Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"
Автор книги: Mark Hodder
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“This was drawn up in 1844 by a French naval officer named Maizan,” Burton told them. “As you can see, I have added extensive corrections and annotations. We are here-” he pointed to a spot on the map, then to another, farther inland, “-and this is the village of Kuingani. And beyond that, here we have the village of Bomani, and here, Mkwaju. If you march at two and a half miles per hour and don't stop at the first two villages, you'll reach the third in about four and a half to five hours.”
Thomas Honesty shrugged. “Sounds too slow.”
“Don't underestimate the terrain,” Burton replied. “You'll find it hard going, and the pace I suggest won't be easy. And in addition to the difficulties of swamp and jungle, the hills that extend back from here, and which rise up along the length of the coast, belong to the Wamrima tribes. They are generally hostile and uncooperative.”
“Who wouldn't be, with slavers preying on them?” Isabella Mayson murmured.
“Quite so. My point is this: strike camp at the crack of dawn, press on as hard as you can, stay alert, and keep your weapons to hand. Don't take any nonsense from the villagers. They will undoubtedly try to charge you an extortionate tax for passing through their territory. They refer to it as hongo-meaning ‘tribute’-and they'll do everything possible to hamper your progress if they aren't satisfied with what they get. Pay only as Said advises-which will, anyway, be over the odds.”
He said something to the guide in Arabic. Said looked at Krishnamurthy and addressed him in fluent Hindustani: “I speak thy tongue, sir.”
“Ah, good, that's excellent!” Krishnamurthy responded.
Burton continued: “When you reach Mkwaju, rest and eat, but be ready to move on at a moment's notice. If everything goes to plan, by the time we catch up with you, it'll be the hottest part of the day. Despite that, we'll have to start moving again. I want to reach Nzasa, here-” He tapped another mark on the map. “That's another three-and-a-half-hour march. By the time we get there, I'm pretty sure we'll be too done in to go any farther, and the day's rains will be on their way, so this is where we'll camp for the night.”
They talked for a little while longer, then Burton stood, stretched, and fished a cigar from his pocket. He addressed Isabel Arundell and William Trounce: “It's a new moon tonight, so we'll be operating by starlight alone. Isabel, when your women are done with their evening prayers, please begin your preparations. William, come have a smoke with me. The rest of you: bed-that's an order!”
“I'll work on me book, Boss,” Herbert Spencer said. “Sleep is another pleasure I'm denied nowadays, but it ain't all bad-my First Principles of Philosophyis comin' on a treat!”
They bade each other goodnight.
Burton and Trounce stepped outside, lit up, and strolled slowly around the camp, sending plumes of blue tobacco smoke into the heavy air. It did nothing to drive away the mosquitoes. Trounce slapped at one that was attacking his forearm. “Bloody things!”
“They gather especially around swampy ground,” Burton told him. “The places where miasmic gases cause malaria. The areas where the mosquitoes are thickest are the same areas where you're most likely to succumb.”
“How long before I do?”
“The seasoning fever usually sets in fairly quickly. A fortnight at most, old chap, then you'll be sweating it out and gibbering like a loon for a month. I'm afraid it's inevitable.”
Trounce grunted. “I hope Sadhvi is as good a nurse as you say she is!”
They watched Isabel's women saddling their horses, then discarded their cigar stubs, walked back to the main tent, and retrieved their shoulder bags and rifles.
“All right,” said Burton. “Let's get on with it.”
Ten minutes later, the two men were riding at Isabel's side and leading two hundred mounted Amazons up the hill. When they reached its brow, Trounce pulled his horse around-like Honesty and Krishnamurthy, he'd learned to ride during their trek through Arabia-and looked down at the camp. It seemed a tiny island, hemmed in on three sides by riotous vegetation, with the Indian Ocean glittering in the starlight beyond, and, behind him, the endless expanse of unexplored Africa.
“I feel that we're up against impossible odds,” he said to Burton.
The king's agent replied, “We probably are.”
Mzizima village was five miles south of the camp. Originally, it had been composed of thatch-roofed beehive huts and a bandani-a wall-less palaver house, just a thatched roof standing upon six vertical beams-which were all positioned in an orderless cluster around an open central space. Surrounding the village, amid cocoa, mango, and pawpaw trees, there had been fields of rice, holcus, sugarcane, and peas, separated by clumps of basil and sage. This cultivated land stretched to the edge of a mangrove forest in the south, to the hills in the west, and to a small natural bay on the coast.
In the distant past, the Wamrima inhabitants had been farmers of the land and fishers of the sea, but the slave trade had made lying, thieving, shirking, and evasiveness the tools of survival, reducing a once-prosperous village to a clump of hovels occupied by men and women who, in the knowledge that life could be literally or metaphorically taken from them at any moment, did not bother to apply themselves to the business of living.
And now the Prussians had come.
It was four o'clock in the morning. Sir Richard Francis Burton was lying on his stomach at the top of a bushy ridge to the north and was using the field glasses he'd retrieved from the Orpheusto spy upon the settlement. Only a few of its original structures remained-the palaver house being one of them-and in their place wood-built barracks of a distinctly European design had been erected. There were six of these, plus six more half-built, and beyond them a sea of tents that spread out into the once-cultivated fields. The canvas dwellings were especially numerous farther to the south, where man groves had obviously been chopped and burned away. More half-erected wooden buildings were visible there, too.
“It looks like they're planning a permanent camp here,” Trounce whispered. “Building a village a little to the south of the original one.”
Burton grunted an agreement.
By the bright light of the stars, he could see that his stolen supplies were stacked up in the bandani.One of his harvestman vehicles squatted beside the structure. The other one was closer to his and Trounce's position, standing motionless at the outer edge of the tented area just in front of the ridge, obviously left there by its driver. A guard was standing beside it, with a rifle over his shoulder and a pipe in his mouth.
Mzizima was silent, with only a few men on patrol. Of the Wamrima, there was no sign, and Burton felt certain that the villagers had either been pressed into service as lackeys or killed.
“What the bloody hell is that?” Trounce hissed, pointing to the other side of the encampment.
Burton focused his glasses on the thing that flopped along there. Even before he caught a clear view of it, its shadowy shape caused him to shudder. Then it floundered into an area of silvery luminescence and he saw that it was a huge plant, propelling itself along on thick white roots. To Burton's astonishment, there was a man sitting in the thing, cocooned in a fleshy bloom and surrounded by flailing tendrils. He appeared to be steering the plant by thought alone, for there were coiling threadlike appendages embedded into the skin of his scalp, and when he moved his head, the grotesque vehicle turned in the direction he was looking.
“There are others,” Trounce said. “They're patrolling the outer perimeter.”
A few minutes later, it became apparent why.
One of the plants suddenly lunged forward and grabbed at something. A man, screaming wildly, was yanked out of the undergrowth and hoisted into the air. It was a Wamrima native, obviously trying to escape, and now he paid the price. Held aloft by creepers entangled around his wrists, he was mercilessly whipped by the plant's spine-encrusted limbs until his naked back was streaming blood, then he was cast back into the camp-sent spinning through the air to land in a heap between tents, where he lay insensible.
“This complicates matters,” Burton said.
“Should we call it off?”
“No. We'll need those supplies if we're to catch up with Speke. He's got a tremendous lead on us, but if we have all our resources, we can cut straight through all the circumstances that will slow him down.”
“What circumstances?”
“Mainly the obstructions the natives will throw in his path. I'm counting on his incompetence as an expedition leader, inability to communicate in any language other than English, and the fact that, believing us blown up on the Orpheus, he has no idea we're on his tail.”
Fifteen minutes later, Pox swooped out of the sky and landed on Burton's shoulder.
“Message from Isabel Arundell!” the parakeet announced.
“Shhh!” Burton hissed, but it was an instruction the bird didn't understand.
“In position, you lumpish clotpole. Awaiting the word. Message ends.”
“The guard by the harvestman is looking this way,” Trounce said softly.
“Message to Isabel Arundell,” Burton whispered. “Consider the word received. Beware. There are Eugenicist plants. Message ends.”
Pox gave a squawk and flew away.
“It's all right,” Trounce said. “He just saw Pox. Probably thinks it's nothing but a noisy jungle bird. He's giving his attention back to his pipe.”
“I think it's time to take care of him, anyway,” Burton said.
He pulled his spine-shooter from its holster.
Steadying the cactus gun on his left forearm, he took careful aim and gently squeezed the nodule that functioned as a trigger. With a soft phut!, the pistol fired.
Seven spines thudded into the guard's chest. He looked down at them, muttered, “Was sind diese?”then crumpled to the ground.
“Quietly now,” Burton hissed. “To the outer tents. Stay low.”
The two men slipped over the brow of the ridge and slithered silently down to the perimeter of the camp. They crouched in the dark shadow of a tent and waited.
When it happened, it did so with such suddenness that even Burton and Trounce, who were expecting it, were taken by surprise. One minute there was nothing but the sound of snoring men under canvas, the next the night was rent by rifle fire, the pounding of horses' hooves, and the ululation of women.
The Daughters of Al-Manat came thundering over the crest of the hill on the northwestern border of the camp, and even before a warning shout could be raised by the guards, they had stampeded over tents, set burning brands to three of the barracks, and wheeled their horses and raced back up the hill and out of sight.
The Prussian guards barely got a shot off, so panicked were they at this unexpected onslaught.
“Wir wurden angegriffen! Wir wurden angegriffen!”they bellowed. “ Verteidigt das Lager!”
Men blundered out of the burning buildings, came running out of the others, and emerged from the tents, rubbing their eyes and peering around in confusion. Gunfire banged and flashed from the summit of the hill. Many of the soldiers fell to the ground with bullets in them.
Snatching up their rifles, the Prussians raced to meet the attacking forces. Burton grabbed Trounce by the arm and pointed to the Eugenicist plant vehicles. They, too, were lumbering to the northwesternmost part of the settlement.
The gunfire from one particular area of the hills intensified. The Prussians returned it, shooting blind. While their attention was thus engaged, twenty riders burst out of the verdure a little farther to the south, dashed across an overgrown field, and put torches to two of the plant creatures. Burton could barely repress a cheer when the starlight revealed that Isabel Arundell was the leader of this cavalry charge. She held a pistol in one hand and a spear in the other, and, expertly controlling her mount with her knees, she sent her charge leaping across tents to another of the Eugenicist creations. Plunging her spear into the densest part of it, she reared her horse away from its lashing tendrils, brought her pistol to bear, and shot the plant's driver through the head. She barked a command, galloped away with her band following, and disappeared into the darkness.
The part of Mzizima closest to Burton and Trounce was almost entirely abandoned now.
“Let's move,” Burton urged. “We have to get this done before the southern part of the camp joins the fray.” He and Trounce crept forward until they reached the nearest of the two harvestmen. The explorer reached up to where he expected to find a small hatch in the machine's belly. In London, harvestmen were primarily employed to transport goods, which they carried in netting suspended from their bellies. It had been his intention to reclaim the two vehicles, load them up with the supplies, and walk them away while the Prussians were distracted. He now encountered a serious setback.
“Damn!” he said. “They've removed the confounded net! It's been replaced by a bracket. Looks like they intend to fix something else to the underside of the body.”
“How will we transport our stuff?” Trounce asked.
“I don't know. Let's get to it first. Speed is of the essence!”
They ran forward, unnoticed amid the confusion.
One of the barracks, consumed by flames, collapsed, sending out a shower of sparks. Men yelled. Rifles cracked.
Pox fluttered onto Burton's shoulder.
“Message from Isabel churlish bladder-prodder Arundell. Hurry up, you foot-licker! Message ends.”
The second harvester, standing beside the bandani, was intact. Burton pulled down its net and spread it out.
“Start loading it. As many crates as you can. Ignore the specie-it's the equipment we need.”
“Was machen Sie hier?”a voice demanded.
Burton whirled, raised his spine-shooter, and shot the inquisitor down.
“Message to Isabel Arundell,” he said. “We're loading the equipment now. There's only one harvestman. Maximum distraction, if you please. Message ends.”
Pox departed.
Moments later, the Daughters of Al-Manat came pelting back down the hill with guns blazing. As they engaged at close quarters with the Prussians, Burton and Trounce lifted crate after crate from the bandaniinto the netting. At one point, the king's agent sensed movement at the periphery of his vision, looked up, and noted ten or twelve Africans running up the slope of the ridge and disappearing into the undergrowth.
“Good for you!” he grunted.
Two more soldiers noticed the Englishmen and both went down with venomous cactus spines in them.
“That's as much as she can take,” Burton panted. They'd loaded about a third of the stolen supplies. “Get into her, stay low, and drive back the way we came. If I haven't caught up with you by the time you reach the sand spit, wait for me there.”
William Trounce uttered an acknowledgement, climbed the rungs on one of the harvestman's legs, and settled into the driver's seat. He started the engine. Its roar was drowned out by the gunfire, but as the harvestman stalked away, with its loaded net swinging underneath and Burton running in its wake, its trail of steam was noticed and three of the Prussian plant vehicles started to converge on it.
“Keep going!” Burton yelled. “Get out of here!”
As they came abreast with the other harvestman, the king's agent quickly clambered up its leg, slipped into position, grabbed the control levers, and prayed to Allah that the machine was operational.
It was.
The engine clattered into life behind his seat, and he sent the conveyance striding into the path of the nearest plant. He raised his cactus gun and fired spines at the Prussian who was nestled in its bloom. They had no effect.
“Immune to the venom?” he muttered. “Maybe you're half-plant yourself!”
Burton sent his steam-powered spider crashing into the mutated flora. Tendrils wrapped themselves around his machine's legs and started heaving at it, attempting to turn it over. He repeatedly shot spines at its driver until the Prussian's face resembled a porcupine. The man remained conscious, snarled at the Britisher, and sent a vine whipping at the explorer's hand. It caught the cactus gun with such viciousness that the barrel was sliced completely in half. Burton cursed and dropped it.
The harvestman was jolted from side to side. Its carapace was battered and scored by swishing barbed limbs, and Burton felt it slewing sideways beneath him. Desperately hauling at its levers, he caused its front two legs to rise up and brought them sweeping down onto the soldier's chest. The man died instantly, his heart pierced through, and the plant bucked and threshed wildly, causing the harvestman to topple over. In the instant before it hit the ground, Burton dived out of it, rolled, and started running. He reached the bottom of the slope but it was too late; the two other plants were looming over him. Putting his head down, he pumped his legs as fast as he could and started up the hill. Creepers coiled at the periphery of his vision, reaching out to grab him. Suddenly, one hooked under his left arm and wrenched him into the air. Expecting to be flayed or ripped apart, Burton instead found himself flying over the ground and bumping against the side of a horse. He realised that it wasn't a creeper but a hand holding him. Unable to manoeuvre himself into a position where he could see his rescuer, he clutched at the rider's ankle in an attempt to steady himself-a female ankle!
The horse dashed up to the top of the ridge and skidded to a halt beside Trounce's harvestman. Burton was dropped unceremoniously onto the ground.
“William! Stop!” The commanding voice belonged to Isabel Arundell.
Trounce brought his machine to a halt.
“Get onto the net, Dick!” Isabel barked.
Burton looked up at her just as a bullet tore through a fold in her Bedouin robes, missing her flesh by less than an inch. She turned in her saddle, levelled her revolver, and fired six shots back into the camp.
“Move, damn it!” she yelled.
Burton snapped back into action. Three paces took him beneath the harvestman. He jumped up, gripped the net, and clambered onto it.
“Go, William!” Isabel shouted. “As fast as possible! Don't stop and don't look back! We'll keep the Prussians occupied for as long as we can.”
“Isabel-” Burton began, but she cut him off: “We'll catch up with your expedition later. Get going!”
She reared her horse around, and, as she sent it plunging down the slope, she pulled a spear from over her shoulder and jabbed its point into one of the plant vehicles.
Trounce pulled back on a lever, his harvestman coughed and sent out a plume of steam, then went striding into the night with Burton swinging underneath.
“Bloody hell!” the explorer muttered to himself. “That woman has the strength of an ox and the courage of a lion!”
William Trounce didn't stop the harvestman until he'd travelled half the distance back to the expedition's campsite. There'd been no pursuit. Distant gunshots peppered the night.
He manoeuvred one of the spider's long legs inward until it was within Burton's reach. The king's agent climbed up it to the one-man cabin and sat on the edge of it with his legs inside and feet hooked under the seat.
“All right,” he said, and Trounce got the vehicle moving again.
It was slow going. The harvestman was far heavier than a horse, and the pointed ends of its legs frequently sank deep into the sodden earth. By the time they reached the sand spit, the sun had risen, the vegetation was dripping with dew, and the land was steaming.
The sandy clearing where they'd camped was empty.
“Good,” Burton said. “They're on their way. Maybe we can catch up with them before they reach Nzasa.”
Pox glided down and landed on Trounce's head.
“Hey there! Get off!” the Scotland Yard man protested. The bird ignored him.
“Message from Isabel Arundell. We're going to withdraw and recoup. Eleven of my women killed, three injured. We shall wage an idle-headed guerrilla campaign over the next few days to prevent them following you. We'll catch up presently. Travel safely, wobble-paunch! Message ends.”
“An idle-headed guerrilla campaign?” Trounce asked, in a puzzled tone.
“I think there's a parakeet insertion there,” Burton said.
“Oh. Can you get the bloody parrot off my head, please?”
“Message for Isabel Arundell,” Burton said. “My gratitude, but don't take risks. Disengage as soon as you can. Message ends.”
The parakeet squawked its acknowledgement and launched itself into the air.
With Burton navigating, Trounce steered the harvestman up the hill on the western side of the clearing. They travelled over sandy soil, thick with thorn bushes, and, after a succession of rolling hills, descended into rich parkland dotted with mangoes and other tall trees. The sun was climbing behind them. The morning steam evaporated and the air began to heat up.
A little later, Pox rejoined them.
They came to a swamp and waded the harvestman through it, scattering hippopotami from their path.
“This would have sent Speke into a frenzy,” Burton noted.
“What do you mean?”
“He's a huntsman through and through. He'll shoot at anything that moves and delights in killing. When we were out here in '57, he slaughtered more hippos than I could count.”
The giant mechanised arachnid pitched and swayed as it struggled through the stinking sludge, then it finally emerged onto more solid ground and began to move with greater speed.
A few beehive huts came into view, and the inhabitants, upon seeing the gigantic spider approaching, bolted.
Burton and Trounce crossed cultivated land, passed the village of Kuingani, which emptied rapidly, and proceeded onto broad grasslands flecked with small forests and freestanding baobab trees possessed of bulbous trunks and wind-flattened branches. It was here that Trounce saw his first truly wide African vista and he was astonished at the apparent purity of the land. Giraffes were moving in the distance to his right; two herds of antelope were grazing far off to his left; eagles hung almost motionless high in the sky; and on the horizon, a long, low chain of mountains stretched from north to south. This Eden should, perhaps, have been caressed by the freshest of breezes, but the atmosphere was heavy and stagnant and filled with aggressive insects. The backs of Trounce's hands, his forearms, and his neck were covered with bumps from their bites.
After a further two hours of travel, Burton pointed and exclaimed: “Look! I see them!”
There was a village ahead, and around it many people were gathered. Burton could tell by the loads he saw on the ground that it was his expedition.
“That little collection of huts is Bomani,” he told Trounce.
As the harvestman drew closer, the natives reacted as those before them had done and fled en masse.
“Well met!” Maneesh Krishnamurthy cried out as the harvestman came to a halt and squatted down with a blast of steam and a loud hiss. “They wanted all our tobacco in return for safe passage through their territory. You soon saw them off!”
“You've made good time,” Burton noted, jumping to the ground.
“Said had us packed and moving well before sunup,” Krishnamurthy revealed. “The man's a demon of efficiency.”
Burton turned to the Arab: “Hail to thee, Said bin Salim el Lamki, el Hinawi, and the blessings of Allah the Almighty upon thee. Thou hast fulfilled thy duties well.”
“Peace be upon thee, Captain Burton. By Allah's grace, our first steps have been favoured with good fortune. May it continue! Thou hast caught up with us earlier than anticipated.”
“Our mission did not take the time I expected. The Daughters of Al-Manat were ferocious and the Prussians barely looked in our direction. We were able to recover our supplies quickly. Are we fit to continue?”
“Aye.”
“Very well. Have the porters take up their loads.”
The ras kafilahbowed and moved away to prepare the safari for the next stage of the journey.
Burton spoke to Miss Mayson. “Swap places with William, Isabella. We'll take shifts in the harvester. It's more agreeable than a mule.”
The young woman smiled and shook her head. “To be honest, I'd rather stay with my flea-bitten animal. I'm better with beasts than with machines.”
“You're not uncomfortable?”
“Not at all. I feel positively liberated!”
It was Thomas Honesty who took over from Trounce in the end, for Sister Raghavendra also refused to give up her mount, preferring to ride alongside Swinburne's litter. The poet was awake but weak.
“My hat, Richard!” he said, faintly. “Was that really Christopher Rigby? What in blue blazes happened to him?”
“Count Zeppelin. I think he carries some sort of venom in his claws. Either he didn't pump much of it into Peter Pimlico or his talons were less well grown when he strangled him. Rigby, by contrast, received the full treatment.”
“And it turned him into a prickly bush?”
“Yes. It was a close call, Algy. What devils the Eugenicists have become!”
“Not just them,” Swinburne said, glancing at the harvestman. “If you ask me, all the sciences are out of control. I think my Libertine friends were right all along. We need to give more attention to the development of the human spirit before we tamper with the natural world.”
Herbert Spencer limped over to them. “Mr. Said says we're all set for the off.”
“Tell him to get us moving then, please, Herbert.”
“Rightio. Pardon me, Boss, but would you mind windin' me up first? Me spring is a little slack.”
“Certainly. Fetch me your key.”
The clockwork man shuffled off.
“How are you feeling, Algy?” Burton asked his friend.
“Tip-top, Richard,” Swinburne replied. “Do you think I might have a swig of gin, you know, to ward off malaria?”
“Ha! You're obviously on the mend! And no.”
When Spencer returned, he stood with his back to Burton, and the king's agent, after first checking that the porters couldn't see what he was doing, felt around for the holes that had been cut in the back of the philosopher's many robes, and in the polymethylene suit beneath them. He pushed a large metal key through and into the opening in the brass man's back, then turned it until the clockwork philosopher was fully wound.
Spencer thanked him and went to help get the safari back under way.
It took half an hour for the crowd of men and animals to open out into a long line, like a gigantic serpent, which then slowly made its way westward.
What a sight that column was! At its head, Burton and Trounce rode along on mules, the explorer noting everything in his journal, assessing the geography and geology as Palmerston had ordered, while the Scotland Yard man scanned the route before them with the field glasses. A few yards to the left, Honesty drove the harvestman, while behind, Isabella Mayson and Sister Raghavendra, with dainty parasols held over their heads, rode their mounts sidesaddle. Swinburne, in his stretcher, was carried by four of the Wasawahili, and behind him, the rest of the porters and pack mules followed, all heavily laden. Most of the men carried a single load balanced on their shoulder or head, while others shared heavier baggage tied to a pole and carried palanquin fashion. Each man also bore his private belongings upon his back-an earthen cooking pot, a water gourd, a sleeping mat, a three-legged stool, and other necessities.
The Wasawahili wore little, just rough cloth wound about their loins, and, when the rains came or the sun had set, a goatskin slung over their backs. Some had a strip of zebra's mane bound around their head; others preferred a stiffened oxtail, which rose above their forehead like a unicorn's horn; while many decorated their craniums with bunches of ostrich, crane, and jay feathers. Bulky ivory bracelets and bangles of brass and copper encircled their arms and ankles, and there were beads and circlets around their necks. At least half of them had small bells strapped just below their knees, and the incessant tinkling blended with the heavier clang of the bells attached to the mules' collars. This, along with ceaseless chanting and singing and hooting and shouting and squabbling and drumming, made the procession a very noisy affair, though not unpleasantly so.
At the rear of the long line, Krishnamurthy and Spencer rode their mules and kept their eyes peeled for deserters, but it was Said bin Salim and his eight Askari bully boys who were, by far, the most industrious members of the party. With illimitable energy, they ranged up and down the column, keeping it under tight control and driving the men on with loud shouts of, “Hopa! Hopa! Go on! Go on!”
The expedition soon came upon one of Africa's many challenges: a forest, thick and dark and crawling with biting ants. They struggled through it, with low branches snagging at the loads the porters carried on their heads. Honesty had great difficulty in forcing the harvester through the unruly foliage.
They eventually broke free and descended a long gentle slope into a ragged and marshy valley. Here, the mules sank up to their knees and blundered and complained and had to be driven on by the energetic application of a bakur-the African cat-o'-nine-tails. After a long delay, with the fiery sun beating down on them, they reached firmer ground and struggled up through thick, luxuriant grass to higher terrain. From here, they could see the village of Mkwaju. Once again, the prospect of a gigantic spider approaching sent the villagers racing away.
“This is an advantage I hadn't anticipated,” Burton told William Trounce. “They're too scared of the harvestman to hold us up with demands for hongo.Damnation! If only we had all our vehicles! Without the crabs to clear a route through the jungles, we'll soon reach a point where the harvester will be stymied and we'll be forced to abandon it.”
Mkwaju was little more than a few hovels and a palaver house, but it was significant in that it was the last village under the jurisdiction of Bagamoyo. The expedition was now entering the Uzamaro district.
The sun was at its zenith, and the soporific heat drained the energy out of all of them, but they were determined to reach Nzasa before resting, so they plodded on, glassy-eyed, the sweat dripping off them.
