Chapter IIThe Pass of Blood
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 brawnychest. 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.
It is not my purpose to relate each adventure as it happened. Perils from man andbeast there were. Once we were captured by a strange tribe and escaped narrowly, leaving behind us much of vital use to us in our journeying. Once I saved Lestrade, helpless and unarmed, from the fury of a gorilla. Once we fled for our lives before the onslaught of an army of brown ants, that strip to the bone every living thing that ventures in the line of its strange march.
So on, and at last we reached the waterfall set down upon our chart, and here a thing happened that kindled anew the fire of our drooping hearts.
It was a thing wonderful in itself, more wonderful as explaining the parting words of the slave Sagamoso, and it clearly showed us that we had not strayed from the right path, and that the jungle had given up its secret.
This waterfall was higher than any I had seen in Africa. It fell with a rush and a roar loud enough to be heard very far off, and it was split at its lowest part by a tall pillar of stone, on which was carved—and this was what cheered us like wine—the grotesque image of the snake-encircled god.
How such a pillar could have been set up by mortal hands in such a place, exposed as it was to the fury of the downpour of this great body of water, was in itself a marvel, and threw a new light on the people that, with our small store of weapons, we two men had set out to brave.
“The waterfall must have been turned from its course,” said Lestrade.
And I, seeing no better way out of it, agreed.
Yet was this no time to stop and argue the matter, so we took up our burdens once more, and, with renewed hope, pressed on; and the more certainly in that here the jungle broke, leaving before us a broad track, as though an army of elephants had fled or been driven along the way.
This did not astonish us at the moment, for there are many such clearings in the African forest; but as we sped onward, and the broad thoroughfare still stretched before us, as far as eye could see, we knew this was no common happening.
Night found us yet on this untrammelled and solitary highway; and as the shadowsclosed, I am not ashamed to confess that a chill settled on my heart, and that even Lestrade grew silent.
However, naught chanced to disturb our slumbers, and looking well to our arms, we marched briskly forward.
Lestrade was a little ahead, and on a sudden he gave a sharp cry and—disappeared. The ground had opened and swallowed him. I pressed forward, and my horrified gaze took in at a flash the devilish trap into which he had fallen.
A pit thirty feet in depth, twenty feet or more in width, stretched, as I afterwards found, from one side of the road to the other. It had been artfully covered with a fine mesh of woven grass, and this mesh by several inches of earth, so that the fiendish contrivance was hidden from the most careful gaze. Air-holes, the use of which I will tell presently, were so arranged as to be concealed by the dense foliage of the jungle. The plaited grass of course could not bear up any weight of moment, although small animals might safely venture across.
But this was not all. A loathsome mass of serpents crawled and twisted upon the bottom of this pit; and hanging by his fingers from a slight projecting rock on the side, some twelve feet down, I saw the agonized form of my friend.
“Courage, Gaston!” I cried, and cheerfully, though my soul was sick within me. “I will save you—or shoot you,” I added inwardly.
Even in that moment of horror the old mocking smile played for an instant on the white face beneath.
“Agreed,” Lestrade answered, in a voice that he fain would have copied after my own.
I slipped the woven garment of the priest Sagamoso from about my body, and knotted it into a running noose. This I tied securely to the stock of my rifle, and leaning over the pit, I swung it down in the hope that I might fasten it under Gaston’s shoulders and so ease the terrible strain that I could see grew instantly more unbearable.
I beheld the white bones of animals or men in the pit beneath. The fetid odor ofthat nameless place assailed my nostrils, and I saw, merciful heaven! that it should be so—the noose fell short.
I looked heavily upward, and there, carved on a tree that overtopped the pit, I beheld the horrid image of the snake-encircled god.
The face leered down upon me, and the eyes taunted me, vile slits that they were, in the impassive cruelty of that smooth countenance.
Then a frenzy seized me and lent strength to bone and sinew.
“I will save you, man, or I will die with you.” The sound came thickly from between my teeth.
I thrust my spear deep into the ground beside the pit. I tied about me one end of the garment of the dead priest, and fastened the other to the spear. Then with my naked hands I made a kind of foothold in the close packed earth, and let myself down over the edge. If there was a flaw in the iron forged by savage hands, the spear would snap. The woven strip of cloth that cut into my flesh might part under the strain, or the stake bepulled from its earthen bed. I dared not look below, but I heard Lestrade’s quick, hard breathing.
That twelve feet seemed a hundred, and the snail pace all the slower for the galloping pulses of my heart.
All at once—for the ear grows keen in danger—I heard Gaston’s fingers slipping,—slipping along the rock.
“Friend, I can do no more.”
The faint whisper was borne upward from the pit. With a superhuman effort I let go my hold with one hand, and my fingers closed upon the collar of Lestrade’s shirt.
He hung a dead weight, limp in my grasp, and I thought my arms would start from their sockets. The spear above us swung to one side; the sweat from my forehead ran down and blinded my eyes.
With an animal instinct I clung to the side of the pit. I could feel the veins in my temples full to bursting, and for one brief moment, ease from that terrible rack seemed more to be desired than a friend’s life; more precious than sunlight; a better thing than honor itself.The next instant, and my foot, by the Lord’s mercy, touched the stone that had stayed Lestrade’s fall.
Inch by inch, I, John Dering, lifted that unconscious body, while the birds twittered in the branches overhead, and the pitiless sun beat down, and the god of the people of the Walled City kept evil watch, and the serpents hissed and writhed in the pit beneath.
At last I had one arm over the edge of that place of torment. One final mighty effort, and Lestrade was safe, while the spear shot from its socket, and fell tinkling into the depths below. How I drew myself up to lie upon the edge beside my friend, I do not know. My blood had turned to water in my veins, and I was as weak as a new-born babe. I could not have lifted a finger to have escaped a thousand deaths. Earth and sky came together in one black threatening mass; the next I knew Lestrade was pouring water on my forehead, and moreover kissing me on both cheeks—a foreign practice I could never stomach, and one which soon brought me to my senses.
That day we rested. The next we tore the cover of grass from that foul trap, and left it open to the gaze of men and beasts.
Then because I am a religious man and believe in the right conduct of human undertakings, I swore to set my face the more earnestly towards the object of our travelling. Neither to seek peace or comfort till the Walled City be found; praying that Providence might deliver into my hand the maker of that death pit, that I might presently bring him to a repentance that would be beyond the pale of backsliding forever.
“The Lord do so to me, and more also, if I follow not the leading of my conscience in this matter,” said I, and Lestrade answered, “Amen.”
Then, because we were not to be put aside like children, from that to which we had set our minds, we felled a tree, and bridged the pit and so crossed.
Much more slowly we now proceeded, for we had been taught caution, yet we marched onward, with little thought to the map, for the course lay plain before us. We were nowin a mountainous country, and it had grown cool, a matter for much thanksgiving. We guessed by this and other signs that now our quest was well-nigh over, and we were right; for at length after much toil of travel we came without mishap to our journey’s end. Massed across the open appeared a pile of rock, and as we neared, I saw the lines in Lestrade’s face deepen. Nor was I untouched, for we did not doubt that before us lay the entrance to the City that we sought. We looked to our guns and came up with all caution.
The noise of the jungle was in our ears, but of human sight or sound there was none. The mass in front towered above us to the sky, and we saw that it had been set in place by some gigantic machinery unknown to the civilized world. The massive barrier was formed of rock, fitted together with cunning, and smooth like glass.
The nature of the rock was strange to us, for it was splashed here and there by great red stains, like gouts of blood; and the fancy was further heightened by a scarlet creeper that clung and fed itself, and well-nighcovered the base of the ponderous mass.
There was no gate nor doorway nor visible opening of any kind, and on each side of the great wall grew dense a prickly thorn, so tough that it turned the edges of our axes, and we saw the hopelessness of cutting through our way, even if the wall of stone extended not further in the African forest than eye could see.
That this was the mocking work of the people we had come to seek was plain; for here, as before, by the waterfall and overlooking the pit, here on the central rock and far above our heads, was painted the same gross image of their god.
We hoped to find some hidden entrance, and we went over the wall’s surface, Lestrade and I, with patient fingers, all the long morning, and again and again, till night had well-nigh settled down upon us. But all in vain. The unyielding mass barred our further progress, and, as before, the serpent god gloated over the failure of our hopes. Mad at this ending, I seized my gun, and aimed itstraight at the hideous face above. The ball sped surely, as my shots ever do. It flattened itself against the surface of the rock, between the creature’s eyes.
There was a dull rumbling, a sound as of chains that slid and struck against stone or metal. Then the central stone slowly turned, as on a pivot, and forth from the opening poured a wild stream of men.