The Veiled Man

“Get up, you lazy devil. Stir yourself. We’re in a complete hole!”

“Hole? hole? Ah, your English tongue is indeed extraordinaire! A hole is a place in the ground, n’est ce pas?”

“Yes, and you’ll have a hole in the ground all to yourself, my dear Pierre, if you don’t bustle up a bit.”

Pierre Dubois, the man addressed, a bronzed, grey-bearded, stout, small-eyed Belgian of fifty, was lying tranquilly on his back on a pile of soft rugs, like an Oriental potentate, smoking his shisha, or travelling pipe, and being fanned by an extremely ugly negress. Dubois was the name he had adopted after leaving the Congo hurriedly, carrying with him a goodly sum belonging to the Belgian Government, in whose employ he had been for ten years. A native of Liège, he was one of the pioneers of that so-called Central African civilisation of trade, gin, and the whip; but after lining his pockets well, and making good his escape through the boundless virgin forests of “darkest Africa,” he had started as a trader in that most marketable of all commodities – black ivory.

Pierre Dubois and Henry Snape, his partner, were slave-raiders. They dressed as Arabs, and lived as Arabs.

Outside in the blazing noon, beneath the scanty shade of a few palms and mimosa scrub which surrounded that desert watering-place known as Akdul, a number of their heavily-armed followers were lying stretched upon the sand, sleeping soundly after their two-bow prayer to Allah, while here and there alone sat one of their number on his haunches, wrapped in his white burnouse, hugging his knees, his rifle at his side, keeping watch. They were a forbidding, evil-looking lot these Songhoi Touaregs, pirates of the forests and the desert, each with his black litham wrapped around his face concealing his features, a complete arsenal of weapons in his girdle, a string of charms sewn in little bags of yellow leather around his neck, and, strapped beneath his left arm, a short cross-kilted sword, keen-edged as a razor.

Beyond, lying in the full sun glare, were sixty or seventy wretched, woolly-haired negroes, men and women, chained together and guarded by a dozen of the veiled men. Throughout Northern and Central Africa the very name of the Songhoi was synonymous with all that was fierce, cruel, and relentless, for they lived by robbing the desert caravans or capturing slaves in the boundless virgin forests between the Niger and the Congo, being essentially a nomadic race, and having no other home than their tents in the Sahara, that limitless wilderness of rock and sand. Of all the slavers of Central Africa these “veiled men” were the worst, for they attacked and burned villages, placed the unfortunate blacks to torture to compel them to reveal the hiding-places of their store of ivory, and afterwards took them prisoners, and sold them in the great central slave-market at El Obeïd, away in Kordofan.

Among the natives of the Upper Congo and the Aruwimi, even the hordes of that notorious king of slavers, Tippu-Tib, – so called by the negroes because the guns of his men created a noise, from which they have named him phonetically, – were more tolerated than the fierce Songhoi bands, with their black veils, which none ever removed, sleeping or waking; for the track of the latter through the forest or grass-land was always marked by murder, devastation, and wanton cruelty.

Dubois, when in the service of King Leopold, had been active in endeavouring to put down the trade, but seeing how lucrative it was, and finding Snape, an English adventurer, ready to join him, he had collected a following of the fiercest Touaregs he could gather, and as he paid all well for their services, while on their part they were proud to be led by a white man in whom they had once lived in fear, their trade had, for a long time, been a most lucrative one. They were the terror of the whole region from Stanley Falls to Tanganyika. A dozen times they had been north to El Obeïd with ivory of both varieties, white and black, and on each occasion the profits had been far beyond their expectations. The trade is still easy enough in the Congo State, and slaves are captured without very much difficulty. The great risk, however, is to transport them by the route they had been following for the past two months, as, in order to reach the central market, they had to pass through that portion of British territory where a very watchful eye is kept, and where the notorious Arab raider Kilonga-Longa met his fate only a few months before.

But Dubois and Snape had run the gauntlet many times, and were absolutely fearless. On the present raid through the country of Emin and Junker, they had made their captures in the Moubouttou, within the Belgian sphere of influence, with the complicity of the Belgian agent at Sanga, whom they, of course, bribed with a goodly present of ivory; then, marching through the great Forest of Eternal Night, due northward to Zayadin, they had passed through the Dinka country to Fatik, which, being only two days’ march from the Bahr-el-Guebel upon which the British have posts, is a dangerous point. Nevertheless, they had pushed forward night and day, and were now in the centre of that great, sunburnt desert, the Wilderness of Nouer, which stretches northward for three hundred miles to El Obeïd.

Dubois grumbled loudly at the Englishman for interrupting his meditations, saying —

“Go and sleep, mon cher. You’ll be getting fever if you worry too much.”

“Worry!” echoed Snape. “There’s danger, I tell you. Surely you’re not a confounded fool, man?”

“Ah,” answered his partner, quite calmly, “is there not always danger here, in Africa? You have a wonderful imagination, my dear Henri, I quite admit; but do allow me to finish my sleep. Then let us talk of this extraordinary hole, whatever it may be.”

“Idiot!” ejaculated the Englishman, hitching up his flowing white burnouse. He was a tall, good-looking fellow of forty, whose career, however, had been a singularly eventful one. Since he left Balliol he had met with a good many adventures in various lands, most of them being to his discredit. He had been a born gambler, and had drifted from the London clubs to the tables at Monte Carlo, and thence, by a very crooked channel, to that sink of the world, Africa, where chance had brought him in contact with the scoundrel and arch-slaver Dubois. They were a well-matched pair. At college Snape had taken honours for Arabic, therefore his knowledge of that language now served him in good stead. He was one of those men who could never run straight, even though he had often tried. He was a born outsider.

“Why idiot?” inquired his partner lazily. The old negress waved the fan backwards and forwards, understanding not a word of the conversation between the headman and the great white Sheikh, who, on account of his raiding, the Touaregs had named The Father of the Hundred Slaves.

“Well, I’m not the sort of fellow to let the grass grow under my feet when there’s any danger,” snapped Snape. “You remember what Zafar said yesterday.”

“He’s like yourself, mon cher, – always apprehensive of some horrible calamity,” muttered the Belgian, blowing a cloud of smoke from his lips.

“This time, I tell you, it’s no mere imagination,” the Englishman went on. “Last night, after the dua, I left secretly, so as not to arouse any misgivings, and rode due east until the dawn, when I discovered, encamped among the aghrad, a whole troop of Soudanese soldiers. I got near enough to ascertain that the officers were Englishmen.”

“Well?”

“They’ve got word somehow that we are passing through,” he said. “And now, if you don’t stir yourself, you’ll never see Brussels again – you understand?”

“I have no wish to see Bruxelles, mon cher,” the elder man replied, quite undisturbed. “If I did, it would only be to see the inside of a prison. No; I prefer Africa to the pleasures of the miniature Paris. Here, if one has a little ivory, one is a king. Life is very pleasant.”

“I admit that,” his companion said. “But do, for Heaven’s sake, get up and let us decide what to do. There’s danger, and we can’t afford to be trapped, especially with all those niggers tied in a string. The evidence is a bit too strong against us, and the officers are English. There’s no bribing them, you know.”

The Belgian stirred himself lazily at last, and asked —

“Are they at a well?”

“No. They are without water.”

“Then as this is the only well for about a hundred miles, they’ll arrive here to-day – eh?”

“Of course. That’s why I came straight to warn you. There’s no time to be lost. Let’s strike camp and get away. It’s skip or fight.”

“If we skeep – I suppose you mean march – ah! your English language! – then they will skeep in pretty quick time after us. They’ve got wind of our presence in the vicinity, therefore why not remain and fight?”

“Fight my own people?” cried Snape. “No, I’m damned if I do!”

“Why not?” asked the Belgian, with gesticulation. “Our Touaregs will slice them into mincemeat. Besides, at long range they’re as good shots, and better, than those Soudanese, all fez and swagger.”

“No,” the Englishman argued. “Let’s fly now, while there’s time. In two days we shall be in the Nioukour, and they’ll never find us in the mountains. We hid there quite snugly once before, you recollect.”

“Muhala,” said the Belgian, turning to the old negress, “go. Call Yakub, and remain outside.”

The hideous old woman went forth into the sun glare, and in a few moments an old thin-faced Touareg entered, making a low salaam.

“Now, Yakub,” exclaimed the Belgian in Arabic, “answer me. Of what did our caravan consist when we left the Aruwimi?”

“Three hundred and thirty-three slaves, and twenty-nine tusks,” answered the villainous-looking old fellow.

“And now?”

“Seventy-three blacks and twenty-nine tusks.”

“Then two hundred and sixty have died?”

“Yea, O master,” he responded. “The new lash of elephant hide has killed many, and the black death has been responsible for the remainder. Five are suffering from it now, and never a day passes ere one or more is not attacked. I have feared that none will live to sight the mosques of El Obeïd.”

“In short, Yakub, they are a diseased lot – eh? You think they’re worthless?”

“Only two women are left, O master, and both were seized by the black death yesterday.”

“In that case,” observed the Belgian, turning to his partner, “the whole batch are not worth transporting. The game is not, as you English say, worth the lamp.”

“Then what’s your suggestion?” asked Snape.

“Well, as you are so much in fear of these confounded English, we must, I suppose, act.”

“How?”

“It is quite simple. We just abandon the whole lot, and save ourselves and the ivory.”

“Very well,” his companion agreed. “I’m open to any move except fighting against the English.”

“Bah! You are full of scruples, mon cher Henri,” he laughed. “I have none – none. And I am happy – perfectly happy.” He was silent a moment, as though reflecting deeply.

“But,” he added, “I do wish we could teach these interfering English a lesson. It would do them good. They try to rule Africa nowadays. Ah! if we could – if we could!” And there was a strange glint of evil in his eyes.