“Ah, and are you so finely bred, then?” I demanded hotly, with a rage beginning to pound in the vault of my head, for it was only by heavy effort that I could rein in my temper.
“You have heard my name,” said he disdainfully.
“It means nothing to me.”
“I am not at all surprised,” replied this Caldeira de Rodrigues, and turned himself from me as though I had been dissolved into air.
I might have called him out for a brawl, but that I still had some mastery over myself, knowing that whether or no I be pilot for these men, I still was in a subservient place. And yet it was a close thing, my fury being so strong at his mockery: only the touch of a hand on my arm—Cabral’s, I think—kept me at the last from leaping at him.
I learned from others, a little after, that this snotnosed scornful jay was the son of one of Portugal’s great dukes, and close kin to the old royal family that had fallen from power: and so he was far superior in birth to almost anyone else of Angola, except perhaps for Don João de Mendoça, that was also of high origin. Caldeira de Rodrigues and his elder brother Gaspar, they said, were exiled from Lisbon for their ruinous high living and stark criminous pastimes, which went too far even for men of their great standing, and were sent to Angola to sweat themselves into some semblance of virtue. He was a man of eighteen, very slender, pretty almost in a womanish way, though there was an ugly and hard glint in his eye, and a dagger at his hip that I knew he would be quick to use. His face was marred by a purple blemish of the cheek that took back some of the prettiness, and his beard grew only in places, with foolish barren patches between. All in all I liked him little, and was sorry to have him among my shipmates.
During this time of delay I sometimes did wander about the district, either by myself or with one or two of the more amiable Portugals, and rarely without some blackamoor guards also following us to see that we did not cross into holy ground. That thing we nearly did, one time, when we walked back toward the harbor and spied one of their idols, a little black image that is known as Kikoko. Kikoko is a mokisso, that is, a witch-spirit, that lives in a little house along the main highway, and everyone who goes by him claps hands, or makes a gift, as an offering.
I knew these mokissos had great power over the blacks, and I thought that power might extend even to us: for who knows how long the reach of the Devil’s arms may be? All that I heard led me to tread cautiously in the witch-world. In Loango, they said, this mokisso will sometimes take possession of a person in the night, and he babbles frantically for the space of three hours. Whatever the frantic person speaks, that is deemed the will of Kikoko, and all the tribe obeys it, and they make a great feast and dancing at the house of the one who speaks.
Though I had much respect for this evil being, yet did I want, out of curiosity, to look upon Kikoko in his little house. But the blacks stood before him and made a frightful gesture at me with their spears, and I weighed anchor swiftly and went elsewhere.
There was one diversion concerning these idols. A new one had been carved and was arriving by sea from a town to the north, when it slipped from the hands of its bearers and fell into the water. Though they sought mightily for it, they could not uncover it below, which was deemed a great calamity. The king of the land sent for us, and told us what had befallen, and asked if we had some way of bringing up the statue. Very few of the Portugals were able to swim at all, but I had that skill, so I stripped off my garments and went down, and thought I had sight of the mokisso, but the water was too deep and my breath not sufficient, so that I came to the surface empty-handed.
“I will try again,” said I.
“Nay,” said Faleiro, “do not drown yourself on behalf of these pagans, Piloto, for we do have greater need of you.” And I did not dive a second time.
On another occasion Cabral and Andrade showed me the burial grounds of the kings of Loango. This was at a place called Loangiri, two leagues without the town. Here the teeth of elephantos were thrust into the ground all about, to make a great shining white palisado, and the whole burying-place was ten roods in compass, that is, a fine estate for anyone. Cabral said, “These elephanto teeth alone, if we could but have them, would be worth half a kingdom. But also, beneath those mounds, they have buried with their kings all manner of treasure, pearls and jewels and such, of a value too high to count.”
I stared at him wide-eyed, this Cabral having seemed to me to be a man of honor, as honor is reckoned among the Portugals.
“But surely you will not covet the things of a cemetery!”
With a shrug he said, “But this is not consecrated ground. They are but pagans, and if they choose to waste their precious things by burying them, why, it is our duty to God to unbury them, and carry them off for some use.”
“Your duty to God,” said I in wonder, “to rob the dead?”
“They are but pagans,” Cabral repeated.
And he and Andrade spoke of a time to come, when Christianity would be spread into this land of Loango, and the priests intended to persuade the king at that time to have his ancestors reburied in a Christian graveyard. “And at that time,” said Andrade, “we will take all these heathen treasures from the ground, to our own great profit and the saving of the peoples’ souls.”
“Aye,” I said, but not aloud, “save their souls by stealing out of graves. Look to your own souls, Portugals!”
But we did not trespass that day upon the royal burying-place. We only stared in awe at that great wall of lofty elephanto teeth that ringed the place, and I smiled to see the greed that glistened in the faces of my friends Andrade and Cabral, and after a time we returned to the town.
2
By slow and easy stages Faleiro began to prevail in his negotiations, and it seemed sure that the Loango folk would trade with us at long last. I was heartily glad of that, for this idleness wearied me, and I was eager to feel the sea-breezes against my face. I confess with no little shame that I longed also to return to the arms of Dona Teresa in São Paulo de Loanda: for although I had managed to be virtuous enough for several years of chastity after leaving England, I had had my slumbering lusts reawakened by her, and it was not easy now to return them to their disciplined repose. So betimes at night I imagined her satin-smooth breasts in my hands and her thighs wrapped tight about my hips, and I played such fantasies with her in my mind as previously I had been wont to do with Anne Katherine. Anne Katherine herself, I fear, was becoming only a shadow in my memory by this season, for it was four years now and some months since my leaving England, and all my prior life was growing pale and unreal to me, like something I had once read about in a book. The bright sunlight of Africa did eclipse for me the poor pale gleam of England. Africa was become my only reality now. So I dreamed of Dona Teresa’s tawny nakedness and I gobbled the fiery stews and porridges of Loango and I roamed the town to study its ways, learning a bit of its language and discovering of its customs. I found another mokisso-house near the port, where an old woman dwelled named Nganga Gomberi, which means the priestess of the spirit Gomberi, and the blacks told me that once a year a feast is made there, and Nganga Gomberi speaks from underneath the ground, giving oracles. I asked to be let to see this old witch, hoping she would cast a horoscope that would waft me back to England, but they would not show her to me.