"'Lead us not into temptation.' Oh, wondrous wise and simple prayer, which riseth every night and morning out of the mouths of babes and sucklings over all the Christian world, and in a few brief phrases includes every aspiration needful for humanity!" said Cecil Patrington, who was in matters theological just where he had been when his boyish head was bowed under the Episcopal hand on the day of his confirmation.
Far away from new books and new opinions, knowing not the names of Spencer or Clifford, Schopenhauer or Hartmann, this rough traveller's religion was the unquestioning faith of Paul Dombey, of Hester Summerson and Agnes Whitfield and Little Nell, of all the gentlest creatures in the dream-world of Charles Dickens.
There was leisure and to spare for argument and discussion here in this quiet settlement on the shore of the great lake. The travellers had established themselves in a deserted tembe, which had been allotted to them by the Arab chieftain of the land, and which was pleasantly situated on a ridge of rising ground about a mile from the busy village of Ujiji. They had done all that laborious ingenuity could do to purify the rough clay structure, ridding it as far as possible of the plague of insects that crawled in the darkness below or buzzed in the thatch above, of the rats which the dusk of evening brought out in gay and familiar riot, and the snakes that followed in their train, and the huge black spiders, whose webs choked every corner. They had knocked out openings under the deep eaves of the thatched roof—openings which allowed of cross-currents of air, and were regarded by their Zanzibaris and Unyanyembis with absolute horror. Only once in their pilgrimage had the travellers found a hut with windows.
"What does a man want in his tembe but warmth and shelter? And how can these white men be so foolish as to make openings that let in the cold?" argued the native mind; nor was the native mind less exercised by the trouble these three white men took to keep their tembe and its surroundings, the verandah, the ground about it, severely clean, or by their war of extermination against that insect life whose ravages the African suffers with a stoical indifference.
The travellers had established themselves in this convenient spot—close to the port and market of Ujiji—to wait for the Masika, the season of rain that raineth every day—rain that closes round the camp like a dense wall of water—such rain as a man must go to the tropics to see, and which, once having seen, he is not likely to forget. They could hardly be better off anywhere, when the rains of April should come upon them, than they would be here. The natives were friendly; friendly too, friendly and kind and helpful, was the mighty Arab chief Roumariza, the white Arab, sovereign lord of these regions, sole master here, where the sceptre of the Sultan of Zanzibar reaches not: a man whose word is law, and in whose hand is plenty.
Roumariza looked upon Cecil Patrington's party with the eye of favour, and upon Patrington as an old friend—nay, almost a subject of his own, so familiar was Patrington's bronzed face in those regions, whither he had come close upon the footsteps of Cameron, and when that lake land of tropical Africa was still a new world, untrodden by the white man's foot, the northern shores of the lake still unexplored, the vast country of Rua unknown even to the Arabs.
At Ujiji provisions were plentiful and cheap. At Ujiji there were boat-builders; and canoes and rowers were at hand for the exploration of the vast fresh-water sea. Indeed, there was only too much civilization and human life to please that son of the wilderness, Cecil Patrington.
"I love the unknown better than the known," he said. "We shall never see the lake again as Burton saw it—before ever the sound of engine and paddle-wheel had been heard on that broad blue expanse, when the monkeys chattered and screamed and slung themselves from tree to tree in a tumult of wonder at sight of the white wayfarer. Nobody can ever enjoy the sense of rapture and surprise that took Cameron's breath away as he looked down from the hills and saw the wide-reaching, pale blue water flashing in the sun. He took the lake itself for a cloud at the first glance, and a little islet for the lake, and asked his men, with bitterest chagrin, 'Is this all?' And then the niggers pointed, and these vast waters spread themselves out of the cloud, and he saw this mighty sea shining out of its dark frame of mountain and plain forest. Jupiter, what a moment! I could never enjoy that surprise. I had read Cameron's book, and he had discounted the situation for me; he had swindled me out of my emotions. I knew the breadth and length of the lake to within a mile—no chance of mistake for me. Yes, I said. Here is the Tanganyika, and it is a very fine sheet of blue water; and pray where is the Swiss porter to take my luggage? or where shall I find the omnibus for the best hotel? Mark me, lads, before we have been long underground, there will be hotels and omnibuses and Swiss porters, and the Cooks and Gazes of the future will deal in through tickets to the African lakes, and this great heart of Africa will be the Englishman's favourite holiday ground. Let but the tramway Stanley talks about be laid from Bagamoyo to the interior, and 'Arry will be lord of Central Africa, as he is of the rest of the earth."
Idle talk in idle hours beside the camp-fire. Though the days were as sunny and summer-like as February on the Riviera, the nights were cold; and after sundown masters and men liked to sit by their fires and watch the pine-wood crackle and the flames leap through the smoke like living things, vanish and reappear, fade into darkness or flicker into light with swifter and more sudden movement than even the thoughts of the men who watched them.
The porters and servants had their own huts and their own fires. They had made a rough stockade round the cluster of bee-hive huts—a snug settlement, which Allan compared to a mediæval fortress, one of the Scottish castles, whose inhabitants live and move in the pages of the Wizard of the North. Allan was a devoted worshipper of Scott, whom he held second only to Shakespeare; and as Cecil Patrington claimed exactly this position for Charles Dickens, the question afforded an inexhaustible subject for argument, sometimes mild and philosophical, sometimes vehement and angry, to which Geoffrey listened yawningly, or into which he plunged with superior vehemence and arbitrary assertion if it were his humour to be interested.