In the Mbutaran town, I used my trade goods in preparing the next step in my homeward journey. I bought another ass, and a piece of cloth from which I could make a tent and a tunic, and a wooden shovel. I bought fishhooks and line, waterskins, hay for the asses, and all the durable foods— dates, smoked meat, and a kind of coarse flour—that the beasts could bear. Then I set out.
In return for my casting a protective spell on their herds and fields, the Mbutaran ferried me across the great river. I then followed the river to its mouth, skirting the marshes around its estuary. I do believe that this river was the one in whose bay we had seen the ruins of Hanno's Kernê. Then I reached the coast and struck out to the north.
North of this river, vegetation thinned out until I was marching along the edge of the great African desert. I soon learnt that the best way was to sleep through the hottest part of the day and do most of my marching at night, as I had marched through Nubia on my way to the Egyptian gold mines. Day after day I plodded ahead, along sandy beaches against which the Atlantic surf forever thundered, over rocky outcrops, and around salt marshes. Sometimes I shared my food with Satyros. For the most part, though, the baboon fed himself, turning over flat stones and snatching up the creeping things he found under them. He could catch a scorpion, tweak off its stinging tail, and gobble the rest in a couple of heartbeats.
The asses likewise grazed on the scanty herbage, save when we passed an area of sand dunes, where no natural fodder grew and I doled out hay to them. Fresh water I obtained by digging in the beds of dry watercourses.
Day after day I marched, seeing no other human being. I remember a few days distinguished by some special event, such as the time I drove an ostrich away from its nest in order to steal one of its eggs, or the day I heard a lion roaring and thought the beast was stalking me, or the day I caught a ten-pound fish in the surf and ate fish until it came out my ears, or the day I found the abandoned huts of some fishing clan. I had lost track of time and seasons. I thought the month was Skirophorion, but it might have been a month earlier or later. I could, however, tell roughly how long the journey was taking by watching the phases of the moon.
What with the time I had to spend in hunting for food and caring for my animals, I was seldom able to make more than three leagues a day. As usually happens on a journey into unknown lands, I found that the distance was greater than I had supposed, while my supplies did not last so well as I had hoped. By the end of the first month, the load of food and fodder was down to where one of the asses could carry it alone.
For a while I rode the other ass. This made life easier for me, but then the wretched beast went lame. I resumed my walking, hoping that being without a load would cure the beast; but it only got worse until it could hardly move. So I slaughtered it, cut it up, and smoked its meat. It would have been hard to gather enough desert shrubs to do a proper job of smoking, but I luckily found a log of driftwood.
This journey would have been easy with camels, which can go for ten-days without water and thrive on prickly desert shrubs that other animals spurn. But the camel does not seem to be used in Africa west of the Nile valley.
By the end of the second month, the beach still stretched endlessly ahead; the surf pounded on my left; the desert shimmered on my right; the sea birds squealed overhead. I had eaten all the meat of the ass I had killed. It was as tough as bark, and my teeth were no longer what they had once been; but it sustained me thus far. The dates and the native flour were nearly gone.
I could tell by the stars that I was getting farther north, back towards familiar latitudes. But, without a map and astronomical instruments, I could not measure my distances accurately.
I stretched my food supply by searching tide-washed rocks and tidal pools for edible shellfish. But it takes a fearful lot of shellfish to furnish the strength found in one good, honest roll of bread or pork chop. Besides, I was nearing exhaustion, and so were Satyros and the remaining ass. Their ribs showed. The monkey looked at me from bloodshot eyes, grunting in a puzzled way as if demanding an explanation for our peril and discomfort. Every day, it seemed, we made a shorter distance than the day before. At this rate, we should soon he down and die from hunger and fatigue.
One day, when I was digging for water in a dry channel, I heard voices. For an instant I thought: this is the end; I am in the delirium that foreshadows death. Then I took a grip on myself and looked around. Half a plethron away stood a couple of men, with two asses and a flock of goats. They seemed to have sprung out of the desert.
The twain approached cautiously, calling out. They were lean, brown men, evidently Moors of some sort, and probably father and son. The younger wore a kilt of coarse cloth and had a goatskin mantle slung around his shoulders. The other, gray-bearded, wore a whole tunic of this cloth. Each carried a spear.
I hauled myself out of the hole I had dug and sat on the edge of the excavation. With a mind-wrenching effort, I remembered what I could of the Moorish tongue and called out a good-day. At once, white teeth flashed against dark skins and beards. The two began to talk. Although their dialect differed from that of Mauretania, I caught a word here and there.
"Where do you come from?" asked the older.
I pointed. "From the land of the blacks, that way. How about you?"
"We heard there has been rain in the South, so we are taking our animals thither for pasture. What are you doing?"
"Digging a well."
The Moors laughed shrilly. "Oh, what a fool! You will never find water that way."
"I have found it before and shall again. Just watch—"
During this talk, I had not noticed that the younger Moor had circled around behind me. Now a frightful shriek made me whip around. The scream came from Satyros, who leaped on the back of the younger Moor just as the latter poised his spear to plunge it into my back. No doubt it had seemed too good a chance to miss, to kill me for my ass and any useful gear and supplies I might have.
With a yell as loud as the baboon's, the young Moor was thrown forward to hands and knees, dropping his spear. As I scrambled out of my hole, an old tavern-fighter's instinct warned me to whirl back towards the old Moor, who was just bringing up his spear. Since my own spear was out of reach, I aimed a terrific, two-handed blow at the base of his skull with my shovel. The skull crunched, the shovel broke with a crack, and the man was hurled to the sand.
I turned back to the other Moor, but he was already on his feet, with blood running down his body from Satyros' bites about his neck and shoulders. He raced away across the sand. I hurled his spear after him but missed. He vaulted on one of the asses and beat it into a gallop, with the other ass and the goats bounding after. They all vanished in a cloud of dust.
I retrieved the young Moor's spear and came back to where I had been working. The old Moor was dead. I petted and praised Satyros, who showed his pleasure by leaping up and down on all fours and grunting.
Then I thought hard. At the best estimate I could make, I had several ten-days more of hiking ahead of me, and my stock of food would never last But why should I leave the Moor to rot, if he would furnish me with the strength I required?
Such an idea would horrify my civilized contemporaries, but I had seen too many of mankind's queer customs and prohibitions to take any of them very seriously. If one must turn savage to survive, why, say I, turn savage! Besides, the man was already dead—slain in legitimate self-defense—so it was not as if I had gone out and hunted him for his flesh, as did my friends the Mong.