Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon (Burton & Swinburne) (41 page)

“I dreamt of you before,” he said. “You were in Kumari Kandam. This, though, is Africa, where the Nāga are known as the
Chitahuri
or the
Shayturáy.”

“I am K'k'thyima. I am here, I am in other places. I am nowhere, soft skin, for my people were made extinct by thine.”

“Yet the essence of you was imprinted on one of the Eyes; you lived on in that black diamond until it was shattered.”

Again, the Nāga chose not to respond.

A flash drew Burton's eyes upward. He saw a shooting star, the brightest he'd ever witnessed. It blazed a trail across the sky, then suddenly divided into three streaks of light. They flew apart and faded. When he looked down, the Nāga priest was gone.

He lay back and woke up.

“It's dawn, Boss. I can still hear shots from Kazeh.”

Herbert Spencer's head was poking through the entrance to the tent. It was wrapped in a
keffiyeh
but the scarf was pulled open at the front and the polymethylene suit beneath was visible, as were the three round openings that formed the philosopher's “face.” Through the glass of the uppermost one, Burton could see tiny cogs revolving. Spencer was otherwise motionless.

A moment passed.

“Was there something else, Herbert?”

“No, Boss. I'll help Mr. Bombay to load the horses.”

The philosopher withdrew.

Swinburne sat up. “I think I shall take lunch at the Athenaeum Club today, Richard, followed by a tipple at the Black Toad.”

“Are you awake, Algy?”

The poet peered around at the inside of the tent.

“Oh bugger it,” he said. “I am.”

Burton shook Trounce into consciousness and the three of them crawled into the open, ate a hasty breakfast, packed, and mounted their horses.

Burton groaned. “I'm running a fever.”

“I have some of Sadhvi's medicine,” Swinburne said.

“I'll take it when we next stop. Let's see how far we can get today. Keep your weapons close to hand—we don't know when we might run into Speke.”

They moved off.

Most of the day was spent crossing the savannah.

Vultures circled overhead.

The far-off sounds of battle faded behind them.

They entered a lush valley. Clusters of granite pushed through its slopes, and the grass grew so high that it brushed against the riders' legs.

“Wow! This is the place called Usagari,” Bombay advised. “Soon we will see villages.”

“Everyone move quietly,” Burton ordered. “We have to slip past as many as we can, else the few boxes of beads and coils of wire we're carrying will be gone in an instant.”

After fording a
nullah
, they rode up onto higher ground and saw plantations laid out on a gentle slope. Bombay led them along the edges of the cultivated fields, through forests and thick vegetation, and thus managed to pass four villages without being spotted. Then their luck ran out, and they were confronted by warriors who leaped about, brandishing their spears and striking grotesque poses that were designed to frighten but which sent Swinburne into fits of giggles.

After much whooping and shouting, Bombay finally established peaceful communication. The Britishers paid three boxes of beads and were given permission to stay at the village overnight. It was called Usenda, and its inhabitants proved much more friendly than their initial greeting had suggested. They shared their food and, to Swinburne's delight, a highly alcoholic beverage made from bananas, and gave over a dwelling for the explorers' use. It was a poor thing constructed of grass, infested with insects, and already claimed by a family of rats. Trounce was too exhausted to care, Swinburne was too drunk to notice, and Burton was so feverish by now that he passed out the moment he set foot in it. They all slept deeply, while Spencer stood sentry duty and Bombay stayed up late gossiping with the village elders.

When they departed the next day, the king's agent was slumped semi-aware in his saddle, so Trounce took the lead. He successfully steered them past seven villages and out of the farmed region onto uninhabited flatlands where gingerbread palms grew in abundance. It was easy going but took two days to traverse, during which time Burton swam in and out of consciousness. His companions, meanwhile, grew thoroughly sick of the unchanging scenery, which offered nothing to suggest that they might be making any progress.

At last, they came to the edge of a jungle and began to work their way through it, with Trounce and Spencer leading the way while Swinburne and Bombay guided the horses behind them. Burton remained mounted and insensible.

For what felt like hours, they fought with the undergrowth, until Spencer pushed a tangle of lianas out of their path and they suddenly found themselves face to face with a rhinoceros. It kicked the ground, snorted, and moved its head from side to side, squinting at them from its small, watery eyes.

They raised their rifles.

“Absolute silence, please, gentlemen,” Trounce whispered. “The slightest noise or movement could cause it to charge us.”

“Up your sooty funnel!” Pox screamed.

“Pig-jobber!” Malady squawked. “Cross-eyed slack-bellied stink trumpet!”

The rhino gave a prodigious belch, turned, and trotted away.

“My hat!” Swinburne exclaimed. “Malady has been learning fast!”

“Humph!” Trounce responded. “Next time we're confronted by a wild beast, I won't bother to unsling my rifle. I'll just throw parakeets.”

It was close to nightfall by the time they broke free of the mess of vegetation and found a place to camp. Burton recovered his wits while the others slept, and he sat with Spencer, listening to the rasping utterances of lions and the chuckles and squeals of hyenas.

“How're you feelin'?” the philosopher asked.

“Weak. How about you?”

“Phew! I'll be glad when all this walkin' an' ridin' is over an' done with. It's playin' merry havoc with me gammy leg.”

“Your leg is just dented, Herbert.”

“Aye, but it aches somethin' terrible.”

“That's not possible.”

“Aye. Do you think, Boss, that I've lost some qualities that a man possesses only 'cos he's flesh?”

“What sort of qualities?”

“A conscience, for example; a self-generated moral standard by which a man judges his own actions. Old Darwin said it's the most important distinction between humankind an' other species.”

“And you think it's a characteristic of corporeality?”

“Aye, an evolution of a creature's instinct to preserve its own species. Compare us to the lower animals. What happens when a sow has a runt in her litter? She eats it. What happens if a bird hatches deformed? It's bloomin' well pecked to death. What do gazelles do with a lame member of the herd? They leave it to die, don't they? Humans are the dominant species 'cos we're heterogeneous, but to support all our individual specialisations, we have to suppress the natural desire to allow the weak an' inferior to fall by the wayside, as it were, 'cos how can we evaluate each other when reality demands somethin' different from every individual? A manual labourer might consider a bank clerk too physically weak; does that mean he should kill the blighter? The clerk might think the labourer too unintelligent; is that reason enough to deny him the means to live? In the wild, such judgements apply, but not in human society, so we have conscience to intercede, to inhibit the baser aspects of natural evolution an' raise it to a more sophisticated level. As I suggested to you once before, Boss, where mankind is concerned, survival of the fittest refers not to physical strength, but to the ability to adapt oneself to circumstances. The process wouldn't function were it not for conscience.”

Burton considered this, and there was silence between them for a good few minutes.

Spencer picked up a stone and threw it at a shadowy form—a hyena that had wandered too close.

“You're suggesting,” Burton finally said, “that conscience has evolved to suppress in us the instinct that drives animals to kill or abandon the defective, because each of us is only weak or strong depending on who's judging us and the criteria they employ?”

“Precisely. Without conscience we'd end up killin' each other willy-nilly until the whole species was gone.”

“So you associate it with the flesh because it ensures our species' physical survival?”

“Aye. It's an adaptation of an instinct what's inherent in the body.”

“And you suspect that your transference into this brass mechanism might have robbed you of your conscience?”

“I don't know whether it has or hasn't, Boss. I just wonder. I need to test it.”

They sat a little longer, then Burton was overcome by weariness and retired to the tent.

Travel the following morning proved the easiest since their arrival in Africa. The ground was firm, trees—baobabs—were widely spaced, and undergrowth was thinly distributed. Small flowers grew in abundance.

As they entered this district, Pox and Malady launched themselves from Spencer's shoulders and flew from tree to tree, rubbing their beaks together and insulting each other rapturously.

“It's love,” Swinburne declared.

Almost before they realised it, they found cultivated land underfoot and a village just ahead. It was too close to avoid, so
hongo
was paid and, in return, a hut was assigned for their use.

They rested and took stock.

Sadhvi's medicine was driving the fever out of Burton. He ached all over but his temperature had stabilised and strength began to seep back into his limbs.

Trounce, though, was suffering. The spear wound in his arm had become slightly infected, and his legs were ulcerating again.

“I shall be crippled at this rate,” he complained. He sat on a stool and allowed Swinburne to roll up his trouser legs.

“Yuck!” the poet exclaimed. “What hideous pins you have, Pouncer!”

“You're not seeing them at their best, lad.”

“Nor would I want to! Now then, it just so happens that I'm the sole purveyor of Sister Raghavendra's Revitalising Remedies. Incredible Cures and Terrific Tonics, all yours for a coil of wire and three shiny beads! What do you say?”

“I say, stop clowning and apply the poultice or I'll apply the flat of my hand to the back of your head.”

Swinburne got to work.

“Shame you can't do nothin' for mine,” Spencer piped.

Burton, who, with Bombay, had been parleying with the village elders, walked over and plonked himself on the ground beside the Yard man.

“We need to navigate in a slightly more northeasterly direction,” he said. “It will save us from having to pass through a densely populated region.”

They departed before sun-up the next morning, descended into a deep and miry watercourse, struggled through bullrushes, then climbed to the peak of a hill just as the sun threw its rays over the horizon. The next few hours were spent crossing uneven ground cut through with marshy rivulets, each filled with tall, tough reeds. There were cairns dotted over the land for as far as the eye could see, as well as stubby malformed trees in which hundreds of black vultures sat in sinister contemplation.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of Death,” Swinburne announced.

“Spongy-brained measles rash!” Pox added.

A steep incline led them up onto firmer ground and into a forest. The two parakeets once again left Spencer's shoulders and travelled overhead, with Pox teaching Malady new insults.

Burton rode onto a fairly well-defined trail.

“This is the path I think Speke is following,” he said.

“Wow!” Bombay answered. “It is the one he took before, when I was with him.”

“Then we should proceed with caution.”

They stopped to eat, then rode on at a brisk pace until they emerged from the trees at the head of a shadowed valley. Its sides were thickly wooded and a clear stream ran through its middle with reasonably open ground to either side. There were pandana palms in profusion, rich groves of plantains, and thistles of extraordinary size. In the distance, the land rolled in high undulations to grassy hills, which Burton identified as the districts of Karague and Kishakka.

Late in the afternoon, they approached a village and were surprised when the inhabitants, upon sighting them, ran away.

“By Jove! That hasn't happened since we had the harvestman,” Trounce observed.

Riding among the huts, they noticed that the usual stocks of food were missing. There were also a couple of ominous-looking stains on the ground in the central clearing.

“It looks like they received some non-too-friendly visitors,” the king's agent said. He unpacked two boxes of beads from one of the horses and placed them at the entrance to the chief's dwelling. “Let's leave them a gift, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that not all
muzungo mbáyá
are bad.”

The remainder of the day was spent travelling through the rest of the valley before crossing fine, rising meadowlands to a stratified sandstone cliff, beneath which they rested for the night.

Another early start. Hilly country. Herds of cattle. Forests of acacias.

All around them, the trees were alive with a profusion of small birds, whistling and chirping with such vigour that, for the entire day, the men had to raise their voices to be heard above the din.

They left the boisterous tree-dwellers behind as the sun was riding low in the sky and drew to a halt on a summit, looking across a broad, junglethick basin. On the far side, they spotted movement on the brow of a hummock. Trounce lifted the field glasses, clipped them onto his head, and adjusted the focusing wheels.

“About twenty men,” he reported. “On foot. And one of those plant-vehicle things.”

“Let me see,” Burton said.

His friend passed the magnifying device and Burton looked through it, watching the distant group as it disappeared from view.

“Speke,” he said.

They decided to stop where they were, quickly set up the camp, and without bothering to eat first immediately fell into an exhausted sleep.

Herbert Spencer stood outside the tent, leaning on his staff. His shadow lengthened, turned a deep shade of purple, then dissipated into the gathering gloom. When they awoke in the morning, he was still there. Burton wound him up.