Chapter Seventeen.
A Tale Told on the Sea of Ice.
“The mariner whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar.”
Coleridge.
Scene: The good ship Brilliant in the Doldrums. Crew at their Christmas dinner. The doctor continues his story.
“‘In the year 18—, I sailed from Hull in the good barque Constance, bound for Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen, in pursuit of seals and walruses. I was a very young man then, and, indeed, white though my hair be and snowy my beard, I am not old yet. It is not age that has made me grey, but grief, and one of the most terrible experiences it has probably ever been the lot of man to undergo.
“‘Our voyage to the Arctic seas was a pleasant enough one. We did not encounter a single gale, and we made the country in less than a fortnight. We met the seals a little north of Mount Beerenberg, coming southward to the low pack ice in thousands; nay, but in millions; for the sea was black with their beautiful heads for miles on each side of our ship, and as far north as we could see from the masthead. Oh, didn’t our hearts beat high then! We saw fortune within our reach, and had bright visions of a splendid voyage, a ship full to the hatches, with bings of skins on deck, and an early return to sunny England, our sweethearts and wives. We put about and followed the seals, and ere many days were past had the satisfaction of seeing them take the ice. There would soon be enough to fill all the ships in the Greenland fleet. We had but to wait a week or two until the young were big enough to capture. What a happy crew we were now! It was singing forward and laughing aft, all day long. But alas! and alas! for the fickleness of fortune, a wretched, greedy old Dutch ship came in, and no sooner saw the seals on the ice than she lowered her boats, and in spite of our remonstrances, proceeded to the ice. Twenty-four hours afterwards there was not one single seal, of all the myriads that had taken the ice, visible anywhere, above or below—the Dutch boats had scared them all away. It was all our captain and myself—I had only that spring got my certificate as mate—could do to prevent our men from boarding the Dutchman, and taking summary vengeance on that idiot skipper and his idiot crew.
“‘We got up sail as soon as possible, and began forging through the loose pack ice, in the hope of again falling in with fortune in the shape of seals. We did sight them far in towards the west, and on heavier ice than we generally cared to venture among; but we did not think twice about the matter then. We worked our vessel in, and in, and in, towards our game, when the wind failed us all at once, and every seal disappeared as if by magic, or as if they had been but phantoms of the brain. To add to our grief, hard frost set in, and lasted for many weeks. We hoped against hope we would get clear before long, and still be in time to follow the old seals northwards toward Spitzbergen. So we dreamt. Well, clouds banked up on the southern horizon at last, and snow fell, such snow as I had never seen before, and have seen but once or twice since. Every flake was as big as a hand. In less than twelve hours the whole of that vast ice-pack was one level surface, one unbroken field of dazzling snow. But then came the wind—a fierce and fearful gale—and the bergs rose and fell around us and tossed and tumbled, as if we had been in the middle of a troubled sea, the waves of which were walls of snow. Our barque was heaved up, now forward, now aft, and ground and torn, till we could hear the very timbers cracking and rending beneath us, and we knew then she was doomed—knew that when the ice that nipped her receded, and the pressure abated, she would sink. This happened sooner far than we could have believed possible. While the wind still roared through the rigging, and all between decks was as dark as a winter midnight with the clouds of drifting, driving snow, suddenly the sides of the saloon, in which the captain, myself, and the other mate were sitting, came crashing and splintering in upon us, and we had barely time to spring to the companion ladder before the freer ice was grinding amid a chaos of broken boards and timbers in the very place where we had been sitting barely three seconds before. Almost at the same moment the after-part of the ship took fire.
“‘How this happened I cannot tell. Friction itself would fire the rum, or the blazing coals from the broken stove might have been thrown among the staved casks. Explosion after explosion occurred; then the water rushed forward, and the vessel began at once to be sucked under. We had barely a quarter of an hour to clear out, but even in that short time we managed to land three boats with blankets and provisions on the ice, and this, too, in spite of the storm, in spite of the numbing wind, and the drifting, choking, powdery snow.
“‘We huddled together beneath the boats for hours and hours, and when the wind went down at last, we crawled out—those who could crawl—the living from among the dead, the maimed and sick. Out of a crew of thirty-nine only twenty-four answered to their names the morning after the wreck of the good barque Constance. We sunk the dead between the bergs, and waited for others to die—waited days and days; then the remainder of us started southwards with two of the whalers to seek for the open water. The frost had set in again harder than ever, and the sun was very bright, but it was a terrible journey, nevertheless, and five more of us, including our captain, succumbed to cold and hardship before we stood at last on the edge of the solid pack with the open water all before us.
“‘Ay, there it was—the open water, the Southern Sea—black as ink in the foreground, blue beyond, and dotted here and there with little floating bergs, just as the sky above was flecked with little fleecy, floating clouds. And we knew well that hundreds of miles beneath the horizon lay Iceland, the country we must try to reach, even if we perished in the attempt.
“‘We launched our boats and grasped our oars, and so began our long and dangerous voyage. Provisions we had, and compasses; water we had none, but we took on board huge pieces of fresh-water ice that we were lucky enough to find on top of the salt sea bergs.
“‘All went well for days and days, and, much to our joy, a breeze sprang up. The sail was set. We were so far south now that, summer though it was, the sun set; then we steered by the stars, for as yet clouds had not obscured the sky. I had command of our boat; the steward had charge of the other.
“‘One morning I was saddened to see a body launched overboard from our companion boat, which was a little way ahead at the time. As we sailed up I had just time to notice it was the steward himself ere a terrible specimen of the hammer-headed shark sprang, monster-like, out of the sea, and next moment the body had disappeared.
“‘The rugged mountain peaks of Iceland at last! With what joy we hailed them, only those who have been so situated can understand or appreciate. Yes, the mountains were very rugged, very much peaked and jagged, but we knew that in the freer glens betwixt them, and at the head waters of many a lonely fiord, dwelt a rude but kindly-hearted people, who would gladly welcome and shelter the shipwrecked mariners.
“‘And in two days at the furthest our trials would be over; so we fondly imagined. Alas! they were but beginning. In a few hours after we had sighted the distant hills the wind completely failed us, while up from the south came, rolling and tumbling along the surface of the ocean, a bank of dark fog, and we were soon completely enveloped. We called to the other boat to keep near us, and trusting now entirely to our compasses, we took to our oars once more.
“‘For half a day our boats kept together, but as soon as night and darkness fell, the wind got up, and the sea became rough, dashing continually on board of us, and necessitating constant work in baling. Towards morning the wind had increased to a gale, and we were running before it under our small, closely reefed mainsail and a trifle of jib. Where we were running we knew not, and, I think, hardly cared. We were completely exhausted with the wet and the cold. Our ice and the provisions were gone, and even the compass lost.
“‘The sun broke through the fog at last, and to some extent the wind abated, but the sea still ran houses high. I looked up from the place where I sat, mechanically grasping the tiller. Heavens! what a sight I witnessed! When night had come on, we had been seven in our boat; now we were but three, that is two more than myself. Of the others two had leapt overboard mad, or been washed away; two sat alive but pale and ghastly, grasping in white-blue hands, that I could see were sadly frost-bitten, the icy sheets of the sails. One poor fellow was curled up dead under the bows; the other had fallen backwards over a thwart as if he had caught a crab, and there he lay with his long yellow hair floating in the water with which the boat was half full, and his sightless eyes turned sunwards.
“The life still there upon his hair,
The death within his eyes.”
“Bale, men, bale the boat,” I cried, “bale her, or we shall sink.”
“‘They turned their awful cadaverous faces towards me, they opened their mouths as if to speak, but a sound ’twixt a moan and a gurgle was all that came from their throats; then they lifted their hands and tapped the backs of their fingers against the gunwale of the boat, and they rattled as if they had been made of wood, so sorely were they frozen.
“‘Many, many times during that long and dreadful day did those two poor fellows turn towards me, and they kept signing, signing to me for the help they were pleading for in vain, and ever from their throats came that awful gurgling moan. Oh! men, I think I see and hear them now.
“‘Night fell at last, night and pitchy darkness, and next morning I was alone on the sea. Alone with the dead!
“‘And all that day I sat there, as if in the power of some strange nightmare. The use of every limb I retained as well as that of head and body, but still I did not or could not move, but I kept praying, praying not for the cold and icy wind to fall, not for the clouds and fog to roll away, or the sea to go down, but praying for death, a share of the death I saw around me.
“‘Towards the afternoon I think I must have slept or fallen into a kind of a trance. The wind had quite gone down when I again recovered a sort of consciousness. There was no more broken water, but a heavy tumbling swell on the eastward when I looked. These huge heaving smooth waves seemed to take on the appearance of monsters of the deep, raising their awful heads and backs, grim and grey and cold, above the sea; but westward they were moving masses crimson and black. The sky was a wonderful sight. From the sun’s upper limit to the zenith it was hung with curtains of blue-grey clouds, one behind the other, as it were, the edges all zig-zagged and fringed with red. All round the sun itself was a coppery haze. To the north the sky was clear and of a bright lemon yellow; to the east it was clear also, and green.
“‘I sat gazing at clouds, and sky till they faded into the gloom of night; they got thinner and thinner then, and stars shone through them, and soon they vanished entirely, and the stars had it all their own way.
“‘I felt no hunger, no thirst, no pain, no pleasure; my condition was one of pure apathy; my very soul appeared dead within me.
“‘Soon a bright light shone out of the north with tints of carmine, pale yellow, and green; it was the aurora, and long fringes of pale phosphorescent light descended from the sky overhead. I could have touched them with my hand had they been tangible. They were independent of the far-off aurora. They assumed the forms of gigantic fern leaves and danced dazzlingly before my eyes, and I could almost imagine they emitted a hissing, crackling sound.
“‘Then my brain began to reel, and I fell forward in the boat among my dead companions.
“‘A shock awoke me at last. Cold and shivering now, I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Morning was breaking gloomy and grey over the sea, and some gulls were wheeling and screaming about in the air.
“‘Once again the shock, and the boat trembled from stem to stern, and some birds rose up out of the bows and floated slowly away. They had been gorging on the dead.
“‘The shocks to the boat were easily accounted for: the sea was alive with monster sharks.
“‘O God! men, it was a fearful sight. There was something appalling and horrible in the very way they gambolled around the boat. Their eyes told me one thing: they had come for the dead—and the living.
“‘I cannot tell you whether I really did lift the bodies of my late companions and throw them overboard. I would even now fain believe this was but a dream. If so, it was terribly real, the fighting, wrangling sharks in the sea, the birds wheeling and screaming above.
“‘My boat was picked up that day by some Icelandic fisherman; there was no one in it but myself, men, white in hair, white in beard, as you now behold me.’”
So ended the spectioneer’s story, and so ended that Christmas dinner in the Doldrums, but both Kenneth and Archie long, long after this used to speak about it amid other scenes and in other climes, and both agreed it was one of the pleasantest afternoons ever they had spent in life.
The two friends made many a voyage together in the Brilliant, and together came through no little adventure, and saw many a strange sight in many a strange sea. They came to love the vessel at last, for real sailors do love their ships. They loved her and called her the saucy Brilliant, and the dear old ship, and quite a host of other pet names.
“But alas! and alas?” said Kenneth to Archie one day, while they stood together on the quarter-deck, “we are not making our fortunes. We will never get rich at sea. And by-and-bye, you know, we’ll be getting fearfully old.”
“Yes,” said Archie, “I’m feeling old already. We are both of us over twenty.”
“Sad thought! yes?” added Kenneth. “So I propose we leave the dear old stupid craft at the end of this voyage, Archie.”
And so they did, reader. And thus our tale runs on, but the scenes must change.
End of Book Two.
Chapter Eighteen.
On the Unknown River.
“Most glorious night,
Thou wert not sent for slumber! let me be
A sharer in thy fierce and fair delight.”
Byron.
Scene: Night on an unknown river, which, dark and deep and sluggish, is rolling onwards to the distant ocean through a wild and beautiful district in the interior, nay, but ill the very centre of Africa. The centre it may well be called, for it is near the equator, and hundreds of miles from the Indian Ocean. Night on the river, but not darkness. A round moon has risen, the clouds, dazzled by its splendour, have parted to let it pass; its light is flooding hill and dell and forest, and changing the river itself to—apparently—a moving flood of molten gold.
Light, but not darkness. Night, but not silence either. Were it possible for any one to pass swiftly and unseen along the banks of the unknown river at such an hour and on such a night as this, what sights he would see, what sounds would fall upon his listening ear! Come with me in imagination! Take heed of those rocks; they are slippery at the edge, for the rainy season is not yet past. To fall into the stream would mean an ugly death, were you even as good a swimmer as the gallant Webb. There are no signs of life in the water, it is true, but the plash of your fall would raise a score of awful heads above it; the crocodiles would be upon you with lightning speed, and rend you from limb to limb.
Peer over the cliff just there. What is that lying on the mud close by the river? Is it the trunk of some dead tree? Drop a pebble on it. See; it moves off into the river and slowly disappears—a crocodile.
Hark to that horrible sound! it makes the very “welkin” ring,—a loud, discordant, coughing, bellowing roar. It is the lion-king of the forest. He loves not the moonlight. It baulks him of his prey; so there is anger in that growl. But you hardly can tell whence it comes; at one moment, it sounds over yonder among the rocks, next, down in that lonesome ravine, and next, in the forest behind you.
Look at those great birds. They fly so closely over our heads that their mighty wings overshadow us for a moment, and we can hear the rustling, creaking sound made by their feathers. There is something lying dead in the valley beyond the hill, and these are vultures going to gorge by the moonlight.
Two great necks are raised like poles behind a rock as the birds fly in that direction. Giraffes, who have been sleeping—there in the open, their heads leaning on the rocks, their ears doing duty even in slumber, but ready if danger draws near to—
“Burst like whirlwind o’er the waste,
To thunder o’er the plain.”
In yonder, beneath that flowery, ferny bank, is the leopard’s cave—the tiger cat. If you went near enough you would see her fiery eyes, and hear a low, ominous growl that would chill you to the spine.
Yes, wild beasts and wild birds keep close to-night; for a little while only; when the deer and the antelope steal down to the river, they will come forth, and there will be yells and shrieks of anger, pain, and terror, and an awful feast to follow.
Behold those lordly elephants; how they trumpet and roar! They are excited about something.
Something unusual has happened, or they would not be there at this hour. Ha! There is a boat on the river, creeping up under the shadow of the rocks. What mystery is this? There are white men in it, too, and right merrily they are paddling along. But never before have the waters of this unknown river been stirred by oar of European.
For not only is the country all around here a wild one, but it has the name, at all events, of being inhabited by a race of savages that are never at peace, who are born, live, and die on the war-path—the Logobo men.
“Couldn’t we go a little nearer?” said Harvey, who sat in the stern sheets near the tall Arab Zona, who was steering, Kenneth and Archie having an oar each.
“Couldn’t we go a little nearer and have a shot at that elephant?”
“No, no, no,” cried Zona, hastily; “we must keep in the shade, gentlemen. Even the moon is not our friend, pleasant though her light be. But the sound of your rifle would raise the Logobo men, and a thousand poisoned arrows would soon be whistling round our heads. We could not escape.”
“Before morning,” said Kenneth, “according to your reckoning, my good Zona, we should be well through the Logobo country, and among friends?”
“True,” replied Zona; “we will be among friends all the way to the land of gold, I trust.”
“The land of gold!” exclaimed Kenneth; “what a fascinating phrase! Zona, when we met you in Zanzibar our lucky stars must have been in the ascendant.”
Zona gave a little laugh.
“It is the land of gold,” he said, “that we are going to, it is true; but no man that ever yet tried brought that gold down to the coast.”
“And why, my friend?”
“Why? I cannot tell you all the reasons why. They say the gold is guarded by evil spirits, that the hills where it is to be found are encircled by giant forests, by terrible swamps, the breath of which is more feared by the Arab than spear of savage foeman.”
“We can but try,” said Kenneth.
“Zona,” said Archie, “did ever you hear the line of that old song, ‘The March of the Cameron Men,’ which says, ‘Whatever a man dares he can do’?”
“Gentlemen all,” replied Zona, “the Arab is the most daring of all men who live; the Arab has sought this gold that we are going in quest of; the Arab has failed! I have spoken.”
“Worthy Zona,” said Harvey, laughing, “you have an excellent opinion of your people, and an excellent opinion of yourself. Nay, never start, man. I love you for it. But let me tell you this. There is one thing in which even an Arab gold-seeker, with all his pluck and daring, may fail in—”
“And that is?” said Zona.
“Knowledge of prospecting.”
“I am in the dark as to your meaning,” said Zona.
“I know you are, and so are all your people. In other words, then, they don’t know where to look for the gold. Now listen, friend. I have spent years and years in the gold regions of California—”
“I say, Harvey, old man,” said Kenneth, “you weren’t much the better of it. Eh?”
“True,” replied Harvey, with a sigh; “else you wouldn’t have found me working as an ordinary seaman before the mast in a craft like the Brilliant.”
“Forgive me,” said Kenneth, stretching out his hand, which Harvey readily grasped. “Forgive me; I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I found you before the mast, it is true; but I took to you from the first hour we met. You have got the grit of a good man in you. Else Archie and I wouldn’t have asked you to come with us on this gold-hunt, which after all may turn out to be a wild-goose chase.”
“But it will not be a wild-goose chase. Man, I tell you this, the very mud of the river we are now floating over contains gold dust. We are going to trace that gold to its source, and find it in nuggets.”
“I have found gold before,” he continued. “I have made two fortunes and lost them, worse luck; but I can tell you whether or not gold lies in any country, if I get but one glance at the land, or but walk over it once. Fear not then, I won’t deceive you, nor myself.”
“Well, we shall trust to your skill,” said Archie.
“And to Zona’s,” added Kenneth.
“To Zona’s, certainly.”
Let us hark back, reader, in our tale for a moment, and explain the appearance of our adventurers on this wild dark river of Africa at such a time of night.
The Brilliant then was in the habit of touching occasionally at Zanzibar in her passage from the East Indies to the Cape. Being much on shore, Kenneth could not help becoming acquainted with some of the numerous Portuguese merchants, who had settled in that strange city,—if a Portuguese merchant can be said to settle anywhere, for they are, like ourselves, a nation of wanderers. They are hospitable at their houses, however, and Kenneth and Archie too were made welcome, enough, and many a quiet cup of coffee they drank in the cool of the evening on great square housetops overlooking the blue sea.
They would sit far into the night, listening to stories of the interior of Africa, of wild adventures with wild beasts and wilder men, of great forest land and terrible swamps, of the country of the dwarfs and the dreaded gorilla, and of diamond caves, and caves in which nuggets of the richest gold were to be had for the gathering.
No wonder that such stories as these fired the young blood of our heroes Kenneth and Archie. They both longed to be rich; it was no mean ambition, for riches would be valued by neither as a mere hoard of wealth, but for the good they could accomplish therewith in the dear wild land of their nativity.
“Oh!” said Kenneth one evening as he sat on a roof-top under the quiet stars, listening to the conversation of his friend Morosco. “Oh! if I could but get up and command an expedition into the interior!”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the Portuguese, “an idle dream. Ten thousand men could not penetrate into the land of gold and diamonds.”
“But,” said Archie, “two or three might.”
“Ah!” cried Morosco, “there you have it, young sir; one man may do more in Africa than an army. It has ever been thus; look at your Livingstone for example.”
Then Kenneth took to thinking, and for days said no more on the subject even to Archie. But one evening, he asked him to come for a row among the coral islands. It was nearly sundown. There was not a ripple on the water, only a yellow haze all along the horizon, with the broad sun sinking red through it.
Kenneth lay on his oars, and let the boat float wherever the tide cared to take her.
“What a lovely night, Archie!” said Kenneth at last. “What a lovely colour is in the sky! The clouds are gold, the sea is gold, the consuls’ houses and the sultan’s palace are roofed in gold, the lofty palm-trees are tipped with gold, and the waves are rippling and lisping on sands of gold.”
“Ah!” replied Archie, “my dear brother, your thoughts are steeped in gold. Morosco’s stories have given you gold fever—but there, I won’t laugh at you, for I tell you I know all your longings, and I, too, have the same.”
Kenneth stretched across the thwarts and pressed his friend’s hand.
“You’ll go,” he said, “you’ll come with me into the interior. You’ll brave danger? Everything?”
“Everything,” replied Archie. “We are young, strong, healthy, hearty; why should we not? But,” he continued, “while you have been dreaming I have been scheming. Zona, an Arab friend of mine, and a soldier, has been on expeditions into and beyond the Logobo country already; I have spoken to him, he is willing to venture with us. And so will Harvey.”
“Harvey?” said Kenneth.
“Yes, he is like ourselves, a Scot. He will, he says, do or dare anything for a change.”
“Hurrah!” cried Kenneth.
He was so excited now that he must needs bend to his oars again, and the light skiff in which he rowed seemed actually to skim the water like a skipjack. For his actions were keeping pace with his thoughts. And all the way down to the Cape, in what was to be their last voyage in the Brilliant, there was little else talked about by the three friends but their coming adventures in the land of gold.
When paid off, they took passage, for cheapness’ sake, in an Arab dhow to Zanzibar. It was a long voyage in such a craft, and a rough one in many ways, for they got little to eat except dates and rice. But what cared they? The rice, in their eyes, seemed like little nuggets of gold. They reached Zanzibar safe and sound, and made haste to see Zona, the Arab chief, and arrange everything.
Zona brought with him a bold but honest-looking black boy. He was to be their guide through the country beyond Logobo. This boy, called Essequibo, came from there. Nay, let me rather say had been dragged from there by cruel and heartless slave-dealers.
Though an Arab, Zona had a good heart. He had first seen little Essequibo asleep on the rude steps of the slave auction mart at Lamoo, and his soul warmed to the poor lad. Dreaming the boy was of his far-off home in the interior, of the little village among the cocoa palms, where his mother and father lived ere that terrible night when the Arabs fell on them with chains and fire,—fire for the town, chains for the captives. Dreaming of home, dreaming that he was back once more, roaming with his brothers and sisters in the free forest, through the jungle, over hills purple with glorious heaths, through woods dark even at midday, or by the lakes where the hippopotami bathe and wallow, and where under the pale rays of the moon the deer and hart steal down to drink, their every movement watched by the wary leopard.
Though but a child when stolen from his home, and at the time of our tale in his fifteenth year, Essequibo had not forgotten a single hill or dale or creek or even tree of his native country. He was bold, bright, and faithful, as will be seen.
The preparations for the great journey had been very simple, perhaps too much so, for they consisted mainly in arms and ammunition. Kenneth, with all the simple faith of his countrymen, had put Nannie’s old Bible in his wallet. In his wallet, too, Archie had slyly deposited the flute.
“An old Scotch air,” he had said, “may help to ’liven us up when things look black and drear.”
They had travelled thus far almost without adventure. They were now in the very heart of the warlike Logobos, but as yet had seen nothing more terrible than the denizens of forests and river I have already described.
Chapter Nineteen.
The Search for the Land of Gold.
Scene:—Daybreak on the unknown river. The stream is a good mile wide here; its banks are lined with a cloudland of green, the great trees trailing their branches in the water. A sand bar at one side, jutting far out into the river, tall crimson ibises standing thereon like a regiment of British soldiers. The mist of morning uprising everywhere off the woods and off the water. One long red cloud in the east heralding the approach of the god of day. Silence over all, except for the dip of the oars—they are muffled—as our adventurers’ boat rapidly nears the shore to seek the friendly shelter of the tree-fringe.
“So far on our way, thank heaven,” said Kenneth, as soon as the boat was hidden and the party had landed on a little bank deeply bedded with brown leaves.
“So far, and now for breakfast.”
Yes, now for breakfast, reader, and a very frugal one it was; some handfuls of boiled rice and a morsel of biscuit steeped in the water to make it go down.
This had been their fare for days and days, but added thereto was the fruit that Essequibo never failed to find.
Fish there were in this great river in abundance, fish that they had plenty of means of catching too, but none of cooking without danger; for smoke might betray their presence to an enemy more implacable and merciless than the wildest beast in the jungle.
The long hot day passed drearily away. They sat or reclined mostly in a circle, carrying on a conversation in voices but little over a whisper.
When the day was at its very hottest, when there was not a leaf stirring in the branches above, when the monkeys that more than once had visited them, creeping nearer and nearer with curious half-frightened gaze, had sought the darkest, coolest nooks of the forest, and the—
“Strange bright birds on starry wing—”
had ceased their low plaintive songs, and sat open-mouthed and all a-gasp on the boughs, then sleep stole over every one, and it was far into the afternoon ere they awoke.
The sun went down at last, and darkness—a tropical darkness—very soon followed. Lights might now be seen flitting about among the trees; the fire-flies and curious creeping things went gliding hither and thither on the ground, all ablaze with phosphorescent light. Yonder knobs of fire that jump about so mysteriously are beetles; that long line of fire wriggling snake-like at the tree foot is the dreaded brown centipede, whose bite is death.
They must not leave their hiding-place yet though, for Logobo canoes are still on the river. They must wait and listen for hours to come. But they keep closer together now and grasp their arms sturdily, for lions have awakened and begun to yawn; there are terrible yells and shrieks, and coughing and groaning to be heard on every side, and many a plash alongside in the dark water. Sometimes a huge bat drives right against them, poisoning the air with pestiferous odour. Sometimes they see starry eyeballs glaring at them from under the plantain bushes, and hear the branches creak and crack, and the sound of stealthy footsteps near them. It is an eeriesome place this to spend even half-an-hour in after nightfall, but their only chance of safety lies in remaining perfectly still, perfectly mute. At long last light shimmers in through the leafy canopy above them, they know the moon has arisen, and it is time to be going.
Once more they are embarked, and once more stealing silently up the unknown river.
As the night advances, they are less cautious and talk more freely. Earlier in the evening they had heard the beating of the warlike tom-tom and the shouts of savage sentries, but now these are hushed and the beasts and birds of the night alone are left to rend the ear with their wild cries.
Hiding by day, and journeying silently onward and upward by night, our heroes are in less than a week far past the country of the dreaded Logobo men. Not that their dangers are over by any means, nor their trials. There are dangers from beasts, from lion or leopard, and from hideous reptiles, far more ugly than a nightmare, and these they must often face, for the rapids in the river have now become numerous, and they have to land and carry their light boat past them. But, on the whole, they were so happy now and light-hearted that they often laughed and joked and sang; and why not? Were they not marching on to fortune? They believed so, at all events.
In the long dark evenings, round the camp fire, they would lie on their blankets with their feet to the fire, and their guns not far off, you may be well sure, and sing songs and tell stories of their far-away native land. The flute, too, was put on duty, much to the delight of little Essequibo, the nigger boy. Essequibo, or Keebo as he was called for short, was at first inclined to be afraid of the flute; in fact, when first he heard it, he turned three somersaults backwards and disappeared in the jungle. He did not appear again for half-an-hour; then he came out, and gradually and slowly and wonderingly advanced to where Kenneth sat playing.
Keebo’s eyes were as big as half-crown pieces, now, and he walked on tip-toe, ready to bolt again at a moment’s notice.
“Massa Kennie,” he said plaintively, “Massa Kennie, what you raise inside dis poor chile wid dat tube you blows into? You raisee de good spirit or de ebil one? Tell me dat.”
“The good spirit, Keebo,” replied Kenneth; “listen.”
Then Kenneth played “The Land of the Leal.”
“I’se all of a shake, Massa Kennie,” said the poor boy; “de spirits, dey am all about here now, I knows. Dey not can touch poor Keebo? Tell me dat for true?”
Essequibo got more used to the flute before long, and at last he quite loved it.
Here is the story of Essequibo’s conversion. I give it briefly. It was one day when Kenneth and he were alone, all the rest being away in the bush in search of food and dry fuel.
Keebo squatted near Kenneth’s knees, leaning his hands thereon with child-like confidence, and gazing up into the young Scot’s face as he played low sweet Scottish airs. These plaintive airs took Kenneth away back in fancy to grand Glen Alva, and the tears rose to his eyes as he thought of his childhood’s days, of his simple happiness while herding sheep, of his dear mother, of Kooran and the fairy knoll.
And last but not least of the sweet child Jessie, and of that day among the Highland heather, when she gave him the flowers. He took the Bible from his bosom and opened it.
And there they were side by side. And they were near a chapter his mother used often to read to him. His mother? Heigho! he would never see her again in this world, but faith pointed upwards.
He took his flute more cheerfully now, and began to play that sweet melody “New London.” His whole soul was breathed into the instrument.
When he looked again at Keebo, why, there were tears rolling down the boy’s cheeks.
“You remember your mother, Keebo?”
“Ess, Massa Kennie, I ’member she. De cruel Arab men kill she wid one spear. Sometimes Keebo tink she speak to her boy yet in his dreams.”
“So she does, Keebo. So she does, dear child. She lives, Keebo.”
“She lib, sah! My moder lib?”
Then Kenneth told Essequibo the Bible tale and all the sweet story of Jesu’s love; and every word sank deep into Keebo’s heart, and was never, never forgotten.
When returning that day from the bush in Indian file, Archie, who was first, checked the others with uplifted hands, and pointed through the plantain bushes to the clearing where Kenneth knelt in prayer beside the boy Keebo.
Both Archie and Harvey doffed their caps, and stood reverently there, not daring to reveal their presence till Kenneth had arisen. The very sky above them seemed at that moment a holy sky.
Essequibo was a strange name to give this nigger boy. (The name of a river in South America.) It came by chance, and suited him well. He was clever, this lad; and proved a treasure to the little expedition in many a trial. His English was not of the purest, he had learnt it in Zanzibar; but he could talk the languages of the interior tribes and Arabic as well. It is truly wonderful how soon boys of this caste learn languages.
Zona was guide and chief of the party; he knew the land well, and he knew the river. He knew which way to go to avoid unfriendly Indians, and he knew also the shortest tracks. So you may fancy them going on and on day after day in their search for the land of gold, sometimes gliding along the silent and unknown river, sometimes plunging into deep, dark forests; at other times toiling over arid plains, round the spurs of lofty mountains, or wading deep through miry marsh lands, the home, par excellence, of the most loathsome of Saurian monsters; but journeying ever with light hearts, for hope still pointed onwards.
At night, by the camp fire, Archie and Kenneth used to build aerial castles, and plan out the kind of future that they should spend in Scotland when they had wealth. But never a night passed without a chapter being read, a psalm sung, and a prayer said. Zona used to retire to the bush, and it is but fair to say that, according to his lights, he was as good at heart as any of the others.
They had hired over a dozen sturdy Indians to carry boats and ammunition, but these men needed watching, both by night and by day. They were necessary evils, that is all. Not that negroes of this kind are not often faithful enough, but they need a master eye to guide them, else they soon lose heart and faint and fail—then fly.
More than once Keebo prevented these men from stampeding, for Keebo was ever watchful.
For many weeks our heroes kept on in the same slow course, defying every obstacle. They were now little more than fifty miles from the goal of their desires.
“If gold or diamonds,” said Kenneth to Archie, “be but half as plentiful as represented, we have only to collect and retire. We have overcome every danger, and avoided the greatest danger of all—the Logobo country. We will go more swiftly down stream than we came up.”
Archie was quite as hopeful as Kenneth.
Harvey hardly so much so.
“‘There is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip,’” the latter would say.
Perhaps this was one of the happiest periods of the lives of either of our heroes. Indeed, their existence at present resembled nothing so much as one long picnic. They were like the wild creatures around them; they lived on the good things they found, and were contented and happy.
Kenneth, true lover of nature, could never have dreamt of scenery like that which he now gazed on daily. Oh the luxuriance of an African tropical woodland! what pen could describe, what pencil or brush portray it!
Yes, there were deadly things to be avoided, but one gets careless of even them, or, at least, used to them, so that in time not even a great snake dangling from a branch in front of him makes him shudder; nor is he greatly alarmed if he comes suddenly on the African “tiger,” as the leopard is called, enjoying a siesta at noon-tide under a tree.
The tribes they had hitherto encountered were non-warlike and quiet. One day, however, Essequibo, who had been scouting on ahead, came rushing back in a state of great alarm.
“Dey come, dey come!” he shouted; “plenty bad men. Plenty spear and shield. Dey kill and eat us all for true!”
The carrier negroes threw down their boat and packages and would have bolted en masse, had not our heroes stood by them with pistol and whip. The whip was, I believe, more dreaded than even the revolver.
In less time than it takes me to tell it, the little expedition, which was quickly formed into a solid square, was surrounded by a cloud of armed blacks.
To fight such a mob was out of the question; they used better tactics: they pretended to be overjoyed at meeting them. They were friends, Kenneth told the chief of these negroes, not foes, and wanted to see the king, and brought him presents from the far-off white man’s land.
Shouts of joy from those simple natives now rent the air, and rattling their spears against their shields they led the way towards the camp of the king, a village of adobe and grass huts, built round cocoa-nut palms, in the midst of a great and fertile plain. In the centre of the town, inside a compound, was the square bungalow of King ’Ntango.
’Ntango was in, but did not appear for hours. It would not be royal etiquette to show much curiosity. Meanwhile the native women brought milk and honey and baked plantains, and everything went as merry as a marriage bell.
The king, into whose presence they were ushered at last, was round and squat, very yellow and very fat.
He showered his questions on Kenneth through Essequibo as interpreter.
Where did they come from? What did they want? Were they Arab or foreign? Did they come to steal his wives and little ones? How long did they want to stop? For ever, of course. Where were the gifts? Guns? Yes. Beads? Good. Pistols? Good again. But was this all? Where was the rum? Arab men had been here before, they brought much good rum. What, no rum? Never a skin of rum? Ugh!
With this last ejaculation, which was almost a shriek, the king sprang from the mat on which he had squatted.
“They must die?” he shouted; “die every one of them. The Arab must first die, then the black men. Then the white men. Essequibo he would fatten and kill and eat. Bring chains; away with them! away! away! AWAY!”
The king’s eyes shot fire as he waved his arms aloft, and shouted, “Away, away!” and his lips were flecked with blood and foam.
He was a fearful being to behold, this irate African savage.
Almost at the same moment our heroes were seized rudely from behind, disarmed, and dragged off. They soon found themselves huddled together in one room, with stone walls, slimy, damp, and over-run with creeping things that made them shudder, albeit they were under the very shadow of death.
Towards evening the king sent to “comfort” them; it was very condescending of him. The “comfort” lay in the information that at sunrise next day they would be led out to die, by spear or by knife, as they might choose.
Meanwhile, poor Essequibo’s chains were knocked off, and he was led away to his fattening pen.
Such is life in Central Africa. But stranger things still befell our heroes.
Chapter Twenty.
Land of Darkness.
Scene: The interior of King ’Ntango’s palace. The king seated on a mat in the middle of the floor of the principal apartment—a large square room with walls of mud and grass. The only furniture, a tall tom-tom, a mat-covered dais, and a heap of empty stone bottles in a corner. Those bottles once contained gin.
It is near sunset, the king is alone. There is no sound to break the silence, except the tap, tap, tap the gecko lizards that crawl on the walls make, as they beat to death the moths they catch.
Yes, the king is alone in his glory, though his spear-armed attendants wait outside. He is quite a study, this savage potentate, to any one fond of an anthropology. Look at him now! he is leaning his fat face on his podgy fingers, his elbows are resting on his knees—he is thinking.
There are but two things in this world that this king dearly loves; one is to see human blood spilled, the other is to drink gin or rum. These last two words are the only English ones he can pronounce or understand. He learnt them from itinerant Arabs, unscrupulous scoundrels, who bought the youth and flower of his people for a bottle each.
The king is thinking; the question that exercises his mind at present is this, “Shall I kill these white men, and laugh to see the red blood flow; or keep two, and send the others back for rum?”
“Room,” this is how he pronounces the word “rum,” and “gin” he calls “geen.”
“Room, room, room,” he mutters to himself, “geen, geen, geen.”
He rises; a thought strikes him. May it not be possible that one, just one full bottle remains still among that heap of empty ones? He goes straight to the heap, and turns them over. No, not one. Still, he has a glimmering notion that in a dazed moment he hid one. Ha! he remembers all of a sudden. He seizes the stick with which he is wont to beat the tom-tom, and hies him to a corner, and speedily unearths, not one bottle, but two.
He is a joyful king now. He whacks the tom-tom, and summons two of his wives to squat beside him; not to help him to drink, but to see him drink.
Then he summons Essequibo, and launches questions at him. “How long will he take to fatten? How long before he be ready to kill? Do the white men tremble to die?”
“No,” Keebo tells him; “they rejoice to die because their spirits will go to a glorious land of flowers and sunshine.”
The king gets blue with rage. He whacks Keebo with the tom-tom stick, and he whacks his wives; then he declares that the white men shall not die, that their spirits shall not go to the glorious land of flowers and sunshine.
Then he drinks “geen,” and cools down.
But Keebo sees his advantage. He expatiates on the mechanical ability and cleverness of white men in general, and of Massa Kennie, Archie, and Harvey in particular, and so inflames the king’s cupidity, that he sends for the white men, and has their chains knocked off in his presence, and tells his sentries they are free, and any one who touches the hem of their garments shall be made food for the blue-bottle flies, and the long-legged “krachaw.” (A kind of carrion-eating heron.)
“Ha! ha! ha!” he yells, “the king will live for ever.”
Then he drinks again, yells again, whacks his wives with the tom-tom stick, and laughs to see them wince; and drinks, and drinks, and drinks, till he falls back asleep, and is borne away by the wives he whacked, and laid tenderly on the daïs.
“Well,” cried Harvey, “this is a queer ending to a day’s march.”
Zona shrugs his square thin shoulders, and Kenneth and Archie laugh.
“Ask those scoundrels,” says Kenneth to Essequibo, “what they have done with our arms and our boat.”
Very submissive are those spear-armed warriors now. They lead them to a wood, and there in the thicket they find everything intact.
“Now, lads, do as I tell you,” said Kenneth.
And here is what our heroes did at Kenneth’s advice. They rolled all their spare arms and ammunition in blankets, dug a hole, buried them, and turned the boat upside down on them. Next they tore up a lot of white and red rags, tied them to strings, and arranged these along, over, and around the boat, in precisely the way you would over a row of peas in the country to keep the sparrows away.
Funny though it may seem, this was quite enough to keep these savage negroes at bay. There was magic in it, they thought, and they gave that wood a wide berth.
Well, our heroes had, after a manner of speaking, to buy their lives.
The king had them before him at daybreak, not to order them to execution, but to give them his royal commands. They were to teach his people to do all the clever things that white men could do; if they failed, the king told them death would be the fate of their teachers.
“We do not fear to die, King ’Ntango,” said Kenneth.
The king looked at him with a merry twinkle in his eye; then he took a sip of “geen” and said, through the interpreter Keebo,—
“You do not fear death? No, you think you go straight to your glorious land of sunshine; but listen, you will not. I will arrange it differently. I will cut from you a leg, an arm, and an ear,—ha! ha! what think you? will the leg, and arm, and ear go first to the land of sunshine, and wait you? Take care, I am a great king, and I have twenty thousand ways to torture without killing.”
Poor Kenneth confessed to himself that the king had the best of the argument, but he replied,—
“If you cut from me an arm or leg, how then shall I teach your people?”
The king smiled grimly, and said, “Go.”
They must propitiate this king, that was evident, in order to gain his favour and their eventual liberty, for slaves they now undoubtedly were to all intents and purposes.
So they set themselves to teach his people to build boats, and sail on the great lake that occupied the centre of the plain; to make articles of furniture and household utility generally; to till the ground and to sow; and lastly, to cook the latter department belonged to Zona, and it greatly pleased the king. It pleased him also to see his men drilled, and to witness their deftness in rowing and sailing, but he saw not the sense of sowing.
“Has not the Great Spirit,” he said to Kenneth, “given us the fruits that grow aloft on the trees, the fish in the water, and the beasts of the field? what need we of more?”
But days rolled into weeks, and weeks into months. The prospect of getting out of this king’s country, either onward to the gold country, or back towards the coast, seemed to get less and less bright. ’Ntango’s men became good soldiers, adept spearsmen; formerly they could send an arrow with terrible precision through a kind of blow-pipe into the breast of a leopard or lion; now they were not afraid to attack these creatures with the spear alone.
But these better soldiers of the king’s were all the better able to watch their prisoners; there was no end to the king’s cunning. Many and many a plan did Kenneth and his brothers in affliction fall upon to try to effect their escape, but every one was frustrated.
“No,” said the king to Kenneth,—“I love you so much now I cannot part with you. You must live with me for ever and ever and ever.”
This was, indeed, a dark prospect.
A whole year passed away; the one comfort of their lives now rested in the fact that they were permitted to enjoy each other’s company. They had built quite a splendid bungalow for themselves, and surrounded it with a beautiful compound and gardens, in which the most delightful flowers bloomed, and where grew the most delicious fruit. Under other circumstances their lives would really have been enjoyable. Wild sports they had also in abundance, and fishing and boating both by lake and on the river, but on these excursions one hundred of the king’s trustiest spearmen always accompanied them, and their bungalow was surrounded by a palisade that they did not build, and for ever guarded by sentries they could not elude.
One good for these poor people Kenneth did effect; he had a meeting-house built, and therein, Sabbath after Sabbath, he taught them to read and to pray, just as he had taught good Essequibo.
It was not long before the king found out Kenneth’s powers as a musician, and at first it was hard on Kenneth, for he was kept playing from morning till night for weeks.
Music lost its power to some extent over the king at length, and latterly it was but rarely he sent for his musician to play. Nor had ’Ntango much of an ear for melody, for Kenneth manufactured a score of “chanters” out of pieces of cane, and taught a score of savages to make an unearthly kind of noise in all kinds of keys; and this pleased the king quite as much as the flute.
Archie thought of a plan at last to get a brief holiday. The first intimation of it was given the king by Essequibo. All the white men, he told him one morning, were ill and dying, and nothing would cure them but permission to explore the country to the nor’-west, the land where gold lay.
The king graciously gave his permission, and the expedition, well guarded, started to prospect for gold. After days and days of toil and travel they reached the El Dorado.
Disappointment and nothing else. Gold there was, but not for the gathering; it was deeply imbedded in veins of quartz, and the strongest machinery would be needed to work it.
Diamonds there were none.
Their gloom increased now. Their hopes of finding fortune had been but a youthful dream, and had ended in making them prisoners to a wild and despotic savage.
If there was any one ray now to illuminate their darkness and despair, it lay in the fact that their visit to the land of darkness had not been quite in vain; they had sowed the seeds of righteousness, and who could say what fruit these might not bear in after-times?
They tried now to make the best of their position, and take things as they came, determined, however, if a chance should arise, to seek safety in flight at all hazards. The river was not far away, and their boat and spare ammunition still lay intact and handy.
Nearly two years passed away.
One night they had retired to their bungalow early. It was Archie’s birthday, and they were going to have a big talk about home.
It was long past twelve o’clock before they thought of lying down. Ere they undressed they went for a walk as usual in their garden, to breathe the odour of the flowers, which the dews of evening never failed to draw out.
The moon was high in the heavens, looking like a little burnished shield in the blue sky, and dimming the light of the thousand twinkling stars. Suddenly from every direction there arose a muttering startled cry, which presently increased to a yell. Smoke, too, began to roll across the sky, increasing every moment, while tongues of flame leaped higher and higher.
They listened thunderstruck.
“Logobo—Logobo—Logobo!” That was the terrible cry.
“Heaven be praised!” cried Kenneth. “Now, boys, now, men, our time has come for freedom or for death. Follow me!”
He grasped his rifle as he spoke, and rushed out. The sentries had fled.
The whole village was in flames, and in the lurid glare, hand to hand in deathly combat, struggled two tribes of savages.
It was no business of our heroes, however. They rushed onwards through the melée, and in a very short time had reached and shouldered their boat.
One hour after, the din of the conflict was muffled in the distance, miles away, and Kenneth and his companions were safe on the river.
They were not free yet, however. Swiftly down the river they sped, racing onwards at all hazards. Daylight found them far away, but not safe. All the country they passed through gave token of the march into the interior of the Logobo men. The villages by the banks were fire-blackened ruins, swollen corpses floated here and there, and half-charred spars.
A week of fearful toil and anxiety, during which they had more adventures and hair-breadth escapes than I could describe in a goodly volume, brought them to the edge of the Logobo land. And here redoubled caution was needed. They could not rush it, as they had done the other part of the river. They must resort to their old tactics of hiding by day and pursuing their way adown the unknown river in the silence of night.
But three days of this work had almost set them free. It was the very last day of their hiding, and near sunset. They had determined to start early, and were longing for six o’clock and speedy darkness. Lower and lower went the sun. Already the gloom of the short twilight was settling down on the still forest, and beasts of prey were beginning to wake up, and yawn—and a fearful sound it is to listen to—when suddenly into the clearing where they stood strutted a Logobo savage in war array.
The yell he gave awakened a thousand others on every side. The whole forest was alive with savages apparently.
“Ping, ping,” from Archie’s revolver, and down dropped the Logobo warrior.
“Quick, men, quick,” cried Kenneth, “to boat, to boat!”
Ah! none too soon; hardly had they launched their frail craft and embarked, ere a flight of spears came from the bush, and poor Essequibo fell.
The gathering darkness favoured them, and they were soon beyond the reach of danger.
Two hours after, the moon had risen; its rays brightened the woods and rocks and sparkled on the river.
Poor Keebo lay in the bottom of the boat across Zona’s knee, his face upturned to the sky.
His life was ebbing fast away.
Near him knelt Kenneth, holding his cold hand.
“I’se goin’, good-bye,” murmured the dying lad. “I’se goin’ to de land—ob sunshine. I see poor mudder soon.”
“Keebo,” said Kenneth, “you know me?”
“Ess, dear Massa Kennie.”
“Now, say after me. O Lord!”
“‘O Lor’!’”
“Receive poor Keebo’s soul.”
“‘Poor Keebo’s soul.’”
“For the blessed Jesu’s sake.”
“‘De bressed Jesu’s sake.’”
There was just one little painful quiver of the limbs, then a gentle soughing sigh, and—Keebo was gone.