CHAPTER IX
Samba Meets the Little Men
Samba had cheerfully accompanied Mr. Martindale's expedition, in the confidence that one of its principal objects, if not indeed its main one, was the discovery of his parents. Nando had told him, on the ruins of Banonga, that the white man would help him in his search, and the white man had treated him so kindly that he believed what Nando said. But as the days passed and the canoes went farther and farther up stream, miles away from Banonga, the boy began to be uneasy. More than once he reminded Nando of his promise, only to be put off with excuses: the white man was a very big chief, and such a trifling matter as the whereabouts of a black boy's father and mother could not be expected to engage him until his own business was completed.
Samba became more and more restless. He wished he could open the matter himself to the white men; but the few words of English he had picked up from Jack and Barney were as useless to him as any schoolboy's French. Jack often wondered why there was so wistful a look upon the boy's face as he followed him about, much as Pat followed Samba. He spoke to Nando about it, but Nando only laughed. Samba began to distrust Nando. What if the man's assurances were false, and there had never been any intention of seeking his father? The white men had been kind to him; they gave him good food; he was pleased with the knife presented to him as a reward for his watchfulness; but all these were small things beside the fact that his parents were lost to him. Had the white men no fathers? he wondered.
At length he came to a great resolution. If they would not help him, he must help himself. He would slip away one night and set off in search. He well knew that in cutting himself adrift from the expedition many days' journey from his old home he was exchanging ease and plenty for certain hardship and many dangers known and unknown. The forest in the neighbourhood of Banonga was as a playground to him; but he could not know what awaited him in a country so remote as this. He had never been more than half a day's journey from home, but he had heard of unfriendly tribes who might kill him, or at best keep him enslaved. And the white men of Bula Matadi—did not they sometimes seize black boys, and make them soldiers or serfs? Yet all these perils must be faced: Samba loved his parents, and in his case love cast out fear.
One morning, very early, when every one in the camp was occupied with the first duties of the day, Samba stole away. His own treasured knife was slung by a cord about his neck; he carried on his hip, negro-fashion, a discarded biscuit tin which he had filled with food saved from his meals of the previous day; and Mr. Martindale's knife dangled from his waist cord. It was easy to slip away unseen; the camp was surrounded by trees, and within a minute he was out of sight. He guessed that an hour or two would pass before his absence was discovered, and then pursuit would be vain.
But he had not gone far when he heard a joyous bark behind him, and Pat came bounding along, leaping up at him, looking up in his face, as if to say: "You are going a-hunting: I will come too, and we will enjoy ourselves." Samba stopped, and knelt down and put his arms about the dog's neck. Should he take him? The temptation was great: Pat and he were staunch friends; they understood each other, and the dog would be excellent company in the forest. But Samba reflected. Pat did not belong to him, and he had never stolen anything in his life. The dog's master had been good to him: it would be unkind to rob him. And Pat was a fighter: he was as brave as Samba himself, but a great deal more noisy and much less discreet. Samba knew the ways of the forest; it was wise to avoid the dangerous beasts, to match their stealth with stealth; Pat would attack them, and certainly come off worst. No, Pat must go back. So Samba patted him, rubbed his head on the dog's rough coat, let Pat lick his face, and talked to him seriously. Then he got up and pointed towards the camp and clapped his hands, and when Pat showed a disposition still to follow him, he waved his arms and spoke to him again. Pat understood; he halted and watched the boy till he disappeared among the trees; then, giving one low whine, he trotted back with his tail sorrowfully lowered.
Samba went on. He had come to the river, but he meant to avoid it now. The river wound this way and that: the journey overland would be shorter. He might be sought for along the bank; but in the forest wilds he would at least be safe from pursuit, whatever other dangers he might encounter. At intervals along the bank, too, lay many villages: and Samba was less afraid of beasts than of men. So, choosing by the instinct which every forest man seems to possess a direction that would lead towards his distant village, he went on with lithe and springy gait, humming an old song his grandfather Mirambo had taught him.
His path at first led through a grassy country, with trees and bush in plenty, yet not so thick but that the sunlight came freely through the foliage, making many shining circles on the ground. But after about two hours the forest thickened; the sunlit spaces became fewer, the undergrowth more and more tangled. At midday he sat down by the edge of a trickling stream to eat his dinner of manioc, then set off again. The forest was now denser than anything to which he had been accustomed near Banonga, and he went more warily, his eyes keen to mark the tracks of animals, his ears alive to catch every sound. He noticed here the scratches of a leopard on a tree trunk, there the trampled undergrowth where an elephant had passed; but he saw no living creature save a few snakes and lizards, and once a hare that scurried across his path as he approached. He knew that in the forest it is night that brings danger.
The forest became ever thicker, and as evening drew on it grew dark and chill. The ground was soft with layers of rotted foliage, the air heavy with the musty smell of vegetation in decay. Samba's teeth chattered with the cold, and he could not help longing for Barney's cosy hut and the warm companionship of the terrier. It was time to sleep. Could he venture to build a fire? The smoke might attract men, but he had seen no signs of human habitation. It would at any rate repel insects and beasts. Yes—he would build a fire.
First he sought for a tree with a broad overhanging branch on which he could perch himself for the night. Then he made a wide circuit to assure himself that there were no enemies near at hand. In the course of his round he came to a narrow clearing where an outcrop of rock had prevented vegetation, and on the edges of this he found sufficient dry brushwood to make his fire. Collecting an armful, he carried it unerringly to his chosen tree, heaped it below the hospitable branch, and with his knife whittled a hard dry stick to a sharp point. He selected then a square lump of wood, cut a little hollow in it, and, holding his pointed stick upright in the hollow, whirled it about rapidly between his hands until first smoke then a spark appeared. Having kindled his fire he banked it down with damp moss he found hard by, so as to prevent it from blazing too high and endangering his tree or attracting attention. Then he climbed up into the branch; there he would be safest from prowling beasts. The acrid smoke rose from the fire beneath and enveloped him, but it gave him no discomfort, rather a feeling of "homeness" and well-being; such had been the accompaniment of sleep all his life long in his father's hut at Banonga. Curled up on that low bough he slept through the long hours—a dreamless sleep, undisturbed by the bark of hyenas, the squeal of monkeys, or the wail of tiger-cats.
When he awoke he was stiff and cold. It was still dark, but even at midday the sun can but feebly light the thickest parts of the Congo Forest. The fire had gone out; but Samba did not venture to leave his perch until the glimmer of dawn, pale though it was, gave him light enough to see by. He was ravenously hungry, and did not spare the food left in his tin; many a time he had found food in the forest near his home, and now that he felt well and strong, no fear of starvation troubled him. Having finished his simple breakfast, he slung the empty can over his hip and set off on his journey.
For two days he tramped on and on, plucking here the red berries of the phrynia, there the long crimson fruit of the amoma, with mushrooms in plenty. Nothing untoward had happened. In this part of the forest beasts appeared to be few. Now and again he heard the rapping noise made by the soko, the gibber of monkeys, the squawk of parrots: once he stood behind a broad trunk and watched breathlessly as a tiger-cat stalked a heedless rabbit; each night he lighted his fire and found a serviceable branch on which to rest.
But on the third day he was less happy. The farther he walked, the denser became the forest, the more difficult his path. Edible berries were rarer; fewer trees had fungi growing about their roots; he had to content himself with forest beans in their brown tough rind. When the evening was drawing on he could find no dry fuel for a fire, and now, instead of seeking a branch for a sleeping place, he looked for a hollow tree which would give him some shelter from the cold damp air of night. Having found his tree he gathered a handful of moss, set fire to it from his stick and block, which he had carefully preserved, and threw the smouldering heap into the hollow to smoke out noxious insects, or a snake, if perchance one had made his home there.
The fourth day was a repetition of the third, with more discomforts. Sometimes the tangled vines and creepers were so thick that he had to go round about to find a path. The vegetation provided still less food, only a few jack fruit and the wild fruit of the motanga rewarding his search. He was so hungry at midday that he was reduced to collecting slugs from the trees, a fare he would fain have avoided. Fearless as he was, he was beginning to be anxious; for to make a certain course in this dense forest was well-nigh impossible.
At dusk, when again he sought a hollow tree and dropped a heap of smouldering herbage into the hole, he started back with a low cry, for he heard an ominous hiss in the depths, and was only just in time to avoid a python which had been roused from sleep by the burning mass. In a twinkling the huge coils spread themselves like a released watch-spring beyond the mouth of the hole and along the lowermost branch of the tree. With all his forest lore, Samba was surprised to find that a python could move so quickly. The instant he heard the angry hiss he crouched low against the trunk, thankful that the reptile had chosen a branch on the other side. Armed only with a knife, he knew himself no match for a twenty-foot python; had he not seen a young hippopotamus strangled by a python no larger than this? Like Brer Rabbit, Samba lay low and said nothing: until the python, swinging itself on to the branch of an adjacent tree a few feet away, disappeared in the foliage. Then, allowing time for the reptile to settle elsewhere, Samba sought safer quarters. The python's house was comfortable, even commodious; but Samba would scarcely have slept as soundly as he was wont in uncertainty whether the disturbed owner might not after all return home.
He felt very cramped and miserable when he rose next day to resume his journey. This morning he had to start without breakfast, for neither fruits nor berries were to be had: a search among fallen trees failed even to discover ants of which to make a scanty meal. Constant walking and privation were telling on his frame; his eyes were less bright, his step was less elastic. But there was a great heart within him; he plodded on; he had set out to find his father and mother; he would not turn back. The dangers ahead could be no worse than those he had already met, and no experienced general of army could have known better than Samba that to retreat is often more perilous than to advance.
In the afternoon, when, having found a few berries, he had eaten the only meal of the day and was about to seek, earlier than usual, his quarters for the night, he heard, from a short distance to the left of his track, a great noise of growling and snarling. The sounds were not like those of any animals he knew. With cautious steps he made his way through the matted undergrowth towards the noise. Almost unawares he came upon an extraordinary sight. In the centre of an open space, scarcely twenty feet across, a small man, lighter in hue than the majority of Congolese natives, was struggling to free himself from the grip of a serval which had buried its claws deep in his body and thigh. Two other small men, less even than Samba in height, were leaping and yelling around their comrade, apparently instructing him how to act, though neither made use of the light spears they carried to attack the furious beast. The serval, its greenish eyes brilliant with rage, was an unusually powerful specimen of its kind, resembling indeed a leopard rather than a tiger-cat. It was bent, as it seemed, upon working its way upward to the man's throat, and its reddish spotted coat was so like his skin in hue that, as they writhed and twisted this way and that, an onlooker might well have hesitated to launch a spear at the beast for fear of hitting the man.
One of the little man's hands had a grip of the serval's throat; but he was not strong enough to strangle it, and the lightning quickness of the animal's movements prevented him from gripping it with the other hand. Even a sturdily-built European might well have failed to gain the mastery in a fight with such a foe, and the little man had neither the strength nor the staying power to hold out much longer. Yet his companions continued to yell and dance round, keeping well out of reach of the terrible claws; while blood was streaming from a dozen deep gashes in the little man's body.
Samba stood but a few moments gazing at the scene. The instinct of the born hunter was awake in him, and that higher instinct which moves a man to help his kind. Clutching his broad knife he bounded into the open, reached the fainting man in two leaps, and plunged the blade deep into the creature's side behind the shoulder. With a convulsive wriggle the serval made a last attempt to bury its fangs in its victim's neck. Then its muscles suddenly relaxed, and it fell dead to the ground.
Samba's intervention had come too late. The man had been so terribly mauled that his life was ebbing fast. His comrades looked at him and began to make strange little moaning cries; then they laid him on a bed of leaves and turned their attention to Samba. He knew that he was in the presence of Bambute, the dreaded pigmies of the forest. Never before had he seen them; but he had heard of them as fearless hunters and daring fighters, who moved about from place to place in the forest, and levied toll upon the plantations of larger men. The two little men came to him and patted his arms and jabbered together; but he understood nothing of what they said. By signs he explained to them that he was hungry. Then, leaving their wounded comrade to his fate, they took Samba by the hands and led him rapidly into the forest, following a path which could scarcely have been detected by any except themselves. In some twenty minutes they arrived at a clearing where stood a group of two score small huts, like beehives, no more than four feet high, with an opening eighteen inches square, just large enough to allow a pigmy to creep through. Pigmies, men and women, were squatting around—ugly little people, but well-made and muscular, with leaves and grass aprons for all clothing, and devoid of such ornaments as an ordinary negro loves.
They sprang up as Samba approached between his guides, and a great babel of question and answer arose, like the chattering of monkeys. The story was told; none showed any concern for the man left to die; the Bambute acknowledge no ties, and seem to have little family affection. A plentiful dinner of antelope flesh and bananas was soon placed before Samba, and it was clear that the pigmies were ready to make much of the stranger who had so boldly attacked the serval.
One of them knew a little of a Congolese dialect, and he succeeded in making Samba understand that the chief was pleased with him, and wished to adopt him as his son. Samba shook his head and smiled: his own parents were alive, he said; he wished for no others. This made the chief angry. The chiefs of some of the big men had often adopted pigmy boys and made slaves of them; it was now his turn. The whole community scowled and snarled so fiercely that Samba thought the safest course was to feign acquiescence for the moment, and seize the first opportunity afterwards of slipping away.
But nearly three weeks passed before a chance presented itself. The pigmies kept him with them, never letting him go out of their sight. They fed him well—almost too well, expecting his powers of consumption to be equal to their own. Never before had he seen such extraordinary eaters. One little man would squat before a stalk bearing fifty or sixty bananas, and eat them all. True, he lay moaning and groaning all night, but next morning would be quite ready to gorge an equal meal. Since they did not cultivate the ground themselves, Samba wondered where they obtained their plentiful supply of bananas and manioc. He learnt by and by that they appropriated what they pleased from the plantations of a neighbouring tribe of big men, who had too great a respect for the pigmies' poisoned arrows and spears to protest. Samba hoped that he might one day escape to this tribe, but a shifting of the village rendered this impossible, though it afforded the boy the opportunity for which he had so long been waiting.
On the night when the pigmy tribe settled down in its new home, four days' journey from the old, Samba took advantage of the fatigue of his captors to steal away. He had chosen the darkest hour before the dawn, and knowing that he would very soon be missed and followed up, he struck off through the forest as rapidly as he could. With plentiful food he had recovered his old strength and vigour, and he strode along fleetly, finding his way chiefly by the nature of the ground beneath his feet; for there was no true path, and the forest was almost completely dark, even when dawn had broken elsewhere. As the morning drew on the leafy arcades became faintly illuminated, and he could then see sufficiently well to choose the easiest way through the obstacles that beset his course.
Despite all his exertions his progress was very slow. Well he knew that, expert though he was in forest travel, he could not move through these tangled mazes with anything like the speed of the active little men who by this time were almost certainly on his track. At the best he could hardly have got more than two miles' start. As he threaded his way through the brushwood, hacking with his knife at obstructive creepers, and receiving many a scratch from briar and thorn, he tried to think of some way of throwing the pursuers off the scent; but every yard of progress demanded so much exertion that he was unequal to the effort of devising any likely ruse.
Suddenly coming upon a shallow stream about two yards wide that ran across his line of march, he saw in a flash a chance of covering his trail. He stepped into the stream, pausing for a moment to drink, then waded a few paces against the current, narrowly scanning the bordering trees. They showed a close network of interlacing branches, one tree encroaching on another. Choosing a bough overhanging the brook, just above his head, Samba drew himself up into the tree, taking care that no spots of water were left on the branch to betray him. Then, clambering nimbly like a monkey from bough to bough, he made a path for himself through the trees at an angle half-way between the directions of the stream and of his march through the forest. He hoped that, losing his track in the stream, the Bambute would jump to the conclusion that he was making his way up or down its bed, and would continue their chase accordingly.
Among the trees his progress was even slower than on the ground. Every now and again he had to return on his tracks, encountering a branch that, serviceable as it might look, proved either too high or too low, or not strong enough to bear his weight. And he was making more noise than he liked. There was not only the rustle and creak of parting leaves and bending twigs, and the crack of small branches that snapped under his hand; but his intrusion scared the natural denizens of the forest, and they clattered away with loud cries of alarm—grey parrots in hundreds, green pigeons, occasionally a hawk or the great blue plantain-eater. The screeches of the birds smothered, indeed, any sound that he himself might make; but such long-continued evidence of disturbance might awaken the suspicion of the little men and guide them to his whereabouts.
By and by he came to a gap in the forest. The clear sunlight was welcome as a guide to his course; but he saw that to follow the direction which he believed would bring him towards Banonga he must now leave the trees. He stopped for a few minutes to recover breath, and to consider what he had best do. As he lay stretched along a bough, his eye travelled back over the path he had come. The vagaries of lightning that had struck down two forest giants in close proximity disclosed to his view a stretch of some twenty yards of the stream which he had just crossed on his primeval suspension bridge. What caused him to start and draw himself together, shrinking behind a leafy screen thick enough to hide him even from the practised eyes of the little forest men? There, in the bed of the stream, glancing this way and that, at the water, the banks, the trees on every side, were a file of Bambute, carrying their little bows and arrows and their short light spears. They moved swiftly, silently, some bending towards the ground, others peering to right and left with a keenness that nothing could escape. Samba's heart thumped against his ribs as he watched them. He counted them as they passed one after another across the gap; they numbered twenty, and he was not sure that he had seen the first.
The last disappeared. Samba waited. Had his ruse succeeded? There was absolute silence; he heard neither footstep nor voice. But the little men must soon find out their mistake. They would then cast back to the point where they had lost the scent. Could they pick it up again—trace him to the tree and follow him up? He could not tell. They must have been close upon him when he climbed into the tree; evidently he had left the path only in the nick of time. This much he had gained. But he dared not wait longer; there was no safety for him while they were so near; he must on.