But these fears of the two Portugals were not long in troubling us: for the nobility began to issue from the royal palace, and among them came the king himself, borne by slaves atop his high throne. Which reassured us and at the same time increased our concern, since that we knew that the Maloango made no public appearances except when some grave occurrence had befallen his kingdom.
We stood still as stones while the pipers and the drummer went past, and then came the center and cause of this eerie procession. Out of the forest road walked very slowly four warriors of the realm who carried a broad shield of elephanto-hide stretched over a wooden frame; and on that shield lay a naked man, dead, his limbs dangling all asprawl. They brought him before the king and laid him down, shield and all, and backed away, and the musicians were silent, and the entire city was silent.
Then there did burst from the throat of the Maloango such a wailing and outcry as could rend the soul to hear it. You would think that he grieved for his own most dearest son, like David crying for Absalom. Yet was not this the king that had ordered a child of his issue quartered for coming untimely upon him as he drank wine? Now he wept, he moaned, he shredded his headdress and hurled it to the ground. Not even Mary beweeping the Savior could have set up such a vast lamentation.
“What is it?” I asked Faleiro. “Why does he shriek so?”
“This is a prince of the Jaqqas that lies dead here,” replied Faleiro in a hoarse whisper.
I moved as close as I dared, for a better look. Indeed the dead man seemed to be of some tribe other than the Loangan. He was of large stature, slender, with great elongated arms and legs and a high slim neck, yet also he had nobly developed muscles, that lay like cords of metal beneath his sleek midnight-hued skin. He wore nothing but a double rope of white beads about his narrow hips, and on his bare shining chest there was painted, strangely, the sign of the cross in some thick white paint, that gave him the look of a Knight Templar which had gone out to take the Holy Land from the infidel. His cheeks were covered with ridged scars, six down this side, six down that. In the grimace of his dead mouth I saw two of his upper teeth gone and two lower, which seemed done by way of ornament, since his other teeth were strong and good.
From his length and majesty I thought this might be that same Jaqqa prince I had seen standing alone in the clearing along the River Kwanza, that time just before the massacre of the village of Muchima. But no, this was a different man, although somewhat similar of body. For I remembered that that other prince, naked and leaning insolently on his shield, had possessed a male member of phenomenal length, like unto a black serpent hanging halfway down his thigh, and this man was constructed in a more ordinary way, though yet scarce worthy of anyone’s contempt. Even in death a kind of frightsome radiance was about him, a mysterious invisible glow, something like the halo that a devil might have if devils had halos of the sort that saints are widely said to have.
I saw on him the marks of his death. For his chest was somewhat crushed and twisted, and one side of his body was bruised, as though he had been injured by some great beast of the forest. It was Faleiro’s idea that this Jaqqa had been surprised by an elephanto, which had seized him in his long nose and squeezed him and perhaps hurled him against a tree to his perdition, and I think that was the case.
The King of Loango now left off his wailing and began a speech, of which I could understand perhaps every sixth word, and in which the words “Jaqqa” and “Imbe Calandola” were repeated over and yet over. Faleiro struggled to hear, as did Cabral, but I could tell that they scarce understood anything. And though I could follow the words, I knew so little of Loangan customs that I could not easily arrange them into sense. But by conferring among us three, we puzzled out the truth of the king’s speech.
Which was that one Jaqqa generally meant many; that in all likelihood this Jaqqa was a scout, come to investigate the desirability of making war against Loango; and that the death of this man, though it was not the doing of any Loangan, might well bring destruction upon the entire city.
Faleiro spat and kicked against the ground. “We must leave this place at once!” he said, in a fury.
“Without our cargo?” I asked.
“If needs be. I will not stay here when the Jaqqas come.”
“We are charged to return to Angola laded with elephanto teeth,” I said, “and all the other goods that come from this place. How now, can we flee after waiting so long, and bring back nothing?”
“Piloto, this is no concern of yours!”
“It would be an embarrassment to show such cowardice.”
Faleiro’s eyes went bright with rage at that last heavy word, and he reached toward his sword. I being unarmed except for a small knife, I felt that my last moment might be upon me. And deservedly so, for I had spoken foolishly. What was it to me, if these Portugals prospered or did not prosper? I was but their prisoner, their indentured servant: if they chose to go back to Don João and say that fright of the Jaqqas had driven them off empty-handed, what shame would attach to me? Yet it galled me to have wasted so much time here without making trade, even if I was to have no share in the profits of the voyage. But Pinto Cabral came between us and made peace before Faleiro could strike, and I fell back, coming to my right mind and saying in a low voice, “I beg pardon. These are not my decisions to make.”
“Yea, Piloto. Stay here if you like, and let the Jaqqas stew you alive. But we will leave.”
While this dispute had unfolded, the Maloango had continued to instruct his subjects. I returned my attention to him and found that he was laying schemes for defense, ordering the city to prepare for an incursion of the cannibals, and sending scouts off into the forest to search out the enemy force. And soon everyone was running about in frantic hurry, while we withdrew to plan our retreat from that place.
Yet after this first hour of excitement things grew more calm. Drums sounded in the forest, near and farther away, that were the sounds of Loangan scouts talking to one another, sending back word by a sort of code, and what they seemed to be saying, so I did learn, was that no Jaqqas were near at hand: the dead man had been an isolated wanderer. That eased the crisis somewhat. The next day there was a ceremony of great pomp in which the Jaqqa was buried, at a special burial-place deep within the forest. I think the Maloango, by showing this respect to the Jaqqa’s corpse, hoped thereby to ward off the anger of his fellows.
There was one especial surprise for us. When the king became aware that Faleiro had ordered our departure, he sent word that he wished at last to conclude some trade with us. And after all this long delay, we did indeed engage in active bargaining, buying from them with our rugs and our beads and our looking-glasses the elephanto tusks that we had come there to obtain. This exchange, too, may have had some mystical significance, the king thinking to please his gods by obtaining our shiny merchandise from us and putting it on their altars: at least, I can find no reason otherwise for this sudden willingness to have commerce, after that we had been kept waiting so long. We filled our hold with ivory and with palm-cloth, and also with something else of high value, that is, elephanto tails. These were of no worth to the Portugals, God wot, but were much prized by the blacks of Angola, who wove the hair of them into necklaces and girdles; I learned from Faleiro that fifty of the coarse hairs of the tail were valued at a thousand reis of Portugal money, which is the same as six English shillings. So we were obtaining these tails from this land rich in elephantos in order to trade them elsewhere for slaves, and thus the circle of merchandising doth go in these territories.