Haviland's Chum

by Bertram Mitford

The solitude is intense, but not so the silence. The call of bird voices echoes through the shade; some shrill and piping and not unmelodious, others harsh, half human, almost menacing; the screech of cicalas too, loud, vibrant, distressing to overwrought and weakened nerves. Green lizards of some size dart scramblingly through the scattered bark or lie motionless, with head erect, and ruby-like eyes dilated, as they watch the intruder; and a great tree spider, huge, hairy, and hideous, shoggles up a trunk within a yard and a half of the wanderer’s face.

And now hunger is gripping the unfortunate man; thirst, too, which the slimy swamp water he has drunk—though, in prudence, sparingly—has not availed to stave off for long. The day is waning, moreover, and well he knows that another night spent in the forest spells death. And still no sign of human habitation or friendly succour; yet how should there be, seeing that the red scourge of the slave-hunter, or of warring barbarian clans, equally ruthless, has swept this zone of terror and of blood, leaving it a howling waste of uninhabited wilderness. Or even were things otherwise, why should those he half hoped to meet prove any more desirable than those from whom he fled, here in the dark places of the earth, where anything in human shape, any fellow creature, was almost synonymous with a cruel and ruthless enemy? But the enduring courage, the bulldog tenacity of purpose, which characterise the true explorer or up-country adventurer, whatever his nationality, is to this man an ever present force. The traditions of his order that no hardship, no peril, however great, however hopeless, is without abundant precedent, are with him now, to steady his staggering steps as he plunges forward, to uphold and cheer his despairing mind.

There is light ahead; a break in the skies. Only another tract of open swamp, is the first thought of the fugitive; and yet with it a sort of instinct—hardly more, although the creation of experience—warns him, tells him, that human habitation lies at hand. With renewed strength and quickened steps he presses forward to the edge of the forest line and peers forth.

At the sight which meets his gaze his heart gives a great bound. His instinct has not been at fault. There, in the midst of the open space, are the thatched roofs of a native village—and a village of some size.

It is situated in the open—in the midst of an amphitheatre of forest which engirdles it on three sides, the further being bounded by a line of jagged rocks of no great height. But around it there is no sign of life. No human forms are issuing from or entering its low stockade, no sound of human voices comes to him from within it. Perhaps they are sleeping throughout the heat of the day. And then he pauses.

What will be his reception? Hostile possibly. Yet here lies his only hope. To remain as he is means certain death. He will warn the inhabitants of yonder place of the proximity of his enemies and theirs, that it not strong enough for defence, which is more than likely, they may save their lives—and his—in timely flight. And, having decided upon this line of conduct, he steps from his hiding-place, and proceeds to cross the intervening space.

But as he draws near the village, he is conscious of a renewed sinking of the heart; for now he perceives that the stockade is broken down in several places, and what he has hardly noticed before in his excitement and hunger as he snatched at the bunches of millet—a field of which he is passing through—that the crops are trampled and torn about, as though hurriedly foraged. And then, as he gains a wide breach in the stockade, and is about to step through, a sight meets his gaze which is not entirely unfamiliar, but which somehow or other never seems entirely to lose its horror and repulsion.

Strewn around in scattered profusion are hundreds of bones. Skulls, too, grinning up out of the long herbage which in some instances has sprouted right through the battered orifice which has let out the life, producing the most hideous and ghastly effect. Everywhere they lie, grouped in batches, mostly just within the stockade, though others are not wanting immediately around the low-roofed grass huts. Well enough does the fugitive know these signs. The fate of this village has been that of many another in the blood-stained heart of the Dark Continent. Its inhabitants have been surprised, and all who have shown resistance, or for any reason were not worth carrying away, ruthlessly massacred, regardless of age or sex—as not a few skulls of diminutive size lying around eloquently proclaim. His supposed place of refuge is but a village inhabited by the dead.

Grim and gruesome as this thought is, a new hope springs within the hunted man’s resourceful mind. His pursuers, even should they suspect the direction he has taken—he is satisfied that they have lost his spoor, or they would have been upon him long since—will forbear to follow him here. The last asylum they will dream of him seeking will be this village of the dead. There is comfort in this, at any rate, and now, his next thought is to collect the ears, or rather bunches of millet—there is still plenty left which is not crushed and trampled—and as he devours great handfuls of the grain, he remembers that where there is a village there must be water. Fortified by even this sorry food, rough, indigestible, unwholesome as it is, he renews his search and is soon rewarded. He has no difficulty—save for the exhaustion of dragging along his weary frame—in finding water, which, though slimy, and tepid and unpalatable, is still water—and having slaked his thirst, he crawls back to the village again.

The sun has sunk beneath the ridge of black rocks, and in the brief gloaming the miasmatic vapours seem to roll up thicker than before. One by one, the stars twinkle forth into the hot misty sky, and soon the reddening glow of a broad moon suffuses the tree tops, flooding with its spectral light the open space and whitened relics of those who erewhile tenanted these silent and primitive dwellings. Gigantic bats are flitting to and fro, uttering their strident squeaks, and the forest depths begin to resound with the howling of hyaenas, and the shrill baying of hunting jackals. To the fugitive the sounds are not without a certain sinister significance. Well he knows that the hyaena is the most cowardly of beasts, but he remembers too, how in these regions of constant massacre, even the most cowardly of beasts can hardly have failed to lose all respect for the dominant animal, Man—seeing that he, at any rate dead, constitutes an easy and abundant form of prey. He realises his own enfeebled state, and knows that the otherwise cowardly carnivora will realise it too. Even now, he can descry grisly, blunt-snouted shapes, skulking about in the moonlight, allured by the scent of fresh blood—his own blood to wit—nor does the occasional subdued shout he utters avail to alarm them overmuch, or cause them to retire very for. The stealthy patter of their footfalls seems ever to increase—to be drawing nearer and nearer.