“Are there any ‘Doooo’ in the neighbourhood, now?”
He looked up and smiled with a gush as artful as a London coquette, as if to say, “You know best! Oh! naughty man, why do you chaff me?”
“Will you show us the road to the village where we can get food?”
He nodded his head rapidly, patted his full-moon belly, which meant, “Yes, for there I shall get a full meal; for here”—he smiled disdainfully as he pressed his thumb nail on the first joint of his left index finger—“are plantains only so big, but there they are as big as this,” and he clasped the calf of his leg with two hands.
“Oh, Paradise!” cried the men, “bananas as big as a man’s leg!” The pigmy had contrived to ingratiate himself into every man’s affection. My authority was gone until the story of the monstrous bananas would be disproved. Some of them looked as if they would embrace him, and his face mimicked artless innocence, though he knew perfectly well that, in their opinion, he was only a little lower than an angel.
And all this time, the coppery face of the nut-brown little maid was eloquent with sympathy in the emotions of the male pigmy. Her eyes flashed joy, a subtle spirit glided over her features with the transition of lightning. There were the same tricks of by-play; the same doubts, the same hopes, the same curiosity, the same chilling fear, was felt by the impressionable soul as she divined what feelings moved her kinsman. She was as plump as a thanksgiving turkey or a Christmas goose; her breasts glistened with the sheen of old ivory, and as she stood with clasped hands drooping below—though her body was nude—she was the very picture of young modesty.
The pair were undoubtedly man and woman. In him was a mimicked dignity, as of Adam; in her the womanliness of a miniature Eve. Though their souls were secreted under abnormally thick folds of animalism, and the finer feelings inert and torpid through disuse, they were there for all that. And they suited the wild Eden of Avatiko well enough.
1888.
Oct. 28.
Forest.
Burdened with fresh supplies of dried plantains, and guided by the pigmies, we set out from the abandoned grove of Avatiko E.N.E., crossed the clear stream of Ngoki at noon, and at 3 P.M. were encamped by the brook Epeni. We observed numerous traces of the dwarfs in the wilds which we had traversed, in temporary camps, in the crimson skins of the amoma, which they had flung away after eating the acid fruit, in the cracked shells of nuts, in broken twigs that served as guides to the initiated in their mysteries of woodcraft, in bow-traps by the wayside, in the game-pits sunk here and there at the crossings of game-tracks. The land appeared more romantic than anything we had seen. We had wound around wild amphitheatral basins, foliage rising in terraces one above another, painted in different shades of green, and variegated with masses of crimson flowers, and glistening russet, and the snowdrop flowerets of wild mangoes, or the creamy silk floss of the bombax, and as we looked under a layer of foliage that drooped heavily above us, we saw the sunken basin below, an impervious mass of leafage grouped crown to crown like heaped hills of soft satin cushions, promising luxurious rest. Now and then troops of monkeys bounded with prodigious leaps through the branches, others swinging by long tails a hundred feet above our heads, and with marvellous agility hurling their tiny bodies through the air across yawning chasms, and catching an opposite branch, resting for an instant to take a last survey of our line before burying themselves out of sight in the leafy depths. Ibises screamed to their mates to hurry up to view the column of strangers, and touracos argued with one another with all the guttural harshness of a group of Egyptian fellahs, plantain-eaters, sunbirds, grey parrots, green parroquets, and a few white-collared eagles either darted by or sailed across the leafy gulf, or sat drowsily perched in the haze upon aspiring branches. There was an odour of musk, a fragrance of flowers, perfume of lilies mixed with the acrid scent of tusky boars in the air; there were heaps of elephant refuse, the droppings of bush antelopes, the pungent dung of civets, and simians along the tracks, and we were never long away from the sound of rushing rivulets or falling cascades, sunlight streamed in slanting silver lines and shone over the undergrowth and the thick crops of phrynia, arum, and amoma, until their damp leaves glistened, and the dewdrops were brilliant with light.
And the next day our march underneath the eternal shades was through just such a land, and on the morning of the 1st of November we emerged into the clearing of Andaki, to refresh our souls with the promised fruit of its groves. The plantains were not very large, but they were mature and full, and before an hour had elapsed, the wooden grates were up, and the fruit lay in heaps of slices on the bars over the fire. The word was passed that the first and second day of the month should be employed in preparing as much provisions as every man could carry. We were in N. Lat. 1° 16½′. Kilonga-Longa’s station was in 1° 6′, and Fort Bodo in 1° 20′, so that our course was good.