The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (30 page)

             
"I found it dismal enough when I got there. Built at sea level, it had little paving and open sewers that emptied into a sluggish little river also called 'Belize
'
. The sewers and
the river were both full of rubbish, including dead cats, pigs, dogs and possibly people. It all went out to sea but slowly and not much to sea, with each tiny tide. There were few if any decent buildings and fewer Caucasians, though that meant
little
to me. I had chats with the Governor, the Consul and the local police chief, saying
little
myself but learning a lot about the country. I had impressive but vague papers, which said I was from the Foreign Office on inspection duty. What I really wanted I kept to myself. I had to tell one chap only, and I chose the policeman. Like a lot of Colonial Cops, he was a splendid chap and had started long before as a London Bobby. I told him the whole thing, except for the meaningless bits of message, the stuff about
'hair' and such. And I had him arrange a meeting with Captain Hooper, the skipper who'd got the actual message so strangely. The police chief was the only one in the country who knew even vaguely what my job really was and he'd been cleared by my own H.Q.

             
"We ended up by having a very quiet meeting one evening, Captain Hooper, his oldest son, George, and I. Over vast glasses of appalling beer, which did not help much with the tropic stench in the still air, but some, we talked. Police Chief Plover, by agreement, kept watch outside the
little
hut on the town's edge where we met
.

             
"I got the whole story from Hooper and his son, the latter a big, really big, young Black. His rippling muscles were impressive but the steady eyes over the high cheekbones and the soft, deep voice were more so. The father had both and only a
little
grey in his cropped curls. They were far better material than I'd hoped for. I noticed their cheap clothes were clean and that they were also.

             
"I told t
hem what I wanted and they prompt
ly agreed with enthusiasm. They and the rest of
th
e crew had been back from a trip down the Coast for over a week and were loading goods on their schooner, named
Windsor
incidentally (they pronounced
it'Weensore
' in their deep tones) for
another. Whatever I wanted was mine and they even argued about my offer to pay a price for
charter! This was '
Guvmint
Wuhk
' and they wanted no pay. A refreshing note of loyalty for the battered Empire in those Post-War days but I'd found it elsewhere in the world before this and later as well. They were clever men and they could reason. When I'd sketched what my plans were, they had thought of some helpful ideas of their own and I do mean helpful.

             
"Captain Hooper summed it up and I'll give it to you in his words. 'You
wanna
go inshore to where that man swim
out wit
that
lettah
. Then,
Cap'n
, (I was that rank) you
wanna
go
afta
that
mon
all the way in to them Mayan Mountain, where you feel he come from?
Okeh
,
gettin
you
theyah
,
thass
easy. You come on
wit
us in the
dahk
and none know this. But when you go
ashoah
,
thass
vurry
difficult. Bad country,
fulla
bugs, snake and sickness. If you goes through to them hills,
mebbe
it get worse. No one go up there,
cep
' a few hunter now and then. Clean air, plenty
watah
, good ground and animals too,
mebbe
even a few 'Panther cats' or even '
Tygrees
.' (He meant Puma and Jaguar, the latter being Tigre to Spanish speakers.) But,
Sah
, they ain't why I'm worried, nor
Jawge
neither. Nobody like the inside of them hills and nobody, not the lousiest'
Injun' corn digger, go there for
mor'n
a day or two. No one live
theah
! That
Baaad
Place and it always been so. A
littul
huntin
,
thass
OK, but some folks won't even go in there
foh
just that even.' Captain Hooper stopped here and looked at his son. I could see them both clearly in the light of the paraffin or kerosene lamp.

             
"George was ready for the pause. '
You'se
watched, is what I
heah
,' came his own deep tones. '
Somfin's
in
theah
that watches folks. If they stays on the edges like and don' stay long,
then's
all right
.
If should be they goes in deep or
mebbe
tries to live there permanent,
thass
a
diffrunt
thing,
Cap'n
. They just vanish, like a
Duppy
got'm
. Whoosh!'

             
"His father took a giant gulp of beer, emptied the bottle in fact, and nodded to me. 'He say right,
Cap'n
.
Thass
no
place to go, not nobody. And
nevah
alone,
Suh
. Too easy
foh
the
Duppies
, one
puhson
all by
hisself
!' "

             
Ffellowes leaned back and his blue eyes twinkled at us. "A '
Duppy
,' my friends, is an evil spirit
.
It's simply
Anglic
dialect for what the Haitians call a 'Zombie' or one of their own spirit terrors. Cheery news, eh, in that smoky hut?" Then the humor left his eyes and he continued. "I was making mental notes over what I heard when George spoke again.

             
" 'I go
wit
the
Cap'n
,
Dadee
. I ain't no Bushman, jus' a
sayluh
boy but I got good legs. An' we take Lucas
Payrfit
.
He part
Spaniol
,
mebbe
part Injun, but he my
fren
' also. An' he do know the Bush. He hunt
evr'thin
they is an' he know to live
theyah
an' go quiet-like.
Wit
us two,
mebbe
they's
a
chanct
.
Lemme
ask Lucas to come
ovah
and talk
wit
usn's
.'

             
"I strongly suspect," Ffellowes continued, "that all this had been pre-talked over before we met
.
I feel that George had already got his father's permission to escort me and that the mysterious Lucas had already been sounded and had agreed."

             
He fell silent, gazing at the rug and we stayed immobile in our circle. Once again Ffellowes had captured our spirits and we all were far away and long ago with him in that steamy, tropical hut, planning a venture into the unknown. The street noises and the faint sounds from the other parts of the Club were mentally shut out and meaningless, not registering on our tensed-up sense
patterns. We also saw and heard the two black giants as they calmly offered to risk their lives for Ffellowes and that sacred (to them) intangible, the British Government
.

             
The Brigadier gave a sigh and then resumed. "Well, at Dawn, two days later, we cast off from a battered, mooring post and were off to the South. All had been taken care of that could be. I'd left a complete report of my findings, which were largely speculative and also my intentions, possibly
even more so. All that was with Plover the Top Cop. A good chap and he'd served a term not long before in the police of one of the Malay States, in Borneo I believe. He knew something thus of both traveling and looking for trouble in uncharted rain forests.

             
"As the
Windsor
chugged out, sails down, on her battered auxiliary, there were two of us below decks, sweating in the still heat and stench. We'd come on board in the thick dark at 3:00 A.M. and with us a lot of equipment we needed. The other man was the mysterious 'Lucas
Pairfit
' His name was really of French derivation and spelled correctly, was '
Peyrefitte
.' The
Hoopers
had summoned him quietly at dusk on the previous day and he'd just appeared, equally silent
.

             
"I had given him the once over, since we were to be companions and I was rather impressed. He too was tall, perhaps 6'2" but lean and not burly. He had a hawk face and bronzy-red skin. There was some
negroid
strain, as evinced by the close-cut tight curls, but the rest? At a guess, French and Amerindian. He moved like a great cat and he had piercing black eyes. His voice was a purring growl, very sinister at first but his grip was firm and hard. We chatted while trying to breathe as the schooner cleared the river with me putting the questions and him the answers. George Hooper was on deck with his father and two husky cousins, but that was the normal thing and thus not worth disguising.

             
"Lucas had guided more than one hunting party into the edge of the Maya Mountain country but as he put it 'I don' stay long. I keep the white folks who hire me
movin
' fast and when they want rest I always tell 'em this Bad Place. Sometime I say
fevah
, sometime bad
watah
, sometime no animal to hunt sometime too many
buggses
. But
mos'
imphtant
we keep on the move.'

             
"When I asked him about the feelings the others had told me of, those of being watched, I could see the whites of his eyes flicker, even in the fetid dark of the little cargo space.

             
" 'Oh yes,' he said, this time with a real snarl. 'They is
somethin
' that see you. You don' notice much in the day time, jus' now an then. But
aftah
dark, then it get bad. You look to me
Sah
like a man what's done a bit of
huntin
', right?' At my grunt of assent, he went on. 'Then maybe you have feel this thing too. All
huntah
have. But,
lookee
,
Cap'n
, did you
evah
have this
feelin
', that a
smaht
tigre
watch you, one that don' like you and can think about it, like a man think?'

             
"When he'd finished that particular comment, there was silence between us, broken only by creaking timbers and our breathing. His next comment anticipated my next question but was quite logical in so doing. 'I
nevah
find any tracks, not a one. But I do fin' where a place where something heavy, maybe man size, squat down. An in
sof
'
groun
' close by, I find where a branch been use to rub out track. Jus' like you or me would if we don'
wanna
be seen or notice we been
theyah
at all.'

             
"Again there was a brief pause and again he went on, but doing no thought reading this time. '
Theah
was also a stink.
Vurry
light and not one I
evah
smell. If it were people, then they got a very nasty smell to 'em. They got that smell, like
somethin
' that live in the woods, some
wil
' animal, d'you see an' they got a lot of weight, more than us and they like the
dahk
, jus' like a cat do.'