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“I do.”
“They have looked upon thee and they have judged.”
“And what did they find?”
Mirambo sneered. He checked that there was priming powder in the pan of his matchlock. He tested the sharpness of his spear with a fingertip. He examined his arrow points. He cast an eye over his warriors. “Mine eyes see that thou art muzungo mbaya, and therefore bad.”
“My people are the enemy of those who destroyed this village. We found the women injured, and we helped them.”
“Did doing so darken thy skin?”
“No, it did not.”
“Then thou art still muzungo mbaya.”
“That is true, but, nevertheless, we remain the enemy of those who did this deed.” Burton held his hands open, palms upward. “We have come to help thee.”
“I will not be friends with any muzungo mbaya”
Burton sighed. “I have learned a proverb from thy people. It is this: By the time the fool has learned the game, the players have dispersed.”
Mirambo turned his head a little, chewed his lip, and regarded Burton from the corners of his eyes. He coughed and spat, then said, “I understand thy meaning. If I do not choose, I will have no say in the outcome.”
“That is probably correct.”
There was a sudden commotion among the gathered warriors and a small man pushed his way to the front of them. He was wearing a long white robe and a white skullcap, with a matchlock rifle slung over his shoulder and a machete affixed to his belt. At the sight of him, Burton felt a thrill of recognition.
“Wow! I know this scar-faced man, O Mirambo,” the newcomer a
The Wanyamwezi chief pondered this for a few moments, then said to the man: “Give me pombe, Sidi Bombay.”
The small man took a goatskin flask from one of his companions and handed it to the chief. Mirambo drank from it then passed it to Burton, who did the same.
“Now,” Mirambo said. “Tell me of our foe.”
The season of implacable heat arrived, and each morning they struck camp at 4 a.m., walked for seven hours, then stopped and did their best to shelter from it. It meant slow progress, but Burton knew Speke wouldn't be able to move any faster.
Their first three days from Tura saw them trekking over cultivated plains. The sky was so bright it hurt their eyes, despite that they wore keffiyehswrapped around their faces.
The Daughters of Al-Manat, now supplemented by the vengeance-bent women of Tura and their children, rode and walked to the right of the porters.
Mirambo and his men marched on the other side of the column, keeping their distance, holding their matchlocks at the ready and their heads at an aloof angle. Sidi Bombay, though, walked along next to Burton's mule, for he knew the explorer of old, and they were firm friends.
A one-time slave who'd been taken to India then emancipated upon his owner's death, Bombay spoke English, Hindustani, and a great many African languages and dialects. He'd been Burton's guide during the explorer's first expedition to the Lake Regions in '57, and had then accompanied Speke on his subsequent trek in '60. Burton now learned that he'd also accompanied Henry Morton Stanley, last year.
As they pushed on across a seemingly unchanging landscape, Bombay cast light on some of the mysteries surrounding the latter two expeditions.
Burton already knew that, after discovering the location of the African Eye of Naga in '57 but failing to recover the jewel, Speke had returned to Africa with a young Technologist named James Grant. They'd flown toward Kazeh in kites dragged behind giant swans, but, en route, had lost the birds to lions. He now learned that when they'd arrived at the town on foot, they'd hired Bombay to guide them north to the Ukerewe Lake, then west to the Mountains of the Moon.
“Mr. Speke, he led us into a narrow place of rocks. Wow! We were attacked by Chwezi warriors.”
“Impossible, Bombay!” Burton exclaimed. “The Chwezi people are spoken of all over East Africa and all agree that they are long extinct. Their legendary empire died out in the sixteenth century.”
“But perhaps no one has told them, for some have forgotten to die, and live in hidden places. They guard the Temple of the Eye.”
“A temple? Did you see it?”
“No, Mr. Burton. It is under the ground, and I chose not to go there, for I met my fourth wife in an ill-lit hut and I have never since forgotten that bad things happen in darkness. So I remained with the porters and we held back the Chwezi with our guns while Mr. Speke and Mr. Grant went on alone. Only Mr. Speke came back, and when he did-wow! — he was like a man taken by a witch, for he was very crazy, even for a white man, and we fled with him out of the mountains and all the way back to Zanzibar. On the way, he became a little like he was before, but he was not the same. I think what he saw under the ground must have been very bad.”
Stanley's expedition had also ended in disaster. The American newspaper reporter's team-five men from the Royal Geographical Society-had employed porters to carry rotorchairs from Zanzibar to Kazeh, then flew them north to locate the source of the Nile. They'd returned a few days later, on foot. Their flying machines had stopped working.
Bombay, who at that time was still living in Kazeh, was commissioned as a guide. He led Stanley to the Ukerewe, and the expedition started to circumnavigate it in a clockwise direction. But at the westernmost shore, Stanley became distracted by the sight of the far-off mountains and decided to explore them.
“I told him no, it is a bad place,” Bombay said, “but-wow! — he was like a lion that has the musk of a gazelle in its nostrils and can think of nothing else. I was frightened to go there again, so I ran away, and he and his people went without me. They have not been seen again. This proves that I am a very good guide.”
“How so?”
“Because I was right.”
The safari trudged on.
The cultivated lands had fallen behind them. Now there was nothing but shallow, dry, rippling hills that went on and on and on.
“The same!” Swinburne wailed, throwing his arms out to embrace the wide vista. “The same! The same! Won't it ever change? Are we not moving at all?”
During the nights, swarms of pismire ants crawled out of the ground and set upon the camp. They chewed through tent ropes, infested the food supplies, shredded clothes, and inflicted bites that felt like branding irons.
On the fourth day, the safari left the region behind with heartfelt expressions of relief and entered the Kigwa Forest, a wide strip of gum trees and mimosas spread over uneven, sloping land. The boles were widely spaced but the sparse canopy nevertheless provided a little shade and for the first time in many weeks they weren't bothered by mosquitoes or flies.
They camped among the trees, dappled by shafts of pollen-thick light, with butterflies flitting around them and birds whistling and gabbling overhead. The scent of herbs filled their nostrils.
“We've travelled almost six hundred miles,” Burton said. He was sitting on a stool in front of the main Rowtie, massaging his left calf, which felt bruised after his bout of cramps. Trounce was on a chair at a folding table.
The Scotland Yard man's beard reached halfway to his chest, and he'd had enough of it. He was attempting to crop it close to his chin with a pair of blunt scissors. “But how long has it taken us?” he asked.
“That's the question. It took me a hundred and thirty-four days to reach this spot during my previous expedition. I feel we've been considerably faster but I couldn't tell you by how much. It's very peculiar. All of us appear to have lost track of time. Do you want a hand with that, William? You appear to be struggling.”