“Niani will always try to be good, because he loves his Master Selim,” the little fellow said.
“So be it,” answered his master.
“And I,” said Abdullah, “want to be Niani’s friend; and he must say ‘thou’ to me, and when we reach Zanzibar, Niani will find how grateful an Arab boy can be.”
Simba said: “Niani must look upon me as his father from this evening, because he has neither father nor mother of his own. Master Selim, Abdullah, and Moto are his friends; and when Niani is big like me, Master Selim will give him a wife and garden, and a home, and he will grow up with plenty of little Nianis around him.”
This set them all laughing, and the idea of little Niani having plenty of other little Nianis, lasted as a good joke until it was time to sleep.
The fire was allowed to die out; but through the gloom of night in the dark forest, with the broad, shadowy boughs swaying softly over the sleepers, the everlasting stars, the southern cross, glittering Orion, and bright, shining Canopus, searched them out, but they never looked down from their exalted heights on a camp in Central Africa, where were purer fellowship, or greater human kindness than that which those sleeping forms contain within them towards one another.
The march of our party was continued the next day and for six days more toward the south without having once emerged from the forest. They saw plenty of game, and almost every day bagged something for the larder; but they always kept a surplus of dried meat by as a provision for exigencies.
On the seventh day after the scenes just detailed above, Kalulu thought they might now turn west, and after going in that direction for three days, might slowly point their faces toward the north-west, or alter their direction towards Lake Liemba, as circumstances permitted. (See note at end of this chapter.)
The genial shade and tranquillity of the primeval forest was soon exchanged after they turned their faces west for the intolerable heat and vexation of a low, thorny jungle. Their nostrils became offended with the fetid rank exhalations of the cactaceous and aloetic plants, and black gummy bushes, armed with many a horrid thorn, which struggled with each other for place and air with the wanton luxuriance and spontaneous growth which belongs to tropical plants. These loaded the air with a pungent, acrimonious odour, which set them all coughing, and when they impatiently rubbed the tormented organs of respiration, they but added to their discomfort, for their hands had unconsciously rubbed against some leaves as they passed through, and communicated a burning sensation to their noses and lips like that which cayenne pepper provokes. Long creepers, armed upon all sides with ridges of thorn, evoked many an impatient word, as at an unlucky moment they stumbled against these, and were held fast to the great and severe wounding of the epidermis, and pendulous arms, overhanging the road which they traversed, caught them fast often with their crooked and sharp thorns by the skin of the throat, causing severe and painful wounds. These pains and penalties, which the jungles of that region impose upon the unlucky travellers who are compelled to travel through them, were but a few of the inconveniences and discomforts which our friends suffered. The whole ground seemed strewn with the opened kernel of a seed thorn, which is armed outside with as many straight, sharp thorns as there are quills in a porcupine’s back. Fancy men with naked feet walking over a ground strewn with miniature porcupines, and you will agree with me that the pain and torment would be as great almost as walking over hot embers. At least such were the opinions of our friends, as they were compelled, while their faces were wrinkled with pain, to stop every other minute to extract the vile thorn kernels which had wounded their feet.
Apart from these miseries of the jungle were those which the heated and cracked earth furnished. The red, drouthy ground was full of wide and unsightly seams, rugged rents, which gaped open to receive the incautious foot, and many a stumble and cry was elicited from the unwary Arab boys, who, instead of watching against these mischances, permitted their eyes to rove over the inhospitable scene.