Chapter Thirteen.
In the Heart of the Great African Forest.
As the Flying Fish settled down quite close to the spot where the carcases of the four unicorns were lying, von Schalckenberg waved his hand and shouted to the little group on deck—
“Ach! my friends, I am glad to see you. Unicorns’ flesh must be an especially choice morsel with the carnivora in this part of the country, for I have been literally beset since Mildmay left me. I have had no fewer than three lions, one leopard, and a whole pack of wild dogs disputing with me the possession of these carcases.”
“And how have you dealt with the disputants, Professor?” laughed Lethbridge.
“Oh! there was but one way to deal with them, and I took it,” answered the professor. “I shot them, and they are among those rushes. The dogs were the worst, because there were so many of them, and they were so persistent. But I drove them off at last.”
“You appear to have had a busy time, to judge by the look of things!” exclaimed Sir Reginald.
And indeed there was abundant evidence of this when the new arrivals came to look more closely; for the carcases of eight wild dogs—creatures as big as Siberian wolves, and quite as formidable-looking—were in plain view, showing how determinedly they had attempted to “rush” the professor, while others could be seen partially hidden among the reeds, together with those of the leopard and one of the lions.
“Well, you have richly earned your breakfast, so come aboard and have it,” exclaimed Lethbridge. “Nothing is likely to interfere with your unicorns, now that this big ship is so close alongside. But to make quite sure that no accident happens, I will get a rifle and mount guard up here if you like, while you get your bath and breakfast.”
So it was arranged; and half an hour later von Schalckenberg entertained the other occupants of the breakfast-table with a lively and graphic account of the adventures of himself and Mildmay during the night, from the moment of their departure from the ship.
That was a busy day for the five male members of the party, for of course the professor insisted that the skins of the unicorns must be removed with the utmost care, and the observance of every precaution against stretching or otherwise injuring the rather thin and delicate hides, which made the task of removal a somewhat protracted one. And when at length this was successfully achieved, there still remained the carcases of four lions, one leopard, and a python to be dealt with. It was consequently well on in the afternoon ere the somewhat disagreeable task was over, and the men were free to bathe, change their clothing, and generally make themselves presentable. This done, the Flying Fish was taken back to her former berth on the bush-encircled area of open ground, it having been unanimously agreed to spend a few days longer in so splendid a game country as this seemed to be. But all were agreed that, after their exertions of the day, they were rather too tired to enjoy a night’s watching among the reeds of the lake. The entire party therefore adjourned to the music-room for an hour or two after dinner, and retired early to their cabins to recuperate in readiness for whatever the morrow might have in store for them.
For a full week the party hunted this grand game-producing district, accumulating such a pile of lion and leopard skins, ostrich feathers, ivory, rhinoceros-horns, and other trophies of the chase, that at length Sir Reginald laughingly protested against any further slaughter, declaring that unless an immediate move were made, the Flying Fish would be unable to carry away the accumulated cargo, which, he reminded his companions, would doubtless be largely added to ere they turned their faces homeward. But although the sport was good, it was uneventful; there were no thrilling adventures or hairbreadth escapes to record, due, so Mildmay half-grumblingly asserted, to the fact that their weapons were so perfect that the poor animals had no chance to show sport. Accordingly, on the morning of a certain day, the great ship once more rose into the air, and in leisurely fashion headed away to the southward and eastward, on her way toward the ruins of ancient Ophir, discovered by the baronet and his companions during the course of their previous voyage of exploration in the Flying Fish.
Proceeding at the slow rate of one hundred miles per day, with occasional pauses where game happened to be sighted that it was thought worth while to hunt, the party arrived on a certain evening within sight of a vast stretch of forest-land, extending east and west as far as the eye could see, from the moderate elevation of three hundred feet at which they were travelling. This, von Schalckenberg declared, was the Great Central African Forest discovered by Stanley, covering an area of several thousand square miles of unexplored country, the home of the pygmies, the gorilla, and heaven alone knew what other new, strange, and interesting inhabitants, and offering innumerable possibilities to a party of determined explorers.
“Well,” said Sir Reginald, “we are a party of determined explorers; and I think I may say that if the element of personal risk is likely to enter into the act of exploration, it would but add to the attractiveness of the idea. But we must not forget that we are not now alone, as we were upon the occasion of our last cruise; we have two women and a child with us now, who are absolutely dependent upon us for protection. It is true that, so long as they remain shut up in this ship, little harm can happen to them; and there is also the fact that, in case of emergency, my wife knows enough to be able to raise the ship into the air and navigate her beyond the reach of a pressing danger; but I am not so sure that, in the event of such an occasion arising, she would be able to find her way back again to the starting-point after the danger had passed. And this, as I need scarcely point out, might prove exceedingly awkward, both for them and for us—especially for us, who would, in such an event, find ourselves stranded, without resources, and with no possibility of knowing in which direction to look for the missing ship. Whatever we decide to do, therefore, I think we shall be wise to act circumspectly. I am quite willing to face any legitimate danger that may be involved in our hunting or exploring undertakings; but I confess that I should not be inclined to regard as legitimate any such danger as that of these ladies being driven away from a given spot, and lost.”
“You are perfectly right, Elphinstone,” concurred Lethbridge, gravely. “The presence of the ladies and little Ida necessarily imposes certain limitations upon our movements; and it is quite easy to imagine a dozen or more undertakings that we might quite justifiably undertake, if we were alone, that are not permissible under present circumstances. A way out of the difficulty that you have indicated would, of course, be for one of us men who understand the working of the ship to remain with the ladies; and it will afford me the greatest possible pleasure to do so.”
“No, no, certainly not; by no manner of means, old chap,” struck in Mildmay, with quite unwonted eagerness. “If anybody is to remain aboard this ship I, obviously, am the man to do so. For, in the first place, I am such a confoundedly lazy beggar that it would be no pleasure to me to go toiling and groping my way mile after mile through the thick undergrowth of a forest like that, purely upon the off-chance of stumbling up against something interesting enough to shoot or look at; while you would enjoy nothing better.”
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” interposed Sir Reginald; “but a moment’s reflection, I think, will serve to convince you that, as your host, I am the man who—”
“No, no,” interrupted Mildmay, “that plea won’t do at all, my dear fellow; it is altogether too thin! You, like Lethbridge and the professor—to say nothing of Colonel Sziszkinski—would be in your element prowling through that forest; while, as for me—well, I should not go from choice, in any case. So there you are!”
“Do you really mean that, Mildmay?” demanded Sir Reginald.
“Yes, upon my honour, I do,” assented the skipper. “I must confess,” he continued, “that I have a very strong predilection for a clear horizon and an unimpeded view of the sky overhead, whether I happen to be ashore or afloat. Besides, it is not as though you needed me, you know; in that case it would be very different, of course. But—well, I think I have fully made out my contention that, if it is necessary for either of us to remain aboard, I am the man.”
“Very well; then that is settled,” agreed Sir Reginald. “Now, the question that next suggests itself is this: Are we to leave the ship here, and endeavour to penetrate the forest from this point; or should we take the ship into the heart of the forest, and use her as our headquarters from which to make short day excursions? There is something to be said in favour of either plan. For example, in considering the first plan I mentioned, we all noticed a number of native villages as we came along. Two or three of these are only a few miles distant; and it might be possible for us to engage any number of those fellows to serve as bearers, to carry our impedimenta for us, cut a path through the undergrowth, and so on. Under such conditions we should certainly see far more of the forest than we can possibly hope to do by adopting the other plan. Plan number two, on the other hand, appears to offer us the better chance to reach the heart of the forest. Now, what say you, gentlemen? Which plan appeals to you the more strongly? Or has either of you an alternative to suggest?”
“Let us try the second plan; and if that proves unsatisfactory we can always fall back upon the first,” said the professor. And so it was arranged.
Accordingly, on the following morning, the first streaks of dawn saw von Schalckenberg astir, and on his way to the pilot-house, where he first of all manipulated the lever that controlled the grip-anchors, drawing it back, and thus causing the anchors to relinquish their hold upon the ground. Then he turned a sufficient stream of vapour into the air-chambers to create a partial vacuum and cause the ship to rise in the air to a height of about two hundred feet above the tops of the most lofty trees; and finally to set the engines going ahead at a speed of about fifty miles an hour, in accordance with an arrangement between himself and Sir Reginald, made the last thing before turning in on the previous night. Then, the morning being perfectly calm, he set the course due south, and returned below to get his bath and dress.
For the first three hours or so of this comparatively rapid flight the forest was found to be by no means dense. The trees grew more or less in clumps, with plenty of open spaces between, many of which were occupied by native villages, the inhabitants of which turned out en masse to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead, and to greet her appearance with weird, blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums. Then they crossed the Aruwimi River—an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun. And here the villages abruptly ceased, and the forest growth rapidly thickened, until, with the arrival of noon, they found themselves floating over a mass of foliage so dense that it was impossible to see anything of the ground beneath. They had by this time traversed some two hundred and fifty miles of forest, and they came to the conclusion that they were now near enough to the heart of it for all practical purposes. They therefore slowed the ship down to a speed of ten knots, and rose to a height of two thousand feet, with the object of searching for some opening in the great mass of multi-tinted green beneath them large enough to receive the ship and allow her to come to earth. This they eventually found some ten miles farther south, on the banks of an almost dry stream, flowing in a westerly direction. Four mountain peaks were then in sight to the eastward, at an estimated distance of between forty and fifty miles.
By the time that the ship was moored luncheon was on the table; and at the conclusion of the meal Sir Reginald Elphinstone, Colonel Lethbridge, the professor, and Colonel Sziszkinski took their rifles and left the ship upon what they termed a preliminary exploration of the forest in their immediate vicinity.
They very soon discovered that any attempt to penetrate the forest without the aid of axes and bush-knives would be utterly useless. Let them go in what direction they would, a few yards of laborious struggling through the dense undergrowth was certain to bring them to a spot where the thicket became so dense and so inextricably tangled that further progress became impossible. As a last resource, therefore, they tried the river, and here they got on very much better, the water being so low that much of the bed was dry; and by scrambling over boulders and great piles of drifted tree-trunks and tangled scrub that were encountered at frequent intervals, with, here and there, a few yards of clear gravel or sand, upon which the going was perfectly easy, they eventually reached an open space of some twenty acres in extent. This during the rainy season was undoubtedly a pool; but it was now merely a chaotic agglomeration of rocky outcrop, boulders, coarse shingle, and sand, in which lay, half buried, further tangled masses of tree-trunks, branches, and undergrowth, with thread-like streams of water twisting hither and thither through it and occasionally widening out into broad, shallow pools. The important fact in connection with this spot, however, was that, upon careful examination, it was discovered that several well-defined tracks through the forest converged here, the imprints upon the soil of which showed that the various denizens of the forest, for many miles round in every direction, used this spot as their regular drinking-place. It was obvious at once to them all that this was the most favourable spot for an ambush that they could possibly wish for; and at length, after careful examination of several promising positions, they chose a pile of rocks near the centre of the open space, and against which a great heap of tangled débris had been piled during flood-time, as the spot where they would lie in wait for such game as might come down to drink. They improved the natural advantages of the place so far as they could in the limited time at their disposal, and then hastened back to the Flying Fish to report themselves and make their preparations for the coming night.
It was within an hour of sunset when, having snatched a hasty impromptu meal and provided themselves with a few sandwiches and a well-filled pocket-flask each, as well as a liberal supply of cartridges, the four hunters left the Flying Fish on their way to the ambush which they had arranged. The golden light of evening still gleamed brilliantly upon the topmost boughs of the forest trees, but down below in the river bed the twilight was already deepening as the quartette made their laborious way over the many obstacles that impeded their progress; and the sight of a deer or two that had already made their way down to the river to drink was a reminder to them that they had no time to spare, and an incentive to avoid dawdling on the way. The multitudinous insect-life of the forest was already awake and stirring, the hum and chirp of the myriad winged things causing the air fairly to vibrate with softly strident sound, to which was added the rolling chorus of innumerable frogs inhabiting the marshy low-lying patches contiguous to the river margin. Great gorgeously winged dragon-flies swept hither and thither; a few belated butterflies—some of which were so large and so magnificently marked as to excite the professor’s most enthusiastic admiration—fluttered here and there in the more open spaces; birds of various descriptions and of more or less brilliant plumage—some of the smaller kinds being veritable winged jewels—flitted from tree to tree uttering weird and startling cries, while an occasional soft rustling sound in the adjoining thicket betrayed the movement of some larger creature.
It was so nearly dark when the four hunters at length reached their chosen hiding-place that they experienced some little difficulty in satisfactorily bestowing themselves within it; and when at length they had done so, there ensued a weary wait that was exceedingly trying to their patience. For the darkness soon became so profound that although from time to time there came to their ears certain slight sounds, such as the sudden swish of a bough, or the crackling of withered leaves and twigs, betraying the stealthy movements of some wild creature, they could see nothing, strain their eyes as they might.
At length, however, a soft, silvery radiance brightening the topmost branches of the trees encircling them proclaimed the rising of the moon, then well advanced toward her second quarter; and as the light gradually brightened, they became aware of certain shadowy forms indistinctly seen moving hither and thither in the deeper shadow of the trees, their whereabouts betrayed by the momentary rattle of a displaced pebble, or the soft plash of their feet in the shallow pools from which they drank.
At length there came a moment when, perhaps from some subtle atmospheric change, affecting the quality of the light, they suddenly became aware that the open space in the midst of which they were ambushed was teeming with animal life. The forest seemed to be pouring out its denizens from every quarter, and all of them were flocking to this spot to quench their thirst. Yonder, for example, was a crowd of buck, of a dozen or more different kinds, all congregated together in one spot, and more or less vigorously hustling each other in their endeavours to get at the most desirable pool, while, some distance away, three leopards, flattened out upon a low overhanging ledge of rock until they were scarcely distinguishable, lapped the water from a tiny streamlet that trickled past them. Here, quite close at hand, a troop of monkeys of various kinds and sizes were softly yet fiercely chattering at each other as they squabbled for the best places, while others, with quick, excited gestures, ladled up the water in the palms of their hands, from which they drank. None of these creatures, however, were deemed by the lurking hunters as worthy of their attentions, although Sziszkinski would fain have had a shot at the leopards; but von Schalckenberg explained, in a scarcely audible whisper, that everything in sight belonged to well-known species, while they were avowedly out after only rare specimens. The leopards, therefore, were, like the bucks, allowed to drink their fill and retire unmolested.
But now a sound of deep grunting and snorting, accompanied by the occasional snap of a dried branch, gradually separated itself from and became audible above the other noises of the forest, betraying the approach of some beast that scorned concealment, and presently there emerged into the opening a huge red buffalo, shaggy of hide, ferocious of aspect, and with a pair of enormous, deep-curving horns. He clattered down the narrow, shingly, boulder-strewn bed of the river—so noisily that the monkeys fled precipitately, with loud shrieks of alarm—and stood fully revealed in a small patch of brilliantly white moonlight, tossing his head, and sniffing the air suspiciously as he turned it from side to side.
“Now, Boris, my friend, you may shoot, if you will,” whispered the professor, eagerly, to his Russian friend. “That fellow is new to me; I know him not. His head is—but, ach! you would not understand if I explained. Wait until he turns his broadside to us, and then aim behind the shoulder.”
A few breathless moments followed, for the huge brute persisted in facing the little party as he drank; but, at length, having quenched his thirst, he turned to retreat into the forest depths again, and, as he did so, Sziszkinski’s hammer clicked, and, with a low, deep moaning sigh, the great beast sank to the earth, kicked convulsively for a few seconds, and was still.
“Good!” ejaculated von Schalckenberg; “that is a very valuable addition to—”
He was silenced by the light pressure of Sir Reginald Elphinstone’s hand upon his arm, and turning, he saw the baronet raise his hand and point. He looked in the direction indicated, and in a moment his frame seemed to stiffen with eagerness as he gazed. For there, standing knee-deep in a pool, some two hundred yards away, and quite alone, was an animal not unlike a giraffe, but very much smaller, and with a neck that, although not so long in proportion to its body as that of a giraffe, was still very long. The creature was strongly silhouetted against a patch of moon-lighted vegetation, and therefore stood out black against its lighter background, with no indication of its markings. The outline of it, however, was clear-cut and distinct, and as the professor continued to gaze at it he became an interesting study of growing excitement and agitation. He felt feverishly for the binocular glasses that he had not brought with him, and held his breath until he could do so no longer, letting it out suddenly with a gasp that he as suddenly checked, glaring through his spectacles, meanwhile, as though he would fain hypnotise the creature. Then, as it bowed its head to drink, he turned to Sir Reginald and whispered huskily—
“Shoot, my friend, shoot! But, as you love me, don’t miss; for, as I am a sinful man, it is none other than the okapi!”