CHAPTER XXXVIII.

WE LAND IN AFRICA.

And now to resume my own more simple narrative.

The barque Princess, which, until we touched at Ascension, had been favoured with singularly fine weather, now encountered strong head-winds. She was driven out of her course, and had to run well in, on the African coast.

After long beating about, on the 2nd of August we saw the great continent on the southern shore of the Gulf of Guinea.

The winds had become light and the weather cloudy. On this day I remember the crew were variously employed, and the carpenters were busy in making two new topgallant masts, to replace those injured in the rough weather we had so recently encountered.

About six P.M. the weather became squally. Captain Baylis ordered the studding-sails to be taken in, and the chain-cables bent to the anchors. At midnight we took in the royals and flying-jib.

At four o'clock on the morning of the 3rd, as we required fresh water, we came to anchor in a little sheltered bay of the Rio Gabon, which lies between the Bight of Benin and Cape Lopez Gonsalvo.

The wondrous transparency of the atmosphere here exceeded all I had seen—even in the pure region of eternal ice; for amid the clear splendour of the heavens, the eye could observe without a telescope many a lesser star unseen in the north; and on this morning when we were coming to anchor, two of the fixed planets shone with a refulgence so brilliant as to cast the shadow of the ships far across the estuary.

By this time, the hot vertical sun of the tropics had peeled all the paint off the blistered sides of the Princess. Her anchors and ironwork had become mere masses of red rust, her once white paint had been turned to orange colour, and her tar to dirty yellow, while the caulking and pitch had boiled out from her planks and seams.

Captain Baylis had no intention of remaining here longer than he could avoid, as the climate is unhealthy. Though the hills which overlook the river are of considerable height, the land between it and them is but a series of swamps, where the gigantic water-weeds of Africa and the wild mangrove-trees flourish in rank luxuriance, and where the hideous crocodile squatters in the slime, or crawls along the sand, where its eggs are hatched by the hot sun, if they are not previously stolen by the ichneumon.

While the chief mate went off in the long-boat to the Pongos—as the little isles at the mouth of the estuary are named—to fill several casks with fresh water, Captain Baylis proposed a visit to a negro village on the coast, for the purpose of procuring some elephants' teeth and leopard skins, and having a palaver with the natives, many of whom, though extremely savage, have picked up a little English by the frequent visits of our ships, particularly those of the African squadron.

With a view to barter, he placed in his gig four old rusty muskets, some well-worn table knives, old coats, pots and kettles, while, to be prepared for any emergency, four rifles, carefully loaded and capped, were concealed in the stern sheets, and Mrs. Baylis, Hartly, and I accompanied him on this expedition, which was the commencement of a series of disasters, that ended in the destruction of nearly all concerned.

For the lady's comfort, an awning was rigged over the stern of the gig, which, being rowed by eight oars, ran rapidly close in shore, where we saw a number of black fellows in a state of semi-nudity, gabbling, gesticulating violently, and watching our arrival with considerable interest.

Some of their actions seeming to indicate hostility as they brandished long spears and asseguys, Captain Baylis stood up in the boat and displayed his old pots and kettles, making signs that he wished to trade or barter with them. On this they uttered a simultaneous yell, and disappeared among the mangroves, which fringed all the bank of the river, and formed a species of natural arcade by their branches arching over from the solid soil, and taking root in the slimy water.

Of this unsatisfactory result we could make nothing; but in no way daunted, Captain Baylis (though saying that he "wished he had left his good wife on board") steered for a little creek, on entering which, we lost sight alike of the Pongo islets and the Princess, which lay at anchor in the estuary, about four miles off.

Beaching partly the sharp-prowed and handsome gig in the soft sand, Baylis, Hartly, and I sprang ashore, and looked in every direction among the tall weeds and mangroves for our sable traders; but all was silent and still. The breast of the broad river was undisturbed by a ripple, and seemed to sleep in the sultry sunshine; the silence of the mighty forests that grew along its banks was unbroken by a sound; and the vast baobab or calibash trees, with their gigantic yellow fruit and wondrous horizontal branches, covered by foliage, were drooping listlessly in the hot and breathless atmosphere of the tropical noon.

"I don't understand this, and, moreover, I don't much like it," said Captain Baylis, in a low voice to Hartly and me; "for when I was here before I found the darkies ready enough to 'make friends,' as they term it, and to exchange their elephants' tusks, panther skins, and camwood for any rubbish we could collect on board."

But he knew not that, at this time, one of the crew of an American ship which sailed on the previous day had wantonly shot the fetisher, or priest of a village, and thus inspired the people with hostility to all white strangers; and it is not improbable that they conceived the Yankee and the Princess to be one and the same vessel.

After looking about us for some time, and finding that none of the natives returned, Baylis proposed that we should pull a little higher up the stream, to the village of the Rio Serpientes—or Snake River, as it is called in the charts—a tributary of the Gabon.

The giant size of the plants, shrubs, and trees, their wonderful greenness and luxuriance, the brilliance of the flowers, the loud hum of insect-life, where insects are as large as birds at home, the depth of the forest dingles, and the overpowering heat of the atmosphere, all served to impress me with novelty and strangeness; while mingled emotions of wonder, pleasure, and apprehension filled my breast.

With deep interest I trod this wondrous soil, of which so little is known. "For three centuries," says some one, "our ships have circumnavigated Africa, and yet, with a few exceptions, our knowledge of its districts is very incomplete; while the interior presents to the eye a blank in geography—an unsolved problem, in moral as well as physical science." Though nearly four thousand years ago the valley of the Nile was the cradle of art and commerce, we know no more about the Mountains of the Moon than old Ptolemy himself knew.

We were about to re-embark, when the united yells of more than a hundred negroes rent the clear welkin, and starting from the leafy seclusion of the mangroves into the blaze of sunlight, a horde of black and naked savages rushed upon us with long asseguys, bows, clubs, and knives; and in a moment we found ourselves their prisoners.

Two seamen in the bow of the gig, while attempting to shove her off, were struck through the body with poisoned spears, and slain on the instant; the rest were dragged out, the gig itself was lifted fairly out of the water, hoisted on the brawny shoulders of nearly twenty men, and borne with yells of derision and exultation up the bank, where they hurled it high and dry ashore among the mangroves; while at the same moment, poor Baylis with horror saw his shrieking wife dragged by others into the jungle.

After being beaten with asseguy-shafts until we were nearly senseless, our clothes were rent from us roughly, and in a state nearly approaching nudity, covered with bruises, and in some instances with blood, we were dragged into a thicket, and brought before the King of the village, who was seated on a grass matting, which was spread under the umbrageous shadow of a baobab-tree, where he was smoking a great wooden pipe.

All this passed in less than five minutes; and I was so stunned by the rapidity of the transaction, as well as by several blows received on the head from lance-shafts, that the whole affair resembled a terrible dream!

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE KING OF THE SNAKE RIVER

In that district of Africa every village has its petty monarch, and these are all vassals of the King of Gabon, who, in turn, is vassal of the King of Benin; and Zabadie, the sooty sovereign of this empire, had just died about this time.

The town, or capital (of his Majesty of the Snake River), if it could be so named, in which we found ourselves, was composed of some six hundred huts or so; and these resembled a large collection of beehives, being constructed with meshes, twigs, straw, and turf.

I was dragged to the door of one, while a savage, whom I conceived to be the proprietor, and who wore a large coin at his neck, threw in my hat, coat, vest, and trowsers, of which he had violently possessed himself, being a person in authority and near relation of the King. While he grasped me by a thong which secured my right wrist, I could perceive within that his dwelling consisted of one apartment, the appurtenances of which were only mats, calibashes, a stone mortar for pounding millet, and a cauldron of earthenware.

Closing the door, which was composed of basket-work, he dragged me to our forlorn group, which stood before the King, who for some time permitted us to be pelted with stones, decayed gourds, and pulpy water-melons, by the women and children of his capital; and under this treatment and her terror, poor Captain Baylis saw his unfortunate wife about to sink without being able to yield her the least assistance, as the point of an asseguy menaced his throat at the slightest movement.

As an accessory to the alarm our situation excited within us, close by where his Majesty sat was a negro, on whom a sentence of his had just been executed.

This miserable wretch had been tied to a stake, disembowelled alive, and had his body thereafter filled with hot salt. Despite the terrors of our own situation, his dying agonies suggested terrible thoughts of what our own fate might be. At last his contortions and quiverings ceased for ever, and then, on the hoarse beating of an old Arab drum, the pelting was stopped, the King of the Snakes laid aside his pipe, and while all his sable subjects, save those who guarded us, prostrated themselves on the turf, he commenced to address us; and Baylis, who knew something of his jargon, replied, and translated the conversation to us.

The Captain earnestly deprecated our treatment, as we had come among them with the peaceful intention of trading. He pled especially on behalf of his wife, and offered a great store of bottled rum, old firelocks, pots, kettles, brass buttons, and iron nails, as ransom for us all.

At these offers his sable Majesty, the Solon of the Snake River, before whom had been laid the entire contents of the gig, with the bloody garments of the poor fellows slain in her, only grinned from time to time, and then uttered a diabolical laugh, which boded us no good.

This savage chief presented a dreadful aspect. Black as ebony, tall, strong, and muscular in form, he had a horizontal slit in his nether lip (a custom of his people) through which he could loll his tongue at pleasure. This unusual aperture was so large as to give him the appearance of having two mouths; thus, when he grinned, the white teeth appeared at the upper, and the red cruel tongue through the lower. He wore long splints of wood through the lobes of his ears; one eye had a fiery red circle painted round it, the other a yellow. He wore the skin of an ape in front like an apron; and this, with a pair of sandals, formed of elephant hide, completed his attire. His weapons were a long asseguy of tough teak wood, having a point of iron; and a short sword of iron, curiously fashioned, with a great leathern tassel at the end of the sheath, hung on his left side.

Behind him a savage held the bridle of his dromedary, which was covered by a multiplicity of barbaric trappings.

"It is the law of Empungua," said the King, "that he who slays a man shall have a public trial in face of the tribe; and if he cannot justify the act, he and all his adherents are doomed to die."

"Then," replied Baylis, "I demand justice on those who slew two of my men, and plundered our boat."

"But how know we not that one or both killed the fetisher, who was at worship in the Wood of the Devil?" demanded the King, with a dreadful expression in his yellow eyeballs.

"Ya—ya—ya—yah!" chorused the tribe.

"I swear to you that we know nothing of the act you mention," replied Baylis, with great earnestness.

"The white men are liars!"

"If we had known, or been guilty of it, would we have ventured ashore to trade or barter with you like brothers?"

"Yes; because the white men are all liars!"

"It was done by the ship of another nation."

"All the white men belong to one tribe, and one big canoe is very like another. You are liars who come over the Sea of Darkness."*

* The Atlantic.

Baylis, on finding that all his assertions of innocence met with utter disbelief, bent all his energy to bribe our release; but his sable Majesty only grinned through both his horrid mouths, and said—

"Enough! the King of the Snake River will keep what he has got, without trusting to getting more. The white men are false. Who of my people would venture to your ship when we know now what we never knew before?"

"And what is this?"

"Accursed dog and son of a race of dogs!" thundered the King, spitting a quid of something like beetel-nut full in the face of Baylis; "we have learned that you white men take our people away in shiploads to fatten them for food, in a land far beyond the sea!"

On this, a yell similar to that we had first heard made wood and welkin ring. Violent hands were again laid on us, and we expected instant immolation; but their purpose at present was merely to denude us more fully of anything we had about us.

On having his shirt torn from him, poor Hartly endeavoured to protect or conceal a little gold locket, which contained the hair of his dead wife and of their little ones, and which was hung at his neck by a black silk riband. But he received a blow from a carved war-club which covered his face with blood; he reeled backward, and the prized relic was instantly appropriated by the King, who, no doubt, deemed it the white man's fetish, a "great medicine," or amulet.

Mrs. Baylis became insensible, and was delivered over to a crowd of women, who shouted and laughed like devils as they bore her into a wigwam, while her husband, Hartly, six seamen, and I, were, by the King's order, conducted through the town of huts, and driven like a herd towards the summit of a high mountain, where we fully expected to be put to death in some barbarous fashion.

Mounted on his dromedary, the King accompanied his savages, one of whom, brilliantly smeared over with ochre, was an esquire of the royal body, I presume, as he sat behind, and held outspread a broad umbrella of grass matting.

CHAPTER XL.

THE GABON CLIFF.

A sad series of barbarities, suffering, danger, and death make up the remainder of my story.

We were in the hands of a tribe addicted to fetishism of the lowest kind. Worse than the ferocious Bisagos, who pay divine homage to a dunghill cock, or the people of Benin, who worship their own shadows, they adored the devil and all snakes, from the little adder to the great cobra-capello, and maintained temples and priests in their honour; remaining, in this age of steam, gas, and electricity, as ignorant as the people mentioned by Ælian, who worshipped flies, and offered up full-fed oxen on their shrines!

Amid a yelling horde, who, by their menacing tones, seemed full of animosity, and no doubt were pouring upon us their whole vocabulary of abuse, though we understood it not, we were led up the steep rough slope of a mountain, which rose at a very sharp angle to a great height. The side on which we ascended was covered with loose stones, amid which the wild coffee and tobacco plants, with innumerable thorny trees—the persea of Theophrastus—grew in tangled masses, with serrated grass, having blades as sharp as knives, with many a nameless bramble that tore our tender skins, while gnats came upon us in swarms, and well-nigh drove us mad; and all this we endured, while the well-armed crew of the Princess, in ignorance of our fate, were within a few miles of us!

On reaching what we supposed to be the summit of a mountain, we found ourselves upon a green plateau that terminated abruptly in a precipitous cliff nearly four hundred feet in height, and overhanging some rocky shelves, which sloped down to the bed of the Gabon River.

Here the King dismounted from his dromedary, and squatted his sable person on a piece of grass matting under the royal umbrella, while several of his chief men seated themselves at a respectful distance, after knocking their woolly heads upon the earth, in token of their slavish submission.

From the brow of this cliff we could see our ship at anchor in the estuary, but alas! far beyond the reach of signals. We could also see the little green Pongos, which stud the bay formed by the great sweep of the Gabon.

Afar off on the other hand towards the east, we could discern where, between groves of strange trees—the plantain, banana, and the baobab—with many a giant plant and mighty flower upon its shores, the great river of Guinea, the Rio Gabon, rolled from its distant source, in the unexplored land of Ungobai—a stream so broad and deep that a sloop of war has ascended it for more than seventy miles.

Transparent though the air was around us, a hot sunny haze shrouded those green forests through which the Gabon came rolling like a mighty flood of gold towards the west—rolling through a vast plain, covered by a leafy wilderness, where the lordly lion with his shaggy mane, the cruel panther with his stealthy step, and the ponderous elephant, roved in herds; and amid the luxuriant flowers and lovely fertility of which, the scaly cobra-capello, and a hundred kinds of dreadful reptiles, with tongues that teemed with poison, lurked; where every fruit and herb were gigantic in proportion to the mighty continent which produced them; where the crocodile squattered in the green miasmatic slime, and the hippopotami, huge, misshapen, and pre-Adamite in form, swam like the great tusky walrus of the icy regions I had left so recently.

All these natural wonders were contained in the vast plain at our feet—a plain that seemed to vibrate under the cloudless glare of the burning sun; for the heat at noon must have been somewhere about 107° in the shade, and our tender skins were blistering under it.

But the thoughts this scene inspired for a moment were soon diverted from it, by the terrors about to be enacted there.

A hideous old negro, whose barbaric ornaments announced his rank and character as a fetisher, proceeded to examine, with gipsy-like care, the various lines on the palms of our hands.

What he affected to gather therefrom we could not divine, but the lines proved fatal to three of our companions, whom, with yells of satisfaction, he thrust aside from the rest, and the work of torture and death at once began by order of the King.

Three strong and handsome young seamen had their hands tied behind them by a thick thong.

To this a rope was attached; after this they were thrust over the cliff, and a piercing cry, which curdled the blood in our hearts, burst from each, when, by the violence of the jerk and their own weight, their arms were torn round and upward, and dislocated in the shoulder socket.

In this horrible situation they swung at the extremity of the suspending lines, which were made fast to the roots of a palm-tree; and there with a pendulous motion, they swayed to and fro in mid-air, over the sharp edge of that impending cliff, with the rocky bank of the Gabon four hundred feet below.

Need I say their shrieks and cries for pity were piercing and unheeded?

Unable to yield them the slightest assistance, we gazed in speechless horror; while, as their strength waned, their sad moans arose from time to time to the plateau on which we stood.

The hungry cormorants, in anticipation of their coming repast, came out of their holes in the cliff, and with flapping wings, wheeled and swooped up and down about them.

To protract the mental and bodily agony endured by these poor fellows, they were permitted to hang thus for nearly half an hour, when the King gave a signal, and a score of tum-tums, or drums, were beaten. On this, the cords were parted by three blows of a sharp hatchet, then the bodies of our companions fell whizzing through the air, and vanished from sight far down below, where no doubt the river crocodiles, the greedy cormorants, and the wild ducks would soon rend their poor corses asunder.

So perished these unfortunates!

We looked into each other's haggard eyes with blank dismay; and it may readily be supposed that such an episode made us still more spiritless and timid.

"Oh, my wife! my poor wife!" exclaimed the unfortunate Baylis from time to time. "Death is but the birthday of another life, the parsons tell us; but I think with horror of her fate among such cowardly dogs as these. God help her! God help her!"

A series of prolonged and exulting yells now announced that our captors conceived they had appeased the spirit of the fetisher whom the Yankees had slain.

"Let them die! let them die!" (Baylis told me were their shouts;) "they are but white dogs who worship neither the sun nor moon, nor the big snake that lives in the wood."

There were now but six of us remaining, and our fate was soon decided. The King selected Hartly and Baylis as slaves for himself, assigning the four others to different chief men of his town or territory.

"My poor friend," said Hartly, "this is from bad to worse! Why did we not perish with the Leda? We shall never weather these fellows, I fear!"

I fell to the lot of the savage with the coin at his neck, a personage whom they named Amoo—the same supple fellow who had first pounced upon me when we landed in that fiendish country.

As we were separated, Hartly and I had only time to exchange a farewell glance. My hands were still secured by the thong, which was tied so tightly that the flesh of my wrists was becoming blue, livid, and swollen almost to bursting, so my aching arms were powerless. By blows with the shaft of his asseguy, Amoo drove me down the hill, and conducted me to his wigwam, when the tribe separated, and save on one occasion I never again saw any of my poor companions in misfortune; though I afterwards learned the miserable fate of Captain Baylis and his wife.

CHAPTER XLI.

HOW THE CAPTAIN PERISHED.

I have mentioned that the gentle Mrs. Baylis—she who had nursed us so kindly in our helplessness—had been carried off by the women of this tribe of devils, who confined her in a wigwam.

On perceiving the whiteness of her skin, and the great length and softness of her hair, which was of a fair auburn colour, forming thus a strange contrast to their sooty exteriors, and the short, poodledog-like tufts of wool with which their own round skulls were covered, they diligently proceeded to make her as like themselves as possible.

A species of gum and certain herbs were boiled in an earthen pipkin, and with this decoction they rubbed her whole face and body, until they became black as ebony.

They next rooted out the whole of her soft and beautiful hair, making her perfectly bald. Her head was then smeared thickly with gum, and coated over with green and crimson parrot's feathers. They then streaked her breast and shoulders with red and yellow paint. This process occupied two entire days, during which she remained a passive victim in their hands, and at the close—when these ladies of the Rio Serpientes thought they had made the unhappy woman as fiendish in aspect and as like themselves as possible—they placed a kind of hoe in her hands and dragged her into a plantation of millet to work with them; as the naked warriors and lazy husbands of Gabon, like those of other savage districts, disdainfully leave all manual labour to their slavish helpmates.

Despair and exhaustion rendered Mrs. Baylis unable to work; so the negresses beat, scratched, and bit her, till she sank under their hands at the root of a date-tree, where she lay inert and reckless alike of life and death; but the horrid hiss of a serpent close by, aroused her.

So great is the instinctive love of life, that on beholding this hideous reptile, which was of the venomous kind and some six or eight feet long, rearing its head to attack her, she uttered a shrill and piercing cry for aid.

Two white prisoners who had been hewing wood in an adjacent thicket came forth on hearing this; but the negresses, who laughed and danced on seeing the poor woman assailed by one of their holy snakes, met the two men with their hoes in a hostile attitude, and barred their advance to a rescue: while the white men, conceiving the shrieking victim to be a mere savage—so darkly was the skin of Mrs. Baylis dyed by the decoctions of her tormentors—were not over anxious to interfere.

In one of these white prisoners, worn to a skeleton, haggard in eye, and covered with sores and bloody bruises, she had nearly as much difficulty in recognising her husband, the once plump and jolly captain of the Princess, as he had, in tracing in the face of that dusky and copper-coloured squaw, with her gummed wig of red and green parrot's feathers, his pretty English wife, with her once snowy skin and silky auburn hair; but she cried aloud,

"Save me, Baylis—Oh, save me! I am your poor wife, your own Annie!"

The unfortunate Baylis trembled with mingled rage and horror, and snatching a hoe from a negress rushed upon the poisonous serpent, which had already bitten its victim thrice, and beat it furiously upon its flat head and scaly body; but while doing so, the frantic cries of the negresses, who deemed this an act of sacrilege, brought to the spot Amoo, with a crowd of savages, one of whom pierced Baylis through the heart with his asseguy, and mercifully slew him on the instant.

The negresses then rushed upon his wife, and by repeated blows of their implements upon her head, face, and bosom, soon ended her miseries.

On beholding this scene of double barbarity, the seaman who had been at work with Baylis, and who, like him, was also a mass of sores and bruises by the ill-usage he had undergone, became filled by a species of frenzy. Wresting an asseguy from Amoo, he ran three of his followers through the body in quick succession, and killed, or mortally wounded them, as all these weapons are poisoned; but he was soon overpowered by numbers, beaten down, secured, and condemned to death by tortures, almost too horrible for narration.

His eyes, mouth, and nostrils were forced open and filled with hot pepper. He was then enclosed in a strong basket of cylindrical form, full of long sharp thorns, and this was rolled for hours about the town of wigwams, until he became a shapeless mass of flesh and blood, which dropped through the wattling of the cage; and during this dreadful torture, under which he must soon have perished, if he uttered cries they were unheard, as they were unheeded, for the whooping, yelling, and beating of tum-tums, might have made one suppose that Pandemonium had vomited all its denizens on the bank of the Gabon River.

While this was going on, I was at work among the plants which grew in a patch of ground adjoining the wigwam of Amoo; but I could in no way discover who this last victim was. However, as Baylis and Hartly had been condemned to slavery together, I was full of deep sorrow lest the sufferer might be my friend.

CHAPTER XLII.

AMOO.

Amoo, the savage who wore the amulet or coin at his neck, proved to be the King's brother; and when first dragged to his miserable dwelling he informed me, by signs—pointing to the earth which I was to till, and to the trees which I was to hew—that I was to be his obedient servant or slave, and by placing the poisoned point of his asseguy in dangerous proximity to my throat, he menacingly indicated that death would be the result of the least attempt at resistance or escape.

I understood his grim pantomime in all its terrible minutiæ; but in no way daunted thereby, resolved, whatever froward fate might have in store for me, to leave no means untried to fly his thraldom and reach the coast, in the hope of escaping to any vessel that might come in sight, or anchor off the Pongos on the same unfortunate errand as the Princess.

I could no longer hope that she was still there, as the chief mate, after the lapse of a week, would suppose we were all murdered, and so continue his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope.

Amoo, though savage and exacting in the tasks he set me, was nothing in severity when compared to his wife, for this Brave of the Rio Serpientes had "a helpmate meet for him," who hoed his rice and maize, shared his matted hut and couch of skins, and who scraped in thankful silence what he was pleased to leave her after meals at the bottom of his calibash; who shared with the house-dog his half-picked bones, and nursed a frightful little imp about a month old. They had three others, and Amoo doubtless fondly hoped (to quote Ossian) "they would carry his name and fame to future times."

By an anomaly in savage life, Amoo was very much attached to his four children, while their mother was tolerably indifferent about them, and often forced me to carry her black bantling, which I did, with an exhibition of all the solicitude I could assume, and with as little disgust as possible, conceiving that if her good will and confidence could be won, they might improve my chances of escape; but I strove in vain, and might as well have caudled the cub of a she-bear.

My mistress was a negress of Guinea, and of unusually horrible aspect. Her lower lip was slit, and had a long wooden peg inserted in it so curiously, that the end thereof dangled upon her breast. Her great ears, set high upon her woolly head, had ponderous rings of metal, which dragged them downward to her shoulders. Her teeth were dyed blood red by some native herb, known to the fetishers alone, and her whole body, where revealed by her only garment—an apron of grass matting—was covered with a species of tattooing, and always smeared with a thick unctuous grease, in which the embedded gnats and flies could revel undisturbed.

To eat repasts which were cooked by her odious hands excited a loathing which hunger alone could conquer; but anxiety for the future, and the intense heat of the atmosphere, made me generally averse to animal food; hence I found the yams, which there grow like turnips (and shoot out long leaves like French beans), my most pleasant food, as I could cook them for myself, either by boiling them in a pipkin, or roasting them among cinders. The inside is white as flour, and sweet and dry.

For many days I lived on these, with such fruit as I could find when at work near our wigwam, and Amoo gave me at times a little olive oil and palm wine, but in secret, for this warrior, though fearless in other respects, was civilized enough to be afraid of his wife.

My days were spent in hoeing yams, cutting fuel, carrying water in calibashes, selecting long and straight reeds for baskets, or boughs and bark to keep the wigwam water-tight. My mistress would have had me dive into the bay in search of sea-eggs, but to this I would by no means consent, and my refusal caused an open and standing feud between us.

At night, in a corner of their wretched dwelling, I coiled myself up on a panther skin, and for hours would lie awake in the dark, revolving plans of escape. To push a passage through the wattles, and make off under cloud of night, would have been an easy task, could I have silenced or circumvented the herd of ferocious dogs which guarded the town, or rather village, after sunset, and the yells of which, on the slightest movement, raised an alarm that would soon cause their being unleashed and let slip upon my track.

The negroes among whom I was cast worshipped the sun, the moon, and the devil; and in many instances, with singular barbarity, offered up their youngest children to the latter, that rain might fall in due season to make the yams big and the bananas grow.

Amoo strove in vain to lessen the severity of his wife, who frequently beat me with a hard club, till I grew weary of existence, and my heart swelled with savage thoughts of revenge.

Among the glass beads, feathers, rusty nails, and other trash which Amoo wore as a necklace, was his great amulet, a curious coin, which he one day permitted me to examine, but which he would have yielded up less readily than his life.

It proved to be a piece of the reign of Servius Tullius, sixth King of the Romans, and consequently must have been more than twenty-three centuries old. How came it there, and what was its history? So this prize, which half the savans of Europe would have rejoiced to possess, hung, and, for aught that I know, still hangs at the neck of an African savage, who found it on the sea-shore.

It was several ounces in weight, and bore on one side the head of Minerva, on the other an ox, as plain as if struck yesterday; and accoutred with this "great medicine," Amoo rushed fearlessly to encounter alike human enemies and the wild beasts of the forests which bordered the Gabon and the River of Snakes.

In the course of three weeks I picked up several words of the native language, which is full of rather musical sounds, as most of the words end in a vowel. The desire for escape added to the care with which I studied it.

One day when Amoo, with other savages, was hunting in the forest, and his better half was paddling about in her canoe on the river fishing, she suddenly uttered a shrill yell, which arrested me at my work among the yams, where I was hoeing under a broiling sun.

She was only about forty yards from me, and was pointing frantically to a huge baboon, which had squatted itself close by where her youngest child was asleep, under two large plantain leaves, the stems of which had been stuck in the turf as a species of sun-shade.

The baboon was of the ursine species, larger than a Newfoundland dog, and though common enough in South Africa, I now beheld it for the first time. It was a hideous brute, covered with shaggy brown hair, except on the hind feet and hands, for its forepaws are literally hands, and bare as a man's, being constantly employed in climbing rocks and trees, pulling fruit, or grubbing up roots and esculents for food. Its head resembled that of a dog, but its hind feet were rather human in form.

These baboons are so strong and bold, that they will attack a leopard or hyæna, and by their teeth, which are an inch-and-a-half long, and their sharp fore-claws, can rend the throat and jugular vein with ferocious dexterity.

The woman uttered yell after yell, and pointing to her nursling with one hand, paddled vigorously towards the shore with the other, while I gazed at her with irresolution; thus, before either of us could come to the rescue, the grisly she-baboon had snatched it up and bounded into the forest!

Though I had no great love for the tribe of the Rio Serpientes, the natural impulses of humanity, together with a dread of the vengeance that might fall upon me for neglect, caused me instantly to rush away in pursuit.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE RESCUE OF HIS CHILD.

Some time before this, I had fortunately made for myself a pair of long sandals, formed of panther's skin, which I wore as Bryan O'Lynn did his breeches—

"With the skinny side out and the hairy side in."

Indeed these, and a kind of shirt of grass-matting, were all the garments I possessed; for the savages, on our capture, tore all our clothes into strips, that each might have a portion; thus, every coin and button found upon us were appropriated; even our watches were broken up, and the wheels and springs of them were worn in their noses and ears as ornaments.

These sandals enabled me to run with ease and safety through patches of prickly yams, among serrated blades of grass, wild vines, dense creepers, and all kinds of thorny bushes.

Two warriors, on hearing the alarm, joined me in the pursuit. One soon passed me, but went upon a false trail; the other stumbled and hurt himself severely; so relinquishing my wooden hoe for his asseguy, I continued the pursuit alone.

Encumbered by her prey, the baboon could only run upon her hind legs, thus I easily kept her in sight after seeing her again. She was making straight towards those steep and lofty rocks which overhang the Gabon river—the same fatal rocks where three of our boat's crew had perished so miserably.

But her progress was soon impeded by a wall of gigantic reeds about ten feet high, through which a passage seemed impossible, as they grew close and dense amid a deep miasmatic quagmire, which covered all the plain at the base of the rocks, and amid which myriads of water-snakes lurked, and poisonous reptiles squattered. Here, too, there was no air—not a breath could be inhaled with freedom, for the density of the reeds obstructed every passing current; and, gasping and bathed in perspiration, as I drew near the savage animal she turned, and was about to make a hostile, and perhaps most fatal spring, in which case all had ended with me then; when suddenly perceiving a narrow opening in the reedy wall, she changed her intention, and entering, again vanished with the child.

Further pursuit seemed impossible!

I sank under a tree, and for some time fanned myself with a large leaf. While thus employed, I heard a strange railing cry at a distance, and on looking round perceived the baboon, about a hundred yards off, clambering up the face of the rocks, where it entered a hole, and disappeared.

Though I could scarcely hope that the child of Amoo would be alive or undevoured, I marked well the locality of the crevice its captor had entered, and making a detour, reached the end of the reedy marsh, and then proceeded boldly to ascend the rocks.

In some parts the climbing convolvoli and papyrus grew in such masses, and were so interlaced, as to form a rampart, against which I toiled in despair, and had my skin torn in innumerable places, ere I could burst through them. One feels so helpless without clothing.

At last I reached the vicinity of the hole, and after pausing for a time to recover breath, advanced with the asseguy charged breast high, lest the fierce brute might spring forth upon me; but on peering into the den, I saw its eyes glancing, and its grim satyr-like visage grinning at me, while uttering a hoarse cry.

The infant was alive, and its captor was kindly fondling it; having been probably deprived of her own offspring by some hunter's shaft, the act of abduction had been prompted by a strange and erratic maternal emotion in herself.

Amoo explained this to me afterwards as being no uncommon occurrence. I had no thought of it then, but rushed upon her with the long and sharp asseguy, and thrust it deeply into her breast. Coiled up in her little den, and thus rendered incapable of active resistance, she could only howl, bite, and writhe upon the tough teakwood shaft; while her life-blood smeared all the little black infant, and ebbed away among the well-picked bones of the small monkeys and wild ducks, which strewed the hole that formed her lair.

The poor baboon expired just as I drew forth the asseguy for a finishing thrust; and at that moment Amoo, with a crowd of other savages, came rushing up the rocks, and joined me, with excitement expressed in all their wide mouths and glittering eyeballs.

Breathless and drenched in perspiration, overcome by exertion, and somewhat sickened by the cries and death agonies of the half human-like creature I had slain, I sank upon a bank of turf, incapable of further exertion.

Amoo, after holding up his offspring by each leg alternately, and viewing it over as one might do a dead duck or rabbit, to ascertain if any of its bones were broken, found that it had suffered only a few scratches, on which he uttered sundry shrill howls expressive of paternal satisfaction, and patted me kindly on the head and breast, in token that henceforth we were friends, and in amity.

"You are brave—you are brave! Yah—yah!" said he repeatedly. "You are the brother of Amoo."

Thus did I achieve the very end I had in view—to win the confidence of my savage task-masters!

We returned to the wigwams in triumph, bringing with us the skin of the ursine baboon on the point of an asseguy; and the circumstance of a creature so agile and ferocious having been slain by me, the poor despised white slave, was evidently the cause of much marvel to that dingy community.

From this day there was a sensible alteration in the bearing of my mistress towards me. I cannot say that I gained more of her confidence, or had fewer tasks set me, but when beating me with her club, she entirely ceased to strike me on the head or face, as she had been wont to do. But the reason of this unusual forbearance was explained to me by Amoo, and proved a very cogent reason for hastening my departure from the unpleasant vicinity of the Snake River.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE GRATITUDE OF HIS WIFE.

In two instances she patted my head and smiled on me, till the corners of her mouth went up to her ears.

On the last occasion she gave me a large iron knife to sharpen, indicating by various signs that a very fine edge must be put upon it.

"She is grateful to you for saving her child," said Amoo, who observed her.

"I am glad of it," said I, with a sigh of mingled bitterness and impatience.

"She means to show you and the tribe that she is so."

"The tribe too, how?"

"Yah, yah," said Amoo, as he placed one hand on my head, and drew the right forefinger of the other across his throat, in a way that was unpleasantly suggestive. Then he laughed and pointed to a gaily painted canoe that lay among some reeds by the river-side.

"She will assist me to escape in it to a big ship at the Pongos?" said I with a glow of hope.

Amoo frowned, then he grinned and shook his head.

"What then?" I asked anxiously.

After a good deal of pantomime, with which he endeavoured to aid his explanations, at last the horrid truth broke upon me!

She wished my caput as a figure-head to her canoe, for which purpose, after being duly prepared by gums, balms, and herbs, she could make it suitable. Amoo flatteringly added that such had been her desire from the first, as "I was the youngest and best-looking of the prisoners."

Here was a pleasant prospect!

"And it was for this purpose she gave me the long knife to sharpen so carefully?"

"Yah, yah," replied Amoo, while a glow of rage filled my breast; "and even now she is gathering herbs on the borders of the wood to boil in the stone jar with it."

"It—what?"

"Your head."

"I must watch."

"It is of no use to watch," replied Amoo; "sometime, when you are not thinking of it, she will give you some red berries, that will cause you to sleep very sound; and then with her knife or a sharp shell—yah, yah!" he concluded by a guttural laugh, and again pressed his finger round his neck.

"Oh, Heavens!" I exclaimed, "aid me to escape from this atrocious squaw!"

I asked Amoo if he, in gratitude to me for saving his child, would aid me to escape; but he shook his head, adding:

"I am the brother of a great king, and must keep my slave."

"Why?"

"To punish the white men, who fatten up our brothers beyond the Sea of Darkness, and eat them."

After reiterated applications to his gratitude and pity for freedom or assistance, finding that he was gradually losing his temper and becoming suspicious; that his snake-like eyes were beginning to gleam and his thick red nostrils to quiver, I abandoned the subject, and resuming my hoe, went to my daily task in the patch of garden where our yams and other esculents grew, and affected to work as usual, conscious that, for a time, my savage owner was eyeing me with vague doubts, and while playing ominously with his long reed-like asseguy, was probably repenting that by his admissions he had put me on my guard against the artistic views of his better half.

After a time he disappeared, yet I dreaded that it was only to conceal himself under some of the bushes, or the leaves of the creeping gourds, to watch me, so I affected to hoe industriously—yes, and to whistle too, though my heart was sick and full of dreadful apprehensions. One thing I had resolved, come what might, never again to commit my head to sleep, or to pass a night within the same wigwam with that horrible woman.

While revolving in my mind, and almost blind with desperation, what measures I should take to save myself, to escape from my present danger and misery, I saw her pass from the wood towards the town of wigwams. In one hand she held the knife I had sharpened so nicely for her, in the other a basket filled with herbs—herbs, I doubted not, for my especial behoof; and she "grinned horribly a ghastly smile," as she walked on with that shuffling gait peculiar to these negresses.

My heart swelled with so much rage and hatred at this hideous creature, that I had some difficulty in repressing a vehement desire to beat her down with my hoe; but such a proceeding would only have ensured and accelerated my own destruction; as I knew not what number of watchful savages might at that moment be eyeing me from amid the jungle of leaves, flowers, and fruit which bordered the patch wherein I worked, under a sun so vertical that I had scarcely a shadow.

Lest such a surveillance might be maintained, I resolved as soon as she disappeared to adopt something of their own subtlety.

I seated myself under a tree among some weeds, as if tired, and then, after a time, affected to sleep; though keeping watch with open ears and half-closed eyes, lest any one might approach; but all remained still around me, save the monotonous hum of the millions of insects that revolved in the shade of the adjacent wood.

On being assured of this, I crept on my hands and knees into the jungle, dragging my hoe after me, and going feet foremost on my face for nearly a hundred yards or so, that I might with my fingers obliterate all traces of a trail; and in this, I was very successful by raising the crushed grass and shaking the bruised twigs.

At last I reached a runnel, the waters of which I knew would destroy all scent of my footsteps, and baffle the keen nostrils of those ferocious dogs, which would certainly be let slip in search of me the moment I was missed.

Assured that this runnel of water would be a tributary of the Rio Serpientes, I proceeded up its course for several miles, and in my anxiety to escape the human race forgetting all about the ferocious denizens of the African forest—the snakes and other dreadful reptiles with which the woods, the water, and the bordering deserts teemed.

I must have proceeded about ten miles without meeting either man or beast to molest or obstruct me, when evening was beginning to close, and I found myself nearly exhausted, but within a pleasant thicket of orange, citron, and chestnut trees, which bordered a pretty lake, and flourished amid the thousand flowering shrubs of this luxuriant wilderness.

The necessity for rest forced itself upon me; but I dared not sleep on the earth lest snakes might assail me, and even in a tree I was not safe from the panthers, yet I chose my couch in the latter. Furnished with a large stone, as a missile for defence in any emergency, grasping the hoe by my teeth, I clambered into a chestnut-tree, scaring therefrom a whole covey of kingfishers, copper-coloured cuckoos, and green and flame-coloured parrots.

Then selecting a place where the leafy branches were forked out from the stem, and grew in such a form that I could rest upon them with ease, and without fear of falling, I deposited the stone in a hollow of the tree, and after an hour of anxious and exciting watchfulness, gradually felt sleep stealing over me—a sleep to which the "drowsy hum" of the insects, the balmy air of the evening, the lassitude produced by my recent travel after a day's toil under a burning sun, all conduced; and so, heedless of everything, at last I slept profoundly on my awkward perch.

CHAPTER XLV.

FLIGHT.

In this precarious situation I must have been asleep for some hours, when awakened by a dreadful sound, and with a start so nervous that I nearly fell from my roost upon the long, reedy grass below.

This sound was the roaring of a lion!

I had heard it often in menageries at home; but there the sound was feeble as the bay of a house-dog when compared to the dread roar, which rolled along the ground and rent the still air of the morning in that lone African forest. A terror possessed me; yet, grasping my hoe, while quivering in every fibre, I gazed with keen anxiety between the leaves of the chestnut-tree for the approaching enemy.

Ignorant alike of his powers of leaping and scenting, I knew not whether the lion might, on discovering me, at once spring up like a tree-leopard, which can pursue its prey, like a cat, from branch to branch. Oh, how I longed for a good rifle—a sharp sword—a dagger—for any other weapon than the miserable wooden club (for the hoe was no better) with which I was armed at that moment.

The lilac light of dawning morn poured through the thick green vista of the wild forest, and the little lake which lay near my chestnut-tree shone white as a sheet of milk, bordered by countless gaudy tulips and opening flowers.

The sun was yet below the horizon, but every dew-drenched herb, and leaf, and tree, were distinctly visible in the clear pale light that overspread the sky.

Every pulse quickened, and all my energies became wound up to the utmost pitch by excitement, when I saw the mighty lord of the wilderness—a vast dun-coloured lion, with his large round head and shaggy mane, powerful legs, his close round body and tufted tail, that shook wrathfully aloft as he trotted past swiftly, bearing a dead sheep in his mouth.

Passing almost under the tree, and round the margin of the lake, he disappeared in the forest; but a sense of his terrible presence seemed to linger about me still. My doubts and irresolution were increased; the dangers of the wilderness in which I wandered, alone and unarmed, became more vividly impressed upon me, and for a time I almost regretted that I had left the coast, and the protection of my savage task-masters. But then the wife of Amoo, and her hideous desire for possessing my head!

"Hope is the bounty of God!" thought I, and as the forest remained still and quiet—at least, as no sound reached my ear, save the increasing hum of the myriads of insects warming into life and sport in the light and heat of the rising sun—I resolved to descend from my perch, and follow the track of any stream which might lead to the coast, for by the sea—the open, free, wide sea—lay my only hope of escape from this dangerous and detested shore.

Remembering the geographical form of Africa, as represented on the map, I knew that if I could, by any means, proceed westward for about two hundred and fifty miles or so round the Bight of Benin, I should be so near our settlement at Cape Coast Castle as to be in safety. But how, in such a country, was this to be accomplished?

I had already begun my descent from the tree, when the noise of something coming rapidly through the forest made me scramble into my perch again. And lo! a savage, armed as usual with a long asseguy, but mounted on a swift dromedary, came from amid the trees, and paused by the lonely lake to give his great misshapen nag a drink; and while he did so, in his brawny form and tasselled apeskin apron and sandals, his eyes with their circles of red and yellow paint, the slit under his mouth, his hideous aspect and barbaric trappings, I recognised the brother of Amoo—the King of the Rio Serpientes!

Were both upon my track, or had chance alone brought him here? I knew that if retaken, I had met with more mercy from the lion than from either; and the image of the wife of Amoo, with her sharp knife and basket of herbs and gums, seemed to rise before me.

The savage looked around him, and suddenly turning his dromedary, rode straight towards my place of concealment. I grasped my hoe, resolved if he had seen me, not to yield up my wretched existence without a desperate struggle; but all unconscious of my presence, his sable majesty dismounted, placed his asseguy against the chestnut tree, spread a grass-mat at its root, and seating himself, proceeded quietly to light a species of hubble-bubble, or pipe made from a reed and a nut-shell. Stuffing therein some dried herbs, he applied flint and steel, and began leisurely and literally to enjoy his morning weed.

At his neck I could see poor Robert Hartly's gold locket glittering.

The vicinity of this ferocious and tremendous personage, with the chances of his horde being all within hail, like the band of Roderick Dhu, so greatly alarmed me, that fully a quarter of an hour elapsed before I rallied sufficiently to conceive the idea of appropriating his quiet and docile dromedary (which was cropping the herbage close by), and using it as a means of reaching Cape Coast Castle, the western goal of all my hopes.

I knew that this animal was deemed a miracle of swiftness even in that burning clime, where they will travel with ease fifty miles per day.

The savage King seemed to be asleep, or in a waking doze; but I knew that by habits of danger, activity, and a life spent in the open air, the senses of these people were so acute, that the slightest sound would revive him; and that, if once discovered, he could crush me like a shrimp in his powerful grasp.

"Can I not kill him?" thought I, as furious thoughts began to fill my mind; "my hoe is too light—ha! the stone!"

I snatched the stone, which with difficulty I had conveyed up the tree overnight, as a missile against wild animals, and poised it in my hands. It was nearly twelve pounds weight, and the woolly skull of the King was immediately below me; but it might be thick as that of an elephant, so the missile would prove more harmless than a ball of worsted.

If I missed, death to me was certain; if I slew or stunned him, I had an equal certainty of escape. Then I thought of poor Captain Baylis, of his tortured wife, of Hartly, and of that horrible butchery by the steep rocks of the river Gabon, and a glow of merciless fury filled my soul!

The stone shot from my hand, and, bathed in blood, quivering and senseless, the brutal King of the Snake River rolled among the long dry grass, with foam issuing from his mouth, and the aperture below it.

Swift as lightning I descended the tree—all cramped and stiff by a night passed amid its branches; caught his dromedary by the bridle, sprang upon its back, snatched up the asseguy as a weapon for defence, and, without casting a glance to ascertain whether I had been guilty of actual regicide, or had merely given him a crack upon his imperial crown, urged the animal I bestrode westward at furious speed, through a grove of pale green orange trees, where the rich dewy fruit hung like balls of gleaming gold in the light of the morning sun.

CHAPTER XLVI.

FLIGHT CONTINUED.

Steering my course westward, so closely as I could judge, I rode rapidly through wild and pathless places; and when mounted on an animal so sure and swift of foot, I felt more confident of escape from any savages in whose way I might fall.

I was not without a dread of wild animals, for the furious lion and the stealthy panther roam everywhere through the forests of Africa; and though nearly the whole day passed without meeting one of either species, hundreds of pernicious serpents, black, or brown, or green and scaly, with glaring eyes, hissed at me from amid the long rank grass; while brightly pinioned birds flew about me, and horrid baboons and monkeys, of all kinds and sizes, leaped and frisked on every hand, springing from branch to branch of the trees, where they swung madly to and fro by their tails as I passed.

At a distance rose the smoke of fires, with the dome-shaped wigwams of three negro villages; but these I avoided by keeping far off, and without tarrying a moment for food or refreshment, pushed on westward, through a broad plain where the maize, cassava, and pulse were cultivated in little patches. On, on where the banana, the papaw, the lemon, orange, and tamarind trees grew wild in thickets; where the spotted giraffe, the striped zebra, and the graceful little antelope, made their lair, and trembled when they heard the roar of the lion of Libya.

On, on I rode to reach the castle of Cape Coast, and urged the dromedary to his utmost speed.

Leaving the plain, at the end of which the sun was setting now, I continued my way still westward across a long tract of desert sand; and now for the first time I paused to look around me.

On the borders of this desert grew some wild lotus trees. Dismounting, I took some of their farinaceous berries with joy to assuage my hunger, and found their flavour to resemble sweet ginger-bread.

After a draught of water from a runnel—water that was actually tepid—I remounted with difficulty, as my strength was nearly gone now; having ridden the livelong day under a burning sun, which left the sand so hot that it scorched my feet, while the finely pulverized grains of it were floating in a cloud about me, and filling my mouth and eyes as it whirled in eddies when the faint evening wind passed over the arid waste, rippling up its surface as if it was water.

At a distance appeared some bustards and long-legged cranes; but no other living thing, as the setting sun, vast, round, and blood-red, after shedding a steady crimson glare across the desert waste, sank beneath the horizon.

At the quarter of his declension, I perceived a grove of trees, and fearing to remain all night on the open waste, rode swiftly towards them; but they were farther off than I imagined, and seemed to recede as I progressed, so deceptive is the distance of a level sandy desert; thus night was far advanced when I reached the shelter of their foliage, and overcome by a lassitude—a total prostration—there was no resisting, I had just strength sufficient to throw the bridle of the dromedary over the branch of a tree, and to roll off his back upon a bank of soft turf, when a heavy sleep fell on me.

Waking next morning, stiff, cramped, and drenched with dew, I looked round for my four-footed friend, but he had disappeared, and not a trace of him remained.

Thus, after all the toil and travelling of the past day, my prospects were little better than before.

But the forest scene was lovely! It was full of scarlet and golden blossoms, all bright as the glossy plumage of the parrots that nestled amid the foliage; while the perfume of the orange and lemon trees, which the dew of the past night had refreshed, filled the morning air with delicious fragrance; and now the mighty hum of a myriad great insects loaded it with monotonous and perpetual sound.

On the outskirts of the wood, between me and the far-stretching vista of the white sandy desert, my eye suddenly detected the tall dark figure of a savage, stalking about with a long asseguy in his right hand. He was naked, all save a scanty scarlet grass-cloth around his body.

Coiled up in my lurking-place, I watched with considerable interest the motions of this man of the wilderness. Supple, brawny, and strong, he had the form of a bronze Hercules, the agility of an antelope, and the eye of an eagle. He had detected the footmarks of the dromedary, and gliding about, with a light stealthy step, and a keen prowling eye, he tracked them with his face near the ground, until he came close to where I lay, but never, the while, did he venture within the actual boundary of the wood.

Suddenly his eye fell upon me!

He started; uttered a shrill cry, and poised his long asseguy, as if about to launch it; then he lowered it, and uttered a whoop, which brought some twenty or thirty other savages around him.

They all pointed to me in a manner and with expressions that seemed to indicate surprise or rage; they gesticulated violently, and by what they said, I could learn that by being within the forest, I was guilty of an act of sacrilege. Their language seemed a dialect of that spoken by the tribe I had lied from, on the north bank of the Gabon.