“Hims find a nest of womins!” exclaimed Jumbo, throwing down his load and dashing away into the bush.
Every individual of the party followed his example, not excepting Harold and Disco, the latter of whom was caught by the leg, the moment he left the track, by a wait-a-bit thorn—most appropriately so-called, because its powerful spikes are always ready to seize and detain the unwary passer-by. In the present instance it checked the seaman’s career for a few seconds, and rent his nether garments sadly; while Harold, profiting by his friend’s misfortune, leaped over the bush, and passed on. Disco quickly extricated himself, and followed.
They were not left far behind, and overtook their comrades just as they emerged on an open space, or glade, at the extremity of which a sight met their eyes that filled them with astonishment, for there a troop of women and one or two boys were seen walking towards them, with Chimbolo in front, having a child on his left shoulder, and performing a sort of insane war-dance round one of the women.
“He’s catched her!” exclaimed Disco, with excited looks, just as if Chimbolo had been angling unsuccessfully for a considerable time, and had hooked a stupendous fish at last.
And Disco was right. A few of the poor creatures who were so recently burnt out of their homes, and had lost most of those dearest to them, had ventured, as if drawn by an irresistible spell, to return with timid steps to the scene of their former happiness, but only to have their worst fears confirmed. Their homes, their protectors, their children, their hopes, all were gone at one fell swoop. Only one among them—one who, having managed to save her only child, had none to mourn over, and no one to hope to meet with—only one returned to a joyful meeting. We need scarcely say that this was Marunga.
The fact was instantly made plain to the travellers by the wild manner in which Chimbolo shouted her name, pointed to her, and danced round her, while he showed all his glistening teeth and as much of the whites of his eyes as was consistent with these members remaining in their orbits.
Really it was quite touching, in spite of its being ludicrous, the way in which the poor fellow poured forth his joy like a very child,—which he was in everything except years; and Harold could not help remembering, and recalling to Disco’s memory, Yoosoof’s observations touching the hardness of negroes’ hearts, and their want of natural affection, on the morning when his dhow was captured by the boat of the “Firefly.”
The way in which, ever and anon, Chimbolo kissed his poor but now happy wife, was wondrously similar to the mode in which white men perform that little operation, except that there was more of an unrefined smack in it. The tears which would hop over his sable cheeks now and then sparkled to the full as brightly as European tears, and were perhaps somewhat bigger; and the pride with which he regarded his little son, holding him in both hands out at arms’-length, was only excelled by the joy and the tremendous laugh with which he received a kick on the nose from that undutiful son’s black little toes.
But Yoosoof never chanced to be present when such exhibitions of negro feeling and susceptibility took place. How could he, seeing that men and women and children—if black—fled from him, and such as he, in abject terror? Neither did Yoosoof ever chance to be present when women sat down beside their blackened hearths, as they did that night, and quietly wept as though their hearts would burst at the memory of little voices and manly tones—not silent in death, but worse than that—gone, gone for ever! Doubtless they felt though they never heard of, and could not in words express, the sentiment—
“Oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.”