The Golden Wind

BOOK X — Nkoa the African

Our captors loaded us with the loot from the Jezebel and marched us off on a jungle trail. Near the coast, the forest is scrubby, with many openings. In these open spaces grew huge flowers of every hue—scarlet, azure, gold, and purple.

As we marched inland, however, the trees grew taller and taller until they reached a size I had never seen before. We found ourselves inclosed between towering walls of monotonous dark green. Vines hung down from gigantic trees in loops and strands, as tangled as the web of a hedge spider. The ground beside the trail was covered with ferns and palms in riotous profusion.

Birds and monkeys chattered in the trees. We seldom saw large beasts, although we heard them often enough—the trumpeting of the elephant, the snarl of the leopard, the grunt of the wild pig, the scream of the giant man-ape.

The trail was fairly passable, since this was the dry season. Now and then we had to wade through a patch of swamp, where huge white lilies stood up like ghosts. The biting flies and mosquitoes tormented us to distraction, the more so since we were now naked. Some men were frightfully bitten by venomous ants when they carelessly trod upon a procession of the creatures.

We came to a place where the jungle had been cleared for farms. Amid the wide, deforested plain stood Klimoko, the capital of the Gbaru. Klimoko proved much larger than Gombli; practically a real city. I guessed that it sheltered five to ten thousand people. A stockade, the points of which were decorated with human skulls, surrounded it. As we neared the town, our column halted. A violent altercation had broken out among the leaders of our plumed and befurred captors. Sumbo told me:

"They angry because sacrifices are all over for this year. Each chief blame the other for making us late."

"Do you mean that we were to have been sacrificed, but now it's too late for that?"

"Yes, sir."

"How do they know the sacrifices are finished?"

"You see soon."

And see we did, as we got closer to the skull-decked stockade. The first sight was a headless black body lying by the path. Then more and more bodies appeared. Some were headless like the first. Others had been hung from trees by their wrists and used as targets for missiles, or had been done to death in other ingenious ways. While most of the bodies were of men, some were of women. The number of corpses must have been in the hundreds. The stench was appalling.

Despite having seen much slaughter and rapine, I was a little shaken. This, I thought, was worse than the Roman gladiatorial games, or the mass burnings of children in which the Phoenicians used to engage.

The entrance to the town was a small wooden door in the stockade, so low that one had to bend double to get through it, thus affording a defender inside a fine chance to dash one's brains out. We filed in, one by one, while around us drums thundered and the Gbaru pranced in a victory dance.

They marched us to a central square, in the middle of which rose a man-high, conical pile of human heads. At one side of the square stood the palace, like the other houses of Klimoko but twice as large, with a walled compound behind it containing separate huts for the king's many wives. A pile of elephants' tusks lay beside his front door.

The fat old king of the Gbaru, gaudy in fur, feathers, and golden ornaments, sat before his thatched palace on a big wooden stool, elaborately carved and inlaid with shell and ivory. The chiefs who had commanded the war party prostrated themselves before him while the drums roared. Everybody talked at once at the top of his voice. Children screamed, dogs barked, and speckled fowl ran around amongst the feet of the crowd.

After a discussion that dragged on for hours, the king gave his decision. Sumbo explained that, since it was too late for this year's sacrifices, we should be worked as slaves and saved for the big event next year.

I thought, in that time I shall surely devise an escape, or my name is not Eudoxos Theonos. Prospects for an escape looked good. The Gbaru divided us into squads of five to ten men, each with an overseer. At night the squads were brought together in an inclosure, where we slept, guarded by several warriors. The watch was lax, however, and the watchmen often slept at their posts. The Gbaru seemed unconcerned about our trying to escape. As Sumbo explained it, if we did escape, we should soon lose ourselves in the surrounding forest and perish of starvation, snakebite, or some other misfortune.

The overseers varied like other men. Some were harsh, some mild; some were exacting, others lax. Our man was a stout black named Mabion, an easygoing and, most of the time, not unkindly fellow. He was, however, unpredictable. One day when we were cleaning the street of Klimoko, one of my sailors did something to offend him. Thereupon Mabion seemed to go mad. Screaming and foaming with rage, he plunged his spear into the unfortunate mariner and then stood over the body, stabbing it again and again. But next day Mabion was his usual sleepy, good-natured self again.

As the days passed, my efforts to organize an escape plot were repeatedly thwarted by sickness among my men. Man after man fell ill, and few recovered. Some like poor Hagnon were knocked on the head by impatient overseers when they could no longer drag themselves to work. Some were allowed to lie around the sleeping inclosure until they gave up their ghosts on their own.

With so many men sick, I began to recognize the symptoms of the principal ailments. One was an ague that gave the victim chills and fever and turned his urine the color of dark red wine. Another tinged his skin and eyeballs yellow. Still another caused a bloody flux and, usually, death in a few days. Doctor Mentor was one of the first thus carried off. Some men succumbed to an overpowering desire to sleep; they drifted off into a coma and never awoke. Others developed sores that would not heal, or parasitic worms and insects burrowed into their flesh and drove them mad with itching.

The blacks sometimes came down with similar ailments but usually recovered. The African jungle is an even sicklier place for outsiders, without immunity to its plagues and poxes, than the coast of India.

Once I caught an ague, with chills and fever. When the worst of it had passed, it left me so weak that I could barely stagger for days. However, my rugged constitution pulled me through. For years thereafter I had recurrent attacks, but the attacks weakened until now I hardly notice them.

About the time I had recovered from this ague, the overseers herded us together—the mere eighteen or twenty still alive and active—and began marching us in a single chain out the north gate. I asked Mabion what this portended.

"You will not be here any more," he said. "You palefaces are dying off so fast that the king has decided to sell you to the Mong, since there would not be enough of you left alive for the Great Sending."

This Great Sending was the annual mass human sacrifice. The victims were brought to the king, one by one. The king gave each a message to one of his dead ancestors or other kinsmen. Then the victim was slain, and his spirit was supposed to deliver the message in the afterworld. Since the king had a long pedigree with many deceased relatives, and since the victim's ghost could not be trusted to remember more than one message, there had to be one sacrifice for each message. This custom had grown until the capture of slaves from neighboring tribes for sacrifice had become the main business of the Gbaru,. For, if the supply of slaves, prisoners, and convicted malefactors gave out before all the messages had been sent, the king designated some of his subjects for the honor. He found this a convenient way to get rid of malcontents.

"What do the Mong want of us?" I asked.

Mabion grinned and slapped me heartily on the back. "Niama!" he said, this being the word for "eat" in several African tongues. He then laughed uproariously at my expression.

I recovered my self-control and said, "I do not see my friend Sumbo. Is he being traded, too?"

"Nay. Sumbo is a human being, even if he is not a Gbaru. So he will be kept for the Sending."

Evidently we palefaces were not deemed human; but I was too weary to argue, even though I was now fairly fluent in Gbaru. I shambled off into the jungle with the rest.

A day's march from Klimoko, we came to a clearing in the jungle—actually, the site of an abandoned village, not yet completely overgrown. Here we met a party of Mong. These were tall, lean blacks, completely naked like the Baga. When they smiled, they showed front teeth that had been filed to points.

On the ground lay a pile of the goods for which we were being traded: iron implements—mostly heads for spears and hoes—and some of the egg-shaped sea shells used as money hereabouts, similar to those used in India for small change.

Although the Gbaru were far ahead of the primitive Baga in the arts and crafts—making their own pots and weaving their own cloth—they did not know how to mine, smelt, and work metals. So they got their iron, copper, and bronze from more northerly tribes, who in turn got them by trade from Moors, Garamantes, and other denizens of the great desert.

Here is an opportunity for some enterprising trader, to open up a regular sea route between these lands and Gades. He would have to use my triangular sail to get back to the Pillars against wind and current. He-"would also have to enlist a black crew, to withstand the diseases of this coast. The Baga, being skilled boatmen, should be easy to train as sailors. Were I but younger ...

The Mong counted and poked and pinched us as if we had been so many hogs at market. Then they haggled with the head overseer. At last they were persuaded to add a few more shells to the pile. The Gbaru gathered up the spoil and marched back the way they had come, while the Mong herded us off on another trail.

The main village of the Mong, called Dinale, was between Gombli and Klimoko in size; but it was the cleanest African town I had seen. It was also the best laid out, with the huts in regular rows, like the tents in a Roman camp.

Again we were lined up and looked over by the chief men. At least I suppose they were such, although it is hard to distinguish ranks and offices where everyone goes as nude as a frog. Then another man appeared—a small, lean man with his face painted like a skull, anklets of monkey fur, and other adornments. He came towards us in a kind of shuffling dance, crooning a chant. I asked a guard in Gbaru:

"Who is this?"

"Nkoa, the wizard," replied the man. "What is he doing?"

"He is smelling for witches."

"What if he finds one?"

"Then that one will be burnt at once, instead of being kept to eat."

Nkoa danced up and down the line, peering into our eyes and smelling our breasts. He pointed to one man and spoke in Mong, whereupon that one was dragged away. I heard the sound of a heavy blow and a shriek. This was repeated with several others.

Nkoa looked at the man next to me and said something else. This man was dragged away and tied to a post. While the wizard continued his inspection, firewood was piled around the last man and ignited. The screams of this man mingled with the shrieks and moans of the previous victims, who, I later learnt, had had their legs broken to prevent escape.

Nkoa came to me last of all. My tired old brain had been working at extra speed. Before the wizard reached me, I had picked up a couple of pebbles. When the skull-faced one danced up to me, I said in Gbaru:

"O Nkoa, I am a wizard in my land, too. I can show you some useful tricks, like this—what is that in your ear?"

I took one of the stones out of his ear, as Hippalos had taught me to do. "And what is this in your nose?" I produced the other pebble.

Nkoa started back. "What is this?" he snapped.

"Of course," I said, "I cannot be useful to you if I have been burnt or eaten. Do you understand?"

He looked at me narrowly. "Are you a member of the Poro in your land?"

I assumed that the Poro was some wizards' society. "We call it by another name, but it is the same thing."

"We cannot waste a good Poro man," said Nkoa. He spoke to the other Mong, who cut my thongs.

I followed Nkoa back to his hut. Inside, sitting on a reed mat on the floor facing him, I showed him my little repertory of sleight-of-hand, handicapped as I was by having no clothes to hide things in. When I showed him how the tricks worked, he gave a dry little chuckle.

"Now that I know your tricks, I could turn you over to the warriors to break your legs like the others," he said. "But you interest me, man. I have heard of this land of the palefaces but never believed it until now, when I have seen some of these creatures with my own eyes. Can you tell me all about this land of yours?"

"I can tell you a good deal. I have lived long and traveled far among the lands beyond the great desert."

"Very well, then. So long as you keep me entertained by such tales, you shall live."

"Perhaps I could be your assistant?"

"If you were younger, perhaps. I need an apprentice, and there is none among the young men of Dinale who suits me." He spat. "Stupid oafs, caring for nought but filling their bellies and futtering their women. But alas! you are too old. You must be well past forty."

I did not mention that I had just turned sixty. Nkoa judged me by the standards of his own folk, whose primitive, disease-ridden lives aged them fast. He was, I think, about my age, which made him practically an immortal among the Mong.

"Besides," he continued, "when I die, my apprentice would take my place, and the people would never accept a man so strange as yourself, with your ghostly color and all. Nevertheless, you shall be useful to me."

"How so, master?"

"When your companions have been eaten, the people will clamor for more meat. I must prepare a spell to assure the success of their next foray. You shall help me."

Thus I became Nkoa's assistant in fact if not in name. The next day, he and I built a small hut outside Dinale. We retired to this hut for two days, while Nkoa consulted his spirits. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he went into a trance, moaning and muttering. When he came out of it, he told me the spirits had given him instructions for the spell.

I am sure he honestly believed in these spirits. If he sometimes played tricks on the tribesmen, he reasoned that spirits are flighty creatures on whom one cannot rely. One must herefore have a few tricks ready to save one's credit with the tribe when one's spirits let one down. The priests of Alexandria, I understand, justify their fakeries by similar reasoning.. We moved back into Nkoa's regular hut, and the wizard assembled the warriors of the village. He sent one into the forest to get the seed pod of a certain tree. Another he sent to dig up a curious two-pronged spear, which had been buried outside the village in a secret place.

Then, on the night of the new moon, Nkoa and I went into the forest, with me carrying a basket. Far from Dinale, Nkoa found another tree. He chewed the seeds from the pod and spat them against the tree, chanting: "Phaa! Let no arrow strike me! Let no spear pierce me! Let no club smite me!"

Then he climbed the tree, with agility surprising in such a withered oldster. At the first main branches, he picked off pieces of bark with his nails and fluttered them down to me. I caught them in the basket, not being allowed to pick one up from the ground if I missed it. Nkoa climbed down, and we repeated the whole process with a tree of another kind.

Back at Dinale, Nkoa commanded the warriors to fetch a large clay pot. The men laid a fire in front of his hut, with stones around it and the pot resting on the stones. The following night, Nkoa took me to a fresh grave, which we opened. We dug out the corpse, that of a middle-aged Mong. Nkoa cut off the corpse's head with a knife. While I held the two-pronged spear, he jammed the head down upon it, saying:

"O corpse! Let no man hear what I say! And harm me not for thus entreating you!"

He brought the head back to his hut on the points of the spear. There we twisted off the head of a speckled fowl and let the blood drip on a large leaf. Nkoa also dripped some of the blood into the big pot. Then he put into the pot the corpse's head—still on the points of the spear, whose shaft stuck up out of the pot—some arrows, and water.

Again he summoned the warriors and lit the fire. When the water boiled, he dipped the skin of some beast of the cat tribe into the pot and sprinkled the warriors, saying:

"Let no man go in unto his woman for the rest of this month!"

For the next month, the warriors practiced war songs and dances in the village, while their wives worked on their farm plots as usual. Nkoa quizzed me about the land of the palefaces. One by one my unfortunate sailors, whose sufferings with their broken legs must have been terrible, were slain, broiled, and devoured. I racked my brains for some scheme to save them, without success. Nkoa bristled at the mere suggestion, and I was in no position to coerce him.

With the coming of the next new moon, Nkoa performed more magical operations. He mixed some powdered wood with the fowl's blood that he had caught on the leaf, tied up the mixture with the corpse's head in the skin of another animal, and hung the stinking bundle in bis hut. Next day he again gathered the men. They tore apart a fowl and some plantains, put the pieces in the pot, cooked them, and ate the stew. Nkoa opened the bundle, mixed the mess inside with the bark of another tree, and smeared the stuff on the men's chests, crying:

"Let no shaft strike here! Let no spear pierce here! Let no club smite here!"

Then he led them in procession through the town calling upon the people to shoot him to prove his invulnerability. At the right time, I shot a headless arrow at his chest. When it bounced off, he cried out that it was a real arrow, whose head his magic had destroyed at the last instant The Mong shouted yes, they had seen the real head on it, too. The ceremony closed with an orgy of drumming, singing, and dancing, during which Nkoa anointed the rest of the townsfolk with his foul ointment. The next day, the warriors marched off, leaving Nkoa and me safely behind in Dinale to watch the magical bundle and to pray to the spirits for success.

During this time I came to know Nkoa quite well. I think he even developed a small affection for me—as much as these wizardry types ever do for anyone but themselves. By our standards I suppose he was a heartless, bloody, tricky old scoundrel. But in intellect he was far above his fellow tribesmen. With a little formal education, he could have held his own in the company of any Athenian philosophers.

He was full of interesting ideas and loved to argue, reason, and speculate. Theology fascinated him, and he loved to hear my tales of the gods of Hellas. I thought it wiser not to admit my own skeptical viewpoint. He knew that different tribes had different tales of how the creator-god made the universe, and that these stories could not be reconciled. This puzzled and disturbed him, but he never came to any conclusion about it. When he was a little drunk on plantain wine, he taught me some of his sleight-of-hand tricks.

While I told him about the lands and peoples of the Inner Sea, I also extracted from him information about the countries between the Mong and the great desert. I had not given up hope of escape, although my efforts were more lethargic than usual. Age, disease, and the unaccustomed diet seemed to have stolen away my energy. I was no longer able to plan so readily, nor yet to carry out my plans so promptly and resolutely, as in former years. Thus, for instance, I never did learn to speak Mong well. Somehow I could no longer compel myself to grasp the new grammar and memorize the new words.

Ever since my arrival on the African coast, I had wondered at the lack of domestic animals, other than the dog and the speckled fowl. Such beasts would have done much to relieve the blacks' constant danger of starvation, and there was no lack of greenery for the beasts to feed on. Nkoa knew about domestic hoofed animals; he told me of a tribe to the north that had asses and cattle. But it seemed there was something about the dense jungle that caused all such beasts to sicken and die whenever they entered it.

As the months passed, the folk of Dinale got used to me. I even took part in some of their cannibal feasts, when an expedition brought back a few trembling captives for their larder. Human flesh, I found, tastes much like veal. Some savages, I have heard, eat their fallen foes for magical reasons, for example in hope of ingesting the courage of the deceased. But the Mong ate people simply to fill their bellies. Lacking cattle, sheep, and swine, they had no other ready source of meat.

Their dietary habits aside, I found the Mong in many ways admirable savages—at least, in their dealings with one another. They were brave, honest, dignified, and courteous—in one word, gentlemen. Outsiders, however, they viewed as fair game, against whom any cruelty or treachery was legitimate.

Shortly after the first spell in which I had assisted Nkoa, I came upon a group of Mong loafing in the shade of a big tree and laughing loudly. Approaching, I found that they were tormenting a young monkey, which one of them held on a leash. They poked the creature, pulled its stumpy tail, turned it upside down, and rubbed its face in the dirt. It screamed at them and tried to bite, meanwhile rolling blood-shot eyes in a vain quest for escape.

I was not overly softhearted about animals, but this made me indignant. Like Pythagoras, I thought it wrong to inflict pain wantonly upon them. I knew better than to upbraid these young killers, however. I strolled back to Nkoa's hut and asked the wizard:

"Will you lend me a few cowries, Nkoa?"

"What for?" he snapped.

"I have seen something I wanted, that is all."

"Oh, well, take them," he said, pushing a handful of the shells at me.

I walked back to the scene I had witnessed. The Mong had begun to be bored by their game. Two had fallen asleep and the rest were tormenting the monkey in a halfhearted, lackadaisical manner. When I offered the man with the leash a couple of cowries for his beast, he was glad to hand it over.

I tried to lead the monkey back to the hut, but it sat down and had to be dragged. I did not care to pick it up for fear of being bitten. Back at the hut, I tied it to one of the wall slats. I fed it, and in a few days it had become quite tame as far as I was concerned, although it still hated blacks and screamed and bared its teeth when one came near. It had olive-brown fur, a black face, and a long, piglike snout. Nkoa told me it was the young of the big baboon of these parts—a fiendish-looking creature the size of a large dog, with a startling red-and-blue face and an equally disconcerting red-and-blue arse.

With familiarity, Nkoa and his people came to trust me more, even though I could never be truly one of them. I went on a couple of their foraging expeditions for human meat, to utter spells to make the Mong invulnerable and invincible and to fill the hearts of their foes with terror. If the raid failed, Nkoa could always aver that some warrior had violated his injunction against copulation. Men being what they are, one or another was sure to have broken this rule, thus giving the wizard an infallible excuse for failure. My own purpose was to familiarize myself with the country roundabout, in case a chance of escape was offered.

One day, a Mong ran excitedly into Dinale to say that an elephant had fallen into one of their covered pitfalls. The warriors boiled out of the town and rushed to the site. The beast was already nearly dead from the piercing of its vitals by the stake at the bottom of the pit. A few spear thrusts finished it off.

Then the whole town turned out to cut up the beast, salvage its hide, and gorge on its meat. I have never seen people eat so much at once. They invited the folk of the other Mong villages to the feast, and for a ten-day the carcass seethed with black humanity, like a swarm of ants attacking a piece of garbage. They kept at it after the stench became too strong for me to endure.

The chief saw to it that the tusks were removed to Dinale. Then he called a council of elders. These decided that, when the two new tusks were added to those already in the village, there would be enough to justify a trading venture to the La-kopi country, in the north, to sell the tusks for metal.

Among barbarians, an affair of this sort is set in motion only after an enormous amount of talk. Everything must be discussed: who should go on the expedition, what route they should follow, who should command the party, and so on. The chiefs power to order his men around is not very great, since, if he tries to enforce too many unpopular commands, his people simply walk out on him and go to dwell in other villages. So night after night, the warriors squatted in the square, talking and talking until they arrived at a common policy.

They would carry the tusks on their own shoulders, since they did not keep slaves in the usual manner. The captives they took in their raids had their legs broken to prevent escape and were eaten soon after their capture. At this time there were only a few such unfortunates awaiting consumption. If the Mong obtained a good cargo of metal, they would try to capture a few victims on their return journey. When these had served their purpose of bearing the cargo to Dinale, they would be devoured in their turn.

Many were doubtful about the project, because the route to the Lakopi country took them close to the land of the Jalang. This tribe bore enmity to the Mong, because the latter had often carried off and eaten their people. Therefore, the doubters said, they did not wish to take part in the expedition unless Nkoa went with them to cast protective spells over them.

I discussed the matter with Nkoa in our hut Nkoa grumbled: "I do not wish to go on this journey, either. These days, my breath comes too short and my joints ache too much for long journeys. But what should I do, Evok?" (This was the nearest the Mong could come to my name.; "If I tell Dinale of this, some young oaf will say: Nkoa grows too old and feeble to be a good wizard. Let us knock him on the head and get another one from some nearby village."

This was the first time he had ever asked my advice. Cautiously I replied: "Well, you might send me in your place."

His bright little eyes sought mine. "I know what you have in your mind, Evok. When you get to the Lakopi country, you will give our warriors the slip and set out for your own land."

"Why, master!" I exclaimed. "Whatever gave you such an idea? No such thought—"

"Never mind the lies," he said. "A good wizard knows what others are thinking, even though they say not a word. But I have enjoyed our talks about far lands and strange gods, these past months, and I would do something for you in return. Besides, we men of intelligence must stand together and help one another against the unthinking masses. So I will send you to Lakopiland with the traders, and whether you return or not is your affair."

On this journey, I bore a spear and a small bundle of belongings and food. Satyros, as I called my monkey, trotted along with me. Since I often let him off his leash, he could easily have escaped, but he had become so attached to me that he never tried to do so. He had grown a lot since I had bought him and had begun to show the fantastic red-and-blue markings of the adult male. He now weighed at least thirty pounds and was armed with formidable dogteeth. The Mong let him severely alone.

We had no trouble with the Jalang, since the rainy season had begun and most of the inhabitants of the great forest stayed close to their villages. But even under these conditions, travel was most unpleasant. Terrific tempests lashed the jungle, day after day, with such lightning and thunder that one would have thought the end of the world was at hand. Now and then the wind would overturn some gigantic old tree, bringing it down with a roar louder than the thunder and an impact that shook the earth.

Along the trails, we waded in water ankle to knee deep. Betimes the leading man would step into a hole and go in up to his chin or over his head. Every so often, we had to climb out of the water to pull off the huge leeches that fastened upon our legs. I got a parasitic worm under my skin, which itched me half crazy until one of the cannibals showed me how to pull it out by reeling it around a twig. A spell of ague assailed me on the third day out, so that I reeled along with chattering teeth. I could keep up only by virtue of my length of leg and the fact that I was not expected to carry a tusk.

The Mong were not very efficient marchers. There were always a few lazy fellows who did not want to start with the rest in the morning, and much time was lost in argument to get them going. Then they wanted to stop early in the afternoon, and this led to more discussion. If they had put the energy into walking that they did in disputation, they could have reached Lakopiland in half the time. As it was, between the flooded trails, the storms, and the incessant delays, we seldom did more than two leagues a day.

After the first ten-day, however, travel became easier, because the great forest began to thin out. At first it became scrubby, like that along the coast Then it turned into a mixture of scattered trees, thickets of brush, and open stretches of grass. Rain still fell, but not so hard and incessantly. We even had some sunny days.

Animal life became commoner, or at least we could see it more readily. The Mong often brought down an antelope with their poisoned arrows, so that we had fresh meat.

After a journey of perhaps twenty days—I cannot give an accurate count of time during this period—we came to Bakalenda, the Lakopi capital. This was a big town, comparable to Klimoko. It was surrounded, not by a wooden stockade, but by a crude dry wall of fieldstone.

We filed into the city, under a row of heads set on spikes over the gate, and proceeded to the marketplace The Square was crowded with Africans, showing their wares and chaffering in a score of tongues. There were cattle and goats and asses, for we had now reached the lands where such beasts could thrive. Some of the traders were naked like my own Mong; others wore every sort of garb from mere codpieces to full-length robes.

Heavily armed Lakopi warriors leant on their spears, watching to make sure that men from hostile tribes did not disrupt commerce by fighting. Like the Gbaru, the Lakopi wore clothes of a sort. Their city was a trading center for tribes from all over the great forest and the coast.

My Mong consulted with a Lakopi official, who guided them to a place where they could set out their tusks. He collected one tusk as the market tax and departed, a slave carrying the tusk behind him.

Then came a long wait. Some of the Mong wandered about, accosting traders with metal to sell and trying to interest them in their ivory. Other traders came to our display and made a few tentative offers. In time I got bored with the lack of action and explored the town. I struck up conversations with several Gbaru-speaking traders and sounded out market conditions. By evening I had some idea of local supply and demand.

By evening, however, the Mong had not yet sold a single tusk. Getao, the leader of our party, said:

"You do not understand trade, Evok; but then, of course, you are only a poor, ignorant foreigner. One must never show eagerness, either to buy or sell, lest one be worsted in the deal."

So, I thought, I'm just a poor, ignorant foreigner who does not understand trade? Next morning, when the trading started, I said:

"Getao, lend me one of those tusks."

"Why?" said the Mong suspiciously. "What do you want it for?"

"I will show you. You shall have it back tonight, undamaged."

I picked up the tusk and walked off with it before he could think of further arguments. I strolled over to the stall of one of the merchants to whom I had spoken the day before ...

When the trading stopped at sunset, I returned to the Mong plot with the same tusk over my shoulder. I led an ass, whose panniers were stuffed with spearheads, hoes, knives, beads, copper wire, and other trade goods.

"How did you do that?" said Getao.

"Oh, I sold the tusk for some cloth, and the cloth for some leather goods, and so on until I had enough to buy the tusk back."

"You must have cast one of your spells on the other traders," he growled. "Is that beast yours, too?"

"Yes."

"The more fool you; it will die on the road back to Dinale."

"I know that, so I will sell it before we leave Bakalenda." Ignorant foreigner, forsooth! Some of these Africans were pretty sharp traders, but none had ever been up against a Greek sea captain.

Since the Mong had sold only four of their tusks, they were likely to stay in Bakalenda for several days. Early next morning, I slipped out of town with a party of Mbutaran tribesmen returning to their home. This, I understood, lay near the mouth of a great river, north of the Lakopi country. I led the ass, while Satyros perched on its back. The Mbutaran looked nervously at the baboon. I explained that, since every great wizard required a familiar spirit, Satyros was mine. He could, I assured them, read their thoughts, and he would infallibly warn me if any evil persons thought to murder me in my sleep for my trade goods. A few sleight-of-hand tricks convinced the Mbutaran that I was all I claimed to be, so I had no trouble with them.

In the Mbutaran town, I used my trade goods in preparing the next step in my homeward journey. I bought another ass, and a piece of cloth from which I could make a tent and a tunic, and a wooden shovel. I bought fishhooks and line, waterskins, hay for the asses, and all the durable foods— dates, smoked meat, and a kind of coarse flour—that the beasts could bear. Then I set out.

In return for my casting a protective spell on their herds and fields, the Mbutaran ferried me across the great river. I then followed the river to its mouth, skirting the marshes around its estuary. I do believe that this river was the one in whose bay we had seen the ruins of Hanno's Kernê. Then I reached the coast and struck out to the north.

North of this river, vegetation thinned out until I was marching along the edge of the great African desert. I soon learnt that the best way was to sleep through the hottest part of the day and do most of my marching at night, as I had marched through Nubia on my way to the Egyptian gold mines. Day after day I plodded ahead, along sandy beaches against which the Atlantic surf forever thundered, over rocky outcrops, and around salt marshes. Sometimes I shared my food with Satyros. For the most part, though, the baboon fed himself, turning over flat stones and snatching up the creeping things he found under them. He could catch a scorpion, tweak off its stinging tail, and gobble the rest in a couple of heartbeats.

The asses likewise grazed on the scanty herbage, save when we passed an area of sand dunes, where no natural fodder grew and I doled out hay to them. Fresh water I obtained by digging in the beds of dry watercourses.

Day after day I marched, seeing no other human being. I remember a few days distinguished by some special event, such as the time I drove an ostrich away from its nest in order to steal one of its eggs, or the day I heard a lion roaring and thought the beast was stalking me, or the day I caught a ten-pound fish in the surf and ate fish until it came out my ears, or the day I found the abandoned huts of some fishing clan. I had lost track of time and seasons. I thought the month was Skirophorion, but it might have been a month earlier or later. I could, however, tell roughly how long the journey was taking by watching the phases of the moon.

What with the time I had to spend in hunting for food and caring for my animals, I was seldom able to make more than three leagues a day. As usually happens on a journey into unknown lands, I found that the distance was greater than I had supposed, while my supplies did not last so well as I had hoped. By the end of the first month, the load of food and fodder was down to where one of the asses could carry it alone.

For a while I rode the other ass. This made life easier for me, but then the wretched beast went lame. I resumed my walking, hoping that being without a load would cure the beast; but it only got worse until it could hardly move. So I slaughtered it, cut it up, and smoked its meat. It would have been hard to gather enough desert shrubs to do a proper job of smoking, but I luckily found a log of driftwood.

This journey would have been easy with camels, which can go for ten-days without water and thrive on prickly desert shrubs that other animals spurn. But the camel does not seem to be used in Africa west of the Nile valley.

By the end of the second month, the beach still stretched endlessly ahead; the surf pounded on my left; the desert shimmered on my right; the sea birds squealed overhead. I had eaten all the meat of the ass I had killed. It was as tough as bark, and my teeth were no longer what they had once been; but it sustained me thus far. The dates and the native flour were nearly gone.

I could tell by the stars that I was getting farther north, back towards familiar latitudes. But, without a map and astronomical instruments, I could not measure my distances accurately.

I stretched my food supply by searching tide-washed rocks and tidal pools for edible shellfish. But it takes a fearful lot of shellfish to furnish the strength found in one good, honest roll of bread or pork chop. Besides, I was nearing exhaustion, and so were Satyros and the remaining ass. Their ribs showed. The monkey looked at me from bloodshot eyes, grunting in a puzzled way as if demanding an explanation for our peril and discomfort. Every day, it seemed, we made a shorter distance than the day before. At this rate, we should soon he down and die from hunger and fatigue.

One day, when I was digging for water in a dry channel, I heard voices. For an instant I thought: this is the end; I am in the delirium that foreshadows death. Then I took a grip on myself and looked around. Half a plethron away stood a couple of men, with two asses and a flock of goats. They seemed to have sprung out of the desert.

The twain approached cautiously, calling out. They were lean, brown men, evidently Moors of some sort, and probably father and son. The younger wore a kilt of coarse cloth and had a goatskin mantle slung around his shoulders. The other, gray-bearded, wore a whole tunic of this cloth. Each carried a spear.

I hauled myself out of the hole I had dug and sat on the edge of the excavation. With a mind-wrenching effort, I remembered what I could of the Moorish tongue and called out a good-day. At once, white teeth flashed against dark skins and beards. The two began to talk. Although their dialect differed from that of Mauretania, I caught a word here and there.

"Where do you come from?" asked the older.

I pointed. "From the land of the blacks, that way. How about you?"

"We heard there has been rain in the South, so we are taking our animals thither for pasture. What are you doing?"

"Digging a well."

The Moors laughed shrilly. "Oh, what a fool! You will never find water that way."

"I have found it before and shall again. Just watch—"

During this talk, I had not noticed that the younger Moor had circled around behind me. Now a frightful shriek made me whip around. The scream came from Satyros, who leaped on the back of the younger Moor just as the latter poised his spear to plunge it into my back. No doubt it had seemed too good a chance to miss, to kill me for my ass and any useful gear and supplies I might have.

With a yell as loud as the baboon's, the young Moor was thrown forward to hands and knees, dropping his spear. As I scrambled out of my hole, an old tavern-fighter's instinct warned me to whirl back towards the old Moor, who was just bringing up his spear. Since my own spear was out of reach, I aimed a terrific, two-handed blow at the base of his skull with my shovel. The skull crunched, the shovel broke with a crack, and the man was hurled to the sand.

I turned back to the other Moor, but he was already on his feet, with blood running down his body from Satyros' bites about his neck and shoulders. He raced away across the sand. I hurled his spear after him but missed. He vaulted on one of the asses and beat it into a gallop, with the other ass and the goats bounding after. They all vanished in a cloud of dust.

I retrieved the young Moor's spear and came back to where I had been working. The old Moor was dead. I petted and praised Satyros, who showed his pleasure by leaping up and down on all fours and grunting.

Then I thought hard. At the best estimate I could make, I had several ten-days more of hiking ahead of me, and my stock of food would never last But why should I leave the Moor to rot, if he would furnish me with the strength I required?

Such an idea would horrify my civilized contemporaries, but I had seen too many of mankind's queer customs and prohibitions to take any of them very seriously. If one must turn savage to survive, why, say I, turn savage! Besides, the man was already dead—slain in legitimate self-defense—so it was not as if I had gone out and hunted him for his flesh, as did my friends the Mong.

So I smoked that Moor as I had the ass. I used one of his shoulder blades and strips of his hide to make a new shovel. He proved almost as tough as the ass, but without him Satyros and I should never have won through to the mouth of the Lixus.

It was the third of Boedromion, in the second year of the 167th Olympiad, when I entered Eldagon's warehouse in Gades once more. Eldagon—portly and dignified, with his beard hanging down to his girdle—came towards me with a polite nod, saying:

"What can I do for you, sir?" Then he sighted Satyros, who had now reached his full scarlet-and-blue glory, on his leash. "By Tanith's teats, what is that extraordinary beast?"

"Don't you know me, Eldagon?"

He looked puzzled. "Speak once more, I pray. Your voice sounds familiar."

"What ails you, man? It hasn't been quite a year since—"

"Good Baal Hammon, it is Eudoxos!" He threw himself into my arms, laughing and weeping. "Thrice welcome! Tubal and I had given you up for good, this time. But I might have known you would turn up."

"Why didn't you know me? Herakles! Have I changed so much?"

"Have you seen yourself in a mirror?"

"No."

"Well, have a look."

When I saw my face, I almost dropped the mirror. My skin was as black as that of many lighter Ethiops, while my hair and beard were pure white. I looked older than Kronos.

"By Our Lady, no wonder!" I said.

"What has befallen you? What of your ships and cargo?"

"The blacks got them, and my crew have all either died of disease or been eaten by cannibals. But now I should like you to meet a friend of mine. Satyros, this is Eldagon ben-Balatar, an old associate."

The baboon nodded gravely. Eldagon sent a man to fetch his brother Tubal. Then he asked:

"Did you manage again to amass a fortune on the way home, despite your disasters?"

"Oimoi! No. I arrived in Tingis with nothing but an ass, which I sold to pay my passage to Gades. But, knowing how you are about animals, I have brought you Satyros. If he likes you, he may deign to take up residence in your menagerie."

"I knew you would produce something unexpected," he said. "In Tingis, did you have any more trouble with King Bocchus?"

"No. Nobody paid any heed to a penniless old vagabond."

Well, that is my story. It was six years ago that I returned to Gades from my second assault on the African continent. Eldagon was so grateful for the baboon that he invited me to live with him as a kind of retired senior partner, since the journey had aged me to the point where I was no longer fit for strenuous seafaring. The sons of Balatar could not have been kinder. Instead of blaming me for the loss of the ships and cargo, they attributed my misfortunes to Fate and the gods and praised me for having succeeded in returning at all.

Since then, I have earned my keep by designing rigging for Tubal's smaller vessels. I persuaded him to let me rig a fishing smack with my triangular sail and spent the rest of the summer tacking about the Bay of Gades to show what the sail could do. Although seamen are a hidebound lot, the ability of my rig to beat away from a lee shore at last impressed them. They began to order new ships—small craft like fishermen and coasters—with the fore-and-aft rig. They also commenced to have old ones converted to this rig in Tubal's yard. We put it about that I am the only man who can set the rig up right. In time, they will doubtless discover that the rig is really easy to copy, and that will end the profit we have been garnering from it.

The past year I have spent mostly in dictating my adventures, and this manuscript is the result I daresay your uncles and other kinsmen will find it interesting, whether or not the public does.

I still think the route from Gades around Africa to India is feasible, although I am no longer up to trying it. The ships should, however, avoid stops along the damp, jungled coast where I met with disaster. If the crew are not devoured by the natives, they will die off from the horrible diseases wherewith this land is rife. How far one must sail to reach a healthier clime I know not. But, if Necho's Phoenicians could do it, we moderns, with all our technical advances, should be able to.

Now, my son, I should like you to do certain tasks for me. As I explained in the introductory letter, one is to edit this manuscript and arrange for its publication. As I think you will agree, mine has been no humdrum life. It is not mere vanity that leads me to wish my successes and failures, my sufferings and triumphs immortalized. I think the tale itself is a worthy addition to the literature of Hellas, making up in excitement and the lore of distant lands what it may lack in literary polish.

Furthermore, if possible, I should like you to do something about the god-detested Hippalos, who is as hateful to me as the gates of Hades. I hear that he is back in Alexandria. The whipworthy trickster has set himself up as the high priest of some weird cult, which he claims is the true scientific religion, based upon his lifelong study of the mysteries of the East.

In addition, he has wormed his way into the confidence of Kleopatra the Wife and her present co-ruler, her son Ptolemaios Alexandros. (As you doubtless know, she quarreled some time ago with her other son, King Ptolemaios Lathyros, and drove him to Cyprus, where he now rules.) Now the dog-faced knave is promoting yearly voyages to India by the route I discovered, from the Red Sea.

To add insult to injury, he has named the half-yearly winds across the Indian Ocean after himself instead of after me. I doubt if you can do anything with the queen, who will still bear me a grudge. But you might send a petition to Lathyros in Cyprus asking him to proclaim me the true and proper discoverer of this golden wind. He may be all the more willing because of his feud with his mother, and be may also some day regain the throne of Egypt.

Lastly, if you ever get a chance to do evil to the polluted Hippalos himself, without untoward risk, I pray and exhort you, as your duty to your sire, to take advantage of it. Avenge both your parents thus.

I had plenty of leisure for thought on my three-hundred league march along the African coast. I decided that, if Hippalos had made your mother happy, I might by now have been willing to forgive and forget, as old Giaukos had advised. I was not a satisfactory husband to her, either; but at least I never tormented her to the point of suicide. So the greatest pleasure you could give your old father in his last years would be to send him the scoundrel's head, pickled in brine. I know that the chances of your obtaining this trophy are not good, for that temple thief is a fox who can slip through any hole. But the mere thought of it gives me pleasure.

Convey my love to all the kinsmen. Strength to you!