Henderson's Spear Page 4

  That will be for my widow to judge, and perhaps also for the police.

  I am not at all sure how to broach this narrative. The very act of trying to write makes it seem beyond expression. It cannot be done briefly, for to compress events would be to drain them of their ambiguity and impose an order not apparent at the time. Yet these matters were already raised by Dr. Part, and now they have been raised again by my dear wife. What wouldn’t I give to have spared her any glimpse of them!

  Ivry said nothing of this on our honeymoon, and no shadow passed across her lovely face—a wise face, I might add, for it is subtly etched with its own share of cares—until after we honeymooners were returned and comfortably installed at Bramford. My mother and Henry offered us a wing of Riverhill for which they have little use, pending my return to Africa. Here we enjoy the best of both worlds: the society of family and, when we wish it, we are self-contained.

  “Frank,” said Ivry in a fraught voice one morning after breakfast. “I should like you to write to Dr. Part. I remember you saying he saved your life when you escaped from the Sofas.”

  “Part? Is he in England? Of course, we’ll have him down.”

  “Not as far as I know. If only he were.”

  “Escape is rather overdoing it, dear girl. Samory let me go.”

  “Frank, please listen.” She was pouring us both more tea. “You mentioned once that he spoke to you about talking in your sleep.”

  “That’s all over and done with, Ivry. Please don’t bring it up again. Let the dead bury the dead.”

  “Frank, I do not believe it is over and done with. You know how tired you feel every morning, how many cups of tea you need before you go to your study—tea you could stand a spoon in. The truth is you’re not sleeping well, and I keep hearing things. Names of people I don’t know—or perhaps some of them are places—and they all seem to be doing their level best to kill you, whoever they are. And the odd thing is it doesn’t seem to come just from your time with Samory, because I distinctly hear you speak of ‘poison.’ From what you’ve told me of the Sofas, Frank, they don’t sound like the sort who go in for poison.” She took my hands in hers across the table, and looked into my eyes. She was doing her best to make light of it, but I could tell how worried she was.

  “And these places, Frank. A lot of it’s a jumble, but I’m sure it harks back to your time at sea. You’re talking about ships. Voyages. The South Seas. You were in Sydney and Fiji and Tahiti, weren’t you, my dear—all those years ago, when we lost touch and I married Reginald? I envy you, you know. Isn’t it an earthly paradise down there? Of course, I can imagine you may have reasons for not telling me.…” She laughed coquettishly. “But you should know me well enough by now to see I don’t care a fig about things like that. In your past, I mean. I’m hardly an ingenue, Frank dearest. I know what sailors get up to.”

  “Ivry, please,” I said, making the painful decision to be less than candid with her. “Sydney, yes. And Fiji—Bacchante called there. But not Tahiti. The French have it. A British warship wouldn’t go there. Not without a very good reason. Anyway, if you want to know what we did on Bacchante, you have only to look it up in Reverend Dalton. Though be warned, he makes a devilish dull read of an extraordinary voyage.”

  I gestured towards my study where, in a glass-fronted bookcase, repose the obese tomes of the royal tutor’s exhaustive, and exhausting, narrative—the routes and ports, each breath of wind, each foot of sail, every pound of coal that propelled the royal corvette. To say nothing of the learned mans potted history of each colony and nation visited, descriptions of their flora and fauna, analyses of produce and industry, and prospects for British settlement, right down to the cost of a third-class ticket from Liverpool.

  “He says he merely compiled the account from the Princes’ journals, Ivry. But of course he wrote the thing himself. One can’t imagine those two youngsters sitting down night after night and penning anything like that. It was hard enough getting them to write to their grandmother. Imagine that when your granny’s Queen Victoria!”

  “Don’t try to divert me, Frank. I’m worried.”

  “Well, whatever this is you keep hearing, let me assure you it has nothing to do with sailors’ doings. I’m sorry if I’m still raving occasionally, but that’s all it is. Raving. Old Part did say it takes some people years. Perhaps we should sleep in separate rooms, just for the time being.”

  Ivry replied, with characteristic verve, that she had not remarried in order to sleep alone so soon. I guessed more or less what she must have been hearing, though in my waking life I fought it down, hoped it would unravel each morning the way dreams do, even the worst of nightmares. But the truth is that the dreams have not been fading. Quite the reverse. My time with the Sofas has unearthed a Pandora’s box from dark recesses of my mind.

  Things could hardly have looked better for me in the mid-nineties, my first years on the Gold Coast. The illness that had forced my retirement from the Navy was by then a memory, and I rediscovered youthful springs of energy and spirit that I had feared might never flow again. I became Secretary and Aide-de-Camp to the Governor, Sir William Maxwell, accompanying him on the Ashanti Expedition of 1895–96, in which all involved could take pride, for it was both bloodless and decisive.

  With the might of Ashanti broken, the way seemed clear to consolidate our own influence in the North. To this end Sir William made me Travelling Commissioner in the Gold Coast Hinterland, empowered to visit distant kings and chiefs with whom we had treaties, to show them that though they were out of sight they were nonetheless dear to the heart of the Colonial Office.

  I set out late in 1896, accompanied by the Colony’s Surveyor, Mr. George Ekem Ferguson, one of the most remarkable men and staunchest friends it has ever been my privilege to know. Ferguson was a man in a million, one who moved with ease and brilliance between the African world of his birth and the English world he served. A member of the Fanti tribe (with perhaps a Scot somewhere up the family tree), he spoke eloquent Ashanti, half a dozen other local languages, better French than I do, and each evening on our travels he was reading Caesar and Tacitus in the Latin. His knowledge of local geography, flora and fauna was unsurpassed. Had our Hinterland duties not intervened, Ferguson would have gone to London that November to address the Royal Geographical Society and receive its medal, the first African to be so honoured. Instead, he met an untimely death in a remote and lawless corner of the globe, an end witnessed only by his killers.

  Since we expected no trouble, our column was small: one hundred Hausa rifles under Captain Irvine and Native Officer Gimalah, a flinty old warrior from Timbuctoo, plus a medical contingent in the capable hands of Dr. Part, Colonial Surgeon.

  About ten days out from Accra, after marching inland through the grand and gloomy jungles that surround the Kingdom of Ashanti, we entered Kumasi. The Ashanti capital was much changed in the months since I’d last seen it, having a forlorn and desolate look, a far cry from its glory days when the native rank and beauty flocked there for the glister of gold and the gore of human sacrifice. The Ashantis had promised to give up that cherished custom, but found they could not deny themselves after their victory over Nkoranza, when King Prempeh, like some modern Montezuma, consigned captives in their hundreds to the sacrificial blade.

  Royal Engineers were at work on the British fort, using hewn granite brought in originally by King Kofi for his palace. The Residency was complete enough that Ferguson, Irvine, and myself could lodge within its walls. Ferguson remarked how these very stones, in their former life, must have heard many a toast quaffed from the royal goblet made of Sir Charles MacCarthy’s skull.

  We pressed on north into the Hinterland, the great woods slowly fraying into scattered bush and undulating plains where elephant grass grew high and thick. I soon began to hear reports of a new scourge in the region: encroachment by invading Sofas, the followers of Samory and his warlike sons. Until then, these marauders had seldom been met with east of the Black V
olta. Now they were crossing the river in strength, seizing our traders’ goods and carrying them back to their headquarters behind the French Ivory Coast. There the plunder—mainly slaves and tribute extorted with unspeakable cruelty from any native kingdom unable to resist—was exchanged for the latest weaponry, to be employed in further outrages.

  Although addressed as King, and assuming the pomp and state of royalty, Samory himself was only the son of a petty Mandingo trader. Also styled by his people the Almamy, or High Priest, he sanctified his ambitions by invoking the name of the Prophet. His so-called empire was, however, nothing more than a sticky web of terror stretching across the Hinterland beyond the reach of the Great Powers. His followers were a mongrel lot of no particular tribe or nationality, the word Sofa, or “Horseman,” being applied to any brigands claiming to have horses, sometimes with as little reason as the term Cavalier during our own Civil War.

  We travelled many weeks, reaching a country whose isolation and wildness surpassed anything I had seen. The eye fed upon waving plains turning sere, with acacias, baobabs, and other trees dotted about sparingly. The people, who wore little but leaves and not many of them, were known as a turbulent race who might welcome the stranger with a poisoned arrow between his ribs.

  At a fortified village where we camped, we saw a pond full of tame crocodiles, reared and held sacred like those of ancient Egypt. On learning that they often took a stroll about town after dark, I was careful to fasten my tent securely against these festive Saurians.

  I was stricken, however, by dysentery, an old foe from my Navy years. Our stores had nearly run out, and milk—the diet prescribed by medicos—was almost unobtainable. Ferguson’s knowledge of the climate and diseases made him especially anxious that I should not quench my thirst with water, a beverage harmful under any circumstances. He scoured the country to get milk for me from nearly anything he could find that was female and walked on four legs.

  At length we reached Wa, in the northwest, where we set up a temporary headquarters. My people settled down comfortably, the Hausas making their usual huts of poles and grass. The town looked prosperous and substantial, well built of rammed earth finished with swish (mud plaster) and the dwellings arranged in compounds.

  Complaints about the Sofas soon came in from all around, especially from the people of Bona who had recently fled to Wa when the raiders occupied their capital. In some places hardly a hut was unburnt, hardly a field free from charred and mangled corpses. This was the work of Samory’s eldest son, whom the Sofas knew simply as Famadeh, or “the Prince.”

  Affairs came to a head when the king of Wa, emboldened by our presence, refused to fulfil a Sofa demand for five thousand slaves. I decided to go with a portion of our force and occupy Dawkita, a town on Was frontier with Bona, in the hope that my presence would deter the Sofas from invading a land where the Union Jack was flying.

  It was the second of March when I set out on this ill-fated mission, accompanied by Mr. Ferguson, Native Officer Gimalah, and forty Hausas, leaving Captain Irvine in command of Wa. At noon the following day we reached the steep wooded banks of the Black Volta, a fine stream broader than the Thames at Windsor. The water was low, and we got across easily. On the west bank we met more refugees, who told me that Sofas were on the march.

  Upon reaching Dawkita I told the chiefs I had come to protect them, and did not expect the Sofas would attack me. I then sent a message to the Prince, explaining which kingdoms were under British protection and must therefore be left unmolested. He sent a threatening reply, telling me that all the Hinterland belonged to Samory, and that if I wished to die, Dawkita would be a perfect spot for it.

  We prepared by occupying three large compounds, each with thick mud walls about ten feet high and a single narrow entrance. The rooms inside had flat roofs about seven feet high, thus leaving a parapet to protect defenders on the roof. All was quiet for some time, the weather very hot, and we watched in dismay as the small Dawkita River became dryer each day, until there remained only a waterhole in its bed.

  One morning before dawn, Ferguson shook me awake with news that the whole Sofa army was approaching. Shortly past noon they came in sight, advancing over the hill in a huge square, numbering about seven thousand. These were flanked by four hundred horsemen, who veered off along the riverbank and took our waterhole. Late in the afternoon the Sofa bugles sounded, and their riflemen opened fire from the edge of the bush. We had no more than 120 rounds per man. I gave orders that only picked shots were to fire, but when a rush was threatened a volley should be given. The Hausas showed admirable steadiness throughout our four days and nights under siege, and I cannot speak too highly of their courage.

  On the last day of March, there came a sudden pause in the firing, and a messenger approached with a letter in a cleft stick. In this the Prince said that we had better go away across the Volta. My reply was that the Sofas had attacked me, and had better retire themselves, for I should not do so.

  This decision seems to me now to have been foolhardy, and I have repented of it bitterly through many a wakeful night. But only hindsight can trace the line between arrogance and fortitude, and there is no telling what treachery we might have met with had we left our compounds.

  There was enough water for only one more day, and our ammunition was nearly at an end. Next morning the Sofas renewed their attack with undiminished ferocity, and by mid-afternoon compounds 2 and 3 were in flames. The defenders retreated to mine, losing on the way one killed and six wounded, one mortally Mr. Ferguson took a bullet through his leg. The enemy then occupied the buildings we’d abandoned, put out the flames, and resumed firing from there.

  At dusk we decided that our position was untenable. Our only chance—and, though no one said so, we all knew it to be slim—was to fight our way out, withdraw across the Volta under cover of darkness, and fall back on Wa.

  It then occurred to me that I might see the Prince and induce him to cease hostilities. I knew him to be untrustworthy and cruel, but thought the risk worth taking in view of the great loss of life, to say nothing of guns and equipment, which would probably result on our retreat. The other officers strongly objected, saying I should be uselessly courting death—very possibly in some unpleasant form.

  In the end they agreed. We decided that if negotiations failed, or if I were detained, the rest should make their escape that night. I must add that poor Ferguson, though he spoke most gloomily of the fate that would befall me, was restrained only with difficulty from coming along, wounded though he was.

  At first light I started for the enemy camp, carried in state by my hammock-men in their uniform of dark blue pants and frocks trimmed in red, with sashes and caps to match; myself with white flag in hand.

  I was met by a Sofa priest, a refined man of Arab type named Abu Bukari, who asked me to wait for a short time. I was then taken to the place of palaver.

  The Prince was tall and good-looking, but there was weakness in his countenance—perhaps, thought I, the weakness of a cruel man. Surrounding him were chiefs and courtiers, many of them very young. Some carried umbrellas, at one time reserved for royalty in Africa, but nowadays borne by pushing and pretentious individuals with no better claim than those who call themselves “Esquire” in England. Behind them stood a semi-arch of a thousand riflemen.

  The Prince said that my people should surrender and come into his camp with all our stores and weapons. I told him this was out of the question. I was then placed under guard in a compound, Abu Bukari letting me know that he and several older chiefs had begged the Prince to spare my life. Late that night I heard firing in the direction of Wa, and could only guess at its meaning. Was Irvine breaking through at last? Or was this the end for the others? My hammock-men, who had bravely chosen to remain with me, now said that our heads would soon be off, and we should therefore finish the whisky.

  On the next day I was brought again before the Prince and his chiefs. He said they had “examined my head” (figuratively thus far)
and found I was a good man. He would do me no harm and send me back to the coast, but I must first go before his father, Samory, at Haramonkoro, some fortnight’s journey to the west.

  The Prince added that as I had not been afraid to come to him, my men would not be killed. I demanded to know what had happened to Ferguson and the others, and the meaning of the shooting last night towards Wa. But he would say no more, and I received no further news of my friend until his death was communicated to me many days later in a most grisly manner.

  The Sofas brought in stores of ours that they had seized, and I had to explain their use. The surveying equipment baffled them; the gold (about £100 brought for friendly kings) aroused glee; and certain medical appliances, namely syringes and enema bulbs, afforded them infinite amusement.

  The next day we started for Bona, which lay en route to Samory’s headquarters. A lame Rosinante was my mount, all knobs and saddle-sores. As the day wore on, my skin wore off, until parts of me resembled the condition of my steed. The country we traversed was mostly dry upland, lion-coloured and dotted with thorny acacias and other hardy trees. The baobabs had lost their leaves, as they always do in this season, but great cylindrical seed pods still hung from them like salami in an Italian butchers shop. Whenever we stopped beneath one of these trees I begged my Sofa jailer, a surly old ruffian named Siraku, to split open a pod and let me have the pith, which serves as a tart and refreshing sherbet.