"What do you mean? How do you know that, Kaneke?"
"I mean what I say, and I do know it, Lord. Even in that pit which you thought so dangerous you were quite safe, as you were when the Arabs attacked you and the elephants chased you, and as you will be to the end of this adventure, if only you keep your promises. For was this not vowed to you at the beginning?"
"Yes, Kaneke, by an unhappy woman whom I see no more."
"Those who are not seen may still be present, Lord, or their strength may remain behind them. But if you turn back before your mission is ended, it will depart. Those tribes who have welcomed you upon your outward journey will one and all fight against you on your return, until in this way or in that you are brought to your deaths. Never again will you look upon the sea, Lord."
"That's pleasant!" I exclaimed, controlling my temper as best I could. "Listen. You talk of my mission. Be so good as to tell me what it is. The only mission that I have, or had, was to visit a certain lake called Mone, if it exists, in order to satisfy my curiosity and love of seeing new things. Well, I have changed my mind; I no longer desire to travel to the Lake Mone."
"Yet I think you must go there, Lord, as I must, for that which is stronger than we are draws us both. In this world, Lord, we do not serve ourselves, we serve something else; I cannot tell what it is. Everything we do or seem to do, good and bad together, is done to carry out the purpose of what we cannot see. Like that beast Donna of yours, we travel our road, sometimes willingly, sometimes to satisfy our appetites, sometimes driven forward with strokes. Each of us has his powers, which are given to him, not that he may gain what he desires, but that he may fulfil an invisible purpose. Thus you have yours and I have mine. I know that your servants and others hold me to be a magician, and now and again you are tempted to believe them. Well, perhaps in a certain way I am something of a magician, that is to say, strength works through me, though whence that strength comes I cannot say."
"All this does not leave me much wiser, Kaneke."
"How can we who have no wisdom at all ever grow wiser, Lord? To do so, first we must be wise, and that will not happen to us until we are dead. All our lives we toil that we may grow wise—in death, when we may learn that wisdom is nothingness, or nothingness wisdom."
"Oh, have done!" I said in a rage. "Your talk goes round and round, and ends nowhere. You are fooling me with words, but I suppose that what you mean is, that we must go on with you."
"Yes, Lord, I mean that, amongst other things, unless indeed you wish to stop altogether and go to seek wisdom in the stars, or wherever she may dwell. Safety and good fortune have been promised to you and to the yellow man your servant, knowledge also such as you love. These lie in front of you, but behind lies that which all men shun, or so I read what is written."
"Where do you read it, Kaneke?"
"Yonder," he answered, pointing to the sky that was thick with stars, though the moon had not yet risen.
I stared at this solemn–faced, big–eyed man. Of all that he said I believed nothing, holding that if not merely a clever cheat, like others of his kind, he was a self–deluder. Yet of one thing I was sure, that if I tried to cross his will and deserted him, his prophecies would certainly be fulfilled, so far as we were concerned. Evidently this Kaneke was one who had authority among natives. It would be easy for him to pass a word back over the road that we had travelled, or in any direction that we might go, which word would mean what he foretold for us, four men only who must be at the mercy of a mob of savages, namely—death. On the other hand, if we went forward, his vanity would see to it that what he had asserted should come true, namely that we should be safe. Not till afterwards did I remember that only Hans and I were included in that assertion. Nothing was said about the two hunters.
On the whole, after this talk I hated Kaneke more than ever. Something told me that however plausible and smooth–tongued he might be, at heart the man was deceitful, one, too, whose ends were not good.
Chapter IX
Explanations
Next morning early I laid all this matter before Tom and Jerry, telling them that I had made up my mind to go forward with Kaneke and that Hans would accompany me, as I considered on the whole that this would be the safer course. If, however, they wished to return, I would give them rifles with a fair share of our ammunition, also the donkey Donna to take the place of porters. In fact, only in more detail, I repeated the offer which I made before we went out to hunt, or rather to be hunted by, elephants, explaining that I did so because after that experience they might have changed their mind about its acceptance.
They consulted together, then Tom the Abyssinian, who was always the spokesman, said:
"Master, after what we went through on the mound in the midst of the plain and in the forest with those elephants, which we believe to have been creatures bewitched, it is true that we are much more frightened even than we were before. So frightened are we that were it not for one matter, we would now do what we said we would not do, and attempt to work our way towards the coast, even though we must go alone."
"What matter?" I asked.
"This, Macumazahn. We are men disgraced; not only did we show fear and run when on duty, we did worse, we threw away our guns that we might run more quickly, and therefore, although they have been found and brought back by Kaneke's people, I say that we are men disgraced."
"Oh!" I said, trying to soothe their pride. "Hans and I ran also. Who would not have run with all those elephants thundering after him? It was the only thing to do."
"Yes, Macumazahn, you ran also, and it was the only thing to do. But, Lord, neither you nor Hans threw away your rifle against the hunter's law—"
"No, we should never do that," I said, trying to interrupt, but he went on rapidly:
"—So ashamed are we, Macumazahn, that I tell you, were it not that we are Christians, both of us, we should have hung ourselves or otherwise have put an end to our lives. But being Christians, this we cannot do, for then we should go to answer for that crime to a greater Master than you are. For this reason, Macumazahn, seeing that we may not wipe out our shame as savages would do, we propose to redeem our honour in another fashion. We hold that if we go forward with Kaneke we shall die, for we believe ourselves to be men bewitched, yes, men doomed by that wizard, whatever may be the fate of you, master, and of Hans. If so, thus let it be, for we are determined that if we must die, we will do so in some great fashion which will cause you to forget that we are men who broke the hunter's law and threw away our guns, with which it was our duty to defend you, and to remember us only as two faithful servants who knew how to give their lives to save that of their master."
I was so astonished at this solemn speech that I began to wonder whether Tom, in order to console himself for the slur upon his honour, the breach of the "hunter's law", as he called it, had got at my scanty stock of spirits.
"What do you say?" I asked, looking hard at Jerry.
"Oh, Macumazahn," answered that phlegmatic person, "I say that Little Holes is quite right. We two who have always had a good name—as the writings about us told you—when trouble came have shown ourselves to be not watch–dogs, but jackals. Yes, we are fellows who in the hour of danger have thrown away our rifles, which we should have kept to the last to protect the white lord who paid us. Therefore we will not go back, although we believe that we walk to our deaths, being under a curse. No, we will go on hoping that before the end you may learn that we are not really jackals but stout watch–dogs; yes, if God is good to us, that we are more, that we are bull–buffaloes, that we are lions."