The Fire-Gods Part 23

They met with instant success. Some one had pa.s.sed within the course of the last few hours.

In consequence, the loads were disembarked. Three canoes were sunk, and the remaining three lifted high and dry upon the bank. It was whilst this work was in progress that Crouch, to his infinite delight, discovered his case of gla.s.s eyes, which he had left in camp on the morning of their adventure at Leopard Marsh.

They were obliged to halt for a few hours for food. They had brought with them a week's rations for their men: plantain flour, soaked manioc and ears of corn. It was two o'clock when the caravan began to move through the jungle towards the Kasai. They eventually reached one of their old camps by Observation Pool. Their progress was necessarily slow. The slaves were in no fit condition to do a forced march through the jungle; and that night it was decided that Edward and Max and the Fans should push on ahead, in an endeavour to overtake the fugitives, and failing that to bring back the Loango boys to help. Crouch was to follow with the caravan with what dispatch he could.

In two days, the advanced party reached the place where the creek turned to the south. Caesar's tracks still followed the old route direct to Date Palm Island.

On the fifth day of their journey from Hippo Pool, they came upon a place where Caesar had turned to the north. Edward was an experienced tracker, but it did not require the eye of an expert to see that human beings had turned from the portage and followed an elephant track to the Kasai. For a moment, Harden was undecided how to act. If he continued on his way to Date Palm Island, some days might be wasted before he again picked up the trail. In the end he decided to send Max and the three Fans to the north, and go himself with M'Wane to the Island.

There he would load up the canoe, send half the boys down-stream on the look-out for Max, and bring the others back to the portage to a.s.sist the slaves.

The following morning he shook hands with his nephew, and continued on the old route with which he was now familiar. He had not gone far, however, before he noticed bloodstains on the leaves of the undergrowth; and presently, to his utmost surprise, he came across one of the Loango boys wounded by a bullet in the leg, and crawling painfully on hands and knees towards the river.

This boy said that he had been hunting in the jungle--for they were short of food on the Island--when he had come across a caravan consisting of six Arabs and a white man. They were carrying a canoe half-filled with supplies, and a great box which appeared to be excessively heavy. The white man who led the way, seemed to be very weak, for he staggered as he walked. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine the hardships that the tall Portuguese underwent upon that last and fateful journey. So anxious was he to save his rubies, to gain the sea-coast in safety, that he had not brought with him sufficient supplies. In consequence, he and his men were starving and, as we shall see, they had an even more deadly foe to reckon with.

M'Wane, picking up the wounded boy in his arms, carried him like a baby throughout the rest of the journey to Date Palm Island. There the man's wound was attended to, and he was placed in a canoe which was ready loaded two hours after Edward had reached the river.

Once more Harden set forth upon his old track, leaving instructions that the canoe was to drop down-stream on the afternoon of the following day.

The Loango boys from the Island, though they had complained of being short of food, were in fine condition; and the party came up with Crouch at the end of the second day. Thence they made better headway and, following Caesar's trail, arrived eventually at the river, where they found not only Max and the Fans, but the party from the Island.

And now followed a race down the river after the slave-drivers and their chest of rubies. The three canoes which had been carried from the Hidden River, were embarked on the Kasai. The slaves who had acted as porters on the journey were given the option of finding their own way back to their villages or going down to the Congo in the canoes. There was never the slightest doubt that the majority would choose the former course. Half their number had come from the Pambala village on the slopes of Solitude Peak, and a score from other villages farther to the south-west. In all there were only five who desired to journey to the Congo, and these were men whom Caesar had captured in the land of the Bakutu.

The current of the river was so swift that the four canoes shot down-stream at a great velocity with little help from the paddles. On the upper reaches of the great river, rapids and waterfalls were frequent, and at such times it was necessary to carry the canoe to unbroken water. At each portage they found traces of Caesar and his Arabs. Once the camp-fire of the Portuguese was still alight, and soon after that, on rounding a point, they came in sight of a canoe.

They thought at first that they had overtaken Caesar, but they were doomed to be disappointed. With the aid of their fieldgla.s.ses they ascertained that the canoe was coming towards them, working slowly up-stream against the force of the current.

They were still more surprised when they recognised, seated in the stern of this canoe, the white solar topee and the black coat of a European.

A few minutes later Crouch was within hail.

"Who are you?" he asked, with both hands to his mouth.

And the answer came back in the accent of Aberdeen: "James Mayhew, of the Scottish Missionary Society."

That, indeed, was so. This man alone, attended only by a few native servants, was forcing his way in the absolute Unknown, in order to bring the enlightenment of Christian knowledge into the depths of an endless forest, inhabited by cannibals and dwarfs. They had time only to congratulate the missionary upon his courage, and to wish him every success. Crouch gave Mr. Mayhew directions as to how to reach the Hidden Valley, and told him that, if he found his way to Solitude Peak and said that he had come from the "White Wizard," he would find many converts among the liberated slaves and the people of the village.

On being asked whether he had seen the Portuguese and his Arabs on the river, the Missionary answered that he had pa.s.sed them not an hour ago.

The Arabs had been paddling furiously, as if their lives depended upon their reaching the Congo with as little delay as possible. As for the Portuguese, he had been lying as if sick, in the body of the canoe, with his head propped against a great ironbound chest.

Crouch waited to hear no more. Waving his hand to the Missionary, he gave orders for the journey to continue.

That evening, they expected to arrive at Caesar's camp, but by midnight they had come to the conclusion that the man was resolved to push on without halting for food.

It was now that M'Wane and his four companions--the three that had gone to Solitude Peak and the one who had been left at the Island--asked to be put ash.o.r.e. They said they were not far from their own people, and were desirous of returning home. For all that, they were extremely sorry to leave their masters, the great white men who had overcome the Fire-G.o.ds.

When they left, there was much hand-shaking. Each man was presented with a rifle and several rounds of ammunition, in addition to that they received enough beads, bra.s.s rods, and cloth, to gladden the hearts of any savage who ever roamed the equatorial forests.

Throughout the night the canoes paddled to the north-west. All this time de Costa lay in the body of a canoe, groaning with ague and shivering from fever. It is a strange thing that in the close and humid atmosphere of the forest there is little malaria or malarial typhoid, which cause such havoc among the white men on the great rivers of the Congo Basin. For it is above the surface of the water that the mosquitoes swarm, which breed these fell diseases.

At daybreak they sighted Caesar. They saw his canoe for no longer than an instant as it rounded a bend in the river. The natives plied their paddles with a will, and Crouch, in the vanguard of the pursuit held his rifle ready to fire.

All day long, beneath the blazing tropic sun, with the insects droning in their ears and the yellow seething water rushing onward to the sea, this strange race continued.

Three times did they catch sight of the fugitives; once in the morning, once at mid-day, and the last time when the afternoon was drawing to a close.

By then they were not five hundred yards in the rear. It seemed probable that the Portuguese would be overtaken before night. Throughout that day native settlements on either bank of the river had been frequent. They were but two hundred miles above the point where the Kasai joins the Congo, to the north of Stanley Pool.

At last they entered a broad reach, where the river was straight as a Roman road. On either side the jungle rose to the height of about two hundred feet--a tangled ma.s.s of vegetation, of creepers, vines, convolvuli, so densely interwoven as to give the effect of endless walls. Far in the distance, at the end of this long reach, they could see an island standing in mid-stream, as if it floated on the surface of the river.

Resolved to overtake the man before darkness set in and a.s.sisted his escape, they urged the canoes forward, until Caesar recognised himself for lost. Two shots from Crouch, and Caesar's canoe drew in to the bank of the island.

As they approached they saw the Portuguese lifted out of his canoe in the arms of his faithful Arabs, and deposited on the bank. Then the Arabs, taking their rifles in their hands, opened fire on their pursuers.

They realized at once that resistance would be hopeless. The Loango boys, after many weeks of inactivity on Date Palm Island, were spoiling for a fight. Not all of them were armed with rifles, but the odds were two to one against the Arabs, who knew that they could always trust the white men to show mercy. No sooner had the Englishmen set foot upon the island than they delivered up their arms.

Had Crouch shot them on the spot these men, who for two years had been scourging slaves with their whips, had got no more than they deserved.

As it was, their weapons were not given back to them, and they were turned adrift upon the great river, with a week's provisions, to find their way back as best they might to some settlement of their own kith and kin.

And then the Englishmen were able to give their attention to Caesar. The tall man lay upon the ground, rigid as in death. The whole party gathered around him, with the exception of de Costa, who was himself too ill to land upon the island.

Caesar's complexion was a dull, slaty-blue. His face was drawn and haggard, his eyes had sunk deep into their sockets. As Max pushed his way through the inquisitive Loango boys, who stood gaping at the dying man, Caesar struggled to a sitting position, and supporting his back against a tree, looked savagely about him.

"Stand back!" cried Max. "It's cholera!"

It was then he realized the truth. Caesar had thrashed one of his slaves for no greater crime than having contracted the pestilence that was ravaging his camp. Max had s.n.a.t.c.hed the whip from the man's hand and brought down upon his face and hands and back the cruel thong, whose very touch was contagion. And thus was the vengeance of G.o.d, upon one who had done evil all his days, taken from the hands of Captain Crouch.

Max was actually on his way back to his canoe to procure his medicine chest when the man looked about him, rolled his eyes to the heavens, as if he who had shown so little of mercy to others thought to find it there. Then he fell back with a groan, and lay cramped and twisted in the agony of his death.

That night, they buried him upon the island. They filled ammunition boxes with the rubies, and burnt the chest against which Caesar had rested his head. And then, they left him in the starlight, in the midst of the great stillness of the lonely river, to make his peace with G.o.d.

CHAPTER XXI--BACK AT THE "EXPLORERS'"

The green baize doors are just the same as ever; and in the inner smoking room is Edward Harden, as large and clumsy-looking as on the morning when we met him first at the top of St. James's Street, except that, perhaps, he is more sun-burnt and somewhat haggard.

It is winter; the London fog is without, and a great fire is roaring in the grate. And before that fire is seated a young gentleman who now, for the first time, is enjoying the privileges of a member.

Edward rose to his feet, and looked at the clock.

"It's six," said he. "Crouch ought to be here."

Max Harden consulted his watch, as if to verify the evidence of the tall grandfather's clock which proclaimed the hour between the masks of a snow-leopard and a panther.

"He said he would be back at five," said he to his uncle. "I suppose we'd better wait."

At that moment, one of the green baize doors swung open, and Captain Crouch limped into the room. He was now dressed in what he deemed the garb of civilization: that is to say, a navy blue pilot-coat, with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, and a red tie that might have served to guide him in the fog.

They had the smoking-room to themselves.