Resolved to give the cavalcade a good start, he watched it disappear in a cloud of dust among the ruins, and then, assuming his most commanding attitude and manner, raised his right hand aloft and exclaimed:
“We will now return through the air to the village—keeping as close to the ground as possible,” he added with some trepidation as he nervously grasped the guard rail in anticipation of the expected movement.
The ship, however, remained motionless. Something was evidently wrong, but what it might be he could not imagine; surely he had not forgotten or misunderstood the formula as stated to him by Lualamba? He now most heartily wished that he had brought that trusty chief with him, and so provided against all possibility of error; however, the omission could not be helped, and he would try again, adopting a somewhat different form of words. This time he stamped rather impatiently on the deck, exclaiming:
“Take us back to the village, good flying horse, but gently, and not very far above the ground.”
Still no movement. The king began to look puzzled, and to feel as vexed as he dared, with the consciousness weighing heavily upon him that he was playing with frightfully keen edged tools. He did not know what to make of this persistent immobility; it was uncanny, sinister, portentous, almost appalling. He would try again. He did try again, not once but nearly a dozen times, varying the form of words, more or less, every time; and, of course, with the same ill success. At length, in chagrin and disgust, he gave up the attempt to move the ship, and turned his attention to an examination of her interior. He advanced to the pilot-house, complacently reflecting that here, at least, he could not possibly be beaten; he had only to walk up to the door and enter. But here, again, surprise and confusion awaited him; for, after twice making the circuit of the building, he was unable to find a door; there was no perceptible entrance anywhere excepting the circular windows, which, however, were all open. Summoning his followers to his assistance, he made them give him a “back;” and, scrambling up on their shoulders, he at length contrived to raise himself to the level of these openings and to look in. He saw a great many levers, and knobs, and buttons, and short lengths of insulated wire; in fact, he got a glimpse of pretty nearly all the apparatus contained in the pilothouse; but that did not help him in the least, for he had not the most remote idea of what all these things were for; and when he essayed an entrance by one of the windows he was again foiled; it was much too small. At length, after a great deal of ineffectual wriggling and struggling—which occasioned serious inconvenience and anxiety to the human supports who were with the utmost difficulty maintaining a state of very unstable equilibrium beneath his feet—his patience completely failed him, and, in a fit of childish anger and spite, he sent a series of truly blood-curdling yells echoing into the interior of the pilot-house. These cries were of course distinctly heard by George and the chef, but (acting upon a concise code of instructions furnished to them when they were first engaged for the voyage, and which provided for almost every conceivable emergency), neither of these individuals condescended to take any notice of them. Having thus given vent to a portion of his spleen, king M’Bongwele, paying but scanty attention to the comfort or dignity of his supporters, scrambled down from his elevated position to the deck, and sat down to reflect upon the next steps to be taken. He would gladly now have left the ship and made the best of his way back to the village, even though the journey would have had to be performed on foot; but the ladder had, by his own command, been removed, and his retreat was thus effectually cut off, a drop of about forty feet from the bottom of the metal accommodation ladder to the ground being a something not to be thought of.
Chapter Twenty.
The History of certain Distressed Damsels.
Meanwhile Seketulo, the chief in command of king M’Bongwele’s household cavalry, returned to the village in due course, and lost no time in dismissing his men, chuckling to himself as he reflected that, after all, he had beaten his monarch in the race homeward.