CHAPTER III
Monsieur Elbel
Samba made no resistance when Nando lifted him and carried him to the centre of the clearing. He moaned once or twice as the Baenga pressed his wounded arm, and almost fainted when he was laid on the ground before Mr. Martindale. But a sip from the traveller's flask revived him, and he smiled.
"That's better," said Mr. Martindale. "Poor boy! He looks half starved. Have you any food about you, Nando?"
"No, sah: get some one time."[[1]]
He went off into the thicket, and soon returned with a couple of scorched bananas. These Samba devoured ravenously.
"Now I wonder if he could tell us all about it?" said Mr. Martindale. "Ask him, Nando."
Samba told his story. His dialect was different from Nando's, but there is a freemasonry of speech among the tribes of the Congo, and Nando understood. It was not so easy for the others to get at the meaning of Nando's strange jargon as he interpreted, but they listened patiently, and missed little of the narrative. Mr. Martindale sat on an upturned pot, Jack and Barney on charred logs. Nando squatted beside Samba on the ground, and Pat thrust his muzzle contentedly between the boy's knees and seemed to sleep.
The finding of Samba
One night, when the moon was at the full, a messenger had come into Banonga village. The time was at hand when the agent of Bula Matadi would attend to collect the tax—the weight of rubber exacted by the Congo State from every able-bodied man. The messenger reminded the chief that Banonga had several times been in default. Only a few men had hitherto been punished, only a few women carried away as hostages for the diligence of their husbands. But the patience of Bula Matadi was exhausted. If on this occasion the due measure of rubber was not forthcoming, the anger of Bula Matadi would blaze, the soldiers would come, and the men of Banonga would have cause to rue their idleness.
The chief listened in silence. He was old; his body was bowed, his spirit broken. Life in Banonga was no longer the same since the white man came. All the joy of life was gone; the people spent their days in unremitting toil, endeavouring to satisfy the cry of their rulers for rubber, always rubber, more rubber. When the messenger arrived the men were away hunting for rubber, but Mirambo knew that, were they doubled in number, they could not gather the quantity required. The vines in their district were exhausted; the men had not been taught how to tap them; they destroyed as they went, and now the whole district around Banonga would not yield half of what was demanded of them. The poor old chief trembled when he thought of the woe that was coming to Banonga, for he now knew from the fate of other villages on the river what the messenger of Bula Matadi foreshadowed. Unless his men could achieve the impossible, find rubber where there was none, the blow would fall. And when it fell Banonga would be no more. The village a little while ago so happy and prosperous would be destroyed, its people killed or scattered. So it had happened to other villages: how could he hope that Banonga would be spared? The messenger indeed had spoken of the leniency of Bula Matadi, but the chief might have reminded him of the outrages the people had suffered; of the rapacity, the ruthless brutalities, of the forest guards. But he said no word of provocation; only, when the man had gone, Samba heard him mutter the terrible sentence now too often on his lips: "Botofé bo le iwa: rubber is death!"
The day came: the agent of Bula Matadi appeared, with an armed escort. The men of Banonga had not returned. They came dropping in by ones and twos and threes, worn out with their long quest. The rubber was weighed: in many cases it was short; excuses were rejected, entreaties scoffed at. The hapless victims suffered taunts, abuse, the terrible whip. One, less enduring than the rest, resisted. This was the signal. A dozen rifles were raised—a dozen shots rang out, strong forms lay writhing in the agony of death. A brief, sharp struggle; another fusillade; and the terrified survivors, men, women and children, fled helter-skelter to the forest, pursued by the shots of the soldiery, ruthless of age or sex. A raid was made upon their deserted huts: everything that had value for the native levies was seized; then the match was applied, and soon what had once been a prosperous happy village was a heap of smouldering ruins.
Samba saw it all. He remained dauntless by his grandfather's side until a bullet put an end to the old chief's life; then he too fled into the forest, to find his father and mother, his brothers and sisters. But he had delayed too long; one of the sentinels fired at him as he ran: his left arm was struck. He struggled on, but his friends were now out of reach: he could not find them. For several days he wandered about, supporting his life on roots and herbs in the vain search for his people. Then, growing hourly weaker, he crept back to his village, hoping that by and by the survivors would return to their desolated homes, to rebuild their huts, and sow new crops. But none came. He was alone! And he had lain down among the trees—as he thought, to die.
"Poor little fellow!" said Mr. Martindale. "How old is he, Nando?"
"He say ten three years, sah," replied Nando after consulting the boy.
"Thirteen. He looks older. This is a pretty kettle of fish. What can we do with him?"
"We must take him with us, uncle!" said Jack.
"Take him with us, indeed! What can we do with him? We can't hunt for his father and mother: he'd be of no use to us in our job. He wants doctoring: he might die on our hands."
"I learnt a little doctoring in the hospital, sorr," said Barney. "Sure I think I could mend his arm."
"Well, well, Nando and the other man had better bring him along to the canoe—gently, you know. Don't make him squeal."
The two negroes lifted the boy, and the party set off to return to the river.
"A fine responsibility you have let me in for, Jack," said Mr. Martindale as they went along. "I've no notion of a Crusoe and Friday relationship."
"Why not say Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, uncle?"
"A man of my girth!" said Mr. Martindale, chuckling. "But joking apart, Jack, this is a serious business. What am I to do with the boy, supposing he gets better? I am not a philanthropist; I can't start a boys' home; and the little chap will be of no use to us in our proper work. For the life of me I don't see daylight through this."
"We may find him useful in other ways, uncle. Besides, we may come across his people."
"And we may not—we may not, Jack. Still, have your way; only remember he's your protégé; I wash my hands of him. And mind you, I'm not going to start a crusade. There's been terrible work in this village: no mistake about it; but I'm not convinced it's the doing of white men: in fact, I refuse to believe it."
"But they're responsible. They shouldn't employ natives who are so blackguardly."
"That's where it is, you see. You Britishers employed Red Indians in our war of Independence, didn't you?"
"Yes, and Lord Chatham thundered against it, and it was put a stop to."
"They taught you history at Rugby, did they? Glad to hear it. Well, I dare say Leopold will put a stop to it if representations are made to him. It's none of my business, but I'll mention the matter when I get back to Boma. Now, Sambo——"
"Samba, uncle."
"Bo or ba, it's all the same. You'll have to be a good boy, Samba. But what's the good of talking! He can't understand what I say. Doesn't know good from bad, I warrant. Well, well!"
They reached the canoe and laid Samba gently down upon rugs. The rude craft was soon under way. For a time Samba lay asleep, with his arm about Pat's neck; but by and by, when the paddlers paused in the song with which they accompanied their strokes, the boy awoke, and began to sing himself, in a low musical voice that struck pleasantly upon the ear after the rougher tones of the men.
"Bauro lofundo! (he sang); bauro lofundo! Bompasu la Liwanga bao lindela ud' okunda ilaka nkos'i koka."
This he repeated again and again until he was tired and slept once more.
"Very pretty," said Mr. Martindale. "The boy'd make a fortune in New York, Jack. But what does it all mean, anyway?"
"Berrah nice song, sah," said Nando. "Me tell all 'bout it. People of Bauro, sah, plenty bad lot. Bompasu and Liwanga been and gone after 'long 'long into de forest, not come back till parrots one two free twenty all dah."
"Well, I can't make much of that. Doesn't seem to have any more sense than the songs that our gals sing at home."
But further inquiry brought out the story. It appeared that a rubber collector, not satisfied with exacting from the people of Bauro the usual quantity of rubber, had required them to furnish him by a certain day with twenty young parrots which he wished to take with him to Europe. Being unable to obtain so large a number by the given date, the people were declared to be surpassingly obstinate and wicked, and the sentries Bompasu and Liwanga were let loose upon them until the twenty parrots were delivered.
"Humph!" grunted Mr. Martindale. "Say, wasn't it Macaulay who said he'd write a nation's history from its ballads? Rubber and parrots; what next, I wonder? These Congo people have original ideas in taxation."
"Begorra, sorr," said Barney, "and don't I wish the taxes in the ould counthry were uv the same kind. Sure and ivery man in the counthry would be glad to supply the collectors wid scores uv sparrows or peewits or any other fowl, and murphies and blackthorns—ivery mortal thing but money, sorr."
In the course of a few hours the stream they had hitherto been navigating ran into a larger tributary of the Congo some hundred and fifty miles above the point where it joined the main river. The canoe had scarcely entered the broader river when the crew suddenly stopped paddling, and Nando, turning round with some excitement, said—
"Smoke-boat, sah."
"What?"
"Smoke-boat nebber dis way before, sah."
"A steamer, eh?"
"A launch flying the Congo State flag, uncle—blue with a golden star," said Jack, standing up in the canoe and taking a long look ahead.
Nando explained that the rapids, a day's paddling down stream, had prevented the State officers hitherto from bringing steam launches into this part of the river. Evidently the vessel now approaching must have been carried, as a whole or in sections, overland past these rapids—a work of great difficulty and labour, for the rapids were at least three miles in length, and the shores were at some parts rocky, at others covered with dense scrub.
Almost before Nando had finished his explanation the canoe had been put about, and the men began to paddle hard up stream towards the mouth of the little river, into which the launch could not follow them.
"Hi, now, Nando, what are you about?" cried Mr. Martindale.
Nando replied that it was always best to avoid the State officials. He would lie in a creek until the launch was past.
"I don't see why we should run away," said Mr. Martindale. "However, after what we've just seen, I've no wish to meet them. I might say something that would lead to a row with the Company."
He lit a cigar and lay back in the canoe. Jack turned flat on his face and watched the launch. It was soon clear that Nando's plan was impossible. The launch was a swift one: it came on with increased speed, and when within hailing distance a voice in French called peremptorily upon the canoe to stop.
"Nando, stop paddling," said Mr. Martindale, leisurely turning round on his seat. "Answer their hail, Jack."
"Who are you?" shouted Jack in English.
The foreigner in the bow of the launch was somewhat taken aback. He had thought to do the questioning, not to be questioned. But he replied stiffly—
"I am Monsieur Elbel, of de Société Cosmopolite du Commerce du Congo."
The launch was now within a few yards of the canoe. Monsieur Elbel was a short thick-set man with reddish hair, and a thick red moustache that stuck out rigidly a couple of inches on each side of his nose. He wore a white topee and white trousers, but his coat was blue, with brass buttons, and gold lace at the shoulders. All but himself on deck were negroes.
Mr. Martindale ordered the paddlers to bring the canoe round, so that he might face the Belgian. Then, still seated, he blew out a cloud of smoke and said—
"Well, I don't know you, Mr. Elbel, and if the work in Banonga yonder is due to you I don't wish to. Paddle ahead, Nando."
The crew looked somewhat awestruck, but obediently dropped their paddles into the stream. Monsieur Elbel's cheeks had turned a fiery red several shades deeper than his hair, and the veins upon his forehead swelled. The canoe sped past him while he was still endeavouring to collect himself. Suddenly a tall negro at his side threw out his hand, exclaiming: "Ok'ok'ok'oka!"[[2]]
The Belgian looked in the direction pointed out, and the negro followed up his exclamation with a rapid excited sentence. Monsieur Elbel at once sent the launch in pursuit of the canoe, ran her alongside, and cried:
"Halt! I bid you halt. You are rude. I vill run you down if you have not care. Dat boy I see in your canoe I know him; he belong to my société: I demand him to be given up."
"Not so fast, Mr. Elbel. I treat men as they treat me. You have no right to stop me. I am an American, a citizen of the United States, travelling in the Free State, which I believe, is open to all the world. Besides, I have a patent from your company. I propose to continue my journey."
"But—but—I tell you, dat boy is not American: he is subject of Congo State, in concession of my société; still vunce, I demand him."
"Sorry I can't oblige you. The boy is in my service: he has been wounded—perhaps you know how; nothing but an order from the Free State courts will compel me to give him up. And even then I won't, knowing what I know. That's flat, Mr. Elbel. You stop me at your risk. Go ahead, Nando."
The negroes dug their paddles into the water, and the canoe darted past the side of the launch. Monsieur Elbel bit his moustache and savagely tugged its ends; then, completely losing control of his temper, he shouted—
"You hear; I varn you. You act illegal; you come to seek for gold; dat is your business: it is not your business to meddle yourself viz de natif. I report you!"
The launch snorted away up stream, the canoe continued its journey at a moderate pace, and each was soon out of sight of the other.
For some minutes Mr. Martindale seemed preoccupied.
"What is it, uncle?" asked Jack after a time.
"I was thinking over what that fellow Elbel said. He knows more about our business here than I quite like. Of course they all know we're after minerals, but Barnard's find is not the dead secret he thought it was. Or say, Jack, d'you think we are being watched?"
"Perhaps he was fishing?"
"I don't think so, for he didn't wait for an answer. However, we needn't meet our difficulties half-way. Anyhow, 'twill do Mr. Elbel no harm to know that we don't care a red cent for him or any other Congo man. I suppose he's in charge of this section. But what on earth did the fellow want with the boy?"
Nando, without ceasing to ply his paddle, turned his head and spoke over his shoulder to Samba, now wide awake.
"Samba say him uncle dah, sah: uncle Boloko, plenty bad man."
"A wicked uncle, eh?"
"He berrah angry, sah, 'cos Samba him fader hab got plenty more wives, sah; must be chief some day. Boloko he want to be chief: berrah well: Banonga men all say 'Lako! lako!'[[3]] plenty loud. Boloko berrah much angry: go to white men: tell berrah bad fings 'bout Banonga men. Samba say Banonga men lib for cut off Boloko his head if catch him."
"Wigs on the green, Jack. Then I guess this Boloko fellow wanted to get in first. Well, it doesn't raise my opinion of Mr. Elbel; you know a man by the company he keeps, eh?"
"And the Company by him, uncle."
[[1]] Immediately.
[[2]] Exclamation of surprise.
[[3]] Exclamation of refusal.