Adventures (8 page)

“No. It is ... I have not words for it.”

Well, we got to using sign language, and just the merest bit of Swahili I had picked up, and it turned out that this particular
juju
was a form of preventative medicine. I knew they didn't have no vaccinations out in the wilderness, so I questioned him about the nature of it.

“Cut veins,” said Nmumba.

“I'm not sure I follow you, Brother Nmumba,” I said.

“Cut like so,” he said, pointing to a recently healed knife scar just between his earlobe and his jawbone. “Bad blood goes out. Devils go out.”

“You mean the old
juju
man
bled
you?”

He nodded. “Very strong medicine.”

It wasn't the first time I'd heard of bleeding as a disease preventive. In fact, it had been all the rage in the courts of Europe for centuries. But it was kind of surprising to find it being practiced out here in the bush.

And then I realized that it was more than surprising—it was Providential.

“Brother Nmumba,” I said, “I think this may be your lucky day. My friend is a
juju
man, one of the greatest in all Africa.”

“Too small,” said Nmumba doubtfully.

“Big things come in small packages, Brother Nmumba,” I said. “Not only can Brother Herbie bleed your people, but he will take all the devils into his own body so they can never harm you again.”

“Truly?” said Nmumba.

“Do I look like the kind of man who would lie to you?” I said. “Brother Nmumba, you cut me to the quick!”

Nmumba lowered his head in thought for a moment. “Would he agree to be our
juju
man?”

“Nothing would please him more,” I said truthfully.

“Good!” said Nmumba. “Then it is settled, and the Wanderobo can remain here for many moons.”

“Well, there is one little problem,” I said.

“Oh?”

“It would mean that my own people would be without a
juju
man, and in exchange for this they would probably want some compensation. Not for myself, you understand; I'm happy just to be able to do my good friend Nmumba a favor. But they will probably have to go out and hire another
juju
man.”

He didn't understand many of the words, but the message came across loud and clear. We sat down for some hard bargaining, and half an hour later I had traded Herbie Miller to the Wanderobo for twelve thousand pounds of ivory and porters to carry it down to Mombasa for me.

Which is how I made my first fortune, and how Herbie Miller became the happiest witch doctor on the entire Dark Continent.

Chapter 4
SLAVE TRADING

It was with a certain feeling of quiet pride and accomplishment that I led my seventy porters eastward toward civilization, carrying a modest fortune of ivory on their broad, sweat-streaked backs. We marched for about three days, and headed north toward the Sudan just to make sure that we didn't bother any game wardens or British officers who might have been in the area, which is how I lost my fortune before I had a chance to build my tabernacle.

One night we were lying down by the campfire, totally exhausted—them from toting all that ivory, and me from converting it into dollars inside my head—when a bunch of shots rang out and pretty soon we were surrounded by a dozen Arabs in full desert regalia. Now, I know that on the surface it seems kind of hard to envision twelve men surrounding seventy-one, but it's a lot easier than you might think when the twelve men have rifles and the seventy-one don't.

Anyway, they motioned me to step aside, and herded the porters into a tight little circle, making them kneel down and raise their hands above their heads, a gesture I was not unacquainted with, but had previously seen only on Sunday mornings and in games of chance involving little white cubes with spots painted on them.

“Not a bad haul,” said a familiar voice. “And ivory, too! Not bad at all, my friends.”

Then a fat man in a soiled white suit stepped out of the shadows and nodded to me.

“Dutchman!” I exclaimed.

“Doctor Jones,” he replied with a smile. “What a pleasant surprise to see you once again, my good friend.”

“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded.

“I am afraid that
you
are responsible for my presence here, my dear Doctor Jones,” smiled the Dutchman, pulling out a handkerchief and wiping the sweat from his pudgy face.

“Me?”

“Indeed. You see, when Herr Von Horst made off with a certain shipment of, shall we say, perishable goods, purchasing them with funds that you freely gave to him, I found that I had to expand my primary business to make up for the income you had cost me. Regrettable, to be sure, but fitting in a way, would you not agree?”

“I most certainly would not!” I snapped. “That ivory and them porters are mine! Though, of course, if you want to rent them from me once they deliver the tusks, I'm sure we can do a little business.”

“Oh, no, my friend,” laughed the Dutchman. “I'm doing my business right now. You wouldn't happen to know your wrist and ankle sizes, would you?”

“Surely you're not thinking about putting shackles and chains on a fellow white man, Brother Dutchman?” I said in horror.

“What guarantee have I that you won't try to run away before we reach our destination?” he asked, putting a pudgy hand to his chin and eyeing me warily.

“You've got my word as a Christian gentleman and a man of honor,” I replied.

“Get the chains!” he called to one of his Arabs.

“Brother Dutchman!” I cried. “It's inhuman to chain me like I was some black heathen on the way to market. Surely we can work out some accommodation that would be mutually acceptable.”

“Oh, it's just for a little while, Doctor Jones,” he said. “Once we get into the desert, I'll be happy to release you.”

“You will?”

“Certainly. After all, I'll have the only water for hundreds of miles in any direction.”

And so I was chained, hand and foot and neck, to my seventy porters. Out of deference to my race and my position, the Dutchman chained me first in line, which struck me as only just and fitting, until I figured out that the first man in line was also the first to step on snakes and scorpions and other foul denizens of the desert. And, of course, anytime one of the porters tripped or even slowed down, I usually found out about it in an exceptionally painful and undignified way.

Then there was the matter of the ivory. The Dutchman didn't want to leave it behind, but it was kind of hard for the porters to carry, shackled up as they were, so we had to stop every half hour or so for them to shift the weight.

Finally, on the second evening of my captivity, after our neck chains were unhooked for the night, I moseyed over to where the Dutchman was sitting alone by his fire.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked, sitting down next to him as gracefully as my chains would allow.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he replied, taking a swig from a half-empty flask of something that sure didn't smell much like water. “After all, how will it look to the hired help? I don't even let
them
share my fire or my liquid refreshments.”

He gestured to the twelve rifle-toting Arabs, who were eyeing me with open hostility.

“Besides,” he continued, “I try never to mix business with pleasure. If we got to talking and drinking and swapping lies, I'd feel absolutely miserable about what I'm going to be doing to you in a week.”

“Oh?” I said.

“Yes, Doctor Jones. It would fair break my heart. On the whole, I think it would be best if you were to quickly take leave of me and return to your porters.”

“Well, actually I didn't come over here to swap lies with you, Brother Dutchman,” I said.

“Well, if we're speaking business, that's a whole different matter,” said the Dutchman, suddenly alert. He offered the flask to me. “Have a drink, Doctor Jones.”

“Don't mind if I do,” I said, taking a long sip and then another. “How much ivory do you suppose I've got here with me, Brother Dutchman?”

“None,” he replied with a smile. “But if I understand the thrust of your question, I've got about eighteen thousand dollars’ worth.”

“There's a lot more where that came from,” I said softly, which was technically true, since it had originally come from elephants, and as far as I knew there wasn't any current and severe shortage of them.

“You're suggesting that if I release you you'll lead me to all this ivory?” asked the Dutchman with a sly grin.

I nodded, returning his grin.

“Well, I do wish I could accommodate you, Doctor Jones,” he said, still smiling, “but the porters can hardly carry what we've got now. Besides, ivory is very difficult to sell in Egypt, whereas ... But I think you get the point.”

“Say no more, Brother Dutchman,” I said confidently. “If it's more black heathen you want, I can round ’em up and have ’em here in no time.”

“You still don't seem to understand,” said the Dutch man. “Everyone sells natives. Natives are a drug on the market. It is you, Doctor Jones, who constitutes the
piece de resistance
of my current consignment.”

“Me?” I repeated.

“You,” he said, nodding sadly. “And because I have nothing against you personally, other than the fact that you cost me a modest fortune back in Dar-es-Salaam, and are a scoundrel and liar to boot, I must confess to you that it grieves me more deeply than you can imagine to have to sell you to Ali ben Ishak, no matter how much he pays me.”

“Ali ben Ishak?”

He nodded again.

“Nasty fellow, is he?” I asked as a small knot formed in my belly and began to grow.

“Under other circumstances I wouldn't wish your fate on my worst enemy,” said the Dutchman gravely.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

“Please, my friend,” said the Dutchman, holding up a hand for silence. “I wish to speak no further on the subject. It would only depress me.”

“If it upsets you all that much, Dutchman,” I suggested, “perhaps it might be better not to sell me to this Ishak person after all.”

“My dear fellow,” he said severely, “this is
business
. I'll just have to learn to live with the guilt.”

That being settled, he had another swallow from his flask and ambled off to his tent. His Arabs shooed me away from the fire, and I rejoined my porters, thinking that maybe they weren't such unfortunate souls after all, at least compared to some people I could name, like me for instance.

The next three days passed pretty uneventfully, unless you think trudging across a desert with your hands and feet chained together qualifies as an event. At that point, which was five days into our little sojourn, the Dutchman had one of his Arabs unshackle me after first explaining that we were at least a four-day march from water of any kind.

Now, I could find a lot of fault with the Dutchman's ethics and morals and appearance and even his personal hygiene, but I'd never noticed much wrong with his business sense, so when he told me that I took him at his word and made no attempt to sneak off from the caravan. Besides, he still had my ivory, and without it the Tabernacle of Saint Luke wasn't likely to get itself built in the real near future.

Every day I'd ask the Dutchman about this Ali ben Ishak character, and every day he'd tell me that he was too fond of me to discuss the matter. The only thing he'd say was that Ali ben Ishak was one of the five wealthiest Arabs in the world, and that he (the Dutchman) felt just terrible about this whole situation. I must confess that the more I tried to talk about it, the more he wasn't the only one who felt terrible. Finally I decided to put the entire thing in the hands of the Lord, after explaining the problem to Him and making certain recommendations of my own. Thereafter I spoke no more about it, and concentrated mostly on not dying of heat stroke, a considerable task in its own right.

It was a week to the day since we'd been captured that I looked ahead of me and saw a huge cloud of sand out near the horizon. It came closer, and finally I could make out a batch of Arab sheikhs and warriors mounted on horseback and camels, all wearing colorful robes and headgear and sporting expensive-looking rifles. The Dutchman signaled us to stop and then had us walk in a circle, just like the old-time pioneers did whenever Indians drew near. Then he had his dozen men brandish their weapons and position themselves around our close-knit little group.

The leader of the mounted Arabs signaled his own men to stop about twenty yards away. Then he rode his horse slowly toward me and the Wanderobo, circled us twice, and turned to the Dutchman.

“Slaves?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Friends and relations,” said the Dutchman hastily.

“In chains?” asked the old sheikh.

“I don't get along with them very well,” answered the Dutchman.

“Where are you going?” asked the sheikh

“Nairobi,” said the Dutchman.

“You're heading in the wrong direction,” said the sheikh.

“We thought we'd get a little exercise along the way,” said the Dutchman.

“And who are you?” asked the Arab.

“Colonel T. E. Lawrence,” replied the Dutchman. “But my friends call me El Aurens.”

Suddenly the old sheikh's attitude changed, and he became positively servile. After offering Allah's blessings on the Dutchman and his friends and relations, he rejoined his men and beat a hasty path around us.

“That was close!” sighed the Dutchman, wiping some sweat from his forehead.

“How did you know they'd leave you alone if you told them you were Lawrence of Arabia?” I asked.

“Trial and error. One batch almost tore me apart when I told them I was Chinese Gordon. I guess they don't view the fall of Khartoum quite the same way you and I do. Anyway, after a number of confrontations, I found that Lawrence's name worked best.”

“And what will happen if the real Lawrence ever shows up?” I asked.

“I imagine they'll think he's Chinese Gordon and tear him to pieces,” replied the Dutchman with a chuckle.

He walked over to me and attached me to the porters again. “I hate to do this to you, my friend,” he grated as he was attaching the chains, “but we reach Cairo in two more days and I wouldn't want you to do anything unwise.”