The overloaded ark, p.18
The Overloaded Ark, page 18
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE JU-JU THAT WORKED
THE next two days were spent hunting with the dogs, and we had exceptionally good luck. The first day we caught a young Monitor and a full-grown Duiker, but it was on the second day that we secured a real prize. We had spent some hours rushing madly up and down the mountain following the dogs, who were following trails that seemed to lead nowhere, and at length we had halted for a rest among some huge boulders. We squatted on the rocks, gasping and sweating, while our dauntless pack lay at our feet, limp and panting. Soon, when we had all regained our breath somewhat, one of the dogs got up and wandered off into some neighbouring bushes, where we could hear it sniffing around, its bell clonking. Suddenly it let out a wild yelp, and we could hear it rushing off through the bushes; immediately the rest of the pack was galvanized into action and followed quickly with much yelping. We gathered up our things hastily, flung away our half smoked cigarettes, and followed the pack with all speed. At first the trail led downhill, and we leapt wildly among the boulders and roots as we rushed down the steep incline. At one point there was a flimsy sapling hanging low over our path, and instead of ducking beneath it as the others had done, I brushed it aside with one hand. Immediately a swarm of black dots appeared before my eyes and an agonizing pain spread over my neck and cheek. On the branch which I had so carelessly thrust aside there was hanging a small forest wasps’ nest, a thing the size of an apple hanging concealed beneath the leaves. The owners of these nests are swift and angry, and do not hesitate to attack, as I now realized. As I rushed on, clutching my cheek and neck and cursing fluently, it occurred to me that the hunters had seen the nest and had instinctively ducked to avoid disturbing it, and they presumably thought I would do the same. From then on I imitated their actions slavishly, while my head ached and throbbed.
It was the longest chase we had had to date; we must have run for nearly an hour, and towards the end I was so exhausted and in such pain that I did not really care if we captured anything or not. But eventually we caught up with the pack, and we found them grouped around the end of a great hollow tree trunk thaat stretched across the forest floor. The sight of the animal that crouched snarling gently at the dogs in the mouth of the trunk revived my interest in life immediately; it was the size of an English fox, with a heavy, rather bear-like face, and neat round ears. Its long sinuous body was cream coloured, as were its head and tail. Its slim and delicate legs were chocolate brown. It was a Black-legged Mongoose, probably the rarest of the mongoose family in West Africa. On our arrival this rarity cast us a scornful glance and retreated into the interior of the trunk, and as soon as he had disappeared the dogs regained their courage and flung themselves at the opening and hurled abuse at him, though none of them, I noticed, tried to follow him.
The hunters now noticed for the first time that I had been stung, for my face and neck were swollen, and one eye was half closed in what must have looked like a rather lascivious wink. They stood around me moaning and clicking their fingers with grief, and ejaculating “Sorry, sah!” at intervals, while the Tailor rushed off to a nearby stream and brought me water to wash the stings with. Application of a cold compress eased the pain considerably, and we then set about the task of routing the Mongoose from his stronghold. Luckily the tree was an old one, and under the crust of bark we found the wood dry and easy to cut. We laid nets over the mouth of the trunk, and then at the other end we cut a small hole and in this we laid a fire of green twigs and leaves. This was lit and the Tailor, armed with a great bunch of leaves, fanned it vigorously so that the smoke was blown along the hollow belly of the dead tree. As we added more and more green fuel to the fire, and the smoke became thicker and more pungent, we could hear the Mongoose coughing angrily inside the trunk. Soon it became too much for him, and he shot out into the nets in a cloud of smoke, like a small white cannon-ball from the mouth of a very large cannon. It took us a long time to unwind him, for he had tied himself up most intricately, but at last we got him into a canvas bag, and set off for camp, tired but in high spirits. Even the pain of my wasp stings was forgotten in the warm glow of triumph that enveloped me.
The next morning I awoke feeling wretched: my head ached, and my face was so swollen that I could hardly see out of my copiously watering eyes.
To irritate me still further it turned out to be one of N’da Ali’s off days: she had enveloped herself in every available cloud and even the kitchen, a few paces away from the tent, was invisible in the white dampness. As I was gently masticating the remnants of my breakfast, Pious loomed out of the mist, and with him was a short, misshapen, evil-looking man bearing a huge basket on his head.
“Dis man bring beef, sah,” said Pious, eyeing my swollen face with disapproval.
The man bobbed and bowed, displaying withered yellow stumps of teeth in his fox’s grin. I disliked him on sight, and I disliked him even more on opening his basket and finding inside, not the fine specimen I had hoped for, but a solitary mangy rat with an amputated tail. Having told the man what I thought of his beef I returned to my breakfast. Pious and the man whispered together for a few minutes, the man glancing furtively at me now and then, and Pious came forward once more.
“Excuse me, sah, dis man come from Fineschang, and he say he get something to tell Masa.”
The man capered forward, bowing and grinning and flapping his wrinkled hands.
“Masa,” he whined, “de people for Fineschang dey angry too much dat Masa done come for dis place.”
“Well?”
“Yesterday dey done put ju-ju for Masa. . . .”
“Whar!” yelped Pious, slapping the man on the head so that his dirty hat fell over his eyes. “Na what kind of ju-ju dey done put for Masa, ay?”
“No be bad ju-ju,” said the man hastily, “only Masa no go catch any more beef for dis place, no go get lucky, get plenty rain too much, Masa no go stay.”
“Go tell the people of Fineschang I no fear their ju-ju,” I said wrathfully, “I go stay here until I want to go, you hear? And if I see any Fineschang man for dis place, I get gun that get power too much, you hear, bushman?”
“I hear, sah,” said the man, cringing, “but why Masa de shout me, I no get palaver with Masa?”
“My friend, I savvay dis ju-ju talk: dis ju-ju no fit work if I no know dis ting, and so you be messenger boy, no be so?”
“No, sah, I no get palaver with Masa.”
“All right, now you go for Fineschang one time or I go get palaver with you. You hear?”
The man scuttled off through the mist and Pious gazed anxiously after him.
“You want I go beat him, sah?”he asked hopefully.
“No, leave him.”
“Eh! I no like dis ju-ju business, sah.”
“Well, don’t tell the others, I don’t want them all panicky.”
It was the first time that I have had a ju-ju put on me, and I was interested to see what would happen. I most emphatically do not dismiss ju-ju as a lot of nonsense and mumbo-jumbo, and anyone who does so is a fool, for ju-ju is a very real and potent force all over Africa, and has been known to produce results which are difficult to explain away. Perhaps the commonest sort, and the most effective, is where you have the co-operation of your victim. By this I mean that the man must know he has had a ju-ju placed on him, and then, if he believes in magic, he is ripe for the slaughter. A “well-wisher” comes to the unfortunate man and tells him that a ju-ju has been placed on him, and then, if he believes it, he is left in horrid suspense for a time. Slowly the whole plot is unfolded to him by different “well-wishers” (these, in Africa, are just as deadly as their European counterparts) and he learns that he is gradually to waste away and die. If he is sufficiently convinced of the efficacy of the spell, he will waste away and die. The man who had just been to see me was one of these “well-wishers”, and now that I had been told about the ju-ju, it was more or less up to me. The curious thing was that the ju-ju did work, better than anyone could have wished, but how much of it was due to my own unconscious efforts, and how much was mere coincidence, I don’t know.
The next afternoon, the swelling on my face having gone down, the Tailor, myself, and four others went to the base of some huge cliffs a few miles from camp. These cliffs were riddled with caves, and our object was to try and catch some of the bats that lived in them and to see what else we could find. N’da Ali had recovered from her bad mood, and the day was sparkling with sunlight, and there was even a gentle breeze to keep us cool. I had forgotten all about the ju-ju . . . or, at any rate, I thought I had.
To get down to these caves, which were all connected to each other by a network of narrow passages, we had to lower ourselves into a gorge about forty feet deep. We soon found that the ropes we had brought with us were not long enough for this, and so we had to cut great lengths of “bush rope”, that thin, tough creeper that grows everywhere in the forest.
With these bits of creeper tied together, we lowered ourselves into the gash in the mountainside At the bottom we separated, and each squeezed through a different tunnel to explore various sections of the caves. The place was full of bats, from the tiny little insect-eaters to the great heavy fruit- eaters, but for two hours they flicked about us and we caught nothing.
Blundering through the labyrinth I met the Tailor, who was standing gazing at a pile of rocks in one corner of the cave. In an excited whisper he said that he had just seen something move on top of the, pile of rocks, high up by the roof. While we were holding a whispered argument as to the best thing to do, we were joined by another member of the hunting brigade, so we all trained our torches on the pile of rocks and surveyed them carefully. There was nothing to be seen.
“Are you sure you saw something, Tailor?”
“Yes, sah, sure. ’E dere for on top.”
We peered again, and suddenly we were startled by the appearance of a black shape which humped itself above the rocks and grunted loudly.
“Na tiger, sah,” said the Tailor.
I was inclined to agree, for the shape was too big to be anything else. On hearing our identification the third member of our little party fled down the cave towards the blessed open air and safety, leaving the Tailor and myself to face the foe.
“Na foolish man, dat,” said the Tailor scornfully, but I noticed that the hand that held his torch was none too steady. I was not at all sure what was the best thing to do: if the leopard turned nasty it would be extremely dangerous to shoot at it, for letting off a gun in a cave like that is a dangerous procedure, as it may bring the whole roof down. I felt that I would rather face a live leopard than be buried dead . . . or alive . . . under several tons of rock.
Meanwhile the black shape; after humping itself up several times and giving a few more growls, disappeared behind the rocks, and we heard a faint clatter of rocks, In the shadowy darkness of the cave we could not tell where the animal would next appear, so I was just about to suggest a strategic withdrawal when a head appeared over the top of the pile of rocks, gaped at us for a moment, and then said: “Masa, I done catch beef.”
It was the smallest and most useless of the party, one Abo, who had climbed to the top of the rocks in pursuit of a rat, Lying on his stomach he had followed the rodent through the rocks, and the heaving shape we had seen was his backside as he wriggled painfully between the slabs, grunting loudly with the unaccustomed exertion. This anti-climax left both the Tailor and myself weak with laughter, and the Tailor reeled round the cave, tears streaming down his face, slapping his thighs in mirth.
“Eh . . . aehh! Abo, nearly Masa done shoot you. Eh . . . aehh! Abo, you be fine tiger . . ” he chortled.
Abo climbed down from the rocks and held out for my inspection a small rat.
“I tink I done wound him small, Masa,” he said, which proved to be an understatement for the rat was very dead.
While we were looking around to see if we could catch any more of these rats, we heard a rumble of thunder from the outside world, which echoed ominously along the caves and passages. When we reached the gorge we found it dark and gloomy, for above us, along the sides of the huge cliffs, swollen black rain clouds were coiling and shifting. We hauled each other out of the gorge as quickly as possible, and started to pack the equipment in the bags. Suddenly the thunder crashed directly overhead, seeming to shake the very foundations of the mountain, and the next minute the clouds swept low over us and an icy sheet of rain descended. I have never seen rain so thick and heavy; almost before we realized what was happening our flimsy clothes were drenched, and our teeth chattering with cold. The sky was scarred by a sudden flash of lightning, followed by a tremendous regurgitation of thunder, and somewhere to our left in the forest I could hear the chimpanzees screaming and hooting a shrill protest at the weather.
The men picked up their bundles and we started off down the hill-side for camp; we had not gone fifty feet when my feet slipped on a rain-soaked rock, and I fell and went bouncing and rolling down the slope, ending up against the trunk of a tree, bruised and scratched, with my right leg doubled up under me and hurting badly. For a moment I thought I had broken it until I straightened it out, and then I realized I had only wrenched my ankle. But this was bad enough, for I could not stand on it for the pain. I lay there among the rain-lashed drooping trees, with a shivering group of men about me, trying to rub some life back into my leg. We were a good four miles from camp and my ankle was swelling visibly. It was obvious that we could not stay there indefinitely, and to add to my discomfiture I realized that the storm clouds hanging low over the mountain would bring darkness upon us more quickly than we had anticipated. I sent the Tailor to cut me a sapling, and this he fashioned into a rough crutch. Using this, and with the Tailor supporting me on one side, I managed to hobble along, albeit painfully, and so we progressed slowly through the dripping trees. Soon we reached a more or less level area of forest, and the sound of running water came to us. I was surprised, for the only stream we had crossed on the way up had been a wide shallow one, barely covering our ankles, and yet this one sounded like a well-fed stream. I looked at the Tailor for an explanation.
“Dat small water done fillup,” he said.
It was my first experience of how quickly a stream, especially a mountain stream, could “fillup” in a good downpour of rain. The stream we had crossed, shallow as a bird-bath, was now a foaming yellow torrent nearly waist deep, and in this roaring broth, branches, roots, leaves and bruised flowers were swept and whirled among the rocks. The shallowest point to cross was where this stream left the level forest floor and plunged down the steep mountain-side over a great sheet of rock, which had been stripped of its covering of leaf-mould by the waters. The other men went first, and when they were safely across the Tailor and I followed. Slowly we edged our way across, I testing each step with my stick. We reached the centre, and here the force of the water was greatest for it was squeezed between two big rocks. It was here that I placed my stick on a small stone that tilted, my stick was twitched away from my grasp, and I had a momentary glimpse of it sweeping down the slope, bobbing on the surface, before I fell fiat on my face in the water.
It was the grip the Tailor had on my arm that prevented me from being swept down the hill-side in company with my stick. As it was, when I landed in the water I felt myself being swept down, until I was brought up with a jerk by the Tailor’s hand, but this jerk nearly threw him alongside me into the water. Bent almost double to keep his balance he roared for help, and the others jumped back into the stream and laid hold of whatever bits of my anatomy they could see, and hauled us both to safety. Panting and shivering and sodden, we continued our way to camp.
The last half-mile was the worst, for we had to clamber down the escarpment, crawling from boulder to boulder, until we reached the level strip where the camp awaited us. Only visions of dry clothes, a hot meal and a drink kept me going. But when we reached the camp a dreadful sight met our eyes: the tiny unassuming stream that had whispered and twinkled so modestly twenty feet from my tent, was now a lusty roaring cataract, Swollen with its own power it had burst its tiny banks and leapt upon the camp. The carriers’ flimsy huts had been swept away as though they had never existed; half the kitchen was a wreck and the floor knee-deep in water. Only my tent was safe, perched as it was on a slight hillock, but even so the ground under and around it was soggy and shuddery with water. There was no firewood and the only means of heating food was the solitary Tilly lamp. Under these conditions there was only one thing to do: we all crawled into the tent . . . myself and twelve Africans in a tent that had originally been designed to accommodate two at the most! We boiled pints of hot, sweet chocolate over the lamp, and drank it out of a strange variety of dishes ranging from tin mugs to animal plates. For three hours we sat there, while the rain drummed on the taut, damp canvas, then gradually it died away, and the mountain was enveloped in great drifts of white cloud. The carriers became busy rebuilding their little shelters, and as I watched them I suddenly thought for the first time of the ju-ju. Well, the first round certainly belonged to it: my leg was very bad, and the rain made everything more difficult, and hunting almost impossible. I had a bad night, and the next day it rained solidly and dismally from dawn to nightfall, and my leg showed no improvement. Reluctantly I came to the conclusion that it would be more sensible to call it a day and give in to the ju-ju: down in Bakebe, at least, I could rest my leg in comfort and be doing some useful work, but sitting up on top of N’da Ali was not doing anyone any good. So I gave the orders to pack up and said we would leave the next morning, whereupon everyone except myself looked very pleased.
