And then he went on to explain that the open country through which the Arab caravan had lately been travelling was the last clear stretch by which their stronghold could be reached. It was wedge-shaped, narrowing as it became engulfed in the forest. The few natives whose hamlets were dotted about it were all in the Arabs' pay, and were treated with special and unusual consideration, in order that they might be disposed to give early tidings of an enemy's approach. Mbutu assured his master that the Arab chief would at once acquaint the natives all through that district with his prisoner's escape and offer a reward for his capture, expecting him to make his way eastward, where every path and cross-road would be narrowly watched.
"In that case we had better strike southward into the forest," said Tom. "A pleasant prospect!" he mused. "I have some recollection of reading in one of Stanley's books about this forest: hundreds of miles long, and hundreds broad; one could drop Great Britain and Ireland into it, to say nothing of the kingdom of Man. But I suppose," he said, turning again to Mbutu, "after a time we could safely make a turn to the south-east and reach the River Rutchuru again? What about your own country, Mbutu? Couldn't we make for that?"
"'Fraid no, sah; my country days and days ober dar." He pointed to the south-west, then looked puzzled, and finally confessed that in the dark he was not quite sure of the direction. "My people all gone dead, sah; live man all stole, huts burnt in big fire. No; Mbutu no fader, no mudder, no pickin: no nuffin--only sah."
"Poor fellow! Well, I see nothing for it but to go into the forest as soon as it is light. We've nothing to keep us warm at night; no food except these nuts I brought. I have no watch and no compass: you've nothing but a knife; we're both desperately poor, Mbutu, and we'll have to live on our wits, I'm afraid.--Hark! what's that?"
The dawn came up like thunder, indeed. Through the wood resounded the thud-thud of many drums of various tones, some rattling a rapid rat-tat, others booming with deep, hollow, reverberating notes. Mbutu turned his ear towards the sound, listening with peculiar intentness for several minutes. Then he shook his head.
"Not know dat!" he said. He explained that many tribes had their own individual codes of drum-signals, which could only be recognized by their own friends. By means of these information was often telegraphed for miles in a very few minutes, the note of the drum reaching far, and being taken up and repeated from point to point. Though he had never heard these particular notes before, he surmised that the Arab chief was already signalling the escape of his prisoner. It was clearly time to be off. Slipping down from the tree, the two fugitives struck into the forest in a south-westerly direction, and were relieved to hear the drum-taps becoming ever fainter and fainter as they proceeded. When the sounds had died away altogether, they sat down on a fallen tree and made a frugal breakfast of nuts, sipping up the gigantic beads of dew which covered the spreading leaves of plants near the ground. Then they arose and went on their way.
By this time they were well on the outskirts of the great Congo Forest, which stretches for hundreds of miles westward of Lake Albert Edward and the rivers flowing into it. Tom began to be oppressed by a sort of nightmare feeling, which damped his spirits and made him drop his voice to a whisper when he spoke to Mbutu. The silence was awful. Trees large and small, packed so close together that there seemed at a distance barely room to squeeze between them, rose up, some straight of stem, some twisted and warped, others snapped off high above the ground, their foliage interlacing and shutting off all view of sky and sun, the space beneath as dim as the aisles of some vast cathedral. From tree to tree ran huge festoons of creeper and vine, weaving intricate patterns with each other, clinging in great coils about the trunks. At every fork and on every branch huge lichens were embossed, with broad spear-leaved plants, and clusters of orchid and liana. The sodden forest floor was covered with bush and amoma, save where a group of fallen trees, split or scorched by the lightning, had made a gap and let in the sunlight, and there innumerable baby trees had sprung up, jostling each other in their eagerness to catch the stream of light and heat.
At one point Tom sat down to rest on a prostrate moss-covered trunk. It crumbled into rottenness under his weight, and, looking, he saw that it had been mined by countless termites. Red ants scurried after one another in the wrinkles of the bark, and a huge blue scorpion darted out of a hole, causing Tom to start back with loathing. Near at hand was a shallow pool, green with duckweed, its surface covered with leaves of lotus and lilies, and a green, greasy scum of microscopic plants. Above this was a crooked tree, whose trunk seemed to have broken out in great ulcerous sores, from which swollen globules of gum exuded, dropping with heavy pong into the pool. Not a sound broke the stillness; the silver trill of the mavis, the strident caw of rooks, the brisk chirp of grasshoppers, all the myriad sounds of an English wood, were absent; and Tom, gazing into the confused mass of green, his feet chilled on the spongy humus, felt that he was surrounded in very truth by death in life.
Marching on again along a narrow path which seemed a mere tunnel in the forest, Mbutu had often to use his knife to cut away obstructive growths--great sprays of thorn that grabbed at their clothes, caught them under the chin, and seemed bent on cutting their throats. Presently they came to an abandoned clearing, where the vegetation now grew more luxuriantly than ever; the charred poles of native huts covered with climbing plants of vivid green, mingled with white and purple flowers, forming bowers fit for Titania the fairy queen. Just beyond was a stream, dashing over rocks between banks covered with vegetation, some of the larger trees bending over the current at the height of fifty feet, thus forming a huge shed beneath which hundreds of boats might have been sheltered. Here Tom got Mbutu to cut him a stout cudgel of hard wood from one of the stooping monsters, thinking it might prove useful as they progressed. The pedestrians drank their fill of the delicious water, crossed on the rocks, and forced their way up the opposite bank into the forest again. Half a mile farther on they came to a trickling stream, and beyond it, in a hollow, under a dense canopy of foliage so thick that, but for twinkling points of blue here and there, the sky was invisible, they lighted upon tiny, cage-like habitations no more than three feet high, made of sticks and leaves, and erected in a narrow clearing between clumps of gigantic trees. Mbutu stopped short and uttered a low cry of alarm, looking round with evident apprehension.
"What is it?" asked Tom in surprise, for the boy had hitherto shown himself absolutely fearless.