Lukundoo | Page 3

Etcham simply.

"Little fever, you say," Van Rieten ruminated.
"Enough and too much," Etcham declared.
"Has he been delirious?" Van Rieten asked.
"Only twice," Etcham replied; "once when the first swelling broke, and
once later. He would not let anyone come near him then. But we could
hear him talking, talking steadily, and it scared the natives.
"Was he talking their patter in delirium?" Van Rieten demanded.
"No," said Etcham, "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