The Great Quest Part 31

The negro suddenly uttered a low exclamation.

Standing as still as so many statues, we heard yet again that faint, unearthly wail far off in the night, a wail, as before, twice repeated. The third cry had scarcely died away, when the negro, with a startled gasp, darted into the brush.

O'Hara raised his hand and called to him to come back; but, never turning his head, he disappeared like a frightened animal.

Again we were alone in the wilderness.

To me, now, all that formerly I had understood only in vague outline had become clear in every detail. I knew, of course, that, after their own ship was wrecked, our quartette of adventurers had sent Gleazen back to America, to get by hook or crook another vessel to serve their G.o.dless purposes; and I knew that they had implicated my deluded uncle in something more than ordinary slave trade. Their talk of the man who had stayed behind for a purpose still further convinced me that Arnold had been right; I remembered the rough stones on the table in the cabin the night when I took the four by surprise. But it was only common sense that, if our first guess were _all_ their secret, they would have smuggled such a find down to the coast, and have taken their chance in embarking in the first vessel that came to port. There was more than that of which to be mindful, and I knew well enough what.

"I say, now, push forward this very minute," cried O'Hara. "Better travel a bad road by dark in safety than a good road by day that will land every mother's son of us in the place where there's no road back."

"The black devils are hard upon us," Gleazen cried. "Lay low, I say.

Come afternoon we'll sneak along easy like."

"I stand with Bud O'Hara," said Matterson, slowly. "It'll not be so easy to hit us by moonlight as by sunlight."

"And once we're with Bull in the little fort that he'll have made for us," Bud persisted, "we'll be safe surely."

"It is harder to travel by night," said Arnold. "But it is easier by night than by day to evade an enemy."

The others looked at him curiously, as if surprised by his temerity in speaking out; but, oddly, his seemed to be the deciding voice.

Working with furious haste, we sorted our goods and made them up into six packs, which we shouldered according to our strength. But as we worked, we would stop and look furtively around; and at the slightest sound we would start and stare. Our determination to go through to the end of our adventure had not flagged when at last we gathered beside the thicket where we had concealed the boat; but we were seven silent men who left the boat, the creek, and the river behind us, and with O'Hara to guide us set off straight into the heart of Africa.

O'Hara's long sojourn on the continent, which had made him a "black man" in the sense that he had come to believe, or at least more than half believe, in the silly superst.i.tions of the natives, had served him better by giving him an amazing knowledge of the country. That he was following a trail he had traveled many times before would have been evident to a less keenly interested observer than I. But though he had traveled it ever so many times, it was a mystery to me how he could follow it unerringly, by moonlight alone, through black tangles of forest growth so dense that scarcely a ray stole down on the deeply shadowed path.

Pa.s.sing over some high hills, we came, sweaty and breathless, down into a rocky gorge, along which we hurried, now skirting patches of cotton and corn and yams, now making a long detour around a sleeping village, until we arrived at a wood in a valley where a deep stream rumbled. And all this time we had seen no sign whatever of any living creature other than ourselves.

It was already full daylight, and throwing off our burdens, we flung ourselves down and slept. Had our danger been even more urgent, I believe that we could not have kept awake, so exhausted were we; and indeed, we were in greater peril than we had supposed, for all that day, whenever we woke, we heard at no great distance from our place of concealment the thump of a pestle pounding rice.

Twelve hours of daylight would easily have brought us to our destination. But it was slow work traveling in the darkness, and we still had far to go. Pushing on again that night, we pressed through a country thickly wooded with tall trees, many of which elephants had broken down in order to feed on the tender upper branches.

As we pa.s.sed them, I was thrilled to see with my own eyes the work of wild elephants in their native country, and should have liked to stop for a time; but there was no opportunity to loiter, and leaving the woods behind us, we came at daylight to a brook, which had cut a deep channel into dark slate rock and blue clay.

Here I conjectured that we should camp for another day, but not so: our three leaders were strangely excited.

"Sure," O'Hara cried, pointing at a low hill at a distance in the plain, "sure, gentlemen, and there's our port. Where's the man would cast anchor this side of it?"

O'Hara, Gleazen, and Matterson stood at one side, and Arnold, Abe, and I at the other, with my poor uncle in the middle. We had not concerted to divide thus. Instinctively and unconsciously we separated into hostile factions, with poor Seth Upham--neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, as they say--standing weakly between us. But even so, the enthusiasm of the three was contagious. Weary though we were, we strongly felt it. We had come so far, all of us, and had wondered so much and so often about our mysterious errand, that now, with the end in sight, not one of us, I believe, would have stopped.

Casting caution to the winds, we swung down into a wild country and across the broad plain, where, after some three hours of rough hard travel, we came to the foot of the hill. And in all this time, except the patches of tilled land that we had pa.s.sed, the towns that we had avoided, the thumping of pestles and the occasional sounds of domestic animals, we had seen and heard no sign of human life. It is not strange that for the moment I forgot the threats that had caused us such anxiety. Stopping only to catch our breath and drink and dash over our faces water from a brook, we started up the hill.

O'Hara, ahead of us all, was like a mad man in his eagerness, and Matterson and Gleazen were not far behind him. Even Uncle Seth caught something of their frenzy and a.s.sumed an empty show of his old pompousness and sharp manner.

Up the hill we went, our three leaders first, then, in nervous haste, between the two parties literally as well as figuratively, my uncle, then Arnold and Abe and I, who were soon outdistanced, in that fierce scramble, by all but Uncle Seth.

"Do you know, Joe," Abe said in a low voice, as he gave me a hand up over a bit of a ledge, "I'd sooner be home on my little farm that Seth Upham sold from under me, with only my crops and fishing to look forward to, than here with all the gold in Africa to be got? I wonder, Joe, if I'll ever see my wife and the little boy again."

"Nonsense!" I cried, "of course you will."

"Do you think so? I'm not so sure."

As we stood for a moment on the summit of the ledge, I saw that we had chosen a rougher, more circuitous path than was necessary. The others had gone up a sort of swale on our right, where tall, lush gra.s.s indicated that the ground was marshy. It irritated me that we should have scrambled over the rocks for nothing; my legs were atremble from our haste.

"Of course you will," I repeated testily. Then I saw something move.

"See!" I cried. "There goes an animal of some kind."

While for a moment we waited in hope of seeing again whatever it was that had moved, I thought, oddly enough, of the girl at the mission; then my thoughts leaped back half round the world to little Topham, and returned by swift steps, through all our adventures, to the spot where we stood.

Now the others were bawling at us to come along after them, so Abe and I turned, not having seen distinctly whatever animal there may have been, and followed them up the hill.

"Here's the brook!" O'Hara cried, "the brook from the spring!"

He was running now, straight up through the tall gra.s.s beside the tiny trickle, and we were driving along at his heels as hard as we could go.

"Here's the clearing, and never a blade of gra.s.s is changed since I left it last! O Bull! Here we are! See, men, see! Yonder on the old grave is the house all wattled like a n.i.g.g.e.r hut! O Bull! Where are you? But it's fine inside, men, I'll warrant you. He was laying to build it good. He said he'd fix it up like a duke's mansion. O Bull!

I say, Bull!"

There indeed was the house, on a low mound, which showed the marks of sacrilegious pick and shovel. The posts on which it stood were driven straight down into the hillock. But in reply to O'Hara's loud hail no answer came from that silent, apparently deserted dwelling.

O'Hara turned and, as if apologizing, said in a lower voice, but still loud enough for us to hear, "Sure, now, and he must be out somewhere."

Then he waited for us, and we gathered in a little group and looked at the wattled hut as if in apprehension, although of course there was no reason on earth why we should have been apprehensive.

"Well, gentlemen," said Arnold, very quietly, "why not go in?"

Not a man stirred.

O'Hara faced about with moodily clouded eyes. "Well, then," he gasped, "he _would_ build it on the king's grave."

I am sure that my face, for one, told O'Hara that he only mystified me.

"Sure, and he was like others I've seen. More than once I warned him, but he didn't believe in n.i.g.g.e.r G.o.ds. He didn't believe in n.i.g.g.e.r G.o.ds, and he built the house on the king's grave! On the king's grave, mind you! He was that set and reckless."

"Gentlemen," said Arnold, again, very quietly, very precisely, "why not go in?"

All this time my uncle, as was his way except in those rare moments when he made a pitiful show of regaining his old peremptory manner, had been standing by in silence, looking from one to another of our company. But now he hesitantly spoke up.

"He has not been here for some time," he said.

Gleazen turned with a scornful grunt. "Much you know whether he has or not," he retorted.

"See!" My uncle pointed at the door. "Vines have grown across the top of it."

Gleazen softly swore, and Matterson said, "For once, Neil, he's right."

Why we had not noticed it before, I cannot say; probably we were too much excited. But we all saw it now, and Gleazen, staring at the dark shadow of the leaves on the door, stepped back a pace.

"By Heaven," he whispered, "I don't like to go in."