Nick got up, rubbing the green mud from his elbows and knees, and staring in wonder at the object the fall of which had so astonished him. An examination of it did not tend to remove his perplexity. It was a large heavy piece of wood, shaped evidently by the axe, so as to resemble a rude arrow, but as thick as the mast of a large cutter. To the end of this was attached an iron head of a corresponding size. It had penetrated deep into the ground, and would have been sufficient to shatter Nick’s skull like an icicle if it had come in contact with it. “Whatever can that be?” he exclaimed; “and how came it up there?”
“A hippopotamus trap,” said the missionary; “and it is a good job that it has not proved a man trap too. You must not leave your companions in this wild country, Nick, or even your good luck won’t keep you out of trouble. I noticed the trap as we passed, and then perceived a minute or two afterwards that you were not with us. It is fortunate I turned back and called you. If you hadn’t been running fast it might have caught your head, or at all events your leg.”
By this time they were rejoined by the rest of the party, and De Walden proceeded to explain to the boys the curious construction of the machine from which Nick had had so narrow an escape. It was common enough, he told them, in the neighbourhood of the haunts of the hippopotamus. The stem of a young tree, a foot or so in diameter, was cut off at the length of about four feet. A strong and sharp iron head was fixed at one end, and at the other an eye, to which a string was attached. This rude shaft was then hung up to the branch of a large tree immediately over the path by which the hippopotamuses were wont to go down to the river. The string was passed over the branch, round a projecting root at the bottom of the tree, and straight across the path, being ultimately secured to a peg driven into the earth. This string came into contact with the feet of the hippopotamus, which, in walking, shambles along, scarcely raising its legs from the ground. The string being in this manner broken, the heavy beam instantly falls, usually striking the hippopotamus in the back, and penetrating the vitals. The blow is almost always mortal. Even if the animal is not killed on the spot, it is so badly wounded that it dies shortly afterwards. Sometimes, to make assurance doubly sure, Mr De Walden told them, the iron is steeped in poison.
“There didn’t need that,” said Nick, as he contemplated the barbed point, as big as the fluke of an anchor, and sharp as an arrow. “The iron head would have finished me off very handsomely, without troubling the poison-makers. Well, I’ll take care another time, as the children say, and I can’t do more. Let’s be off now. I want to get to our quarters for the night.”
Chapter Twenty One.
The Basuto Kraal—Queen Laura—The Queen’s Narrative—The Wreck of the Grosvenor—Sufferings of the Survivors—The Basuto Chief—De Walden’s Joy.
Nightfall was near at hand, when the party approached the Basuto kraal; and the boys looked eagerly round them to see if they could discover any marked differences between it and the other native villages which they had visited. Ella, as she had called herself, had hardly spoken a word during the whole journey. A sudden shyness apparently having seized her, which was a curious contrast to the self-possession of her demeanour when she first encountered them. To the questions addressed to her by Frank and Nick, she made very brief and seemingly reluctant replies, and they soon discontinued their inquiries. But their curiosity was only heightened by the lady’s unwillingness to satisfy it. It appeared that De Walden had heard something of a white Basuto Queen; but whence she came, or how she had attained to her kingdom, was a sealed mystery. Perhaps she might be one of an English colony, which had established itself in these parts, and assumed a sovereignty over all the inhabitants round about But if so, it was strange that none of them should have heard from the Bechuanas, and especially from Kobo, anything about such a colony. Well, at all events, a very short stay in the village would suffice to explain the mystery; probably, indeed, the first sight of it would be sufficient.
But this did not prove to be the case. The kraal was not very unlike those of the Bechuanas, and other neighbouring tribes. The houses were constructed of wicker-work plaited with reed, and had the usual arched entrance, which served as door, window, and chimney. There were the baskets and pails, the assegais, and bows and arrows, which usually stood in front of a Kaffir hut, or were hung against the central pole. The population, too, which had assembled, one and all, to witness the entry of the strangers, did not materially differ from the other inhabitants of the district. The whole kraal, to be sure, had the appearance of having been constructed in haste, and only partially finished; but otherwise, our adventurers would hardly have known that they had entered the country of a new people. As soon as they had entered the enclosure, Ella called up one of the natives, to whom she gave some orders in a tone that was not audible, and then, turning to her companions with a graceful bend of the head, she vanished into one of the neighbouring houses. The Basuto to whom she had spoken, now stepped up to the Englishmen and invited them, by a gesture of the hand, to follow him. They obeyed, and presently found themselves in a room which showed, for the first time, a real contrast to ordinary savage life. It was a room, not the inside of a hut—a room perhaps fourteen feet square, hastily constructed of trees squared by the axe, and planks nailed horizontally to them, but a room, nevertheless, with ceiling, unglazed windows and doors, and carpeted with Kaffir matting. There were even some rude chairs and a table in the centre. Their guide pointed to these first, and then to a door opening into another apartment of about the same size, where some skins were spread on the floor. “Eat here,” he said; “sleep there.”