The Forest God:

Parts 1-4

By Rex Mundy

1: PUNITIVE MEASURES

I was tired, footsore, and hungry. The jungle trail was dark, oppressive, and muddy underfoot; the shrieking of monkeys had grown monotonous, and flies plagued both of us. Branches and leaves dripped from the daily rains, from which we had sheltered ineffectually under a mahogany tree. We had not seen a black face in six days, and it was weeks since we had met any white men.

‘How long did they say it would take to reach the next village?’ I asked again.

‘Five days’ march,’ said Ned Storey, walking ahead of me. ‘And after that it won’t be long until we reach the river that leads to the coast. There are white people there, they said.’

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Damn shame the blacks couldn’t tell us what nationality they were. I hope they’re not French.’

‘For all we know they could be British,’ Storey said. ‘We have no certainty of where we are in relation to the other colonies. The natives are as imprecise in their geography as in their concept of time.’

Ruefully I inspected my empty rucksack. It had seemed a weighty thing when we left the last village after successfully trading one of our rifles for food and machetes. That had been a gamble, a suicidal gamble I thought, although “dash” of that kind is what paves one’s way in Africa. And now we had no food left, while Storey, who carried the remaining rifle, was running low on ammunition. Although the countryside teemed with game, hunting was risky. If we used up our remaining cartridges, we would have no way to defend ourselves if attacked. Not for the first time I regretted plunging south into the jungle.

‘We should have given ourselves up to the authorities,’ I muttered to myself. A death sentence awaited us if we were caught. But even the firing squad would be better than a long, lingering death in the depths of the bush.

‘We must have taken the wrong trail,’ I added out loud. ‘The wrong turning.’

Storey shook his head. ‘We have been following the same trail ever since we left their village,’ he said. ‘There have been no other turn offs. This is the right way, unless the blacks were lying to us, and why would they, unless they wanted to rob us of what little we have left. And they would have attacked by now if that was the case.’

‘Bit vague, isn’t it, old man?’ I said after we had tramped on in silence a while. ‘Five days’ march? How far is that? Surely it depends.’

‘Exactly,’ said Storey. ‘They may travel faster than we. It may depend on the season. It may depend…’

He broke off as we rounded a turn in the trail. The sun was slanting through the trees, as they thinned out into fields and vegetable plots. In the middle of the fields, where maize, manioc and cassava grew, stood a crude palisade of roughhewn, unshaped wood, surrounding beehive huts with thatched, cone-like roofs. In the middle of the village stood a banyan tree, from which hung dark objects, indistinguishable from this distance.

The smell of smoke tickled my nostrils. I imagined cooking fires, roasting meat, native women pounding maize, men drinking pots of sour native beer. Although hardly the cuisine I had grown accustomed to in London, even in Seven Dials, I found myself salivating.

‘Come on,’ I said urgently.

‘No, wait,’ Storey jerked, placing a hand on my arm. Then he unslung his rifle, and pumped the bolt.

‘Why so cautious?’ I said. ‘The Ugabu are said to be friendly people.’

‘Can’t you see?’ Storey asked. ‘The fields are empty. At this time of day, the women would be toiling away, their children with them, while the men would be out hunting. But the fields are empty. Why?’

‘Maybe everyone’s in the village,’ I suggested. ‘Perhaps there’s a public meeting.’

Storey nodded pensively. ‘Come on, we’ll get closer. Keep your eyes and ears open. This could be dangerous.’

As we drew closer to the village, I thought I caught the sound of a man speaking; orating, in fact. I relaxed. I had been right. Some kind of public meeting, and that was a chief addressing the tribe. Reaching the gate, we looked curiously up the dusty street. The village square lay ahead of us, shaded by the limbs of the banyan tree. But now I saw what hung from them. 

Black bodies, swinging from nooses, surrounded by clouds of flies. And the smell of smoke that I had taken for cooking fires came from the burning thatch of the big hut.

Men, women and children crouched in the middle of the square, hands on their heads. Standing over them were other negroes, these armed with rifles, one carrying a whip. As we watched, one man broke away from the crowd and ran down the street in our direction. But ere he could get far, there was a sharp report and a puff of gun smoke. He flung up his hands, then fell face down in the dirt.

‘A tribal raid!’ I said. ‘Maybe these are slavers. We had better leave. This isn’t our fight.’

Storey looked regretfully at his gun. ‘I would dearly like to intervene,’ he said. ‘But two of us with one rifle between us and barely any ammunition…’

‘Exactly,’ I said gratefully. ‘We had best get back into the bush, work our way round the village and carry on walking to the river.’

We turned. Standing in the gate, training rifles upon us, were five negroes in native costume, their almost naked black hides glossy in the afternoon sun.

‘Hände hoch!’ one barked.

My German is little better than my French, but I could understand that much, although it was strange to hear such a language in Darkest Africa. I raised my hands. The leader gestured for Storey to drop his rifle, and my companion complied with a scowl. A native ran forwards and seized it.

‘Hände hoch!’ repeated the negro, and Storey obeyed.

As they marched us up the dusty street, I said out of the corner of my mouth, ‘Dashed peculiar to hear German from these chaps.’

‘We must have entered German West Africa,’ Storey surmised. ‘And these aren’t slavers, they’re native troops…’

He broke off as we entered the square. In the shadow of the banyan tree and its grisly fruit, the captives cowered before the rifles of the soldiers. Standing over them, haranguing them, was a white man in a spiked helmet, wearing the khaki uniform of a German officer. To his side stood another white man, in NCO’s uniform, holding a rifle that had been recently fired. The officer broke off and stared at us as we were marched into the square.

He addressed us in German. I caught something to the effect that he had not expected to see white men this deep in the bush. ‘Sprechen sie Englisch?’ I asked, although I knew full well that Storey spoke German like it was his mother tongue.

‘Englischer?’ The officer wore a little imperial on his chin and a cheroot dangled from his mouth. ‘What are Englishers doing here?’

‘Herr Leutnant,’ said the NCO significantly, lowering his rifle. ‘Remember the expedition.’

‘But of course!’ said the officer urbanely. ‘You gentlemen are from the Venables-Playfair Expedition, nein?’

‘Indeed, leutnant,’ said Storey glibly. ‘We lost our way.’ He glanced at the banyan. ‘We thought we had stumbled upon a slave raid.’

‘A punitive exercise, nothing more,’ said the officer dismissively. He introduced himself as Leutnant Weismann, and his NCO as Feldwebel Hackenschmidt. There was a sheen of sweat on his handsome, youthful, Junker brow. ‘The Reich requests villages to set aside a third of their lands to produce a cash crop. It is the only way they will raise themselves above the level of beasts! Subsistence farming is hardly the way of progress! But they are obstinate.’

A cash crop would also make it easier for the Reich to tax them, it seemed to me, but I kept this thought to myself. The leutnant pointed at one of the corpses that hung from the tree, a grossly fat man who still wore a colourful cutch cap. ‘That was their chief,’ he said, with all the pride of a big game hunter. ‘He said that their ways had been good enough for their ancestors, and although I spoke to him about Progress, he was not dissuaded. So I had my boys hang him, and his cronies too, when they complained.’ He glanced at the abject villagers. Some of the women were sobbing, others sat hollow eyed. ‘The next chief they elect will think differently.’

‘So you are on patrol?’ asked Storey.

‘Nein,’ said Weismann, ‘this is merely a side issue. We are chiefly investigating the disappearance upcountry of one of my superior officers, Hauptmann von Schaumberg, who was sent on a mission into the interior. He has not reported back…’

‘Sir!’ barked Hackenschmidt, a burly Thuringian two decades older than the Prussian. ‘You should not speak so freely with these Englisher pigs.’ He was red faced and jolly looking. I could picture him in some spa town, drinking lager beer proffered by buxom, dirndl-wearing frauleins while guzzling bratwurst and sauerkraut.

‘Nonsense, Feldwebel,’ said Weismann. ‘Germany is not at war with the British Empire. The Venables-Playfair Expedition was given permission to proceed at the highest level.’ He clicked his heels. ‘Which of you is Herr Professor Venables?’

After the briefest of pauses Storey said, ‘Why, I am.’

‘Then this,’ Weismann said, eyeing me doubtfully, ‘must be Herr Colonel Playfair. Men must be promoted to the rank of colonel at a surprisingly young age in your British Army.’

There was an uneasy silence. ‘Your papers, please, Herr Professor, Herr Colonel,’ Hackenschmidt said nastily.

Storey spread his hands out. ‘I can only offer my apologies, Herr Feldwebel,’ he said, lying as only a former public school boy can, ‘we lost our papers when we lost our way. Much of our baggage went missing after we were attacked by hostile natives…’

‘I don’t believe these are the explorers, sir,’ said Hackenschmidt, turning to his leutnant. ‘They have no proof of who they are, and besides, the Reverend Mother told us they had gone upriver in a paddle steamer. Where is their boat? Where is the pilot? Their bearers? I think they are spies.’ 

‘It looks suspicious, I admit,’ said Weismann. ‘I must apologise, Englishers, but for the moment, until we have proof that you are who you say you are, you will remain our prisoners. 

‘Let us hope that this disagreeable episode has taught these primitives a lesson. We have certainly spent overlong here. It is half a day’s march to the river, and the sun will soon be setting. Time we were moving.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Bring the prisoners!’

With Weismann at the front, Hackenschmidt in the rear, Storey and I marched in the middle of the column as the Germans and their native troops moved out. The native soldiers had modern rifles, Mausers, I believe, and two men staggered under the weight of a Maxim machine gun. Some wore native dress, others had khaki uniforms and wide-awake hats that reminded Storey of his time in South Africa.

There had been a massacre here. As we left, I saw more corpses, in the street or in ditches of the fields. We must have been out of earshot at the time; I had heard no firing as we made our way up the jungle trail. And now we were prisoners, suspected of espionage.

I hoped that the Venables-Playfair Expedition, whatever that might be, was indeed lost, and that our imposture would never be revealed. But if Weismann was travelling upcountry, it would scotch our chances of getting to the coast and finding a way out of this colony. Rootless renegades as we were, Storey and I had no specific destination in sight, and survival was our only priority. As prisoners of belligerent German soldiers, our chances would be low.

It soon grew dark. After a quarter of an hour of blundering along by torchlight, Weismann called a halt, and some of the soldiers pitched tents and lit a fire, while others erected a thorn boma. Storey and I were kept under guard outside the main tent. Weismann stood for a while talking to Unteroffizier Mosoni, a tall, bearded native soldier in khaki, with a whip in his belt. The leutnant came up to us, his hand on the butt of his Luger.

‘Where the devil is Hackenschmidt?’ he demanded. ‘Have you seen him, Englishers?’

‘The Feldwebel was at the back of the column,’ Storey said, looking up from where we both squatted. ‘I have seen nothing of him since we left the village.’

‘Neither have I,’ I said. ‘We’ve been in no position to keep an eye out for him. Have you not asked the blacks?’

‘No one has seen him.’ Weismann looked anxiously out into the dark forest. ‘Where in heaven’s name is he?’

Something leapt from tree to tree high above us. It could have been a monkey, but it seemed too large. Some kind of great ape, I surmised. In the darkness, it was invisible.

2: THE LIVING DEAD

I heard a chorus of shouts. ‘Herr Leutnant, Herr Leutnant!’

Mosoni rushed back into the relight, clutching his rifle. ‘Feldwebel Hackenschmidt, sah! Him seen!’

‘What a relief!’ the leutnant exclaimed. ‘Where is the devil?’

But Mosoni was shaking with fright. With his free hand, he patted at the crucifix he wore. ‘Him stand there, sah… in trees… Like ghost! The boys, they afraid.’

‘Superstitious primitives,’ Weismann sneered. ‘How many times must I tell you, there is no such thing as ghosts!’

Mosoni nodded his head jerkily. ‘Yes, Herr Leutnant,’ he said. I noticed that his teeth were filed to points. ‘Me Christian, sah. Me not believe in ghosts! But…’

‘Out of my way,’ said the leutnant, pushing past.

I followed him with my eyes, but out of the small circle of firelight he was soon no more than a dark form. ‘What did you see, Unteroffizier?’ asked Storey.

Filed teeth chattering, the negro turned to him. ‘The Feldwebel,’ he said. ‘We all see him! Him stand between two trees, him head drooping as if neck broken. Me speak to him but him not talk back.’

‘What do you reckon happened to the poor fellow?’ I asked Storey. ‘Did natives from the village attack him?’

Storey shook his head. ‘They would have killed him outright, and more besides. It sounds as if he has suffered some kind of traumatic experience. If these fools would stop holding guns on us…’

Weismann swept back into the relight, a disgusted expression on his face. He struck Mosoni. ‘What are these lies, Unteroffizier?’ he demanded. ‘There was no one there! If this is some kind of joke…’

‘No joke, Herr Leutnant!’ Mosoni protested, clutching at his cheek. ‘Me see him plain as me see you, sah! But maybe him ghost…’

Weismann was about to retort when several native soldiers charged up from the other side of the boma, yelling and pointing. The leutnant shouted them down. ‘You are soldiers of the German Empire!’ he cried. ‘Soldiers of the Kaiser! You will shew discipline, not run about screaming like little girls afraid of the dark!’

‘Herr Leutnant!’ wailed one soldier. ‘We see Feldwebel Hackenschmidt!’

‘Donnerwetter!’ Weismann cried. ‘How can he be over there if he was over here only seconds ago? Are you playing games with me?’

‘Ghosts, Herr Leutnant!’ Mosoni cried. ‘Ghosts!’ He clutched at his crucifix and muttered a heartfelt prayer.

Weismann crossed over to us. ‘I am setting you free,’ he said. ‘These blacks are out of control, unmanned by superstitious fears. Stand up, both of you, and take rifles. We’ll get to the bottom of this if it kills us.’

He seized a burning branch from the fire and led us across the boma. Native soldiers cowered by their tents, wailing. Outside the boma were two trees, and a figure in khaki stood between them, its back to us. As we approached, it whirled round in a strange, unnatural way reminiscent of a puppet.

It was Feldwebel Hackenschmidt, large as life and twice as nasty. His head rolled on his shoulders, and he did not look up at us. But it was him, clad in the uniform he had worn when last I had seen him.

‘Hackenschmidt!’ Weismann rapped. ‘What the devil are you doing? What happened to you?’

But Hackenschmidt made no reply. Slowly, in eerie silence, he turned until his back was to us. There was something altogether ghastly about the way he moved, as if he was floating rather than standing on his feet. Weismann strode forward, undeterred, to lay hands on the sullen Feldwebel. Then, with the strangest of movements, difficult to describe, Hackenschmidt leapt jerkily upwards, vanishing into the darkness of the forest canopy. I heard a crashing sound from up above.

‘Gad!’ I cried. ‘What was that?’

‘Tree leaper!’ Mosoni was shaking from head to toe. ‘They speak of them, the tribes. Dead men come back, leap through trees and prey upon living.’

Even as he spoke, a chorus of wild, wailing cries burst out from the boma. Weismann led us back inside. 

The blacks were running around in terror. Hackenschmidt stood limply—in the middle of the fire itself! Flames charred his grey uniform, rose up to crisp his hair. His head still lolled insensibly on his shoulders.

‘Tree leaper!’ Mosoni shouted, and lifted his Mauser to fire. Before Weismann could seize the barrel and force it down, Hackenschmidt’s flaming form rose, up above the fire, shedding a light on the canopy… It jerked and wriggled for a moment, then plummeted down with a crash on the leutnant’s tent.

The canvas went up in flames. Native soldiers ran through the camp, screaming. The branches of the canopy swayed and I heard a noise from above, receding into the distance, as if an ape were swinging through the trees.

The soldiers ran for the exit. ‘Halt!’ shouted Weismann. ‘Halt or I fire!’

Some of them stopped, others kept running. 

Ruthlessly, Weismann shot one down. ‘You two!’ he barked at Storey and I. ‘Shoot any man who runs! Unteroffizier Mosoni, help me extinguish this fire.’

Storey and I kept our rifles levelled on the soldiers who had stopped running, and they unwillingly remained within the thorn ring fence of the boma. A hush descended after the drama of the last few minutes, as Weismann flung much needed water on the burning canvas. Although I had done a better job of concealing my feelings than the native troops, I was shaking.

‘We should get away from here,’ I murmured to Storey. ‘This tree leaper, he’s here to get revenge on Weismann. This is no business of ours. We’ve got guns now, we should leave.’

‘Go into the forest at night?’ Storey jerked. ‘We’d not travel a mile ere some predator got our scent. We stay here. I don’t believe in native superstitions.’

His incredulity would be understandable in Grosvenor Square, where electric light and the C of E has relegated the supernatural to the province of parlour games. But out here, deep in the African bush, countless miles from anything remotely resembling civilisation, it was inexplicable.

‘You saw Hackenschmidt’s body,’ I said. ‘He’s dead but walking. What they call a zombie! How do you explain that except as some kind of foul native juju? A strange magic lingers in Africa. Magic works if you believe in it, you know, Storey, old chap. And in Africa they still believe. Curses, witchcraft, ghosts…’

‘I’m sure there’s a rational explanation,’ said Storey complacently.

Weismann joined us. He and Mosoni had doused the fire and Hackenschmidt’s charred form lay amongst the ashes. ‘Mosoni, take over here. Tell the boys to get back to their tents. Flog anyone who argues. We’ll still have a long march tomorrow. You two Englishers, come with me.’

We joined him examining Hackenschmidt’s body by the light of torches. The Feldwebel was stone dead, although the flames had done little more than char his limbs and blacken his uniform. There was no sign of his gun.

‘His neck is broken,’ Weismann stated clinically.

Storey crouched down and put a hand to the dead man’s skin. He looked up. ‘Cold, but for a lingering warmth that can be explained by the fire,’ he said. ‘And the body is beginning to stiffen. Leutnant, this man has been dead for hours.’

‘Why, it’s hours since anyone last saw him,’ I said. ‘He must have been killed not long after we left the village. He was bringing up the rear. Somebody from the village snatched him, then performed their unholy rites…’

‘Zur Hölle damit!’ Weismann snapped. ‘We don’t want any more of that superstitious drivel. It’s bad enough when the blacks fall prey to it, but you’re a white man, even if you’re not German!’

‘Then how do you explain it?’ I said. ‘Dead for hours, of a broken neck, and yet we all saw him standing there. And then he leapt up into the trees! Leutnant, there are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your German philosophy.’

‘Hamlet, Act One, Scene Five,’ Weismann sneered. ‘And it’s in heaven and earth. You English, you don’t even know your own Shakespeare.’

‘What would the Bard have to say about this?’ Storey had been examining the corpse’s neck with a magnifying glass. ‘Marks and contusions around the neck. By the look of them they were inflicted after death. They encircle the neck, you see?’

‘From Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes,’ said Weismann wryly. ‘But what does it mean?’

‘A cord of some kind has been knotted around Herr Feldwebel Hackenschmidt’s neck,’ Storey mused, ‘after death. It’s very rough, so perhaps a grass rope or even a liana. In the darkness we did not see it, but I should say that was what they used to dangle the body down from the trees.’

‘Who?’ I asked. ‘The villagers?’

Weismann pursed his lips. ‘They would need to be as agile as monkeys. Hackenschmidt appeared in several parts of the camp. Even if the villagers had taken to the trees, they would be hard put to leap from branch to branch. Unless there was a whole host of them, but surely we would have heard something.’

‘I heard something,’ I ventured. ‘Something moving through the tree canopy. I thought it was an ape of some kind.’

Rising, Weismann held his flaming torch high to illuminate the branches above. They rose higher and higher, a crazily interlocked weave, vanishing into the darkness. Something, disturbed by the light, shrieked angrily, and went leaping away, but it was only a monkey of some kind. Too small to have been the perpetrator.

‘What now, Leutnant?’ Storey challenged him. ‘We have an enemy who can strike at any time, who is of unbelievable agility and lethal intent. And he has struck fear into the hearts of your soldiers.’

‘What now?’ Weismann echoed. ‘To begin with, I am conscripting you, Herr Professor, and you, Herr Colonel. You are now enlisted in the Schutztruppe, the German Colonial Army. You will help me with the boys. They need iron discipline. Even Mosoni has given way to the superstitions of his childhood. It is bad for morale. What we will do firstly is to bury Hackenschmidt and the native soldier I shot. Then we will strike camp and keep marching through the night. By morning we will have reached the convent, and the river, and left this forest of death behind us. And then we can continue on our mission. Quickly now! Schnell!’

Half an hour later and two shallow graves were all that remained within the boma. The tents had been struck, the native soldiers were marching down the jungle trail with flaming torches held high. Weismann, Storey, and I marched in the vanguard. Poor Mosoni had been elected to bring up the rear. I only hoped that his simple faith would give him the strength he needed.

Wearily we marched on through the night. From time to time my keen ears detected noises from the tree canopy high above. It could have been monkeys or other arboreal animals. Whatever it was, it seemed to be following us. But whenever I looked upwards, I saw nothing but the shadows thrown up by the torches. 

It was an eerie journey, and my state of mind was little better than that of the negroes who marched behind us, white eyes rolling fearfully in black faces. Despite Storey’s assurances that there was a rational explanation for these uncanny happenings, I felt that only some kind of African voodoo could explain it.

And so it was with a sense of weight lifting from my weary shoulders that I saw the dawn. Animal and bird voices greeted the sun in a discordant crescendo of cries and howls, as the trail led out from the gloom of the jungle and into open veldt. A river wound through sere yellow grasses. 

On a bend in the river, surrounded by trees and fields, stood a large, whitewashed building. Off to one side of it was a chapel, with a spire topped by a cross that seemed to glow in the morning sunlight.

3: SANCTUARY

The Mother Superior was a plump, plain, motherly looking woman with an Austrian accent. She greeted Leutnant Weismann with a smile as he led Storey and I, and Mosoni, into the welcome coolness of the convent refectory. 

As we entered the whitewashed building, several other nuns fled through an interior door. I caught a giggle from one of them. A pair of saucy eyes in a coffee coloured face met mine briefly, before another nun urged their owner from the room.

‘Back so soon, Herr Leutnant?’ the Mother Superior trilled, glancing at Storey and I. ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the privilege… But where is Feldwebel Hackenschmidt?’

‘We lost him, Reverend Mother,’ Weismann told her grimly. ‘But surely you said that you had already met Professor Venables and Colonel Playfair.’

I shifted uncomfortably as the Mother Superior turned her deep blue eyes on Storey and I. ‘There must be some mistake, Herr Leutnant,’ she said. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen these gentlemen before.’

Weismann arched an elegant eyebrow at us, but before he could speak, the Mother Superior added, ‘How did you come to lose your man? Was there trouble with the natives? Oh, but I am forgetting my manners. Please, take a seat, gentlemen, and refreshments will be served.’

Weismann, Storey and I sat at a wooden table while Mosoni crouched on the floor, gazing up at the Mother Superior as if she were some kind of tribal fetish. Two of the other nuns returned with cups of steaming coffee and we drank, while Mosoni shuffled outside to tell the soldiers to eat their rations.

‘There was trouble of a kind with the natives,’ Weismann told the Mother Superior. ‘I had to deal with them severely. On the journey back, there was further trouble. That was when we lost Hackenschmidt.’

The Mother Superior listened as he gave a suitably edited version of the ghoulish tale. When he finished, she glanced at Storey.

‘It was providential that you encountered your two companions,’ she said. ‘This attack… I have heard local legends that…’ She broke off. ‘But we haven’t been introduced.’

‘Well!’ said Weismann, with an embarrassed cough. ‘There has been some confusion. I’m not at all sure who my companions are. Perhaps you could introduce yourselves, gentlemen. And explain how you came to be in German territory.’

‘My name’s Storey, Ned Storey,’ said my friend, ‘and this is Rex Mundy.’

‘We’re explorers,’ I added, ‘which is why we had that little confusion about the Venables Expedition. But we became lost weeks ago and entered your territory unawares.’

‘We were exploring one of the backwaters of the Benue,’ Storey elaborated, ‘in the Niger Coast Protectorate…’

‘And after this attack by natives, you became lost,’ said Weismann slowly. ‘Yes, it’s all becoming clear to me.’ But something in his eye told me he doubted our word.

He turned to the Mother Superior. ‘Reverend Mother, you were saying something about local legends. Could they shed any light on our experiences?’

She raised her hands as if praying, and tapped them against her lips. ‘This is still a pagan land, gentlemen,’ she announced. ‘The natives bow down before idols and fetiches, while deeper in the bush dwell savage cannibals and terrible beasts. We have had very few converts—your man Mosoni being perhaps our greatest success. But the blacks visit us when they are sick, since they know that we will look after them. Even the most savage warriors come here when ill, and my nuns feel quite safe. Our hospital is very popular, and we have treated dengue fever and even yellow fever in our time, as well as malaria. While they are with us, the blacks are often very affable and talkative, and it is important that we learn of their native superstitions if we are to spread God’s Word. One tale I have heard time and again is that of the Great White Ape, or the Forest God.’

I felt a chill, remembering what I had heard last night. ‘Unteroffizier Mosoni spoke of the tree leaper,’ I commented.

The Mother Superior’s ice blue Austrian eyes turned in my direction. ‘That is a new story to me, Herr Mundy,’ she said, so I explained what the Unteroffizier had said. She listened carefully and even took notes in a notepad that appeared as if by some miracle from under her habit. ‘Very interesting, Herr Mundy,’ she said with a smile. ‘One day, if the good Lord permits, I shall write a book on native superstitions. Perhaps your tree leaper is another form of the same legend, of the Great White Ape.’ 

‘What of this ape?’ Storey asked.

‘The legends say,’ she went on, ‘that upcountry is a taboo land, the home of more than one strange being. But most feared of all is the Great White Ape, the god of the forest. It is said that he dwells in the treetops and snatches his victims from above in the manner you describe, Herr Leutnant,’ she added, turning to Weismann. ‘Had I heard this story from a native, I would have dismissed it as rank superstition.’

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‘Perhaps there is some truth at the back of every legend, Reverend Mother,’ I said quietly.

We accompanied Weismann to the riverbank where several canoes had been moored. In them he and his soldiers had journeyed upriver from the coast.

‘But the real journey is still to come,’ the leutnant said after inspecting the canoes. He was looking upstream, where more jungle was visible. ‘I’m not sure whether to believe your story, but let me make a bargain with you. I need men I can trust when I go upriver in search of von Schaumberg, and that will mean depending on native troops. Apart from Mosoni, they are not to be trusted. While I had Hackenschmidt with me, they remained well disciplined, but I fear that without his steadying influence they will fail me—particularly if we are being stalked by a killer. However, reinforced by two more white men, I feel that the balance will be in my favour. It is vital that von Schaumberg’s whereabouts are discovered, whether he and his men are alive or dead.’

‘You want us to accompany you upcountry,’ Storey observed. ‘With all due respect, Herr Leutnant,’ he went on, ‘what precisely is in it for us?’

‘If you do this,’ the leutnant said, ‘in return I will take you back downriver to the coast, from which point you can find a ship to the Niger Coast Protectorate or British South Africa, or wherever it is you wish to travel.’

‘We could follow the river downstream,’ I pointed out.

‘You could,’ said Weismann, ‘and I could order my boys to shoot you as deserters. I won’t. But I must tell you that two white men alone will be unlikely to make it to the coast. Savage tribes and savage beasts infest the riverbanks and the river itself. It is worse further east, where we will be going, but there is safety in numbers.’

‘We’ve survived so far,’ I muttered, but Storey interrupted.

‘We will help you, Leutnant. Mundy, old man,’ he said to me in an undertone, ‘we can’t abandon this poor fellow.’

That evening, after a nourishing meal of good plain fare provided by the nuns, we were both slated for sentry duty. Soldiers had been stationed on each side of the convent compound, and Weismann gave us the job of overseeing them, with Storey taking first watch, me second. 

When I went to relieve him and his boys, I asked him, ‘What’s your real reason for staying with Weismann?’

Storey grinned. ‘I’m still working for the Deuxieme Bureau, old chap,’ he murmured. ‘The French view Teutonic colonialism with a somewhat jaundiced eye. We’re not a million miles from their equatorial provinces.’

I shivered, and not with the night cold. ‘The French?’ I said. ‘We’re on the run from the Legion, remember.’

‘Our desertion and other crimes will be forgotten and forgiven,’ Storey replied, ‘if we have something to bargain with. Inside information on a German colony might just give us that.’

And how would Leutnant Weismann react if he learnt that he had indeed taken on two French spies? I changed the subject. ‘Has there been any sign of this forest god?’

Storey shook his head. ‘Not that I or any of the sentries have noticed. Now we’re out of the forest, it seems, we’re safe from the killer. Though I have heard sounds of movement from time to time. Probably animals, but it pays to be cau… What the devil was that?’

I heard a soft footstep behind me and whirled round, rifle at the ready. A dark figure stood in the shadows by the convent wall.

‘Who goes there?’ Storey rapped.

‘Only me,’ came a soft, feminine voice. My electric torch revealed a nun with the coffee coloured skin and large, liquid eyes of a mulatto. What she looked like without that starched white wimple I could not have said, but it made her extremely pretty.

‘I am Sister Veronika,’ she announced. 

I had seen her before, I realised, in the refectory when first we came to the convent.

‘What do you want?’ Storey asked. ‘Does the Mother Superior have a message for us?’

As Sister Veronika trotted closer she gave a giggle. ‘Reverend Mother does not know I am out of the dormitory,’ she whispered, giving a cat-like grin. She reached out to run a long, slim finger down Storey’s cheek, and drew even closer. ‘I thought you might be… lonely out here, guarding us from the monsters.’ 

Storey and I exchanged glances. ‘I really think you had better return to your dormitory, Sister,’ Storey said, looking uncomfortable. ‘Mundy, will you escort this young lady back to bed?’

‘I’m on duty now, remember?’ I told him. ‘You’ll have to tuck her up on your way back.’

Sister Veronika giggled again. ‘You’re not as unfriendly as him, are you?’ She slipped a slender arm round my waist. ‘I could keep you company, big man.’

I grinned. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said. ‘Sentry-go is such a bore…’

‘Mundy!’ Storey glared. ‘You are forgetting yourself, man. You have your duty! If the killer returns… Dammit, girl, you’re a nun!’ he added, addressing Sister Veronika. ‘Remember your vows!’

She pouted her big lips. ‘I never said I wanted to be a nun,’ she whined. ‘My father packed me off here while he went on his trading expeditions into the interior. Said I would be safer here. But I am very bored. You will entertain me, won’t you? Maybe both of you could…’

‘Sister Veronika!’ A severe voice rang out. I shone the light round, revealing the Mother Superior standing there, her face like thunder. ‘I might have known! The moment men come within the convent walls… Gentlemen, my apologies. Sister Veronika suffers from a severe form of furor uterinus. She was left here under my care and tutelage in the hopes that it would help with her condition. I have clearly failed in my duties to instil discipline in the girl. Come with me, Sister! You must do penance for this offence!’

‘Oh no! No, Reverend Mother!’ the girl cried, dismayed. ‘Not the scourge! Not again! Please don’t make me do penance again!’ 

Heedless of her pleas the Mother Superior dragged the girl in the direction of the chapel.

I laughed. ‘Of all the terrors of the jungle I was expecting, a mulatto coquette was not one of them.’

Storey’s boys had already gone to their tents which had been pitched in the courtyard. As Storey marched to his own berth, which like mine was in the convent hostelry, I went to inspect my sentries. This took me past the chapel, and as I did so, I caught muted voices from within, followed by what sounded like the crack of a whip and an anguished shriek. The sounds faded away as I went to join my sentry on the east wall. I felt rather sorry for poor Sister Veronika.

The native soldier saluted me as I came out, but his attention was on the river that his position overlooked. He clutched his Mauser, trembling in fear and excitement.

‘Was ist es, Soldat?’ I asked him.

‘Das Boot, mein herr, das Boot!’ the negro shouted, pointing.

I wheeled. Ploughing through the moonlit water, paddles going like billy-o, chimney belching a long trail of smoke, was a paddle steamer. It was heading straight for us.

4: THE EXPEDITION 

‘Why, they’re out of control!’ I cried. ‘If they don’t turn about, they’ll…’ Before I could say any more the steamer catastrophically fulfilled my expectations, ploughing into the mud flats below the convent. A shout of surprize drifted from the vessel. The smoke cut out, the paddles whirred to a halt.

I shouted at the soldier. ‘Get help! Hilfe erhalten!’

He ran, and I scrambled down the bank towards the stranded steamer. It was half buried in the mud, veering starboard at a crazy angle. The hull was stove in towards the stern, as if they had already suffered some kind of collision. I could hear shouting from the deck.

‘Ahoy, the boat!’ I yelled, hands cupping my mouth. ‘Ahoy there!’

A man staggered out of the cabin and lurched to the rail. He wore the cap of a pilot. ‘Ahoy down there yersel’!’ he shouted in an Irish accent. ‘How many of ye are there now?’

‘Just the one, old chap,’ I said, ‘but I’ve sent for help. How many of you?’

Two more joined the first at the rail, a stout, bearded man wearing a top hat and a tall, lean man in a pith helmet. Both wore knee length khaki shorts. ‘We’re a teensy bit undermanned, begorrah,’ lisped the Irish pilot, slurring his words. ‘Just us and the stoker and his mate, who are below.’ He broke off as the paddle steamer lurched worryingly. ‘We’d better be goin’ ashore, Oi’m thinkin’, gentlemen,’ he added with a hiccough.

He flung a rope ladder over the edge. I slithered across the mud to secure it as the men on deck were joined by two blacks. They began to descend one by one. Leutnant Weismann and Storey marched up, accompanied by soldiers.

‘What’s going on here?’ the leutnant asked. ‘Who are these people?’

The first of the white men, the stout man with the beard, had already reached the bottom of the rope ladder. He stepped off the bottom rung and slipped on the mud, almost falling. I grabbed him and steadied him, and he thanked me.

‘Good evening, old chap,’ he cried, thrusting out an unsteady hand. ‘Professor Charles Valiant Venables. Very glad to see a fellow white man in this benighted region.’ 

The pilot joined him, followed by the man in the pith helmet, both plastered in noisome mud. Greetings were exchanged, while the blacks chattered like excitable children. Weismann suggested we adjourn to the bank.

Shortly afterwards we were all in the convent refectory, with yawning nuns providing both food—I saw Sister Veronika, although she moved slowly, as if uncomfortable—and medical assistance to the crew and passengers of the paddle steamer. The Mother Superior welcomed them as old friends.

‘Herr Professor!’ she said warmly. ‘How good to see you again! And Herr Colonel Playfair,’ she added, addressing the man in the pith helmet, who had a monocle screwed into his left eye and sported a particularly fine moustache on his ruddy, hatchet face. ‘Herr Kapitan Gallagher,’ she added to the pilot, who had now doffed his cap to reveal a shock of carroty red hair. ‘When you went upcountry you had a whole train of bearers and crew. What happened? Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘Begorrah, we surely did,’ said Gallagher, blinking a watery pair of blue eyes. I caught a whiff of whisky on his breath. ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Rev’rend Mother, fer me swearin’ jus’ den. But Oi said it wis a bad idea, goin’ lookin’ fer cratures o’ the Devil ‘im-self, and Oi was right!’

‘It was only a hippo, you dipsomaniac old leprechaun,’ said Colonel Playfair, ‘not this confounded prehistoric monster, more’s the pity. I got it with both barrels before it attacked.’

‘I’m really not sure that it was a hippopotamus,’ said Professor Venables in fussy, pedantic tones. ‘What I glimpsed in the twilight was reptilian, much as the stories say. And it was too large for hippopotamus amphibius. No, gentlemen, I am positive that it was the creature the natives term N’yalama!’

‘N’yalama, N’yalama,’ chattered the bearers who had crowded into the refectory, and I heard the soldiers in the courtyard repeating the name. Weismann bellowed for silence.

He sat down across from Professor Venables. ‘You’ve been upriver?’ he said. ‘How far? Did you see any sign of a patrol?’

Venables shook his head. ‘We have been upriver, lieutenant, naturally. That was the purpose of my expedition. But the only people we met were natives. I say met, but we seldom saw them. More often we heard the bush telegraph, the beating of drums from the riverbanks as the Wild Rover went upstream. We were not far from the lake that is said to be the haunt of N’yalama when we were attacked.’

‘Attacked by natives?’ Weismann asked.

Venables regarded the leutnant in wide eyed surprize. ‘No, indeed, lieutenant, we were attacked by a river animal. My colleague Colonel Playfair seems to be of the opinion that it was a hippopotamus…’

‘It certainly was, m’dear old pineapple,’ said Colonel Playfair, stroking his mustachios. ‘I’ve shot hundreds of the brutes. I know old man hippo well enough.’

‘…but I am certain that our encounter was with the very creature we set out to find,’ the professor continued as if the colonel had not spoken. ‘The creature whose existence was considered so doubtful by the Royal Society that I had to secure funding from other, more penurious, sources. The creature who many deem to be no more than a native myth…’

‘You don’t mean the Forest God?’ I said.

‘No, no, my man,’ he said, ‘although it is heartening to meet another student of native folklore. The Forest God, or Great White Ape, is undoubtedly a mythological beast, obviously harking back to primitive sun worship.’ I tried to query this assertion but the professor steamed on relentlessly. ‘The N’yalama, also called the blocker of rivers, is nothing less than a survival from the Mesozoic. It is a sauropod dinosaur.’

Silence greeted this earnest pronouncement. The Reverend Mother tutted. Playfair blew out his cheeks. Weismann leaned forward.

‘But surely, Herr Professor,’ he said as if reasoning with a lunatic, ‘the dinosaurs are extinct. Our primitive ape forebears may have encountered them, but…’

‘No, no, and for the third time no!’ Professor Venables cried in irritation. ‘By Jove, I should have expected better from a young man who, going by that duelling scar on your cheek, attended a German university. The fossil evidence tells us that the dinosaurs died out millions of years ere the evolution of Man…’

‘And yet, Herr Professor, you claim to have found a sauropod,’ Weismann said, ‘in the backwaters of this colony.’

Venables sat back. ‘There are exceptions to every rule, lieutenant,’ he said with an airy wave. ‘In the backcountry, little has changed since the Upper Cretaceous. Whatever natural forces were responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs have not yet reached those remote regions. Native legends speak of any manner of strange life as yet unrecorded by science. The natives describe N’yalama with almost scientific clarity: a large, smooth skinned, brownish grey or mottled herbivore with a long, flexible neck, a snake-like head, a thick thorax bigger than that of a hippopotamus, and a long tail; the creature is up to thirty feet in length from nose to the tip of its tail. He spends most of his time submerged in the river or lake but has been known to sink boats and canoes when irritated by such. It is the avowed intent of my expedition to capture a specimen of the animal, or preferably a breeding pair, and ship them back to England for scientific study.’

‘You seemed to have returned empty handed,’ Weismann pointed out.

‘A temporary setback, nothing more,’ Venables said. ‘Our encounter with the sauropod unfortunately resulted in damage to our vessel, which almost sank. Most of our native servants fell overboard, and no doubt drowned or were attacked by crocodiles. A superstitious reaction on the part of the more primitive of the survivors, and I include the Celtic element as well as the Negroid,’ he added, with a cutting glower at Gallagher, ‘led to a precipitate flight for several days and nights, with the obvious result that we ran aground.’

Gallagher’s face ushed as red as his hair. ‘Now, Professor, sorr, to be sure an’ all, ye’ll take dat back!’ he said, slapping the table and leaping to his feet. ‘Oi gave the command to turn back because we wis undermanned and needed repairs!’

‘That doesn’t explain why you got blind drunk and went full speed ahead without looking where you were going,’ drawled Colonel Playfair. Purpling, Gallagher glared from him to the professor and back again. He looked as if he was about to punch the colonel, but suddenly he sat down with a merry laugh.

‘Well, maybe Oi was a moite bit scared of that galumphing great sea serpent, or whatever it was we collided with, sorr. But it wis yersel’ who started blazing away wid yer rifle, yer bollix!’

‘Please, gentlemen,’ the Mother Superior said severely, ‘do not forget your manners. You will scare my nuns with your clamour.’ She appealed to Weismann. ‘This is a house of peace!’

‘My humble apologies, Reverend Mother,’ the leutnant said. ‘Herr Professor Venables and his companions have had a rather disturbing time. Hippopotami can be a verdammt nuisance, I know full well myself; I’ve seen gunboats sunk by them before. They are dangerous brutes and I would happily see the lot of them shot, along with most of the inhabitants of this cursed colony. In the morning we will take a good look at your steamer, and my boys will shift her from the mud and effect whatever repairs are necessary.’

‘Very kind of you, Herr Leutnant,’ said Professor Venables. ‘I apologise for my earlier outburst. As you say yourself, we have all had a rather trying time in this country. As soon as the boat is freed from the mud and repaired, we shall turn about and resume our expedition.’

‘No we shall not, Professor,’ slurred Gallagher. ‘And ye’ll be asking me why. And Oi’ll be tellin’ ye why.

‘Firstly, cuz we have lost most of our crew, and we’ll be needin’ a dhozen men at least to operate the Wild Rover proper-like. Secondly, Oi tell ye point blank, moi man, Oi am not goin’ back up dat river! Dat river, beggin’ yer pardhon Rev’rend Mother, is der river av hell, and any man spalpeen enough to sail up it will wind up wid de Devil himself as skipper, to be sure. I foretell me own death and the death av many others if this expedition goes ahead.’ 

‘But Captain,’ Professor Venables began.

‘And dat is final,’ said the Irishman stubbornly. ‘I will not be a-pilotin’ that there boat upriver for any money.’

‘I can double your wages,’ Professor Venables pleaded. 

‘Come along, you silly old bogtrotter,’ growled Playfair. ‘It was only a hippo, dammit, man.’

‘It was not a hippo; it was not, it was not!’ said Gallagher. ‘Oi saw it, sorr, and it was a monster out av a tinker’s potcheen nightmare! I’ve not a doubt that it was this here dinosaurus the professor’s been a-talkin’ about, and if he’d explained it all proper-like when he hired me, I’d never have left working for the Cork to Liverpool ferries at all at all, not for any money. And I tell ye, Professor, I will not pilot the Wild Rover anywhere, except downriver, for all de gold at de end av the rainbow.’

He folded his arms obstinately. Professor Venables looked distressed. Colonel Playfair snorted contemptuously. I glanced at Storey, who had been listening with keen interest.

‘Look here, my man,’ said Professor Venables. ‘You fail to understand the importance of this expedition—to science! Do you not want to extend the boundaries of Man’s knowledge and understanding of this mysterious universe in which we live? That is science’s noble goal. Not for the sake of wealth or fame, but to add even just a little to our comprehension of the world and our place within it. I appeal to you, my man, in the noble name of Science; take us back upriver. And not only will you be paid handsomely, but I will guarantee that your name will be repeated amongst the highest in the land!’

‘To be sure, professor,’ said Gallagher, ‘at the day’s end all I want is nothing more than a little place o’ me own in Cork or in Killarney and a dhrap enough o’ the whisky to chase away me bad memories. All this speechifying ’bout science and nobility is just a bad case av de shart to me. I’ve got me little woman and our seven children to t’ink about, back in the Oul’ Sod, and if we’re goin’ to talk about dooty, tis me dooty to them to see dat Mrs Gallagher don’t wind up a widder woman, and dat all the little Gallaghers know dat their daddy’s comin’ back home for Christmas…’

Leutnant Weismann interrupted. ‘Herr Kapitan Gallagher, you will do precisely as Professor Venables says. Not for an increase in your wages, not for fame and wealth. Nein. Simply because I say so, Gott in Himmel; I, Leutnant Weismann of the German Colonial Army. In the name of his imperial majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II, I am commandeering your boat and conscripting you and your crew—I shall make up the missing members with my own soldiers—and we shall be going upriver.’

Professor Venables gaped at him. ‘Why… why, thank you, Herr Leutnant!’ he said, astounded. ‘I take back all I said about German universities! Your support of science is highly commendable.’

‘Your quixotic quest for a mythical monster is of no interest to me, Herr Professor,’ said Weismann. ‘I was sent upriver to locate my superior officer, and I shall find him all the faster by requisitioning your paddle steamer. I’m a reasonable man, and anyone who does not wish to accompany me may remain here, if the Mother Superior is agreeable.’ As I opened my mouth to nominate myself for this responsibility, the leutnant added, ‘By which I mean Professor Venables and Colonel Playfair. Everyone else is under my orders. And they will be coming with me.’