In African Forest and Jungle

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

"No fear of that, Rogala," I said; "no Bakalai would dare to follow the Oguizi. The man is either an elephant hunter or a runaway slave, or a man who has fled from his tribe or village on being accused of witchcraft."

Rogala got up and went for his gun; then he said: "Oguizi, let us go in search of that man. We must capture him, for who knows but he may have discovered our camp?"

Taking "Bulldog" with me, we started, Rogala whispering to me, as we went along, the well-known caution: "Let us not make more noise than a leopard in search of prey, or a fish swimming."

We came to the little stream where I had seen the footprints. Rogala said to me, after he had looked at them: "This man has taken this rivulet as a path, and followed the water."

With these words he did the same thing. I followed, and we waded down with the current. We had not walked more than one hour when Rogala gave a low click and pointed with his finger to a particular spot near a big tree. Looking in that direction, I saw a man under a koola tree picking up some of the nuts that had fallen on the ground, breaking them with a stone, and eating them voraciously. He had evidently been starving.

We hid behind a tree, and watched silently the movements of the stranger. We did not dare to whisper for fear of being heard.

Rogala, who was about two yards from me, came to my side, and made a sign to move away further. He was very much excited. His forehead was covered with perspiration. When we were at a safe distance, he whispered: "This man is not a Bakalai; he is from a far country. I think he has run away from his people. Let us surprise him, and if he runs away from us I will shoot at him and kill him."

I saw by the looks of Rogala that he was in earnest.

"No, Rogala," I replied, "we must not kill him if he runs away, but try to capture him. Then we shall find out where he comes from, and how far off his country is. As soon as we come near him we will shout to him to stand still. I will fire 'Bulldog,' and if he has never heard a gun fired in his life he will be so scared that he will not move. If he runs away, we will run after him. We are good runners, we can go quickly through the jungle. Now let us crawl towards him; you keep on his right, I on his left."