"Wait here," said I. "There'll be canoes under the town. I'll get one."
Gleazen made a motion as if to go himself, but Arnold shook his head. "No; let Joe go first. He will learn where the canoes are, and do it more quietly than we."
They all sat down by the edge of the water, and, leaving them, I went on alone. It took all the courage I could muster; but having rashly offered, I would not hesitate.
For one thing, it gave me time to think, and in a sense I desired to think, although in another sense it came to me that I was more afraid of my own thoughts than of all the walled towns in Africa. The living nightmare through which we had passed had left me worn in body and mind. That Uncle Seth, upon whom once I had placed every confidence, should have died so tragic a death, now brought me a fresh burst of sorrow, as if I realized it for the first time. It seemed to me that I could hear his sharp yet kindly voice speaking to me of little things in our life at Topham. I thought of one episode after another in those earlier days, some of them, things that had happened while my mother was alive; others, things that had happened after her death; all, things that I had almost forgotten long before. My poor uncle, I thought for the hundredth time—my poor, poor uncle!
Then suddenly another thought came to me and I straightened up and stood well-nigh aghast. By the terms of my uncle's will, of which more than once he had told me, all that had been his was mine!
The river silently swept down between its high banks, past me who stood where the waves licked at my feet, past the black walls of the town, which stood like a sentinel guarding the unknown fastnesses of the continent of Africa, past high hill and low gravel shoal and bottomless morass, past pawpaw and pine palm and mangrove, to the mission and the sea.
There I stood, as still as a statue, until after a long time I remembered my errand and, like one just awakened, continued on my way.
I found a score of canoes drawn up on the beach under the town, and very carefully placing paddles by one that was large enough for our entire party, I cautiously returned to the others and reported what I had done. Together we all slipped silently along the shore to the canoes, launched the one that I had chosen, and with a last glance up at the pointed roofs of the houses and the sharpened pickets of the stockade, silently paddled, all unobserved, out on the strong current and went flying down into the darkness.
It had been one thing to row up stream against that current. It was quite another, and vastly easier, even though three of us were entirely ignorant of handling such a canoe, to paddle down the swift waters of midstream. Exerting always the greatest care to balance the ticklish wooden craft, which the blacks with their crude adzes had hewn out of a solid log, we sent it, even by our clumsy efforts, fairly flying past the trees ashore; and as it seemed that we had struck the river many miles below the creek where we had left our boat, we had hopes that the one night would bring us within striking distance of the open sea. Indeed, I found myself watching every point and bend, in hope that the mission lay just beyond it.
Estimating that daylight was still two hours away, we drew in shore at Gleazen's suggestion, to raid a patch of yams or plantains.