Nando was like a child in his humours. His broad face could not long be overclouded. When the party once more embarked he performed his work as chief paddler with his usual cheerfulness. All that day the river washed the edge of a continuous forest tract—a spur, as Jack understood from Nando's not too lucid explanations, of the vast Upper Congo forest that stretched for many hundreds of miles across the heart of Africa. Jack gazed with great curiosity, merged sometimes in a sense of awe and mystery, at the dark impenetrable woodland. It was only a year or two since he had read Stanley's account of his wonderful march through the forest, and his vivid recollection was quickened and intensified by the sight of the actual scene.
"And are there pigmies in that forest—little men, you know?" he asked Nando.
"Sartin sure, sah. Me fight fousand hundred little tiny men: me no 'fraid. Dey shoot plenty good, sah: one arrow shoot two free birds. Dey hab berrah fine eye, sah; see what big man no can see. Massa see dem some day: make massa laugh plenty much."
Here and there, in places where the river widened out, the travellers came upon herds of hippopotami disporting themselves in the shallows. Their presence was often indicated first by strange squeals and grunts: then a huge head would be seen on the surface of the water as the beast heard the regular splash of the paddles and was provoked to investigate its cause; his jaws would open, disclosing a vast pink chasm; and having completed his long yawn, and satisfied himself that the strangers intended no harm, he would plunge his head again beneath the water, or turn clumsily to wallow in uncouth gambols with his mates. The negroes always plied their paddles more rapidly at such spots. Nando told stories of hippopotami which had upset canoes out of sheer mischief, and of others which, pricked and teased by native spears, had lain in wait among the rushes and wrecked the craft of fishers returning to their homes at dusk.
"Me no 'fraid of little man," said Nando; "me plenty much 'fraid of hippo."
Now and again a crocodile, disturbed in his slumbers by the splashing of the paddles or the songs of the men, would dart out of a creek and set off in furious chase; but finding the canoe a tougher morsel than he expected, would sink after a disappointed sniffing and disappear. Occasionally Mr. Martindale or Jack would take a shot at the reptiles, but they were so numerous that by and by the travellers desisted from their "potting," Mr. Martindale regarding it as a waste of good ammunition.
The natives whom they saw at riverside villages were now sometimes suspicious, and disinclined to have any communication with the strangers. Returning from interviews with them, Nando reported that they had heard of the massacre at Banonga, and though he assured them that his employer was no friend of the tyrants, he failed to convince them: he was a white man; that was enough. It was with some difficulty, and only after the exercise of much tact, patience, and good humour on Nando's part, that he managed to secure enough food to supply the needs of the men.
Two days passed amid similar scenes. The journey never became monotonous, for in that wonderful land there is always something fresh to claim the traveller's attention. Jack began to give Samba lessons in English, and found him an apt enough pupil, though, in practising his newly-acquired words afterwards, the boy, to Jack's amusement, adopted a pronounced Irish accent from Barney.
On the morning of the third day, when the camp became active, Barney was somewhat surprised to find that Samba and Pat did not join him as usual at breakfast. Boy and dog had gone to sleep together in his tent, and he had not seen or heard their departure. Breakfast was cleared away, everything was packed up in readiness for starting, and yet the missing members of the party had not appeared. Both were very popular; Samba's unfailing cheerfulness had made him a general favourite, and Pat's sagacity, his keen sporting instincts, and the vigour of his barking when hippopotami or crocodiles came too near the canoe, won for him a good deal of admiration from the natives.
"What! Samba gone!" exclaimed Mr. Martindale, when Barney told him of the disappearance. "Have you called him?"