An’ then from the jungle behind me I heard a girl’s voice, an’ it was speakin’ good English.
“Be silent and I shall speak to my father,” she said.
You can imagine how I felt hearin’ an English voice from the jungle that way, an’ knowin’ it was a girl’s voice. But I knew she wasn’t a white woman. I could tell that by the sound of the voice, sort of the way the tongue didn’t click against the roof of the mouth, but the lips made the speech soft like.
An’ then there was a lot of squeaky talk from the jungles back of me.
There was silence after that talk, an’ then I heard the girl’s voice again.
“They’ve gone for the goldsmith. He’ll talk to you.”
I didn’t see who had gone, an’ I didn’t know who the goldsmith was. I turned around an’ tried to see into the jungle, but all I could see was leaves, trunks, an’ vine stems. There was a wispy blue vapor that settled all around an’ overhead the air was white way way up, white with Sahara dust. But down low the jungle odor hung around the ground. Around me the circle stood naked an’ silent. Not a man moved.
Who was the goldsmith? — I wondered. Who was the girl?
Then I heard steps behind me an’ the jungle parted. I smelled somethin’ burnin’. It wasn’t tobacco, not the kind we have, but it was a sort of a tobacco flavor.
A man came out into the circle, smokin’ a pipe.
“How are yuh?” he says, an’ sticks forward a hand.
He was a white man, part white anyway, an’ he had on some funny clothes. They were made of skins, but they were cut like a tailor would cut ’em. He even had a skin hat with a stiff brim. He’d made the stiff brim out of green skin with the hair rubbed off.
He was smokin’ a clay pipe, an’ there was a vacant look in his eyes, a blank somethin’ like a man who didn’t have feelin’s any more, but was just a man-machine.
I shook hands with him.
“Are they goin’ to eat me?” I asks.
He smoked awhile before he spoke, an’ then he takes the pipe out of his mouth an’ nods his head.
“Sure,” he says.
It wasn’t encouragin’.
“Have hope,” came the voice from the jungle, the voice of the girl. She seemed to be standin’ close, close an’ keepin’ in one place, but I couldn’t see her.
I talked to the man with the pipe. I made him a speech. He turned around and talked to the circle of men, an’ they didn’t say anything.
Finally an old man grunted, an’ like the grunt was an order they all squatted down on their haunches, all of ’em facin’ me.
Then the girl in the jungle made squeaky noises. The old man seemed to be listenin’ to her. The others didn’t listen to anything. They were just starin’ at me, an’ the expression on all of the faces was the same. It was sort of a curiosity, but it wasn’t a curiosity to see what I looked like. I felt it was a curiosity to see what I’d taste like.
Then the goldsmith rubbed some more brown leaf into the pipe, right on top of the coals of the other pipefull.
“The girl is claimin’ you as a slave,” he says.
“Who is the girl?” I asked him.
“Kk-Kk,” he says, an’ I didn’t know whether he was givin’ me a name or warnin’ me to keep quiet.
Well, I figured I’d rather be a slave than a meal, so I kept quiet.
Then the monkey-man in the tree began to jabber.
They didn’t look up at him, but I could see they were listenin’. When he got done the girl squeaked some more words.
Then the monkey-man made some more talk, and the girl talked. The fellow with the pipe smoked an’ blew the smoke out of his nose. His eyes were weary an’ puckered. He was an odd fellow.
Finally the old man that had grunted an’ made ’em squat, gave another grunt. They all stood up.
This is the show-down, I says to myself. It’s either bein’ a white slave or bein’ a meat loaf.
The old man looked at me an’ blinked. Then he sucked his lips into his mouth until his face was all puckered into wrinkles. He blinked his lidless eyes some more an’ then grunted twice. Then all the men marched off. I could hear their feet boomin’ along the hard ground in the jungle, on a path that had been beaten down hard by millions of bare feet. I found out afterward that same path had been used for over a hundred years, an’ the king made a law it had to be traveled every day. That was the only way they could keep the ground hard.
I guess I’m a meal, I thought to myself. I figgered the goldsmith would have told me if I had been goin’ to be a slave. But he’d moved off with the rest, an’ he hadn’t said a word.
The monkey-man kept talkin’ to the bunch. He didn’t walk along the path, but he moved through the trees, keepin’ up in the branches, right over the heads of the others, an’ talkin’ all the time, an’ his words didn’t seem happy words. I sort of felt he was scoldin’ like a monkey that’s watchin’ yuh eat a coconut.
But the old man grunted at him, an’ he shut up like a clam. He was mad, though. I could tell that because he set off through the trees, tearin’ after a couple of monkeys. An’ he pretty nearly caught ’em. They sounded like a whirlwind, tearin’ through the branches. Then the sounds got fainter, an’ finally everything was still.
I looked around. There was nobody in sight. I was there, on the fringe of beach, right near the edge of the jungle, and everything was still an’ silent.
Then there came a rustlin’ of the jungle stuff an’ she came out.
She had on a skirt of grass stuff, an’ her eyes were funny. You know how a monkey’s eyes are? They’re round. They don’t squint up any at the corners. An’ they’re sort of moist an’ glistening on the surface. It’s a kind of a liquid expression.
Her eyes were like that.
For the rest she was like the others. Her skin was dusky, but not black, an’ it was smooth. It was like a piece of chocolate silk.
“I’m Kk-Kk, the daughter of Yik-Yik, and the keeper of the gold ledge,” she said. “I have learned to speak the language of the goldsmith. You, too, speak the same language. You are my slave.”
“Thank God I ain’t a meal,” I said. That was before the doctor guys discovered these here calories in food; but right then I didn’t feel like a half a good-sized calorie, much less a fit meal for a native warrior.
“You will be my slave,” she said, “but if you pay skins to my father you can buy your freedom, and then you will be a warrior.”
“I ain’t never been a slave to a woman,” I told her, me bein’ one of the kind that had always kept from being led to the altar, “but I’d rather be a slave to you than to that old man on the boat out yonder.”
There was something half shy about her, and yet something proud and dignified.
“I have promised my father my share of the next hunt in order to purchase you from the tribe,” she went on.
“Thanks,” I told her, knowin’ it was up to me to say somethin’, but sort of wonderin’ whether a free, white man should thank a woman who had made a slave, outa him.
“Come,” she said, an’ turned away.
I had more of a chance to study her back. She was lithe, graceful, and she was a well-turned lass. There was a set to her head, a funny little twist of her shoulders when she walked that showed she was royalty and knowed it. Funny how people get that little touch of class no matter where they are or what stock. Just as soon as they get royal blood in ’em they get it. I’ve seen ’em everywhere.
I followed her into the jungle, down under the branches where there wasn’t sunlight any more; but the day was just filled with green light.
Finally we came through the jungle an’ into a big clearin’. There were huts around the clearin’ an’ a big fire. The people of the tribe were here, goin’ about their business in knots of two an’ three just like nothin’ had happened. I was a member of the tribe now, the slave of Kk-Kk.