Samba: A Story of the Rubber Slaves of the Congo

by Herbert Strang

It was not until the midday meal that accident befriended him. The Askari came to a village which had clearly been for some time deserted—another monument, Jack supposed, to King Leopold's rule. He took refuge from the burning heat, which did not appear to incommode the negroes, in one of the empty and half-ruined huts. There he ate his meal of rancid kwanga—all that his guards would allow him. While he squatted on the floor eating, his eye was attracted by a bright light, the reflection of the sun on some polished surface in the wall of the hut. Out of sheer curiosity he stepped across, and drew from the interlaced wattles the head of a small axe. Its edge was very sharp, as Jack found to his cost when he drew his finger across it; and although in parts rusty, it appeared to be of very fine steel, too fine to be of native workmanship. Wondering who had been its owner, and how it came to be stuck, separate from its shaft, into the wall of a rough native hut, he slipped it into his pocket; it might prove a weapon of value to an otherwise unarmed man.

There was nothing to cause his guards to suspect him when the march was once more resumed. In an hour or two they came to a place below the series of rapids where it was safe to launch the canoe. There the party divided. The carriers being all gone, the canoe left behind could only be fetched by some of the Askari; and after some squabbling, ten of them went back, the rest promising to wait for them at a convenient spot down the river. As they paddled away, Jack gathered from the talk of his escort, in a dialect which had some slight resemblance to that of the men of Banonga, that they expected to arrive at this place, an old camping-ground of theirs by the river, before nightfall. They had placed him in the bow of the canoe, a light one suitable for portage, with no platform, and therefore nothing between him and the water but the thin side.

Keenly he watched the banks, hoping to be able at a favourable moment to turn his observations to account. But except for a few hippos half hidden in the long grass or reeds at the river-side, and here and there a crocodile basking on a rock or sandbank, its scaly back scarcely distinguishable from the soil, the river was deserted. Forest lined the banks on both sides, its continuity only occasionally broken by clearings showing signs of burnt villages. The trees were beginning to throw long shadows over the water; sunset must be fast approaching; still no means of escape had suggested itself. Yet escape, if effected at all, must be effected soon, for he did not know when, with his transference to a steamer, his immediate fate would be sealed.

Should he risk all, spring overboard, and swim for the bank? He was tempted to do so, though he could not repress a shudder as he thought of the crocodiles now beginning to wake from their afternoon nap. But he knew that as soon as he came to the surface he would be overhauled in two or three strokes of the paddles, even if the paddlers did not think his attempt to escape sufficient justification for a little Albini practice. In any case his death or capture could be a matter of only a few minutes.

But as time passed, Jack resolved that he would chance the crocodiles if he could elude his guards. He would run any risk rather than go to Boma and submit himself to the tender mercies of the Congo State officials. A crocodile, after all, might prove a more merciful enemy!

They came to a part of the river where the channel narrowed, and though the fall was not enough to deserve the name of a rapid, the increased velocity of the current and the presence of large rocks necessitated some caution on the part of the paddlers. Jack could not help hoping that the canoe would come to grief. In the confusion there might be a bare chance of escape, though, being no more than a fair swimmer, he was not blind to the added risk he would run owing to the strength of the current and the danger of being dashed against the rocks.

But the Askari, experienced voyageurs, successfully navigated this stretch of the river, and as the canoe shot safely into smoother water Jack's hopes again fell. Then a thought occurred to him: Why wait upon chance? Why not make his own opportunity? He felt in his pocket; the axe-head was still there; its edge was sharp. If the canoe did not meet with disaster from without, why not from within? He was sitting on one of the thwarts amidships; the paddlers were standing on the thwarts forward and astern of him. All the Askari were paddling except three, and these were squatting, two at the one end of the canoe, one at the other, with their rifles between their knees. In his position Jack was almost completely screened from them. The paddlers had their rifles slung over their shoulders; the baggage was equally distributed over the whole length of the canoe.

Though built of the frailest material, the canoe was of considerable length. This was the one drawback to the plan which had suggested itself to Jack—to drive a hole in the craft at any moment when the attention of the crew seemed sufficiently engaged to give him a chance of doing so unobserved, for the size of the canoe rendered it doubtful whether any hole he might make would be large enough to sink the vessel before it could be paddled ashore. This could only be proved by making the attempt.

Time passed on; no opportunity occurred. The passage here was easy, and the paddlers did their work almost automatically. It needed no attention. Jack was almost giving up the idea when a chance suddenly came. He heard the leader of the Askari call out: "There is the gorge just ahead: soon we shall be at our camping ground. Be steady!"

The canoe went faster and faster, and in a few minutes entered a gorge strewn with jagged rocks threatening destruction at every yard. The men stopped singing—they sang at their paddles from morning till night—and shouted with excitement when the vessel escaped as by a miracle being dashed to pieces on one or other of the rocks in mid-stream. Choosing the moment when the shouting was loudest and the danger probably greatest, Jack stooped down from his thwart and, drawing the axe-head from his pocket, thrust it with all his strength into the side of the canoe near the bottom, where there was already an inch of bilge water. Working the steel to and fro, he enlarged the hole as much as he could, and then withdrew his clumsy implement; the water rushed in with a gurgling noise which must, he feared, attract the attention of the paddler just above him. But the man gave no sign; he was too intent upon his task.