Next morning, although almost under the equator, they saw the day dawn gray, and cheerless, and raw. On taken his observations, Stanley found that he was only about twenty miles northwest of his camp. The news sent new life into the crew. They hoisted sail, and, though at first the wind was unfavorable, yet, as if good luck had come at last, it shifted astern, and, with a full sail, they steered straight for camp—every heart bounding with joy.
The men in camp discovered the boat when miles away, and hurrying to the shore sent up shout after shout, and tossed their arms joyfully in the air. As the boat drove swiftly on, the shouts were changed to volleys of musketry and waving of flags, while "the land seemed alive with leaping forms of glad-hearted men." Rumors of their destruction had reached camp, and his long absence seemed to confirm them, and they had made up their minds, that, with their leader lost, they must turn back. As the boat grated on the pebbly shore, fifty men leaped into the water and seizing Stanley lifted him bodily out, and, running up the bank, placed him on their shoulders, and danced around the camp like madmen. They seemed unable to contain their joy. It showed how strong was the hold Stanley had on their affections. Stern in enforcing discipline and relentless in punishing crime, he was always careful of their welfare, attentive to their wants, just in all his dealings, and generous in his reward for good behavior and faithful service, and by this course he had bound these simple children of nature to him with cords of iron.
CHAPTER XV. AN INTERVAL OF REST.
The next morning, as Stanley looked out of his tent-door upon the broad and beautiful lake, it was with that intense feeling of satisfaction with which one contemplates a great and perilous undertaking, which, after being well-nigh abandoned, is at last successfully accomplished. The waters, glittering in the morning sun, had but a short time before seemed to him an angry foe, but now they wore a friendly aspect. They seemed to belong to him. Livingstone, and Speke, and Burton, and others had looked on that lake, and sighed in vain to solve the mystery that enveloped it, while he had not only followed its winding shores their entire length, but had sounded its depths and fixed its geographical position forever. His toils were over, and the victory won in this his first great enterprise, and he could well look forward with hope to the great work still before him. His escapes had been wonderful, and he might take them as good omens for the future.
It seemed as if fate delighted to place him in positions of danger, from which there appeared to be no escape, in order to show her power to save him under any and all circumstances. Even now, when contemplating so satisfactorily his success, he was startled by the narrowness of his escape from a danger of which he had never before dreamed. That trouble, disorder and desertion might befall his camp during his absence he had often feared, but now he was told by the men he had left in charge of it, that in a few hours more the expedition would have broken up and disappeared forever.
This was Frank Pocoke's report. He said that a rumor had reached camp that Stanley and his crew had been taken prisoners soon after leaving, and he at once sent off fifty soldiers to effect his release, who found the report false. They had also heard of his fight with the Wamma, and that he was killed. In the meantime a conspiracy had been formed by three neighboring tribes to capture the camp and seize all the goods. It was discovered, and everything put in the best state possible to defeat it, when the whole fell through on account of the sudden death of one of the conspirators and the disaffection of another.
With the report of Stanley's death uncontradicted—nay, corroborated by his long absence—and in view of the dangers surrounding them, the soldiers and men held a meeting to determine what course they should take. He had then been gone nearly a month and a half, and it should not have taken more than half that time to have circumnavigated the lake with a boat that, in a fair breeze, could go five or six miles an hour.
Something must have happened to him; that was certain; and it mattered little whether it was death or captivity. It was finally decided to wait fifteen days longer, or till the new moon, when, if he did not appear, they would strike camp and march back to Unyanyembe. The fifteen days would have expired the next day after Stanley's arrival. If, therefore, he had been delayed forty-eight hours longer, instead of being received with the waving of flags, shouts and volleys of musketry, and wild demonstrations of delight, there would have been no welcome, but a silent, deserted camp. This would have been a terrible blow, and would have dashed with the bitterest disappointment all the joy at his task successfully accomplished. But he had been saved all this; still one calamity had befallen him for which there was no remedy; young Barker had died only a few days before his arrival, and six of his strong men had fallen victims to dysentery and fever. Thus while in all the danger through which he had passed on the lake he had not lost a man, seven had died while lying idly in a healthy camp. The death of Barker he felt keenly, for of the three white men who had started with him, two had already fallen, and now only one was left.