The Treasure of the Lake

THE TREASURE OF THE LAKE

nate in the priestess known from generation to generation by the name of “Shadow”, who, from birth till death, dwelt on the island in the holy Lake Mone. Until that hour, went on Kumpana, none of the Abanda dared to attempt to re-enter Mone-land, as the country encircled by the crater’s walls was called.

“Why not, if they are so brave and numerous?” I asked, astonished.

“Because, Lord, if they did the curse would fall upon them and they would perish miserably, I know not how. At least, so they believe, as we do; and it is for this reason that from the moment you entered the pass of the cliff yesterday, you were safe. Had it been otherwise the Abanda would have followed you and killed you in the pass, for they were many and you were few. For this reason, too, we do not so much as guard that path and certain others.”

Hearing this I reflected, first that I liked not the security. For what was the sum of it? That a vast horde of savages, or semi-savages, who believed themselves to have been driven out of a kind of Garden of Eden by the flaming sword of a heavenly curse, although they were much more numerous and stronger than those who still dwelt in the Garden, and although the gates of that garden stood open, dared not enter them because they were sure that if they did so, the invisible sword of the curse that always hung over them would smite and destroy them.

Still, there seemed to be truth in the story, for otherwise why were we not followed into the unguarded cleft? Doubtless the Abanda were frightened of our firearms, but seeing

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that we were but three men against hundreds, this was not enough to have held them back. No, the mighty hand which restrained them must, as Kumpana declared, have been that of spiritual fear.

Oh, what a force is superstition; as I sometimes think, the greatest in the whole world, or at any rate in Africa. So mighty is it that when I contemplate its amazing power, at times I wonder whether in many of its developments it is not rooted deep in the soil of unappreciated and unknown truths.

Of these reflections of mine, however, I said nothing to my companion, because I thought it wiser to be silent. Yet I did ask him – if he felt at liberty to tell me and had the necessary knowledge – what part I and Arkle, whom he called “The Wanderer”, had in all this business.

To my astonishment, instead of refusing to answer the question or thrusting it aside as natives can, he replied quite frankly that he did not know, or at any rate knew very little.

“The stars guide us, Lord,” he said. “We consult them, as our fathers have done from the beginning; we read their messages and obey their commands. Long ago the stars told us, speaking through the mouth of her who is named Shadow, not she who rules today, but she who went before her and has been gathered to the heavens, that in this year a great war would fall upon us – we do not know what war. More recently we were told, through the mouth of that Shadow who has faded, to call back Kaneke from the land where he dwelt because of his crime against her, that he might bring with him a certain white man whose name was your name, namely Watcher-by- Night. This command was sent to Kaneke and he obeyed it, as

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he must do or die; for if he disobeyed, the messenger was commanded to bring death upon him, as she was commanded, if he obeyed, to protect him from all dangers. That is all we know of the reason of your coming, though now I see that if you had not come the other white lord would have been killed.”

Reflecting that this tale about myself was, with variations, much the same as that told by Kaneke, something real enough to these people, but to me a mystery, and wondering if by any chance this fate-dealing messenger was White-Mouse, I left the subject and attacked one of more immediate interest, namely that of Arkle, saying outright:

“The white lord Wanderer told me that you, Kumpana, met him beyond the country of the Abanda and guided him into your own land. Why did you do this?”

Kumpana’s face changed; it was as though a veil fell over his eyes and mild, intelligent features, a veil of secrecy.

“Lord,” he answered, “there are matters of which it is scarcely lawful that I should speak, even to you who have come here to be our friend. I would have you understand that we Dabanda are not as other folk. We are a small people and an ancient who live by wisdom, not by strength, and this wisdom comes to us from heaven. We worship the stars, or rather the Strength beyond the stars, and from them come spirits who teach us through the mouth of the Lake-Dweller, Shadow, or otherwise, much that is not known even to the wise of the earth, such as yourself, Lord. They give us gifts of vision also, so that at times we can see into the darkness of the past, and even look beneath its curtain into the light of the future that blinds the eyes of other men.

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“Moreover we, or some of us, have certain powers over Nature. Death indeed we must suffer like all who live. Yet we know that it is not death; that it is but a door of darkness through which we pass to another house of flesh, a better or a worse house according to our deserts, that is yet inhabited by the same spirit. So, too, we have strength over beasts” (here I bethought me of Kaneke and the elephants), “which we can cause to obey us as though they were our dogs. You smile. Then, look upon those buck,” and he pointed to a bunch of blue wildebeests, which I have always found wild and savage creatures, that were staring at us from among some trees about a hundred and fifty yards away. “Now I will call them, that you may believe.”

Well, stepping a few paces to my right, call them he did, uttering cries in a kind of sing-song voice. The wildebeests seemed to listen. Then presently they moved slowly towards us, and soon were standing within a few yards of Kumpana, as cows might do that are waiting to be milked. There they stood, patient and submissive, until they caught my wind, when they snorted, whisked their tails, put down their heads and, to my great alarm, prepared to charge me. Just as Hans and I were about to fire to keep them off, Kumpana said something and waved his hands, as a beast-tamer does to his performing animals, whereon those gnus turned and gambolled off in their well-known lumbering fashion.

“They are no wildebeests, Baas,” whispered Hans to me. “Like the elephants, they are men wearing the shape of brutes.”

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“Perhaps,” I answered, for I was too mystified to argue; also Kumpana was speaking again, saying:

“Now mayhap you will believe me when I tell you that we have power over the animals, who are as our brothers and not to be harmed by us; so much power that we have driven those of them that can hurt men, such as lions, from our land; yes, and evil reptiles also. Search where you will here, Lord, you will find no snakes,” a statement which caused me to reflect that St. Patrick must have bequeathed his mantle to the Dabanda. “Thus, too,” he went on, “we control sicknesses, summon rain, and hold off tempests, which is why we are reported to be a people of wizards.”

“If so,” I replied, “all this does not tell me why the white man Wanderer was guided by you and why afterwards he was driven away, as it seemed, to death.”

“I guided him, Macumazahn, because I was so commanded, and because he is appointed to play a great part in our history, as once before he did in the past. He was driven away because he was disobedient and suffered folly to master him, for which causes he must be punished and learn the taste of terror. Ask me no more concerning this lord, for I cannot answer you. Yet it may happen that before all is done you will learn the answer for yourself.”

Now I proposed, in my thirst for information, to put some questions to him concerning the wondrous woman, or sacred personage who was said to dwell in the lake, and who, as I suspected, was an African version of the old legend of the WaterSpirit which is to be found in many lands. But when I mentioned her name of Shadow, Kumpana turned upon me with

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so fierce a look in his eyes, hitherto mild enough, that I grew silent.

“Lord Macumazahn,” he said, “I see that you do not believe in our priestess, the Shadow of the Engoi whom we worship. Though you have never said so to me, it is written on your face. That is to be understood, for white men, I have heard, can be very ignorant and scornful of faiths that are not their own. Yet I pray you do not make a mock of her to me, as I am sure you were about to do. I have answered all your other questions as best I might, but as to her I answer none. Nay, of her you must learn for yourself”; and before I could reply or explain, he departed to join the guard, leaving me alone with Hans.

“Baas,” said that worthy, “you are always seeking new adventures and strange peoples, and this time I think you have found both. These folk are all wizards, Baas, like Kaneke, and we are caught in their web, where I expect they will suck us dry. I think the Baas Red-Bull is a wizard also, for otherwise why was he not killed; and unless he is one of their brothers, why are these Dabandas so glad to see him? Also, how did he learn so quickly all that oath which he made Kaneke swear? Then there was White-Mouse who, I am sure, was a witch, though a very pretty one, for otherwise how could she have deceived me, Hans, as she did, making me believe all sorts of things that were not true, such as that she was a jealous wife of Kaneke who liked me for myself? Oh, we have come into a land of spells where the fierce wildebeests are as dogs and the passes are held by ghosts, and I do not think we shall ever get out of it alive, Baas, unless indeed, for their sport they turn us into animals, like elephants and the wildebeests and hunt us hence.”

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Now I remembered that Tom and Jerry had talked in this fashion, with good reason in their case; and looked at Hans doubtfully, fearing lest he might have caught the infection. However, this was not so, for as is common with primitive men of mercurial nature, suddenly his mood changed, and, grinning, he said:

“Yet, Baas, though White-Mouse did blind me for a little while, these wizards will have to be very clever if they hope to deceive Hans, who is such a good Christian that he can defy the devil and who, moreover, has the reverend predicant, your father, for his friend and guide. Cheer up, Baas, for I think I shall bring you through safely, if only you will be guided by me and not let that Shadow woman make a fool of you, as WhiteMouse did. Yes, yes, everything may still be well, and after all, perhaps those wildebeests were just tame buck like some that the Scotchman kept on his farm near Durban which used to come and feed out of his hand.”

“Yes,” I said, “no doubt they were tame, and I don’t believe in the magic. Still, I should like to know what has become of the Baas Arkle.”

Well, we walked on all day through that most lovely land, until towards evening we came upon patches of cultivated ground and drew near to the edge of the forest, where I saw that there was a town.

It was a straggling place and quite unprotected; just a number of neat houses built of whitened clay and thatched with palm-leaves, or in some cases, having flat roofs of lime cement, standing, each of them, in a garden of its own on the borders of

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wide roads or streets. In short, this Dabanda town had nothing in common with the crowded cities, if they may be so called, which exist in Nigeria and elsewhere. It was just a sparsely populated village, such as may be seen by scores in certain districts of Eastern and Central Africa.

“If this is their big kraal, these Dabanda are but a little people, Baas,” said the observant Hans.

I agreed with him. As I had noted during our march, their crater-land was wide and most fertile, but until we approached the town I saw few signs of cultivation. Here and there on the track that ran to the pass were two or three huts surrounded by gardens. Nor in these outlying districts were there many domestic animals; they were almost entirely occupied by wild game. Near the town, however, we did see herds of cattle of a small breed, also flocks of long-haired goats. Clearly the Dabanda, so far as numbers were concerned, must have been but an insignificant tribe, relying for their protection upon moral forces rather than those of arms, a fact that seemed to bear out some of Kumpana’s statements as to the reason why the passes were left unfortified.

We entered the main street of the town which began nowhere in particular, and walked down it without exciting much attention. Occasionally a woman stared at us from the doorway of her house, or an old man stopped his work in a garden to see who the passers-by might be. Also from time to time a few grave-faced children, three or four perhaps, followed us for a little way, then stopped and returned whence they came. This I thought strange, for they could never before have seen a white man, except perhaps Arkle. But then everything about

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the Dabanda was strange; evidently they were a folk apart, one of whose characteristics was a lack of curiosity.

To tell the truth, they gave me the impression of people living in a dream, or under a spell, human in form and mind, yet lacking some of the human attributes; lotus-eaters who felt no need for energy or effort, because Nature fed them and they were, or considered themselves to be, god-guarded. Such was my first impression of these Dabanda, which in the main was confirmed by what I saw and learned of them in after days. I should add that they were all extremely good-looking, men and women together, but very like one another, as though from continual in-breeding; remarkable, too, for their fine-cut features, light-coloured skin like to that of half-castes or Persians, straight hair and large, sleepy, owl-like eyes, of which I observed the pupils seemed to grow bigger after nightfall, as do those of certain animals that seek their food by night.

The long, wide street ended in an open area that for want of a better name I will call a market-place, where the ground was levelled and trodden hard. At intervals round half this area stood houses of a larger size than those that we had passed, occupied, as I guessed rightly, by the chief men of the tribe, with their wives and children, if they had any. The other half of the area was bounded by a dense forest formed of tall and solemn trees, which forest ran down to the borders of the lake that, as I had judged from my view of it from the higher land, lay at a distance of several miles from the town. In the centre of this open space stood three curious erections; two pointed towers of rough stone, fifty or sixty feet high perhaps, with spiral stairways winding round them to their tops, and between

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these a large platform twenty feet or so in height, that looked like the base of an uncompleted pyramid, on which platform burned a fire.

“What are those, Baas?” asked Hans. “Watch-towers,” I answered.

“What is the good of towers whence one can see nothing except the sky?” asked Hans again.

Then I guessed their real object. They were observatories, and the truncated pyramid was a great altar where priests gathered and offered sacrifices. Of this I had little doubt, though I wondered what they sacrificed.

At the moment I had no time to make further observations, for just then we reached a house where Kumpana, who had rejoined us on the outskirts of the town, informed me I was to lodge. Though flat-roofed and somewhat larger than the rest, except one adjoining which I took to be that of the chief, like the others it was situated in a garden and had a veranda, from which a door-way led into the building. It consisted of one big, white-washed room, without windows. Such light as there was came through the open door-way, over which a mat was hung, to be used at night, for there was no door. Like the passes, the houses were undefended against attack or thieves; indeed I learned afterwards that such a crime as theft was quite unknown in Mone-land.

In this room, to my delight, I found all our goods which had been carried by the Dabanda porters for so many weary marches. There were the spare rifles, the ammunition, the medicines, the cooking-pots, the clothes, the beads and cloth for presents – everything; even the suspicious Hans could

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