Текст книги "Expedition to the Mountains of the Moon"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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“We fight!”

Burton held his hands out wide in a gesture of disbelief. “Look at us, Isabel! We're nothing but a ragtag expedition! Our clothes are half-rotted off us! We look positively skeletal! We're exhausted and ill!”

“Will Palmerston send troops?”

“I consider that highly probable.”

“Then once your mission is done, Richard, I shall lead my women against the Prussians until the British Army arrives.”

The king's agent blew out a breath and shook his head. “I can't stop you, of course. You're the most obstinate woman I've ever met. You infuriate me-and it's why I fell in love with you. Just don't take unnecessary risks, please.”

“We shall do what we do best: hit them and run. Then wait, and, when they least expect it, we'll hit them again, and then we'll run again.”

The expedition spent the remainder of the day resting, writing journal entries, checking equipment, and socialising with their generous hosts.

Before sun-up the following morning, much recovered, the travellers set forth across the Marenga M'khali, a stretch of desert that would take four days to traverse. The ground was hard and cracked, the scrub thorny, and the horizon lumpy with low, quivering, and blurring hills.

Close up, the terrain was a rusty-brown shade, strewn over with rocks and rubble and tufts of brittle white grass. As it receded into the distance, it grew paler, bleaching to a soft yellow that eventually blended hazily into the washed-out-blue sky, which deepened in colour overhead.

The sun was like fire upon their necks in the mornings, and blinded them in the afternoons.

Burton, Swinburne, and Trounce were mounted on mules. Sister Raghavendra and Miss Mayson were riding with the Daughters of Al-Manat. Krishnamurthy was being borne along on a litter.

Said bin Salim and his eight Askaris kept the liberated slaves moving despite their inclination to laze until sundown. Burton by now considered his ras kafilaha marvel of efficiency and industriousness. Between Said and Sister Raghavendra, the expedition had progressed with a minimum of annoyances and illnesses.

Herbert Spencer limped along at the back of the column of men.

Algernon Swinburne had said nothing to anyone about what he'd seen in the clockwork man's book. He didn't know why he kept it quiet-he simply felt no need to raise the subject. At one point, on the third day, when they were climbing onto higher ground and passing huge blocks of weathered granite, he had a sudden urge to speak to Herbert about the First Principles of Philosophy, but when he'd approached him, he heard Pox-on the philosopher's head-mutter, “Sweet cheeks,” and changed his mind. Herbert was the only individual the parakeet ever complimented, and for some reason, hearing the messenger bird was enough to make the poet change his mind. Swinburne dropped the subject. He knew it was wrong to do so; he knew it made no sense; but he dropped it anyway.

The expedition did not cross the desert alone. Antelope and buffalo, giraffe and rhinoceros, elephants and zebra, in herds and alone, they all plodded along wearily, making their way toward the nearest watering holes. Burton watched and envied them their uncomplicated instincts. He wished his own possessed such clarity, and wondered whether he'd made the right choice in accepting the king's commission.

Marry the bitch, Burton. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books!

Those had been the words of Spring Heeled Jack, the man from the future. The “bitch” referred to was Isabel Arundell, and the speech had been a clue to the life he would have led had history not changed-perhaps the life he was meantto lead. In rejecting it, it now appeared that he'd inadvertently placed himself at the centre of a maelstrom that would shape the future of the world.

Why must it rest on my shoulders?

He watched the animals moving through the heat.

A horrible sense of inevitability settled over him.

The long slog continued.

Eventually, the desert became a featureless grassy plain, which disappeared into a tough, tightly packed jungle, and beyond it they reached the village of Ziwa, where they were received with war cries and a shower of poison-tipped arrows.

Five porters were killed and three mules went down before Said managed, through much shouting, to communicate the fact that the long line of men was not an invading army but a peaceful safari.

The headman argued that all muzungo mbayacame to kill and steal. “Go!” he hollered. “Turn around and go all the way back to your own lands and remain in them! This place is our home and if you try to cross it we shall kill you with our arrows and then we shall take our spears and use them to kill you a second time!”

One of the lead porters laid down the bundle of cloth he'd been carrying on his head and stepped forward. “Goha!” he cried. “Do you not recognise me? It is Kidogo, who was stolen from this village by slavers some days and days and days ago!”

The p'hazimoved his head left and right as he examined the man. “H'nn! Yes, you are the son of Maguru-Mafupi, who was the son of Kibuya, who had pain in his joints and was the son of a man whose name I cannot remember but he had big ears. So now you, who were taken from us, are the slave of these white devils?”

“No! It was the one named Tippu Tip who put me in chains, but these men came and set me free. They set all these others free, too. And now I have come home, and I see my mother!”

Before the p'hazicould react, a caterwauling arose from behind the gathered warriors and a woman shoved her way through them and ran to the porter, throwing herself upon him.

“It is Kidogo, my son!” she wailed, and gave forth a loud ululation, which was quickly taken up by all the women of the village.

Goha threw down his bow and jumped up and down on it in a fit of temper. He yelled at Kidogo: “See what noise you have caused by coming home after being stolen from us? Now the women will expect a feast and drumming and dancing and we will have to dress in our finest cottons! Is there no end to the troubles and inconveniences caused by the muzungo mbaya?”

Burton stepped forward and spoke in the man's language: “Perhaps, O p'hazi, if we provided the food?”

“And alcohol?”

“Yes. We have beer and gin and-”

Swinburne, who understood nothing except the words “beer” and “gin,” whispered urgently: “Don't give him the brandy!”

“-and gifts.”

“You will pay hongo?”

“We will pay.”

Goha scratched his stomach and looked at Burton with interest. He shouted: “Kidogo! Tell your mother to be quiet! I can't think with all her clucking and twittering!”

The liberated slave nodded and guided his parent into the village. The ululations quietened. The headman huddled into a group with his warriors and they murmured and argued and complained, with many a glance at the white men. After a few minutes, Goha turned back to Burton. He bent and picked up his bow.

“See,” he said. “You have been here but a little time and already you have broken my bow, which I have treasured my entire life, and which I made just yesterday. You people have skin like ghosts and cause destruction and misery and problems wherever you put your feet.”

“We shall replace your weapon.”

“Whatever you give me will not be as good. Is it true that you eat your dead and use their bones to make the roofs on your huts?”

“No, that is not true.”

“Is it true that Uzungu-the White Land-is far across the water and in it bright beads grow underground and the men have more wives even than I?”

“How many wives do you have?”

“Eight.”

“No, that, also, is not true, though my land is far across the water.”

“I meant five.”

“It is still not true.”

“And the beads?”

“They do not grow underground.”

“Is it true that the flowers and plants obey your will?”

“They will not obey my people but there are white men from a different land who possess some such control. They are my enemy. Have you seen them?”

“Yes. They came at night and took our cattle for meat and killed two of our women for no reason except that they like killing. They were angry because their porters kept running away and they tried to take the men of this village to replace them but we prevented that from happening, for we are fierce warriors.”

“How did you prevent it?”

“By running fast and hiding in the jungle. Sit and eat and sing and dance with us and I will tell you more of them after you have given me some beer and a better bow than this excellent one, which you broke.”

In this long-winded manner, Burton was invited to set up camp at the village, and while his friends and the porters enjoyed what turned out to be fine hospitality, Burton sat in conference with Goha and the other elders and learned that the whole region was aware that two expeditions were travelling toward the interior, and that one of them did not respect the customs of the people, while the other one did.

Of Speke's expedition, he was informed that it was perhaps three times the size of his own and comprised mainly of Prussians, with just a few African guides and maybe seventy porters. There were eight of the plant vehicles with it, and these, just as Burton's harvestman had done on the first day of the safari, caused great fear wherever they were seen.

Despite this, Speke's people were in complete disarray.

Confident that he could forge ahead by brute force alone, Burton's former travelling companion had opted not to carry specie and was refusing to pay hongo.As a result, his path through East Africa, which had thus far followed a route parallel to and some fifty miles north of Burton's own, had been made extremely hazardous by villagers, who'd run ahead to warn of his approach. Traps and obstructions had been set: the thorns of bushes to either side of the trail were smeared with poison; sharp spines were pushed point-upward into the mud of countless nullahs; and arrows and spears were launched from the undergrowth.

As it struggled through this, Speke's column of men had become ever more ragged. His porters were not paid, like Burton's, but were slaves, and they took every opportunity to slip away, often carrying equipment with them. As for the Prussian soldiers, not being accompanied by a Sister of Noble Benevolence, they had succumbed again and again to fevers and infections.

Just as Burton had suspected, Speke's long head start had been eaten away, and, frustrated, the traitor had recently attempted to solve his problems by leaving the northern trail to join the southern one, which the king's agent was following. The question was: how far in front was he?

As usual, establishing a realistic sense of time was a hopeless endeavour. When asked how long ago Speke had passed, Burton received the reply: “Days and days and days and days and days and days.”

“How many?”

“This-” And Goha stretched out his arms to indicate a distance.

It was impossible to understand what he meant, and despite Burton's experience, and no matter how many different ways he asked the question, he didn't receive a comprehensible answer.

Later, he said to Swinburne, “Time is not the same in Africa as it is in Europe. The people here have an entirely different conception of it.”

“Perhaps they are rather more poetical,” Swinburne replied.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe they measure time not by the beat of a second or minute or hour, but by the intensity of their reactions to a thing. If they feel very disgruntled by Speke's expedition, that means it was here not long ago. If they feel mildly irritated, but they remember that they were more annoyed before, then a greater amount of time must have passed. And if they feel fine, but recall once being upset, then obviously the reason for it occurred long ago.”

“I never considered it that way,” Burton confessed. “I think you might be on to something.”

“Not that it helps much,” his assistant noted. “We still can't establish when Speke was here. How much easier it would be if old Goha could tell us, ‘Five o'clock last Sunday afternoon!’” He looked puzzled, and continued, “I say, Richard! What's the confounded day, anyway? I haven't a giddy clue!”

Burton shrugged. “Nor have I. I've haven't noted the date in my journal since-” He paused, then stretched out his arms. “This long ago.”

They left Ziwa, trudged across broad, rolling savannahs, and climbed onto the tableland of the Ugogo region. From here, they could see in the distance to their rear, crowned with mist and cut through by streaks of purple, the pale azure mountains of Usagara. In front, in the west, the terrain sank into a wide tract of brown bushland, dotted with grotesquely twisted calabash trees through which herds of elephants roamed, then rose to a range of rough hills. South and northward, verdure-crowned rocks thrust up from an uneven plain.

The villages they encountered, as they traversed this country, were inhabited by the Wagogo people, who, not having suffered as much the decimating attentions of slavers, demonstrated less timidity and a greater degree of curiosity. They turned out of their settlements in droves to watch the wakongo-the travellers-passing by, and cried out: “Wow! Wow! These must be the good men who are chasing the bad ones! Catch them, Murungwana Sanaof Many Tongues, for they killed our cattle and chased us from our homes!”

However, while the people in general appeared to regard Burton's safari as a force bent on vengeance for the crimes committed by Speke's, the village elders with whom the explorer spoke proved rather more suspicious. “What will happen to us,” they asked, “when your people take the land?”

To this question, Burton had no reply, but it caused him more and more to think of Palmerston.

They will be accorded the rights given to all of our citizens.

The explorer felt increasingly uneasy.

They stopped for a day at a settlement called Kifukuru, the first where the Kinyamwezi language was spoken, rather than Kiswahili.

Swinburne entertained its inhabitants with a poetry reading. They didn't understand a word of it, of course, but they laughed uproariously at his odd twitches and hops, his jerky gestures and exaggerated facial expressions, and, for some obscure reason, they attached themselves to a stanza from “A Marching Song,” and demanded that he repeat it over and over:

Whither we know, and whence,

And dare not care wherethrough.

Desires that urge the sense,

Fears changing old with new,

Perils and pains beset the ways we press into.

Something about the first line of this caused the audience great merriment-perhaps its rhythm, or the sound of the words-and throughout the rest of the day, the diminutive poet was followed everywhere by hordes of children, who chanted, “Widdawenow! Anwense! Andah! Notkah! Wedru!”

“My hat, Richard!” he exclaimed. “I feel like the blessed Pied Piper of Hamelin! Aren't these little scamps marvellous, though?”

“They're the future, Algy!” Burton replied, and was instantly stricken by an incomprehensible sadness.

The next morning, the expedition took up its baggage and moved on, and Burton carried with him a growing depression and irritability. It was obvious to the others that he was lost in thought. He sat on his mule with his dark eyes smouldering, and his jaw, hidden behind a long bushy beard, set hard.

The rainy season had ended now and the plain, clothed in long ossifying grass, was already a mosaic of deep cracks. It took them two days to cross it, during which time Burton spoke little, then they chopped their way through a jungle and emerged into a ten-mile-wide clearing. Here, a powerful Wagogo chief named Magomba, who'd caused problems for Burton in '57, did so again by demanding that hongobe paid not just for the explorer's expedition but also for Speke's, which had forced its way with violence through the area. Reparation was also demanded for seven men killed by the Prussian forces.

Magomba was jet black in colour and his skin was crisscrossed with thousands of fine wrinkles. From the back and sides of his half-bald head, a few straggly corkscrews of grey hair depended; the whites of his eyes were actually yellow; and his filed teeth were brown. Brass rings dragged his earlobes down to his shoulders.

He squatted, all bones and joints, on a stool in his village's bandani, chewed constantly at a quid of tobacco, and expectorated without mercy.

Burton and Said bin Salim sat cross-legged before him.

“There was uchawi-black magic,” Magomba said. “And I will not have uchawiin my land.”

“What happened, O Magomba?” Burton asked. “Explain to me.”

“One of thy people-”

“Not mine!” Burton interrupted. “They are the enemy of my people!”

“One of thy people took a man by the neck and shook him until he dropped to the ground. The next morning, the man had turned into a tree. We had to cut off his head and burn him. Now, listen carefully whilst I tell thee of the tax thou must pay in order to pass through my domain.”

Magomba's demands were extortionate. Burton and Said spent the entire afternoon haggling, and eventually paid ten patterned cloths, six coils of brass wire, seven blue cottons, a pocket watch, twenty-five brass buttons, four boxes of beads, a quarter of tobacco, and a bottle of port.

“Good,” Magomba said. “Now I shall order a calf killed so that thy people may eat. It is good to see thee again, Murungwana Sana.Ever hast thou been my favourite of all the foul devils that plague this unhappy land.”

The next morning, as the expedition prepared for departure, the old chief confronted Burton and said, “I have had the blue cottons counted. There are only seven rolls.”

“It is what we agreed.”

“No. Thou promised nine.”

“You art mistaken. We said seven, and seven it is.”

“I will accept eight, providing thou swears an oath.”

“What oath?”

“Thou must give thy word not to strike my land with drought, nor with disease, nor with misfortune.”

“Eight it is, then. And I swear.”

Burton's porters hacked a route through the bordering jungle. The explorer led his people out of the clearing and, eventually, up into the hills and onto the glaring white plains of the Kanyenye region. Though the going was easier here, the heat was hellish and pertinacious gadflies assailed them all. The Daughters of Al-Manat had trouble controlling their horses, which constantly shied under the onslaught, and the pack mules bucked and kicked and shed their loads. As the ground gradually rose and became rockier, the expedition also suffered from a want of water, having used up their supply more rapidly than usual.

They started across rolling, very uneven ground, congested with gorse-like bushes and deeply pocked with holes and crevices.

Burton's calf muscles kept cramping, causing him such agony that he could barely keep from screaming.

Swinburne was thrown from his steed and landed among long, viciously sharp thorns. He emerged with his clothes in tatters and his body scratched and bleeding from head to toe. He announced, with much satisfaction, that it would sting for the rest of the day.

William Trounce slipped on stony ground and twisted his ankle.

Maneesh Krishnamurthy, who'd recovered from his malarial attack, was stung in his right ear. It became infected, and his sense of balance was so badly disturbed that he suffered severe dizziness and spent a whole day vomiting until he lapsed into unconsciousness. Once again, he had to be carried on a stretcher.

Isabella Mayson was prostrated by a gastric complaint that caused embarrassingly unladylike symptoms.

Isabel Arundell's horse collapsed and died beneath her, sending her crashing to the ground where she lay stunned until they revived her with smelling salts and a dash of brandy.

Herbert Spencer declared that he was experiencing shooting pains along his limbs, which was impossible, of course, but they'd all concluded that his hypochondriacal tendencies really did cause him discomfort.

Sister Raghavendra developed ophthalmia and could see nothing but blurred shapes and moving colours.

Two of Said bin Salim's Askaris collapsed with fever, and the ras kafilahhimself was stricken with an indefinable ague.

Nearly half of the Daughters of Al-Manat were beset by illness and infections.

Two more horses and three mules died.

Pox the parakeet flew away and didn't return.

As the sun was setting, they arrived in the district of K'hok'ho and wearily set up camp on open ground. No sooner had they lit a fire than angry warriors from the two nearby villages surrounded them and demanded that they move on. No amount of arguing would convince them that the expedition was anything other than an invading force, like the one before it. Tempers flared. A warrior stepped forward and thrust a spear into William Trounce's upper arm. Burton fought to control the Askaris, who stepped forward with scimitars drawn. “Stand down! We are going!” he shouted. “Kwecha! Kwecha! Pakia! Hopa! Hopa! Collect! Pack! Set out!”

Hurriedly, they struck camp and picked their way across the moonlit ground with the warriors escorting them on either side, mocking and jeering and threatening.

Sister Raghavendra, by touch alone, bandaged Trounce's arm.

“I'll need to stitch the wound, William, but we'll have to wait until we're safely away from these ruffians. Are you in pain?”

“By Jove, Sadhvi! Between this and the ankle, I'm having a fine day of it! I feel absolutely splendid! In fact, I thought I might top things off by repeatedly banging my head against a rock! What do you think?”

“I think you'd better chew on this.” She handed him a knob of a tobacco-like substance. “These herbs have strong pain-relieving properties.”

“What do they taste like?”

“Chocolate.”

Trounce threw the herbs into his mouth and started chewing. He gave a snort of appreciation. His ear whistled.

The warriors yelled a few final insults and withdrew.

Burton, at the front of the column, crested the brow of a hill, looked down onto a small plain, and saw the stars reflected in a number of ponds and small lakes.

“We'll rest there,” he said. “And let's hope that water is fresh.”

The division between the days became ever more nebulous and confusing.

Consciousness and unconsciousness merged into a single blur, for when they slept, they dreamt of passing terrain, and when they were awake, they were so often somnambulistic that they might well have been dreaming.

From K'hok'ho into the land of Uyanzi, from village to village, through an ugly and desiccated jungle and over baked earth; then into the sandy desert of Mgunda Mk'hali, where lines of elephants marched in stately fashion, trunk to tail, past petrified trees filled with waiting vultures.

Mdaburu to Jiwe la Mkoa; Jiwe la Mkoa to Kirurumo; Kirurumo to Mgongo Thembo; Mgongo Thembo to Tura.

Days and days and days.

This long.

As they approached Tura, Burton said to Swinburne, “I keep seeing animal carcasses.”

“Funny,” the poet murmured. “I keep seeing a pint of frothy English ale. Do you recall The Tremors in Battersea? I liked that tavern. We should go back there someday.”

The two men were walking. So many of the freed slaves had left them now-gratefully returning to their home villages-that all the animals were required to help carry the supplies, and there were no more spare horses.

Burton looked down at his assistant. The roots of Swinburne's hair were bright scarlet. The rest of it was bleached an orangey straw colour all the way to its white tips. It fell in a thick mass to below his narrow, sloping shoulders. His skin had long ago gone from lobster red to a deep dark brown, which made his pale-green eyes more vivid than ever. He had a thin and straggly beard. His clothes were hanging off him in ribbons and he was painfully thin and marked all over by bites and scratches.

“I'm sorry, Algy. I should never have put you through all this.”

“Are you joking? I'm having the time of my life! By golly, in a poetical sense, this is where my roots are! Africa is real.It's authentic!It's primal!Africa is the very essenceof poetry! I could happily live here forever! Besides-” he looked up at Burton, “-there is a matter of vengeance to be addressed.”

After a pause, Burton replied, “In that, you may not have to wait much longer. The dead animals I've been seeing-I think they were killed by a bloodthirsty hunter of our acquaintance.”

“Speke!”

“Yes.”

They came to Tura, the easternmost settlement of Unyamwezi, the Land of the Moon. Burton remembered the village as being nestled amid low rolling hills and cultivated lands; that it was attractive to the eye and a balm to wearied spirits after so many days of monotonous aridity. But when his expedition emerged from the mouth of a valley and looked upon it, they saw a scene of appalling destruction. Most of Tura's dwellings had been burned to the ground, and corpses and body parts were strewn everywhere. There were only fifty-four survivors-women and children-many wounded, all of them dehydrated and starving. Sister Raghavendra and Isabella Mayson-both recovering from their afflictions-treated them as best they could; but two died within an hour of the expedition's arrival, and during the course of the following night they lost eight more.

The camp was set up, and Burton gathered those women whose injuries were slightest. For a while they refused to speak and flinched away from him, but his generosity with food and drink, plus the presence of so many women in his party, especially Isabel Arundell, whom they took to almost straight away, eventually quelled their fears, and they explained that the village had been ravaged by “many white devils accompanied by demons who sat inside plants.” This terror had descended upon them without warning or mercy, had killed the men, and had made away with grain and cattle and other supplies.

The sun, Burton was informed, had risen two times since the attack.

He gathered his friends in the village's half-collapsed bandani.

“Speke and the Prussians have not respected the customs of Africa at all,” he observed, “but this degree of savagery is new.”

“What prompted it?” Isabel Arundell asked. “John is a schemer but not a barbarian.”

“Count Zeppelin is behind this carnage, I'm sure,” Swinburne opined.

“Aye, lad,” Trounce muttered. “I agree. They went through this place like a plague of locusts. Looks to me as if they badly needed supplies and hadn't the patience or wherewithal to trade.”

“We're about a week away from Kazeh,” Burton said. “It's an Arabic town, a trading centre, and it marks the end of our eastward march. It's where we'll restock with food, hire new porters, and buy new animals, before heading north to the Ukerewe Lake and the Mountains of the Moon. Speke will be following the same route and no doubt intended to obtain fresh provisions there too, but perhaps he couldn't make it. I'd lay money on him having squandered all his supplies between Mzizima and here.”

“So Tura bore the brunt of his ineptitude,” Krishnamurthy growled.

Some of the Daughters of Al-Manat were patrolling the outskirts of the village. One of them now reported that a body of men were approaching from the west. They were carrying guns, in addition to the usual spears and bows.

Burton hurried over to where the women of Tura were sitting together and addressed them in their own language: “Men are coming, perhaps Wanyamwezi. If they've heard what has happened here, they will assume my people are responsible and they will attack us.”

One of the women stood and said, “I will go to meet them. I will tell them of the white devils who killed our men and I will say that you are not the same sort of devil and that even though you are white you have been good to us.”

“Thank you,” Burton replied, somewhat ruefully.

As he'd predicted, the new arrivals were Wanyamwezi. They stamped into Tura-two hundred or so in number-and levelled their weapons at the strangers. They were mostly very young men and boys, though there were a few oldsters, too. All were armed with matchlock rifles; all bore patterned scars on their faces and chests; all frowned at Burton and his associates; and all bared their teeth, showing that their bottom front two incisors had been removed.

From among them, a man stepped forward. He was tall, gaunt, and angular, but powerfully built, with long wiry pigtails hanging from his head. There were rings in his nose and ears and a profusion of copper bangles on his wrists and ankles.

“I am Mtyela Kasanda,” he said. “They call me Mirambo.”

It meant corpses.

“I am Burton,” the king's agent responded. “They call me Murungwana Sanaof Many Tongues.”

“Dost thou see mine eyes?” Mirambo asked.

“I do.”

“They have looked upon thee and they have judged.”

“And what did they find?”

Mirambo sneered. He checked that there was priming powder in the pan of his matchlock. He tested the sharpness of his spear with a fingertip. He examined his arrow points. He cast an eye over his warriors. “Mine eyes see that thou art muzungo mbaya, and therefore bad.”

“My people are the enemy of those who destroyed this village. We found the women injured, and we helped them.”

“Did doing so darken thy skin?”

“No, it did not.”

“Then thou art still muzungo mbaya.”

“That is true, but, nevertheless, we remain the enemy of those who did this deed.” Burton held his hands open, palms upward. “We have come to help thee.”

“I will not be friends with any muzungo mbaya”

Burton sighed. “I have learned a proverb from thy people. It is this: By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed.”

Mirambo turned his head a little, chewed his lip, and regarded Burton from the corners of his eyes. He coughed and spat, then said, “I understand thy meaning. If I do not choose, I will have no say in the outcome.”

“That is probably correct.”

There was a sudden commotion among the gathered warriors and a small man pushed his way to the front of them. He was wearing a long white robe and a white skullcap, with a matchlock rifle slung over his shoulder and a machete affixed to his belt. At the sight of him, Burton felt a thrill of recognition.

“Wow! I know this scar-faced man, O Mirambo,” the newcomer announced. “I have travelled far and far with him. He is ugly and white, it is true, but he is not as those who passed before. He is fierce and loyal and good, though filled with crazy thoughts. I speak only the truth.”