I fell again to my knees. This time prayer did come to me, a flood of thanksgiving gratitude, and the dazzling light of the Almighty’s mercy did shine upon my soul.
The giant headsman went slinking away disappointed, and the crowd, murmuring much, dispersed. With trembling hands I collected my clothes and covered my nakedness.
To Mboma I said, “I owe you my life.”
To this he shrugged. “The message was in the images made in the smoke.”
“Aye,” said I. “But you could have misread it, or chosen to ignore it. And you did not.” Then I laughed wildly, as one does when one is called unexpectedly back from certain doom, and said, “Friend Mboma, this is as near as I will ever come to a lordship, I think. For in my land only the high lords do lose their heads by the block, and all lesser men must die by the hanging or the burning, which is far worse, being slower. And this morning I thought sure I would die a nobleman’s death. But I think I would sooner live a deckhand’s life, and go on living, than perish grandly like an earl. Eh?” And I saluted him and took me back to my cottage, on legs that were so numb and shaking that it was like walking on two wooden stilts.
9
The oracle of the man-witch’s fire had spared me that morning. But I had less faith in that oracle than did these savages, and I resolved me to escape from Mofarigosat’s town without further ado. Perhaps Pinto Dourado would indeed return for me six days hence, and yet I felt sure he would not: whereupon quite likely the headsman at last would have his way with me, Mboma or no Mboma.
So I spent that day in seclusion, thinking over the events of the morning and gradually casting aside my fright, which for some hours after my reprieve had still reverberated in my bones. It is no small thing to walk to the place of the chopping-block and stare at the edge of the blade, and the dread it inspires is not shrugged off in a moment. Moreover still I did think it might all be suddenly reversed, the blacks coming for me an hour hence, saying Mboma now claimed to be mistaken in his reading of the smoke message, and they would smite off my head. From time to time did I wriggle my neck to make certain it was still whole; and I imagined that blade descending and felt a peculiar choking in my Adam’s apple, and it was some days before I was able to put that preoccupation behind me.
When night came and the fullest depth of darkness arrived, no moon being in the sky, I did arise and leaving my cottage I made my way quietly toward the edge of the town. I had with me my musket and shot and powder that Pinto Dourado had provided me with, for the blacks had not thought to take it from me, and a leathern flask of palm-wine, but nothing else.
The town was quiet. But as I went by one group of houses a dog sprang up and nipped and yipped at my heels, which aroused a watchman, a tall black warrior who came forward as if to block my way. I dared not take the time to parley, so I commended his soul to God and put my knife into his throat, and kept going.
Only one other man did I see as I left the town. But this was Mofarigosat, who was walking the boundaries on some dark inquiry of his soul. He did not spy me. He went head downward and hands locked behind his back, deep in thought, and I prayed that he would not glance my way, for then I should have to take his life also, and I did not greatly wish to do that. With all the stealth at my command did I glide behind a tree and wait there, peeping out from moment to moment as that chieftain proceeded to pace up and down, murmuring to himself. Once I thought he was coming in my way, but then he turned, still deep in contemplation. What a noble figure he was, that rigorous old man, spending his sleepless hours in communion with his pagan gods! If God had cast his soul into a Christian body he would have been some prince for sure, or an archbishop.
Like a ghost he floated away from me, his black body becoming invisible in the night and only his white hair in view; then he was gone and I darted into the jungle.
Once more was I free.
But I was the only white man within fifty leagues, doubtless, and I had no slightest hope of finding my way alone through these wastelands and wildernesses to São Paulo de Loanda. Nor did I have much yearning to return to that place, except that there I would find the sweetness of my Matamba once again. But otherwise I had no hunger to see those Portugals: for a traitorous lot they all were, and I was done with their kind.
I intended now to go to the camp of the Jaqqas. Aye: the Jaqqas.
How far was I traveled, now, from that innocent young man who first had set to sea! That boy had held all kinds of fanciful notions of honor, and proper behavior, and rights and wrongs; and he had parted one by one from all those holdings, in his long education under the African stars. Now was he setting forth toward the most dreaded cannibal tribe of this land to give himself over freely to their service, and raising no questions of honor over it. For I did hope in God that in their diabolical marauding the Jaqqas would travel so far to the westward that we should see the sea again; and so I might escape to England by some ship, and holy grace. Only that thing mattered: quitting this accursed land, and homeward sailing. I would pillage, I would kill, I would if need be forswear myself thrice over, all for the sake of getting myself shipped out of this hellish Africa, where I had never desired to go, and where I had been detained against my will for close upon a dozen years now.
All that night I marched through the terrible darkness. I heard sounds I could not name and smelled smells of animals I could not see. Sometimes there was a loathsome snuffling sound, as of a great snout pressed close against the ground, and sometimes there was a craven sickly whining, followed by a growl and then a scream of pain from some other creature. I knew that skull-faced Death did pad along beside me on silent paws, and that he could have me at any instant did he choose. But he did not choose. I put great distance between myself and Mofarigosat before I would allow myself repose; then did I sink down on a moist mossy hummock and take some sleep, which came over me as if I had been drugged.
Two things at once awakened me. One was the coming of morning, sunlight very pale penetrating the green canopy of vines over my head; and the second was the creeping across my body of certain small round insects, bright red with black speckles, that did bite me most abundantly in every exposed place. Each bite was like the prick of a hot needle. I looked at them in amaze and saw the small creatures thrusting their sharp tubes into me, and sucking forth my substance; and with a howl I swept them away, but the tubes often remained in me most painful, and I had to pick them out with great diligence. Within moments each bite grew inflamed, and red swellings rose all over me, so that I looked like one who had taken a pox. But that was the worst that befell me from those vermin; and afterward an African told me that I might have died of it if they had stung me more copiously, for among the blacks the juice of these insects causes a dissolution of the flesh and bones, so that a man becomes a mere bag of vile liquid within his own skin some hours after being bitten. I do not know if this is so: it did not happen to me.
I breakfasted upon some glossy yellow fruits that looked to be safe, and proved sweet and tender. Then I found the River Kuvu, which was here shallow and brackish, with a few sickly-looking coccodrillos dozing on its bank, and I made my journey inland by following its course. The jungle was so deep overhead that I was hard put to see the direction of the sun, but in an opening I spied the mountains of the eastern land ahead of me, and thereafter I kept close by the river, knowing it would take me in the direction that the Jaqqas had gone.
By afternoon I met two Negroes, not of Mofarigosat’s nation, that gaped in wonder at me, for in this place there was never any white man seen before me. These two were sore affrighted and stood like statues in their tracks, but I put them at ease and asked if they had seen the Jaqqas, and they said, “Yes, they are in the town of the lord Cashil,” and showed me the way. Then they gave me some meat they were eating, which was a roasted monkey, and I gave them five beads that I found in my pocket, and we went our separate ways.