32

Female Display Behaviors; A Slave Girl's Dream; Bark Cloth And Beads

"Do not drop it," said Kisu, strained, sweating.

The girls cried out in anguish, slipping, trying to keep the canoe from falling. Ayari struggled with the bow. Behind him were the three girls, then Kisu, amidships, and myself, at the stem. We could hear the cataract some two hundred yards away. The canoe, on our shoulders, tilted upward at a twenty-degree angle. Rocks slipped behind us, rolling down the grade.

"This is impossible," said Ayari.

"Keep moving forward," said Kisu…

"I am tired," said Ayari.

"Upward, upward!" said Kisu.

"Very well," said Ayari. "I never argue with big fellows."

The portage was not easy, and it was not our first. This was the eleventh cataract of the Ua.

Sometimes we used rollers beneath the canoe, and hauled with ropes.

The boats of Shaba had been sectioned, to facilitate such portages. He had had numerous strong men to carry the burdens. We had only ourselves, and three slight-bodied female slaves.

"I can go no further," said Ayari. This was the fourth portage of the day.

"Let us rest," I said.

Gently we lowered the canoe. While the others held it I, with rocks, braced it that it might not slip backwards down the grade.

Trees surrounded us. Overhead bright jungle birds flew. We could hear the chattering of guernon monkeys about.

"Bring up the supplies," said Kisu.

"Yes, Master," said the girls, sweating. They went back down the grade some hundred yards to gather up the paddles and sacks, and roped bundles, which contained our various goods. We moved these things separately, usually a hundred or two hundred yards at a time. Kisu and I took turns at the stern. It requires great strength to brace and support the canoe at that point.

"Shaba passed here," said Kisu, sitting down, wiping the sweat, like river water, from his head.

"Our portages," I said, "would be much more difficult if he had not preceded us."

"That is true," grinned Kisu. We generally followed the portage routes determined by Shaba and his scouts. They had located sensible geodesic contours and, in traversing the area, had, because of their larger vessels, cut away various trees, vines and obstacles.

I smiled to myself. I had little doubt that we, now, were moving much more swiftly than Shaba. Too, he had lost a week, with the illness of several of his men, a dozen or so, as we had learned, at the village at which we had recently traded.

I was pleased with the situation. I suspected, from the degree of recovery of the jungle following the passage of Shaba and his men, that he was not more than fifteen or twenty days ahead of us on the river.

I looked down the grade. Approaching us, in single file, led by Tende, came the slaves, carrying supplies. Last in the line, naked, came the blond-haired barbarian, erect and lovely, balancing on her head, steadying it with her hands, one of the bundles of our supplies. She looked at me. I saw that she looked at me as a slave girl at her master. It pleased me. She put down the bundle. She then, like the other girls, who had also discarded their burdens, returned down the grade. These transports of goods took them two trips.

Ayari was lying on his back, looking up at the sky. Kisu, sitting, was looking down through the trees at the swift, churning water of the river.

In a few minutes the girls, again, made their way upward. Again they came in a single file. Again the blond-haired barbarian was the last in the line, again, lovely and erect, balancing on her head a bundle, one roped heavily and wrapped in bark cloth.

"Do not put down your burden," I said to her. I then rose to my feet and went to where she stood, beautiful and obedient. She straightened herself even more, steadying the bundle on her head. I walked slowly about her, inspecting the slave beauty of her.

"You make a lovely beast of burden," I told her.

"I am a beast of burden, Master," she said. "I am a slave."

I looked at her, and our eyes met, and she lowered her eyes, frightened. Could I know the truth of her? Could I know how she had confessed herself slave and needful of my touch? Of course not, for I had been asleep, and I could not understand her English. Yet, from the very morning following that night of her secret acknowledgments, five days ago, our relationship had been subtly, deliciously, different. She had begun, from that time, timidly, to look upon me with the vulnerable need of a slave girl. She had, secretly, acknowledged herself slave and mine. It was now merely up to me to do what I wished with her. She lifted her eyes again to mine. For an instant they were frightened. Could I know her secret? Of course not. How could I? Swiftly she again lowered her eyes.

"You may put down your burden," I said.

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"Rest now," I told her. "Lie on your stomach, head to the left, with your legs spread, and your hands at your sides, backs of your wrists to the ground, palms facing upwards."

"Yes, Master," she said.

The day had been long and hard.

We had now made camp. A small stream was nearby, which led into the Ua…

She stood before me and then, without asking, gently, delicately, untied, and opened and took from me the shreds of the soiled tunic which I wore. It was muddied and caked with dirt, from the days in the jungle, from the muddy banks of the Ua. As she removed it from me she kissed me softly, tenderly, about the chest and left hip.

"Are you a trained slave?" I asked her.

"No, Master," she said.

She then knelt before me, holding the tattered, muddied garment against her. "Master's garment is muddied," she said…

I said nothing.

Then she leaned forward and kissed me, softly.

"Does the Earth woman kiss her Master?" I asked.

"Yes, Master," she said.

Then she leaned forward and again kissed me, softly.

"Surely you are a trained slave," I said.

"No, Master," she said, looking up at me. And then she rose to her feet.

I crouched by the stream and watched her, on her knees, in the fashion of the primitive, owned female, clean and rinse the garment of her master. The proud Earth woman, unbidden, served as my laundress.

When she had finished with the garment and wrung it much dry, I had her replace it on my body. I would let it finish its drying on my body. Before she tied shut the tunic she kissed me again, softly, this time on the chest and belly, and then again knelt before me, her head down.

"Gather wood for the fire," I told her.

"Yes, Master," she said.

It was now late, and the others were asleep.

Tende and Alice were already, hands tied behind them, wrist-tethered to the small tree which served us as slave post.

The blond-haired barbarian regarded me, and then lowered her eyes, and put a bit more wood on the fire.

It is not always easy to make a fire in the forest. There are commonly two large rains during the day, one in the late afternoon and the other late in the evening, usually an Ahn or so before midnight, or the twentieth hour. These rains are often accompanied by violent winds, sometimes, I conjecture, ranging between one hundred and ten and one hundred and twenty pasangs an Ahn. The forest is drenched. One searches for wood beneath rock overhangs or under fallen trees. One may also, with pangas, hack away the wet wood of fallen trees, until one can obtain the dry wood beneath. Even during the heat of the day it is hard to find suitable fuel. The jungle, from the heat and rain, steams with humidity. Too, like the roof of a greenhouse, the lush green canopies of the rain forest tend to hold this moisture within. It is the fantastic oxygenation produced by the vegetation, conjoined with the humidity and heat, and the smell of plant life, and rotting vegetable matter and wood, that gives the diurnial jungle its peculiar and unmistakable atmosphere, an encompassing, looming, green, warm ambience which is both beautiful and awesome. The nocturnal jungle is cooler, sometimes even chilly, and the air, a little thinner, a shade less rich, is different, the sun's energy no longer powering the complex reaction chains of photosynthesis. Yet, at night, perhaps one is even more aware of the presence and vastness of the jungle than during the day. In the daylight hours one's horizons are limited by the encircling greenery. In the night, in the darkness, one senses the almost indefinite extension of the jungle, thousands of pasangs in width and depth, about one.