Possibly, you say, I have dwelled too long among cannibals, and my soul has been tainted by their ways. Possibly; but I think otherwise. I think only that I have come to a wide understanding of the world’s variety, from having lived so long on its outer edges. I dare say that somewhere on this globe is a race that not only dotes on human flesh but also would puke at the thought of eating cattle or fowl, claiming that such is unnatural and evil.
And then afterward, when all were sated, we did divide the spoils. From the captives the Jaqqas selected certain boys and girls on whom the first hair had begun to sprout in the loins, and adopted them forthwith into their tribe. These were twelve or fifteen in number, who looked to be dazed, and not knowing what was happening to them. On the boys slave-collars were placed, as is done to all Jaqqa youths until they have slain some foe in battle. The other Benguelas were given to us for slaves, as our fee for taking the Jaqqas across the river. These we loaded on our ship, knowing that we had accomplished the making of our fortune: for we had many strong and healthy souls, that we could sell in São Paulo de Loanda for twelve thousand reis the head, and they had cost us nothing, not even a handful of beads.
Then we made ready to depart. At the last, the high Jaqqas came to us, Calandola and Kinguri and some others, and they walked about on shore looking toward our ship, thinking, I suppose, that it was a miracle. And the Imbe-Jaqqa again touched my hair.
I began to have an idea now of why those Jaqqas who had found us in the desert had spared us that time, and conveyed us toward Masanganu. It was for the sake of my hair; for they had never seen its like, and thought me to be god-like in some way. For Calandola showed such fascination with it as made me feel uneasy, fearing that he would not let me set sail with my fellows, in which Pinto Dourado would most likely gladly acquiesce, or that he would let me go, but ask me to leave my hair behind, or some such thing. But the Imbe-Jaqqa was content only to touch it some few times. And then we went out toward the frigate.
And as we journeyed northward I could not cleanse the Jaqqas from my mind.
I was altogether captivated by them. Certainly they were cannibal monsters, and dreadful; and yet they seemed in a strange way not to be truly evil, any more than a storm that sweeps across the land in a rage of destruction can be said to be evil. For they had no malice in them. They were mere appetites on legs. To slay and eat one’s own kind is, in sooth, a great wrong, as any child might argue. But were the Jaqqas any worse than the swarming slippery Portugals who had taken over the coast, and did press an entire race into slavery, and cheated one another and plotted all sorts of dire treacheries, all the while going piously each day to the Mass? In this land of Africa everyone was a monster of some sort or another, I did decide. And I think I preferred the ferocious Jaqqas, who made no pretense of piety, to the hypocrite folk who claimed to be civilized, but were raw savage just beneath the outer costume.
The Imbe-Jaqqa haunted me in another way. I know that there are upon this globe certain great men: Drake is one, and Ralegh, and Elizabeth must be deemed a great man, too, for a man’s role is what she did adopt, and splendidly. And also Julius Caesar and Alexander and such— leaders, dominators. I have a very small bit of that thing about me myself, that they have had: for I am no king or duke, but I have observed that in any group of men, they do turn to me before long for leadership in a natural way, though I do not seek it. Had I ever sought it, or had I the kind of noble birth that confers those powers without the seeking, I might indeed have been something extraordinary and done high deeds, and I say that in no braggartly way, but in quiet simple assessment. Yet I have only a small bit of that thing. I would not have been an emperor. But this Calandola, I thought at once, had in him the stuff of majesty: like the great Genghis of the Tartars, like the Hunnish chief Attila who despoiled Europe in the long ago, like the Assyrian Sennacherib of dire repute, he could capture the souls of men, and make them follow wherever he willed. In that first encounter he had begun to capture mine, which I barely understood. For there was much that was loathsome and repellent about him, and yet he attracted. Do you comprehend? Can you? It was the pull of the coccodrillo, the pull of darkness, of the hidden chilling Satanic river that flows through the depths of the soul and sweeps all conscience and faith before it. I saw Imbe Calandola in my dreams, like a titan filling half the sky. His touch was upon me. He rang like a great gong in my skull, tolling, tolling, giving me no peace. And I did not understand what power he held over me, nor how I was meant to yield to it. But he filled half the sky; he did ring in my skull like a gong.
7
The Jaqqas settled themselves in this country of Benguela and took the spoil of it. And we had great trade with them, five months, and gained greatly by them. First we carried our cargo of slaves to São Paulo de Loanda and sold them, the governor and other officials taking their heavy share, but still leaving profit enough so that we were all rich men. I was showered with milreis, enough money to buy me a grand farm in England, if I were in England. We stayed a little while in the city, and with my new riches I purchased good cloaks for Matamba, and other pretties. I spoke with her of the things that had befallen me, and said that I had seen Imbe Calandola. At the which she moved away from me and began to whimper, as if she feared some contagion of evil might pass from the great Jaqqa to her through me; but I calmed her and she asked me many questions, and told me that the long-legged Kinguri was brother to Calandola, and a famous man in his own right, which I had not known.
We undertook a second voyage to Benguela, bringing certain hatchets and knives and other common things that the Jaqqas needed, and brought away more slaves: for it was easy for the Jaqqas to round up the villagers to give to us at a gentle price. So I grew richer, I that had been a miserable prisoner and a banished man not too long before.
There was a counting-house in São Paulo de Loanda now, operated by a Spaniard with connections in the House of Fugger that is such great bankers across Europe, and I placed my money there, to increase it. This was a noble room of white walls and black wood panels, and a great staircase of some fine black wood rising to the upper room where the secret businesses of banking did proceed. The Spaniard was all courtesy and sleekness, and moved about like a little puppy, fawning on me, with many an eager, “Si, Senor Battell” as though I were some oiled and waxed grandee with a long Espaniardo mustachio, and gave me a receipt for my milreis on splendid vellum, inscribed most heroically in curlicues and flourishes, the way one might inscribe a passport into Paradise.
And I knew that I had crossed another unseen line in the progress of my soul into new territory, for now I was a slave-dealer and no hiding the truth of that: and what else does one call a man who buys men and women from cannibals, and sells them among the Portugals? I who rarely had more than a pound or two to my name now did hold great store of milreis at my account with Fugger of Augsburg, that is, I was a man now of substance and wealth, all of it gained by dealing in souls and trafficking with man-eaters. The which was God’s small jest upon me for living an honorable life.
We did a third voyage also in those five months to the Jaqqas in the south and fetched yet more slaves. But coming the fourth time, we found them not. I knew enough of the Jaqqa way by that time to be aware that Imbe Calandola was not content to keep himself in one place for long; and he and his followers had grown weary of the Benguela country, for they had used up all their wine, and in those parts there are no palm-trees for making wine, though other foodstuffs are abundant. So they had marched toward the province of Bambala, to a great lord that is called Calicansamba, whose country is five days up into the land.