Chapter Nineteen.
The Search for the Land of Gold.
Scene:—Daybreak on the unknown river. The stream is a good mile wide here; its banks are lined with a cloudland of green, the great trees trailing their branches in the water. A sand bar at one side, jutting far out into the river, tall crimson ibises standing thereon like a regiment of British soldiers. The mist of morning uprising everywhere off the woods and off the water. One long red cloud in the east heralding the approach of the god of day. Silence over all, except for the dip of the oars—they are muffled—as our adventurers’ boat rapidly nears the shore to seek the friendly shelter of the tree-fringe.
“So far on our way, thank heaven,” said Kenneth, as soon as the boat was hidden and the party had landed on a little bank deeply bedded with brown leaves.
“So far, and now for breakfast.”
Yes, now for breakfast, reader, and a very frugal one it was; some handfuls of boiled rice and a morsel of biscuit steeped in the water to make it go down.
This had been their fare for days and days, but added thereto was the fruit that Essequibo never failed to find.
Fish there were in this great river in abundance, fish that they had plenty of means of catching too, but none of cooking without danger; for smoke might betray their presence to an enemy more implacable and merciless than the wildest beast in the jungle.
The long hot day passed drearily away. They sat or reclined mostly in a circle, carrying on a conversation in voices but little over a whisper.
When the day was at its very hottest, when there was not a leaf stirring in the branches above, when the monkeys that more than once had visited them, creeping nearer and nearer with curious half-frightened gaze, had sought the darkest, coolest nooks of the forest, and the—
“Strange bright birds on starry wing—”
had ceased their low plaintive songs, and sat open-mouthed and all a-gasp on the boughs, then sleep stole over every one, and it was far into the afternoon ere they awoke.
The sun went down at last, and darkness—a tropical darkness—very soon followed. Lights might now be seen flitting about among the trees; the fire-flies and curious creeping things went gliding hither and thither on the ground, all ablaze with phosphorescent light. Yonder knobs of fire that jump about so mysteriously are beetles; that long line of fire wriggling snake-like at the tree foot is the dreaded brown centipede, whose bite is death.
They must not leave their hiding-place yet though, for Logobo canoes are still on the river. They must wait and listen for hours to come. But they keep closer together now and grasp their arms sturdily, for lions have awakened and begun to yawn; there are terrible yells and shrieks, and coughing and groaning to be heard on every side, and many a plash alongside in the dark water. Sometimes a huge bat drives right against them, poisoning the air with pestiferous odour. Sometimes they see starry eyeballs glaring at them from under the plantain bushes, and hear the branches creak and crack, and the sound of stealthy footsteps near them. It is an eeriesome place this to spend even half-an-hour in after nightfall, but their only chance of safety lies in remaining perfectly still, perfectly mute. At long last light shimmers in through the leafy canopy above them, they know the moon has arisen, and it is time to be going.
Once more they are embarked, and once more stealing silently up the unknown river.
As the night advances, they are less cautious and talk more freely. Earlier in the evening they had heard the beating of the warlike tom-tom and the shouts of savage sentries, but now these are hushed and the beasts and birds of the night alone are left to rend the ear with their wild cries.
Hiding by day, and journeying silently onward and upward by night, our heroes are in less than a week far past the country of the dreaded Logobo men. Not that their dangers are over by any means, nor their trials. There are dangers from beasts, from lion or leopard, and from hideous reptiles, far more ugly than a nightmare, and these they must often face, for the rapids in the river have now become numerous, and they have to land and carry their light boat past them. But, on the whole, they were so happy now and light-hearted that they often laughed and joked and sang; and why not? Were they not marching on to fortune? They believed so, at all events.
In the long dark evenings, round the camp fire, they would lie on their blankets with their feet to the fire, and their guns not far off, you may be well sure, and sing songs and tell stories of their far-away native land. The flute, too, was put on duty, much to the delight of little Essequibo, the nigger boy. Essequibo, or Keebo as he was called for short, was at first inclined to be afraid of the flute; in fact, when first he heard it, he turned three somersaults backwards and disappeared in the jungle. He did not appear again for half-an-hour; then he came out, and gradually and slowly and wonderingly advanced to where Kenneth sat playing.
Keebo’s eyes were as big as half-crown pieces, now, and he walked on tip-toe, ready to bolt again at a moment’s notice.
“Massa Kennie,” he said plaintively, “Massa Kennie, what you raise inside dis poor chile wid dat tube you blows into? You raisee de good spirit or de ebil one? Tell me dat.”
“The good spirit, Keebo,” replied Kenneth; “listen.”
Then Kenneth played “The Land of the Leal.”
“I’se all of a shake, Massa Kennie,” said the poor boy; “de spirits, dey am all about here now, I knows. Dey not can touch poor Keebo? Tell me dat for true?”
Essequibo got more used to the flute before long, and at last he quite loved it.
Here is the story of Essequibo’s conversion. I give it briefly. It was one day when Kenneth and he were alone, all the rest being away in the bush in search of food and dry fuel.
Keebo squatted near Kenneth’s knees, leaning his hands thereon with child-like confidence, and gazing up into the young Scot’s face as he played low sweet Scottish airs. These plaintive airs took Kenneth away back in fancy to grand Glen Alva, and the tears rose to his eyes as he thought of his childhood’s days, of his simple happiness while herding sheep, of his dear mother, of Kooran and the fairy knoll.
And last but not least of the sweet child Jessie, and of that day among the Highland heather, when she gave him the flowers. He took the Bible from his bosom and opened it.
And there they were side by side. And they were near a chapter his mother used often to read to him. His mother? Heigho! he would never see her again in this world, but faith pointed upwards.
He took his flute more cheerfully now, and began to play that sweet melody “New London.” His whole soul was breathed into the instrument.
When he looked again at Keebo, why, there were tears rolling down the boy’s cheeks.
“You remember your mother, Keebo?”
“Ess, Massa Kennie, I ’member she. De cruel Arab men kill she wid one spear. Sometimes Keebo tink she speak to her boy yet in his dreams.”
“So she does, Keebo. So she does, dear child. She lives, Keebo.”
“She lib, sah! My moder lib?”
Then Kenneth told Essequibo the Bible tale and all the sweet story of Jesu’s love; and every word sank deep into Keebo’s heart, and was never, never forgotten.
When returning that day from the bush in Indian file, Archie, who was first, checked the others with uplifted hands, and pointed through the plantain bushes to the clearing where Kenneth knelt in prayer beside the boy Keebo.
Both Archie and Harvey doffed their caps, and stood reverently there, not daring to reveal their presence till Kenneth had arisen. The very sky above them seemed at that moment a holy sky.
Essequibo was a strange name to give this nigger boy. (The name of a river in South America.) It came by chance, and suited him well. He was clever, this lad; and proved a treasure to the little expedition in many a trial. His English was not of the purest, he had learnt it in Zanzibar; but he could talk the languages of the interior tribes and Arabic as well. It is truly wonderful how soon boys of this caste learn languages.
Zona was guide and chief of the party; he knew the land well, and he knew the river. He knew which way to go to avoid unfriendly Indians, and he knew also the shortest tracks. So you may fancy them going on and on day after day in their search for the land of gold, sometimes gliding along the silent and unknown river, sometimes plunging into deep, dark forests; at other times toiling over arid plains, round the spurs of lofty mountains, or wading deep through miry marsh lands, the home, par excellence, of the most loathsome of Saurian monsters; but journeying ever with light hearts, for hope still pointed onwards.
At night, by the camp fire, Archie and Kenneth used to build aerial castles, and plan out the kind of future that they should spend in Scotland when they had wealth. But never a night passed without a chapter being read, a psalm sung, and a prayer said. Zona used to retire to the bush, and it is but fair to say that, according to his lights, he was as good at heart as any of the others.
They had hired over a dozen sturdy Indians to carry boats and ammunition, but these men needed watching, both by night and by day. They were necessary evils, that is all. Not that negroes of this kind are not often faithful enough, but they need a master eye to guide them, else they soon lose heart and faint and fail—then fly.
More than once Keebo prevented these men from stampeding, for Keebo was ever watchful.
For many weeks our heroes kept on in the same slow course, defying every obstacle. They were now little more than fifty miles from the goal of their desires.
“If gold or diamonds,” said Kenneth to Archie, “be but half as plentiful as represented, we have only to collect and retire. We have overcome every danger, and avoided the greatest danger of all—the Logobo country. We will go more swiftly down stream than we came up.”
Archie was quite as hopeful as Kenneth.
Harvey hardly so much so.
“‘There is many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip,’” the latter would say.
Perhaps this was one of the happiest periods of the lives of either of our heroes. Indeed, their existence at present resembled nothing so much as one long picnic. They were like the wild creatures around them; they lived on the good things they found, and were contented and happy.
Kenneth, true lover of nature, could never have dreamt of scenery like that which he now gazed on daily. Oh the luxuriance of an African tropical woodland! what pen could describe, what pencil or brush portray it!
Yes, there were deadly things to be avoided, but one gets careless of even them, or, at least, used to them, so that in time not even a great snake dangling from a branch in front of him makes him shudder; nor is he greatly alarmed if he comes suddenly on the African “tiger,” as the leopard is called, enjoying a siesta at noon-tide under a tree.
The tribes they had hitherto encountered were non-warlike and quiet. One day, however, Essequibo, who had been scouting on ahead, came rushing back in a state of great alarm.
“Dey come, dey come!” he shouted; “plenty bad men. Plenty spear and shield. Dey kill and eat us all for true!”
The carrier negroes threw down their boat and packages and would have bolted en masse, had not our heroes stood by them with pistol and whip. The whip was, I believe, more dreaded than even the revolver.
In less time than it takes me to tell it, the little expedition, which was quickly formed into a solid square, was surrounded by a cloud of armed blacks.
To fight such a mob was out of the question; they used better tactics: they pretended to be overjoyed at meeting them. They were friends, Kenneth told the chief of these negroes, not foes, and wanted to see the king, and brought him presents from the far-off white man’s land.
Shouts of joy from those simple natives now rent the air, and rattling their spears against their shields they led the way towards the camp of the king, a village of adobe and grass huts, built round cocoa-nut palms, in the midst of a great and fertile plain. In the centre of the town, inside a compound, was the square bungalow of King ’Ntango.
’Ntango was in, but did not appear for hours. It would not be royal etiquette to show much curiosity. Meanwhile the native women brought milk and honey and baked plantains, and everything went as merry as a marriage bell.
The king, into whose presence they were ushered at last, was round and squat, very yellow and very fat.
He showered his questions on Kenneth through Essequibo as interpreter.
Where did they come from? What did they want? Were they Arab or foreign? Did they come to steal his wives and little ones? How long did they want to stop? For ever, of course. Where were the gifts? Guns? Yes. Beads? Good. Pistols? Good again. But was this all? Where was the rum? Arab men had been here before, they brought much good rum. What, no rum? Never a skin of rum? Ugh!
With this last ejaculation, which was almost a shriek, the king sprang from the mat on which he had squatted.
“They must die?” he shouted; “die every one of them. The Arab must first die, then the black men. Then the white men. Essequibo he would fatten and kill and eat. Bring chains; away with them! away! away! AWAY!”
The king’s eyes shot fire as he waved his arms aloft, and shouted, “Away, away!” and his lips were flecked with blood and foam.
He was a fearful being to behold, this irate African savage.
Almost at the same moment our heroes were seized rudely from behind, disarmed, and dragged off. They soon found themselves huddled together in one room, with stone walls, slimy, damp, and over-run with creeping things that made them shudder, albeit they were under the very shadow of death.
Towards evening the king sent to “comfort” them; it was very condescending of him. The “comfort” lay in the information that at sunrise next day they would be led out to die, by spear or by knife, as they might choose.
Meanwhile, poor Essequibo’s chains were knocked off, and he was led away to his fattening pen.
Such is life in Central Africa. But stranger things still befell our heroes.