Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (35 page)

Stanley armed his men once again, and accepted any refugees who came to his encampment seeking security. But this time he refused to fight alongside the Arabs. Khamis bin Abdullah, the volatile merchant who had instigated the war in the first place, hatched a plan. Alone, except for a gunbearer and eighty slaves, Abdullah would approach Mirambo’s encampment under the pretext of peace. When the two were alone, he would kill the African, bringing an end to the war.

Assembling his forces, Abdullah marched his men to the edge of town and approached Mirambo. The African, of course, didn’t rise to power through gullibility. He saw through his spyglass that Abdullah’s eighty armed slaves looked far more like a party of war than men seeking peace. Mirambo hastily ordered his men to retreat. Abdullah marched forward, unaware he was walking into Mirambo’s trap. ‘Khamis’, Stanley wrote of his friend, ‘rushed on with his friends after them. Suddenly, Mirambo ordered his men to advance upon them in a body.’

Abdullah’s slaves turned around and ran, but the Arab and his young gunbearer stood their ground. The first bullet that felled Abdullah was through his leg. As he dropped to the dirt in agony, blood spurting from the wound, he became aware that his slaves were no longer at his side. Then his eyes shifted to Mirambo’s warriors. He
rose to his knees as they strode forward. He knew what was about to happen to him.

‘Khamis bin Abdullah,’ Stanley wrote that night, ‘who was a fine, noble, brave, portly man, was found with the skin of his forehead, the beard and skin of the lower face, the forepart of the nose, the fat over the stomach and abdomen, the genital organs, and lastly, a bit from each heel, cut off by the savage allies of Mirambo.’

As Stanley pondered the awareness that his dead friend’s body was being stewed and eaten by Mirambo’s men as a potion for greater strength in battle, he fortified his citadel. Every man who came to his home was armed, until 150 riflemen were stationed along the walls, waiting for Mirambo. ‘I hope to God he will come,’ Stanley concluded that night’s journal entry. ‘If he comes within range of an American rifle, I shall see what virtue lies in American lead.’

MIRAMBO NEVER ATTACKED
Stanley. He looted and burned Tabora, raping and killing and enslaving until Arab opposition finally forced him to pull back. But his main objectives had always been control of the caravan route and a show of force, not driving the Arabs from their indefensible trading outpost. Having accomplished his goals, Mirambo and his men melted back into the woodlands on the night of 26 August. The Arabs, who had frantically marshalled their forces for a counter-attack, woke up the next morning to find him gone. Once again Mirambo had got the better of them. All they could do was lament the missed opportunity and argue about ways to reopen the trail to Ujiji. Many of the most prominent Arabs even began making plans to leave Tabora for good, preferring to do business in Zanzibar.

Stanley became consumed with getting out of town as quickly as possible. It seemed adversity blocked his every move towards Livingstone. If it wasn’t Mirambo forcing a two-hundred-mile detour it was a lack of local porters to
carry the bales of supplies, or the lackadaisical air of African life, where ‘tomorrow’ might mean ‘a month from now’. An infuriated, frustrated Stanley became convinced he was fated to while away his life in Tabora, constantly in search of porters. He began scaling back the expedition, deciding to leave sixty of the bales and almost all of his personal luxuries in Tabora. He and his men would travel light and fast — if they ever got out of town.

Stanley’s greatest vexation, however, was Shaw. He’d signed on at a salary of three hundred dollars per year, which had sounded astronomical back in Zanzibar, when he was a sailor without a ship or prospects. The idea of travelling into Africa to explore the headwaters of the Rufiji River had seemed rather swashbuckling. However, there was no glamour about the reality of life in Africa. Stanley still hadn’t told him they were searching for Livingstone, so Shaw was beginning to think his boss was crazy for being so adamant about reaching Ujiji. Stanley had told Shaw that their goal was to measure the depth of Lake Tanganyika, though Shaw didn’t see how it was worth risking his life and the lives of all his men to get there. Africa wasn’t what he’d imagined it would be, and Shaw desperately wanted to turn around and go home. He begged Stanley to release him from his contract.

Stanley wouldn’t allow it. His excuse was that Shaw, as a white man, had to provide a good example for other members of the caravan. If he showed fear, so would they. But the real reason had nothing to do with race or exploration or leadership, for Shaw was proving himself inept, clumsy, lazy and sometimes just plain stupid.

The real reason Stanley wanted to keep Shaw nearby was because he liked his company. Stanley had been aware of race since Ugogo. Shaw represented another white face in a sea of Africans and Arabs. They shared a frame of reference. They spoke the same language. For all his bluster, Stanley was alone in Africa. He had no one to counsel him, no one to whom he could open up emotionally. In a strange way, merely having Shaw around — as sly as the sailor could be — was comforting. Stanley would not
have crumbled if Shaw left, but he certainly would have felt more isolated. There would be no one to watch Stanley’s back in case of trouble.

Even as Stanley berated and mocked Shaw during August, making sarcastic remarks about his laziness and insatiable sexual appetite, it was Stanley who returned the favour and nursed Shaw back to health when a strange illness almost killed the sailor. He dosed Shaw with cinchona bark and made him drink tonics of brandy, sugar, raw eggs and lemons. Sadly, nothing worked. Despite brief recoveries, Shaw repeatedly relapsed. ‘Shaw will not work,’ Stanley wrote on 30 August, convinced his charge was feigning sickness because his symptoms were different from malaria. In fact, Shaw was suffering from smallpox. ‘I cannot get him to stir himself. I have petted him and coaxed him. I have even cooked little luxuries for him myself.’

Desperate, Stanley unveiled the truth about why they were in Africa, hoping it would spark excitement in Shaw. ‘I sat down by his side,’ Stanley wrote, ‘in order to encourage him. And today, for the first time, I told him the real nature of my mission. I told him I did not care about the geography of the country so much as I cared about finding Livingstone.’

Shaw’s eyes lit up for the briefest of instants, then became dull again. ‘It is to find Livingstone I am here,’ Stanley continued. ‘Don’t you see, old fellow, the importance of the mission? Don’t you see the reward from Mr Bennett if you will help me? I am sure, if you ever come to New York, that you will never be in want of a fifty-dollar bill. So shake yourself, jump about, look lively.’

Shaw’s eyes stared into space. Stanley grew desperate. Looking at his young friend, he implored him to go the distance. His previous taunts about death were forgotten. ‘Say you will not die,’ pleaded Stanley.

Shaw didn’t. But whereas Stanley enjoyed reprieves from malaria, Shaw — and many of the soldiers, too — couldn’t shake the highly infectious smallpox. When Stanley finally attracted a corps of porters by offering
three times the going salary rate, Shaw was still too ill to travel. Stanley’s thoughts and words were filled with speculation on whether the Cockney was truly sick, or merely pretending so he could stay behind and steal back to Zanzibar. ‘If I took a stick I could take the nonsense out of him,’ Stanley fumed.

Shaw saw through Stanley’s facade. Their relationship could never be termed a friendship, but trial had given it depth. Time had given understanding. They had become like a cantankerous couple who know each other’s strengths and weaknesses all too well, mocking one another most of the time while occasionally letting a ray of warmth shine through.

Shaw began opening up to Stanley as he lay in bed in the house outside Tabora, where the rooms were small and rectangular and the sounds of donkeys and of pans rattling in the nearby kitchen could be heard outside his door. He had plenty of time to reflect on his life. Shaw told of a life as the son of a captain in the Royal Navy, and how as a child he had met Queen Victoria on four occasions. Then Shaw spoke warmly about Stanley and looked back in awe on all they’d been through. Characteristically, Stanley laughed in the sailor’s face and dismissed him as a ‘sentimental driveller’. But when Shaw became angry at the rejection, Stanley didn’t lash out caustically, as he had when Shaw rebuked him in the past. Instead, he rolled his eyes and complained of wanting to ‘cry out with vexation’, then continued to encourage Shaw to rise from his sickbed and prepare to travel.

Shaw, however, did not. And as Stanley contemplated the enormity of the challenges he was facing, depression set in. ‘The Apostle of Africa’, he wrote of Livingstone on 13 September, ‘is always on my mind. And as day after day passes without starting to find him I find myself subject to fits of depression. Indeed, I have many things to depress me.’ If only to snap out of his gloomy mood, Stanley was desperate to get out of Tabora, no matter how sick Shaw, Selim or some of his other caravan members happened to be.

The Arabs, who thought Stanley was suicidal for attempting the south-west loop towards Ujiji, didn’t understand Stanley’s mania. They could only see that Shaw was in the throes of a great sickness. They scolded Stanley for being so cruel as to make a dying man travel through the hard country, with its dense forests, bad trails, wildlife and warring tribes. ‘You will find the people will be too much for you and that you will have to return,’ one particularly unsavoury slave trader told Stanley. ‘The Wamanyar are bad, the Wakonongo are very bad, and the Wazavira are worst of all. You have come to this country at a very bad time. There is war everywhere.’

Rumours that those tribes were either preparing for an expected invasion from Mirambo or travelling north to join Mirambo increased their perception of Stanley’s lunacy. And though Stanley wasn’t frightened, his new porters were losing heart and grumbling about the mission they’d signed on for. Even Bombay, veteran of so many African expeditions, told Stanley that turning back for Bagamoyo and trying again later was the smart thing to do. Instead of listening, however, Stanley hired two local men to act as guides. He was particularly impressed with the one named Asmani, who was broad shouldered and over six feet tall. He would be protection against the warring tribes, a hulking Goliath marching at the front of Stanley’s small army. Between the flag of the United States and the stature of Asmani, Stanley would present an intimidating presence to the Wakonongo and Washenshi tribes. ‘If vastness of the human form could terrify anyone, certainly Asmani’s presence is well calculated to produce that effect,’ Stanley marvelled.

Stanley hired Asmani and his friend Mabruki on 16 September. His caravan, with its reduced size so perfect for a speed march, was complete in Stanley’s mind. It was finally time to leave Tabora. What had once seemed idyllic had been tarnished, and he was eager to get on the trail. He threw a massive feast for the caravan, and urged the new porters to invite their families. A pair of bulls was slaughtered, chickens and sheep were grilled on a spit, five
gallons of the native beer were purchased. Everyone in the caravan except he and Shaw drank and danced into the night. Stanley sat on his porch and stared into his now familiar hills and dried stream-beds, smoked a cigar and wrote in his journal. The date of departure would be 19 September, he decided. The morning after next.

But on the morning of the nineteenth, Stanley was struck by a wave of fever. He piled on the blankets and lay in bed, thinking it just a ‘slight’ attack that would pass in a few hours. But the fever raged on through the day. Shaw even got out of bed to gloat that Stanley would die ‘like a donkey’. When that happened, Shaw said, he planned to take charge of Stanley’s journals and trunks then head straight back for Bagamoyo.

‘Who would you like me to write to, in case you die?’ Shaw cooed to Stanley that night, standing over the journalist’s bed. ‘Because even the strongest of us may die.’

‘Mind your own business,’ Stanley snapped. ‘And don’t be croaking near me.’

Shaw left the room, leaving Stanley to sweat out the fever. Finally, at 10 p.m. the fever broke, and Stanley woke to a quiet compound. A single candle flickered in his room. The night air smelled of dry grass and earth, and the only sounds were an occasional snore from the soldiers’ room. Fever or not, he decided, in the morning he would leave, venturing into a region that terrified even the natives and Arabs. He felt alone, lying there in the dark, and the sadness of being without a friend in the world washed over him. He had always been afraid of this sadness, and tried to chase it away with positive thoughts as he had done for years.

Writing had become a catharsis on the journey and his journal was the only place he could freely admit his emotions. So he got up and began describing what he felt. ‘An unutterable loneliness came on me as I reflected on my position and my intentions, and felt the utter lack of sympathy with me in all around,’ he admitted. ‘It requires more nerve than I possess to dispel all the dark presentiments that come upon the mind.’