Short Story...... There are More Things

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 137, 13 June 1938, Page 17

Short 5t0ry...... There are More Things

By E. A. M. WEBSTER

trouble with you, young fel- | low," growled Colonel Ormond, "is that yon talk too much." The men in the club smoking room sniggered. Young Beverley Parker had started by giving us his views upon pacifism, and had then proceeded to blaspheme Shakespeare by informing us that, in this twentieth century, there i« little, if anything, in Heaven or earth that is unwotted of in man's philosophy. The sudden, briefly continued roaring of a lion in the Zoological Gardens on the other side of Regent's Park had dammed the spate of his torrent of words, 'flie same sound had served to arouse the colonel from private cogitations ir. his favourite , fire-side corner. Bover.'ey Parker flushed crimson at Hie direct reproof, but the colonel grinned amiably. "l)o any of -jou fellows remember 'Bungo' Hilton?" he queried, and there was a murmur of assent. Most of us, in fact, remembered the big, quiet fellow. On such rare occasions as he was in England, he used to divide his time between studying the fauna in the Zoological Gardens and poring over maps of the most God-forgotten corners of the earth in the club library. "For an explorer of his experience," Colonel Onnond continued, "Bungo Hilton had me beat six days out of seven. He wasn't quite so cock-sure about all the things in heaven and earth as our friend Parker seems to be, but he did believe that every phenomenon, no matter I how strange it might seem, was capable of it perfectly logical explanation, if only one could hit upon it. Needless to say, he did not take any stock of the so-called supernatural. And yet f rather fancy he knows better nowadays.'" "What's tho yarn, colonel-sahib?" queried a captain of Indian cavalry as Onnond fell silent and sat thoughtfully stuffing his pipe. "H'm, wish to the devil I could give you the explanation," growled tlic colonel; "story itself's not difficult to tell." "Go on! Fire ahead, colonel-sahib," we chorused. "H'm; it was in Rules that I ran across Bungo about fivo years ago," lie answered, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. "Wo lunched together at Simpsons' after taking our aperitifs, for he was full up with some fantastic yarn he'd got hold of and was mad keen to get hold of a man to no out with him to Central Africa. And that, 'Parker, my lad," he broko off, "is a land where you'll certainly find considerably more than is dreamed of in your present philosophy, if ever you have tho guts to get yourself out of England.

"That's neither here nor there, however," he went on. "As I was saying, Bungo Hilton wanted a partner for n Central African expedition he was Manning, and, as I'm fond of a bit of' bi"gamo hunting, I said I'd go along. Once Id promised, lie didn't give me a ghost of a chance to change my mind, alid a month later wo found ourselves in Nairobi.

"According to the yarn Bungo told ho had got hold of information which would enable him to locate the fabulous Elephant's Grave Yard, which every African explorer and big-<Mme hunter for the last half-dozen generations, has been seeking. You know the legend, I suppose, and how it is believed that elephants are granted a prcscience of death and make for a certain, secret place, which has become the ivory treasure house of tho world, on account of the. endless number of elephants that have gone there to die? "According to Bungo, there was supposed to be a corner of the Lado enclave into which no white men had as vet penetrated; and, apart from the graveyard business, the inhabitants were rumoured to be-a pretty queer race, ( "Anyway, we made our way up to Gondokoro, and, from there, struck east towards the Abyssinian border. What sort of a country was it, you wait to know? Well, it was a hell of a co .ntry, whichever way you looked at it. What Bungo used to greet as 'miles and miles of ruddy Africa,' every morning when lie woke up. "We were having breakfast outside our safari tent wlidn one of these fellows put in an appearance. The Watu Wageni they called themselves, as we discovered later. Bungo's boy, lTaincsi Ali, spotted the fellow first, and it was his exclamation, half-fear, half-wonder, and his outstretched hand that directed our attention to a sandy hummock perhaps a hundred yard's away. Standing on top of the mound was one of the queerest objects I have ever clapped eyes on. Ho couldn't have been much under seven feet in height, was as thin as a rail and stood there on one leg with the sole of his right foot pressed inwards against the knee of his left leg, for all the world like a blessed, ruminating stork. His complexion was no darker than that of the average dago and his features were thin and aquiline.

As wo stood up to get a better look at him, he shook his spear at us, in greeting or menace—we couldn't tell wideband then vanished behind the crest of the rise.

"Looks as if there's something in those rumours I've heard," jibed Bungo, who knew that I had felt pretty sceptical about the whole business up to that moment. "We seem to have struck an outpost of the lost tribe; why shouldn't wo find the Elephants' Grave Yard into the bargain?" "Why not," I agreed grudgingly. "We marched steadily north by east throughout a day of appalling heat, when the burning warmth of the sand seemed to strike clean through the soles of your boots and the refracted rays of tho sun were flung back in your facc like a blast from the mouth of the pit of Tophet. Towards evening we came in sight of a cluster of grass huts built round the base of a conical hill, which was surrounded by a single tree of incredible height. Everything in that strange country seemed to be long or tall and extremely attenuated. "No one took the slightest notice of our approach, and the reason was soon apparent, for everyone was staring at an incredibly old man perched up in the topmost branches of that very tall tree. We halted our safari, wondering what the devil we ought to do next, and then we heard what that ancient oracle was saying. With one liand clinging to the slender trunk of the tree and the other shading his eyes he peered out north and south and cast and west; flinging down, the while, instructions as to where dead elephants might be found, up to five days' march distant. As his messages • floated down to them, little bands of armed warriors set out in the directions indicated. "I may add, right away, that all those parties returned within a fortnight, heavily laden with tusks cut from the dead elephants they had found, in accordance with the directions of their witch-doctor. It's no good asking me how the old devil did it, because I simply can't tell you. He must have been best part of a hundred years old and was hard of hearing; but, according to local report, he climbed that very bill tree every day of his life, and he was never wrong in his prognostications of where dead elephants were to be found.

The ivory was carefully sorted as it came in, tho best tusks being set aside for what was known as the Dead Man's Acre. This was a largo plot of ground in which the witch doctor rulers of the Wageni had been buried from time immemorial. It was fenced all round with three rows of the finest elephant tusks in all the world set criss-cross. Good heavens, there nuist be enough firstgrade ivory set round that bally bone yard to pretty nearly pay off our National Debt.

"Long before the ivory retrieving parties returned, of course, the old witch doctor descended from' his tree and made us wclcomo. "W'd struck a mighty valuable store of ivory, that was certain; but it was equally clear that wo had 110 yet found the actual Elephant's Grave Yard. The exasperating part of the business was that the witch doctor undoubtedly knew the situation of the place we were seeking, but about that matter, and everything appertaining to the beliefs and customs of his people, he remained obstinately reticent. All we could ascertain, and that was mainly assumption, was that he was the hereditary guardian of the Elephant's Grave Yard and took as his tribute the pick of the tusks of such dying beasts as failed to reach their destination. "We might have got at the secret in the long run; but luck, that had been with us so far, was due to veer in the other direction. "It all started with Hamesi Ali falling in love with one of the Wageni women. She was ft well-favoured, pleasant sort of wench, this girl Kalui, who had taken tho fancy of Bungo Hilton's servant, but I wish to heaven 110 had chosen to put the comcther upon any other girl in the tribe, for then all might have been well. As things turned out, Kalui was the girl the witch doctor had marked down as providing an acceptable sacrifice to tho tribal deity.

"Hamesi Ali came to ns in a hell of a state of mind when Kalui told him what was in store for her. In fact, lie so far forgot himself as to come blinding into the tent while we wore still sleeping and arouse liis master by shaking him roughly by the shoulder. Bungo promptly responded by knocking Hamesi clean through the tent opening.

"Perhaps he was sorry for his quicktempered action when he heard Hamesi's story, for he was genuinely fond of the boy. Anyway, he set to work to get at •the rights of the case, and then it was we discovered that the Watu Wageni were lion worshippers. That was funny, too, for, although they had any amount of ornaments showing the lion of Egypt

in bas-relief and had flatly refused to allow us to hunt lions, it had never occurred to us that old Simba—the lion —was the object of their particular veneration. '"That's all right, Hamesi,' Bungo reassured his servant; 'when's the sacrifice due to take place?' "'I do not know exactly, bwatia; but I think when the moon is full.' "'That gives us the best p.Tt of a week. Any idea whether there is a real lion and where he lies up?' "'I will find out, bwana,' Hamesi answered. "'Kalui, that evening, gave him all the information he wanted. Next morning she was missing. I suppose some devil of penitence for striking Hamesi dictated Bungo's subsequent actions, for nothing would satisfy him but for us to seek the tribal deity in his lair, in the hope that the native girl had not yet been sacrificed. I didn't like the business, but I kept my mouth shut and saw to the mechanism of my rifle. We realised, of course, that we should have to clear out in double quick time if we did rescue the girl; and that would be the end of our hopes of finding the Elephant's Grave Yard, for even the friendliest of savages are apt to turn nasty if you start monkeying with their religion. "Anyway, Bungo was set on the business, so we slipped out of the village just after dawn and followed Hamesi I along a bush track which we had been | told was taboo. We found the lair of ' the tribal lion at the end of an hour's hard goiug. The place was ankle deep in bones, and a good many of them were ; human; in the mouth of the cave lay the mangled remains of Ivalui, a most j beastly spectacle that sent Hamesi ? fighting mad. i "A moment later we saw the lion ; himself, who had been taking a snooze on top of an ant-heap. Xone of your . stunted desert breed this fellow, but a ' real, deep-chested, black-maned forest . king. He came straight at us without making a sound, and Bungo let him have it smack between the eyes. While ' the carcase was still twitching, the witch I doctor of the Wageni walked out of the . cave, and I've never seen such fury 011 , a man's face in all my life." " 'We may not kill you, because you , are our guest,' he said very quietly. , with his eyes fixed 011 Bungo; 'but the j Curse of Simba be upon you; sleeping t or waking he shall haunt you and. in ; the fullness of your days, a lion shall ; strike you down, Now go!' ; 'You can take it from me that.we lost no time in clearing out; but 1 although Bungo tried to laugh it off, he - was, from that day, a changed man. j We left the village, watched by silently 1 hostile natives, and after seven days' i marching, struck the Blue Nile. That 1 is just about the worst week 'I ever , remember, for by day we continuously 1 mot desert lions which showed fight. I and, by night, our camp was literally , ringed in by the savage brutes. To I make matters worse, Bungo began j dreaming about lions when lie did get ■ to sleep, and, by day, lie brooded over ' his dreams. That made him morose, but, even so, I should not have believed J that a man could have altered so entirely in the space of a few days. J Why, damn it, when those pestilential brutes were roaring and growling round - the camp at night he swore that they were calling to him and, obviously, had the greatest difficulty in preventing | himself from going out to them. "Even when we got on board a boat ' to take 11s down the real Nile things ; were not a great deal better, for the roaring of a lion, \vay-o(T in the desert r beside, the river, would set Bun<ro j shivering like a startled thoroughbred. "At Cairo we decided to put up at the Mcna House Hotel, as Bungo wanted to , study the Pyramids, which he had not ;; visited' previously. Perhaps ho thought j that a new interest would serve to take B his mind off the Curse of Simba, which s had been put upon him by the Wageni witch-doctor. The one thing we liad"not _ reckoned with was that the Mcna House _ was near enough to the Zoolosical , Gardens in the park of the Gizeli _ Palace for us to hear any exceptional . "wise made by the occupants of the

cages. "God! How those lions did roar, that first night we slept in the hotel across the river from Cairo. It was 2 o'clcok in the morning when the din woke inc up, and I went straight along to Bungo's room, with some idea of seeing him through what I believed 1 would be"a bad nerve-storm, brought on.by the noise; but Bungo wasn't in his room. The hall porter said that he had left tho hotel and taken the Eoad of the Pyramid towards Cairo ten minutes earlier. "I took the same road as fast as I could foot it, and every moment the roaring of the lions grew louder. I seemed to know, by instinct, where Bungo was making for; but I never caught a sight of him along the open road, although there was a big, bright moon high overhead. "When I reached Gizch Palace Park I didn't need to find anyone to tell \io whore they kept the lions, the din was awful; and, already, native keepers wore hastening towards the cages. I joined the rush unheeded and then, suddenly, everything went quiet, deathly quiet, if you understand me.

"A moment later we found Bungo Hilton. Ho lay face downwards wtween the protection rail and the bars of one of the cages, a terrible blow had crushed his skull like "li brittle egg-shell, and, behind tho bars lay a great blackmailed lion, purring contentedly as it licked a bloody paw."

The colonel paused to relight his pipe. "Givo me the answer to that one, Mister Beverley Parker," ho invited, "and I'll be willing to listen to your nonsense about there not being more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." But Beverley Parker, for once, was unable to answer. THE END.