Beyond this area of destruction the forest was less dense, and Mbutu by and by discovered a narrow track which he declared was the pathway of pigmies. He looked round apprehensively, fearing every moment lest swift arrows from unseen bows in the brushwood should put a sudden end to their lives. Once he exclaimed that he heard the clash of spears amid the foliage, but Tom assured him it must be simply the rustling of stiff leaves. As the evening shades were falling, the boy asserted positively that he saw little faces peering at him from the trees, and Tom, with a weary sigh, answered:
"I do not care, Mbutu. Elves or sprites or human beings, they don't concern us unless they bring us food. Perhaps the pigmies have been shadowing us all the way since we saved that boy; why should they wish to hurt us? If you see one again, call to him. Call now; perhaps there is a settlement near; we might miss many in this wild forest."
Mbutu plucked up courage to call, but the only answer was a manifold echo from the trees, the squawk of parrots, and what sounded like the barking laugh of the hyena. Tom could walk no farther; he felt that he would fain rest for ever. On this night Mbutu built up a small hut of leaves and twigs for his master, and lit a watch-fire to scare, away wild intruders. For supper they gnawed some leaves, but Tom fell into the sleep of exhaustion in the middle of his scanty meal, and Mbutu sat for hours watching him uneasily. He, too, was at last overcome by fatigue, but not until he had thoughtfully heaped enough fuel on the fire to last until dawn. Tom woke first. He rose feebly and staggered oat of the hut, his forehead hot, his hands clammy; and there, between the still burning fire and his rough shelter, was a huge bunch of plantains! He could scarcely believe his eyes. He called Mbutu, but the boy did not stir. He went to him and shook him.
"Where did you get them?" he asked. "Have you eaten some yourself?"
Mbutu sprang up and stared, not understanding what his master meant, and believing that he must be light-headed. When Tom pointed to the plantains, the boy gave a gasp and looked up in the trees and all around in amazement. Without another word both began to eat ravenously, and not till they had nearly finished the bunch did Mbutu suggest an explanation of the godsend. The spirits of his ancestors, he said, must have been watching over him, or perhaps the Great Spirit of whom he had heard the White Father speak, and who really did seem to care for the black man and white man alike, as the missionary had averred. Tom let the boy talk on. Suddenly a hare-shaped animal darted across the ground in front of them; there was a whirring sound; the animal fell, a short arrow piercing it to the heart. Mbutu sprang up, and ran towards it; then started back, and looked about him with wide scared eyes. Nothing happened; the skilful marksman did not appear to claim his prize; the morning stillness was not broken by so much as a rustling leaf. Mbutu again moved towards the animal, treading delicately, and stopping at every second step to glance fearfully around. He seized the animal, and ran back swiftly with it.
"Bambute, sah!" he whispered, in a tone of awe. "Sah him friends. Sah sabe pickin; Bambute much glad. Oh yes! no want food no more; Bambute gib food."
Again Tom seemed to hear Mr. Barkworth's voice: "There's no gratitude in these natives! I know them." He wondered whether the fact was as Mbutu had surmised; whether the woman had brought her people to see the white man; whether they had dogged the travellers all the way, or had come upon them by accident. Mbutu was already skinning the animal, and preparing it for the fire. Never was flesh more welcome to starving men. Refreshed and strengthened, Tom rose with renewed hope to continue his march.
But next day the old dejection returned. Of the pigmies there was no sign; no heaven-sent food was placed at their feet; they trudged on and on, almost blindly, always hungry. So four days passed, days upon which Tom could never look back without a shudder of horror. Stories of prisoners starving in barred dungeons recurred to his mind; and he wondered which was worse, slowly to pine away in confinement, within bare stone walls that invited death, or to die in the midst of vigorous life, with liberty to range immense spaces. "Death is only death after all," he thought, and he remembered Gordon's words, quoted by Mr. Barkworth: "Heaven is as near the hot desert as the cool church at home". But his mind revolted against death. "I am young--young!" his heart cried. "I want to live, to do things. I am not a broken horse or a rusty engine. No, Tom Burnaby, I'll never forgive you if you chuck it all up yet." And he braced himself and plodded on.
Just after noon, on the fifth day after the pigmies' present, the travellers found that the forest was thinning somewhat; the trees were farther apart, and there was a renewal of the low bush, not so dense or so obstructive as it had been for the past few days. Presently they came to an almost open glade, and Mbutu pointed to a track crossing the direction of their march from clump to clump. It was not four hours old, he declared; the footprints were still soft and clearly marked. They were too large to have been made by pigmies. The weary travellers sat down on a heap of leaves, hastily collected, to talk the matter over, Mbutu being in favour of going in the same direction as the footprints, which must lead, sooner or later, to a village. Suddenly they heard a rapid thud-thud as of heavy footsteps on the sodden ground, accompanied by a curious clanking, suggesting to Tom the sound of a loose horseshoe on a turfy moor. As they were wondering what it might be, a tall black figure, scantily clad, ran out of the forest on their right, labouring heavily, the sweat rolling off his face and body, his eyes protruding with eagerness and fear. Tom had just noticed that part of a chain, with a broken block of wood attached to it, hung from a gyve on the man's left ankle, and another chain from an iron circlet about his left wrist, when three Arabs and a negro came out of the wood at short intervals in hot pursuit.
Tom and Mbutu were partially concealed from the strangers by the straggling bush. Pursued and pursuers had almost crossed the wide open space, the foremost Arab but a yard behind, when the fettered negro stopped short suddenly, turned round, and with a desperate movement of his left arm struck the Arab full in the face with the dangling chain. The Arab dropped, and the hunted man turned again to flee, but the rest were almost upon him. Tom saw that, encumbered as the negro was, he must inevitably be run down in a few moments. Instinctively taking the weaker side, and forgetting his own exhaustion, he sprang up, and sprinting with all the speed of which his tired limbs were capable, he dashed after the pursuers, followed closely by Mbutu. The chase had evidently been a long one; hunters and hunted were breathless, and trod heavily. In the excitement of the moment Tom dashed along at a speed of which a minute earlier he would have thought himself utterly incapable; and he soon saw that he was gaining rapidly on the Arabs. They had muskets, which he inferred they had already fired, and had had no time to reload. He had his staff, and Mbutu clutched his knife.