Into Africa Page 25

  Stanley had had enough. After a fitful night's sleep he lambasted the Arabs for their cowardice. He was insulted that they'd planned on leaving him behind, and even more insulted when they casually greeted him in the morning as if nothing had happened. He lectured the council of war for deserting their wounded and their “every man for himself” policy. The war was just between them and Mirambo, he scolded them, and their habit of running away at the slightest setback was a solid indicator that the war could drag on for years—years Stanley didn't have. “I know something about fighting, but I never saw people run away from an encampment like ours at Zimbizo, for such slight cause as you had.”

  Stanley paused to look hard at the Arabs, making sure his next sentence struck home. “By running away you have invited Mirambo to follow you to Unyayembe. You may be sure he will come.”

  In the morning the Arabs continued their retreat to Tabora. But a disappointed and disheartened Stanley was through with their war. As the Arabs marshaled their forces within the city, he gathered his men and returned to his rented home outside town to regroup. He had done his duty to the Arabs, repaying their kindnesses with service during their war. Now he was free to go. The question haunting him, however, was to where? Once the caravan route reopened, the Arabs had told him, Ujiji was just a month's march. But judging by the way the Arabs were fighting, that reopening looked to be a long time in the future.

  On the other hand, if Stanley tried to run Mirambo's blockade, especially in light of the hostilities, Mirambo would not just demand all of Stanley's cloth and beads in tribute, he would butcher each and every member of the New York Herald expedition.

  Mentally, Stanley began making a case for turning around and going home. He rationalized he had done all that was humanly possible to find Livingstone. No reporter could have done more. Certainly Bennett would understand that.

  Stanley had prevailed through swamps, sickness, and warfare. His porters had been released, so he had no men to carry his cargo. Many of his men had died, his goods had been stolen by deserters, and certain death waited if he went forward. For as powerful as a Winchester repeating rifle would appear in the short term, in the long run Mirambo's large force would be overwhelming. “My position is most serious,” he finally wrote. “I have a good excuse for returning to the coast.”

  The determining factor was the same brute reality behind the entire expedition: money. Stanley pictured himself returning to civilization without finding a scrap of evidence about Livingstone's whereabouts. He would be seen as a failure, and would probably lose his job. More pragmatically, he had run up an enormous tab with the Arab merchants. Bennett would refuse to pay, on the grounds that Stanley hadn't done his duty. Legally, Webb was liable, but Stanley had given his word. The pre-Africa Stanley might have run off and left Webb to pay, considering the episode to be another of life's little failures. But now Stanley knew he had to push on. “So much money has been expended, and so much confidence has been placed in me,” he concluded. Fueled by more Arab reports that Livingstone was alive but destitute somewhere near Lake Tanganyika, he developed a mental picture of Livingstone trapped in Ujiji, unable to move due to war and lack of supplies. Stanley was the cavalry, riding to the rescue. “I feel I must die sooner than return.”

  It was August 11. It had been seven weeks since Stanley had first set foot in Tabora. Counting Bombay, the soldiers, and Shaw, he was down to his last thirteen men. The time had come to do something ingenious and even a little stupid, for that's what it was going to take to reach Ujiji.

  Stanley's salvation came from the man he had denigrated the most: Bombay. The short former slave with the flat teeth told Stanley of a little-used trail to the south of Tabora. It was the long way to Ujiji, adding two hundred miles to the trip by giving the traditional caravan route the widest possible berth. It was a path the porters feared, leading through thick woods of sycamore and scrub, filled with giraffes and elephants. In addition to his own caravan, Stanley would also need to bring along the lazy denizens of Kirk's relief expedition, overseeing them for the final march to Ujiji to ensure Livingstone's supplies didn't get spent in Tabora, as in past years.

  The Arabs tried to convince Stanley to stay. His mind, however, was made up. The expedition had spent almost as much time in Tabora as they had getting there. The time had come to go, and as soon as possible. Even as Shaw fell ill with what he claimed was malaria but what Stanley suspected was venereal disease, Stanley began hiring the necessary porters and preparing his men for the trail once again.

  Then, as Stanley predicted, Mirambo attacked Tabora. The Arabs could look out across the plains surrounding the town from their roofs and see the vast African army spread across the bleached white grass. Mirambo's massive tent was pitched in the rear, fully visible and out of rifle range, protected by his men. If he chose to attack Tabora there was nothing the Arabs could do to prevent the annihilation of their town, the rape of all their women, and the enslavement of their children.

  Stanley armed his men once again, and accepted any refugees who came to his encampment seeking security. But this time he refused to fight alongside the Arabs. Khamis bin Abdullah, the volatile merchant who had instigated the war in the first place, hatched a plan. Alone, except for a gun bearer and eighty slaves, Abdullah would approach Mirambo's encampment under the pretext of peace. When the two were alone, he would kill the African, bringing an end to the war.

  Assembling his forces, Abdullah marched his men to the edge of town and approached Mirambo. The African, of course, didn't rise to power through gullibility. He saw through his spyglass that Abdullah's eighty armed slaves looked far more like a party of war than men seeking peace. Mirambo hastily ordered his men to retreat. Abdullah marched forward, unaware he was walking into Mirambo's trap. “Khamis,” Stanley wrote of his friend, “rushed on with his friends after them. Suddenly, Mirambo ordered his men to advance upon them in a body.”

  Abdullah's slaves turned around and ran, but the Arab and his young gun bearer stood their ground. The first bullet that felled Abdullah was through his leg. As he dropped to the dirt in agony, blood spurting from the wound, he became aware that his slaves were no longer at his side. Then his eyes shifted to Mirambo's warriors. He rose to his knees as they strode forward. He knew what was about to happen to him.

  “Khamis bin Abdullah,” Stanley wrote that night, “who was a fine, noble, brave, portly man, was found with the skin of his forehead, the beard and skin of the lower face, the forepart of the nose, the fat over the stomach and abdomen, the genital organs, and lastly, a bit from each heel, cut off by the savage allies of Mirambo.”

  As Stanley pondered the awareness that his dead friend's body was being stewed and eaten by Mirambo's men as a potion for greater strength in battle, he fortified his citadel. Every man who came to his home was armed, until 150 riflemen were stationed along the walls, waiting for Mirambo. “I hope to God he will come,” Stanley concluded that night's journal entry. “If he comes within range of an American rifle, I shall see what virtue lies in American lead.”

  • CHAPTER 29 •

  Into the Woods

  August 26, 1871

  Tabora

  300 Miles to Livingstone

  Mirambo never attacked Stanley. He looted and burned Tabora, raping and killing and enslaving until Arab opposition finally forced him to pull back. But his main objectives had always been control of the caravan route and a show of force, not driving the Arabs from their indefensible trading outpost. Having accomplished his goals, Mirambo and his men melted back into the woodlands on the night of August 26. The Arabs, who had frantically marshaled their forces for a counterattack, woke up the next morning to find him gone. Once again Mirambo had gotten the best of them. All they could do was lament the missed opportunity and argue about ways to reopen the trail to Ujiji. Many of the most prominent Arabs even began making plans to leave Tabora for good, preferring to do business in Zanzibar.

  Stanley became consumed with getting ou
t of town as quickly as possible. It seemed adversity blocked his every move toward Livingstone. If it wasn't Mirambo forcing a two-hundred-mile detour, it was a lack of local porters to carry the bales of supplies, or the lackadaisical air of African life, where “tomorrow” might mean “a month from now.” An infuriated, frustrated Stanley became convinced he was fated to while away his life in Tabora, constantly in search of porters. He began scaling back the expedition, deciding to leave sixty of the bales and almost all of his personal luxuries in Tabora. He and his men would travel light and fast—if they ever got out of town.

  Stanley's greatest vexation, however, was Shaw. He'd signed on at a salary of three hundred dollars per year, which had sounded astronomical back in Zanzibar, when he was a sailor without a ship or prospects. The image of traveling into Africa to explore the headwaters of the Rufiji River had been rather swashbuckling. However, there was no glamour about the reality of life on the trail. Stanley still hadn't told him they were searching for Livingstone, so Shaw was beginning to think his boss was crazy for being so adamant about reaching Ujiji. Stanley had told Shaw that their goal was to measure the depth of Lake Tanganyika, though Shaw didn't see how that was worth risking his life and the lives of all his men to get there. Shaw desperately wanted to turn around and go home. He begged Stanley to release him from his contract.

  Stanley wouldn't allow it. His excuse was that Shaw, as a white man, had to provide a good example for other members of the caravan. If he showed fear, so would they. But the real reason had nothing to do with race or exploration or leadership, for Shaw was proving himself inept, clumsy, lazy, and sometimes just plain stupid.

  The real reason Stanley wanted to keep Shaw nearby was because he liked his company. Stanley had been aware of race since Ugogo. Shaw represented another white face in a sea of Africans and Arabs. They shared a frame of reference. They spoke the same language. For all his bluster, Stanley was alone in Africa. He had no one to counsel him, no one to whom he could open up emotionally. In a strange way, merely having Shaw around—as sly as the sailor could be—was comforting. Stanley would not have crumbled if Shaw left, but he certainly would have felt more isolated. There would be no one to watch Stanley's back in case of trouble.

  Even as Stanley berated and mocked Shaw during August, making sarcastic remarks about his laziness and insatiable sexual appetite, it was Stanley who returned the favor and nursed Shaw back to health when a strange illness almost killed the sailor. He dosed Shaw with cinchona bark and made him drink tonics of brandy, sugar, raw eggs, and lemons. Sadly, nothing worked. Despite brief recoveries, Shaw relapsed almost as soon as he enjoyed the briefest signs of recovery.

  “Shaw will not work,” Stanley wrote on August 30, convinced his charge was feigning sickness because his symptoms were different from malaria. In fact, Shaw was suffering from smallpox. “I cannot get him to stir himself. I have petted him and coaxed him. I have even cooked little luxuries for him myself.”

  Desperate, Stanley unveiled the truth about why they were in Africa, hoping it would spark excitement in Shaw. “I sat down by his side,” Stanley remembered, in order to encourage him. And today, for the first time, I told him the real nature of my mission. I told him I did not care about the geography of the country so much as I cared about finding Livingstone.”

  Shaw's eyes lit up for the briefest of instants, then became dull again. “It is to find Livingstone I am here,” Stanley continued. “Don't you see, old fellow, the importance of the mission? Don't you see the reward from Mr. Bennett if you will help me? I am sure, if you ever come to New York, that you will never be in want of a fifty-dollar bill. So shake yourself, jump about, look lively.”

  Shaw's eyes stared into space. Stanley grew desperate. Looking at his young friend, he implored him to go the distance. His previous taunts about death were forgotten. “Say you will not die,” pleaded Stanley.

  Shaw didn't. But whereas Stanley enjoyed reprieves from malaria, Shaw—and many of the soldiers, too—couldn't shake the highly infectious smallpox. When Stanley finally attracted a corps of porters by offering three times the going salary rate, Shaw was still too ill to travel. Stanley's thoughts and words were filled with speculation on whether the Cockney was truly sick, or merely pretending so he could stay behind and steal back to Zanzibar. “If I took a stick I could take the nonsense out of him,” Stanley fumed.

  Shaw saw through Stanley's façade. Their relationship could never be termed a friendship, but trial had given it depth. Time had given understanding. They had become like a cantankerous couple who knew each other's strengths and weaknesses all too well, mocking one another most of the time while occasionally letting a ray of warmth shine through.

  Shaw began opening up to Stanley as he lay in bed in the house outside Tabora, where the rooms were small and rectangular and the sounds of donkeys and pans rattling in the nearby kitchen could be heard outside his door. Shaw told of a life as the son of a captain in the Royal Navy, and how as a child he had met Queen Victoria on four occasions. Then Shaw spoke warmly about Stanley and looked back in awe on all they'd been through. Characteristically, Stanley laughed in the sailor's face and dismissed him as a “sentimental driveller.” But when Shaw became angry at the rejection, Stanley didn't lash out caustically, as he had when Shaw rebuked him in the past. Instead, he rolled his eyes and complained of wanting to “cry out with vexation,” then continued to encourage Shaw to rise from his sickbed and prepare to travel.

  Shaw, however, did not. And as Stanley contemplated the enormity of the challenges he was facing, depression set in. “The Apostle of Africa,” he wrote of Livingstone on September 13, “is always on my mind. And as day after day passes without starting to find him, I find myself subject to fits of depression. Indeed, I have many things to depress me.” If only to snap out of his gloomy mood, Stanley was desperate to get out of Tabora, no matter how sick Shaw, Selim, or some of his other caravan members happened to be.

  The Arabs, who thought Stanley was suicidal for attempting the southwest loop toward Ujiji, didn't understand Stanley's mania. They could only see that Shaw was in the throes of a great sickness. They scolded Stanley for being so cruel as to make a dying man travel through the hard country, with its dense forests, bad trails, wildlife, and warring tribes. “You will find the people will be too much for you and that you will have to return,” one particularly unsavory slave trader told Stanley. “The Wamanyara are bad, the Wakonongo are very bad, and the Wazavira are worst of all. You have come to this country at a very bad time. There is war everywhere.”

  Rumors that those tribes were either preparing for an expected invasion from Mirambo or traveling north to join Mirambo increased their perception of Stanley's lunacy. And though Stanley wasn't frightened, his new porters were losing heart and grumbling about the mission for which they'd signed on. Even Bombay, veteran of so many African expeditions, told Stanley that turning back for Bagamoyo and trying again later was the smart thing to do. Instead of listening, however, Stanley hired two local men to act as guides. He was particularly impressed with the one named Asmani, who was broad-shouldered and over six feet tall. He would be protection against the warring tribes, a hulking Goliath marching at the front of Stanley's small army. Between the flag of the United States and the stature of Asmani, Stanley would present an intimidating presence to the Wakonongo and Washenshi tribes. “If vastness of the human form could terrify anyone, certainly Asmani's presence is well calculated to produce that effect,” Stanley marveled.

  Stanley hired Asmani and his friend Mabruki on September 16. His caravan, with its reduced size so perfect for a speed march, was complete in Stanley's mind. It was finally time to leave Tabora. What had once seemed idyllic had been tarnished, and he was eager to get on the trail. He threw a massive feast for the caravan and urged the new porters to invite their families. A pair of bulls were slaughtered, chickens and sheep were grilled on a spit, and five gallons of the native beer were purchased. Except for him and Shaw,
everyone in the caravan drank and danced into the night. Stanley sat on his porch and stared into the now-familiar hills and dried streambeds, smoked a cigar, and wrote in his journal. The date of departure would be September 19, he decided. The morning after next.

  But on the morning of the nineteenth, Stanley was struck by a wave of fever. He piled on the blankets and lay in bed, thinking it just a “slight” attack and would pass in a few hours. But the fever raged on through the day. Shaw even got out of bed to gloat that Stanley would die “like a donkey.” When that happened, Shaw said, he planned to take charge of Stanley's journals and trunks then head straight back for Bagamoyo.

  “Who would you like me to write in case you die?” Shaw cooed to Stanley that night, standing over the journalist's bed. “Because even the strongest of us may die.”

  “Mind your own business,” Stanley snapped. “And don't be croaking near me.”

  Shaw left the room, leaving Stanley to sweat. Finally, at 10 P.M. the fever broke, and Stanley woke to a quiet compound. A single candle flickered in his room. The night air smelled of dry grass and earth, and the only sounds were an occasional snore from the soldiers' room. Fever or not, he decided, in the morning he would leave, venturing into a region that terrified even the natives and Arabs. He felt alone, lying there in the dark, and the sadness of being without a friend in the world washed over him. He had always been afraid of this sadness, and tried to chase it away with positive thoughts as he had done for years.

  Writing had become a catharsis on the journey, so he got up and began describing what he felt. “An unutterable loneliness came on me as I reflected on my position and my intentions, and felt the utter lack of sympathy with me in all around,” he admitted. “It requires more nerve than I possess to dispel all the dark presentiments that come upon the mind.”