I tried to fight ’em off, but it was like fightin’ a fog. Sometimes I’d hit ’em, but they’d just sail through the air, an’ I couldn’t hurt ’em. All the time, they was flutterin’ their wings an’ lookin’ for a chance to get more blood.
I’d got the weight of ’em off, though, an’ I staggered out of the cave. They followed me for a ways; but when I got out to where it was gettin’ light they went back in the cave. It gets light quick down there in the tropics, an’ the light hurt their eyes.
I rolled into the sand an’ went to sleep.
When I woke up I heard marchin’ feet. It sounded like an army. They was comin’ regular like, slow, unhurried, deliberate. It made the chills come up my spine just to hear the boom, boom, boom of those feet.
I crawled deeper into the sand under the shadows of the overhangin’ green stuff. Naked men an’ women filed out onto the beach.
I watched ’em.
Chocolate-colored they were, an’ they talked a funny, squeaky talk. I found afterward some of the words was Fanti and some was a graduated monkey talk. Fanti ain’t never been written down.
It’s one of the Tshi languages. The Ashantis an’ the Fantis an’ one or two other tribes speak branches o’ the same lingo. But these people spoke part Fanti an’ part graduated monkey talk.
An’ among ’em was a monkey-man. He was a funny guy. There was coarse hair all over him, an’ he had a stub of a tail. His big toes weren’t set like mine, but they was twisted like a foot thumb.
No, I didn’t notice the toes at the time. I found that out later, while he was sittin’ on a limb gettin’ ready to shoot a poisoned arrow at me. I thought every minute was my last, an’ then was when I noticed the way his foot thumbs wrapped around the limb. Funny how a man will notice little things when he’s near death.
Anyway, this tribe came down an’ marched into the water, men, women, an’ children. They washed themselves up to the hips, sort of formal, like it was a ceremony. The rest of them they didn’t get water on at all. They came out an’ rubbed sort of an oil on their arms, chests, an’ faces.
Chapter 2
Life or Death
Finally they all went away, all except a woman an’ a little kid. The woman was lookin’ for somethin’ in the water — fish, maybe. The kid was on a rock about eight feet away, a little shaver he was, an’ he had a funny pot-belly. I looked at him an’ I looked at her.
I was sick an’ I was hungry, an’ I was bleedin’ from the bats. The smell of the jungle was in my lungs, so I couldn’t tell whether the air was full of jungle or whether I was breathin’ in jungle stuff with just a little air. It’s a queer sensation. Unless you’ve been through it you wouldn’t understand.
Well, I felt it was everything or nothin’. The woman couldn’t kill me, an’ the kid couldn’t. An’ I had to make myself known an’ get somethin’ to eat.
I straightened out of the sand.
“Hello,” said I.
The kid was squattin’ on his haunches. He didn’t seem to jump. He just flew through the air an’ he sailed right onto his mother’s back. His hands clung to her shoulders an’ his head pressed tight against her skin, the eyes rollin’ at me, but the head never movin’.
The mother made three jumps right up the sand, an’ then she sailed into the air an’ caught the branch of a tree. The green stuff was so thick that I lost sight of ’em both right there. I could hear a lot of jabberin’ monkey talk in the trees, an’ then I heard the squeaky voice of the woman talkin’ back to the monkeys. I could tell the way she was goin’ by the jabber of monkey talk.
No, I can’t remember words of monkey talk. I never got so I could talk to the monkeys. But the people did. I am goin’ to tell you about that. I’m explainin’ about the sleepin’ sickness, an’ about how the memories come back to me after I’ve been asleep.
Maybe they’re dreams, but maybe they ain’t. If they’re dreams, how comes it that when I got to Cape Coast Castle I couldn’t remember where I’d been? They brought me in there on stretchers, an’ nobody knows how far they’d brought me. They left me in the dead o’ night. But the next mornin’ there were the tracks, an’ they were tracks like nobody there had ever seen before.
There’s strange things in Africa, an’ this was when I was a young blood, remember that. I was an upstandin’ youngster, too. I’d tackle anything, even the west coast of Africa on a raft, an’ the Fanti warriors; but I’m comin’ to that directly.
Well, the woman ran away, an’ the monkeys came. They stuck around on the trees an’ jabbered monkey talk at me. I wished I’d been like the woman an’ could have talked to ’em. But the monkeys ain’t got so many words. There’s a lot of it that’s just tone stuff. It was the ants that could speak, but they rubbed feelers together.
Oh, yes, there was ants, great, woolly ants two inches long, ants that built houses out of sticks. They built ’em thirty feet high, an’ some of the sticks was half an inch round an’ six or eight inches long. They had the ants guardin’ the gold ledge, an’ nobody except Kk-Kk, the feeder, an’ the goldsmith could come near there.
The goldsmith was nothin’ but a slave, anyway. They’d captured him from a slaver that went ashore. The others died of the fever, but the natives gave the goldsmith some medicine that cured him. After that he couldn’t get sick. They could have done the same by me, too, but the monkey-man was my enemy. He wanted Kk-Kk for himself.
Finally I heard the tramp of feet again, an’ the warriors of the tribe came out. They had spears an’ little bows with long arrows. The arrows were as thin as a pencil. They didn’t look like they’d hurt anything, but there was a funny color on the points, a sort of shimmering something.
I found out afterward that was where they’d coated ’em with poison an’ baked the poison into the wood. One scratch with an arrow like that an’ a man or beast would die. But it didn’t hurt the flesh none for eatin’. Either of man or beast it didn’t. They ate ’em both.
I saw it was up to me to make a speech. The men all looked serious an’ dignified. That is, they all did except the monkey-man. He capered around on the outside. His balance didn’t seem good on his two feet, so he’d stoop over an’ use the backs of his knuckles to steady himself. He could hitch along over the ground like the wind. His arms were long, long an’ hairy, an’ the inside of his palms was all wrinkled, thick an’ black.
Anyhow, I made a speech.
I told ’em that I was awful tough, an’ that I was thin, an’ maybe the bat bites had poisoned me, so I wouldn’t advise ’em to cook me. I told ’em I was a friend an’ I didn’t come to bother ’em, but to get away from the big ship that was layin’ offshore.
I thought they understood me, because some of ’em was lookin’ at the ship. But I found out afterward they didn’t. They’d seen the ship, an’ they’d seen me, an’ they saw the dried salt water on my clothes, an’ they figgered it out for themselves.
I finished with my speech. I didn’t expect ’em to clap their hands, because they had spears an’ bows, but I thought maybe they’d smile. They was a funny bunch, all gathered around there in a circle, grave an’ naked like. An’ they all had three scars on each side of their cheek bones. It made ’em look tough.
Then the monkey-man gave a sort of a leap an’ lit in the trees, an’ the monkeys came around and jabbered, an’ he jabbered, an’ somehow I thought he was tellin’ the monkeys about me. Maybe he was. I never got to know the monkey talk.