Chapter Ten.
A Fiendish Ceremonial.
“Now,” said Smellie as he turned once more to me, “we shall probably be again threatened on the reappearance of that bloodthirsty villain. But whatever you do, Hawkesley, maintain a bold front; let him see no sign or trace whatever of weakness or discomposure in you. The fellow’s thirst for blood is by this time fully aroused, and every succeeding victim will be subjected to greater refinements of torture; all that diabolical scoundrel’s fiendish ingenuity will now be exercised to devise for his victims increasingly atrocious and protracted agonies. There is one, and only one hope for us, which is that by a persistent refusal to be terrorised by him, and a judiciously scornful demeanour, we may at last exasperate him out of his self-control, and thus provoke him into inflicting upon us the coup-de-grâce at once and without any of the preliminary torments. Here he comes again. Now, for your own sake, dear lad, remember and act upon my advice.”
The first act of the wretch was to despatch his four assistants into the forest, whence they returned in a short time with three long slender poles and a considerable quantity of creeper or monkey-rope. With these, under the fetish-man’s superintendence, a very tolerable set of light shears was speedily constructed, which, when finished, was erected immediately over the fire—now an immense mass of glowing smokeless cinders—in front of the idol. The entire arrangement was so unmistakably suggestive that I could not restrain a violent shudder as it occurred to me that it might possibly be my fate to be subjected to the fiery torment.
All being ready, a dead silence once more fell upon the assembly, and the chief actor in the inhuman ceremonial once more looked keenly around him for a victim.
As in the first instance, so now again was the wand pointed at Smellie’s breast, and once more the cruel crafty bearer of it advanced on tip-toe with a stealthy cat-like tread toward us. He approached thus until he had reached to within about ten feet of the tree, when he once more paused in front of us, gesticulating with the wand and making as though about to strike with it the light blow which seemed to be the stroke of doom, keenly watching all the while for some sign of trepidation on the part of his victim. Then, whilst the wretch was in the very midst of his fantastic genuflexions before us, Smellie turned to me with a smile and observed:
“Just picture to yourself, Hawkesley, the way in which that fellow would be made to jump if Tom Collins, the boatswain’s mate, could only approach him from behind now, and freshen his way with just one touch of his ‘cat.’”
There was perhaps not much in it; but the picture thus suggested to my abnormally excited imagination seemed so supremely ridiculous that I incontinently burst into a violent and uncontrollable fit of hysterical laughter (the precise effect which I afterwards ascertained Smellie was anxious to produce); so highly exasperating the fetish-man that, with eyes fairly sparkling with rage, he advanced and struck me a violent blow on the mouth with his filthy hand, passing on immediately afterwards to seek elsewhere for a victim.
He had not far to seek; the miserable wretch next me on my left was so paralysed with fear that he was deemed a fit and proper person to become the next sacrifice, and almost unresistingly—until resistance was all too late—he was dragged forward into the inner circle, thrown flat upon his stomach, and his hands and feet bound securely together behind him. Then, indeed, he seemed suddenly to awake to a sense of his horrid fate; and his superhuman struggles for freedom and his ear-splitting yells were simply dreadful beyond all description to see and hear. The fetish-man and his assistants, confident of the reliable character of their work, stood back and looked on quietly at the miserable wretch’s unavailing struggles; they seemed to be regarded as quite a part of the entertainment, and the unhappy creature was allowed to continue them unmolested until they ceased from exhaustion. Then, when he lay quite still, panting and breathless, with his eyes starting from their sockets and the perspiration streaming from every pore, the fetish-man approached him and deftly bending on to his fettered limbs an end of stout monkey-rope, he was dragged along the ground into the fire, and thence triced in an instant up to the shears, whence he hung suspended at the height of about a foot immediately over the glowing embers.
The miserable sufferer bore the torment as long as he could, and I shall never forget the awful sight his distorted features presented as, drawing back his head as far as he could from the fierce heat, he glared round the circle seeking perchance for a hand merciful enough to put him out of his misery—but after the first minute of suffering his stoicism abandoned him, and he writhed so violently that the fetish-man and his assistants had to steady the shears in order to prevent them from capsizing altogether. And with every writhe of the victim the slender poles bent and gave, letting the miserable sufferer sink down some three or four inches nearer the fire. The superhuman struggles, the frightful contortions and writhings of the man, his ear-splitting yells, the horrible smell of roasting flesh—oh, God! it was awful beyond all attempt at description. I pray that I may never look upon such a ghastly sight again.
The fiendish exhibition had probably reached its most appalling phase, and I was wondering, shudderingly, what form of torture could possibly exceed it in cruelty, when there was a sudden slight movement of my bonds; they slackened and fell away from the tree-trunk against which I leaned, and I was free. Not a moment was allowed me in which to get over the first shock of my bewilderment; a soft plump hand grasped mine and gently drew me round behind the tree, so rapidly that I had only time to note the fact that apparently every eye in the assembly was fixed upon the writhing figure suspended over the fire—and before I had fairly realised what was happening I found myself a dozen yards away from my starting-point, gliding rapidly and noiselessly through the deep shadows cast by the tree-trunks, towards the outer darkness which prevailed beyond the range of the fire-light; with our little black Hebe friend of a few hours before dragging me along on one side of her and Smellie on the other.
Five minutes later we had left the village so far behind us that the barbarous sounds of horn and drum, mingled with the yells of anguish from the tortured victim, momentarily becoming more and more softened by our increasing distance, were the sole evidences that remained to us of its existence, and we found ourselves hurrying along through the rank grass, threading the mazes of the park-like clumps of lofty timber, and forcing a passage through the thickly clustering festoons of parasitic orchids, under the subdued light of the mellow stars alone.
With almost breathless rapidity our tender-hearted little deliverer hurried us forward, frequently exclaiming in low urgent accents, “Zola-ku! zola-ku,” so expressively uttered that we had no difficulty in interpreting the words to mean that there was the most extreme necessity for rapid movement on our part. We accordingly hastened our steps to the utmost limit of our capacity, and in about ten minutes from the moment of our liberation emerged upon a long narrow strip of sandy beach, with the noble river sweeping grandly to seaward before us. Here our guide paused for a moment, apparently pondering as to what it would next be best to do. Glancing down the river I saw indistinctly, at about two hundred yards distance, some shapeless objects which I took to be canoes drawn up on the beach, and pointing to them I exclaimed to Smellie:
“Are not those canoes? If they are, what is to prevent our seizing one and making our way down the river without further ado?”
Our little Hebe glanced in the direction I had indicated, and seemed quite to understand the nature of my suggestion, for she shook her head violently and exclaimed rapidly in accents of very decided dissent, “Vé! Vé!! Vé!!!” pointing at the same time to Smellie’s and my own untended wounds.
At that moment a loud confused shouting arose in the distant village, strongly suggestive of the discovery of our flight. The sounds apparently helped our guide to a decision as to her next step, for, seizing our hands afresh, she led us straight into the river until the water was up to our knees, and then turned sharply to the right or up stream. Pressing forward rapidly, our way freshened very decidedly by unmistakable shouts of pursuit emanating from the neighbourhood of the village, we reached, after about a quarter of an hour of arduous toil, a small creek some forty yards wide. Pausing here for a moment, our guide made with her hands and arms the motion of swimming, pointed across the creek, touched Smellie on the breast with the query “Yénu?” and then rapidly repeated the same process with me. We took this to mean an inquiry as to our ability to swim the creek, and both replied “Yes” with affirmative nods. Whereupon our guide, raising her finger to express the necessity for extreme caution, and uttering a warning “Ngandu” as she next pointed to the waters of the creek, waded gently and without raising a ripple into the deep water, Smellie and I following, and with a few quiet strokes we happily reached the other side in safety, to plunge forthwith into the friendly shadows of the forest. Had we known then—what we learned afterwards—that the word “Ngandu” is Congoese for “crocodile,” and that it was uttered as an intimation to us that the river and its creeks literally swarm with these reptiles, it is possible that our swim, short though it was, would not have been undertaken with quite so much composure.
Once fairly in the forest, it became so dark that it was quite impossible for us to see whither we were going, but our guide seemed to be well acquainted with the route, which, from the comparatively few obstacles met with, seemed to be a tolerably well-beaten path, so we crowded sail and pressed along with tolerable rapidity behind the slender black and almost indistinguishable figure of our leader. The pursuit, too, was hotly maintained, as we could tell by the occasional shouts and the sudden swishings of branches at no great distance from us in the bush; but at length, after a most wearisome and painful tramp of fully nine miles, we got fairly out of reach of all these sounds, and finally, at a sign from our deliverer, flung ourselves down in the midst of a thick growth of ferns at the foot of a giant tree, and, despite the increasing anguish of our wounds, soon went to sleep.
We awoke at daybreak, to find ourselves alone: our guide of the previous night had vanished. We were greatly disconcerted at this, for we felt that we should like to have done something—though we scarcely knew what—to mark our appreciation of her extremely important services of the preceding night. Besides, somehow, we had both taken the notion into our heads that in liberating us, she had committed an unpardonable sin against her former friends, and that when she crossed the creek and plunged into the forest with us she was virtually cutting herself adrift from her own people and casting in her lot with us. In which case, if we should succeed in making good our escape and finding our way back to the ship, we had little doubt about our ability to make such arrangements on her behalf as should cause her to rejoice for the remainder of her life at having befriended us. However, it seemed as though, having conducted us to a place of temporary safety, she had returned to the village, doubtless hoping to escape all suspicion of having had a hand in our liberation.
It was a glorious morning. The sun was darting his early beams through the richly variegated foliage, and touching here and there with gold the giant trunks and limbs of the forest trees. The earth around us was thickly carpeted with long grass interspersed with dense fern-brakes, and here and there a magnificent clump of aloes, their long waxy leaves and delicate white blossoms standing out in strong relief against the blaze of intense scarlet or the rich vivid green of a neighbouring bush. The early morning air was cool, pure, and refreshing as it gently fanned our fevered temples and wafted to us a thousand delicate perfumes. The birds, glancing like living gems between the clumps of foliage, were saluting each other blithely as they set out upon their diurnal quest for food. The bees were already busy among the gorgeous flowers; butterflies—more lovely even than the delicate blossoms above which they poised themselves—flitted merrily about from bough to bough; all nature, in fact, was rejoicing at the advent of a new day. And ill, suffering though we were, we could not but in some measure take part in the general joy, as with hearts overflowing with gratitude we remembered that we had escaped the horrors of the previous night.
A glance or two about us and we scrambled to our feet, intent, in the first instance, upon an immediate search for water. We had just settled the question as to which direction seemed most promising for the commencement of our quest when a clear musical call floated toward us, and looking in the direction from whence it came, we beheld our black Hebe approaching us, dragging a small dead antelope by the heels after her. So she had not abandoned us after all; on the contrary, she had probably spent a good part of the night arranging for the capture of the creature which was to furnish us with a breakfast.
On joining us she held up her prize for our inspection, and then, with a joyous laugh at our approving remarks—at the meaning of which she could, of course, only make the roughest of guesses—she set to work deftly to clear away and lay bare a space upon which to start a fire, in which task, as soon as we saw what she wanted, we assisted her to the best of our poor ability. This done, she went groping about beneath the trees apparently in search of something; soon returning with two pieces of dry stick, one of which, I noticed, had a hole in it. A quantity of dry leaves and sticks was next collected, having arranged which to her satisfaction, she knelt down, and inserting the pointed end of one stick in the hole of the other, twirled it rapidly between the palms of her hands, producing by the friction thus set up, first a slight wreath of smoke, and ultimately a tiny flame, which was carefully communicated to the dry leaves, and then gently fanned by her breath into a blaze. And in this way a capital fire for cooking purposes was speedily obtained.
In the meantime Smellie and I had produced our knives and had undertaken to skin and cut up the animal, some juicy steaks from which were soon spluttering on pointed sticks before the fire. The cooking operations being thus put in satisfactory progress, our little black friend borrowed my knife and plunged once more into the forest depths, to return again shortly afterwards with a huge gourd full of deliciously clear cool water.
The antelope steaks were by this time ready, and we all sat down to breakfast together. For my own part, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the meal; but I was sorry to observe that Smellie ate with but little appetite, drinking large quantities of water, however. The poor fellow made no complaint, but I could tell by his haggard look, his flushed cheeks, and his glittering eyes that it was quite time his wounds were attended to, or we should be having him down with fever in the bush, and then Heaven alone could tell when we should—if ever—be able to rejoin the Daphne.
But we were not to be allowed to sink tamely into a state of despondency or apprehension; our sable lady friend proved to be, like the rest of her sex, a great talker, and she seized the opportunity afforded by the discussion of breakfast to plunge into an animated conversation. She began by introducing herself, which she managed in quite an original fashion. Pausing for a moment, with a piece of steak poised daintily on a large thorn, she pointed to herself and remarked “Mono;” then touched Smellie and me lightly on the breast and added “Ingeya;” “Ingeya.” We nodded gravely to signify that we understood, or thought we did; upon which she pointed to herself once more and observed, “Mono Lubembabemba.”
“Which, being interpreted, means, as I take it, that her ladyship’s name is Lubem by—something. Your most obedient servant, Miss Lubin by—”
She laughed a very pretty musical little laugh at Smellie’s elaborate assumption of mock gallantry and his bungling efforts to pronounce the name.
“Lubem-ba-bemba,” she corrected him; and this time the gallant second lieutenant managed to stumble through it correctly, at which there was more laughter and rejoicing on the lady’s part. Then I was called upon to repeat the name, which, having paid the most praiseworthy attention whilst Smellie was receiving his lesson, I managed to do very fairly.
Then, flushed with her success, Miss Lubembabemba made a further attempt at conversation. Pointing to herself and repeating her name, she next pointed to Smellie and asked:
“Ingeya?”
Her meaning was so evident that Smellie answered at once, with another elaborate bow:
“Harold Smellie; at your service.”
“Halold-smellie-at-o-serveece!” she repeated with wide-opened eyes of wonder at what she doubtless thought a very extraordinary name.
We both burst involuntarily into a laugh at this really clever first attempt to reproduce the second lieutenant’s polite speech; at which she first looked decidedly disconcerted, but immediately afterwards joined heartily in the laugh against herself.
“No, no, no,” said Smellie, “that won’t do; you haven’t got it quite right Harold; Harold.”
“Halold?” she repeated. And after two or three attempts to put her right—attempts which failed from her evident inability to pronounce the “r”—Smellie was obliged to rest content with being henceforward called “Halold.”
Then, of course, she turned to me with the same inquiry:
“Ingeya!”
“Dick,” said I.
This time she caught the name accurately, and then, to show that she clearly understood the whole proceeding, pointed to Smellie, to me, and to herself in rotation, pronouncing our respective names.
“Yes,” commented Smellie approvingly, “you have learned your lesson very well indeed, my dear; but we shall never be able to remember that extraordinary name of yours—Lubemba—what is it—you know; besides, it will take us a dog-watch to pronounce it in full; so I propose that we change it and re-christen you after the ship, eh? Call you ‘Daphne,’ you know. How would you like that? You—Daphne; I—Halold, since you will have it so; and this strapping young gentleman, Dick. Would that suit you? Daphne—Halold—Dick;” pointing to each of us in turn.
Her ladyship seemed to take the proposal as a tremendous compliment, for her face lighted up with pleasure, and she kept on pointing round the circle and repeating “Halold—Dick—Daphne” until breakfast was concluded. And thenceforward she refused to answer to any other name than Daphne, assuming an air of the most complete unconsciousness when either of us presumed to address her as “Lubembabemba” (the butterfly).
Breakfast over, I thought it was high time to attend to our wounds. The first requirement was water—plenty of it, and this want I managed with some little difficulty to explain to Miss Daphne. Comprehending my meaning at last she intimated that a stream was to be found at no great distance; and we at once set off in search of it, our little black friend carrying along with her a live ember from the fire, which, by waving it occasionally in the air, she managed to keep glowing.
We had not very far to go—most fortunately, for I saw that Smellie’s wounds were momentarily giving him increased uneasiness and pain. A walk of about a quarter of an hour took us to a sequestered and most delightful spot, where we were not only perfectly concealed from chance wanderers, but where we also found a small rocky basin full of deliciously cool and pure water, which flowed into it from a tiny stream meandering down the steep hill-side. In this basin we laved our hurts until they were thoroughly cleansed from the dry hard coagulated blood, and then we set about the task of bandaging them up. Daphne, who, by the way, seemed to have little or no idea of surgery, made herself of great use to us in the bathing process, when once she understood what was required; but when it came to bandaging she found herself unable to help us further, and sorrowfully confessed herself beaten. We were compelled to convert our shirts, the only linen in our possession, into bandages; and poor Daphne, to her evident extreme sorrow, had no linen to sacrifice to our necessities, or indeed any clothing at all to speak of. The costume of a Congoese belle, according to her rendering of it, was a petticoat of parti-coloured bead fringe about twelve inches deep, depending loosely from the hips; the rest of her clothing consisting entirely—as Mike Flanaghan would have said—of jewellery, of which she wore a considerable quantity. I may as well here enumerate her ornaments, for the information and benefit of those who have never enjoyed the acquaintance of an African beauty. In the first place she wore a circular band of metal, about two inches wide, round her head and across her forehead. This band, or coronet, had a plain border of about half an inch wide, and inside this border, for about an inch in width throughout its length, the metal was cut away in very fine lines, forming an intricate and really elegant lace-like pattern. Then she wore also a very large pair of circular ear-rings, similarly ornamented, these ornaments being so large and heavy that they had actually stretched the lobes, and so spoiled the shape of what would otherwise have been a very pretty pair of ears. Upon each of her plump, finely-shaped arms, between the shoulder and the elbow, she wore four or five massive armlets of peculiar but by no means unskilled workmanship; and lastly, round each ankle she wore a single anklet of similar workmanship. On the previous night, when this rather lavish display of jewellery had first attracted my casual notice, I had imagined it to be brass; but now, seeing it again in the full light of day, I discovered it to be gold, almost or quite pure, as I judged from its softness.
To return to our subject Daphne’s first task on our arrival at the pool had been to kindle another fire; and, after helping us as far as she could to doctor our wounds, she next undertook an exploration of the forest in our immediate neighbourhood, returning in about an hour’s time with three long, thin, straight shafts of a kind of bamboo, and three small uprooted saplings. These articles she forthwith plunged into the fire, and after an hour’s diligent work manipulated the bamboos into three very effective lances or javelins, and the saplings into three truly formidable clubs, the knotted roots being charred and trimmed until they formed rounded heads as large as one’s two fists put together. One of each of these weapons she presented both to Smellie and to me, retaining one of each for herself; and thus armed, we were ready to set out once more upon our travels. But it was high time that our wanderings should be conducted with something like method. Our object was, of course, to rejoin the ship with the least possible delay; and before making a fresh start Smellie thought it would be just as well to acquaint our companion with this our desire. He accordingly undertook to do so, and a very amusing scene resulted; but he succeeded at last in making his wish clearly understood, and this achieved we once more resumed our march.