The first step now was to flee from the wrath of the Fan tribe.
Cannibals were they, and over and above their just cause for offence I felt that they had long been tempted to try the flavor of a white-man roast. However, I was not minded to end my days in so inglorious a manner; neither would Gaston’s high spirit brook the thought of such disgrace. We pushed our canoe, therefore, with all good-will up stream, and by dint of hard paddling, in the art of which I stand second to none, we had soon a comfortable distance between ourselves and our neighbors.
Lestrade had copied with feminine painstaking, on a strip of hide, every line of the rude map tattooed upon Sagamoso’s brawny chest. I, for my part, had taken with us the woven garment, which I saw was made of the hair of some animal, a goat probably, and which was colored with vivid dyes in orange, crimson, and blue.
Following, as well as we might, the chart that was now our only guide, towards nightfall we beached our canoe, and I, by great good-luck, speared a small monkey that chattered in the branches of a tree overhead. We quickly made a fire, and Lestrade served a steak which, garnished with plantains, left nothing to be desired.
The howling of a panther sounded faintly through my slumbers that first night of our encampment, but the protecting fire kept the great cat at bay, and he had gone by day-break.
We arose refreshed and ready to look lightly upon our quest, all undisturbed by the slenderness of our ammunition and stores. So one hour passed and another. We had begun to suffer much from the thorns that tore our flesh, from innumerable flies that ran their red-hot needles into every unprotected inch of our bodies and even through our clothes.
Our shoes, too, had by this time been cut in strips, and our feet were swollen and bleeding.
But these were hardships that every traveller looks to, and we were consumed with the desire to find the Walled City and behold the maiden and the treasure that its temple held.
Indeed, we talked of little else. Gaston turned the slave’s tale this way and that, and his nimble tongue wove pictures all different in form, but all ending happily with processions of triumph, where crowned as kings we bore away the damsel and the gold.
Even to my sober thought, these tales lightened much the journey; yet, though I am not given to fancies, the eyes of the heathen god outlined upon the dead priest’s garment, at such times seemed to gleam, with a kind of horrible joy and malice, and the snake’s crest reared, and I could almost hear the thick hiss in which the python vents its rage.