There came at last the dawn. I stood alone in a field of dreadful carnage. Black bodies lay everywhere, and a very few white ones in armor. The great kettles of the man-eaters were overturned; their banners were down; their shrines were all trampled. Mists drifted over the ground, and streams of blood ran like wine, and streams of wine alongside the blood, so that they mixed in hard mockery of the Imbe-Jaqqa’s own favored tipple. Of Calandola I saw nothing. He had slipped away; he had surely not been slain. I do not believe he could have been slain, nor that he will ever die. He is too dark a force, too deep in league with Satan his master, whose incarnation I do think him to be. Search I did for that great body, and I did not discover it. It would have surprised me much had it been otherwise.
And at sunrise the Portugals found me. I was naked but for shreds; I was bloodied and injured; and I sobbed, not out of grief nor fear but of simple relief and ease, that this eternal night was over, and the demons were fled, and I still alive.
Three soldiers that were little more than boys came upon me and pointed their muskets at me, and I threw up my hands to show I meant no harm.
“What is this?” they asked. “Is it Jaqqa, or demon, or what?”
“English,” said I in their own Portuguese tongue. “I am Andres the Piloto, of São Paulo de Loanda, captive among the Jaqqas these past years, and you have freed me.”
“Go you to the governor,” said one Portugal to another, who rushed off at once. And to me he said, looking wide-eyed upon me, “I have heard tales of you, but I thought that they were all but fable. What has befallen you, man? Are you hurt?”
I replied, “I have been in the Devil’s own paw, and he has squeezed me some. But I am whole, I think, and will go on breathing some while longer. Jesu Cristo, it has been a dream, and not a cheerful one, but now I am awake. Now I am awake!”
And I did fall to my knees, and give thanks for my deliverance to Him who guardeth me.
Through the forest now came more Portugals, and at their head was the Angolan governor, João Coutinho, of whom Dona Teresa had spoken. This man looked at me long, without belief, as if I had a second head beside mine own, or wings and a tail. At last he said, “It was you, then, that summoned us.”
“Aye. But I had given up all hope of your coming.”
“We came as swift as we could. There were tales of a massing of the Jaqqas, so that we were poised for the attack, and needed only to know the place. What is your name, Englishman? Andres, is it?”
“Andrew, in good sooth. Andrew Battell.”
He gave me his hand, and drew me to my feet, and ordered up a cloak to be thrown over me, and sent for his surgeon to examine my wounds. This João Coutinho was a man of perhaps four-and-thirty, very sleek and handsome of face, with a warm and kindly way about him; I saw by the mirrors of his soul that were his eyes, that he would use me well, and that he felt great compassion for me in my long travail, so that perhaps my betrayals were at their end.
He said, “And the Portugals who were prisoner with you?”
“Dead. All.”
“Dona Teresa? Don Fernão?”
“Dead,” said I. “Dead and eaten.”
He looked away, choking with a deep revulsion.
“They are monsters,” said he after a moment. “We will hunt them down, and they shall all perish. Did they torment you greatly?”
“Nay,” I answered. “They treated me like one of themselves. I think it was for my golden hair, that made me seem as some kind of spirit to them.”
“Golden hair?” said Don João Coutinho in wonder. “Is it golden, then?”
“Is it not?”
He put his hand to it, and ran his fingers gently through it, and said, “It is white, Senhor Andrew, it is most altogether and entirely white.”
BOOK FIVE: Ulysses
1
So ended my sojourn among the Jaqqas. But there is much more to tell. For I was not yet done with Africa, not by a great long while, and much else went into the tempering and annealing of my soul before that land would let me free. Nor am I fully free yet. Nor have I escaped wholly from the malign sway of the Imbe-Jaqqa Calandola, to this hour.
Don João Coutinho would not have me walk with his army, but gave orders that I be carried by bearer as we left the place of the battle, and returned to Masanganu. There was no war now to be pursued, the Jaqqas having scattered in all directions, and that other army of Kafuche Kam-bara having decamped very swiftly and taken itself to its home territory some way south and east of this place. Which was just as well, since that the only advantage that this Portugal force had had was that of surprise, that now had been expended; for they were only some four hundred men, though they had in that night routed many thousands.
In Masanganu, that had been so hateful to me before but which now seemed like a veritable Jerusalem, did I quickly regain my strength. I was very well used by this new governor, who regarded me as some kind of holy sufferer, a pilgrim, even, that had undergone a great ordeal and must now be recompensed with the kindest of treatment. Thus as I lay at Masanganu he gave orders that I was to have the best of wine and drink; and his surgeons did what they could to close my wounds, and heal them without further mutilation of my skin. And the natural strength and resilience of my body did manifest itself, so that after some time I felt myself beginning to grow strong again, and recovering somewhat of my weariness. But all the same I knew I had been transformed, in a way from which there was no recovering. My body bore scars, both those of a tribal nature and those of warfare and rough usage. And now I had the visage of an old man, which was the outer mark of my experiences, the sign and symbol of the horrors I had witnessed and those that I had committed.
Dona Teresa visited me often in dreams those first nights, and said to me, “Weep not, Andres, I am with the saints in heaven.” Which was but mocking comfort to me. My philosophical quietude over her death had fled me. I bethought me often of the sage Marcus Aurelius, but his teachings just now seemed of no worth: for she was dead that I had held most dear and lost and unexpectedly regained, and I would not regain her again no matter how close I explored this sultry jungled land. And that great loss did burn more hotly in me the more fully my weary body renewed its health.
Then I went to Don João Coutinho in his place at the presidio of Masanganu and he greeted me most warmly, with an embrace and good wine, and asked what service he could do me.
To which I replied, “Only one, that you put me aboard a pinnace bound for São Paulo de Loanda, and you give an order that I am to be set free, and shipped to England, since that I am old now, and would die among my own people.”
“Why are you here at all?” he asked.
I told him everything of it, the great tangled tale of my setting to sea with Abraham Cocke and being taken in Brazil and made prisoner and then being a pilot and then imprisoned again, and so on and on and on down all the winding years of it, in which he was much interested. Only of the Jaqqa part of my life was I chary, telling him merely that I was kept by them.
When I was done he embraced me and said, “You shall have your freedom, Senhor Andrew. But no ship will be departing this land for some months.”
“So that I am aboard the next one, I can wait a little time more,” said I. “For in truth I am not fully ready to see England again.”