Kenneth McAlpine Part 27

"So she does, Keebo. So she does, dear child. She lives, Keebo."

"She lib, sah! My moder lib?"

Then Kenneth told Essequibo the Bible tale and all the sweet story of Jesu's love; and every word sank deep into Keebo's heart, and was never, never forgotten.

When returning that day from the bush in Indian file, Archie, who was first, checked the others with uplifted hands, and pointed through the plantain bushes to the clearing where Kenneth knelt in prayer beside the boy Keebo.

Both Archie and Harvey doffed their caps, and stood reverently there, not daring to reveal their presence till Kenneth had arisen. The very sky above them seemed at that moment a holy sky.

Essequibo was a strange name to give this n.i.g.g.e.r boy. [The name of a river in South America.] It came by chance, and suited him well. He was clever, this lad; and proved a treasure to the little expedition in many a trial. His English was not of the purest, he had learnt it in Zanzibar; but he could talk the languages of the interior tribes and Arabic as well. It is truly wonderful how soon boys of this caste learn languages.

Zona was guide and chief of the party; he knew the land well, and he knew the river. He knew which way to go to avoid unfriendly Indians, and he knew also the shortest tracks. So you may fancy them going on and on day after day in their search for the land of gold, sometimes gliding along the silent and unknown river, sometimes plunging into deep, dark forests; at other times toiling over arid plains, round the spurs of lofty mountains, or wading deep through miry marsh lands, the home, _par excellence_, of the most loathsome of Saurian monsters; but journeying ever with light hearts, for hope still pointed onwards.

At night, by the camp fire, Archie and Kenneth used to build aerial castles, and plan out the kind of future that they should spend in Scotland when they had wealth. But never a night pa.s.sed without a chapter being read, a psalm sung, and a prayer said. Zona used to retire to the bush, and it is but fair to say that, according to his lights, he was as good at heart as any of the others.

They had hired over a dozen st.u.r.dy Indians to carry boats and ammunition, but these men needed watching, both by night and by day.

They were necessary evils, that is all. Not that negroes of this kind are not often faithful enough, but they need a master eye to guide them, else they soon lose heart and faint and fail--then fly.

More than once Keebo prevented these men from stampeding, for Keebo was ever watchful.

For many weeks our heroes kept on in the same slow course, defying every obstacle. They were now little more than fifty miles from the goal of their desires.

"If gold or diamonds," said Kenneth to Archie, "be but half as plentiful as represented, we have only to collect and retire. We have overcome every danger, and avoided the greatest danger of all--the Logobo country. We will go more swiftly down stream than we came up."

Archie was quite as hopeful as Kenneth.

Harvey hardly so much so.

"'There is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,'" the latter would say.

Perhaps this was one of the happiest periods of the lives of either of our heroes. Indeed, their existence at present resembled nothing so much as one long picnic. They were like the wild creatures around them; they lived on the good things they found, and were contented and happy.

Kenneth, true lover of nature, could never have dreamt of scenery like that which he now gazed on daily. Oh the luxuriance of an African tropical woodland! what pen could describe, what pencil or brush portray it!

Yes, there were deadly things to be avoided, but one gets careless of even them, or, at least, used to them, so that in time not even a great snake dangling from a branch in front of him makes him shudder; nor is he greatly alarmed if he comes suddenly on the African "tiger," as the leopard is called, enjoying a siesta at noon-tide under a tree.

The tribes they had hitherto encountered were non-warlike and quiet.

One day, however, Essequibo, who had been scouting on ahead, came rushing back in a state of great alarm.

"Dey come, dey come!" he shouted; "plenty bad men. Plenty spear and shield. Dey kill and eat us all for true!"

The carrier negroes threw down their boat and packages and would have bolted _en ma.s.se_, had not our heroes stood by them with pistol and whip. The whip was, I believe, more dreaded than even the revolver.

In less time than it takes me to tell it, the little expedition, which was quickly formed into a solid square, was surrounded by a cloud of armed blacks.

To fight such a mob was out of the question; they used better tactics: they pretended to be overjoyed at meeting them. They were friends, Kenneth told the chief of these negroes, not foes, and wanted to see the king, and brought him presents from the far-off white man's land.

Shouts of joy from those simple natives now rent the air, and rattling their spears against their shields they led the way towards the camp of the king, a village of adobe and gra.s.s huts, built round cocoa-nut palms, in the midst of a great and fertile plain. In the centre of the town, inside a compound, was the square bungalow of King 'Ntango.

'Ntango was in, but did not appear for hours. It would not be royal etiquette to show much curiosity. Meanwhile the native women brought milk and honey and baked plantains, and everything went as merry as a marriage bell.

The king, into whose presence they were ushered at last, was round and squat, very yellow and very fat.

He showered his questions on Kenneth through Essequibo as interpreter.

Where did they come from? What did they want? Were they Arab or foreign? Did they come to steal his wives and little ones? How long did they want to stop? For ever, of course. Where were the gifts?

Guns? Yes. Beads? Good. Pistols? Good again. But was this all?

Where was the rum? Arab men had been here before, they brought much good rum. What, _no_ rum? Never a skin of _rum_? Ugh!

With this last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, which was almost a shriek, the king sprang from the mat on which he had squatted.

"They must die?" he shouted; "die every one of them. The Arab must first die, then the black men. Then the white men. Essequibo he would fatten and kill and eat. Bring chains; away with them! _away_! away!

AWAY!"

The king's eyes shot fire as he waved his arms aloft, and shouted, "_Away_, away!" and his lips were flecked with blood and foam.

He was a fearful being to behold, this irate African savage.

Almost at the same moment our heroes were seized rudely from behind, disarmed, and dragged off. They soon found themselves huddled together in one room, with stone walls, slimy, damp, and over-run with creeping things that made them shudder, albeit they were under the very shadow of death.

Towards evening the king sent to "comfort" them; it was very condescending of him. The "comfort" lay in the information that at sunrise next day they would be led out to die, by spear or by knife, as they might choose.

Meanwhile, poor Essequibo's chains were knocked off, and he was led away to his fattening pen.

Such is life in Central Africa. But stranger things still befell our heroes.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

LAND OF DARKNESS.

Scene: The interior of King 'Ntango's palace. The king seated on a mat in the middle of the floor of the princ.i.p.al apartment--a large square room with walls of mud and gra.s.s. The only furniture, a tall tom-tom, a mat-covered dais, and a heap of empty stone bottles in a corner. Those bottles once contained gin.

It is near sunset, the king is alone. There is no sound to break the silence, except the tap, tap, tap the gecko lizards that crawl on the walls make, as they beat to death the moths they catch.

Yes, the king is alone in his glory, though his spear-armed attendants wait outside. He is quite a study, this savage potentate, to any one fond of an anthropology. Look at him now! he is leaning his fat face on his podgy fingers, his elbows are resting on his knees--he is thinking.

There are but two things in this world that this king dearly loves; one is to see human blood spilled, the other is to drink gin or rum. These last two words are the only English ones he can p.r.o.nounce or understand.

He learnt them from itinerant Arabs, unscrupulous scoundrels, who bought the youth and flower of his people for a bottle each.

The king is thinking; the question that exercises his mind at present is this, "Shall I kill these white men, and laugh to see the red blood flow; or keep two, and send the others back for rum?"

"Room," this is how he p.r.o.nounces the word "rum," and "gin" he calls "geen."

"Room, room, room," he mutters to himself, "geen, geen, geen."

He rises; a thought strikes him. May it not be possible that one, just one full bottle remains still among that heap of empty ones? He goes straight to the heap, and turns them over. No, not one. Still, he has a glimmering notion that in a dazed moment he hid one. Ha! he remembers all of a sudden. He seizes the stick with which he is wont to beat the tom-tom, and hies him to a corner, and speedily unearths, not one bottle, but two.