"Sure you said 'twas my Irish English that sent little Samba away."
"Did I?" said Jack, laughing. "I'd forgotten it. He's a capital little fellow, Barney. Fancy, going by himself that long journey through the forest to find his people! And yet there are fools who think that because a man is black he hasn't feelings or affections like ourselves."
Batukuno was only the firstfruits of Samba's missionary zeal. From day to day, men, women, and children began to drop in at Jack's camp, many of them mutilated, all showing terrible signs of ill-usage and privation. Some were survivors of Samba's own people, the villagers of Banonga; but they numbered among them men from other tribes. Some had heard of the benevolent Inglesa from Samba's own lips; others from people he had told. Among them was an old chief, who appeared heart-broken at having been compelled to leave his country.
"Why did I leave, you ask, O white man!" he said in reply to a question of Jack's. "In the morning, bullets; in the evening, bullets. They shot our mouths away, they shot through our hearts and our sides. They robbed us of everything we had. Why should we stay to be killed like that? That is why I ran away."
"Were many of your people killed?"
"Ah, ah!" he replied, "once we were as bafumba[[3]] in multitude; now we are only as these."
He spread out his fingers twice or thrice.
"And they have been killed—not dying by the sleeping sickness?"
"No. We have lost a few by the sleeping sickness, but only a few. It is rubber that has killed our people. Botofé bo le iwa!"
Jack's sympathy was keenly enlisted on behalf of these unfortunate people; and he looked forward more and more eagerly for Mr. Martindale's return. He could not but smile a little whimsically, remembering his uncle's protestations, to find that Mr. Martindale was gaining a reputation for general philanthropy through a large section of the Upper Congo territory. But as the stream of fugitives showed no signs of diminishing he began to feel a certain embarrassment. It was all very well to open a cave Adullam for every one that was distressed: to start a hospital for the halt and lame and blind; but the space he had at command within his stockade was limited: already the huts he had reserved for Mr. Martindale and his men were occupied, and every fugitive meant another mouth to feed. He feared, too, lest the peace and order of his settlement should be disturbed by the influx of so many idle strangers. And more than all, he feared that some of the poor wretches who came seeking asylum with him would fall into the hands of Elbel ere they reached their desired haven. It was that consideration that induced him to refuse none who sought admittance. Elbel had been absent for some days from Ilola, and the fugitives, by choosing always the fall of night to approach the place, had so far managed to elude observation by their enemies. But that could not continue; the presence of strangers in Ilombikambua must soon become known to Elbel; then a watch would be set, and the wanderers would be intercepted. What their fate then would be Jack knew too well. None suffered so terribly at the hands of the forest guards as people caught straying from their villages. Such absences interfered with the regularity of the rubber supply, which in turn affected the revenue and reduced profits. No runagate serf in mediæval Europe was more severely dealt with than the Congo native who dared to range afield.