The Portuguese town was very tiny and not pleasing to me. It had eight or ten Portugals living there, gloomy-looking men in the main, whose appearance was ill-kempt and bedraggled. They had with them some black concubines, practically naked, and there were bastard babes running about, and dirty, fly-bedeviled dogs of uncertain breed. “Fie,” I said to Faleiro, “are these men convicts, that they look so worn?”
“They are the garrison, and do guard this place against invaders.”
I laughed at that. “An invasion of mosquitos? An invasion of mice?”
“What if the Dutchmen were to come here, or you English, and try to pry the Kongo from our influence?”
“And would these sad old men drive them away, then?”
“They fly the flag. It is important to fly the flag. Other Europeans respect a flag. So long as they are here as representatives of our land, there will be no foreign invasion.”
“And if the Jaqqas come?”
“Ah,” said Faleiro, with a little shudder. “The Jaqqas are another matter.”
I understood the unhappiness here. These were forgotten men in a forgotten place. The Portugals now concentrated their energies in winning Angola, and had their other main base well up the coast at São Tomé to do their slave-trading; but the Kongo, once so great in their schemes, was hardly more than anything to them now, and there was no future for those who maintained the ghost of an empire here for Portugal. Yet it had to be done, and these were those who did it, and also those remaining at São Salvador. I readily comprehended now why so ambitious and capable a man as Don João de Mendoça, after having devoted himself to the Kongo for so long, had removed himself to Angola in the pursuit of his ambitions. But these poor souls could not do as he had done.
Well, and that was hard for them, but no concern of mine. No one had compelled them to go to Africa, as I had been compelled. They stared at me sourly, knowing from my yellow hair that I was something out of the ordinary, and when they heard that I was English some of them made the sign of the fig at me in scorn, since that England and their homeland were enemies now, but I gave it back to them, and the sign of the folded arm as well, and would have no mockery from them. Faleiro spoke with them and they let me be after that. I disliked their mangy town and went back to the native one, where the people did look upon me as if I had come down from a different world. But they were friendly, and in their timid dainty way begged to touch my hair and beard.
We performed our trading business quickly and in enormous profit. This island was a depot for the merchants of the hinder lands, who brought such treasures as the teeth of elephantos to trade with us. These teeth are of great size, being only the two forward ones, that are called tusks, and ivory is carved from them. Another sort of thing that the Portugals purchase here is the golden wheat of the kingdom, that is called masa mamputo by the natives. This is not true wheat at all, nor is it native to Africa, but it is the stuff called maize or Indian corn, that comes from the Americas and was introduced here by the Portugals. The last commodity we had at the Hippopotamus Island was the oil of the palm, that they produce out of the pulpy fruits of the slender and graceful palm-trees that grow everywhere about. This is extracted from the fruit as oil is extracted from olives, and is most excellent in cooking: I came to prefer my food cooked in it and now find the oils of Europe greasy and strange to my taste. Its color and consistency are that of butter, though it is more greenish; it has the same use of olive oil and butter; it may be burned; it may be used to anoint the body. We acquired great store of it here.
And what did we give in return for this abundance of tusks, and that golden wheat, and the oil? Why, long glass beads and round blue beads and trifling little seed beads, and looking-glasses of the most vile manufacture, and red coarse cloth, and Irish rugs, which were very rich commodities to the Bakongo folk. We received for one yard of cloth three elephanto teeth, that weighed one hundred twenty pounds. I was ashamed to do such dealings, but when I saw that the natives were joyed to have our scurvy merchandise I let my objections drop away from me, for who am I to say which is more valuable, an elephanto tusk or a yard of cloth?
So quickly we laded our pinnace and got ourselves back onto the bosom of the great river. Which swept us like a cork out to sea, and I caught hold of the wind and turned us south, and coasted us skillfully back to Angola. And stood like a king in triumph on the deck of the Infanta Beatriz, bare to the waist and sunburned dark, with my hair long behind me in the breeze that came out of the hot lowlands, as we made our way into harbor at São Paulo de Loanda. For it had been a successful voyage and I had done well, and had won my own respect in the business of piloting. And one’s own respect is the hardest of all to win, if one be an honest man.
Don João de Mendoça clapped me lustily on the back and praised me or my work and fed me on buffalo and other strange meats, and gave me his good wines, and said, “Well accomplished! And next week off you go again, even farther, to the land of Loango for a greater cargo.”
Indeed I was ready to go. And go and go again, as often as they did care to ship me, for a year or so. I would keep my bargain, and then they would keep me theirs, and send me off to England as a free man.
Aye! To bargain with a Portugal! Ere I saw England, how many voyages there would be, and what monstrosities of event, and what pains, what deaths, what torments! But I predicted nothing of that to myself then. I supped with Don João, and I spoke a trifle boastfully of my getting into the estuary of the Zaire, and then I went to my new little house in the city to plan for my next voyage. There did Dona Teresa come to me soon after, and there did we have a joyous reunion of our bodies and our spirits, and afterward, when I lay alone and drowsy, an amazing thought did enter my mind. For I realized that even though I had been taken captive and sent into slavery to these Portugals, and had endured much that was not to my liking, I had emerged into a happy life. I was a happy man, by God, and could not deny it! Only one thing was lacking to me, and that was my return to my native land; but even that seemed less urgent, now that I was out of dungeon and had won a place among the Portugals here and had a skill that I practiced well. That amazed me: to find myself happy. Yet it was the truth, at that moment. And in a week, the voyage to Loango; and in a year, perhaps, the voyage home to England. All journeyed well for me.
Aye! Would that it had been so!
BOOK TWO: Pilot
1
Northward aye I went, in quick course, on my second trading voyage in behalf of Don João. Loango was my destination, which is a kingdom that has its beginning fifteen leagues to the north of the River Zaire.
Do you wonder at the ease with which I became an officer of the Portuguese maritime? That I should have no qualms and pangs of conscience, that I should take so swiftly to piloting of their vessel and earning them their tons of richly valued elephanto teeth? Nay, but I did not see myself as any traitor to Her Majesty by so doing. My choice was to serve, or to lie and rot in dungeon. If I proudly chose the second of those, and if perchance some venomous creature did creep upon me in my cell and bite its poison into me, would I then ever again see England or serve the Queen? But by undertaking these voyages along the coast I could preserve my life, I could increase my health, I would gain in knowledge of piloting that might some day be of use to Her Majesty— and I stood at least a chance of regaining my liberty. Or so I told myself, over and over a great many times, whenever this debate erupted within my soul, until a time came when it erupted no longer and I did my duties without self-inquest.