’s china----”

“Oh, you have given me away; but I’ll be equal to you, never fear,” said the Major, shambling off as his wife prepared to loose the knot of her sash from the table.

She did not speak a word, but her face was flushed, and it was plain that she was greatly annoyed. The flush upon her face deepened when her husband went out to the verandah and uttered a curious guttural cry.

“How has he learned that?” asked Dr Koomadhi.

“Learned what?” asked Mrs Minton.

“That cry.”

“Oh, it’s some of his foolishness.”

“I daresay; but----”

“Ah, I thought I could bring you here, my friend,” cried the Major, as Jacco the baboon swung off his usual place over the porch into his arms.

Dr Koomadhi watched the creature run its fingers through the Major’s disordered hair. He heard the guttural sound made by the baboon, and he heard it responded to by the Major.

He found that Major Minton was on a level with himself in his acquaintance with the simian language.

He rose and took leave of Mrs Minton, and then, with a word of warning in regard to his imprudent exercises, of the Major, left the Residency.

It was not until he had reached his own house that he discovered that upon the back of his spotless linen coat there had been executed in ink the grinning face of a clown. He recollected that he had seen Major Minton toying with a quill pen behind him as he sat drinking tea.

XIII.

A few days later Dr Koomadhi was visited--unofficially--by Commander Hope. The poor Commissioner was as grave as if an impetuous French naval officer had just been reported to have insulted the British flag on some part of the coast protected (nominally) by that variegated bunting. He was anxious to consult the Doctor regarding the condition of Major Minton.

“Indeed?” said the Doctor. “What do you suppose is the matter with him, sir?”

The Commissioner tapped his forehead significantly.

“A slight touch of sunstroke, I fancy,” he replied. “He has been behaving strangely--giving us a great deal of uneasiness, Koomadhi. Oh yes, it’s clearly a touch of sunstroke.”

“That’s bad--but not sufficiently bad to be very grave about, sir,” said the Doctor. “You know how these attacks pass away, leaving scarcely a trace behind, if properly treated. You have, of course, applied the ice?”

“We’ve applied nothing,” said the Commissioner. “He’s beyond our control, Koomadhi. He left the Residency last evening and has not turned up since.”

“Great heavens!”

“It’s a fact. Oh, he must be stark, staring mad”--the Commissioner was walking up and down the Doctor’s room in a state of most unofficial perturbation. “I found it necessary to speak to him pretty plainly a couple’ of days ago. It was bad enough for him to climb up the mast and nail the flag to the pole so that it could not be hauled down at sunset, but when it conies to dropping the keys of the despatch-boxes into the water-tank, the thing ceases to be a joke. I gave him a good slating, and he sulked. He had an idea, his wife told me, that he understood the simian language, and he was for ever practising his knowledge upon our tame baboon. What on earth does that mean, if not sunstroke--tell me that, Koomadhi?”

“It looks very like sunstroke, indeed,” said the Doctor. “But where can he have disappeared to?”

“That’s the question that makes me feel uneasy,” said the Commissioner. “I don’t like to make a fuss just yet, but--I’ll tell you what it is, Koomadhi,”--he lowered his voice to a whisper,--“the man has a delusion that he is an ape--it’s impossible to keep it a secret any longer. God help us all! God help my poor girl--my poor girl!”

The Commissioner broke down completely, and wept with his face bowed down to his hands. He was very unofficial--tears are not official.

“Come, sir, you must not give way like this,” said the Doctor. “This coast is the very devil for men like Minton, who will not take reasonable precautions. But there’s no reason to be alarmed just yet. The _Penguin_ will be here in a few days, and the instant the steamer drops her anchor we’ll ship him aboard. He’ll be all right, take my word for it, when he sails a few degrees northward.”

“But where is he now?”

“He’s probably loafing around the outskirts of the jungle; but he’ll be safe enough, and he’ll return, most likely, within the next few hours.”

“You are of that opinion?”

“Assuredly. Above all things, there must be no talk about this business,--it might ruin him socially; and your daughter----”

“Poor girl! poor girl! I agree with you, Koomadhi,--it must be kept a secret; no human being must know about this shocking business.”

“If he does not return before to-night, send a message to me, sir.”

“I’ll not fail. Poor girl! Oh, Koomadhi, her heart will be broken--her heart will be broken!”

The Commissioner went away, looking at least ten years older than when he had last been seen by Dr Koomadhi.

The Doctor watched him stumbling down the pathway: then he laughed and opened a bottle of champagne, which he drank at a gulp--it was only when he was alone that he allowed himself the luxury of drinking champagne in gulps.

Shortly before midnight he paid a visit to the barracks of the Houssas, and found that the officer who was on the sick list was very much better. Returning by the side of the jungle, he heard the sound of steps and a laugh behind him. It might have been the laugh of a man, but the steps were not those of a man.

He looked round.

A shambling creature was following him--a creature with a hairy face and matted locks--a creature whose eyes gleamed wildly in the moonlight.

“How the mischief can you walk so fast along a path like this?” came the voice of Major Minton from the hairy jaws of the Thing.

“I’m not walking so fast, after all,” said the Doctor. He had not given the least start on coming face to face with the Thing.

“I don’t care much about walking on roads; but I’ll back myself to cross a forest without leaving the trees,” said the Thing. “That would beat you, Koomadhi. Oh, by the way----” Here he emitted some guttural sounds.

The simian language was recognised by the Doctor, and replied to with a smile, and for some time the two exchanged remarks. The Doctor was the first to break down.

“I don’t understand that expression,” said he, when the other had repeated some sounds.

“Why, you fool, that means, ‘Is there anything to drink handy?’” said the voice of Major Minton. “Why, I know more of the language than you. We’ve been talking nothing else for the past day or two.”

“Where have you been?”

“In the jungle. Where else would you have me be?”

“Where, indeed? You’d better stay with me to-night. I’ll give you something to drink.”

“That will suit me nicely. I’m a bit thirsty, and----” Here he lapsed into the simian jabber.

He curled himself up in a corner of the sofa, and took the tumbler that Dr Koomadhi offered to him, drinking off the contents pretty much after the style of the Doctor when alone. He then began talking about the sense of freedom incidental to a life spent in the jungle, and every now and again his words became what was long ago known as gibberish; but nearly every utterance was intelligible to the Doctor.

After some time had passed, the Doctor took the carved stones out of the desk drawer, and, handing one to his companion, said--

“By the way, I wonder if you are still deaf to the sound of this thing. Try it again.”

“What’s the good? I’m not such a fool as to fancy that any sound can come from a stone.”

“Doesn’t Shakespeare say something about ‘sermons in stones’?”

“Oh, Shakespeare? He could hear things and see things that no one else could. Well, give me the stone.”

He put the roughly carved lips to his ear, while the Doctor raised the other to his own mouth.

“You can hear no murmur?” said the Doctor.

“Nothing whatever. I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll go asleep.”

“I can give you a bed.”

“A bed? What rot! No, thank you, I’ll be comfortable enough here.”

He curled himself up and went asleep before the Doctor’s eyes.

When the Doctor entered his sitting-room the next morning the apartment was empty.

XIV.

I was a fool for not detaining him by force,” said Dr Koomadhi, in telling the Commissioner, a few hours later, that his son-in-law had paid a visit to his (the Doctor’s) house. “But there really is nothing to be alarmed about. He has a whim, but he’ll soon tire of it.”

“I hope to heavens he’ll return by to-morrow evening,” said the Commander. “The _Penguin_ will be here in the morning, and we must get him aboard by some means. What a pity you didn’t lock him in.”

“To tell you the truth, I was afraid to do so--if he had made a row in the morning on feeling himself a prisoner the thing would be over the town before noon. Oh, you may be certain that he’ll turn up again either to-day or tomorrow.”

That night one of the officers of the Houssas gave Dr Koomadhi a circumstantial account of a strange chimpanzee which one of the men had seen on the outskirts of the jungle at daybreak. If the thing wasn’t a chimpanzee it certainly was a gorilla, the officer said, and he meant to have a shot at it. Would the Doctor join him in the hunt? he inquired.

The Doctor said he would be delighted to do so, but not before the next evening, he had so much on hand.

The _Penguin’s_ gun was heard early in the morning, and Dr Koomadhi had the privilege of reading his ‘Saturday Review’ at breakfast.

He went to the Residency before noon. The Commissioner was not there. He had gone aboard the _Penguin_, Mr Letts, the Secretary, said, without looking up from his paper.

“I wonder if you know anything about Minton, Mr Letts,” whispered Koomadhi.

“I wonder if you know anything about him, Dr Koomadhi,” said Mr Letts.

“He has not been near me since the night before last,” said the Doctor. “Has he been here?”

Before the Secretary could reply a servant knocked at the office door conveying Mrs Minton’s compliments to Dr Koomadhi, and to inquire if he would be good enough to step into the breakfast-room until the Commissioner returned from the mail steamer.

Dr Koomadhi said he would be pleased to do so, and he left the office and followed the servant into the breakfast-room--an apartment which occupied one end of the Residency, and had windows opening upon the verandah, and affording a view of that portion of the jungle which was nearest Picotee.

He scarcely recognised Gertrude Minton. The deadly pale, worn woman who greeted him silently, had nothing in common with the brilliant daughter of the Commissioner who, a few months before, had been as exquisite as a lily in the midst of a jungle.

“What are we to do--what are we to do?” she whispered. “You have seen him since we saw him. What did he say? Will he return in time to be put aboard the steamer? Oh, for God’s sake, give me a word of hope--one word to keep me from going mad too!”

“Mrs Minton,” said Dr Koomadhi, “you have asked me a great many questions. May I remind you that I never asked but one question of you?”

“One question? What do you mean?”

“I asked you if you thought you could marry me. What was your answer?”

“Why do you come here to remind me of that? If you are thinking of that fault of mine--it was cruel, I know, but I did not mean it--if you are thinking of that rather than of the best way to help us, you had much better have stayed away.”

“You said you would as soon marry a baboon as marry me.”

“I checked myself.”

“When you had practically said it.”

“Well, what then?”

“Nothing; you did not marry me, and the alternative was your own choice.”

“The alternative?”

“Yes; you married a baboon. You know it. Is there any doubt on your mind? Come to this window.”

He had suddenly crossed the room to a window facing the jungle. She staggered to his side. He threw open the shutter and pointed out.

What Mrs Minton saw was a huge ape running on all fours across the cleared space just outside the jungle. The creature ran on for some distance, then stopped and turned round gibbering. Then from the jungle there came another ape, only in a more upright posture. With a yell he caught the hand of the first, and the creature stood upright. Then, hand in hand, in a horribly grotesque dance, they advanced together until they were within a hundred yards of the Residency.

“You see--you see,” laughed Dr Koomadhi. “You may still be able to recognise some of his features in spite of the transformation. You have had your choice. A baboon is your husband, and your child----”

The shriek that the woman gave before falling to the floor frightened even Dr Koomadhi.

In a second the room door was opened. Mr Letts appeared. He rushed at Dr Koomadhi, and had his hands on his throat before the Doctor could raise Mrs Minton. He forced the negro backward into the porch, and flung him out almost upon the Commissioner and Mr Ross, the surgeon of the _Penguin_, who were in the act of entering.

“For heaven’s sake, Letts!” cried the Commissioner.

“You infernal nigger!” shouted Letts, as Dr Koomadhi picked himself up. “You infernal nigger! if ever you show your face here again, I’ll break every bone in your body!”

“What the blazes is the matter?” asked. Ross.

“I believe that that devil has killed Mrs Minton,” said the Secretary. “If he has, by God! I’ll kill him.”

XV.

Dr Koomadhi went to his house in dignified silence. He put a couple of glasses of brandy into a bottle of champagne and gulped down the whole. Then he wrote a short note to the officer of the Houssas, mentioning that he would be happy to help him to shoot the great ape at daybreak.