I had heard it often in menageries at home; but there the sound was feeble as the bay of a house-dog when compared to the dread roar, which rolled along the ground and rent the still air of the morning in that lone African forest. A terror possessed me; yet, grasping my hoe, while quivering in every fibre, I gazed with keen anxiety between the leaves of the chestnut-tree for the approaching enemy.
Ignorant alike of his powers of leaping and scenting, I knew not whether the lion might, on discovering me, at once spring up like a tree-leopard, which can pursue its prey, like a cat, from branch to branch. Oh, how I longed for a good rifle—a sharp sword—a dagger—for any other weapon than the miserable wooden club (for the hoe was no better) with which I was armed at that moment.
The lilac light of dawning morn poured through the thick green vista of the wild forest, and the little lake which lay near my chestnut-tree shone white as a sheet of milk, bordered by countless gaudy tulips and opening flowers.
The sun was yet below the horizon, but every dew-drenched herb, and leaf, and tree, were distinctly visible in the clear pale light that overspread the sky.
Every pulse quickened, and all my energies became wound up to the utmost pitch by excitement, when I saw the mighty lord of the wilderness—a vast dun-coloured lion, with his large round head and shaggy mane, powerful legs, his close round body and tufted tail, that shook wrathfully aloft as he trotted past swiftly, bearing a dead sheep in his mouth.
Passing almost under the tree, and round the margin of the lake, he disappeared in the forest; but a sense of his terrible presence seemed to linger about me still. My doubts and irresolution were increased; the dangers of the wilderness in which I wandered, alone and unarmed, became more vividly impressed upon me, and for a time I almost regretted that I had left the coast, and the protection of my savage task-masters. But then the wife of Amoo, and her hideous desire for possessing my head!
"Hope is the bounty of God!" thought I, and as the forest remained still and quiet—at least, as no sound reached my ear, save the increasing hum of the myriads of insects warming into life and sport in the light and heat of the rising sun—I resolved to descend from my perch, and follow the track of any stream which might lead to the coast, for by the sea—the open, free, wide sea—lay my only hope of escape from this dangerous and detested shore.
Remembering the geographical form of Africa, as represented on the map, I knew that if I could, by any means, proceed westward for about two hundred and fifty miles or so round the Bight of Benin, I should be so near our settlement at Cape Coast Castle as to be in safety. But how, in such a country, was this to be accomplished?
I had already begun my descent from the tree, when the noise of something coming rapidly through the forest made me scramble into my perch again. And lo! a savage, armed as usual with a long asseguy, but mounted on a swift dromedary, came from amid the trees, and paused by the lonely lake to give his great misshapen nag a drink; and while he did so, in his brawny form and tasselled apeskin apron and sandals, his eyes with their circles of red and yellow paint, the slit under his mouth, his hideous aspect and barbaric trappings, I recognised the brother of Amoo—the King of the Rio Serpientes!
Were both upon my track, or had chance alone brought him here? I knew that if retaken, I had met with more mercy from the lion than from either; and the image of the wife of Amoo, with her sharp knife and basket of herbs and gums, seemed to rise before me.