These sandals enabled me to run with ease and safety through patches of prickly yams, among serrated blades of grass, wild vines, dense creepers, and all kinds of thorny bushes.
Two warriors, on hearing the alarm, joined me in the pursuit. One soon passed me, but went upon a false trail; the other stumbled and hurt himself severely; so relinquishing my wooden hoe for his asseguy, I continued the pursuit alone.
Encumbered by her prey, the baboon could only run upon her hind legs, thus I easily kept her in sight after seeing her again. She was making straight towards those steep and lofty rocks which overhang the Gabon river—the same fatal rocks where three of our boat's crew had perished so miserably.
But her progress was soon impeded by a wall of gigantic reeds about ten feet high, through which a passage seemed impossible, as they grew close and dense amid a deep miasmatic quagmire, which covered all the plain at the base of the rocks, and amid which myriads of water-snakes lurked, and poisonous reptiles squattered. Here, too, there was no air—not a breath could be inhaled with freedom, for the density of the reeds obstructed every passing current; and, gasping and bathed in perspiration, as I drew near the savage animal she turned, and was about to make a hostile, and perhaps most fatal spring, in which case all had ended with me then; when suddenly perceiving a narrow opening in the reedy wall, she changed her intention, and entering, again vanished with the child.
Further pursuit seemed impossible!
I sank under a tree, and for some time fanned myself with a large leaf. While thus employed, I heard a strange railing cry at a distance, and on looking round perceived the baboon, about a hundred yards off, clambering up the face of the rocks, where it entered a hole, and disappeared.
Though I could scarcely hope that the child of Amoo would be alive or undevoured, I marked well the locality of the crevice its captor had entered, and making a detour, reached the end of the reedy marsh, and then proceeded boldly to ascend the rocks.
In some parts the climbing convolvoli and papyrus grew in such masses, and were so interlaced, as to form a rampart, against which I toiled in despair, and had my skin torn in innumerable places, ere I could burst through them. One feels so helpless without clothing.
At last I reached the vicinity of the hole, and after pausing for a time to recover breath, advanced with the asseguy charged breast high, lest the fierce brute might spring forth upon me; but on peering into the den, I saw its eyes glancing, and its grim satyr-like visage grinning at me, while uttering a hoarse cry.
The infant was alive, and its captor was kindly fondling it; having been probably deprived of her own offspring by some hunter's shaft, the act of abduction had been prompted by a strange and erratic maternal emotion in herself.