And I, forgetting the lesson of the two quarrelsome cats, could stand no more to see these two women, near naked and so vulnerable, harming their beauty in this way. So before the gougings of eyes commenced, and the breaking of noses, and such like mutilations, I flung myself against their slippery bodies and did strive to separate them.
God’s death, the foolishness of it! Ah, the silly man I was!
In the fury of the moment they turned each on me, just as had the cats, and I found myself assailed and beleaguered in a madness of bounding breasts and raking nails. They did not know nor care who it was they attacked now, but only wished to vent their rage. Aye, and vent it they did! I know not how long our triple combat lasted, but that we smashed everything in the room, as thoroughly as if we had turned a brace of bull-elephantos loose in it, and my shirt hung in rags and the hot rivulets of blood did run in channels on my arms and chest, and I was so kicked and pummeled and bruised that I feared destruction altogether, until at last I flung them into opposing corners of the room and stood panting between them, periling them with my arms lest they come at each other again or at me.
In that first moment of calmness, the three of us breathing hard and dazed from the violence, Dona Teresa did begin to cry out some new vituperation, which I silenced with a command; and Matamba muttered something dark in her own language, which also I cut off. “I will hear no more,” said I. “I have had enough of this uproar!” I remained as a wall betwixt them, and beckoned to them to rise to their feet. They were both of them all but stripped bare, and sweat made their bodies shine, Teresa’s dusky one and Matamba’s black one, and I saw the blood all over them, but more of it on me. Yet no one was badly injured.
“Clothe yourself,” I said to Dona Teresa. “And you, Matamba, stand back, let her take her leave. And not a word from either of you!”
Wearing only her outer garments, Dona Teresa went from my cottage, glaring most murderously at us both. Matamba stood rigid until she was gone, and then did begin to tremble and shake with a violence that astounded me.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“Blessed Virgin!” she cried. “I am bewitched! She has put the Fiend upon me, and I will wither, I will shrivel!”
“Nay, it was only words,” said I, though without the fullest conviction.
I went to her and took her in my arms and comforted her, and she me, and she stood sobbing a while, and then went to fetch the sponge, so we might cleanse our bloody scratches. But the terror remained in her. I had never seen her so pale, a new color of skin altogether, the ruddiness wholly gone from her. “It is the Devil’s own mokisso she has called down on me,” said she.
“God is stronger, Matamba. God will be your shield.”
“So I pray.” She clutched at my arm. “I beg you, burn that idol of hers, today! Render it into ashes!”
“It is but a carved thing,” said I. “It has no power.”
“Destroy it! Hurl it into the sea!”
“Ah, Matamba, I would not do it.”
“Even now? Even after what you have seen?”
I stroked her back, and the nape of her neck. Even now, I knew, I could not bring myself to part with that little statue, though its maker had shown herself to me in all her deep darkness of soul. And it shamed me to reveal to Matamba how fond I was of that idol, and of its maker. Yet did I say, “I have no faith in the strength of idols, and neither should you, if you be a Christian. It is but a trinket. Give it no mind. Come, let us bathe, and clothe ourselves, and put all witchery from our minds.”
But she still trembled, as did I. I found myself more frighted by what had just befallen than I had been all during the attack by the warriors of Kafiiche Kambara. For now Dona Teresa was my sworn enemy, and she would be no hollow braggartly foe such as the brothers Caldeira de Rodrigues had shown themselves to be. She would, I feared, cause me more grief than either of them and a whole regiment of painted savages with lances, if she did put her subtle mind to the task.
14
In the whole of my stay in Africa I had given no serious thought to escaping. That had never seemed in any way possible, there being no English ships passing within hundreds of miles of this coast, and the interior of the country being wild and unknown. Better, I had thought, to wait and serve, and have faith in Don João’s pledge to free me, or in some favorable alteration of conditions between England and Portugal, that might bring me my freedom.
But this grave new breach with Dona Teresa threatened me utterly, and I felt dear need to protect myself from her; and under that necessity I did suddenly see that God’s providence had given me a way to take my departure from this madhouse of a land. If I acted now, I might well be saved. If I let the moment pass, I would be at Dona Teresa’s mercy: and if she persisted in her sudden hatred of me she would be an implacable foe that could do me much harm. So when I was washed and clothed and rested some, I summoned my bearers and went down to the harbor, and sought out the Dutchman Cornelis van Warwyck, that I had appointed to be the agent of my salvation.
He greeted me with warmth, a lusty clap on the back, a hearty laugh, an offer of tobacco and the good strong Dutch genever spirits that he carried in casks in his cabin. I declined the pipe but gladly took the spirits, being in severe need of its potency. We drank in the Dutch fashion, tossing the clear fiery stuff down our gullets in a quick wrist-flipping gulp, and gasping our delight and filling the glasses again.
Then Warwyck said, “You are troubled, Battell?”
“Is it so easy to see?”
“Two hours ago you looked at your ease. Now storms do rage in your face, and contrary winds rush about your head.”
“Aye,” I said. “You judge me shrewdly. There is trouble.”
“With the Portugals?”
“With women,” I said.
At which he smiled, and seemed greatly relieved, for I think he had feared some overthrow among his hosts, and his own position in this city was a delicate and easily unbalanced one.
He puffed his pipe and contemplated me in his unhurried way, and I studied him close, weighing him, for I meant to make a heavy request of him.
After a time I said, “Have you wondered at all, captain, what an Englishman is doing among these Portugals in Angola?”
He looked amused. I saw a twinkling of his eye through the vile clouds of pipe-smoke.
“It did cross my mind that you were unusual here,” he said most calmly. “I thought it was not my place to ask questions. I am here to do trade, not to conduct inquiries into matters which do not concern me.”
“Of course.”
“Yet I did wonder. Be you some sort of renegado?”
“Nay, captain. A prisoner.”
His eyebrows lifted a small part of an inch. “Are you, then?”
“Taken captive off the Brazils, while privateering. Shipped here in irons four years past.”
“Ah, you English! You do love piracy so!”
“It was my first voyage in that line,” I said. “And, I think, my last.”
He puffed some more. “You have landed comfortably enough here, I trow. You wear no irons these days. I see you travel about on the backs of slaves when you go through the town. They tell me you have commanded their vessels in sailing along the coast and up their rivers.”
“I did not go gladly into the service of the Portugals,” I replied. “It was either that or stay in their dungeons. As time passed, they gave me employ and came to trust me, which is fair enough, for I am not a devious man.”