But it was not to be. When darkness arrived we halted at a hot dry low place where the brush was heavy and more of those abominable thorn-trees of the milky green flesh abounded. The Jaqqas drew us into a little clearing from which there was only one exit, and made us lie down, which indeed we gladly did. Two of them guarded us, standing casually before us with their arms folded, and the others went on a foray, from which they returned with a few handfuls of fruits and seeds. These they distributed to us, with a gesture that we should eat.
The fruits were bitter and the seeds were hard fare to crack and chew, yet it was good food withal, and there was a clear spring near at hand from which we were able to drink, which we had not done all the day long. The Jaqqas meanwhile busied themselves by building a fire, which they did most cleverly, by twirling one slender stick against another over a bunch of the dry straw that passed here for grass, until a spark flew forth and ignited it. Soon a goodly blaze was roaring.
We witnessed then an unholy feast, for they did take one of the three cadavers they had filched from the battlefield and most dexterously did lop its legs from it. Thereupon they carved his thigh-flesh into cubes of meat, which they affixed on skewers that they held into the tips of the flames, twisting them deftly so that the meat cooked while the skewers did not take fire. All this they did in the most absolute calmness, as if it were an extremely ordinary daily thing to butcher a dead man and make morsels out of his thighs. But in good sooth such was the case for them, it being the most daily of events, this grim anthropophagy. During their cooking they laughed and chanted, but I saw no talking between them, and as the fat dripped down and sizzled it did give them passing great delight, so that they clapped their hands like children.
They ate their fill, and then some; and when they had done with the meat, they did crack the skull, and scoop out the brains with a sort of spoon fashioned from a rib, and dine themselves with a high pleasure on that; and afterward they turned to us, who had looked on in deep horror at it all and most extremely at the serving of that final pudding, and they did make broad generous gestures to us, as though to be saying, “Join us in our banquet, comrades! There’s meat enough for all!” But of course we shrank back from this kindly offer the way we would from the embrace of the Devil’s dam.
The fire burned all night, and the Jaqqas sat by it, nor did they ever sleep, so far as I could tell. I was now in great discomfort from my wound and I lay sometimes awake and sometimes lost in a mazy disorder of the mind, but every time I opened my eyes I saw our five diabolical guardians sitting together, unsleeping. Now and again one of them would arise and cut for himself a piece of fresh meat and cook it to eat. All during the night the gruesome reek of charred flesh and human grease did hang over our encampment, sickening at first and then becoming merely another smell, of which one took no special notice.
Morning came. The Jaqqas prodded us awake and buried their smouldering fire in sand. We assumed our formation and moved onward.
I saw now that escape was plainly impossible. They were too shrewd in the ways of the desert, and kept us ever in check, whether on the march or in camp at night. And if I did manage to slip away it would be folly, this being an inhospitable place and I not knowing the whereabouts of the water-holes, or the plants whose fruits were safe to eat, or any such; I should be clawing at my own guts in extreme agony within two days, if I successfully fled from them into this awful wilderness. So I abandoned that plan utterly. Some of the Portugals with whom I marched made a different assessment of the situation, and on the third day of the journey two of them suddenly broke from the line and began to run, clumsily and with much staggering, across the arid waste. They had not gone ten yards before one of the Jaqqas had his bow down from his shoulder and an arrow in the ready, and I thought sure there would be a dead Portugal or two an instant later. But the tallest of the Jaqqas made one gesture and the archer put down his bow, and then he made another gesture and two of his fellows went sprinting after the fugitives I have never seen mortal man run so fast. The leopard, when he hunts, can in a short distance outpace even the fast-footed gazelle; but I think those two Jaqqas could have left even a leopard behind. In no time at all they caught the two Portugals, and seized them with an arm slipped round their necks and dropped them easily to the ground, and then lifted them, not roughly, and got them to their feet. The Portugals were shivering with fear, expecting to be slain on the spot for their temerity. But no, they were not harmed at all, they were merely sent back to their places in the line, and we continued as though nothing whatsoever had occurred.
That was the only escape attempt any of us made.
But on the fifth day north we began to perceive something amazing, that made us all rejoice we had not been more assiduous at getting away from our captors. For we took notice of certain familiar tokens on the landscape, that led to only one conclusion: the Jaqqas were not captors but rescuers, for they were guiding us in the direction of Masanganu!
“How can this be?” asked a Portugal. “Have they conquered the whole place, and is their main camp there now?”
“Nay,” said another, “Masanganu is of no interest to them.”
“Who knows what interests a Jaqqa?”
“Are we truly going that way?” I asked.
“Look, there, Englishman. That row of palm trees on the horizon— what else is it, but the forest at the edge of the River Kwanza? There are no rivers here, except the Lukala that comes in from above, and we are below. And there, those hills to the east—it is Kambambe, the silver-mining land!”
“But why bring us to Masanganu?” I said in wonderment.
“Why, indeed?” replied the Portugal surgeon.
And that was all the answer we ever had. You know how it is in dreams, that things take place that will not answer to the test of reason; and you know I have said again and again that these Jaqqas did seem to me to be creatures out of the misty land of sleep, like walking nightmares set loose upon our world. One does not ask questions of dream-creatures, or, if one does, one must know that one has no right to a sensible answer.
The Portugals were right that the trees had their roots in the waters of the Kwanza. Another day passed and then we were in truth within sight of the fortifications of Masanganu. Here the air did change, becoming moist and fever-laden in the horrid Masanganu way, which told us that we had come at last out of the desert where so many Portugals had left their bones. The Jaqqas did not accompany us farther. They had eaten all three of their dead men, to every last scrap of flesh, in their nightly feasts, and they had done their mysterious self-appointed task of saving our lives, and now they vanished as suddenly as they came, without a word, without a hint, and left us to find our way the last few miles into Masanganu.
A sad and sorry lot we ten were, as we struggled and tottered into the presidio. We were near naked, clad in grimy rags, and all gaunt and bulging-eyed from a diet of shabby bitter fruits and hard seed. Our wounds had begun to fester despite the best offices of our surgeon. But yet we were alive. We had neither perished on the battlefield in Kafuche Kambara’s terrible ambush, nor had gone into the bellies of the Jaqqas, and that we had avoided both these fates seemed miraculous now, so that we did fling ourselves down at the outside of Masanganu and give thanks to the Lord in our own ways and languages, crying out to Him for what surely was His own compassionate intervention on our behalf.