Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 85, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1920 — WHITE MAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WHITE MAN

By George Agnew Chamberlain

Author of "Home,” "Through Stained Claes.” "John Bogardus,” etc.

SYNOPSIS. CHAPTER I.—Andrea Pellor, handeoma teuxhtar of Lord Pellor, impecunious aristocrat. Is doomed to marry an iUlt•rate but wealthy middle-aged diamond mine owner. She disconsolately wanders from her hotel in South Africa and discovers an aviator about to fly from the beach. Impulsively, of course imagining that the trip will be merely a pleasant excursion, and a welcome relief from thoughts of her impending loveless marriage, she begs to be taken for a flight, although she does not know him. He •omewhat unwillingly agrees, and they •tart. CHAPTER ll.—When she realises her unknown aviator is not golag back Andrea in desperation tries to choke him with one of her stockings. He thwarts her and they sail on into the very heart of Africa. Landing in an immense craal, Andrea finds the natives all bow in worship to her mysterious companion, sne Is given a slave boy, “Bathtub, and the White Man sets about building a hut for her. CHAPTER lll.—Andrea is ve " * glimpse of the home which is to be hers, and wonders at its completeness. White Man invites her to dinner that evening, and In spite of the fact that he has refused to take her back to civilisation Andrea accepts his invitation, but he continues deaf to her pleading that he restore her to her friends. CHAPTER IV.—Andrea is awakened from sound sleep next morning by loud pounding on her doorway and li told to prepare for a day’s hunt with White Man. She thoroughly enjoys the exciting trip and begins to understand more of he ••host’s'” character and the reason for his apparently ruthless slaughtering of animals. He is providing for the force of blacks he employs and who look to him for sustenance. CHAPTER V.—Andrea, worrying over her deplorable lack of change of clothing. Is surprised and delighted when a trunk, loaded with everything in the way of clothing dear to the feminine heart, is dropped at her doorway by stalwart natives and she Is told by white Man that they are hers. White Man by a skillful shot saves her from the attack of a sable bull and she Is fast becoming reconciled to her fate after eight days In the craal. CHAPTER Vl.—On another expedition the donkey on which Andrea is mounted runs away with her and she is for a moment made ridiculous. White Man explains the African method of wife pur. chase “obolo.”' She is horrified. Afterward'she listens to the report of native runners that a herd of elephanta Is In the district and Is Invited to the hunt by White Man. They start down a croco-dile-Infested stream for the scene of the hunt.

CHAPTER VII. They started out, a skeleton cavalcade. The three wizened ones led the way and Andrea measured their importance by the fact that they carried M’sungo’s battery of rifles, respectfully surrendered by the gunbearers as a fitting tribute from onlookers to men who were hunters in their own right. M’sungo nodded toward them and spoke to Andrea over his shoulder. “The old boys are my brothers in arms and they carry the guns as a sort of Insignia. When it comes down to business they’ll slip them to the trained bearers.” Behind Andrea came Marguerite, his attendant before and Bathtub after him; then followed the gunbearers, a single tracker and a single waterboy. No hangers-on were allowed * ev.en to see the cortege from the craal. Over one shoulder Bathtub carried slung a cracker tin, container of all the food allotted to the day. In ten minutes’ march they came to the river which, in spite of its proximity to the camp, Andrea now saw for the first time! Often she had suggested to M’sungo that she wished to visit it, but on every occasion his lips had set in a straight line and he had invented manifold reasons for keeping her from its shores. The most efficacious of these arguments , were snakes and crocodiles, but while she conceded the strength of those two deterrents she could not escape from an intuitive’ belief that there was something else —some other and ranking cause in the back of M’sungo’s mind.

The river was a treacherous-looking stream, deep, sluggish, bordered for the most part by flat-topped banks. Where its shores were broken into shelving slopes these were covered with a towering growth of feeds and matted elephant grass. There was a sand-spit here and there and on edch were lying what appeared to be logs cast up by flood. As the expedition reached the crest of the bank, thereby coming into full view of the river, the logs, one by one, elevated themselves a foot into the air through all their length and moved silently, swiftly, horribly into the water. Andrea caught her breath. She had seen crocodiles in captivity, but never like thfs, never free to scurry on distorted legs, to sink silently into murky depths and lurk. “White Man,” she whispered, “are they as awful as they look?” “They are,” he answered. “It is pretty generally accepted that more natives succumb to crocs in Africa annually than to any other one cause, not excepting famine and smallpox. It sounds unbelievable until you know the native mind. A map will pe taken at a certain crossing and half an hour later you may see his companions

leisurefir wading the stream the same place. The explanation is that they consider that the victim lost his life solely by reason of the cheap brand of ‘medicine’ he carried. Each one is convinced that his own bit of stone, rag or twisted wood is the real thing and nothing can dissnade him until the moment when he too is snatched under.” .. j “How ghastly,” said Andrea, ‘and how pitiful.” “Yes, it is,” said M’sungo, and added: “Sort of knockout to faith, isn’t it? But even crocs have character. There are certain crossings swarming with them where they are known to be friendly and where no one has ever been attacked.” By the time he finished speaking the natives had baled out a wide, clumsy scow and M’sungo nodded to Andrea to slide down the slippery landing chute and climb in. She was worried as to how Marguerite was to be managed when, to her delight, four blacks picked him up bodily and deposited him in the center of the leaky craft. He did not deign to more than half

open his eyes. Propelled laboriously up-stream by poles and then across by clumsy paddles, it took them the best part of half an hour to make the opposite landing. Andrea was surprised that M’sungo's impatience seemed to be dying down, and said so. “Oh,” he explained, “there’s no great hurry. We aren’t after antelope, you know. Three out of every five eleplants shot are killed at the noon hour. If the one we are after is traveling, we’ll Lever, never see him, for he 11 think nothing of ninety miles as a day’s stroll. If he’s feeding, and that’s the probability in this case, we’ll come up with him at the heat of the day under a big tree dozing and lazily fanning himself with his ears.” The country across the river was a contrast to anything Andrea had seen. It was what M’sungo called mangy; totally bare in spots and breaking out in others into thorn thickets or oases of thick brush. Farther upstream was a forest of high straight trees, much higher than the tembas, but Inland this towering growth suddenly fell to a low level of bush that cut a gray line along the horizon. The band of gray was broken here and there by the black dome of a tree. M’sungo followed the direction of Andrea’s eyes. “That long gray patch,” he said, “that’s elephant bush, but Lord knows when we’ll get there.” The wizened men led them upstream and soon they were in the deep shade of the high foreSt, but not for long. In ten minutes they traversed it, for it was nothing but a tongue, a long screen extending from elephant bush to river. Scarcely had they left its shelter when the three hunters paused and with them M’sungo. Andrea pressed forward. The soggy ground was pock-marked with great holes of varying sizes; the smallest a foot in circumference, the largest, three. “Females and youngsters,” murmured M’sungo in explanation, “all trash.” He stood quite still, his eyes traveling rapidly over a wide radius, pausing suddenly when the tracker thoughtfully touched a grass blade with his toe or another boy solemnly measured a spoor with his feet placed one ahead of the other, looked up inquiringly and retired in confusion at the kindly sneer on the faces of the hunters. “Why are you waiting?" asked Andrea impatiently. M’sungo flashed a look at her. “Waiting?” he whispered. “We’re not waiting. Every man here, according to his lights, is reading. You saw that cheeky gunbearer measure a spoor and then withdraw with a hangdog look. He thought he had spotted a male bull. He has made himself ridiculous for a year. Tonight you’ll hear the camp telling the joke on him over and over again. But the tracker touches a blade of grass bent one way with his toe and presently you’ll see him with a twig broken in the opposite direction. There he jpes now. He looks as if he were day-dreaming, doesn’t he?” Andrea nodded. “Well, be isn’t.” continued M’sungo.

‘By now he has read the whole sfoi*y. He knows how many females made this mess of a trail and how many young. He knows when they came and when they went. He could fill in their stay with a dozen incidents, each one complete in itself, such ns where a youngster slipped, fell, squealed and got spanked by bls mother. But such trimmings of details impress themselves only on his subconscious mind. In reality bls whole attention is fixed on the main chance. By the season of the year he knows that this herd is not traveling alone. The track of the males Is nearby. If we didn’t have the three old hunters we would go up the bank of the river until we struck It, but we don’t have to because they found it by chance this morning at the first streak of dawn."

While he talked, the tracker studied, the three wizened sat aloof, taking snuff. Now, at a nod from M’sungo, they arose and proceeded swiftly along the margin of the big trees. Presently they swerved to the left and plunged through undergrowth to a well-marked puth. In the fine dust of that runway Andrea saw the Identical monster spoor that the old black had drawn with his finger on the ground beside her breakfast table. Another halt was called. The tracker squatted by one spoor and then another. He held up three “All males?” said M’sungo. The tracker nodded. “Big ones?" said M’sungo, with that half-smile of exaltation. The boy grinned. M’sungo touched the edge of the mighty spoor with his toe. “M culo? “Stalecka!” murmured the tracker, and rolled his eyes up into the trees.

“He says it’s a whopper,” whispered M’sungo, and promptly went into action. He took off his jacket and jersey, roiled up his sleeves and tightened his belt. The tracker stripped to his breech-clout and took from one of the wizened a slender-shafted assegai. The three old hunters laid aside the rifles they had been carrying and the gunbearers quietly picked them up. M’sungo turned to Andrea. “Get on the donkey,” he ordered. When she was mounted her eyes were on a level with his own. “Listen,” he said. “You'll ride now, because when we strike the bush you can’t. Please listen. because from now until the kill nobody is going to speak to you and if you should say a word out loud you might get six inches of spear in the excitement of the moment.” “Go ahead; I won’t speak,” said Andrea, and pressed her lips together. “When you begin to get hot,” continued M’sungo, “just take off what you don’t want and drop it. We people ahead can’t lose anything if we try. The ‘boys’ used to pick up my dead matches until I stopped them. When you come to the bush, shed your skirt, get off Marguerite and leave him. Walk lightly and hang on till you drop. If you last long enough, you’ll see me take the big gun. That’s the beginning of the end and when it happens you are to do just one thing. Look around you. Somewhere near you are bound to see a big tree looming out of the bush. Go to it, hug it, stay with it whatever happens till I call you.” A moment later, they were off at a terrific pace, the tracker in the lead, M’sungo next, then the gunbearers, Andrea, and after her the tagging rest. For hours they kept on without a break or a pause. Andrea watched M’sungo’s long stride, fascinated by its unvarying pendulum swing. The gunbeafers took shorter steps. They walked pivoting on the ball of the foot; just before each step, their heels jerked inward sharply for the thrust back. She leaned forward: (TO BE CONTINUED.)

Propelled Laboriously Up-Stream by Poles.