CHAPTER VI
Samba is Missing
Nando was like a child in his humours. His broad face could not long be overclouded. When the party once more embarked he performed his work as chief paddler with his usual cheerfulness. All that day the river washed the edge of a continuous forest tract—a spur, as Jack understood from Nando's not too lucid explanations, of the vast Upper Congo forest that stretched for many hundreds of miles across the heart of Africa. Jack gazed with great curiosity, merged sometimes in a sense of awe and mystery, at the dark impenetrable woodland. It was only a year or two since he had read Stanley's account of his wonderful march through the forest, and his vivid recollection was quickened and intensified by the sight of the actual scene.
"And are there pigmies in that forest—little men, you know?" he asked Nando.
"Sartin sure, sah. Me fight fousand hundred little tiny men: me no 'fraid. Dey shoot plenty good, sah: one arrow shoot two free birds. Dey hab berrah fine eye, sah; see what big man no can see. Massa see dem some day: make massa laugh plenty much."
Here and there, in places where the river widened out, the travellers came upon herds of hippopotami disporting themselves in the shallows. Their presence was often indicated first by strange squeals and grunts: then a huge head would be seen on the surface of the water as the beast heard the regular splash of the paddles and was provoked to investigate its cause; his jaws would open, disclosing a vast pink chasm; and having completed his long yawn, and satisfied himself that the strangers intended no harm, he would plunge his head again beneath the water, or turn clumsily to wallow in uncouth gambols with his mates. The negroes always plied their paddles more rapidly at such spots. Nando told stories of hippopotami which had upset canoes out of sheer mischief, and of others which, pricked and teased by native spears, had lain in wait among the rushes and wrecked the craft of fishers returning to their homes at dusk.
"Me no 'fraid of little man," said Nando; "me plenty much 'fraid of hippo."
Now and again a crocodile, disturbed in his slumbers by the splashing of the paddles or the songs of the men, would dart out of a creek and set off in furious chase; but finding the canoe a tougher morsel than he expected, would sink after a disappointed sniffing and disappear. Occasionally Mr. Martindale or Jack would take a shot at the reptiles, but they were so numerous that by and by the travellers desisted from their "potting," Mr. Martindale regarding it as a waste of good ammunition.
The natives whom they saw at riverside villages were now sometimes suspicious, and disinclined to have any communication with the strangers. Returning from interviews with them, Nando reported that they had heard of the massacre at Banonga, and though he assured them that his employer was no friend of the tyrants, he failed to convince them: he was a white man; that was enough. It was with some difficulty, and only after the exercise of much tact, patience, and good humour on Nando's part, that he managed to secure enough food to supply the needs of the men.
Two days passed amid similar scenes. The journey never became monotonous, for in that wonderful land there is always something fresh to claim the traveller's attention. Jack began to give Samba lessons in English, and found him an apt enough pupil, though, in practising his newly-acquired words afterwards, the boy, to Jack's amusement, adopted a pronounced Irish accent from Barney.
On the morning of the third day, when the camp became active, Barney was somewhat surprised to find that Samba and Pat did not join him as usual at breakfast. Boy and dog had gone to sleep together in his tent, and he had not seen or heard their departure. Breakfast was cleared away, everything was packed up in readiness for starting, and yet the missing members of the party had not appeared. Both were very popular; Samba's unfailing cheerfulness had made him a general favourite, and Pat's sagacity, his keen sporting instincts, and the vigour of his barking when hippopotami or crocodiles came too near the canoe, won for him a good deal of admiration from the natives.
"What! Samba gone!" exclaimed Mr. Martindale, when Barney told him of the disappearance. "Have you called him?"
"Sure me throat is sore wid it, sorr," said Barney, "and me lips are cracked wid whistling for Pat, bad cess to 'm."
"The dog has gone too, eh? I reckon Samba's a thief like the rest of 'em."
"Begging yer pardon, sorr, it takes two to make a thief, one to steal, the other to be stolen. Pat would never agree to be stolen, sorr; besides, he would never be such an ungrateful spalpeen uv a dog, not to speak uv the bad taste of it, as to desert his ould master for a nigger bhoy."
"Well, what's become of them, then? Nando, where's Samba?"
"Me no can tell, sah. Me fink crocodile eat him, sah. Little tiny black boy go walk all alone alone night time. Yah! crocodile come 'long, fink black boy make plenty good chop. Soosh! little black boy in ribber, crocodile eat him all up, sah. What for black boy go walk alone? One time all right, Nando eat manioc[[1]]; nudder time all wrong, crocodile eat Samba."
Nando shook his head sententiously; Samba's exploit on the night of the alarm was evidently still rankling.
"That's not it at all," said Barney. "Pat would niver permit any crocodile, wid all his blarney, to eat him; and if a crocodile ate Samba, sure Pat would have been the first to come and tell us."
"No, it's your Irish that has frightened the boy," said Jack gravely. "I've been trying to teach him a few words of English; but I've noticed once or twice, after I've done with him, that he pronounces the words as if he'd learnt them in Ireland. No decent black boy could stand that, you know, Barney."
"Faith, 'tis Irishmen that speak the best English," returned Barney; "did I not hear them wid me very own ears in the house uv Parlimint?"
"Well, Jack, we must go on," said Mr. Martindale. "I was afraid the boy would be a botheration."
"He has done us a good turn, uncle. Couldn't we wait an hour or two and see if he appears?"
"It's not business, Jack."
"My dear uncle, it's no use your posing as a hard-hearted man of business. You know you're quite fond of the boy."
"Eh! Well, I own he's a likely little fellow, and I sort of felt he's a part of the concern; in short, Jack, we'll put in an hour or two and give him a chance."
An hour passed, and Pat made his appearance. He trotted soberly into the camp, not frisking or barking joyously as was his wont.
"Arrah thin, ye spalpeen, where's Samba?" cried Barney as the dog came to him.
Pat hung his head, and put his tail between his legs and whined.
"Go and fetch him, then," cried Barney.
The terrier looked at his master, turned as if to do his bidding, then moved slowly round and whined again.
"Sure 'tis not devoured by a crocodile he is, or Pat would be in a terrible rage. The bhoy has deserted, sorr, and Pat's heart is after being broken."
"Well, we'll wait a little longer, Barney," said Mr. Martindale; "he may turn up yet."
The day wore itself out, and Samba had not returned. Mr. Martindale and Jack spent part of the time in shooting, adding a goodly number of wild ducks, a river hog and an antelope to the larder. Part of the time they watched the men fishing, or rather harpooning, for they caught the fish by dexterous casts of their light spears. Towards evening Mr. Martindale became seriously anxious, and a little testy.
"I'm afraid a crocodile has made a meal of him, after all," he said. "I don't reckon he'd any reason for leaving us; he got good victuals."
"And a good knife, uncle. Perhaps he has gone to find his father."
"No, I don't bank on that. Too far for a young boy to go alone, through the forest, too, on foot. Anyway, he's an ungrateful young wretch to go without saying a word; I've always heard these blacks don't measure up to white people in their feelings."
Mr. Martindale delayed his departure until the middle of the next day in the hope that Samba would return. Then, however, he declared he could wait no longer, and the party set off.
Late in the afternoon of the next day they came to a spot where a gap occurred in the thick vegetation that lined the bank. Here, said Nando, they must land. Ilola, the principal village of the chief to whom they were bound, stood a short distance from the river, and the way to it lay through the clear space between two forest belts. A quarter of an hour's walking brought them to the village, a cluster of tent-shaped grass huts almost hidden in the bush. The settlement was surrounded by a stockade, and the plantations of banana, maize, and ground-nuts showed signs of careful cultivation.
Nando went alone to interview the chief, bearing a present of cloth and a small copper token which Mr. Martindale had received from his friend Barnard. The chief would recognize it as the replica of one given to him. Nando returned in an hour's time, troubled in countenance. Imbono the chief, he said, had refused to meet the white man, or to have any dealings with him. He well remembered the white man who had cured his son and given him the token two years before; had they not become blood brothers! But since then many things had happened. Dark stories had reached his ears of the terrible consequences that followed the coming of the white man. One of his young men—his name was Faraji—who had joined a party of traders carrying copper down the Congo, had just come back with dreadful tales of what he himself had seen. When Imbono was a boy his people had lived in terror of the white-robed men from the East.[[2]] There had been a great white-robed chief named Tippu Tib, who sent his fighting men far and wide to collect ivory and slaves. These men knew no pity; they carried destruction wherever they went, tearing children from parents, husbands from wives, chaining them together, beating them with cruel whips, strewing the land with the corpses of slaves exhausted by long marching or slain because they were ill or weak.
But terrible as were the warriors of Tippu Tib, surely the servants of the Great White Chief[[3]] were more terrible still; for it often happened that the slave hunters, having come once, came not again; like a fierce tempest they passed; but as, when a storm has devastated a forest, new trees grow and flourish in the room of the old, so when a village had been robbed of its youth, their places were in course of time filled by other boys and girls. And even when the slave hunters came some villagers would escape, and hide in dens or among the forest trees until the danger had passed. But the servants of the Great White Chief were like a blight settling for ever on the land. They came, and stayed; none could escape them, none were spared, young or old. Imbono feared the white man; he prayed him to go in peace; the men of Ilola were peaceable, and sought not to make enemies, but they had bows and arrows, and long shields, and heavy-shafted spears, and if need be they would defend themselves against the stranger.
"I guess this is kind of awkward," said Mr. Martindale when Nando had finished his report. "You can't trade with a man who won't see you. Did you explain that we don't belong to the Great White Chief, Nando?"
"Me say all dat, sah; chief shake him head."
"I suppose you told him our men are not armed?"
"No, sah; me forgot dat, dat am de troof."
"Well, go back; tell the chief that I'm a friend and want to see him. Say that I'll come into the village alone, or with Mr. Jack, and we'll leave our guns behind us. Tell him the white man he saw two years ago said he was a very fine fellow, and I'll trust myself unarmed among his people, bows and arrows and spears and all."
Nando went away, and after another hour returned and said that Imbono, after much persuasion, had agreed to receive the white man because he was a friend of his blood brother. Leaving their rifles and revolvers in Barney's charge, Mr. Martindale and Jack accompanied Nando to the village. The single entrance to the stockade was guarded by a throng of tall warriors with curiously painted skins, and armed with the weapons Nando had described, carrying in addition knives with long leaf-shaped blades.
"They ain't the daisiest of beauties," said Mr. Martindale as he passed them.
"Ugly fellows in a scrimmage," said Jack.
They went on, past the first huts, stared at by knots of the villagers, until they came to the chief's dwelling in the centre of the settlement. Imbono was a tall, well set up, handsome negro, standing half a head taller than the men about him. He received the strangers with grave courtesy, offered them a cup of palm wine, and motioned them to two low carved stools, seating himself on a third.
Through Nando Mr. Martindale explained his business, dwelling on the friendly relations which had existed between the chief and the white man, and assuring him of his peaceable intentions and of his absolute independence of the servants of the Great White Chief. Imbono listened in silence, and made a long reply, repeating what he had already said through Nando. Suddenly he turned to the young man at his side, whom he called Faraji, and bade him tell the white man what he had seen.
"Ongoko! Ongoko!"[[4]] exclaimed the other men. Faraji stepped forward and told his story, with a volubility that outran Nando's powers as an interpreter, and at the same time with a seriousness that impressed his hearers.
"I come from Mpatu," he said. "It is not my village: my village is Ilola. I passed through Mpatu on my way home. It is no longer a village. Why? The servants of the Great White Chief had come up the river. They told the people that the lords of the world, the sons of heaven, had given all the land to the Great White Chief. Mpatu belonged no more to the chief Lualu: it belonged to the Great White Chief. But the Great White Chief was a good chief; he would be a father to his people. Would he take their huts, their gardens, their fowls, their children? No, he was a good chief. Everything that was theirs should be left to them; and the Great White Chief would keep peace in the land, and men should live together as brothers. Only one thing the Great White Chief required of them. In the forest grew a vine that yielded a milky sap. This stuff when hardened with acid from another plant would be of use to the Great White Chief, and he wished them to collect it for him, and bring to his servants every fourteenth day so many baskets full. Every man of Mpatu must bring his share. And they said too that the Great White Chief was just: for all this rubber they collected he would pay, in brass rods, or cloth, or salt; and seeing the Great White Chief was so kind and good, only a bad man would fail in the task set him, and such bad men must be punished. And two servants of the Great White Chief would be left in Mpatu to instruct the people as to the furnishing of the rubber; and these kind teachers the men of Mpatu would surely provide with food and shelter.
"The men of Mpatu laughed at first. Well they knew the vine! Was there not enough of it and to spare in the forest? How easily they could collect what was demanded! How soon would they become rich! And they set the women and children to weave new baskets for the rubber, and made ready new and well-built huts for the men who were to teach them their duty to the Great White Chief.
"But as time went on, woe came to Mpatu. The two servants of the Great White Chief were bad men, selfish, cruel. They stalked about the village, treating the people as their slaves; they seized the plumpest fowls and the choicest fruits; if any man resisted, they whipped him with a long whip of hippopotamus hide.
"But the servants of the Great White Chief demanded still more. It was not only rubber the men of Mpatu were bade to bring them, but so many goats, so many fowls, so many fish and cassava and bananas. How could they do it? The rubber vines near by were soon exhausted. Every week the men must go farther into the forest. They had not enough time now to hunt and fish for their own families. How supply the strangers too?
"Grief came to Mpatu! For long days there was no man in the village save the chief Lualu and the forest guards. The women cowered and crouched in their huts. No longer did they take pride in tidy homes and well-tended hair; no longer sing merrily at the stream, or croon lullabies to their babes; all joy was gone from them.
"Some of the men fled, and with their wives and children lived in the forest, eating roots and leaves. But even flight was vain, for the forest guards tracked them, hunted them down. Some they killed as soon as they found them; others they flogged, chained by the neck, and hauled to prison. There they are given heavy tasks, carrying logs and firewood, clearing the bush, cutting up rubber; and there is a guard over them with a whip which at a single blow can cut a strip from the body. Many have died; they are glad to die.
"And now Mpatu is a waste. One day the rubber was again short; the soldiers came—they burned the huts; they killed men, women, and children; yea, among the soldiers were man-eaters, and many of Mpatu's children were devoured. Only a few escaped—they wander in the forest, who knows where? I tell what I have seen and heard."
When Faraji had finished his story, there was silence for a time. The chief seemed disposed to let the facts sink into the minds of the white men, and Mr. Martindale was at a loss for words. Faraji's story, so significantly similar to what he had himself discovered at Banonga, had deeply impressed him. Were these atrocities going on throughout the Congo Free State? Were they indeed a part of the system of government? It seemed only too probable—the rubber tax was indeed a tax of blood. And what could he say to convince Imbono that he was no friend of the white men who authorized or permitted such things? How could the negro distinguish?
"'Pon my soul," said the American in an aside to Jack, "I am ashamed of the colour of my skin."
Then the chief began to speak.
"The white man understands why I will have nothing to do with him—why I will not allow my people to trade with him. It may be true that you, O white man, are not as these others; you may be a friend to the black man, and believe that the black man can feel pain and grief; but did not the servants of the Great White Chief say that they were friends of the black man? Did they not say the Great White Chief loved us and wished to do us good? We have seen the love of the Great White Chief; it is the love of the crocodile for the antelope: we would have none of it. Therefore I say, O white man, though I bear you no ill-will, you must go."
Courteously as the chief spoke, there was no mistaking his firmness.
"We must go and take stock of this," said Mr. Martindale. "It licks me at present, Jack, and that's a hard thing for an American to say. Come right away."
They took ceremonious leave of the chief, and were escorted to their camp at the edge of the stream.
"What's to be done, my boy?" said Mr. Martindale. "We can't find the gold without the chief's help, unless we go prospecting at large: we might do that for months without success, and make Imbono an open enemy into the bargain. We can't fight him, and I don't want to fight him. After what we've seen and heard I won't be responsible for shedding blood; seems to me the white man has done enough of that already on the Congo. This is a facer, Jack."
"Never say die, uncle. It's getting late: I vote we sleep on it. We may see a way out of the difficulty in the morning."
[[1]] The native word for any food or meal.
[[2]] Arab slave raiders.
[[3]] Leopold II, sovereign of the Congo Free State and king of the Belgians.
[[4]] Yes, do so.