CHAPTER XLVI.
FLIGHT CONTINUED.
Steering my course westward, so closely as I could judge, I rode rapidly through wild and pathless places; and when mounted on an animal so sure and swift of foot, I felt more confident of escape from any savages in whose way I might fall.
I was not without a dread of wild animals, for the furious lion and the stealthy panther roam everywhere through the forests of Africa; and though nearly the whole day passed without meeting one of either species, hundreds of pernicious serpents, black, or brown, or green and scaly, with glaring eyes, hissed at me from amid the long rank grass; while brightly pinioned birds flew about me, and horrid baboons and monkeys, of all kinds and sizes, leaped and frisked on every hand, springing from branch to branch of the trees, where they swung madly to and fro by their tails as I passed.
At a distance rose the smoke of fires, with the dome-shaped wigwams of three negro villages; but these I avoided by keeping far off, and without tarrying a moment for food or refreshment, pushed on westward, through a broad plain where the maize, cassava, and pulse were cultivated in little patches. On, on where the banana, the papaw, the lemon, orange, and tamarind trees grew wild in thickets; where the spotted giraffe, the striped zebra, and the graceful little antelope, made their lair, and trembled when they heard the roar of the lion of Libya.
On, on I rode to reach the castle of Cape Coast, and urged the dromedary to his utmost speed.
Leaving the plain, at the end of which the sun was setting now, I continued my way still westward across a long tract of desert sand; and now for the first time I paused to look around me.
On the borders of this desert grew some wild lotus trees. Dismounting, I took some of their farinaceous berries with joy to assuage my hunger, and found their flavour to resemble sweet ginger-bread.
After a draught of water from a runnel—water that was actually tepid—I remounted with difficulty, as my strength was nearly gone now; having ridden the livelong day under a burning sun, which left the sand so hot that it scorched my feet, while the finely pulverized grains of it were floating in a cloud about me, and filling my mouth and eyes as it whirled in eddies when the faint evening wind passed over the arid waste, rippling up its surface as if it was water.
At a distance appeared some bustards and long-legged cranes; but no other living thing, as the setting sun, vast, round, and blood-red, after shedding a steady crimson glare across the desert waste, sank beneath the horizon.