Their path happened to lead almost directly through the centre of this wide, open space, and the going being easy they quickly traversed it, and plunged again into the forest shadows on the other side, where their slow, toilsome, groping style of progress was resumed. For three long hours they struggled on, weary, now, beyond power of expression, often in grave doubt as to whether or no they were pursuing the right direction, and every moment growing more seriously disconcerted at the extraordinary circumstance that, although during the day they must have journeyed many more miles than they had during the previous night, they still failed to reach the river for which they were aiming.
At length, quite late in the afternoon, they again unexpectedly emerged from the forest into another open space, very similar in size and appearance to the one in which they had witnessed the combat between the gorilla and the leopard. As they stood for a moment in the open, blinking their dazzled eyes in the strong and unaccustomed sunshine, in a vain effort to classify the several objects, moving and motionless, that they saw dotted about the plain, a shout reached their ears, answered by another and another, and half a dozen more. Then they became aware of the sound of lowing cattle, and presently, as their eyes adjusted themselves to the sudden change in the light conditions, they recognised that they were on the outskirts, so to speak, of a native village, and that the inhabitants, whose quick eyes had detected their presence upon the instant of their emergence from the forest, were already mustering, with spear and shield, in unquestionably menacing fashion.
Chapter Fifteen.
A Forest Adventure.
“Natives, and savages at that,” remarked Lethbridge, taking in the situation in an instant. “Now, you fellows,” he continued, “our game is to show a bold front, and to get well into the open straight away, so that none of our black friends yonder can slip round, under cover of the forest, and take us at close quarters in the rear. Those chaps may be perfectly harmless and peaceable, but I confess they don’t look it, and it is a wise thing to be prepared for the worst. And now, Professor, here is an opportunity for you to come out strong; you are acquainted with no end of these African lingos, are you not? Better lose no time in conveying to their intelligences the fact that we are friends, and that if they are prepared to supply us with food, drink, and a shakedown for the night, and to pilot us to the river to-morrow, we will graciously refrain from annihilating them. But you will have to do it quick, old chap, for it looks remarkably as though they were about to make an uncommonly ugly demonstration against us.”
It did, indeed. For, even while Lethbridge had been speaking, the blacks had gathered, to the extent of some three or four hundred, each armed with shield and spears, supplemented in many cases by heavy clubs with big knotted heads thickly studded with formidable spikes, and were now arranging themselves in a kind of crescent formation, as though to attack and surround the four white men.
Von Schalckenberg walked up to and seized a small leafy branch projecting low down from the trunk of a tree close at hand, and wrenched it off. Then, raising this above his head, he boldly advanced toward the threatening phalanx that was already moving forward.
“We must stick close to him,” exclaimed Lethbridge, who by tacit consent had assumed the direction of affairs in this crisis; “we must not allow him to be cut off from us, or we shall never see him again.”