The Ivory Trail | Page 4

gents sometimes exaggerate of course--"
"Now and then," admitted Monty.
"But where there's smoke you mean there's prob'ly some one smoking hams?" suggested Yerkes.
"I mean, let's find that ivory!" said Fred.
"We might do worse than make an inquiry or two," Monty assented cautiously.
"Didums, you damned fool, you're growing old! You're wasting time! You're trying to damp enthusiasm! You're--you're--"
"Interested, Fred. I'm interested. Let's--"
"Let's find that ivory and to hell with caution! Why, man alive, it's the chance of a million lifetimes!"
"Well, then," said Monty, "admitting the story's true for the sake of argument, how do you propose to get on the track of the secret?"
"Get on it? I am on it! Didn't One-eye say Tippoo Tib is alive and in Zanzibar? The old rascal! Many a slave he's done to death! Many a man be's tortured! I propose we catch Tippoo Tib, hide him, and pull out his toe-nails one by one until be blows the gaff!"
(To hear Fred talk when there is nothing to do but talk a stranger might arrive at many false conclusions.)
"If there's any truth in the story at all," said Monty, "government will have done everything within the bounds of decency to coax the facts from Tippoo Tib. I suspect we'd have to take our chance and simply hunt. But let's hear Juma's story."
So the old attendant left off sprinkling water from a yellow jar, and came and stood before us. Fred's proposal of tweaking toe-nails would not have been practical in his case, for he had none left. His black legs, visible because he had tucked his one long garment up about his waist, were a mass of scars. He was lean, angular, yet peculiarly straight considering his years. As he stood before us he let his shirt-like garment drop, and the change from scarecrow to deferential servant was instantaneous. He was so wrinkled, and the wrinkles were so deep, that one scarcely noticed his sightless eye, almost hidden among a nest of creases; and in spite of the wrinkles, his polished, shaven head made him look ridiculously youthful because one expected gray hair and there was none.
"Ask him how he lost his toe-nails, Fred," said I.
But the old man knew enough English to answer for himself. He made a wry grimace and showed his hands. The finger-nails were gone too.
"Tell us your story, Juma," said Monty.
"Tell 'em about the pembe--the ivory--the much ivory--the meengi pembe," echoed Fred.
"Let's hear about those nails of his first," said I.
"One thing'll prob'ly lead to another," Yerkes agreed. "Start him on the toe-nail story."
But it did not lead very far. Fred, who had picked up Kiswahili enough to piece out the old man's broken English, drew him out and clarified the tale. But it only went to prove that others besides ourselves had beard of Tippoo Tib's hoard. Some white man--we could not make bead or tail of the name, but it sounded rather like Somebody belonging to a man named Carpets--had trapped him a few years before and put him to torture in the belief that be knew the secret.
"But me not knowing nothing!" he assured us solemnly, shaking his head again and again.
But he was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain afterward every one who shared the secret.
"How long ago?" asked Monty. But natives of that part of the earth are poor hands at reckoning time.
"Long time," he assured us. He might have meant six years, or sixty. It would have been all the same to him.
"No. Me not liking Tippoo Tib. One time his slave. That bad. Byumby set free. That good. Now working here. This very good."
"Where do you think the ivory is?" (This from Yerkes.)
But the old man shook his head.
"As I understand it," said Monty, "slaves came mostly from the Congo side of Lake Victoria Nyanza. Slave and elephant country were approximately the same as regards general direction, and there were two routes from the Congo--the southern by way of Ujiji on Tanganyika to Bagamoyo on what is now the German coast, and the other to the north of Victoria Nyanza ending at Mombasa. Ask him, Fred, which way the ivory used to come."
"Both ways," announced Juma without waiting for Fred to interpret. He had an uncanny trick of following conversation, his intelligence seeming to work by fits and starts.
"That gives us about half Africa for hunting-ground, and a job for life!" laughed Yerkes.
"Might have a worse!" Fred answered, resentful of cold water thrown on his discovery.
"Were you Tippoo Tib's slave when he buried the ivory?" demanded Monty, and the old man nodded.
"Where were you at the time?"
Juma made a gesture intended to suggest immeasurable distances toward the West, and the name of the place he mentioned