Tom Burnaby Part 18

The night-wind swayed the branches all around him, waking a chorus of creaking stems, swinging boughs, rustling leaves. From below came the ceaseless sc.r.a.ping chirp of crickets, the shrill piping call of cicadas, the tuneless croak of frogs. In the distance he heard the harsh, rasping cry of the lemur, and a strange sound like the noise of a stick rattled against iron railings; this, Mbutu explained afterwards, was a soko or chimpanzee amusing himself with striking upon a tree. Once Tom was startled by a sudden crackle, followed by a rending and rushing and a heavy thump that shook the fork on which he lay. In the morning he found that a dead tree had fallen, crashing through the forest and overwhelming many a living tree with its weight. All these sounds, breaking in upon the sad rustle of the foliage, filled Tom's soul with a sense of forlornness. By and by the sounds were unheeded; his mind was occupied with thronging memories and thoughts. He was reminded of the sleepless nights he had sometimes spent in his father's parsonage, hearkening to the rooks in the trees just opposite his window. He thought of his boyish ambitions; of the pride and eagerness with which he had listened to his uncle Jack's stories when he came on rare visits to the parsonage; of the blow to all his hopes when his father died.

Then he lived again in thought through the long months at Glasgow; heard the din of the engine-shop, and felt once more the dissatisfied longing of that dreary time. That appeared now to be far back in a dim remote past. It was only a few weeks since he had left England, and yet how much had happened in the interval! The events of years seemed to have been compressed into days. His thirst for adventure was more than satisfied; yet here he was, in the heart of an African forest, with who could tell what new experiences in store for him?

And as his mind rolled question after question round an empty ring, eerie shapes seemed to creep out of the darkness, mocking and jibing, whispering words of evil augury, prophesying comfortless days of weariness and pain, of aimless wandering in the immeasurable forest, where he would finally drop and die, a prey to jackal or vulture. He strained his eyes, as though to see if these were in very truth bodily forms surrounding him; then upon his mental sight another scene rose--reminiscences of his brief captivity with the Arabs; stark forms lying in chains upon the swampy path; men and women and children sobbing out their lives in slavery; the slaver's cruel whip descending on the backs of young boys and maidens, who writhed and shrieked and fell bleeding and exhausted, many to rise no more. His own dark fancies fled the horrors of the slave-trade came home to him. He forgot his own puny troubles, and even his present extremity. Once more he registered the vow that, if he were spared, he would strike a blow, however feeble, against this hideous traffic in humanity. Suddenly there fell upon his inward ear the cry of the Arabs in the fight by the bridge: "Allah-il-Allah! G.o.d is G.o.d!" A solemn quiet brooded upon his mind; the wind itself lulled and the rustle of the leaves around him ceased.

Looking up through the canopy of green, he saw one star faintly twinkling. His depression pa.s.sed away; he found himself murmuring the lines of a poem that had been a favourite with his father:

"G.o.d's in His heaven, All's right with the world".

Thoughts of all the good things of life crowded through his mind; he felt contented and at rest; and with recollections his uncle, Dr.

O'Brien, Mr. Barkworth, and the padre making a dancing medley in his brain with hippos and crocodiles, Arabs and pigmies, he at last fell into a dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER X

The Land of the Pigmies

Slow Progress--Forest Life--Hunger--Overtures--A Change of Diet--In Straits--A Man Hunt--At Bay

Tom awoke when the darkness was fading, and a ghostly light showed him the still sleeping form of Mbutu hard by.

"Wake up, my katikiro," he said cheerily. "I shall have to teach you those lines about the sluggard, my boy. Come, what about breakfast?"

Mbutu was wide awake in an instant. He slid down the tree with the agility of a cat.

"Me get breakfast, sah," he said, "jolly good breakfast."

He was out of sight before Tom, in a more leisurely way, had descended.

Soon the Muhima returned, his arms full of magnificent mushrooms. He put them down at the foot of the tree and disappeared again, this time remaining somewhat longer away, and bringing back with him some red berries of the phrynia and the oblong fruit of the amoma. Tom made a wry face as he bit one of the berries, and Mbutu laughed and explained that the kernel was the edible part; but he found the tartish amoma fruit refreshing, and of these and the mushrooms, fried over a twig fire, he made a satisfying meal. Then they started on their way, taking their direction from the rising sun, of which they caught a glimpse through the trees.

But soon the sun was hidden from their view, and they had to tunnel their way through creepers, rubber-plants, and tangled vines. The heat was like the damp heat of a hot-house many times intensified, and they sweated till they were wringing wet. Sometimes they floundered into thick sc.u.m-faced quagmires green with duckweed, into which they sank knee-deep, the stench exhaled from the slough almost overcoming Tom.

Then came a new patch of thorn, which Mbutu had to cut away laboriously with his knife, Tom standing by chafing at his inability to a.s.sist.

When they got through, after taking more than an hour to traverse half a mile, their clothes were in tatters, and Tom's rueful look provoked a smile from Mbutu.

"Soon get used to it, sah," he said cheerfully. "No clothes; all same for one."

"Which means, I suppose, that I'm only very much in the forest fashion!

Well, it's hot enough for anything; certainly too hot to talk. Let us rest."

"Berrah soon, sah. I see coney track; rest ober dar."

Following up the slight track which his sharp eyes had discovered, he led the way to a spot where a camp had evidently been formed not very long before. The ground was cleared, and several logs of various lengths lay about. On one of these Tom sat down thankfully to rest.

"It's time for dinner, I'm sure. I'd give anything for a gla.s.s of cider, but, as that's out of the question, can you find me some water anywhere, Mbutu?"

"Oh yes, sah; camp here, must be water."

He went into the undergrowth, and returned by and by with a broad leaf of the phrynia held cup-shape in his hands, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with delicious water from a rivulet. After quenching their thirst and eating a few berries they went on again.

Marching began to be monotonous. There was little variety. Sometimes they crossed the track of an elephant or a buffalo; once they came upon a stretch of fifty yards of flattened undergrowth exhaling an unpleasant musky smell, and Mbutu explained that that was the trail of a boa-constrictor. Later they crossed a track evidently made by human footsteps, and once Tom was only saved from falling into a deep elephant-pit by Mbutu s.n.a.t.c.hing at him as he trod at the edge. Always there was the bush to be penetrated; colossal trees to be avoided; riotous creepers to be dodged; and Tom was very glad when night came and Mbutu found him a hollow tree to sleep in.

On this night the parts were reversed, for while Tom fell into a sound sleep at once, Mbutu sat up, watchful and anxious. He had been disturbed by the sight of leopard scratches on the trunks of teak, and as a measure of precaution had borrowed his master's box of matches and kindled a fire--a slow process with the damp wood. But he was still more disturbed by the scarcity of food. He had noticed during their last hour's walk the almost complete absence of the edible plants on which they had fed hitherto, and he feared that they might have reached one of those regions of the forest where food, except wild animals to be hunted, is unprocurable. Before he at last closed his eyes he tore a strip off the burnous girt about his loins, and contrived to make with it a running noose, which he hung a foot or two above the ground upon a spray of thorn. This was a simple snare into which he hoped that a coney or some other small animal might run its neck before morning. But when the dawn broke, the noose was still hanging empty, and Mbutu, after a scrutiny of the bush, announced that his master would have to dispense with breakfast. Tom took the news lightly, in order not to discourage his companion.

"Cheer up!" he said. "It won't be the first time I've been for a tramp before breakfast. There's plenty of dew, I see, so that we can have a drink, and perhaps by the time we're sharp-set we shall be in the land of plenty."

So they started cheerfully enough, making still towards the south-west.

But Tom's confidence proved to be not justified. The character of the vegetation had somewhat changed. It grew as thick as ever, but while many of the plants bore attractive-looking berries, Mbutu informed his master that they were all poisonous. They did come upon a ma.s.s of wild bananas, but only the cultivated fruit is eatable. Even when they reached what had once been a clearing, where a grove of plantains might have been expected, they found that elephants had been running riot, and the vegetation there was trampled into a pulp. Once Mbutu uttered a cry of joy on catching sight of a small arum bush; he sprang forward, dug up the roots with his knife, slit them into slices, and roasted them over a fire. That was all the food they obtained that day. It had been very hot, the air had seemed almost solid, and the foetid exhalations from the soft places they had pa.s.sed made Tom feel sick and disconsolate.

When they stopped for the night, Mbutu again lit a watch-fire, and set his noose. In the morning he was wakened by a faint cry, and, springing up, he saw that a coney had been caught in the snare, and had at that moment been pounced on by a wild cat. He was too hungry to allow himself to be forestalled. He picked up his knife and made for the cat, which turned its head without relaxing its hold, and showed its teeth as though inclined to fight. But when Mbutu was almost upon it, with an angry snarl it loosed its prey and sprang up into a tree. The coney was already dead, its neck broken by the cat's fierce onslaught. Mbutu had the animal half-skinned when his master awoke.

"What are you about?" cried Tom, horrified at seeing Mbutu lifting a piece of raw flesh to his mouth.

"Hungry, sah; coney berrah good."

"But you can't eat it raw, surely! Ugh! you'll make me sick."

Mbutu put down the morsel with a look in which mingled emotions were expressed.

"Make fire in two ticks," he said resignedly, a phrase he had heard Tom use; and in a short time he was toasting some steaks at the fire, while his master searched for fruit. He found a few berries, and both he and Mbutu ate their meal ravenously, feeling still hungry when they had finished.

The fourth day of their forest march was but a repet.i.tion of the third.

They found almost nothing eatable, and even good water was scarcer than on the previous day. At one point a huge puff-adder lay coiled in their path, and Mbutu wished to kill it, a.s.suring his master that the reptile was too sluggish to defend itself. But Tom shuddered, and bade him come away. Later in the day Mbutu suddenly flung his knife at a tawny creature with black spots and a long, striped, bushy tail--a genet cat, as Tom afterwards discovered,--but the weapon missed by barely an inch.

That was the last chance they had that day of securing animal food, and they had to content themselves with a few dry and unpalatable, though perfectly wholesome, roots, which Mbutu grubbed up, and the leaves of herbs growing low.

Both the travellers had spoken jestingly of their hunger, for each was unwilling to depress the other; but it was a hollow pretence. Both, but Tom more especially, were already feeling the weakening effects of privation.

Before they settled for the night, Tom thought it well to speak plainly to Mbutu. His own uneasiness was deepened by his feeling of responsibility for the boy.

"Mbutu," he said gravely, "if we do not find food to-morrow we shall begin to starve. I don't know what starvation means; it is too horrible, almost, to think of. Yet we must face the possibility. Now, I brought you into this, and it isn't fair that you should come to harm on my account. If we find no food to-morrow, I think you had better go on without me. You can make your way more easily than I, and if you come to a village and get food you can bring me some; if not, go on; it is better for one to starve than two."

"No! no! no!" said Mbutu vehemently; "sah fader and mudder. Food come by and by; no die dis time."

But the poor boy, when his master had fallen asleep, looked anxiously at his pinched face. The cheeks were thinned and drawn, there were dark sunken patches below the eyes, and his tall frame seemed even taller and thinner. Ever since the young Englishman had saved him from De Castro's whip, Mbutu had cherished a sentiment of absolute devotion for him, only intensified by the hazards of their later adventures. He would have laid down his life for him, and indeed, though Tom had not noticed it, the boy had already stinted himself even of the little food he had obtained.

"My master is much bigger than I," was his half-formed thought, "and needs more to keep his strength up."

The morning of their fifth day in the forest broke dull and depressing.

Huge blankets of mist clothed tree and shrub, and a light breeze set up strange cross currents which rolled great white billows one against another, swirling and eddying, twisting and twining like animate things.

Tom shivered as he awoke; the violent changes of temperature had made him somewhat feverish, and his sunken eyes, unnaturally bright, seemed for a moment to gaze out vacantly upon the encircling walls of misty green. His limbs ached, and he got up stiffly. Mbutu was not in sight, but returned presently, bringing with him some ca.s.sava tubers and arum roots which he cooked for his master's breakfast. Tom found it difficult to eat them. He smiled a weary smile.

"We shall have to tighten our belts to-day, Mbutu," he said. "Did you ever hear of that? Twist your burnous more tightly round your loins and you won't feel the pain so much. And we must be careful of our matches, too. The box is half-empty and we can't get any more."

"Make fire with wood, sah," said Mbutu.

"But wouldn't that be difficult with the damp stuff around us? We must keep up our courage and get on. We can't tell the way till the sun is up, and indeed I'm afraid we shall never see the sun in this thick forest."

"Me climb tree, sah; see sun den."

Mbutu began to clamber up into the foliage, and springing dexterously from branch to branch ascended to the top, where, a hundred and fifty feet from the ground, above the rolling banks of mist, he caught sight of the red sun rising above the limitless expanse of waving green.