Tom Burnaby Part 16

Besides these actual evidences of present cruelty, the path itself bore witness to savageries in the past. Leading, like all native paths, up hill and down dale, crossing rocky uplands or traversing dense forests, it had been trodden with no attempt to find the easiest way, sometimes winding like a snake where a straight course would have saved miles, sometimes making a straight line up a precipitous ascent where a circular route would have been more expeditious. If a tree had fallen across it the obstruction was not removed, but a new path was trodden round it, joining the original path again at a point beyond. At more than one spot Tom saw a skeleton across the track, and there the path made a little divergence of two or three yards, returning to its course at the same distance on the other side. In answer to Tom's question the hakim told him that if a man died on the road he was never buried, but left to the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air. The loop formed by the path about the body remained for ever, though the obstacle in course of time disappeared. Several of the grisly skeletons there encountered had the iron rings still about their necks; and with each, fuel was added to Tom's wrath, and strength to his resolve.

Towards noon, on the second day after leaving the slave-village, Tom, marching among his guards, felt more than usually dejected in spirit.

He held his head high, and preserved an undaunted mien before the Arabs, but in reality he was beginning to despair of ever beholding England and his friends again. For one thing, he was physically out of sorts; the villages in which the long caravan encamped at night were not models of cleanliness, and he was sometimes too sick to swallow the unsavoury foods provided for him. Moreover, he had been terribly plagued with the jiggers, the scourge of African travel,--insects which pierced the skin and laid their eggs beneath it, these in their turn becoming worms that caused intolerable pain and irritation.

Towards noon, then, when he was feeling particularly unhappy, he observed signs of commotion in the column ahead. The chief, posted upon an ant-hill, was looking eagerly into the distance at a group of men whom he had descried upon the sky-line a mile away. He ordered the caravan to halt, and, suspecting from the smallness of the group that it might be the advance scouts of another force led by Europeans, he despatched fifty of his men to reconnoitre. They divided into two equal bands, and went off through the bush on either side of the path so as to surround the little party, and, if it proved hostile, to cut off its retreat.

Mustapha, in the meantime, collected the best of his fighting-men around him, and waited intently for his scouts to reach the strangers, who had halted upon an eminence and seemed to be hesitating whether to advance or to retire. But after a short period of indecision the group moved slowly towards the halted caravan. It proved, as it came more distinctly into view, to consist of ten men, all fully armed. They were soon met by the Arab scouts, with whom they exchanged, not shots, but friendly greetings, and who turned and escorted them towards the caravan. As they approached, something in the bearing of the leader seemed familiar to Tom, and it was with a thrill almost of dismay that he recognized him, a hundred yards away, as indubitably his old enemy, De Castro.

It was a different De Castro, however, from the brisk and alert pursuer whose clutches he had so narrowly escaped. The Portuguese was haggard and worn; his self-confidence had vanished; his clothes were in tatters; even his green coat was sober and subdued, for constant exposure to the sun had bleached it to a dirty gray. His hunt for the Arab had evidently been particularly arduous, and there was no eagerness in his tone as he greeted his friend Mustapha.

Tom had been watching the chief, and wondering at the ominous scowl that darkened his face, growing ever blacker as the Portuguese drew nearer.

To De Castro's greeting the Arab replied with a curse; then turning, he gave a sharp word of command. Twenty of his men sprang forward, and the wayworn new-comers were disarmed in a twinkling, standing helpless with dull amazement. A change instantly came over the att.i.tude of the surrounding Arabs, the ready smile of welcome gave place to a dark scowl, and many a forefinger moved suggestively to the trigger. The Portuguese, after the first shock of surprise, gave vent to a torrent of indignant remonstrance, to which the chief turned a deaf ear; whereupon De Castro, with a shrug that seemed to say: "He's in one of his tempers", held his peace, and accepted the situation with stoical indifference.

Tom, in the meantime, had watched the scene with curious eyes, careful to keep out of the man's sight. "Strange," he thought, "that both of us, after our former tussle, should be prisoners in the same hands!"

When the march was resumed, the Portuguese was sent forward under surveillance to the head of the column, Tom being nearer the centre, puzzled beyond measure at the incivility with which the chief had received one supposed to be bound to him by special ties.

Camp was pitched that night at the verge of the forest, in a deserted and half-ruined village, the stockade of which was broken down at many points of its circ.u.mference. Tom, in charge of the hakim, was located in a hut near the centre of the village, some distance from that appropriated by the chief. The chief's hut was the princ.i.p.al habitation, but it was little less ruinous than the rest. The thatch was broken in places, and there were two apertures in the walls wide enough to admit a full-grown man. It was overshadowed by a large and bushy tree, one of whose branches, springing from the trunk some fourteen feet from the ground, and bending down under its weight of foliage, overhung the roof, actually grazing it as the freshening breeze swayed the bough.

Tom, reclining on the gra.s.s before the hakim's hut, to eat his evening meal in the cool air before turning in, saw the Portuguese led under guard into the presence of the chief. In a few moments the sun went down, but Tom still sat, wondering what was going on at the interview.

Once he thought he heard the sound of angry voices raised in altercation, but in the absence of the moon he saw nothing more, and by and by re-entered the hut, and sought the rough blanket that formed his only bed. At first he could not sleep for thinking over the, to him, unexpected arrival of the Portuguese. "It bodes no good to me," he thought. "Things are bad enough, but may easily be made worse. That villain will tell how I treated him; how he saw me afterwards with his runaway boy on the track of the expedition; that it must have been through our information the ambush came to grief. Heavens! what's to be the end of it all?" More than once during the march he had had thoughts of attempting to escape, but he had barely recovered his full vigour, and not the shadow of an opportunity had as yet presented itself. He pondered and pondered until his anxieties were drowned in quiet sleep.

It seemed but a minute later, it was in reality an hour, when he was awakened by the glare of a torch held close to his face. The smell of the pitch-soaked tow clung to him for months afterwards. Dazed at first, he soon made out the swarthy features of the Portuguese behind the torch, and met his keen eyes peering closely at his own. The Portuguese clicked his tongue, and uttered an exclamation of gleeful and vindictive satisfaction. Turning to the Arab chief, who stood behind, just within the doorway, he cried in Arabic:

"It is the very man!"

Tom lay watching. Now that a crisis was manifestly at hand, his tremors had ceased; his very life depended on his coolness and nerve. De Castro had begun an impa.s.sioned speech to the grave Arab. If Tom could have understood it, he would have heard him say:

"You charge me, forsooth, with being a traitor, with betraying you to the English--me, De Castro, the best hater of the English in all Africa!

There you have the man who spoilt your game--our game. Man, I call him--that cub yonder, who tricked my boy away from me, and paid him, no doubt, to spy on me!"

("Wonder if he's telling the chief how I punched him!" thought Tom, noting the gleam and gesture of anger in his direction.)

"And you talk of accepting a ransom for him! Bah! 'tis the idea of a white-livered fool! Ransom! Mustapha, you were not always like this.

Once upon a time you would have been hot for revenge--your wrath would have been satisfied ere the sun went down. Now you will sit supine after a shameful defeat, and take its price in gold!"

The Arab winced under the sting, and Tom saw him scowl as he laid his hand on his scimitar. He was beginning to speak, but the Portuguese gave him no time.

"Threats! I care not a straw for your threats. Come, Mustapha, do not let us quarrel. Think! Who was it started this parrot-cry, 'Down with the slave-trade'? Who was it stopped the raids for ivory, and hounded your people out of their ancient haunts till they have no rest now for the soles of their feet? Who was it strewed the sands of Egypt with thousands of your kin who were struggling in Allah's name to rescue the country from the Ottoman tyrant? You know who. We have had enough of these accursed English in Africa. But for them the Arabs would have been masters of the continent from Zanzibar to the Atlantic, from Tanganyika to the Great Sea. Bad enough, the swines of Belgians; but they can be bought. You can't buy these insolent dogs of English! Will you be deafened by their barking, and lacerated by their bites? Do you, like a poltroon, throw up the game? If not, let there be no talk of ransom, no faltering; let it be blood for blood, till Africa is our own again."

The Portuguese had waxed more and more vehement, but Tom was cool enough to look on critically as at an oratorical performance, and he even smiled the usual British smile at the fervid, unrestrained eloquence of the Southern races. De Castro went on in calmer accents:

"Come, Mustapha, your men will think you afraid to touch a white man if you allow this bear's whelp to be bought off. They will say: 'Give Mustapha so many gold pieces, and you may draw his teeth!' My friend, hand the cub over to me. I will make an example of him for his countrymen to shiver at!"

The taunts, even more than the arguments, of the Portuguese had roused the cruelty in the Arab's nature.

"Do as you like with him," he said impulsively. "It will teach them a lesson. I can trust you, no doubt, senor," he went on with a half-sneer, "not to let him off too easily. As for me, I have no taste for butchering curs; I prefer to employ others."

The Portuguese glared for an instant, but, too glad to get the long-coveted prey into his own hands, he pocketed the affront.

"So be it. To-morrow's sun will see what shall be done with him.

Meanwhile, haul the dog from his kennel. Why give him a comfortable hut? Treat him like the rest."

The chief nodded. The Portuguese went to the door and called in three of the usual guard of six.

"Here, men," he said, "the chief orders you to remove this prisoner.

Take him and tie him to yonder tree, and see to it that he does not escape."

As the men approached, Tom sprang to his feet and prepared to resist any handling by the Arabs. At this moment the hakim, who had stood in a corner of the hut, came forward and spoke a few words in the chief's ear. But they seemed only to strengthen the Arab's resolve. He bluntly told the physician to mind his own business,--that his intervention was vain. By this time Tom saw that resistance was hopeless; a struggle would probably end in his being butchered; and while there was life there was hope. He suffered himself to be led out. The Portuguese himself superintended the tying-up, the tree being the stout acacia shading the chief's hut. Eight men were set to watch the prisoner during the rest of the night, and with a look of malignant satisfaction in his evil face, the Portuguese, no longer suspected or distrusted, repaired, a free man, to his own quarters.

CHAPTER IX

Gone Away!

Through the Net--A Call in Pa.s.sing--A Chase in the Dark--On the Track--Signals--The Little People--Ka-lu-ke-ke--Visions of the Night

It was desperately cold. Since he had left Kisumu, Tom had spent every night under a blanket, and, standing now with his back to the tree, a rope about his waist, another about his legs, a third tying his arms, he had nothing to defend him from the keen air but the clothes he stood in, and was unable to gain warmth by movement. He chafed under this bitter constraint; tried the strength of the ropes by straining at them with all his might; gave up the effort in sheer impotence, and wondered whether he should live to see another dawn.

"The blackguards!" he said to himself. A whimsical smile twitched his lips as he caught sight of the eight men set to watch him, squatting around a fire some distance away, and beguiling the time with a game somewhat resembling knuckle-bones. He fixed his eyes on the fire, following the leaping flames, indulging his fancy in imaging strange monstrous shapes; then recalled chestnut nights by the big-room fire at school; by and by found himself whistling "Follow up" and "Forty years on", at which the watchers dropped their dice and their talk for a moment and turned their listening faces towards him. Then the numbing cold began its soporific work. He felt dazed; fantastic visions danced before his eyes. Presently his lips moved without his knowing it, framing foolish remarks at which it seemed that another self was laughing; then his head bent forward, and he slept.

Somewhere about midnight it seemed to him in a dream that water was trickling down his neck. He awoke and threw back his head and hitched his shoulders, and felt that it was not water but something sinuous and solid, caught between tie back of his head and his coat collar. While he was wondering whether a snake had sought refuge there from the cold, he felt the intruder withdrawn, or rather was conscious that he had jerked his head away from it. The next moment the cold thin line, of he knew not what, wandered round and tickled his nose. Again he moved his head away. Now fully awake, he concluded that a strand of some creeping plant was dangling from the tree, and hoped forlornly that his discomfort, already not far short of actual torture, was not to be increased in any such irritating manner. He could not bend low enough to scratch his nose. The detestable thing seemed to follow him. He might move his head to left or to right, jerk it back or bend it forward, but he could not avoid the persistent tickler, which he had now recognized by the wan light of the moon, in her fourth quarter and sailing high, as the leafless tendril of a creeper.

He was tempted to call out to the watchers, and ask them to relieve him of this torment. But at the same moment he noticed that the eight negroes about the smouldering fire had dropped their heads on their knees, and that the creeper was swinging to and fro with a regular pendulum movement that was hardly natural, and was certainly not due to the wind, which blew fitfully in sudden gusts. It flashed upon him that somebody, perhaps the hakim, was up the tree, signalling to him.

Bending his head back as far as he could, he peered up into the branches. At the same instant, the dangling switch ascended before his eyes; he gazed more intently, and by the faint glow of the fire from below, rather than by the filtering rays from the moon, he distinguished a crouching form at the fork of bough and trunk. It might have been an animal, but while Tom was still gazing up in a kind of dull amazement the form moved, a human arm was stretched downward, and within the grasp of a human hand a long blade caught a glint of red light from the watchers' fire. Tom longed to s.n.a.t.c.h at it. There it was, three feet above his head! He tore desperately at his fastenings, but the cords only cut into his flesh. "Come down and cut me free!" he whispered; but just then one of the Manyema turned his head, the knife was instantly withdrawn, the figure crawled back upon the branch, and disappeared from view.

Tom wondered. Surely the hakim, if it was the hakim, was not going to desert him. He waited and fretted; minute after minute pa.s.sed; there was no sound, no sign. His heart sank; somnolence was again creeping over his senses when, nearly an hour after he had been first awaked, he heard a faint rustle in the tree above him. He looked up; there again was the form, its features indistinguishable in the foliage. As he gazed he saw a rod let down; the long knife was swathed about the end. It came lower; it reached the level of his hands, and stopped. He looked at it with wonder; then from the tree came a whisper:

"Cut; quick!"

He almost laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion. His hands were tied; his arms were bent in front of his chest, elbows and palms together, and strong cords were wound tightly about the wrists and forearms. But there was the sharp blade turned towards him, within half an inch of the ropes, held stiffly as though some malicious elf were bent on tantalizing him. Again came the eager whisper:

"Cut, cut; up and down, up and down!"

The knife moved closer, it touched the rope about his wrists; he felt its pressure. Was the thing possible? He tried to pull his cramped arms apart, and found that, firmly as they were bound, he could move them up and down for about an inch. He made a downward movement, the ropes sc.r.a.ping against the blade; up again, then down, again, again, with increasing rapidity as his excitement grew. One of the guards heaved a great sigh; Tom instantly stopped rubbing, and when the negro turned sleepily to look at the prisoner, he saw him tied to the tree, his head bent on his chest, his eyes closed. The man stretched out his arms, shifted his position, and gave himself again to slumber. Then the knife moved again, the rubbing was resumed; one strand gave way, then another, the tension was slackened, and with one final wrench Tom found his aching hands free!

He pressed them under his armpits to warm them and remove something of the pain; but the figure above was impatient, insistent. He lowered the knife still farther, and pressed it against the rope around Tom's waist.

Tom took it. A few moments' sawing severed that rope also; then he stooped to his feet, and with three sharp strokes upon the cords about his ankles his last bonds were snapped, and he stood once more a free man. The negroes still slept, and the fire had died down upon its embers.

What was he now to do? Who was his obliging friend? He had little time to wonder; the rod was withdrawn into the tree; a few moments later it came down--the knife was gone.

"Climb up, sah!" came the eager whisper.

Tom grasped the rod, set his feet upon the k.n.o.bby bole, and with exertions which strained the muscles of arms and legs to the verge of cramp he heaved himself into the leafy bough. The figure there clutched him as he was on the point of falling. "Sah! sah!" it said with a sob of joy. Tom gripped Mbutu's hand, and sat for a minute breathless, peering down towards the circle of sleeping negroes. The wind blew with increasing force, rustling the leaves, and the branch swayed heavily, grazing the hut's thatched roof.

"No time fink, sah," said Mbutu. "Must run away!"