CHAPTER XIX.
The day was cloudy, but our trotting caravan did not exceed twenty miles in travel. In Africa things are done leisurely, for neither life, speculation, nor ambition is so exciting or exacting as to make any one in a hurry. I do not recollect to have ever seen an individual in haste while I dwelt in the torrid clime. The shortest existence is long enough, when it is made up of sleep, slave-trade, and mastication.
At sunset no town was in sight; so it was resolved to bivouac in the forest on the margin of a beautiful brook, where rice, tea, and beef, were speedily boiled and smoking on the mats. When I was about to stretch my weary limbs for the night on the ground, my boy gave me another instance of Ibrahim’s true and heedful hospitality, by producing a grass hammock he had secretly ordered to be packed among my baggage. With a hammock and a horse I was on velvet in the forest!
Delicious sleep curtained my swinging couch between two splendid cotton-woods until midnight, when the arm of our Fullah chief was suddenly laid on my shoulder with a whispered call to prepare for defence or flight. As I leaped to the ground the caravan was already afoot, though the profoundest silence prevailed throughout the wary crowd. The watch announced strangers in our neighborhood, and two guides had been despatched immediately to reconnoitre the forest. This was all the information they could give me.
The native party was fully prepared and alert with spears, lances, bows and arrows. I commanded my own men to re-prime their muskets, pistols, and rifles; so that, when the guides returned with a report that the intruders were supposed to form a party of fugitive slaves, we were ready for our customers.
Their capture was promptly determined. Some proposed we should delay till daylight; but Ali-Ninpha, who was a sagacious old fighter, thought it best to complete the enterprise by night, especially as the savages kept up a smouldering fire in the midst of their sleeping group, which would serve to guide us.
Our little band was immediately divided into two squads, one under the lead of the Fullah, and the other commanded by Ali-Ninpha. The Fullah was directed to make a circuit until he got in the rear of the slaves, while Ali-Ninpha, at a concerted signal, began to advance towards them from our camp. Half an hour probably elapsed before a faint call, like the cry of a child, was heard in the distant forest, upon which the squad of my landlord fell on all-fours, and crawled cautiously, like cats, through the short grass and brushwood, in the direction of the sound. The sleepers were quickly surrounded. The Mandingo gave the signal as soon as the ends of the two parties met and completed the circle; and, in an instant, every one of the runaways, except two, was in the grasp of a warrior, with a cord around his throat. Fourteen captives were brought into camp. The eldest of the party alleged that they belonged to the chief of Tamisso, a town on our path to Timbo, and were bound to the coast for sale. On their way to the foreign factories, which they were exceedingly anxious to reach, their owner died, so that they came under the control of his brother, who threatened to change their destination, and sell them in the interior. In consequence of this they fled; and, as their master would surely slay them if restored to Tamisso, they besought us with tears not to take them thither.