Tom Burnaby: A Story of Uganda and the Great Congo Forest

by Herbert Strang

Indignant as he had been at the sight of the herded slaves in the village, his blood boiled at the scenes which met his gaze during the march, and his fingers itched to get to grips with the slave-traders. "If I were only Hercules, or Samson, or any of the fabled giants of old!" he sighed, chafing at his impotence. The slaves were driven on without remorse or ruth, the heavy whip descending upon their shoulders or curling about their loins at any sign of lagging. Mothers carried their babies till they collapsed from exhaustion, strong youths fell, utterly spent, by the path-side. Some of the weaklings were butchered as they lay, the rest were left to die of famine, or perchance to be enslaved again if haply some Good Samaritan found them and nursed them back to strength.

Besides these actual evidences of present cruelty, the path itself bore witness to savageries in the past. Leading, like all native paths, up hill and down dale, crossing rocky uplands or traversing dense forests, it had been trodden with no attempt to find the easiest way, sometimes winding like a snake where a straight course would have saved miles, sometimes making a straight line up a precipitous ascent where a circular route would have been more expeditious. If a tree had fallen across it the obstruction was not removed, but a new path was trodden round it, joining the original path again at a point beyond. At more than one spot Tom saw a skeleton across the track, and there the path made a little divergence of two or three yards, returning to its course at the same distance on the other side. In answer to Tom's question the hakim told him that if a man died on the road he was never buried, but left to the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air. The loop formed by the path about the body remained for ever, though the obstacle in course of time disappeared. Several of the grisly skeletons there encountered had the iron rings still about their necks; and with each, fuel was added to Tom's wrath, and strength to his resolve.

Towards noon, on the second day after leaving the slave-village, Tom, marching among his guards, felt more than usually dejected in spirit. He held his head high, and preserved an undaunted mien before the Arabs, but in reality he was beginning to despair of ever beholding England and his friends again. For one thing, he was physically out of sorts; the villages in which the long caravan encamped at night were not models of cleanliness, and he was sometimes too sick to swallow the unsavoury foods provided for him. Moreover, he had been terribly plagued with the jiggers, the scourge of African travel,--insects which pierced the skin and laid their eggs beneath it, these in their turn becoming worms that caused intolerable pain and irritation.

Towards noon, then, when he was feeling particularly unhappy, he observed signs of commotion in the column ahead. The chief, posted upon an ant-hill, was looking eagerly into the distance at a group of men whom he had descried upon the sky-line a mile away. He ordered the caravan to halt, and, suspecting from the smallness of the group that it might be the advance scouts of another force led by Europeans, he despatched fifty of his men to reconnoitre. They divided into two equal bands, and went off through the bush on either side of the path so as to surround the little party, and, if it proved hostile, to cut off its retreat.

Mustapha, in the meantime, collected the best of his fighting-men around him, and waited intently for his scouts to reach the strangers, who had halted upon an eminence and seemed to be hesitating whether to advance or to retire. But after a short period of indecision the group moved slowly towards the halted caravan. It proved, as it came more distinctly into view, to consist of ten men, all fully armed. They were soon met by the Arab scouts, with whom they exchanged, not shots, but friendly greetings, and who turned and escorted them towards the caravan. As they approached, something in the bearing of the leader seemed familiar to Tom, and it was with a thrill almost of dismay that he recognized him, a hundred yards away, as indubitably his old enemy, De Castro.

It was a different De Castro, however, from the brisk and alert pursuer whose clutches he had so narrowly escaped. The Portuguese was haggard and worn; his self-confidence had vanished; his clothes were in tatters; even his green coat was sober and subdued, for constant exposure to the sun had bleached it to a dirty gray. His hunt for the Arab had evidently been particularly arduous, and there was no eagerness in his tone as he greeted his friend Mustapha.

Tom had been watching the chief, and wondering at the ominous scowl that darkened his face, growing ever blacker as the Portuguese drew nearer. To De Castro's greeting the Arab replied with a curse; then turning, he gave a sharp word of command. Twenty of his men sprang forward, and the wayworn new-comers were disarmed in a twinkling, standing helpless with dull amazement. A change instantly came over the attitude of the surrounding Arabs, the ready smile of welcome gave place to a dark scowl, and many a forefinger moved suggestively to the trigger. The Portuguese, after the first shock of surprise, gave vent to a torrent of indignant remonstrance, to which the chief turned a deaf ear; whereupon De Castro, with a shrug that seemed to say: "He's in one of his tempers", held his peace, and accepted the situation with stoical indifference.

Tom, in the meantime, had watched the scene with curious eyes, careful to keep out of the man's sight. "Strange," he thought, "that both of us, after our former tussle, should be prisoners in the same hands!" When the march was resumed, the Portuguese was sent forward under surveillance to the head of the column, Tom being nearer the centre, puzzled beyond measure at the incivility with which the chief had received one supposed to be bound to him by special ties.

Camp was pitched that night at the verge of the forest, in a deserted and half-ruined village, the stockade of which was broken down at many points of its circumference. Tom, in charge of the hakim, was located in a hut near the centre of the village, some distance from that appropriated by the chief. The chief's hut was the principal habitation, but it was little less ruinous than the rest. The thatch was broken in places, and there were two apertures in the walls wide enough to admit a full-grown man. It was overshadowed by a large and bushy tree, one of whose branches, springing from the trunk some fourteen feet from the ground, and bending down under its weight of foliage, overhung the roof, actually grazing it as the freshening breeze swayed the bough.

Tom, reclining on the grass before the hakim's hut, to eat his evening meal in the cool air before turning in, saw the Portuguese led under guard into the presence of the chief. In a few moments the sun went down, but Tom still sat, wondering what was going on at the interview. Once he thought he heard the sound of angry voices raised in altercation, but in the absence of the moon he saw nothing more, and by and by re-entered the hut, and sought the rough blanket that formed his only bed. At first he could not sleep for thinking over the, to him, unexpected arrival of the Portuguese. "It bodes no good to me," he thought. "Things are bad enough, but may easily be made worse. That villain will tell how I treated him; how he saw me afterwards with his runaway boy on the track of the expedition; that it must have been through our information the ambush came to grief. Heavens! what's to be the end of it all?" More than once during the march he had had thoughts of attempting to escape, but he had barely recovered his full vigour, and not the shadow of an opportunity had as yet presented itself. He pondered and pondered until his anxieties were drowned in quiet sleep.