IN SEARCH OF THE OKAPI
CHAPTER I
THE HUNTER
"Dick, why do you study Arabic so closely?"
"To understand Arabic."
"And further?"
Dick Compton closed his book and placed it carefully in a leather case.
"It is a pity you were born curious, Venning, otherwise you would have made an excellent companion for a studious man. 'Why do I wish to understand Arabic?' Why do you stand on one leg watching a tadpole shed its tail."
"Excuse me, I always sit down to watch a tadpole."
"Yet I have seen you poised on one leg for an hour like a heron, afraid to put down the other foot lest you should scare some wretched pollywog. Why?"
"I do it for the love of the thing, Dick. What is a page of your crooked signs compared with a single green pond and all that it holds?"
"By Jove! Is that so—and would you find a volume in a caterpillar?"
"Why not? Listen to me, Dick. Take the silver-spiked caterpillar, with a skin of black satin and a length that runs to four inches. He lives his life in the topmost boughs of an African palm—a feathered dome amid the forest—and there beneath the blue sky he browses till he descends into the warm earth to sleep in chrysalis form before he emerges as a splendid moth, with glass windows in his wide wings to sail with the fire-flies through the dark vaults of the silent woods."
"All that from a caterpillar?"
"That and much more, Dicky."
"And where will this study of the caterpillar lead you, Godfrey? One can't live on a caterpillar."
"Yet there is one kind—fat and creamy—that makes good soup."
"Ugh, you cormorant! But tell me seriously, what is the end of your studies—where will they lead you?"
"To Central Africa."
"Do you mean that, Venning?"
"I do, Dick. There is one spot on the map of Africa that is marked black. That spot is covered over hundreds of square miles by the unexplored forest. Think what that means to me!"
"Fever most likely—or three inches of spear-head."
"A forest big enough to cover England! Just think of the new forms of life—from a new ant to an elephant or hornless giraffe. The okapi was discovered near that great hunting-ground—and, who is to say there are not other animals as strange in its untrodden depths?"
"Is it a wild-fowl, the okapi?"
"A wild-fowl, you duffer!" exclaimed Venning, indignantly. "Haven't you heard of the dwarfed giraffe, part zebra, discovered by Sir Harry Johnston? It lost the long neck of the original species which browses in the open veld by the necessity to adapt its habits to the changed conditions of life within the forest."
"Your neck is rather long, my boy, from much stretching to watch things. Look out that you don't have it shortened. And so you intend to visit Central Africa? That is very curious!"
"I don't see anything curious about it."
"Nor do I, as to one thing. If a fellow is crazy about butterflies, he may as well roam in Africa as a lunatic with a net as anywhere else; but the curious part of the matter is, that my study of Arabic is intended to prepare me for a trip to the very same place."
"Compton, you don't mean it," said the other, jumping from his seat.
"I do, most decidedly."
"But what has Arabic got to do with the Central African Forest?"
"Quite as much as your short-nosed elephant or long-tailed hippopotamus. I also wish to discover something that has been lost. Don't open your mouth so wide."
"Is it an animal, Dick?"
"Good gracious, no! I don't care twopence about an animal, except it is for the pot, or unless it wants me for dinner. No; mine is another search. It is connected with my father."
"Yes," said Venning, quietly; for his friend had suddenly grown grave.
"When I was a little chap, about seventeen years ago, my mother received a letter dated from the 'great forest.'"
"It contained only these words, 'Good-bye.' With it there was a letter in Arabic, written by my father's headman. That letter was seven months on its travels, and since then no other word have I heard."
Venning muttered something in sympathy.
"My mother," continued the other, "died five years ago, without having learnt the meaning of the message in Arabic. She had a wish that no one but I should read the letter, and often she told me that if it contained any instructions or directions, I was to carry them out. Well, I have interpreted the Arabic signs."
"Yes, Dick; and——"
"And I can't quite make out the meaning. There is a reference to the journal my father kept, with the statement that it was safely hidden; but then follows a reference to a Garden of Rest, to certain people who protected him, and to a slave-trader who did him an injury. These references to me are a mystery; but what is clear is his desire to have his journal recovered from the Arab slave-dealer, described merely as 'The Wolf.'"
"And that is why you wish to go to Central Africa?"
"That is why, Venning. I must recover my father's journal if it exists; I must, if it is not too late, find out how he died; I must find out who are the wild people, and what is the Garden of Rest."
"The Garden of Rest! That sounds peaceful, but it is very vague, Dick, as a direction. A garden in a forest hundreds of miles in length will take some finding."
"I have a clue."
"So."
"There is mention of the 'gates' to the garden, whose summits 'are in the clouds'—twin mountains, I take it."
"Even so, Dick, I think I should have more chance of finding my new animal than you would have of hitting off your garden."
"Well, you know now why I have been studying Arabic. I have a little money, and no ties."
"Like me. By Jove! why shouldn't we go out together?"
"Because we have some sense, I suppose," said Compton, coolly. "Have you ever roughed it?"
"I have slept out in the New Forest—often."
"Oh, that's picnicking, with the bark of the fox in place of the lion's roar, and good food in place of 'hard tack,' and perhaps the attentions of a suspicious keeper instead of a surprise attack by wild men of the woods. An explorer needs experience."
"Yes, and he must buy his own experience; but tell me how he can, unless he makes a beginning."
"Now we come to the point, Venning. He should begin with some one who already has experience."
"I see. And you will wait till some seasoned explorer kindly asks you to join him? You'll have to wait a precious long time."
"I'm not so sure," said Dick Compton, with a knowing smile.
"Have you found your explorer, Dick?" shouted Venning, eagerly.
Compton produced a leather purse and extracted a slip of paper cut from an advertisement column, and passed it to his friend.
"By Jove! eh, that's splendid!" spluttered Venning, in his excitement as he glanced at the paper.
"Read it over."
Venning read the notice—
"A GENTLEMAN, who is an experienced traveler, being about to enter upon an expedition into Central Africa, would like to make arrangements with two young men of education and of means to bear a share of the expenses to accompany him.—Apply, for further particulars, to D. H., No. 109 Box, Office of this paper."
"Let us write at once to D. H.," he said eagerly.
"I have seen him."
Venning took a deep breath and stared at his friend.
"I saw him this very morning," said Compton, quietly.
"And—————"
"He said you were too young! Eh? Go on—go on!"
"And I told him I thought I could find a friend who would join me."
"You mean to say that he agreed to take you?" cried Venning, jumping up.
Compton nodded.
"Oh, splendid! And you will take me to him? You're a brick. What is he like, eh? Is he old or young, eh?"
Compton kept cool outwardly, but he could not subdue the glitter of his dark eyes, or keep the colour out of his cheeks.
"He is about five feet four. I can look over his head."
"Oh!"
"There are grey hairs in his beard."
"Quite old; old and little! What bad luck! He will have to look up to us."
"Well, you know, he can't help being small, can he?"
"I suppose, like most little men, he is as vain as he can stick, bumptious, and fidgety," said Venning, despondently.
"He struck me as being very quiet. At any rate, you can judge for yourself, as we are due to see him within half an hour. You must tell him that you are a naturalist, as he intends writing a book, in which a great deal of space will be given to animals. He said he felt a 'bit shaky on his pins' when it came to scientific terms."
"I should be glad to help him there," said Venning; "but it is too good. He would never take a youngster like me."
"He said he would rather have a youngster who would carry out his own views about treating a subject, than a man who would try to teach him his business. Come along and see him for yourself."
"Within half an hour the two friends who had just left school entered a room which was part library, part museum, armoury, dining- room, and cabin, so crammed it was.
"This is my friend Venning, Mr. Hume."
"Glad to see you, Venning. Sit down anywhere."
Compton sat down between the horns of a bleached buffalo skull, but Venning stood like one in a trance. His hand had been swallowed up by a huge palm and thick iron-like fingers, and he was staring down on a pair of the broadest shoulders he had seen, with an arching chest to match. This was the pigmy he had imagined—this man with the shoulders of a giant and the chest of a Hercules. Then his eyes ranged over the walls, gradually recovering their animation.
"Know 'em," said Mr. Hume, waving a bronzed hand towards the wall.
"I think so, sir."
"Just reel off the names."
Venning reeled off the names of a score or more of animals without hesitation, and Mr. Hume looked pleased.
"There are some men," he said, "who come in here and talk over me and round me and under me about fur and feather, and they can't tell a bighorn from a koodoo by the horns on the wall. Now, my friend, you knew those over there in the corner were the horns of a koodoo, but do you know his habits?"
"No, sir; but I spent a month watching a Dartmoor deer."
"A month! Can't learn anything in a month, boy; but you've struck the right book. The pages that are spread out under the sky hold the right teaching, for those who wish to learn about animals. There are writers who make a study of structure; they argue from bones, and classify; but bones don't tell us about the living flesh and blood. You take my meaning?"
"You make a difference between the structure of animals and their habits."
"That's so, my lad. Ever read Jeffreys, and the sketches by the 'Son of the Marshes'?"
"They're splendid."
Mr. Hume nodded and filled a pipe, having a footlong stem, made out of the wing-bone of an albatross.
"I want to describe the personal habits of animals in their surroundings. I said 'personal' habits. Do you take me?"
"No, sir."
"You think I should use another word, and say, perhaps, 'distinctive' habits. I say personal. Now, you take a lion—a bush lion or a veld lion, a yellow lion or a black lion, young or old. That lion, whichever one you take, is a lion by himself. He's got his own character and his own experience. All lions have ways in common because they're built alike. They're heavy and muscular because they've got to pull down big game; and because they're heavy they move slowly, and because they move slowly they've got to adopt common tactics in hunting. Good; but one lion differs from another, and so with other animals, right away through the list. So, I say, one must study the personal habits of animals in their own back yard, so to say, before he can give a true description of them. Do you take my meaning?"
"I should like nothing better than to study animals in their home," said the boy, burning with excitement.
"And the two of you think you would like to join me in my expedition?"
Mr. Hume looked at them out of calm yellowish eyes as if he were studying them.
"We should," they said eagerly.
"Think it will turn out a picnic—a glorified sort of camping-out, with black fellows to wait on you, and a lot of shooting and fishing? Is that your idea?"
"We were talking about that this morning," said Compton, "and we came to the conclusion that exploring was hard work. We are prepared for rough living."
"That's right. And you tell me that you are free to go without giving anxiety to relatives, eh?"
"We neither of us have near relatives."
Mr. Hume stood up and felt each one over in turn, making them draw deep breaths.
"Seem sound," he mused, "in wind and limb. But there is one thing. The great danger in Central Africa is from fever—not from animals or blacks." Here he took down a bottle of white powder, and placed a large pinch in a wine-glass of water. "Quinine is the traveler's stand-by, but there are some who cannot take quinine, It has no effect on them, and such people have no business to set foot in fever districts. Drink this?"
Compton emptied the glass with a wry face, and Venning, when his turn came, shuddered; but they got the dose down, and smiled.
"Now," said Mr. Hume, "you both of you give me references to the headmaster of your school, and I will give you one in return. I will make inquiries about you, and I would advise you to make inquiries about me. You can come back here to-morrow afternoon, and if we are mutually satisfied, we will then fix up a contract."
"I don't think we require a reference," said Venning.
"Why not?" said Mr. Hume, sharply.
"Because," blurted out Venning, turning red—"because you have lived among animals."
Mr. Hume laughed heartily with a deep rumbling laugh.
"Animals are tricky, boy; and yet," he added, "there may be a meaning in what you say. They have a dignity in death that is grand. Go and make your inquiries, lads. I am Dave Hume, the hunter, and my life has been passed in wild lands, but there are some in London who know me."
He rose up to open the door, and Venning overtopped him by inches, yet he did not look either small or unwieldy. His step was springy, and his head, poised on a massive neck, was well set, with the chin raised. He was a man, evidently, who had always looked the world straight in the face. His eyes had a yellowish tinge, and in their colour and their calm they reminded Venning somehow of a lion, an impression heightened by the tawny hue of a long beard.
The next day, the references having been satisfactorily followed up, the contract was entered upon, and the two boys paid over the sum of Pounds 50 each to David Hume, who in his turn agreed to let them share in any profits which the expedition might make, from any source whatever.
"Profits, Mr. Hume?" they asked.
"Profits from hunting, from trading, or from discovery. I don't say that we shall make anything. The chances are, of course, that we may lose all before we are a month out, but it is always well to be business-like. There is gold in Central Africa. We may discover a gold reef. There are new animals in the forest. We may catch an okapi, and if we could land it in England it would fetch a large sum. We might snare a live gorilla, and there is not a gorilla in the zoological gardens of Europe."
"A gorilla!" said Venning, thinking of a picture he had seen of an erect man-ape bending a rifle-barrel into an arch as if it were a cane.
"A gorilla!" said Compton. "I should like to find the Garden of
Rest."
"You have heard his story, Mr. Venning?" said the hunter, nodding his head at Compton.
"Yes, sir."
"Well, it was because of that story that I have taken you two into my expedition; otherwise I should have been obliged to decline your services on account of your youth. But the story interested me, and I will do my best to help Compton in his search."
"Thank you," said Compton, quietly.
"The Garden of Rest!" mused the hunter. "That, I take it, would be an Arabian phrase; for such a term would not occur to a native, who is too often idle to attach much value to a state of rest. It sounds peaceful; but I have it in my mind that if we ever reach the place, it will be only after much hard work, much suffering, and danger. You understand that this is no pleasure excursion?"
"We do, sir," said Compton; "yet we expect to get much pleasure from the expedition."
"Another word. I am not an exacting man; but there is one thing I will not tolerate, and that is disobedience. It is well to understand that now;" and there came a stern expression into those singular eyes.
"That is only right," said Compton; and Venning agreed.