It became full day, for the sun, a round globe of living fire, or like a fiery balloon, surged upward light and airily. But oh! with what different feelings he gazed upon it now. Yesterday it was hateful with its dry heat and blister, and its thirst-begetting warmth; to-day it was like a huge lamp hoisted up to the sky to light the dim and lengthy aisles of the forest. There was no heat nor thirst in its appearance, nothing but strengthful vigour and cheery light!
At noon, Selim came to a quiet pool in the forest; the lotus flowers rose like yellow cups above its surface, while the leaves lay languidly flat. All around the rim the pool was garnished with these water flowers of Africa; and, so decked, it looked like a great shallow dish adorned with a pictured border! How delicious did the water taste! How cool and tranquil the spot! What deep silence pervaded the forest at noon! How soothing to the fugitive soul!
A little distance off he espied a large baobab, which had a hole in its body. Walking to it and looking in, he saw the hole led to a large hollow in the tree, as large as a small chamber. He crept in, for it was empty, and there he laid down to rest, and finally he slept. He had escaped, and was safe!
It was night when he awoke; he must have slept eight or ten hours; there were no means of knowing how many. It was evidently a hard task to wake up, for after the first movement indicating life, he lay still, and tried to compel the sodden brain to recover its duty, and the eyes to aid it by piercing that thick darkness of the natural chamber in which he found himself. Bit by bit, the senses resumed the old order of things. Mind stirred up, and gave its master to know that he had run away from a most cruel slavery. Ah! yes! and, the keyword touched, all became clear.
“The Watuta!—that torturing yoke-tree, and the sleepless nights it caused me! my galled shoulders, my wealed back, my racking head! that monster Tifum! that fierce man-animal whom pity never touched! that pariah dog-face, repulsive in its animal malignity! those thick lips which uttered such horrible blasphemy! that always-ready whip! Who can forget him? May the foul mother who bore him, and her fouler son, perish like one of those whose fate will be Al Hotamah!
“All is clear to my mind now. I am free! Arise, my soul, for further freedom; the dark night is kinder than day. The wilderness will take more pity on me than man. Shake thyself, son of Amer, thy mother is patiently waiting for thee; thy kinsmen at Zanzibar still look for thee. Courage, my heart, there is nothing to fear.”
He rose to his feet and looked out. “Is that a beast, or is it my timid fancy which creates such a shape? Hush, that was a step! a slow, stealthy step of padded feet; no man alone in the wilds would walk on all fours. Hush, but a moment. Ah! what is it?”
For just then an unearthly laugh—terrible in its satiric wildness of tone—rang through the forest. It was startling for a moment, because it was unexpected, and fearful, because it seemed to challenge all the denizens of the wilds. “What beast can it be?
“Ah! I remember now. Moto has told me of it. It is only a hyaena, and the hungry fellow has scented a prey. Not yet, my friend, can I be thine. Selim is safe from thy jaws. He must see Zanzibar first, before any of thy species can eat him. Oh God!—”
The satiric laugh of the hyaena was succeeded now by a roar which echoed through the forest, and another and another succeeded it, which almost deafened the lad with its volume and power. No animal but the dread king of the forest could have emitted such sounds, and there is nothing more startling than the first sudden bellowing outburst of his lungs—it is so deep, so protracted; but, as if he expends the concentrated power of his lungs in the first roar, the others which succeed it come out in short, gasping, rasping sounds, which seem to chase one another as they peal through the forest in quick succession. Though the first sudden outburst is startling, even appalling, when unexpected, a certain feeling of admiration quickly succeeds the first fear, at the volume and the force of it, and at the echoes which it wakes up.