"Then," decreed Menelek, "give your brother first choice!"
Over wide territory beyond the Abyssinian border, Menelek's power is as much feared and his will as much respected as among his own subjects. Of this there occurred recently a most dramatic proof.
Bordering Abyssinia on the east is the Danakil country. It adjoins the Province of Shoa, of which Menelek was Ras, or feudal King, before his accession to the Abyssinian throne. The Danakils are a savage pagan people of mixed Hamite (early Egyptian) and Ethiopian ancestry. They are perhaps the most tirelessly warlike race in all Africa. Often severely beaten by their Italian and Somali neighbors, they have never been subdued. Indeed slaughter may, in a way, be said to be a part of their religion, for it is the fetich every young warrior must provide for the worship of the woman of his choice before he may hope to win and have her. It is necessary that he should have killed royal game—lion, rhinoceros, or elephant—but not enough. Singlehanded he must kill a man and bring the maid a trophy of the slaughter before she will even consider him, and Danakil maids of spirit often demand some plurality of trophies. Thus the license for each Danakil mating is written in the life blood of some neighboring tribesman; thus are the few poltroons in Danakil-land condemned to stay celibate.
Only Menelek's word do they heed; his might they dread.
Through the Danakil country, between Errer Gotto and Oder, not long ago travelled the caravan of William Northrup McMillan, conveying the sections of several steel boats with which he purposed navigating and exploring the Blue Nile from its source to Khartoom, a region that had never been traversed by white men. In the party was M. Dubois-Desaulle, a gay and reckless ex-officer of the French Foreign Legion who had long served in Algiers against raiding Arab sheiks. He harbored no fear of the unorganized wild tribesmen through whose country they were travelling. McMillan knew them better, however; he held his command under strict military discipline, marched in close order with scouts out, forbade straying from the column, and zareba-ed his night camps. For the march was a severe one and he had neither the time nor sufficient force to search for or to succor missing stragglers.
Urged with the rest never to go unarmed and to stay close with the caravan, Dubois-Desaulle's only reply was a laughing, "Jamais! Jamais. Je ne porte pas des armes pour ces babouins! Je les ferai s'enfuir avec des batons! N'inquiètez pas de moi."
Interested in botany and entomology, holding the natives in utter contempt, repeatedly he strayed from the column for hours without even so much as a pistol by way of arms, until finally McMillan told him that if he again so strayed he would be placed under guard for the balance of march. But the very next day, riding a mule with the advance guard led by H. Morgan Brown, Dubois-Desaulle slipped unobserved into the bush, probably in pursuit of some winged wonder that had crossed his path.
Camp was made early in the afternoon on the banks of the Doha River, and a strong party, with shikari trackers, led by Brown, was sent out in search of the straggler. Night came on before they could pick up his trail, and nothing further could be done except to build signal fires on adjacent hills; but all without result. Anxiety for his safety crystallized into chill fear for his life, when the dull glow of the signal fires was suddenly extinguished by the next morning's sun; for the desert knows neither twilight nor dawn—the sun bursts up blood-red out of shrouding darkness like a rocket from its case, and at once it is day.
An hour later Brown's shikaris found the place where Dubois-Desaulle had strayed from the column, followed his trail through the bush hither and thither for two miles, to a point where he had found a native warrior seated beneath a tree. They read, with their unerring skill at "sign" lore, that there he had stood and talked for some time with the native, and then pressed on, rider and footman travelling side by side, till, within the shelter of especially dense surrounding bush, the footman had dropped behind the rider—for what dastardly assassin's purpose the next twenty steps revealed. There stark lay the body of gay Dubois-Desaulle, dropped from his mule without a struggle by a mortal spear-thrust in his back, the manner of his mutilation a Danakil's sign manual!
Immediately messengers were sent to the caravan bearing the news and asking reinforcements. At this time the indomitable chief, McMillan, was laid up with veldt sores on the legs, unable to walk or even to ride except in a litter. Promptly, however, he despatched Lieutenant Fairfax and William Marlow, with about thirty more men, to Brown's support, with orders never to quit till he got the murderer. By a forced march, Fairfax reached Brown at four in the afternoon.