THE ELEPHANTS’ GRAVEYARD

It didn't take me all that long to find another parish.

I spent a couple of weeks getting clear of British East and found myself in Portuguese East Africa, which was just on the verge of changing its name to Mozambique, partially in honor of its capital city and partially because the Portuguese didn't like swamps and deserts and savages and mosquitoes and snakes and tsetse flies any more than most reasonable people and were pretty busy packing up and moving back to Portugal, where the worst thing they had to worry about was a Viking raid, of which there hadn't been none in about nine hundred years, give or take a decade.

Anyway, I had gotten about two-thirds of the way through Portuguese East, and was planning on heading down to South Africa to see if I couldn't borrow a little mission money from Emily Perrison, who was probably Emily Dobbins by now. I made it as far as the Zambezi River, which may not look like the Mississippi or the Amazon on the maps, but was just as hard to cross, especially considering that it had no bridges and about a million crocodiles, all of which had a lean and hungry look.

I was standing on the bank trying to figure out what to do next when a huge canoe loaded with black warriors pulled up just like a taxicab, and one of these painted savages gave me a big grin and gestured for me to climb in and take a ride with them.

“Thank you kindly, brothers,” I said, hopping in and grabbing a seat. “I must say this is downright neighborly of you. I was afraid that I was going to have to start wrestling crocodiles for a living.”

“We were happy to help a man of God,” said the big fellow who had done most of the smiling. “You are a missionary, are you not?”

“Funny you should mention it,” I said. “I happen to be the Reverend Doctor Jones, come to spread the Word of the Lord and otherwise brighten your dull, lackluster lives. What's for lunch?”

“We shall eat when we return to our village,” said the big guy. “And after that, we would be very happy to learn about your god.”

“You sure seem friendly as all get-out,” I said, lighting up a cigar and offering him one, which he took. “Are you guys Zanake or Makonde?”

“Neither,” he said. “We're Mangbetu.”

“Mangbetu?” I said. “I thought you folks lived in the Congo.”

“There was a food shortage, so some of us migrated down here.”

“How'd you learn to speak English so good?”

“We've had some anthropologists come to live with us from time to time,” he said. “They never stay very long, but we've picked up a smattering of French and English from them.”

“I don't mean no insult,” I said, “but you look pretty much like any other godless black heathens to me. Why would they single you out for serious observing and note-taking?”

“Beats me,” he shrugged. “It probably has something to do with our dietary customs.”

“Yeah?” I said. “What do you do that the rest of the tribes around don't do?”

“We eat people.” he said.

“People?” I repeated. “Such as comes equipped with two arms and two legs and like that?”

He nodded.

“What's your philosophical and gustatory feelings about white meat?” I asked kind of nervously.

“You're our guest, Doctor Jones,” he laughed. “Don't look so upset. We only eat our enemies.”

Viewed that way, I could see where it could save a pile of money that would otherwise be spent on grave diggers, and would also lengthen the lives of a few innocent goats and fish, and as long as sauteed missionary wasn't one of their favorites I figured that I was just a guest and didn't want to upset no applecarts, at least not until I knew their bellies were full.

I found out that the big guy's name was Samjeba, and that he didn't mind my calling him Sam, especially when I explained that the original Samuel was Esther's cousin or manservant or chauffeur or something, and we spent a lot of time exchanging a batch of upside-down handshakes and swapping dirty stories, during which time I learned a whole lot of new Swahili words that just don't tend to crop up in the course of a normal conversation.

We arrived at the Mangbetu village a couple of hours before nightfall. The womenfolk were busy cooking up some mighty tender-looking spareribs, but in the light of our recent conversations I decided to stick to fruits and berries and easily identifiable stuff like that.

When the meal was over I got up and did a little serious preaching from the Song of Solomon, and I got an out-and-out standing ovation with a couple of British “hip hip hoorays” tossed in for good measure when I got up to Solomon 1:5, which goes: “I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.” In fact, it took me quite some little time to explain to the more suggestible of the young bucks that Jerusalem wasn't some tribe of white women over in the next county, but was even farther away than Nairobi.

I couldn't get Sam and his people to forsake cannibalism, but I did manage to get them to agree to say grace before each meal, which was a minor triumph of sorts, especially since most of them worshiped a god who had an elephant's tusks, a woman's breasts, a lion's claws, and one hell of a cookbook.

I remained with the Mangbetus for the better part of three months, during which time I lost about twenty pounds due to an enforced diet of vegetarianism, because I never could be sure quite what kind of steaks they were cooking up at any given time. At last I couldn't stand it no more, and asked Sam if he and a couple of his better bow-and-arrow men might accompany me on a little hunting trip for klipspringer or duiker or some other kind of inoffensive and four-legged type of meat.

He agreed, and the four of us set off one sunny morning in search of a little something to fill the needs of the inner man. At least, it started off sunny; but by noontime we ran into some mighty fierce thunderstorms, so we wandered off the trail we had been following and went deeper into the jungle to get a little protection from the rain. Somehow or other we got lost, old Sam's bushcraft not quite being the equal of his talent in the kitchen, and we stayed lost throughout the rest of the day and all that night. On the morning of the next day we saw a clearing and a valley up ahead, so we headed toward it, and broke out of the forest in about twenty minutes’ time.

There was some kind of smoke or fog rising, like it was some prehistoric place or something, and the first thing I noticed was all the skeletons.

“What does that look like to you, Sam?” I asked, pointing off toward the piles of bones.

“Dead elephants,” he said.

“Lots of ’em,” I agreed, walking down to have a closer look.

Some of them still had their tusks, and those tusks were as big as anything Herbie Miller and I ever tried to bring down back in the Lado Enclave. Others didn't have none, but I wrote it off to their being cows and pups, or whatever it is that lady elephants and their children are called.

“You know what this place is?” I said at last, turning to Sam and his two companions.

“I wish I did,” admitted Sam. “Then I wouldn't feel so lost.”

“This is the lost and fabled Elephants’ Burial Ground, as has been writ up in song and story!” I exclaimed.

“Bad job of burying,” said Sam, indicating all the skeletons that were above the ground.

“No, you got it all wrong,” I said. “This is where the elephants come to die!”

Sam took another look around, and I could tell he was wondering why anyone would bother coming to such an out-of-the-way spot to die, but when I explained that it probably had something to do with their not wanting to be cooked by their enemies it made a lot more sense to him.

“Do you think you could find your way back here if you had to?” I asked.

He explained that we'd simply mark the trees on the way back to the village and we'd have no trouble, which was true, but it turned out that I had asked him the wrong question, a better one being if he knew how to find his way back to the village in the first place, but finally we got there after three or four days of hard searching.

I figured that the very first thing I had to do was stake a claim to the land that held the graveyard, and to this end I had Sam and a couple of the boys accompany me to the city of Beira on the coast, since I was sure I'd never find Sam's village again without help, let alone lead anyone to the graveyard, and while the government knew the village existed Sam kept moving it around due to various disagreements with the local constabularies concerning the finer points of his dietary laws.

Beria wasn't the most modern city on the continent, but it was a seaport, and this brought enough money in so that the government could afford to erect a couple of solid-looking brick and mud buildings from which they ran the affairs of the nation, which meant they made sure that the ships arrived and left pretty much on schedule.

One of the nice things about waterfronts is that they imply the existence of waterfront dives, and one of the nice things about waterfront dives is that if you strike up enough acquaintances and supply enough free drinks you can eventually get a line on who is the man most likely to do you some good. In this case it turned out to be Colonel Philippe Carcosa, who had risen to his imposing high rank by the simple expedient of avoiding any form of combat whatsoever while his countrymen were off dying in foreign wars or personal duels of honor.

Colonel Carcosa, so I was told, was a man who was quick to evaluate all the pros and cons of a business proposal, and who could be counted upon to act with satisfying swiftness when convinced that a handsome return on his investment could be had by so doing.

I made an appointment with the Colonel, and got an audience with him the next morning.

“Good morning,” I said, walking into his luxuriously appointed office in my best Sunday preaching clothes. “I am the Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones.”

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor Jones,” he said, rising from his polished mahogany desk and taking my hand. “May I offer you a brandy?”

“Oh, it's a little early in the day for brandy, me being a man of the cloth and all,” I told him. “I think I'll settle for a double Scotch.”

He grinned and had an orderly bring us each a drink.

“What can I do for you, Doctor Jones?” he asked.

“Not a hell of a lot more than I can do for you, Colonel Carcosa,” I said, lighting up a cigar and offering him one, which he took.

“It's not often that I entertain the clergy in my offices,” he said. “Is this in reference to a church or chapel, perhaps?”

“Close,” I said. “The property I have in mind happens to be a cemetery.”

“Catholic or Protestant?” he asked.

“Well, that's kind of difficult to say,” I answered truthfully.

“Where is this cemetery, and what seems to he the problem?” he asked.

“I can't actually tell you where it is, and the problem is that you and me don't own it,” I said. “Yet.”

“And why should you and I ever wish to own a cemetery?” he asked, suddenly alert.

“Because you and me can't see no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't be millionaires,” I told him.

“That is true,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “No matter how earnestly I search my heart, I simply cannot come up with an acceptable reason. Now, my friend, perhaps you might be willing to explain why the possession of this particular cemetery will substantially alter our financial situation.”

“Certainly,” I said, taking another sip of my drink. “Colonel Carcosa, I have discovered the lost burial ground of the elephants!”

“I didn't even know it was missing,” he said.

“This is the place where all the elephants go to die,” I said. “It's just chock full of skeletons, most of them loaded down with ivory, and it just stands to reason that as long as elephants keep feeling the need to die they'll keep going to the burial ground and adding to the treasure that awaits us there.”

Colonel Carcosa signaled for his aide. “No more liquor for Doctor Jones,” he said. “He doesn't seem to be able to handle it.”

“But it's true!” I said. “I saw it with my own eyes!”

“This is the silliest story I have ever heard in a long lifetime of hearing silly stories,” he said. “I'm afraid I must ask you to leave.”

“Wait!” I cried. “If I take you there and let you see it yourself, are we partners?”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“We got to buy that graveyard before anyone else stakes a claim!” I said. “I ain't got no money, but I know where it is; you don't know where it is, but you can put up the money. If I can convince you it really exists, do we have a deal?”

“How far is it from here?” he asked suspiciously.

“About six days’ march,” I said.

He pulled a map out of his desk. “Mark its location,” he said.

“I can't,” I said.

“Then how are we to find this mythical graveyard?” he demanded.

“I got three Mangbetus waiting for me outside of town,” I said. “They were with me when I discovered it. They can show us the way.”

“Mangbetus?” he said, his eyebrows raised.

“Right,” I said. “And a God-fearing race they are, except in matters of diet.”

“You know, I could arrest you for coming to me with a hare-brained scheme like this,” he said.

“True, Brother Carcosa,” I said. “But then I'd just have to go out and find another partner once you set me free, and I truly don't see how that could possibly benefit either of us.”

“All right,” he said. “Come back here tomorrow morning and I will be ready to leave with you. But if this graveyard does not exist, it is going to go very hard with you, Doctor Jones. Very hard indeed.”

“Brother Carcosa,” I said, rising and shaking his hand, “you got yourself a deal.”

I picked him up the next morning, and we were joined by Sam and the boys when we got a couple of miles west of the city limits. I knew he wasn't all that thrilled with the Mangbetu tribe, but I warned him to keep it under his hat, because the very last thing anyone in his right mind would want was to be viewed as an enemy by the Mangbetus, especially if they had a little mustard and onions handy. He took it under advisement, and the following six days were kind of routine.

Colonel Carcosa had a big map folded up in his backpack, and every couple of hours he'd pull it out and make certain notations on it. When we finally got to Sam's village he made us spend an extra day there while he checked out various landmarks to make sure he had the place spotted on the map. Then we spent a couple more days hunting up the graveyard, but we finally found it despite Sam's deficiencies at bushcraft.

“By God, Doctor Jones!” exclaimed Colonel Carcosa. “I must confess that until this minute I really didn't believe you!”

“Then why did you come along?” I asked as we moseyed down into the valley.

“If nothing else, I could always have turned the Mangbetus in for the reward,” he said. Sam kind of tensed at that, and started looking at the Colonel the way a chef looks at a choice piece of tenderloin, but the Colonel simply smiled back and said, “Of course, that won't be necessary now, especially in view of the fact that we're going to need a nonstop stream of highly-paid porters.”

That soothed Sam down a bit, and after a while he looked like he might settle for maybe only cutting off two or three of the Colonel's toes to flavor up a stew or something.

We walked down to the skeletons, and started counting, and came up with seven elephants.

“But that's just what's on the surface,” said the Colonel. “There's no telling how many have sunk under the soft moist ground. Possibly thousands.”

“Not only that,” I pointed out, “but we might not even be safe standing right here. I mean, for all we know there's a couple of dozen elephants making their way here right now just to die on this very spot.”

He thought about that for a moment and then walked a few feet away. I nodded my approval and told him he looked much safer in his new location.

“Well, Doctor Jones,” he said after a few minutes, “I've seen enough. Let's get back to Beria and stake a claim to this place before anybody else stumbles onto it.”

That made a lot of sense to me, especially since there were a few million army ants discussing combat strategy and logistics a couple of hundred yards away. So we went back to the Mangbetu village very slowly, with the Colonel marking things down on his map every half mile or so. We rested up for a day and then, accompanied only by Sam, who came along mainly to guide me back after we'd claimed the place, we returned to Beria.

I took a room in a local hostelry, Sam hung around a nearby restaurant getting hints on different ways to soften meat, and Colonel Carcosa went to the proper authorities to purchase the tract of land that contained the burial ground. He was in a real good mood when we met for dinner.

“Did you get it?” I asked as soon as he had pulled up a chair.

“Of course,” he said.

“No problems?” I said. “Nobody suspects nothing?”

“Doctor Jones, you're not dealing with an amateur,” he replied smugly. “The graveyard was in the middle of a privately owned two-hundred-thousand-acre tract of land. I purchased the whole thing at five British shillings an acre.”

“The whole thing?” I said. “But why?”

“Because if it were known that I had bought one hundred acres or so in the interior of Portuguese East Africa, it would arouse curiosity. But two hundred thousand acres? It might seem peculiar, but no one is going to race out to search every square centimeter of the land to find out what I want with it.”

I opined as to how it made a bit of sense at that, and we spent the rest of the evening toasting each other's good health and success in the world of high finance.

The next morning Sam and I set out for the graveyard, armed with saws and such other equipment as we might need to separate the various tusks from their skeletons. We stopped off at the Mangbetu village long enough to recruit a little help and for Sam to refresh Missus Sam, and then we headed off for the burial ground. Four of the skeletons had tusks, and we removed them and toted them all the way back to Mozambique.

“Excellent,” said Colonel Carcosa, when the tusks averaged out at one hundred thirty pounds apiece. “I've ordered some earth-moving equipment which should be here in about four months, at which time we can begin digging up all the skeletons that have sunk into the muck and mire.”

It made sense to me, and I prepared to spend the next four months loafing and sleeping and enjoying the company of the local ladies, but Colonel Carcosa started getting itchy a few days later and sent me and Sam off to pick up the tusks from any new corpses.

I got back to Beria two weeks later with the news that there weren't any new corpses.

“That's very odd,” said the Colonel. “After all, it's been almost a month since I was there. You would think some elephants would have died since then.”

“Maybe this ain't the season for it,” I suggested.

“And maybe you are being less than honest with me,” he said accusingly.

“Brother Carcosa,” I said. “I been telling you nothing but God's own truth. If you don't believe me, come on right now and we'll march out there together.”

He stared long and hard at me, as if he was making up his mind. “I'll trust you for the moment,” he announced at last, “but if I should ever find out that you were stealing ivory from our property, Doctor Jones, I have the power to make the rest of your life very unpleasant.”

Getting threatened by your partner can be pretty thirsty work, so after he finished talking I moseyed on over to the local pub, where I ordered a bottle of beer, and started carrying it to a table in the corner.

“Well, if it ain't the Reverend Lucifer Jones!” hollered a familiar voice.

I turned and saw Capturing Clyde Calhoun sitting at the bar.

“I sure didn't expect to see you here, Clyde,” I said, walking over and joining him. “I figured your circus would be taking you to Bucharest and Rotterdam and all them other glittering exotic capitals of Europe.”

“I'll be joining the circus in a couple of days,” said Calhoun, pouring himself a glass of rye whiskey and offering one to me. “I'm just here to ship some survivors back to various zoos in the States.”

“Well, it sure is good to see a friendly face,” I said. “How's Lord Bloomstoke getting along?”

“Just fine,” replied Calhoun. “Of course, I've had to land on him a couple of times about organizing the monkeys, but other than that he's doing a right creditable job. And how about yourself, Reverend? You ever get that tabernacle?”

I told him the sad story of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke, and then he told me the sad story of how he figured out that he had a career waiting for him in the Dark Continent on the day he accidentally shot the mayor's horse back in Billings, Montana, and then I told him the sad story of losing the affections of Miss Emily Perrison to Major Theodore Dobbins, late of His Majesty's armed forces, and then he told me the sad story of his first five wives.

“We've sure had our share of bad luck, ain't we, Clyde?” I said, starting to feel downright weepy.

“We sure have,” he agreed.

“I don't mean to butt in, gents,” said the bartender. “But I got a hard-luck story to match anything you've got. I used to be a hunter like Mister Calhoun here.”

“What happened?” I asked, ordering another beer and pouring two shots of rye into it, just to bring out the subtle nuances of its flavor.

“I got flim-flammed so bad I had to take this here bartending job to climb out from under a mountain of debts that I had taken on in good faith,” said the bartender. “Seems this fellow hired me to go to some valley out in the middle of nowhere, right next to some cannibal sanctuary about five or six days’ march from here, and offered me a thousand pounds for every elephant I could lure there and shoot. Then, after I'd spent a couple of weeks fighting off mosquitoes and hornets and tsetse flies and black mambas and the like and had actually shot a batch of elephants, I came back to town here and wrote notes against the money I was owed, but the son of a bitch took off and I never saw him or heard from him again.”

“How much did he owe you?” I asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Seven thousand pounds!” said the bartender. “And of course we were so far out in the middle of the bush he knew there was no way for me and my one gun bearer to bring any of that ivory back to civilization.”

“Did he say why he wanted you to shoot the elephants?” asked Calhoun.

“I gather he'd just bought a couple hundred thousand acres at a penny an acre or some such ridiculous price, and he seemed to think that leaving a bunch of dead elephants at this particular spot would make his real estate appreciate. I told him and told him that ivory ain't like flowers and that you can't just leave it on the ground and hope it'll take root and multiply, but he just kind of chuckled and said he was a patient man and that sooner or later someone would be impressed by the fact that I'd killed all them elephants. I dunno; I guess he thought shooting elephants in that stupid little valley would make it a national historic shrine or something.”

“This feller's name didn't happen to have a Germanic sound to it, did it?” I asked, feeling kind of weak about the knees.

“Sure as hell did,” said the bartender.

“What was it?” I asked.

“Von Horst,” he replied.

“Damn!” I moaned. “Iknew it!”

“Yep. Erich Von Horst it was,” continued the bartender. “I'll remember that name to my dying day.”

“You got lots of company,” I said.

I explained to Capturing Clyde that I suddenly remembered that I had urgent business elsewhere, and made a beeline toward Sam's favorite restaurant, where I told him that we should give serious thought to leaving the country at the earliest possible opportunity, like right that moment.

He told me that we'd be better off stopping by his village one last time so he could pick up some warriors to defend us against the denizens of the jungle and take along enough women to keep us all happy. I told him that I appreciated the thought, but right now I was a little more concerned with one particular denizen of the Portuguese East African government. He told me that he'd like to accommodate me, but it wouldn't be fair to the Mangbetu tribe as a whole for him to leave the country without sharing his newfound cooking knowledge with them.

Well, I could see I wasn't going to talk him out of it, and it made more sense to start walking toward the village right away than to spend all night standing in the street arguing, so I fell into step and we reached the village some six days later.

Sam conducted a three-hour graduate cooking seminar, gathered the people he thought we'd be most in need of, and headed off toward Tanganyika. We must have been within two miles of the border when a group of about twenty Portuguese soldiers, all armed to the teeth, intercepted us.

Sam was willing to fight to the death, but I explained to him that I had a feeling that the soldiers weren't really after the Mangbetu. The soldier nearest to us nodded, so I wished Sam and his peoplebon appetit as they retreated into the bush. My hands were chained behind me and I was marched all the way back to Beria, where I spent nine days in jail and was then brought to the office of an elderly gentleman named Alfredo Montenegro, who happened to hold the position of Chief Justice.

“Ah, Doctor Jones,” he said. “I have been wondering exactly what you looked like. Now at long last I have the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

“It's a pleasure you could have had eight and a half days sooner as far as I'm concerned,” I told him.

“You led us a merry little chase,” he noted pleasantly. “There were times when I despaired of ever capturing you.”

“Come to think of it, howdid you know we'd be where we were?” I asked.

“Most armies travel on their stomachs, Doctor Jones,” he said. “Let us say that a cannibalistic army is just a tad easier to trace than certain others might be.”

“Poor heathen must of backslid,” I said. “Sam promised me they were only going to practice it as a ritual.”

“Eating can be as ritualistic as most things,” noted Montenegro. “But here you are safe and sound in Beria, so why bother yourself with how you came to be here?”

“True enough,” I said. “But perhaps you might tell me why a man of the cloth who never meant no harm to nobody should have been held in durance vile for lo these many days?”

“My dear Doctor Jones,” he said, “we may be an old colonial power, but we are not yet senile. When we discovered that a block of two hundred thousand acres had changed hands we started piercing through the corporate veil and came up with your friend Colonel Carcosa. We discovered, in tracing back over his actions, that he had spent a considerable amount of time in your company, and began reconstructing what you two had been up to. It all fell into place after we had a little chat with a fellow countryman of yours, a circus owner who thought he was helping your cause and incriminating a gentleman with a Germanic name who is of no importance to this case.”

“Well, if you know all about it,” I replied, “then you know that we were flim-flammed ourselves, and that there ain't no such thing as an elephants’ graveyard. So that ought to let us off the hook, right?”

"Wrong!"he thundered. “Doctor Jones, conspiracy with intent to defraud is every bit as much a criminal offense as fraud itself, and is punishable under very stringent laws, as your friend the former officer is currently finding out.”

“You mean you're going to lock me up for a deal that cost me and my partner a million shillings?” I demanded,

“We would prefer not to,” he said. “After all, you are an American citizen, and we don't wish to cause your government any distress or embarrassment.”

“Well, then, just let me go and we'll let bygones be bygones and I'll forget the whole thing ever happened,” I said magnanimously.

“It's not as easy as all that,” said Montenegro. “Your presence is no longer desired in Portuguese East Africa.”

“Never fear,” I said. “I'll just take my copy of the Good Book and such members of my Mangbetu flock as remain loyal to me in my hour of need and clear out lock, stock, and barrel.”

“I'm afraid that's out of the question,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“What's the problem?” I said. “There's lots of other countries around that'd be proud to have a missionary preaching the Word to the poor uneducated heathen.”

“Doctor Jones,” he said slowly, “while you were our ... ah ... guest, we made certain inquiries of our neighboring nations concerning their reaction should we decide to expel you.”

“And?” I said.

“You are wanted in South Africa, Bechuanaland, and the Transvaal for selling fraudulent treasure maps. There is a warrant out for your arrest in Egypt for slave trading and certain illegal practices involving a mummy. You are wanted in Morocco and Algeria for grand larceny involving the theft of a diamond known as the Lion's Tooth.”

“But I didn't steal it!” I protested. “Hell, I didn't even know Ihad it!”

“Please don't interrupt. You are wanted in the Lado Enclave and Uganda for ivory poaching. You are wanted for removing certain national treasures in the form of precious stones from Nyasaland. The nation of Southwest Africa has issued a warrant for your arrest for killing whales without a license.”

“A series of misunderstandings, nothing more,” I said.

“Let me continue,” he said. “You are wanted in Kenya for operating a bawdy house. The Congo has issued a warrant for your arrest for possible complicity in the disappearance of a gentleman named Burley Rourke. The Sudan wishes to speak to you about slave trading and impersonating a British officer and war hero, and Tanganyika is after you for consorting with known criminals.” He paused and stared at me. “Frankly, Doctor Jones, I wonder where you find the energy to get through the day.”

“How about Rhodesia?” I said. “I ain't never been there.”

“Both Rhodesias have extradition treaties with all of the nations I have mentioned.”

“Then what are you going to do with me?” I asked.

“It is my opinion that the entire continent of Africa will be better off without your particular brand of salvation,” he said slowly. “Therefore, if you will agree to accept passage out of here tomorrow morning, I'll see to it that you are placed aboard a ship before any other African government can officially request that we detain you.”

“I don't see as to how I've got much of a choice,” I said. “As long as I've got to go, Brother Montenegro, how about getting me on a boat today so's I don't have to spend another night in jail?”

“Nothing would make me happier than getting you out of Beria today,” he said, “but the only passenger ship currently in port isThe Dying Quail , and for reasons I can only guess at, they refuse to allow you aboard.”

So I spent my last night in Africa pretty much the same way I had spent some of my first ones.

My spirits were at an all-time low when they took me to the ship the next afternoon. I'd made three or four quick fortunes, only to be gulled out of them by sinful, godless men, and I had even had my beloved tabernacle ripped from my hands by a cruel and unfeeling Fate.

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"I muttered as I started climbing up the gangplank without a penny to my name and carrying no luggage except my well-worn copy of the Good Book.

I paused halfway between shore and ship and turned to take a last look at the Dark Continent. I'd met a lot of interesting folk there, and done most of them more good than they had done me. If it hadn't been for me and me alone, Herbie Miller and the Rodent would still be looking for jobs, and the Dutchman, Ali ben Ishak, Major Theodore Dobbins, Ishmael Bledsoe, and Luthor Christian would all still be hunting for spouses. Rosepetal Schultz would still be selling her dubious services in the back alleys of Cairo, Friday would be wearing a loincloth and living out in the bush, Lord Bloomstoke would still be hiding from his creditors, Capturing Clyde Calhoun would have lowered the world's gorilla population by half, and Mademoiselle Markoff wouldn't have seen the Glory and the Light.

All in all, I decided, it wasn't a bad four years’ work at that. I'd left my mark on a whole bunch of previously worthless lives, and I was still young and vigorous and with my whole life ahead of me.

“You can keep this damned hellhole, Von Horst!” I hollered into the wind. “I'm going off to strange new lands where a God-fearing Christian can still make an honest living!”

I climbed up the rest of the gangplank and was about to hunt up my cabin when my eyes fell on one of the passengers, a vision of loveliness who looked like a redheaded version of Rosepetal Schultz, and the human spirit, glorious and unquenchable thing that it is, began to soar within me once again, especially after I saw the size of the diamonds on her necklace. I stopped to introduce myself and offer her any form of spiritual comfort or uplifting that might appeal to her. She giggled and agreed to discuss the matter more fully over dinner, and by the time the voyage was over we had become fast friends. In fact, truth to tell, it was occasionally a race between us to see just which of us was the faster.

We landed in the far exotic Orient, where sinful and mysterious cities like Hong Kong and Macao and Singapore and Shanghai, all filled with godless men and women and dens of vice and rebel armies and the like, were just waiting for a handsome young buck like myself to come and bring the Word to them, a task to which I dedicated the next few years of my life with considerable success.

But that, of course, is another story.