Among the trees his progress was even slower than on the ground. Every now and again he had to return on his tracks, encountering a branch that, serviceable as it might look, proved either too high or too low, or not strong enough to bear his weight. And he was making more noise than he liked. There was not only the rustle and creak of parting leaves and bending twigs, and the crack of small branches that snapped under his hand; but his intrusion scared the natural denizens of the forest, and they clattered away with loud cries of alarm—grey parrots in hundreds, green pigeons, occasionally a hawk or the great blue plantain-eater. The screeches of the birds smothered, indeed, any sound that he himself might make; but such long-continued evidence of disturbance might awaken the suspicion of the little men and guide them to his whereabouts.
By and by he came to a gap in the forest. The clear sunlight was welcome as a guide to his course; but he saw that to follow the direction which he believed would bring him towards Banonga he must now leave the trees. He stopped for a few minutes to recover breath, and to consider what he had best do. As he lay stretched along a bough, his eye travelled back over the path he had come. The vagaries of lightning that had struck down two forest giants in close proximity disclosed to his view a stretch of some twenty yards of the stream which he had just crossed on his primeval suspension bridge. What caused him to start and draw himself together, shrinking behind a leafy screen thick enough to hide him even from the practised eyes of the little forest men? There, in the bed of the stream, glancing this way and that, at the water, the banks, the trees on every side, were a file of Bambute, carrying their little bows and arrows and their short light spears. They moved swiftly, silently, some bending towards the ground, others peering to right and left with a keenness that nothing could escape. Samba's heart thumped against his ribs as he watched them. He counted them as they passed one after another across the gap; they numbered twenty, and he was not sure that he had seen the first.
The last disappeared. Samba waited. Had his ruse succeeded? There was absolute silence; he heard neither footstep nor voice. But the little men must soon find out their mistake. They would then cast back to the point where they had lost the scent. Could they pick it up again—trace him to the tree and follow him up? He could not tell. They must have been close upon him when he climbed into the tree; evidently he had left the path only in the nick of time. This much he had gained. But he dared not wait longer; there was no safety for him while they were so near; he must on.
CHAPTER X
A Trip with a Crocodile
Samba looked warily round, then began to descend from his perch in the tree, moving as slowly and with as many pauses as a timid bather stepping into the water. Once more he was on the ground. Pausing only to throw a rapid glance on all sides, he struck off in a direction at right angles to the course of the stream, and resumed his laborious march through the forest maze.
Hour after hour he pushed on without meeting a living creature. But he had heard too much of the cunning and determination of the Congo dwarfs to delude himself with the idea that he had finally shaken them off. Tired as he was, sweating in the moist oppressive heat, he dared not rest, even to eat in comfort the food he had brought in his tin. He nibbled morsels as he went, hoping that by good speed during the whole day he might get far enough from the pigmies to make his ultimate escape secure.
Towards evening he heard in front of him the long monotonous rustle of a stream foaming over a rocky bed. He was careful in approaching it: to meet a crocodile ambushed near the bank would be as dangerous as to meet a man. Pushing his way cautiously through the shrubs, he came to the edge of a broad river, flowing in swift eddies from white rapids above. It seemed to Samba that this must be a tributary of the Lemba, the river on whose bank he had left the white men, and to which, lower down, he must ultimately make his way. Pursuit by the white men might now be safely disregarded; Samba thought he could hardly do better than keep to the stream, taking his chance of meeting negroes at isolated villages on the banks. These, if he met them, would at any rate be easier to elude than the Bambute.
But the sun was going down, the air becoming chill. He must find a shelter for the night and pursue his riverside journey next day. A little search revealed, on a bluff above the river, a boulder having a deep cavity on one side. Here Samba sat down to eat the little food left in his tin; then he curled himself up for the night. Nothing disturbed his sleep.