Lukundoo | Page 3

"but he was talking some similar lingo. Hamed Burghash said he was talking Balunda. I know too little Balunda. I do not learn languages readily. Stone learned more Mang-Battu in a week than I could have learned in a year. But I seemed to hear words like Mang-Battu words. Anyhow, the Mang-Battu bearers were scared."
"Scared?" Van Rieten repeated, questioningly.
"So were the Zanzibar men, even Hamed Burghash, and so was I," said Etcham, "only for a different reason. He talked in two voices."
"In two voices," Van Rieten reflected.
"Yes," said Etcham, more excitedly than he had yet spoken. "In two voices, like a conversation. One was his own, one a small, thin, bleaty voice like nothing I ever heard. I seemed to make out, among the sounds the deep voice made, something like Mang-Battu words I knew, as nedru, metababa, and nedo, their terms for 'head,' 'shoulder,' 'thigh,' and perhaps kudra and nekere ('speak' and 'whistle'); and among the noises of the shrill voice matomipa, angunzi, and kamomami ('kill,' 'death,' and 'hate'). Hamed Burghash said he also heard those words. He knew Mang-Battu far better than I."
"What did the bearers say?" Van Rieten asked.
"They said, ', Lukundoo!'" Etcham replied. "I did not know the word; Hamed Burghash said it was Mang-Battu for 'leopard.'"
"It's Mang-Battu for 'witchcraft,'" said Van Rieten.
"I don't wonder they thought so," said Etcham. "It was enough to make one believe in sorcery to listen to those two voices."
"One voice answering the other?" Van Rieten asked perfunctorily.
Etcham's face went gray under his tan.
"Sometimes both at once," he answered huskily.
"Both at once!" Van Rieten ejaculated.
"It sounded that way to the men, too," said Etcham. "And that was not all."
He stopped and looked helplessly at us for a moment.
"Could a man talk and whistle at the same time?" he asked.
"How do you mean?" Van Rieten queried.
"We could hear Stone talking away, his big, deep-cheated baritone rumbling along, and through it all we could hear a high, shrill whistle, the oddest, wheezy sound. You know, no matter how shrilly a grown man may whistle, the note has a different quality from the whistle of a boy or a woman or a little girl. They sound more treble, somehow. Well, if you can imagine the smallest girl who could whistle keeping it up tunelessly right along, that whistle was like that, only even more piercing, and it sounded right through Stone's bass tones."
"And you didn't go to him?" Van Rieten cried.
"He is not given to threats," Etcham disclaimed. "But he had threatened, not volubly, nor like a sick man, but quietly and firmly, that if any man of us (he lumped me in with the men) came near him while he was in his trouble, that man should die. And it was not so much his words as his manner. It was like a monarch commanding respected privacy for a deathbed. One simply could not transgress."
"I see," said Van Rieten shortly.
"He's ve'y seedy," Etcham repeated helplessly. "I thought perhaps...."
His absorbing affection for Stone, his real love for him, shone out through his envelope of conventional training. Worship of Stone was plainly his master passion.
Like many competent men, Van Rieten had a streak of hard selfishness in him. It came to the surface then. He said we carried our lives in our hands from day to day just as genuinely as Stone; that he did not forget the ties of blood and calling between any two explorers, but that there was no sense in imperiling one party for a very problematical benefit to a man probably beyond any help; that it was enough of a task to hunt for one party; that if two were united, providing food would be more than doubly difficult; that the risk of starvation was too great. Deflecting our march seven full days' journey (he complimented Etcham on his marching powers) might ruin our expedition entirely.
Chapter III
Van Rieten had logic on his side and he had a way with him. Etcham sat there apologetic and deferential, like a fourth-form schoolboy before a head master. Van Rieten wound up.
"I am after pigmies, at the risk of my life. After pigmies I go."
"Perhaps, then, these will interest you," said Etcham, very quietly.
He took two objects out of the sidepocket of his blouse, and handed them to Van Rieten. They were round, bigger than big plums, and smaller than small peaches, about the right size to enclose in an average hand. They were black, and at first I did not see what they were.
"Pigmies!" Van Rieten exclaimed. "Pigmies, indeed! Why, they wouldn't be two feet high! Do you mean to claim that these are adult heads?"
"I claim nothing," Etcham answered evenly. "You can see for yourself."
Van Rieten passed one of the heads to me. The sun was just setting and I examined it