Upon extending my inquiries it was found that there were at least 150 people in the camp who had likewise followed his example, and discarded superfluous food, and on that day, the 8th, they had nothing. The headmen were called that night to a council, and after being reproached for their reckless conduct, it was resolved that on the next day almost every able-bodied person should return to Ngwetza which we had left on the morning of the 6th. The distance was 19½ hours for the caravan, but as much time was necessarily lost in cutting through the jungly undergrowth, and even now and then in laying a course, the forage party would be able to return to Ngwetza in eleven hours’ travel.
1888.
Dec. 5.
Ngwetza.
On the morning of the 9th, about 200 people started for the plantain groves of Ngwetza, but before departing they contributed about 200 lbs. of plantain flour as a reserve for the sickly ones, and guards of the camp. We were about 130 in number, men, women and pigmies, the majority of whom were already distressed. I gave half-a-cupful of flour to each person for the day, then despatched Mr. Bonny with ten men to find the Ihuru River. According to my calculations, the camp was in N. lat. 1° 27′ 15″, and E. long. 29° 21′ 30″, about nine geographical miles in an air-line north of Fort Bodo, but it was useless to show the chart to men dreading that starvation was again imminent. All they saw was the eternal myriads of trees with a dead black unknown environing the camp round about, shutting out all hope, and a viewless and stern prospect of rigid wood with a dark cope of leaves burying them out of sight of sky and sunshine, as though they lived under a pall. But they knew that the Ihuru was not far from Fort Bodo, and if Mr. Bonny and his men discovered it, some little encouragement would be gained. Mr. Bonny succeeded in finding the river, and blazed a path to it.
For employment’s sake I sat down to recalculate all my observations with exactitude, to correct certain discrepancies that our journeys over the same ground had enabled me to detect; and buried in my Norie, and figures and charts, my mind was fully occupied. But on the 14th my work was done. I lived in hope the next day, with my hearing on the strain for the sound of voices. The people looked miserable, but hopeful. A box of European provisions was opened, a pot of butter and milk were taken out, and a table-spoonful of each dropped into the earthenware pots that were already filled with boiling water. In this manner a thin broth was made which would serve to protract the agony of existence. On the sixth day the pots were again ranged round me in a semi-circle, and in rotation, each cook brought his vessel of hot water to receive his butter and milk, and after being well stirred, marched off with his group to distribute the broth according to measure. A little heartened by the warm liquid they scattered through the woods to hunt up the red berries of the phrynia, and pick up now and then the amomum, whose sour-sweet pulp appeared to quiet the gnawing of the stomach. A mushroom in the course of several hundred yards’ rambling would perhaps fall to the lot of the seeker. But when 130 men have wandered about and about, to and fro, searching for the edibles, the circle widens, and day by day the people had to penetrate further and further away from the camp. And it happened that while searching with eagerness, impelled on and on by the eager stomach, that they were carried some miles away, and they had paid no regard to the course they were going; and when they wished to return to camp they knew not which way to seek it, and two full-grown men and Saburi, a little boy of eight years, did not return. I had a peculiar liking for the small child. His duty was to carry my Winchester, and cartridge pouch. He was usually a dark cherub, round as a roller, strong and sturdy, with an old man’s wisdom within his little boy’s head, and frequently when the caravan was on its mettle, and a fair road before it, I looked back often and often to see how little Saburi trotted steadily after me. Being the rifle-bearer, trained to be at my heels at any strange sound, I deprived myself of many a choice bit to nourish Saburi with, so that his round stomach had drawn a smile from all who looked at him. He looked like a little boy with a keg under his frock. But, alas! in the last few days the keg had collapsed, and he, like all the others, had penetrated into the wilderness of phrynia to search for berries. On this day he was lost.
In the dark the muzzle-loaders of the Manyuema were employed to fire signals. About 9 P.M. we thought we heard the little boy’s voice. The halloo was sounded, and a reply came from the other end of the camp. One of the great ivory horns boomed out its deep sound. Then the cry came from the opposite side. Some of the men said that it must be Saburi’s ghost wailing his death. The picture of the little fellow seeing the dark night come down upon him with its thick darkness in those eerie wilds, with fierce dwarfs prowling about, and wild boar and huge chimpanzee, leopards and cheetahs, with troops of elephants trampling and crashing the crisp phrynia, and great baboons beating hollow trees—everything terrifying, in fact, round about him—depressed us exceedingly. We gave him up for lost.
It had been an awful day. In the afternoon a boy had died. Three persons were lost. The condition of the majority was most disheartening. Some could not stand, but fell down in the effort. These sights began to act on my nerves, until I began to feel not only moral sympathy, but physical as well, as though bodily weakness was infectious.
On my bed that night the thought of the absent men troubled me; but however distasteful was the idea that a terrible misfortune—such as being lost in the woods, or collapsing from hunger before they reached the groves—it became impossible not to regard the darkest view and expect the worst, in order, if possible, to save a remnant of the Expedition that the news might be carried to the Pasha and thence to civilisation some day. I pictured the entire column perished here in this camp, and the Pasha wondering month after month what had become of us, and we corrupting and decaying in this unknown corner in the great forest, and every blaze on the trees healed up, and every trail obliterated within a year, and our burial-place remaining unknown until the end of time. Indeed, it appeared to me as if we were drifting steadily towards just such a fate. Here were about 200 men without food going thirty-five miles to seek it. Not 150 would perhaps reach it; the others would throw themselves, like the Madis, to the ground, to wait, to beg from others, if perchance they returned. If an accident to the 50 bravest men happen, what then? Some are shot down by dwarfs; the larger aborigines attack the others in a body. The men have no leader; they scatter about, they become bewildered, lose their way, or are speared one after another. While we are waiting, ever waiting for people who cannot return, those with me die first by threes, sixes, tens, twenties, and then, like a candle extinguished, we are gone. Nay, something had to be done.
On the sixth day we made the broth as usual, a pot of butter and a pot of milk for 130 people, and the headmen and Mr. Bonny were called to council. On proposing a reverse to the foragers of such a nature as to cause an utter loss of all, they appeared unable to comprehend such a possibility, though folly after folly, madness after madness, had marked every day of my acquaintance with them. The departure of men secretly on raids, and never returning, the leaping of fifty men into the river after a bush antelope, the throwing away of their rations after fifteen months’ experiences of the forest, the reckless rush into guarded plantations, skewering their feet, the inattention they paid to abrasions leaving them to develope into rabid ulcers; the sale of their rifles to men who would have enslaved them all, follies practised by blockheads day after day, week after week; and then to say they could not comprehend the possibility of a fearful disaster. Were not 300 men with three officers lost in the wood for six days? Were not three persons lost close to this camp yesterday and they have not returned? Did I not tell these men that we should all die if they were not back on the fourth day? Was not this the sixth day of their absence? Were there not fifty people close to death now? and much else of the same kind?
By-and-by, the conviction stole on their minds that if by accident we were to remain in camp inactive for three days, we should then be too weak to seek food; and they agreed with me that it would be a wise thing to bury the goods, and set out on our return to Ngwetza to procure food for ourselves. But there was one difficulty. If we buried the goods, and fifty sick men preferred to remain in the camp to following us, should we return to the caché, we should find that the sick had exhumed the goods, and wrecked everything out of pure mischief.