The Pools of Silence Part 24

It was the big tree which Berselius had pointed out to him as having been tusked by an elephant; and an hour after they had started from the mid-day rest, the horizon to the north changed and grew dark.

It was the forest.

The sky immediately above the dark line, from contrast, was extraordinarily bright and pale, and, as they marched, the line lifted and the trees grew.

"Look!" said Berselius.

"I see," replied Adams.

A question was troubling his mind. Would Berselius be able to guide them amidst the trees? Here in the open he had a hundred tiny indications on either side of him, but amidst the trees how could he find his way? Was it possible that memory could lead him through that labyrinth once it grew dense?

It will be remembered that it was a two days' march from Fort M'Ba.s.sa through the isthmus of woods to the elephant country. At the edge of the forest the trees were very thinly set, but for the rest, and a day's march from the fort, it was jungle.

Would Berselius be able to penetrate that jungle? Time would tell.

Berselius knew nothing about it; he only knew what lay before his sight.

Toward evening the trees came out to meet them, baobab and monkey-bread, set widely apart; and they camped by a pool and lit their fire, and slept as men sleep in the pure air of the woods and the desert.

Next morning they pursued their journey, Berselius still confident. At noon, however, he began to exhibit slight signs of agitation and anxiety.

The trees were thickening around them; he still knew the way, but the view before him was getting shorter and shorter as the trees thickened; that is to say, the mist was coming closer and closer. He knew nothing of the dense jungle before them; he only knew that the clear road in front of him was shortening up rapidly and horribly, and that if it continued to do so it would inevitably vanish.

The joy that had filled his heart became transformed to the grief which the man condemned to blindness feels when he sees the bright world fading from his sight, slowly but surely as the expiring flame of a lamp.

He walked more rapidly, and the more rapidly he went the shorter did the road before him grow.

All at once the forest--which had been playing, up to this, with Berselius as a cat plays with a mouse--all at once the forest, like a great green Sphinx, put down its great green paw and spoke from its cavernous heart--

"I am the Forest."

They had pa.s.sed almost at a step into the labyrinths. Plantain leaves. .h.i.t them insolently in the face, lianas hung across their path like green ropes placed to bar them out, weeds tangled the foot.

Berselius, like an animal that finds itself trapped, plunged madly forward. Adams following closely behind heard him catching back his breath with a sob. They plunged on for a few yards, and then Berselius stood still.

The forest was very silent, and seemed listening. The evening light and the shade of the leaves cast gloom around them. Adams could hear his own heart thumping and the breathing of the porters behind him. If Berselius had lost his way, then they were lost indeed.

After a moment Berselius spoke, as a man speaks whose every hope in life is shattered.

"The path is gone."

Adams's only reply was a deep intake of the breath.

"There is nothing before me. I am lost."

"Shall we try back?" said Adams, speaking in that hard tone which comes when a man is commanding his voice.

"Back? Of what use? I cannot go back; I must go forward. But here there is nothing."

The unhappy man's voice was terrible to hear. He had marched so triumphantly all day, drawing nearer at each step to himself, to that self which memory had hidden from him and which memory was disclosing bit by bit. And now the march was interrupted as if by a wall set across his path.

But Adams was of a type of man to whom despondency may be known, but never despair.

They had marched all day; they were lost, it is true, but they were not far, now, from Fort M'Ba.s.sa. The immediate necessity was rest and food.

There was a little clearing amidst the trees just here, and with his own hands he raised the tent. They had no fire, but the moon when she rose, though in her last quarter, lit up the forest around them with a green glow-worm glimmer. One could see the lianas and the trees, the broad leaves shining with dew, some bright, some sketched in dimly, and all bathed in gauze green light; and they could hear the drip and patter of dew on leaf and branch.

This is a mournful sound--the most mournful of all the sounds that fill the great forests of the Congo. It is so casual, so tearful. One might fancy it the sound of the forest weeping to itself in the silence of the night.

CHAPTER XXVIII

G.o.d SENDS A GUIDE

To be lost in the desert or in a land like the elephant country is bad, but to be lost in the dense parts of the tropical forest is far worse.

You are in a horrible labyrinth, a maze, not of intricate paths but of blinding curtains. I am speaking now of that arrogant jungle, moist and hot, where life is in full ferment, and where the rubber vine grows and thrives; where you go knee-deep in slush and catch at a tree-bole to prevent yourself going farther, cling, sweating at every pore and shivering like a dog, feeling for firmer ground and finding it, only to be led on to another quagmire. The bush pig avoids this place, the leopard shuns it; it is bad in the dry season when the sun gives some light by day, and the moon a gauzy green glimmer by night, but in the rains it is terrific. Night, then, is black as the inside of a trunk, and day is so feeble that your hand, held before your face at arm's length, is just a shadow. The westward part of the forest of M'Bonga projects a spur of the pestiferous rubber-bearing land into the isthmus of healthy woods. It was just at the tip of this spur that Berselius and his party were entangled and lost.

The two porters were Yandjali men, they knew nothing of these woods, and were utterly useless as guides; they sat now amidst the leaves near the tent eating their food; dark shadows in the glow-worm light, the glistening black skin of a knee or shoulder showing up touched by the glimmer in which leaf and liana, tree trunk and branch, seemed like marine foliage bathed in the watery light of a sea-cave.

Adams had lit a pipe, and he sat beside Berselius at the opening of the tent, smoking. The glare of the match had shown him the face of Berselius for a moment. Berselius, since his first outcry on finding the path gone, had said little, and there was a patient and lost look on his face, sad but most curious to see. Most curious, for it said fully what a hundred little things had been hinting since their start from the scene of the catastrophe--that the old Berselius had vanished and a new Berselius had taken his place. Adams had at first put down the change in his companion to weakness, but the weakness had pa.s.sed, the man's great vitality had rea.s.serted itself, and the change was still there.

This was not the man who had engaged him in Paris; this person might have been a mild twin-brother of the redoubtable Captain of the Avenue Malakoff, of Matadi and Yandjali. When memory came fully back, would it bring with it the old Berselius, or would the new Berselius, mild, inoffensive, and kindly, suddenly find himself burdened with the tremendous past of the man he once had been?

Nothing is more true than that the human mind from accident, from grief, or from that mysterious excitement, during which in half an hour a blaspheming costermonger "gets religion" and becomes a saint of G.o.d--nothing is more certain than that the human mind can like this, at a flash, turn topsy-turvy; the good coming to the top, the bad going to the bottom. Mechanical pressure on the cortex of the brain can bring this state of things about, even as it can convert a saint of G.o.d into a devil incarnate.

Was Berselius under the influence of forced amendment of this sort?

Adams was not even considering the matter, he was lost in gloomy thoughts.

He was smoking slowly, holding his index and middle fingers over the pipe-bowl to prevent the tobacco burning too quickly, for he had only a couple of pipefuls left. He was thinking that to-morrow evening the pouch would be empty, when, from somewhere in the forest near by, there came a sound which brought him to his feet and the two porters up on hands and knees like listening dogs.

It was the sound of a human voice raised in a sort of chant, ghostly and mournful as the sound of the falling dew. As it came, rising and falling, monotonous and rhythmical, the very plain song of desolation, Adams felt his hair lift and his flesh crawl, till one of the porters, springing erect from his crouching position, sent his voice through the trees--

"Ahi ahee!"

The song ceased; and then, a moment later, faint and wavering, and like the voice of a seagull, came the reply--

"Ahi aheee!"

"Man," said the porter, turning white eyeb.a.l.l.s and glinting teeth over his shoulder at Adams.

He called again, and again came the reply.

"Quick," said Adams, seizing the arm of Berselius, who had risen, "there's a native here somewhere about; he may guide us out of this infernal place; follow me, and for G.o.d's sake keep close."

Holding Berselius by the arm, and motioning the other native to follow, he seized the porter by the shoulder and pushed him forward. The man knew what was required and obeyed, advancing, calling, and listening by turns, till, at last, catching the true direction of the sound he went rapidly, Berselius and Adams following close behind. Sometimes they were half up to the knees in boggy patches, fighting their way through leaves that struck them like great wet hands; sometimes the call in the distance seemed farther away, and they held their pace, they held their breath, they clung to each other, listening, till, now, by some trick of the trees, though they had not moved and though there was no wind, the cry came nearer.