"O, I shall not pull very hard," said Jack; "but haven't we nearly come to Mr. Harris's farm?"
Mrs. Weldon assured the child that they should soon be where they wanted to be, and Dick, finding that the conversation was approaching dangerous ground, proposed that the journey should be now resumed. Mrs. Weldon assented; the encampment was forthwith broken up and the march continued as before.
[Illustration: It was a scene only too common in Central Africa]
In order not to lose sight of the watercourse, it was necessary to cut a way right through the underwood: progress was consequently very slow; and a little over a mile was all that was accomplished in about three hours. Footpaths had evidently once existed, but they had all become what the natives term "dead," that is, they had become entirely overgrown with brushwood and brambles. The negroes worked away with a will; Hercules, in particular, who temporarily resigned his charge to Nan, wielded his axe with marvellous effect, all the time giving vent to stentorian groans and grunts, and succeeded in opening the woods before him as if they were being consumed by a devouring fire.
Fortunately this heavy labour was not of very long duration.
After about a mile, an opening of moderate width, converging towards the stream and following its bank, was discovered in the underwood. It was a passage formed by elephants, which apparently by hundreds must be in the habit of traversing this part of the forest. The spongy soil, soaked by the downpour of the rainy season, was everywhere indented with the enormous impressions of their feet.
But it soon became evident that elephants were not the only living creatures that had used this track. Human bones gnawed by beasts of prey, whole human skeletons, still wearing the iron fetters of slavery, everywhere strewed the ground. It was a scene only too common in Central Africa, where like cattle driven to the slaughter, poor miserable men are dragged in caravans for hundreds of weary miles, to perish on the road in countless numbers beneath the trader's lash, to succumb to the mingled horrors of fatigue, privation, and disease, or, if provisions fail, to be butchered, without pity or remorse, by sword and gun.
That slave-caravans had passed that way was too obvious to permit a doubt. For at least a mile, at almost every step Dick came in contact with the scattered bones; while ever and again huge goat suckers, disturbed by the approach of the travellers, rose with flapping wings, and circled round their heads.
The youth's heart sank with secret dismay lest Mrs. Weldon should divine the meaning of this ghastly scene, and appeal to him for explanation, but fortunately she had again insisted on carrying her little patient, and although the child was fast asleep, he absorbed her whole attention. Nan was by her side, almost equally engrossed. Old Tom alone was fully alive to the significance of his surroundings, and with downcast eyes he mournfully pursued his march. Full of amazement, the other negroes looked right and left upon what might appear to them as the upheaval of some vast cemetery, but they uttered no word of inquiry or surprise.
Meantime the bed of the stream had increased both in breadth and depth, and the rivulet had in a degree lost its character of a rushing torrent. This was a change which Dick Sands observed hopefully, interpreting it as an indication that it might itself become navigable, or would empty itself into some more important tributary of the Atlantic. His resolve was fixed: he would follow its course at all hazards. As soon, therefore, as he found that the elephant's track was quitting the water's edge, he made up his mind to abandon it, and had no hesitation in again resorting to the use of the axe. Once more, then, commenced the labour of cutting a way through the entanglement of bushes and creepers that were thick upon the soil. It was no longer forest through which they were wending their arduous path; trees were comparatively rare; only tall clumps of bamboos rose above the grass, so high, however, that even Hercules could not see above them, and the passage of the little troop could only have been discovered by the rustling in the stalks.