Samba: A Story of the Rubber Slaves of the Congo

by Herbert Strang

In the morning he felt more than usually hungry. His tin was empty; he did not care to leave the river and go hunting in the forest, perhaps vainly, for berries or roots. A little way down stream he noticed a spot where the dark surface of the water was scarcely disturbed by a ripple; was that a deep pool, he wondered, where fish might be? He went down to the edge and, leaning flat upon a rock peeped over. Yes; in the depths he caught the scaly gleam of darting fish.

Springing up, he went to a swampy patch hard by and cut a long, straight, stiff reed. Then he took the hard stick with which he made fire, and, sharpening the point until it pricked like a needle, he fitted the wood to the reed so as to make a spear. With this in his hand he once more leant over the pool. He lay still for a few moments, intently watching; then, with a movement of extraordinary swiftness, he plunged his spear into the depths, and brought it out with a silvery trout impaled. The fish had stopped to nibble at a root in the bank. When Samba had thus caught three he was satisfied. He did not pause to cook the fish. He split them open, dexterously boned and cleaned them, and ate them raw.

He had scarcely finished his breakfast when he saw, hurtling down the rapids above him, a huge forest tree—a mass of green, for most of its branches in full leaf were still upon it. Clearly it had not long lost its grip of earth. It came swirling towards Samba, every now and then stopping as its submerged part was caught by some rock, only to be whirled round and driven past the obstacle by the weight of water behind. It made a zigzag course through the rapids, and then floated peacefully down the still reach of water beneath.

As he watched the tree sailing gently towards him, Samba had an idea. Why not use it as a raft to carry him on his way? It was strong enough to bear his weight; he could hide in the foliage with at least as good a chance of escaping observation as if he were moving along the banks.

By the time he had grasped the notion the tree was past him. He sprang up, raced along until he was level with it, then took a neat header into the water. A minute's rapid swimming brought him to the end of the trunk, which, he saw, had been snapped clean off and was not encumbered by the roots. He clambered up, and the trunk was so long that his trifling weight scarcely depressed its end. Smiling with pleasure, he crawled along it until he was in the centre of the leafy screen.

This, however, now that he was there, did not seem so dense as when he had viewed it from the bank; he was not concealed so well as he had hoped. Every now and again, too, his novel raft gave an ominous lurch and roll, suggesting that the portion above water might at any moment change places with that below. If that happened, Samba wondered, would he be able to disengage himself from the tangle of branches and swim clear? But these momentary fears were banished by the novelty and excitement of his position. How delightful it was, after his toilsome and fatiguing journey through the forest, to float down the river without effort of his own in a leafy arbour that defended him from the fierce rays of the sun! And his voyage had the pleasures of variety. Sometimes the foliaged top went first; then, when the branches swept the bottom of the stream in shallow reaches, the trunk swung round and went broadside to the current. Sometimes the branches stuck fast, the current carried the trunk round in a circle, and when an eddy set it again in motion, the trunk end became the bow of this uneasy ship. Bump! That was some rock or sandbank; the tree shook, and Samba was nearly toppled from his perch. Nk'oketo![[1]] It was all right; the friendly water had washed the tree clear, and Samba was off again, his black eyes gleaming with fun as he peered between the branches.

It was early in the afternoon, and very hot even for those latitudes. Everything seemed asleep. No breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees along the banks. The air quivered. Samba was dozing, lulled by the gentle motion of the tree, whose progress had not for some time been checked.

All at once there was a shock. Samba instinctively clutched a branch as he felt himself jerked from his seat. His lumbering vessel was twirling round; and looking through the leaves, he saw that it was caught by the head on a sandbank in midstream.

But next moment he felt a shiver run down his spine, and an eery creeping about the roots of his hair. Below him, not four feet away, a gigantic crocodile was staring at him with his cunning baleful eyes. The swish of the projecting branches upon the sandbank had aroused the reptile from his siesta on this vantage ground, whence, at the lazy opening of an eye, he could survey a long stretch of the river. And he had awoke to see a plump and tempting black boy at the inconsiderable altitude of four feet above his snout.

Those who have seen the crocodile only in his hours of ease, lazily sunning himself on a river bank, or floating with scarcely more than his eyes and forehead visible on the surface of the stream, may have come to the comfortable conclusion that he is a slow-moving and lethargic beast. But see him rushing at the bank to seize in his terrible jaws the unwary antelope or zebra that has come to drink, or to sweep it into the river with a single blow of his mighty tail. Watch him when, roused from his doze on a sandbank, by the sting of a rifle bullet on his armour, he vanishes with lightning rapidity beneath the water. At one moment to all seeming as lifeless as a log, the next he is a raging monster, ready to tear and rend any hapless creature which his inertness has beguiled.