The men who had followed Dala were now furious for my death, but Kifura would not give me up to them. The day breaking shortly after, the Balaba and Adiana separated—the latter returning to their own village, and the Balaba making their way to the Ogowai.
I dragged my weary steps along as best I could, every symptom of flagging being rewarded with a lash from a hippopotamus-hide whip; but at last I stumbled and fell, and was powerless to rise again. Flogging and burning with hot coals were resorted to by my savage captors in order to force me on my feet again; but I was so thoroughly weary and sick of life that nothing could induce me to stir. At last Kifura, fearing that I would die, gave orders to have the log and slave-fork taken off me, and then he and his followers tried again to force me on my feet. But hoping that they might kill me, I stubbornly refused to move. At last a pole about eight or nine feet long was cut from a neighbouring tree, and having lashed me tightly to it with strips of bark and hide, four men were told off to carry me.
They had no more mercy than if I had been totally destitute of feeling. They bumped me against trees, dragged me through thorns, and hauled me over fallen trunks, bruising me all over and tearing nearly all the skin off my body. At the same time flies, stinging ants, and other noisome insects, attracted by my sores, fattened on my blood and clustered so thickly round my eyes that I thought I should have been blinded. When I felt myself thrown down like a log in the bottom of a leaky canoe I thought I had undergone the extremity of torture, and that though I was trampled on by the people crowding on board, and had all sorts of things flung on me, I might now have comparative rest and peace. I was fated to find that I had still more exquisite agony to endure; for though the water in the bottom of the canoe was cool, and the abominable insect pests had left, my lashings became tightened by the wet and cut into me like lines of fire; my limbs and body swelled; one lashing round my neck almost throttled me, so that every breath I drew was torture, and another across my forehead seemed to be eating in to my very brain.
I felt that it was impossible to endure such intensity of pain and still to exist, and I begged and prayed to be released. For some time my entreaties were unheeded; but at last Kifura, fearing that I should die, and that he would be deprived of the triumph of bringing a live white man as a prisoner into his country, gave orders for my lashings to be cut. I felt instant relief, even though I was so stiff and helpless that I was unable to sit up, and had to continue lying in the bottom of the canoe, kicked, trampled, and spat upon by its other occupants.
All day long we paddled up the river, and at night camped on its bank, the canoes being hauled up on shore. Rejoicing in being close to their own homes, the Balaba, notwithstanding the fatigues of the day, sang and danced round huge fires nearly the livelong night. To my fevered imagination they seemed like a company of demons rejoicing over the pains of some condemned soul.
In the morning we were early under way again. About eight o’clock, judging by the height of the sun, I heard the sound of rushing water, and presently the canoes put into the bank. All the men went ashore and began stripping the bark from trees and twisting it into ropes. From their conversation I gathered that we were at the foot of some rapids up which it was necessary to haul the canoes.
Unable to walk, I managed to sit up and look about me, and I could see that our numbers had been largely increased. There were many women whom I had not previously seen among the party, so I supposed that we could not be far from the end of the journey.
At first I did not attract much attention, but some of the women coming down to the canoes with bundles of rope noticed me, and cried out that there was a white man. I was soon surrounded by a crowd, who pulled my hair, looked into my eyes, examined my toes and fingers, and shouted and screamed with wonder at the whiteness of my skin, or rather at such portions of it as remained light-coloured. I was so grimed with dirt and tanned with the sun and weather that I doubt if any Englishman would from my appearance have owned me as a fellow-countryman.
I tried to appeal to them to do something to relieve my sufferings; but they only laughed at my speaking, as if I were a strange species of ape, until one old woman came down bending under a heavy load of twisted bark.
When this good old woman saw me she rebuked the crowd of gapers who were standing around, saying—