Dick Sands, the Boy Captain Part 40

[Ill.u.s.tration: The insufferable heat had driven all the residents within the depot indoors.]

huts; calaos with their tuneful song; grey parrots, with bright red tails, called roufs by the Manyuema, who apply the same name to their reigning chiefs; and insect-eating drongos, like grey linnets with large red beaks. Hundreds of b.u.t.terflies flitted about, especially in the neighbourhood of the brooks; but these were more to the taste of Cousin Benedict than of little Jack; over and over again the child expressed his regret that he could not see over the walls, and more than ever he seemed to miss his friend d.i.c.k, who had taught him to climb a mast, and who he was sure would have fine fun with him in the branches of the trees, which were growing sometimes to the height of a hundred feet.

So long as the supply of insects did not fail, Benedict would have been contented to stay on without a murmur in his present quarters. True, without his gla.s.ses he worked at a disadvantage; but he had had the good fortune to discover a minute bee that forms its cells in the holes of worm-eaten wood, and a "sphex" that practises the craft of the cuckoo, and deposits its eggs in an abode not prepared by itself. Mosquitos abounded in swarms, and the worthy naturalist was so covered by their stings as to be hardly recognizable; but when Mrs. Weldon remonstrated with him for exposing himself so unnecessarily, he merely scratched the irritated places on his skin, and said-

"It is their instinct, you know; it is their instinct."

On the 17th of June an adventure happened to him which was attended with unexpected consequences. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning. The insufferable heat had driven all the residents within the depot indoors, and not a native was to be seen in the streets of Kazonnde. Mrs. Weldon was dozing; Jack was fast asleep. Benedict himself, sorely against his will, for he heard the hum of many an insect in the sunshine, had been driven to the seclusion of his cabin, and was falling into an involuntary siesta.

Suddenly a buzz was heard, an insect's wing vibrating some fifteen thousand beats a second!

"A hexapod!" cried Benedict, sitting up.

Short-sighted though he was, his hearing was acute, and his perception made him thoroughly convinced that he was in proximity to some giant specimen of its kind. Without moving from his seat he did his utmost to ascertain what it was; he was determined not to flinch from the sharpest of stings if only he could get the chance of capturing it. Presently he made out a large black speck flitting about in the few rays of daylight that were allowed to penetrate the hut. With bated breath he waited in eager expectation. The insect, after long hovering above him, finally settled on his head. A smile of satisfaction played about his lips as he felt it crawling lightly through his hair. Equally fearful of missing or injuring it, he restrained his first impulse to grasp it in his hand.

"I will wait a minute," he thought; "perhaps it may creep down my nose; by squinting a little perhaps I shall be able to see it."

For some moments hope alternated with fear. There sat Benedict with what he persuaded himself was some new African hexapod perched upon his head, and agitated by doubts as to the direction in which it would move. Instead of travelling in the way he reckoned along his nose, might it not crawl behind his ears or down his neck, or, worse than all, resume its flight in the air?

Fortune seemed inclined to favour him. After threading the entanglement of the naturalist's hair the insect was felt to be descending his forehead. With a fort.i.tude not unworthy of the Spartan who suffered his breast to be gnawed by a fox, nor of the Roman hero who plunged his hand into the red-hot coals, Benedict endured the tickling of the six small feet, and made not a motion that might frighten the creature into taking wing. After making repeated circuits of his forehead, it pa.s.sed just between his eyebrows; there was a moment of deep suspense lest it should once more go upwards; but it soon began to move again; neither to the right nor to the left did it turn, but kept straight on over the furrows made by the constant rubbing of the spectacles, right along the arch of the cartilage till it

[Ill.u.s.tration: Before long the old black speck was again flitting just above his head. Page 432.]

reached the extreme tip of the nose. Like a couple of movable lenses, Benedict's two eyes steadily turned themselves inwards till they were directed to the proper point.

"Good!" he whispered to himself.

He was exulting at the discovery that what he had been waiting for so patiently was a rare specimen of the tribe of the Cicindelidae, peculiar to the districts of Southern Africa.

"A tuberous manticora!" he exclaimed.

The insect began to move again, and as it crawled down to the entrance of the nostrils the tickling sensation became too much for endurance, and Benedict sneezed. He made a sudden clutch, but of course he only caught his own nose. His vexation was very great, but he did not lose his composure; he knew that the manticora rarely flies very high, and that more frequently than not it simply crawls. Accordingly he groped about a long time on his hands and knees, and at last he found it basking in a ray of sunshine within a foot of him. His resolution was soon taken. He would not run the risk of crushing it by trying to catch it, but would make his observations on it as it crawled; and so with his nose close to the ground, like a dog upon the scent, he followed it on all fours, admiring it and examining it as it moved. Regardless of the heat he not only left the doorway of his hut, but continued creeping along till he reached the enclosing palisade.

At the foot of the fence the manticora, according to the habits of its kind, began to seek a subterranean retreat, and coming to the opening of a mole-track entered it at once. Benedict quite thought he had now lost sight of his prize altogether, but his surprise was very great when he found that the aperture was at least two feet wide, and that it led into a gallery which would admit his whole body. His momentary feeling of astonishment, however, gave way to his eagerness to follow up the hexapod, and he continued burrowing like a ferret.

Without knowing it, he actually pa.s.sed under the palisading, and was now beyond it;-the mole-track, in fact, was a communication that had been made between the interior and exterior of the enclosure. Benedict had obtained his freedom, but so far from caring in the least for his liberty he continued totally absorbed in the pursuit upon which he had started. He watched with unflagging vigilance, and it was only when the hexapod expanded its wings as if for flight that he prepared to imprison it in the hollow of his hand.

All at once, however, he was taken by surprise; a whizz and a whirr and the prize was gone!

Disappointed rather than despairing, Benedict raised himself up, and looked about him. Before long the old black speck was again flitting just above his head. There was every reason to hope that it would ultimately settle once more upon the ground, but on this side of the palisade there was a large forest a little way to the north, and if the manticora were to get into its ma.s.s of foliage all hope of keeping it in view would be lost, and there would be an end of the proud expectation of storing it in the tin box, to be preserved among the rest of the entomological wonders.

After a while the insect descended to the earth; it did not rest at all, nor crawl as it had done previously, but made its advance by a series of rapid hops. This made the chase for the near-sighted naturalist a matter of great difficulty; he put his face as close to the ground as possible, and kept starting off and stopping and starting off again with his arms extended like a swimming frog, continually making frantic clutches to find as continually that his grasp had been eluded.

After running till he was out of breath, and scratching his hands against the brushwood and the foliage till they bled, he had the mortification of feeling the insect dash past his ear with what might be a defiant buzz, and finding that it was out of sight for ever.

"Ungrateful hexapod!" he cried in dismay, "I intended to honour you with the best place in my collection."

He knew not what to do, and could not reconcile himself to the loss; he reproached himself for not having secured the manticora at the first; he gazed at the forest till he

[Ill.u.s.tration: For that day at least Cousin Benedict had lost his chance of being the happiest of entomologists. Page 435.]

persuaded himself he could see the coveted insect in the distance, and, seized with a frantic impulse, exclaimed,-

"I will have you yet!"

He did not even yet realize the fact that he had gained his liberty, but heedless of everything except his own burning disappointment, and at the risk of being attacked by natives or beset by wild beasts, he was just on the very point of dashing into the heart of the wood when suddenly a giant form confronted him, as suddenly a giant hand seized him by the nape of his neck, and, lifting him up, carried him off with apparently as little exertion as he could himself have carried off his hexapod!

For that day at least Cousin Benedict had lost his chance of being the happiest of entomologists.

CHAPTER XVI.

A MAGICIAN.

On finding that Cousin Benedict did not return to his quarters at the proper hour, Mrs. Weldon began to feel uneasy. She could not imagine what had become of him; his tin box with its contents were safe in his hut, and even if a chance of escape had been offered him, she knew that nothing would have induced him voluntarily to abandon his treasures. She enlisted the services of Halima, and spent the remainder of the day in searching for him, until at last she felt herself driven to the conviction that he must have been confined by the orders of Alvez himself; for what reason she could not divine, as Benedict had undoubtedly been included in the number of prisoners to be delivered to Mr. Weldon for the stipulated ransom.

But the rage of the trader when he heard of the escape of the captive was an ample proof that he had had no hand in his disappearance. A rigorous search was inst.i.tuted in every direction, which resulted in the discovery of the mole-track. Here beyond a question was the pa.s.sage through which the fly-catcher had found his way.

"Idiot! fool! rascal!" muttered Alvez, full of rage at the prospect of losing a portion of the redemption-money; "if ever I get hold of him, he shall pay dearly for this freak."

The opening was at once blocked up, the woods were scoured all round for a considerable distance, but no trace of Benedict was to be found. Mrs. Weldon was bitterly grieved and much overcome, but she had no alternative except to resign herself as best she could to the loss of her unfortunate relation; there was a tinge of bitterness in her anxiety, for she could not help being irritated at the recklessness with which he had withdrawn himself from the reach of her protection.

Meanwhile the weather for the time of year underwent a very unusual change. Although the rainy season is ordinarily reckoned to terminate about the end of April, the sky had suddenly become overcast in the middle of June, rain had recommenced falling, and the downpour had been so heavy and continuous that all the ground was thoroughly sodden. To Mrs. Weldon personally this incessant rainfall brought no other inconvenience beyond depriving her of her daily exercise, but to the natives in general it was a very serious calamity.

The ripening crops in the low-lying districts were completely flooded, and the inhabitants feared that they would be reduced to the greatest extremities; all agricultural pursuits had come to a standstill, and neither the queen nor her ministers could devise any expedient to avert or mitigate the misfortune. They resolved at last to have recourse to the magicians, not those who are called in request to heal diseases or to procure good luck, but to the mganga, sorcerers of a superior order, who are credited with the faculty of invoking or dispelling rain.

But it was all to no purpose. It was in vain that the mganga monotoned their incantations, flourished their rattles, jingled their bells, and exhibited their amulets; it was equally without avail that they rolled up their b.a.l.l.s of dirt and spat in the faces of all the courtiers: the pitiless rain continued to descend, and the malign influences that were ruling the clouds refused to be propitiated.

The prospect seemed to become more and more hopeless, when the report was brought to Moena that there was a most wonderful mganga resident in the north of Angola. He had never been seen in this part of the country, but fame declared him to be a magician of the very highest order. Application, without delay, should be made to him; he surely would be able to stay the rain.

Early in the morning of the 25th a great tinkling of bells announced the magician's arrival at Kazonnde. The natives poured out to meet him on his way to the chitoka, their minds being already predisposed in his favour by a moderation of the downpour, and by sundry indications of a coming change of wind.

The ordinary practice of the professors of the magical art is to perambulate the villages in parties of three or four, accompanied by a considerable number of acolytes and a.s.sistants. In this case the mganga came entirely alone. He was a pure negro of most imposing stature, more than six feet high, and broad in proportion. All over his chest was a fantastic pattern traced in pipe-clay, the lower portion of his body being covered with a flowing skirt of woven gra.s.s, so long that it made a train. Round his neck hung a string of birds' skulls, upon his head he wore a leathern helmet ornamented with pearls and plumes, and about his waist was a copper girdle, to which was attached bells that tinkled like the harness of a Spanish mule. The only instrument indicating his art was a basket he carried made of a calabash containing sh.e.l.ls, amulets, little wooden idols and other fetishes, together with what was more important than all, a large number of those b.a.l.l.s of dung, without which no African ceremony of divination could ever be complete.

One peculiarity was soon discovered by the crowd; the mganga was dumb, and could utter only one low, guttural sound, which was quite unintelligible; this was a circ.u.mstance, however, that seemed only to augment their faith in his powers.

With a stately strut that brought all his tinkling paraphernalia into full play, the magician proceeded to make the circuit of the market-place. The natives followed in a troop behind, endeavouring, like monkeys, to imitate his every movement. He turned into the main thoroughfare, and began to make his way direct to the royal residence, whence, as soon as the queen heard of his approach, she advanced to meet him. On seeing her, the mganga bowed to the very dust; then, rearing himself to his full height, he

[Ill.u.s.tration: The entire crowd joined in. Page 441.]

pointed aloft, and by the significance of his animated gestures indicated that, although the fleeting clouds were now going to the west, they would soon return eastwards with a rotatory motion irresistibly strong.

All at once, to the surprise of the beholders, he stooped and took the hand of the mighty sovereign of Kazonnde.

The courtiers hurried forward to check the unprecedented breach of etiquette, but the foremost was driven back with so staggering a blow that the others deemed it prudent to retire.

The queen herself appeared not to take the least offence at the familiarity; she bestowed a hideous grimace, which was meant for a smile, upon her ill.u.s.trious visitor, who, still keeping his hold upon her hand, started off walking at a rapid pace, the crowd following in the rear. He directed his steps towards the residence of Alvez, and finding the door closed, applied his strong shoulder to it with such effect, that it fell bodily to the ground, and the pa.s.sive sovereign stood within the limits of the enclosure. The trader was about to summon his slaves and soldiers to repel the unceremonious invasion of his premises, but on beholding the queen all stepped back with respectful reverence.

Before Alvez had time to ask the sovereign to what cause he was indebted for the honour of her visit, the magician had cleared a wide s.p.a.ce around him, and had once again commenced his performances. Brandishing his arms wildly he pointed to the clouds as though he were arresting them in their course; he inflated his huge cheeks and blew with all his strength, as if resolved to disperse the heavy ma.s.ses, and then stretching himself to his full height, he appeared to clutch them in his giant grasp.

Deeply impressed, the superst.i.tious Moena was half beside herself with excitement; she uttered loud cries and involuntarily began herself to imitate every one of the mganga's gestures. The entire crowd joined in, and very soon the low guttural note of the sorcerer was lost, totally drowned in the turmoil of howls, shrieks, and discordant songs.