CHAPTER VIII
THE VOICE OF THE CONGO FOREST
Just after daybreak next morning the expedition started.
Berselius, Adams, the gun-bearers and Félix headed the line; a long way after came the porters and their loads, shepherded by half a dozen soldiers of the state specially hired for the business.
Before they had gone a mile on their route the sun was blazing strongly, sharp bird-calls came from the trees, and from the porters tramping under their loads a hum like the hum of an awakened beehive. These people will talk and chatter when the sun rises; club them, or threaten them, or load them with burdens as much as you please, the old instinct of the birds and beasts remains.
At first the way led through cassava and manioc fields and past clumps of palms; then, all at once, and like plunging under a green veil or into the heart of a green wave, they entered the forest.
The night chill was just leaving the forest, the great green gloom, festooned with fantastic rope-like tendrils, was drinking the sunlight with a million tongues; you could hear the rustle and snap of branches straightening themselves and sighing toward heaven after the long, damp, chilly night. The tropical forest at daybreak flings its arms up to the sun as if to embrace him, and all the teeming life it holds gives tongue. Flights of coloured and extraordinary birds rise like smoke wreaths from the steaming leaves, and the drone of a million, million insects from the sonorous depths comes like the sound of life in ferment.
The river lay a few miles to their left, and faintly from it, muffled by the trees, they could hear the shrill whistling of the river steamboat. It was like the “good-bye” of civilization.