"Aye, sir, good cattle, all of 'em," says Kinnie.
Spring rubbed his hands, and with many a last glance, gave the order to give way. The men at the sweeps hauled, and the big canoe pushed forward up river, Mrs Spring fluttering her handkerchief after us from the Balliol College's rail.
Once round the first bend, we were in another world. On either side and overhead the jungle penned us in like a huge green tent, muffling the cries and shrieks of the beasts and birds beyond it. The heat was stifling, and the oily brown water itself was so still that the plash of the sweeps and the dripping of moisture from the foliage sounded unnaturally loud. The men pulling were drenched in sweat; it was a labour to breathe the heavy damp air, and Kirk was panting under his breath as he accompanied the rowers with "Rock an' roll, rock an' roll, Shenandoah sail-or! hoist her high, hoist her dry, rock an' roll me ov-er!"
It must have been three or four hours, with only a few brief rests, before Spring ordered a halt at a small clearing on the water's edge. He consulted his watch, and then his compass, and announced:
"Very good, Mr Kinnie, we'll march from here. No sense in risking our craft any nearer these gentlemen than we have to. Cover her up and fall in ashore."
We all piled out, and the huge canoe was manhandled in under the mangroves which hung far out from the water's edge. "When she was hidden to Spring's satisfaction, with a guard posted, and be bad ensured that every man was properly armed and equipped, be led the way along a track that seemed to me to run parallel with the river — although the jungle was so thick you couldn't see a yard either side. The air was alive with mosquitoes, and in the shadows of that little green tunnel we stumbled along, slapping and cursing; it was a poor trail, and when Spring asked me what I thought of it, I answered, h—lish. He barked a laugh and says:
"Truer than you know. It's made of corpses — some of the thousands that result from the Dahomeyans' yearly festival of human sacrifice.20 They build up the path with 'em, bound together with vines and cemented with mud." He pointed to the dense thickets either side. "You wouldn't make a mile a day in there — nothing but ooze and roots and rotting rubbish. Sodden wet, but never a drop of water to be had — you can die of thirst in that stuff."
You may guess how this cheered up the journey, but there was worse ahead. We smelled Apokoto long before we saw it; a rank wave of corruption that had us cursing and gagging. It was a stink of death — animal and vegetable — that hit you like a hot fog and clung in your throat. "Filthy black animals," says Spring.
The town itself was bigger than I had imagined, a huge stockaded place crammed with those round grass lodges which are beehive shaped with an onion topknot. All of it was filthy and ooze-ridden, except for the central square which had been stamped flat and hard; the whole population, thousands of 'em, were gathered round it, stinking fit to knock you flat. The worst of the reek came from a great building like a cottage at the far side, which puzzled me at first because it seemed to be built of shiny brown stones which seemed impossible in this swampy jungle country. Kirk put me wise about that: "Skulls," says he, and that is what they were, thousands upon thousands of human skulls cemented together to make the death-house, the ghastly place where the human sacrifices — prisoners, slaves, criminals, and the like — were herded before execution. Even the ground directly before it was paved with skulls, and the evil of the place hung over that great square like an invisible mist.
"I seen as many as a hundred chopped up at one time before that death-house," says Kirk. "Men, women, an' kids, all cut up together. It's like a Mayday fair to these black heathen."
"They seem amiable enough just now," says I, wishing to God I were back at the ship, and he agreed that as a rule the Apokoto folk were friendly to white traders — provided they had trade goods, and looked as though they could defend themselves. It was plain to see now why Spring had us heavily armed; I'd have been happier with a park of artillery as well.
"Aye, they're savage swine if you don't mind your eye," says Kirk, rolling his quid, "an' Gezo's the most fearsome b––-d of the lot. He's the man to set upon your landlord, by G-d! An' wait till you see his warriors — you're a military man, ain't you? — well, you never seen nothin' like his bodyguard, not nowheres. You just watch out for 'em. Best fighters in Africa, they reckon, an' probably the on'y nigger troops anywhere that march in step — an' they can move in dead silence when they wants to, which most niggers can't. Oh, they're the beauties, they are!"
We had to wait near an hour before Gezo put in an appearance, in which time the sun got hotter, the reek fouler, and my mind uneasier. I've stood before the face of savage kings often enough, and hated every minute of it, but Gezo's little home-from-home, with its stench of death and corruption, and its death house, and its thousands of big, ugly niggers to our little party, was as nasty a hole as I've struck; I found myself shivering in spite of the heat haze, but took heart from the fact that all our fellows seemed quite composed, leaning on their muskets, chewing and spitting and winking at the niggers. Only Spring seemed agitated, but not with fear; he fidgeted eagerly from time to time, snorting with impatience at the delay, and took a turn up and down. Then he would stop, standing four square with his hands in his pockets, head tilted back, and you could feel he was working to contain himself as he waited.
Suddenly everything went dead quiet; the chatter of the crowd stopped, everyone held their breaths, and our fellows stiffened and shifted together. Utter silence lay over that vast place, broken only by the distant jungle noises. Spring shrugged and muttered:
"High time, too. Come on, you black b––-d."
The silence lasted perhaps a minute, and then out of the street beside the death house scampered a score of little figures, either dwarves or boys, but you couldn't tell, because they were grotesquely masked. They swung rattles as they ran, filling the air with their clatter, and crying out a confused jumble of words in which I managed to pick out "Gezo! Gezo!" They scattered about the square, prancing and rattling and questing, and Spring says to me:
"Chasing away bad spirits, and finding the most propitious place for his majesty to plant his fat posterior. Aye, as usual, on the platform. Look yonder."
Two warriors were carrying forward a great carved stool, its feet shaped like massive human legs, which they planked down on the dais of skulls before the death house. The masked dancers closed in, whisking away round the stool, and then scattered back to the edge of the square. As they fell silent a drum began to beat from beyond the death house, a steady, marching thump that grew louder and louder, and the crowd began to take it up, stamping and clapping in unison, and emitting a wordless grunt of "Ay-uh! ay-uh!" while they swayed to the rhythm.
"Now you'll open your eyes," says Kirk in my ear, and as he said it I saw emerging from the street by the death house a double file of warriors, swinging along in time to the steady cadence of the drum, while the chanting grew louder. "Ha!" cries Spring, eagerly. "At last!"
They marched out either side of the square in two long lines, lithe, splendid figures, swaying as they marched, and it was something in the manner of that swaying that struck me as odd; I stared harder, and got the surprise of my life. The warriors were all women.
And such women. They must have been close on a man's height, fine strapping creatures, black as night and smart as guardsmen. I gaped at the leading one on the right as she approached; she came sashaying along, looking straight before her, a great ebony Juno naked to the little blue kilt at her waist, with a long stabbing spear in one hand and a huge cleaver in her belt. The only other things she wore were a broad collar of beadwork tight round her throat, and a white turban over her hair, and as she passed in front of us I noticed that at her girdle there hung two skulls and a collection of what looked like lion's claws. The others who followed her were the same, save that instead of turbans they wore their hair coiled together and tied with ropes of beads, but each one carried a spear, some had bows and quivers of arrows, and one or two even had muskets. Not all were as tall as the leader, but I never saw anything on Horse Guards that looked as well-drilled and handsome — or as frighteningly dangerous.