A Middy of the Slave Squadron Part 14

That Tourville would not be satisfied with anything short of taking my life, I was convinced; and very soon I began to feel that I did not care how soon he sated his vengeance; for confined below in the heat and darkness of the stifling hold, with no resting-place but the hard shingle for my aching body, breathing an atmosphere poisonous with the odour of bilge-water, with only three flinty ship-biscuits, alive with weevils, and a half-pint of putrid water per day upon which to sustain life, and beset by ferocious rats who disputed with me the possession of my scanty fare, I soon became so miserably ill that death quickly lost all its terrors, and I felt that I could welcome it as a release from my sufferings.

How long I remained in this state of wretchedness I cannot tell, for I soon lost count of time and indeed at last sank into a state of semi- delirium; but I think from subsequent calculations it must have been about ten or twelve days after the date of my incarceration that I was aroused once more to a complete consciousness of my surroundings by observing that a change had occurred in the motion of the ship. She no longer pitched and rolled as does a vessel in the open sea, but slid along--as I could tell by the gurgling sound of the water along her bends--upon a perfectly even keel except for the slight list or inclination due to the pressure of the wind upon her sails. I conjectured that she must have arrived at the end of her voyage and entered the Kwara river, a conjecture that was shortly afterward confirmed by the sounds on deck of shouted orders and the bustle and confusion attendant upon the operation of shortening sail, soon followed by the splash of an anchor from the bows and the rumble of the stout hempen cable through the hawse-pipe. Then ensued a period of quiet of several hours' duration, broken at length by the appearance of the carpenter and another seaman who, having removed my irons, gruffly ordered me to follow them up on deck.

I felt altogether too wretchedly ill, and too utterly indifferent respecting my fate, to ask these men any questions, but contrived, by almost superhuman exertion, to climb up the perpendicular ladder which led to the deck; and when I presently emerged from the foetid atmosphere of the hold into the free air and dazzling sunshine of what proved to be early morning, I was so overcome by the sudden transition that I swooned away.

I must have remained in a state of complete unconsciousness for several hours, for when at length I again opened my eyes and looked about me the sun was nearly overhead, and I was lying unbound in the bottom of a long craft that my slowly returning senses at length enabled me to recognise as a native dug-out canoe. She was about forty feet long by four feet beam and about two feet deep; and was manned by thirty as ferocious- looking savages as one need ever wish to see. They were stark naked, save for a kind of breech-clout round the loins, and squatted in pairs along the bottom of the canoe, plying short broad-bladed paddles with which they seemed to be urging their craft at a pretty good pace through the water. A big, brawny, and most repulsive-looking savage, who was probably the captain of the craft, sat perched up in the stern, steering with a somewhat longer and broader-bladed paddle, and urging his crew to maintain their exertions by continually giving utterance to the most hair-raising shrieks and yells.

It was the fresh air, I suppose, that revived me, even as, after my long sojourn in the noisome hold of the slaver, it had prostrated me by my sudden emergence into it, and I presently became conscious that I was feeling distinctly better than I had done for some time past. For a minute or two I lay pa.s.sively where I was, in the bottom of the canoe, blinking up at the pallid zenith, near which the sun blazed with blinding brilliancy; and then, no one saying me nay, I slowly and painfully raised myself into a sitting posture and looked about me.

We were in a typical African river, about three-quarters of a mile wide, with low bush-clad banks bordered by the inevitable mangrove, while beyond towered the virgin tropical forest, dense, impenetrable, and full of mystery. The turbid current was against us, as could be seen at a glance; I therefore knew at once that we were paddling up-stream. But whither were we bound; of what tribe or nation were the negroes who manned the canoe; and how had I come to be among them? Had Tourville, with a greater refinement of cruelty than even I gave him credit for, handed me over to the tender mercies of these savages, to work their bloodthirsty will upon me, instead of himself murdering me out of hand?

If so, what was to be my ultimate fate? I shuddered as I put this question to myself, for I had been on the Coast quite long enough to have heard many a gruesome, blood-curdling story of the horrors perpetrated by the African savages upon those unhappy white men who had been unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.

But I was not going to allow myself to be frightened or discouraged by dwelling upon stories of that kind; I was feeling so far better that the desire to live had returned to me. I even experienced some slight sensation of hunger, and there was no doubt at all as to the fact that I was parched with thirst. I therefore turned to the savage who was flourishing the steering paddle and, first pointing to my open mouth, went through the motions of raising a vessel to it and drinking. The man evidently understood me, for he shouted a few--to me quite unintelligible--words, whereupon one of the paddlers about the centre of the canoe laid in his paddle for a few moments, did something dexterous with a spear and a brownish-grey object the size of a man's head, and a minute later my lips were glued to a luscious cocoa-nut, the extremity of which had been deftly struck off with the blade of the spear, disclosing the white-lined hollow of the cup within br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a full pint or more of the delicious "milk," which I swallowed to the last drop. Then, breaking off a strip of the husk and using it as a spoon, I proceeded to sc.r.a.pe out and hungrily devour the soft creamy fruit that lined the sh.e.l.l, and thus made the most satisfying and enjoyable meal that had pa.s.sed my lips for many a day. Shortly afterward, the strength of the ebb current increasing so greatly that we were able to make scarcely any headway against it, our steersman headed the canoe in toward the western bank of the river, and we presently entered a narrow creek up which we pa.s.sed for a distance of about a quarter of a mile until we reached a practicable landing-place, when the canoe was secured to a stout mangrove root, and all hands stepped out of her, the steersman taking the precaution to draw my attention to the spears and bows and arrows with which his party were armed, as a hint, I suppose, of what I might expect should I be foolish enough to attempt to escape.

We pushed our way through the thick bush for a distance of about a hundred yards, and then reached a small open s.p.a.ce, where we bivouacked; a party of ten disappearing into the bush, while the rest remained to kindle a fire and, evidently, to look after me and make sure that I did not give them the slip. At length, after the lapse of about half an hour, the party who had vanished into the bush returned, singly or by two's and three's, some bringing in a monkey or two, others a few brace of parrots, one man a big lizard like an iguana, another a fine deer, until each of the ten had contributed something to the common larder, when the fire was made up, a plentiful supply of food cooked, and all hands set to with a will, each apparently animated by a determination to show all the others how much solid food he was capable of putting out of sight at a sitting. They very civilly offered me a choice of their dainties, and I accepted a tolerably substantial venison steak, broiled over the fire by being suspended close over the glowing embers upon the end of a stick. Off this I contrived to make a fairly hearty meal, after which, following the example of the others, I stretched myself out in the long gra.s.s under the shadow of a big bush, and quickly fell into a deep sleep.

I was aroused from my slumbers, some hours later, by my savage companions, who intimated to me, by signs, that the moment had arrived for us to take our departure, and we accordingly wended our way back to the canoe, taking our surplus stock of food with us, and, embarking, soon found ourselves once more afloat on the placid bosom of the broad river, the downward and opposing current of which had by this time greatly slackened under the influence of the flood tide which was evidently making fast.

Keeping well out toward the centre of the stream, and paddling steadily, we now made rapid progress in a northerly direction, the river gradually widening and shoaling as we went, until, by the time of sunset, we found ourselves progressing up a comparatively narrow deep-water channel with wide expanses of shallow water on either side of us, dotted here and there with dry patches of mud or sand upon which crocodiles lay basking, in some cases in groups of as many as six or eight together, while occasionally the great head of a hippopotamus appeared for a moment, only to vanish again with a little eddying swirl of the mud-charged water as the creature dived.

While the sun still hovered a degree or two above the tree-tops on the western bank of the stream, the moon, now nearly full, sailed gloriously into view above the clumps of vegetation that shrouded the eastern bank; and the gradual transition from the ruddy, golden light of the dying sun to the flooding silver of the brilliant moon, with the ever-changing effects that accompanied the transition, presented a spectacle of enchanting beauty such as I had never up to that time beheld, even at sea. But, beyond a low muttered word or two and a grunt, apparently expressive of deep satisfaction at the appearance of the unclouded moon, the savages took no notice of the magical loveliness of the scene; and while I sat entranced and practically oblivious of everything else, they merely paddled the harder, conversing in low tones among themselves. Of course I did not understand a single word of what was said, yet, so much did I gather from the glances that they flung about them, and the emphasis and accent of their speech, that I shrewdly suspected them of antic.i.p.ating the possibility of attack from the sh.o.r.e.

This suspicion was strengthened, a little later on, by the fact that as we approached a certain bend in the river our timoneer edged the canoe in toward the eastern bank, until we were completely plunged in the deep shadow of the vegetation that grew right down to the water's edge, as though he were desirous of escaping observation; at least there was no other reason that I could think of for such a manoeuvre, for by this time the current was running up quite strongly, and under ordinary circ.u.mstances it would have been to our advantage to have remained in mid-channel, where the full strength of it would be felt. But if this was his object he was only partially successful; for we presently arrived abreast of a bay, or it may have been the wide entrance of a creek, many of which branched off the main stream on either hand, where the forest receded so far that, for the distance of fully half a mile, we were compelled to traverse a s.p.a.ce of water completely flooded by the brilliant rays of the moon, and before we had accomplished half the pa.s.sage a quick e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of mingled annoyance and dismay from the steersman caused me to glance toward the western bank, from an opening in which half-a-dozen canoes were darting out with the evident determination to intercept us if possible. Fortunately for us, however, we had already pa.s.sed the spot from which the pursuing canoes were emerging, this spot now bearing well upon our port quarter; but, on the other hand, our pursuers would presently obtain an important advantage over us, since they would soon reach the deep channel, where the upward current was now running strongly. I feared that when they arrived in that channel they would turn the bows of their craft up-stream and avail themselves of the advantage afforded by the strong current to endeavour to pa.s.s ahead of us and cut off our retreat; but in the eagerness of their pursuit they seemed to lose sight of this advantage, for they continued to head straight for us, while we, impelled by the full strength of our thirty paddles, now plied with desperate energy by our freely perspiring crew, gradually drew out and threw our pursuers still further on our quarter. Yet they were steadily nearing us, and I did not see how we could sc.r.a.pe clear without something in the nature of a fight.

All this time we were heading straight for a low, heavily timbered point which marked another turn in the course of the stream, and I could see that our people were straining every nerve to get round this point before being overtaken. At length, with a mighty stirring up of the mud by our deep-plunging paddles in the shallow water, we shaved close round this point and almost immediately afterwards darted into a narrow creek so completely overgrown with vegetation that the boughs of the mangroves and other trees united over our heads, forming a sort of tunnel, the interior of which was so opaquely dark that it was scarcely possible to see one's hand before one's face. Yet our helmsman seemed to know the place perfectly, for he stood boldly on, urging the crew to continue their exertions. At length, after we had traversed a full hundred yards or more of the creek, we sighted a spot ahead where, doubtless in consequence of a wind-fall, or some similar phenomenon, the dense bush had been levelled, leaving room for a patch of clear moonlight, some ten yards in circ.u.mference, to fall full upon the channel of the creek, revealing every object, even the smallest, within its boundary with a clearness and distinctness that was positively startling. Arrived here, the canoe was sheered in alongside a spot where the mangroves grew thickly, and some twenty of our crew, laying in their paddles, hastily seized their bows and arrows and, springing ash.o.r.e, swiftly vanished into the adjacent deep shadow, while the canoe, with the remainder of us on board, pushed across the patch of moonlight into the darkness beyond, where she was forced beneath an overhanging ma.s.s of foliage, in such a manner as to lie perfectly concealed.

Hardly had this been accomplished when we heard from the river the exclamations of our pursuers, startled at our sudden and, at first, inexplicable disappearance. But it did not long remain inexplicable; some sharp eye soon detected the entrance of the creek and suspected that we were concealed therein, for, after a few minutes spent in animated discussion by the occupants, the pursuing canoes were heard cautiously approaching. It was evident that their knowledge of the creek was not nearly so complete as that of our own steersman, for whereas we had contrived, despite the pitchy darkness, to navigate the crooked channel without running foul of anything, we could hear the continual swishing of foliage and the b.u.mping of the canoes as they encountered the overhanging branches or collided with the mangrove roots on one side or the other. We were thus able to follow the progress of their approach with the utmost precision, and the moment that the leading canoe--a craft manned by some twenty most villainous-looking savages--emerged from the darkness into the patch of brilliant moonlight, she was greeted with a murderous discharge of arrows at short range which put the greater part of her crew _hors de combat_. She was closely followed by another canoe of about the same size, the occupants of which were treated to a similarly warm reception. A warning shout from one of the survivors of this second discharge was raised in time to save those behind from pushing forward to meet a similar fate, and now the quick tw.a.n.ging of bowstrings and loud shouts from those ash.o.r.e and afloat told that a fierce battle was raging. But our people, from the advantage of their position, had very much the best of it, and at length the pursuers were beaten off and compelled to retreat precipitately, with the loss of nearly two-thirds of their number and two canoes, which, with their wounded occupants, were left in our hands, while our party escaped absolutely unscathed. The wounded of the enemy, numbering eleven, would have met with but short shrift at the hands of their captors, but for the interposition of the man whom I have termed our timoneer, who seemed to be a petty chief. This individual carefully examined his prisoners and found that three of them were so severely wounded as to afford little hope of their recovery; these three he therefore despatched with the most callous sang-froid by driving his broad-bladed spear into their throats, after which they were flung over the side; the remaining eight, who appeared to be only temporarily disabled, were trussed up, hand and foot, with thin, tough, pliant creeper, cut from the adjacent jungle, and bestowed, without much consideration for their comfort, in the bottom of our canoe. The captured canoes were then sunk by means of a few large stones placed in them to take them down, and then heeled until the water flowed in over their gunwales, when they quickly vanished beneath the turbid, foetid waters of the creek. This done, our people made preparations for the continuation of their journey.

But our leader, whose knowledge of the river seemed intimate enough to ent.i.tle him to a certificate as branch pilot, had no inclination to incur the risk of leaving the creek again at the point where we had entered it, and thus very possibly falling into a cleverly arranged ambuscade. On the contrary, he proceeded to push boldly on up the creek for a distance of several miles, much to my astonishment, for the waterway generally was so narrow as scarcely to afford room for two canoes to pa.s.s abreast, and I was momentarily expecting that this creek, like so many others of the African rivers, would abruptly end in a mud- bank overgrown with mangroves. Contrary to my antic.i.p.ations, however, when a dozen times or more the banks closed in upon us in such a manner as to suggest that our further progress was about to be stayed, we would suddenly emerge into a comparatively wide channel, and push merrily on for a mile or more ere we encountered our next difficulty. In this manner we must have traversed a distance of nearly twenty miles when, to my amazement, and also that of most of the canoe's crew, I think, we suddenly emerged from the tunnel-like channel that we had been navigating for something like five hours, and found ourselves once more in what was undoubtedly the main stream of the river, and so far away from the spot at which we had diverged from it that it was nowhere to be seen. The moon had by this time risen so high in the sky as to be almost directly overhead; there was therefore little or no shadow on either bank of the river to shroud us from observation, nevertheless we continued to cling closely to the eastern bank for several miles further--the tide having now turned and being against us--until at length, the current becoming too strong for us, our leader found a practicable landing-place, and all hands, except the unfortunate prisoners of war, scrambled ash.o.r.e and, hastily lighting a fire, disposed ourselves to sleep around it.

Now, it will probably be thought by many that I was submitting to my uncertain fate with far greater philosophy than wisdom; but this was by no means the case. The fact was that I had no sooner awakened to the consciousness that I was a prisoner in the hands of African savages than I made up my mind that I could not too soon effect my escape from them; for although I have just spoken of my fate as uncertain I felt that, in reality, there was very little uncertainty about it. It was so rarely that a white man fell into the hands of the negro savages that when one had the misfortune to do so they generally made the utmost of him. And that "utmost" was usually something in which prolonged and agonising torture figured largely. But it would obviously be worse than useless to attempt to escape until an opportunity occurred of at least a fair prospect of success; for to attempt and _fail_ meant the extinguishment at once of all further hope. And, up to the present, I had not had a ghost of an opportunity. My captors had taken good care of that, although they had been kind enough to leave me unbound. But now, when all hands must be feeling the effect of fatigue after several hours of strenuous labour at the paddles, and were likely to sleep soundly, it was possible that, by biding my time, I might be able to steal off to the canoe and cut the bonds of the captives who had been so callously left in it, when it would be strange indeed if, out of grat.i.tude for my release of them, they were not willing to help me to make my way back to the mouth of the river, where I should of course have to take my chance of finding a ship the master of which would be willing to receive me on board. It was not, perhaps, a very brilliant prospect, but I felt that it was at least preferable to that to which I might look forward if I remained in the company of my present owners; and accordingly when my sable companions disposed themselves to sleep, I apparently did the same, but summoned all my energies to aid me in the task of resisting the tendency toward somnolence that I felt stealing over me.

But this was not nearly so easy as I had believed it would be. If I closed my eyes for a few seconds a delicious languor seized me, my thoughts began to wander, and it was only by an almost painful effort that I succeeded in, as it were, jerking myself back to full consciousness. My intention was to remain awake until all my companions had become wrapped in slumber, and then effect my escape from them; but to my chagrin I found that while it was almost impossible for me to remain awake, my captors or owners--I scarcely knew which to consider them seemed restless, watchful, and all more or less upon the alert.

Finally, while waiting and watching for signs that they were succ.u.mbing to the influence of the drowsy G.o.d, I lost all control of myself and sank into a profound and delicious slumber.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

KING BANDA.

How long I remained steeped in that delightful and refreshing sleep I did not then know; but when at length I awoke with a violent start the embers of the fire were merely smouldering, while the snorts and snores that were emitted by the rec.u.mbent figures grouped around it seemed to indicate that the fateful moment had arrived when I might make a bid for liberty with some prospect of success. It was now very much darker than it had been when I sank into involuntary slumber, for the moon had swung so far over toward the west that at least two-thirds of the small clearing which we occupied were enveloped in deep shadow, but I observed with some dismay that my path to the canoe lay directly across the patch that was still bathed in the moon's rays. That, however, could not be helped; I could not afford to delay until the moon had sunk low enough to throw the entire clearing into shadow, for with the setting of the moon would come dawn and sunrise. I therefore determined to start upon my attempt forthwith, and, as a first step, rolled myself over, away from the fire, as though stirring in my sleep.

I was now lying with my back to the fire, and could therefore not see my companions or observe what effect, if any, my movement had had upon them; but I resolved not to fail for want of caution, so I made no further attempt to withdraw myself for the next ten minutes, but confined myself simply to a few restless movements, as though--which was actually the case--I was being worried by the swarms of minute creeping and biting things with which the spot abounded. Then, at the end of about ten minutes from my first movement, I ventured again to roll over in the same direction as before, which once more brought me with my face toward the fire. I now opened my eyes cautiously and carefully surveyed my surroundings. Not one of the black figures about the fire appeared to have altered his position in the slightest degree, so far as I could perceive, while the snoring and snorting still proceeded as vigorously as ever. I lay quite still for two or three minutes, and then, as everything seemed perfectly safe, and I had not too much time to spare, I decided that I might venture upon a somewhat more rapid mode of progression. I accordingly raised myself upon my hands and knees, and proceeded to crawl very cautiously toward the canoe, looking back from time to time to see if I were observed.

It was while I was thus engaged in looking back, while still creeping forward, that, as I put forth my right hand, it fell upon something cold and clammy that stirred beneath my touch, and the next instant I felt a sharp p.r.i.c.king sensation in the fleshy base of my right thumb. Like lightning I s.n.a.t.c.hed my hand away, threw myself backward and sprang to my feet with an involuntary cry; and as I did so I indistinctly caught sight of a small wriggling object in the long gra.s.s that seemed to vanish in a flash. It was a snake, and it had bitten me! Yes, there was no mistake about that, for as I lifted my hand to my eyes there was light enough for me to see two drops of blood, about a quarter of an inch apart upon my right hand. Upon the spur of the moment I clapped the wounded part to my mouth and sucked vigorously, spitting out such blood as I was able to draw from the wound, and this I continued to do industriously for the next hour or more. But my chance of escape was gone for that night at least; for my cry brought the whole of the savages to their feet as one man, with their weapons grasped and ready for instant use. Some half-a-dozen of them, seeing me upon my feet, sprang toward me and surrounded me with angry cries, but I did not of course make the slightest attempt to run; on the contrary, I showed them my wounded hand, and, with two fingers of my left hand extended, made a motion as of a snake striking his fangs into my flesh. The individual whom I took to be the chief of the little party thereupon led me back to the fire, and thrusting two or three dry twigs into the smouldering ashes, fanned the latter into a blaze with his breath, thus causing the twigs to ignite. Then, using these twigs as a torch, he carefully examined my wounded hand, shook his head as though to indicate that I had no chance, cast the blazing twigs to the ground, and saying a few words to his companions, lay down and again composed himself to sleep, an example at once followed by his companions. I, however, remained awake, diligently sucking my wounded hand, which soon began to swell and grow acutely painful, the throbbing pain extending all the way up my arm, right to the shoulder. The pain at length became so acute that I could sit still no longer, I therefore sprang to my feet and began to pace to and fro; but I had no sooner done so than half-a-dozen of the savages were beside me, not exactly interfering with me--for I think they understood pretty clearly what was the matter with me--but making it perfectly plain that they were watching me, and that only a certain amount of freedom would be permitted me. Whether they really understood that I was actually attempting to effect my escape when the snake bit me, I was never able to determine.

At length the dawn arrived, day broke, the sun rose, and a few of the savages, taking their bows and arrows, went off into the bush to forage, as I surmised; and a little later they returned, one after the other, each bringing some contribution to the common larder, while others busied themselves in collecting fresh wood and rebuilding the fire.

While they were thus engaged, one of the party, who happened to pa.s.s near the spot where I had been bitten, suddenly uttered a most dreadful yell, grasped his left foot, looked at it a moment, and then began with furious haste to search about in the long gra.s.s, which he pushed apart with the blade of his spear. A few seconds later he fell to stabbing the ground, as it seemed, savagely, finally stooping down and picking up the still writhing halves of a snake that had been cut clean in two by a blow of his spear. It was not at all a formidable-looking creature, being not more than eighteen inches long and perhaps three inches girth about the thickest part of its body. But it was an ugly, repulsive- looking brute, its head being heart-shaped, and its body almost the same thickness for the greater part of its length, terminating in a short, blunt tail. Its ground colour was a dirty grey, upon which occurred large, irregular blotches or markings of dull black with a few splashes of brilliant red here and there. The fellow who had fallen upon it with such ferocity, and who had evidently been bitten by it, brought the two writhing fragments and flung them into the fire, in the midst of which they writhed still more horribly. Then seizing a good, stout, brightly- glowing brand from the fire, he coolly sat down and applied the almost white-hot end to the wound, which was in his left instep. I do not think I ever saw anything more heroic than this act of the savage, for though the flesh hissed and smoked and gave forth a most horrible odour of burnt flesh, the man never winced, but calmly and deliberately cauterised the bite with as much care and thoroughness as though he had been operating upon somebody else. But that he was not insensible to his self-inflicted torture was very evident from the fact that in a few seconds he was literally drenched with the perspiration that started from every pore of his body.

While this was happening, the leader of the party had hurriedly raked from the fire the scorched and blistered half of the snake to which the head was attached, and, seizing it by the neck, squeezed it until the jaws were forced open, revealing two long, slender, needle-like fangs projecting from the upper jaw. Holding this horrible object between the finger and thumb of his right hand, he approached me, and, before I had the least idea of what he intended to do, seized my wounded hand and approached the head of the still living reptile so closely to it that it was easily to be seen that the two tiny punctures in my flesh were exactly the same distance apart as the snake's fangs, the inference being that this was the identical reptile that had bitten me. Having satisfied himself of this, the man flung the loathsome object back into the heart of the fire, where it was soon consumed.

I was by this time suffering the most dreadful agony, my hand and arm were so terribly swollen that they had almost lost all semblance to any portion of the human anatomy, while the two punctures made by the poison fangs were puffed up, almost to bursting, and encircled by two rings of livid grey colour. The throbbing of the limb, as the blood forced itself through the congested pa.s.sages, can only be compared to the pulsing of a stream of fire, and I am certain that, had I been within reach of qualified surgical a.s.sistance at the moment, I should have insisted upon having the limb removed, as I was convinced that the pain of amputation would have been less acute than that from which I was suffering. Needless to say, I had no appet.i.te for food when it was offered me a little while afterward; but I felt thirsty enough to drink the river dry, and quaffed several cocoa-nuts with an ecstasy of delight that almost caused me to forget my pain--for the moment.

Breakfast over, the word was given to re-embark, and we all wended our way back to the canoe. I do not know whether it was deliberate intention, or merely the result of accident, but I could not help noticing that during the short journey from our camping-place to the spot where the canoe had been left, there were always three or four savages quite close to me, who appeared to be keeping a very careful watch upon my movements, as though they more than half suspected me of a desire to give them the slip; but I was by this time suffering such excruciating agony that, for the time being at least, all thoughts of escape were completely banished from my mind. I had become quite convinced that the bite was going to prove fatal, and my only subject of speculation was how many more hours of torture I was doomed to endure before merciful death would come to my relief. But after we had been afloat for about half an hour, and were once more speeding up the river as fast as the st.u.r.dy arms of the paddlers could urge us, I suddenly became violently sick, the paroxysm lasting for nearly ten minutes; and when I had in some degree recovered from the exhaustion attendant upon this attack, I was equally surprised and delighted to find that the pain and throbbing in my arm were distinctly less acute; and from that moment, as much to the astonishment of the savages as of myself, my symptoms rapidly improved, until by evening I was so far free from pain as to be able to sleep for several hours, although the swelling did not entirely subside until nearly forty-eight hours later. But meanwhile my fellow-sufferer, the savage who had also been bitten, and who had resorted to the heroic method of cauterising his wound, had been all day steadily developing symptoms similar to my own before the curative attack of sickness, his foot and leg, right up to the hip, had swollen to an enormous size and become so stiff that when the moment arrived for us to disembark for the night he was unable to move, and begged most piteously--as I interpreted the tones of his voice and his actions--to be left in the canoe all night, to fight out the battle between life and death alone and undisturbed.

The next morning, when we went down to the canoe, the poor fellow was not only dead, but his whole body was swollen almost out of human semblance, presenting in that and other respects a most shocking and revolting spectacle. We took the corpse with us until we had reached the main channel of the river, and there flung it overboard. We had scarcely left it fifty fathoms astern when there arose a sudden violent commotion in the water about it, and a second or two later it disappeared from view, dragged down by the voracious crocodiles with which the river swarmed.

I was by this time quite free from pain, and apart from a feeling of extreme debility, which I had endured for some hours on the previous day, I was not much the worse for the alarming experience that I had undergone. The death of the savage who had been bitten after me, and undoubtedly by the same reptile, conclusively proved how very narrow had been my escape from a similar fate; and I naturally fell to wondering how it was that he had succ.u.mbed to his injury while I had recovered from mine. For it seemed to me at the moment that the remedial measure which he had adopted ought, from its very severe and drastic character, to have proved much more efficacious than my own; whereas the opposite was the case. But upon further reflection I came to the conclusion that while I had proceeded to suck the poison from the wound _at once_, or within a second or two of its infliction, the savage had wasted at least a minute in pursuing and slaying his enemy before cauterising his wound, and that this minute of delay, accompanied as it was by somewhat violent action on the part of the injured man, had sufficed for the poison to obtain a strong enough hold upon his system to produce fatal results.

Whether or not this is the correct explanation I must leave to those who are better qualified than myself to judge.

Day after day we steadily pursued our course up the river, which, for the most part, retained the same dreary, monotonous aspect of low, bush- clad, mangrove-lined banks, and practically the same width, save where, at occasional intervals, it widened out and became dotted with islands, some of considerable size. At length we arrived at a point where the land on the western bank rose into a range of hills some eight or nine hundred feet high, densely clothed with vegetation to their summits.

This range of hills extended northward for a distance of about thirty miles before it once more sank into the plain; but before it sank completely out of sight astern more high land was sighted ahead, and two days later we found ourselves navigating among some very picturesque scenery, with high land on both sides of us, some of the peaks being twelve to fourteen hundred feet high. Late in the evening of the second day after entering upon this picturesque stretch of the river we arrived at a point where the stream forked into two of apparently equal width and depth, one branch striking away to the eastward, while the other continued its northerly course. Here my savage companions proceeded with the utmost caution, frequently landing and sending one or two of the party away to reconnoitre, and otherwise behaving as though they feared attack; but after a slow and anxious progress of some twenty hours' duration they seemed to consider the danger as past, and once more pressed boldly forward.

By this time I had completely recovered, not only from the effects of the snake-bite--at which my companions seemed greatly astonished--but also from the hardship and privation which I had experienced during the latter part of my voyage aboard _La Mouette_, and had begun to think very seriously of how I was to effect my escape from those who held me captive. Not that I was ill-treated by them, far from it; I enjoyed the same fare as themselves, and was never asked to share their labours, and that, I take it, was as much good treatment as I could reasonably expect under the circ.u.mstances. But I knew that they were not hampering themselves by taking me and their other prisoners this long journey up the river--much of the paddling being done against the stream--merely for the pleasure of enjoying our society. My intuition a.s.sured me that their action had a more sinister motive than this, and in any case I had no desire to penetrate the interior of equatorial Africa; therefore so soon as I felt that my health and strength were sufficiently restored to allow of my attempting the long and perilous journey back to the sea alone, I began to consider the question of escape. But the longer I thought of it the less became my hope of success; for I very soon discovered that under no circ.u.mstances whatever were my custodians disposed to allow me to stray a yard out of their sight. Without imposing any actual restraint upon me, they invariably so contrived that, if I made the slightest attempt to withdraw myself from them, three or four of the most active of the party, always well armed, had occasion to go in precisely the same direction as myself. That, however, was not my only difficulty; for, a.s.suming for a moment the possibility of my being able to give the savages the slip, how was I, a white man, alone, unarmed, and with no means of obtaining food, to make my way down more than two hundred miles of river, flowing through a country every inhabitant of which would undoubtedly be an enemy, whose delight it would be to hunt me to death? I told myself that if I could obtain a small, light, handy canoe and weapons, even though they should but consist of a bow and arrows, the situation would not be altogether hopeless--for I possessed a very fair share of pluck and resource; but I felt that before I could effect my escape from my watchful custodians, and obtain these necessities, I might find myself in so dire a strait as to render them and all else valueless to me. Yet I would not suffer myself to feel discouraged, for I recognised that to abandon hope was to virtually surrender myself tamely to the worst that fate might have in store for me, and this was by no means my disposition; I therefore continued to keep my eyes wide open for an opportunity.

But, watch as I might, the opportunity never presented itself, nor, thanks to the watchfulness of my companions, could I make one; so the time dragged on until, after a river voyage of more than three weeks, we one evening, about two hours before sunset, entered a creek important enough to suggest the idea that it might possibly be a small tributary of the main river. After paddling up it for a distance of about two miles we suddenly hove in sight of a native town of considerable size built upon the north bank of the creek, upon an area of ground that had been completely cleared of all undergrowth, but was well shaded by the larger trees which had been allowed to stand. That the town was of some importance, as well as of considerable size, I surmised from the fact that, with a few exceptions, the habitations, instead of being of the usual circular, bee-hive shape common to most native African towns, were of comparatively s.p.a.cious dimensions and substantial construction, being for the most part quadrangular in plan, with thick walls built of substantial wattles, interwoven about stout poles sunk well into the ground and solidly plastered with clay which, having dried and hardened in the sun, had become quite weather-tight, protected as they were from the tropical rains by a thick thatch of palm leaves, with which also their steep sloping roofs were covered. The average size of these huts was about twenty feet long by twelve feet wide and eight feet high to the eaves; but there were others--about fifty of them altogether-- surrounded by and cut off from the rest by a high and stout palisade-- the points of the palisades being sharpened, in order, as I took it, to render the fence unclimbable--which were not only considerably larger and more substantial in point of construction, but which, as I afterward had opportunity to observe, evidenced some rude attempt at decoration in the form of grotesquely carved finials affixed to the roofs. This part of the town, situated in its centre, and covering, perhaps, a s.p.a.ce of forty acres, was, I afterwards learned, the habitation of King Banda, his Court, the princ.i.p.al officers of his army and household, and the priests, whose temple, or fetish-house, stood on the opposite side of the square to that occupied by the "palace" of the king.

Our appearance did not at first attract very much attention, or create any very great amount of excitement; but when we arrived within hail of the beach in front of the town--upon which were hauled up some three to four hundred canoes of various sizes--our skipper suddenly sprang to his feet and, placing his hands trumpet-wise to his mouth, began, in a curious, high-pitched voice, to shout a somewhat lengthy communication.

Before it was half finished there was a very distinct commotion upon the beach; half the naked children, who had been playing in the water, were racing up to the town as fast as their legs would carry them, shouting as they went, while from every hut the inhabitants came pouring out, like ants from a disturbed nest, and began to hurry down to the beach.

By the time that we arrived there must have been at least two thousand people a.s.sembled to meet us, and others were hurrying down in crowds.

I soon found that I was the cause of all the commotion, for no sooner did I step out of the canoe than, although my travelling companions formed themselves into a cordon round me, and the headman or chief who had me in charge strove by virtue of his authority to prevent such a happening, there occurred a wild rush on the part of the crowd to get at least a sight of me, while those who could get near enough to me insisted upon touching my skin, apparently with the object of satisfying themselves as to the genuineness of its colour; and from their eagerness and their exclamations of astonishment I came to the conclusion that although they might have heard of, they had never actually seen a white man before, a conclusion which I afterwards found to be correct.

Using the b.u.t.ts, and occasionally the points, of their spears freely in order to force a pa.s.sage through the steadily growing crowd, my escort slowly made their way toward that part of the town which was enclosed by the palisade; and, as they did so, I studied the faces of those who thronged about me, with the object of forming some idea, if I could, of the fate that I might expect at their hands.

I must confess that the results of my inspection were by no means rea.s.suring. The first fact to impress itself upon me was that these people among whom I now found myself were of an entirely different race from the negro, properly so-called--the woolly-pated, high cheek-boned, ebony-skinned individual with snub nose and thick lips usually met with aboard a slaver. To start with, their colour was much lighter, being a clear brown of varying degrees of depth, from that of the mulatto to a tint not many shades deeper than that of the average Spaniard. But this difference, marked though it was, was not so great as that between their cast of features and that of the negro; the features of these people were, for the most part, clean cut, shapely, and in many cases actually handsome, their noses especially being exceedingly well formed. Then their head covering was hair, not wool, that of the men being worn close-cropped, while the women allowed theirs to grow at will and wore it flowing freely over the back and shoulders, the locks in many cases reaching considerably below the waist. It was invariably curly, that of the men growing in close, tiny ringlets cl.u.s.tering thickly all over the head, while that of the women, because it was worn longer, I suppose, took the form of long graceful curls. In colour it was a rich glossy black. They were certainly an exceptionally fine race of people, the men being lithe, clean-limbed, muscular fellows, every one of them apparently in the pink of condition, while the faces and figures of the women, especially the younger ones, would have excited the envy of many an English belle. But there was a something, very difficult to define, in the expression of these people that I did not at all like, a hardness about the mouth, and a cruel glint in the eyes--especially of the men-- which looked at me in a manner that suggested all sorts of unpleasant possibilities, and excited within me a distinct longing to be almost anywhere rather than where I was.

The party who had brought me to this remote spot were of an entirely different race from those among whom I now found myself, and the fact that we were making our way toward what was obviously the aristocratic part of the town, coupled with the expressive conversation carried on by the leader of my custodians with three or four individuals who had joined us, led me to surmise--although of course I did not understand a word of what was said--that I had been brought up the river as a peace- offering or something of that sort, which conclusion was again the reverse of rea.s.suring.

As we drew near to the exceedingly narrow gate in the palisade, which had been thrown open to admit us--and which, I presently saw, was strongly guarded by a number of warriors armed with heavy, broad-bladed spears, murderous-looking swords, and small round shields, or targets, of wood covered with what looked like crocodile hide--I became sensible of a horrible charnel-house smell; but it was not until we had pa.s.sed through the gate, and were inside the palisaded enclosure, that I discovered from whence it emanated. Then, observing the direction of the wind which wafted this dreadful odour to my nostrils, I looked that way and presently noticed a large dead tree standing in the middle of the square that formed the centre of this part of the town. It was the immense number of birds that wheeled and screamed about this tree that first caused me to regard it with particular attention, but even then I could not, for the moment, see anything to account for either the birds or the odour. But a minute or two later, as we drew nearer the tree, the stench meanwhile becoming almost overpoweringly strong, I detected fastened to the trunk of the tree, in a manner that was not at first apparent, nine human corpses, some of them so far advanced in decomposition that even the birds would not approach them! Then I understood that I saw before me that detestable thing of which I had often heard as the most prominent object in the typical African native town or village, the "crucifixion tree," upon which the petty despot who rules over that particular community is wont summarily to put to a cruel and lingering death such of his subjects as may be unfortunate enough to offend him! In some cases, I believe, the monarch is content to cause his victims to be securely lashed to the crucifixion tree by stout lianas, there to perish slowly of hunger and thirst; but King Banda, the potentate whose will was law in this particular town, had carried his cruelty to its utmost limit by adopting the time-honoured method of nailing his victims to the tree with spike nails driven through the hands and feet into the tough timber.

The enormous crowd who had followed us up from the beach were not permitted to enter the palisaded enclosure, which was strictly taboo to the common herd; our party therefore now consisted solely of those who had brought me up the river, four individuals who had joined us outside the gate--and whom I took to be officials of some sort--and my unworthy self; and, for my own part, I would very willingly have waived the distinction of forming one of the party. Marching up to what I conjectured to be the king's house--from the fact that it was not only by far the largest dwelling in the enclosure, but was also distinguished by an exclusive embellishment in the form of a row of a dozen poles, each surmounted by a human skull, planted upright in the ground before it--we halted at a distance of some twenty paces from the entrance, with our backs turned toward the crucifixion tree, the leafless branches of which overshadowed us, and waited.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, pa.s.sed, and the sun was within a hand's- breadth of the horizon when a man emerged from the "palace," bearing a ma.s.sive chair of ebony, quaintly-carved, and draped with a magnificent leopard's skin, which he placed immediately before the open door, midway between the house and ourselves, and departed. A moment later another man appeared--this time from the fetish-house on the opposite side of the square--also with a chair, decorated with most gruesome--looking carvings, which he placed beside the first. Then a tall and enormously stout man, clad in a leopard-skin _moucha_, and with a handsome leopard- skin cloak on his shoulders, came forth from the palace, leaning upon the shoulders of two other men, and advanced toward the chair which had first been placed in position, into which he subsided heavily, casting a strongly disapproving glance at the second chair as he did so. Then there arose a sudden tramping of bare feet upon the dry earth, and from somewhere in the rear of the palace there swung into view a hundred picked warriors, armed like those who had mounted guard at the palisade gate, who formed up behind and on each side of the chairs with very commendable military precision. Simultaneously with the appearance of the guards--for such they were--there emerged from the fetish-house a man who appeared to be incredibly old, for his hair and beard were as white as snow, and his once stalwart form was now bowed and wizened with the pa.s.sage of, as it seemed to me, hundreds of years. Yet, although in appearance a very Methuselah in age, this individual had a pair of piercing black eyes that glowed and sparkled with all the fire and pa.s.sion of early manhood, and, bowed as he was, and decrepit as he appeared to be, he tottered across the intervening s.p.a.ce with extraordinary agility, and seated himself in the second chair. Thus I found myself in the presence of the two most powerful men in the district, namely, King Banda and Mafuta, the chief witch-doctor.

The contrast between these two men was most remarkable, for whereas Mafuta appeared to be the living embodiment of extreme age, King Banda could scarcely have been forty; and while Mafuta was an image of decrepitude, Banda, despite his excessive corpulence, appeared to be-- what in fact he was--a man of immense physical strength. Yet, notwithstanding this marked dissimilarity in their appearance, there was one point of strong resemblance between them: the expression of their faces, and particularly of their eyes, was ineffably cruel.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

KING BANDA'S DAUGHTER.

For the s.p.a.ce of nearly a minute there now prevailed an intense silence while King Banda sat glowering at our party, and especially at me, in a manner that caused cold chills to run down my back, as I reflected that this was the man who was responsible for the gruesome fruit borne by the tree, the branches of which overshadowed us, and that if he should by any chance take the fancy into his head to further decorate that tree by nailing a white man to it, there was n.o.body but myself within some hundreds of miles who would dream of saying him nay; and I somehow had a conviction that my disapproval of such a course would not very strongly influence him.

At length, when the prolonged silence was beginning distinctly to get upon our nerves, the king spoke to the headman of our party, addressing to him a few curt words in a decidedly ungracious tone of voice; whereupon the headman, taking the precaution first to conciliate his Majesty by prostrating himself and rubbing his nose in the dust in token of abject submission, rose to his feet and proceeded to spin a long yarn, of which I was evidently the subject, since he repeatedly pointed to me. He must have included in his narrative the incident of the snake-bite, for at one point he seized my right hand and, turning the palm upward, pointed out the spot where the two tiny punctures of the poison fangs were still faintly visible. It appeared as if this part of his story was received with grave suspicion by both Banda and Mafuta, for I was led forward in order that each in turn might examine the marks; and after this had been done, several of the savages who had been present at the time were invited to give what I took to be corroborative testimony. When at length the headman had told his story, Banda issued a brief order to his guards, two of whom at once advanced toward me and laid their hands upon my shoulders as though to lead me away. But, whatever the order may have been, Mafuta evidently objected to it, for no sooner had it been spoken than he sprang to his feet, and with quite marvellous agility, hurried to me and seized me by the left arm, saying in an angry voice something to the guards that I interpreted as an order to release their hold upon me. But Banda promptly intervened, reiterating his order to his guards; whereupon there ensued between the two great men a most unseemly altercation, the hubbub of which had the effect of bringing the entire royal household to the door of the palace, when, catching sight of me, they unceremoniously swarmed out and crowded round me with every expression of the most unbounded astonishment, particularly on the part of the women, who apparently could not persuade themselves that the colour of my skin and hair were real, for they not only took my skin between their fingers, but gently pinched it. When they found that my shoulders and other parts of my body which had been protected from the sun were quite white, whereas the exposed parts were by this time quite as dark as their own skins, there was no limit to their amazement and delight. I thought that the women-folk seemed rather well disposed toward me, I therefore did the best I could to strengthen this feeling by smiling at them and speaking to them in a gentle tone of voice, with the result that before another five minutes had pa.s.sed we were all gabbling and laughing together like so many children, although neither side understood a word of what was said by the other. In the midst of it all Mafuta sprang from his chair in a towering rage, and, addressing a few remarks to the king which seemed to make the latter feel rather uncomfortable, took himself off to his fetish-house, within which he vanished. Then the king shouted something to his women-folk which caused them to scuttle back into the palace like so many rabbits; and the next moment the two guards who had me in charge marched me off to an empty hut behind the palace--which was, luckily, to windward of the crucifixion tree, the odour from which therefore did not reach as far as my lodging--and, having signed to me to enter, mounted guard, one on each side of the door.

My prison--if such it was--was a tolerably s.p.a.cious affair, measuring about twenty feet long by fifteen feet wide, and it was absolutely empty; also, there being no windows to the building, and the light entering only by the open door, the obscurity, on entering, seemed profound, although a few minutes sufficed to enable one's eyes to grow accustomed to it, when, at least during daylight, it was possible to see clearly enough for all practical purposes.