Chapter Nineteen.Tells of Misfortunes that Befell Our Wanderers; of Familiar Toys Under New Aspects, Etcetera.When Harold Seadrift and Disco Lillihammer were stopped in their journey, as related in a former chapter, by the sudden illness of the bold seaman, an event was impending over them which effectually overturned their plans. This was the sudden descent of a band of armed natives who had been recently driven from their homes by a slaving party. The slavers had taken them by surprise during the night, set their huts on fire, captured their women and children, and slaughtered all the men, excepting those who sought and found safety in flight. It was those who had thus escaped that chanced to come upon the camp of our travellers one evening about sunset.Disco was recovering from his attack of fever at the time, though still weak. Harold was sitting by his couch of leaves in the hut which had been erected for him on the first day of the illness. Jumbo was cutting up a piece of flesh for supper, and Antonio was putting the kettle on the fire. The rest of the party were away in the woods hunting.No guard was kept; consequently the savages came down on them like a thunderbolt, and found them quite unprepared to resist even if resistance had been of any use.At first their captors, bitterly infuriated by their recent losses, proposed to kill their prisoners, without delay, by means of the most excruciating tortures that they could invent, but from some unknown cause, changed their minds; coupled Harold and Disco together by means of two slave-sticks; tied Antonio and Jumbo with ropes, and drove them away.So suddenly was the thing done, and so effectually, that Disco was far from the camp before he could realise that what had occurred was a fact, and not one of the wild feverish dreams that had beset him during his illness.The natives would not listen to the earnest explanation of Antonio that Harold and Disco were Englishmen, and haters of slavery. They scowled as they replied that the same had been said by the slavers who had attacked their village; from which remark it would seem that Yoosoof was not quite the originator of that device to throw the natives off their guard. The Portuguese of Tette on the Zambesi had also thought of and acted on it!Fortunately it was, as we have said, near sunset when the capture was made, and before it became quite dark the band encamped, else must poor Disco have succumbed to weakness and fatigue. The very desperation of his circumstances, however, seemed to revive his strength, for next morning he resumed his journey with some hope of being able to hold out. The continued protestations and assurances of Antonio, also, had the effect of inducing their captors to remove the heavy slave-sticks from the necks of Harold and Disco, though they did not unbind their wrists. Thus were they led further into the country, they knew not whither, for several days and nights, and at last reached a large village where they were all thrust into a hut, and left to their meditations, while their captors went to palaver with the chief man of the place.This chief proved to be a further-sighted man than the men of the tribe who had captured the Englishmen. His name was Yambo. He had heard of Dr Livingstone, and had met with men of other tribes who had seen and conversed with the great traveller. Thus, being of a thoughtful and inquiring disposition, he had come to understand enough of the good white man’s sentiments to guard him from being imposed on by pretended Christians.Yambo’s name signified “how are you?” and was probably bestowed on him because of a strongly benevolent tendency to greet friend and stranger alike with a hearty “how d’ee do?” sort of expression of face and tone of voice.He was a tall grave man, with a commanding firm look, and, withal, a dash of child-like humour and simplicity. On hearing his visitors’ remarks about their captives, he at once paid them a visit and a few leading questions put to Harold through Antonio convinced him that the prisoners were true men. He therefore returned to his black visitors, told them that he had perfect confidence in the good faith of the white men, and said that he meant to take charge of them. He then entertained his black brothers hospitably, gave them a few presents, and sent them on their way. This done he returned to his guests and told them that they were free, that their captors were gone, and that they might go where they pleased, but that it would gratify him much if they would consent to spend some time hunting with him in the neighbourhood of his village.“Now,” said Disco, after Yambo left them, “this is wot I call the most uncommon fix that ever wos got into by man since Adam an’ Eve began housekeepin’ in the garden of Eden.”“I’m not quite sure,” replied Harold, with a rueful look, “that it is absolutely theworstfix, but it is bad enough. The worst of it is that this Yambo has let these rascals off with all our fire-arms and camp-equipage, so that we are absolutely helpless—might as well be prisoners, for we can’t quit this village in such circumstances.”“Wot’s wuss than that to my mind, sir, is, that here we are at sea, in the heart of Afriky, without chart, quadrant, compass, or rudder, an’ no more idea of our whereabouts than one o’ them spider monkeys that grins among the trees. Hows’ever, we’re in luck to fall into the hands of a friendly chief, so, like these same monkeys, we must grin an’ bear it; only I can’t help feelin’ a bit cast down at the loss of our messmates. I fear there’s no chance of their findin’ us.”“Not the least chance in the world, I should say,” returned Harold. “They could not guess in which direction we had gone, and unless they had hit on the right road at first, every step they took afterwards would only widen the distance between us.”“It’s lucky I was beginnin’ to mend before we was catched,” said Disco, feeling the muscles of his legs; “true, I ain’t much to boast of yet but I’m improvin’.”“That is more than I can say for myself,” returned Harold, with a sigh, as he passed his hand across his forehead; “I feel as if this last push through the woods in the hot sun, and the weight of that terrible slave-stick had been almost too much for me.”Disco looked earnestly and anxiously into the face of his friend.“Wot,” asked he, “does you feel?”“I can scarcely tell,” replied Harold, with a faint smile. “Oh, I suppose I’m a little knocked up, that’s all. A night’s rest will put me all right.”“So I thought myself, but I wos wrong,” said Disco. “Let’s hear wot your feelin’s is, sir; I’m as good as any doctor now, I am, in regard to symptoms.”“Well, I feel a sort of all-overishness, a kind of lassitude and sleepiness, with a slight headache, and a dull pain which appears to be creeping up my spine.”“You’re in for it sir,” said Disco. “It’s lucky you have always carried the physic in your pockets, ’cause you’ll need it, an’ it’s lucky, too, that I am here and well enough to return tit for tat and nurse you, ’cause you’ll have that ’ere pain in your spine creep up your back and round your ribs till it lays hold of yer shoulders, where it’ll stick as if it had made up its mind to stay there for ever an’ a day. Arter that you’ll get cold an’ shivering like ice—oh! doesn’t I know it well—an’ then hot as fire, with heavy head, an’ swimming eyes, an’ twisted sight, an’ confusion of—”“Hold! hold!” cried Harold, laughing, “if you go on in that way I shall have more than my fair share of it! Pray stop, and leave me a little to find out for myself.”“Well, sir, take a purge, and turn in at once, that’s my advice. I’ll dose you with quinine to-morrow mornin’, first thing,” said Disco, rising and proceeding forthwith to arrange a couch in a corner of the hut, which Yambo had assigned them.Harold knew well enough that his follower was right. He took his advice without delay, and next morning found himself little better than a child, both physically and mentally, for the disease not only prostrated his great strength—as it had that of his equally robust companion—but, at a certain stage, induced delirium, during which he talked the most ineffable nonsense that his tongue could pronounce, or his brain conceive.Poor Disco, who, of course, had been unable to appreciate the extent of his own delirious condition, began to fear that his leader’s mind was gone for ever, and Jumbo was so depressed by the unutterably solemn expression of the mariner’s once jovial countenance, that he did not once show his teeth for a whole week, save when engaged with meals.As for Antonio, his nature not being very sympathetic, and his health being good, he rather enjoyed the quiet life and good living which characterised the native village, and secretly hoped that Harold might remain on the sick-list for a considerable time to come.How long this state of affairs lasted we cannot tell, for both Harold and Disco lost the correct record of time during their respective illnesses.Up to that period they had remembered the days of the week, in consequence of their habit of refraining from going out to hunt on Sundays, except when a dearth of meat in the larder rendered hunting a necessity. Upon these Sundays Harold’s conscience sometimes reproached him for having set out on his journey into Africa without a Bible. He whispered, to himself at first, and afterwards suggested to Disco, the excuse that his Bible had been lost in the wreck of his father’s vessel, and that, perhaps, there were no Bibles to be purchased in Zanzibar, but his conscience was a troublesome one, and refused to tolerate such bad reasoning, reminding him, reproachfully, that he had made no effort whatever to obtain a Bible at Zanzibar.As time had passed, and some of the horrors of the slave-trade had been brought under his notice, many of the words of Scripture leaped to his remembrance, and the regret that he had not carried a copy with him increased. That touch of thoughtlessness, so natural to the young and healthy—to whom life has so far been only a garden of roses—was utterly routed by the stern and dreadful realities which had been recently enacted around him, and just in proportion as he was impressed with the lies, tyranny, cruelty, and falsehood of man, so did his thoughtful regard for the truth and the love of God increase, especially those truths that were most directly opposed to the traffic in human flesh, such as—“love your enemies,” “seek peace with all men,” “be kindly affectioned one to another,” “whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” An absolute infidel, he thought, could not fail to perceive that a most blessed change would come over the face of Africa if such principles prevailed among its inhabitants, even in an extremely moderate degree.But to return, the unfortunate travellers were now “at sea” altogether in regard to the Sabbath as well as the day of the month. Indeed their minds were not very clear as to the month itself!“Hows’ever,” said Disco, when this subject afterwards came to be discussed, “it don’t matter much. Wot is it that the Scriptur’ says,—‘Six days shalt thou labour an’ do all that thou hast to do, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no work.’ I wos used always to stick at that pint w’en my poor mother was a-teachin’ of me. Never got past it. But it’s enough for present use anyhow, for the orders is, work six days an’ don’t work the seventh. Werry good, we’ll begin to-day an’ call it Monday; we’ll work for six days, an’ w’en the seventh day comes we’ll call it Sunday. If it ain’t the right day,wecan’t help it; moreover, wot’s the odds? It’s theseventhday, so that to us it’ll be the Sabbath.”But we anticipate. Harold was still—at the beginning of this digression—in the delirium of fever, though there were symptoms of improvement about him.One afternoon one of these symptoms was strongly manifested in a long, profound slumber. While he slept Disco sat on a low stool beside him, busily engaged with a clasp-knife on some species of manufacture, the nature of which was not apparent at a glance.His admirer, Jumbo, was seated on a stool opposite, gazing at him open-mouthed, with a countenance that reflected every passing feeling of his dusky bosom.Both men were so deeply absorbed in their occupation—Disco in his manufacture, and Jumbo in staring at Disco—that they failed for a considerable time to observe that Harold had wakened suddenly, though quietly, and was gazing at them with a look of lazy, easy-going surprise.The mariner kept up a running commentary on his work, addressed to Jumbo indeed, but in a quiet interjectional manner that seemed to imply that he was merely soliloquising, and did not want or expect a reply.“It’s the most ’stror’nary notion, Jumbo, between you and me and the post, that I ever did see. Now, then, this here bullet-head wants a pair o’ eyes an’ a nose on it; the mouth’ll do, but it’s the mouth as is most troublesome, for you niggers have got such wappin’ muzzles—it’s quite a caution, as the Yankees say,”—(a pause)—“on the whole, however, the nose is very difficult to manage on a flat surface, ’cause w’y?—if I leaves it quite flat, it don’t look like a nose, an’ if I carves it out ever so little, it’s too prominent for a nigger nose. There, ain’t that a good head, Jumbo?”Thus directly appealed to, Jumbo nodded his own head violently, and showed his magnificent teeth from ear to ear, gums included.Disco laid down the flat piece of board which he had carved into the form of a human head, and took up another piece, which was rudely blocked out into the form of a human leg—both leg and head being as large as life.“Now this limb, Jumbo,” continued Disco, slowly, as he whittled away with the clasp-knife vigorously, “is much more troublesome than I would have expected; for you niggers have got such abominably ill-shaped legs below the knee. There’s such an unnat’ral bend for’ard o’ the shin-bone, an’ such a rediklous sticking out o’ the heel astarn, d’ee see, that a feller with white man notions has to make a study of it, if he sets up for a artist; in course, if hedon’tset up for a artist any sort o’ shape’ll do, for it don’t affect the jumpin’. Ha! there they go,” he exclaimed, with a humorous smile at a hearty shout of laughter which was heard just outside the hut, “enjoyin’ the old ’un; but it’s nothin’ to wot the noo ’un’ll be w’en it’s finished.”At this exhibition of amusement on the countenance of his friend, Jumbo threw back his head and again showed not only his teeth and gums but the entire inside of his mouth, and chuckled softly from the region of his breast-bone.“I’m dreaming, of course,” thought Harold, and shut his eyes.Poor fellow! he was very weak, and the mere act of shutting his eyes induced a half-slumber. He awoke again in a few minutes, and re-opening his eyes, beheld the two men still sitting, and occupied as before.“It is a wonderfully pertinacious dream,” thought Harold. “I’ll try to dissipate it.”Thinking thus, he called out aloud,—“I say, Disco!”“Hallo! that’s uncommon like the old tones,” exclaimed the seaman, dropping his knife and the leg of wood as he looked anxiously at his friend.“What old tones?” asked Harold.“The tones of your voice,” said Disco.“Have they changed so much of late?” inquired Harold in surprise.“Have they? I should think they have, just. W’y, you haven’t spoke like that, sir, for—but, surely—are you better, or is this on’y another dodge o’ yer madness?” asked Disco with a troubled look.“Ah! I suppose I’ve been delirious, have I?” said Harold with a faint smile.To this Disco replied that he had not only been delirious, but stark staring mad, and expressed a very earnest hope that, now he had got his senses hauled taut again, he’d belay them an’ make all fast for, if he didn’t, it was his, Disco’s opinion, that another breeze o’ the same kind would blow ’em all to ribbons.“Moreover,” continued Disco, firmly, “you’re not to talk. I once nursed a messmate through a fever, an’ I remember that the doctor wos werry partikler w’en he began to come round, in orderin’ him to hold his tongue an’ keep quiet.”“You are right Disco. I will keep quiet, but you must first tell me what you are about, for it has roused my curiosity, and I can’t rest till I know.”“Well, sir, I’ll tell you, but don’t go for to make no obsarvations on it. Just keep your mouth shut an’ yer ears open, an’ I’ll do all the jawin’. Well, you must know, soon after you wos took bad, I felt as if I’d like some sort o’ okipation w’en sittin’ here watchin’ of you—Jumbo an’ me’s bin takin’ the watch time about, for Antony isn’t able to hold a boy, much lessyouw’en you gits obstropolous—Well, sir, I had took a sort o’ fancy for Yambo’s youngest boy, for he’s a fine, brave little shaver, he is, an’ I thought I’d make him some sort o’ toy, an’ it struck me that the thing as ’ud please him most ’ud be a jumpin’-jack, so I set to an’ made him one about a futt high.“You never see such a face o’ joy as that youngster put on, sir, w’en I took it to him an’ pulled the string. He give a little squeak of delight he did, tuk it in his hands, an’ ran home to show it to his mother. Well, sir, wot d’ee think, the poor boy come back soon after, blubberin’ an’ sobbin’, as nat’ral as if he’d bin an English boy, an’ says he to Tony, says he, ‘Father’s bin an’ took it away from me!’ I wos surprised at this, an’ went right off to see about it, an’ w’en I come to Yambo’s hut wot does I see but the chief pullin’ the string o’ the jumpin’-jack, an’ grinnin’ an’ sniggerin’ like a blue-faced baboon in a passion—his wife likewise standin’ by holdin’ her sides wi’ laughin’. Well, sir, the moment I goes in, up gits the chief an’ shouts for Tony, an’ tells him to tell me that I must make him a jumpin’-jack! In course I says I’d do it with all the pleasure in life; and he says that I must make it full size, as big as hisself! I opened my eyes at this, but he said he must have a thing that was fit for a man—a chief—so there was nothin’ for it but to set to work. An’ it worn’t difficult to manage neither, for they supplied me with slabs o’ timber an inch thick an’ I soon blocked out the body an’ limbs with a hatchet an’ polished ’em off with my knife, and then put ’em together. W’en the big jack wos all right Yambo took it away, for he’d watched me all the time I wos at it, an’ fixed it up to the branch of a tree an’ set to work.“I never, no I never, did,” continued Disco, slapping his right thigh, while Jumbo grinned in sympathy, “see sitch a big baby as Yambo became w’en he got that monstrous jumpin’-jack into action—with his courtiers all round him, their faces blazin’ with surprise, or conwulsed wi’ laughter. The chief hisself was too hard at work to laugh much. He could only glare an’ grin, for, big an’ strong though he is, the jack wos so awful heavy that it took all his weight an’ muscle haulin’ on the rope which okipied the place o’ the string that we’re used to.“‘Haul away, my hearty,’ thought I, w’en I seed him heavin’, blowin’, an’ swettin’ at the jack’s halyards, ‘you’ll not break that rope in a hurry.’“But I was wrong, sir, for, although the halyards held on all right, I had not calkilated on such wiolent action at the joints. All of a sudden off comes a leg at the knee. It was goin’ the up’ard kick at the time, an’ went up like a rocket, slap through a troop o’ monkeys that was lookin’ on aloft, which it scattered like foam in a gale. Yambo didn’t seem to care a pinch o’ snuff. His blood was up. The sweat was runnin’ off him like rain. ‘Hi!’ cries he, givin’ another most awful tug. But it wasn’t high that time, for the other leg came off at the hip-jint on the down kick, an’ went straight into the buzzum of a black warrior an’ floored him wuss than he ever wos floored since he took to fightin’. Yambo didn’t care for that either. He gave another haul with all his might, which proved too much for jack without his legs, for it threw his arms out with such force that they jammed hard an’ fast, as if the poor critter was howlin’ for mercy!“Yambo looked awful blank at this. Then he turned sharp round and looked at me for all the world as if he meant to say ‘wot d’ee mean by that? eh!’“‘He shouldn’t ought to lick into him like that,’ says I to Tony, ‘the figure ain’t made to be druv by a six-horse power steam-engine! But tell him I’ll fix it up with jints that’ll stand pullin’ by an elephant, and I’ll make him another jack to the full as big as that one an’ twice as strong.’“This,” added Disco in conclusion, taking up the head on which he had been engaged, “is the noojack. The old un’s outside working away at this moment like a win’-mill. Listen; don’t ’ee hear ’em?”Harold listened and found no difficulty in hearing them, for peals of laughter and shrieks of delight burst forth every few minutes, apparently from a vast crowd outside the hut.“I do believe,” said Disco, rising and going towards the door of the hut “that you can see ’em from where you lay.”He drew aside the skin doorway as he spoke, and there, sure enough, was the gigantic jumping-jack hanging from the limb of a tree, clearly defined against the sky, and galvanically kicking about its vast limbs, with Yambo pulling fiercely at the tail, and the entire tribe looking on steeped in ecstasy and admiration.It may easily be believed that the sight of this, coupled with Disco’s narrative, was almost too much for Harold’s nerves, and for some time he exhibited, to Disco’s horror, a tendency to repeat some antics which would have been much more appropriate to the jumping-jack, but, after a warm drink administered by his faithful though rough nurse, he became composed, and finally dropped into a pleasant sleep, which was not broken till late the following morning.Refreshed in body, happy in mind, and thankful in spirit he rose to feel that the illness against which he had fought for many days was conquered, and that, although still very weak, he had fairly turned the corner, and had begun to regain some of his wonted health and vigour.
When Harold Seadrift and Disco Lillihammer were stopped in their journey, as related in a former chapter, by the sudden illness of the bold seaman, an event was impending over them which effectually overturned their plans. This was the sudden descent of a band of armed natives who had been recently driven from their homes by a slaving party. The slavers had taken them by surprise during the night, set their huts on fire, captured their women and children, and slaughtered all the men, excepting those who sought and found safety in flight. It was those who had thus escaped that chanced to come upon the camp of our travellers one evening about sunset.
Disco was recovering from his attack of fever at the time, though still weak. Harold was sitting by his couch of leaves in the hut which had been erected for him on the first day of the illness. Jumbo was cutting up a piece of flesh for supper, and Antonio was putting the kettle on the fire. The rest of the party were away in the woods hunting.
No guard was kept; consequently the savages came down on them like a thunderbolt, and found them quite unprepared to resist even if resistance had been of any use.
At first their captors, bitterly infuriated by their recent losses, proposed to kill their prisoners, without delay, by means of the most excruciating tortures that they could invent, but from some unknown cause, changed their minds; coupled Harold and Disco together by means of two slave-sticks; tied Antonio and Jumbo with ropes, and drove them away.
So suddenly was the thing done, and so effectually, that Disco was far from the camp before he could realise that what had occurred was a fact, and not one of the wild feverish dreams that had beset him during his illness.
The natives would not listen to the earnest explanation of Antonio that Harold and Disco were Englishmen, and haters of slavery. They scowled as they replied that the same had been said by the slavers who had attacked their village; from which remark it would seem that Yoosoof was not quite the originator of that device to throw the natives off their guard. The Portuguese of Tette on the Zambesi had also thought of and acted on it!
Fortunately it was, as we have said, near sunset when the capture was made, and before it became quite dark the band encamped, else must poor Disco have succumbed to weakness and fatigue. The very desperation of his circumstances, however, seemed to revive his strength, for next morning he resumed his journey with some hope of being able to hold out. The continued protestations and assurances of Antonio, also, had the effect of inducing their captors to remove the heavy slave-sticks from the necks of Harold and Disco, though they did not unbind their wrists. Thus were they led further into the country, they knew not whither, for several days and nights, and at last reached a large village where they were all thrust into a hut, and left to their meditations, while their captors went to palaver with the chief man of the place.
This chief proved to be a further-sighted man than the men of the tribe who had captured the Englishmen. His name was Yambo. He had heard of Dr Livingstone, and had met with men of other tribes who had seen and conversed with the great traveller. Thus, being of a thoughtful and inquiring disposition, he had come to understand enough of the good white man’s sentiments to guard him from being imposed on by pretended Christians.
Yambo’s name signified “how are you?” and was probably bestowed on him because of a strongly benevolent tendency to greet friend and stranger alike with a hearty “how d’ee do?” sort of expression of face and tone of voice.
He was a tall grave man, with a commanding firm look, and, withal, a dash of child-like humour and simplicity. On hearing his visitors’ remarks about their captives, he at once paid them a visit and a few leading questions put to Harold through Antonio convinced him that the prisoners were true men. He therefore returned to his black visitors, told them that he had perfect confidence in the good faith of the white men, and said that he meant to take charge of them. He then entertained his black brothers hospitably, gave them a few presents, and sent them on their way. This done he returned to his guests and told them that they were free, that their captors were gone, and that they might go where they pleased, but that it would gratify him much if they would consent to spend some time hunting with him in the neighbourhood of his village.
“Now,” said Disco, after Yambo left them, “this is wot I call the most uncommon fix that ever wos got into by man since Adam an’ Eve began housekeepin’ in the garden of Eden.”
“I’m not quite sure,” replied Harold, with a rueful look, “that it is absolutely theworstfix, but it is bad enough. The worst of it is that this Yambo has let these rascals off with all our fire-arms and camp-equipage, so that we are absolutely helpless—might as well be prisoners, for we can’t quit this village in such circumstances.”
“Wot’s wuss than that to my mind, sir, is, that here we are at sea, in the heart of Afriky, without chart, quadrant, compass, or rudder, an’ no more idea of our whereabouts than one o’ them spider monkeys that grins among the trees. Hows’ever, we’re in luck to fall into the hands of a friendly chief, so, like these same monkeys, we must grin an’ bear it; only I can’t help feelin’ a bit cast down at the loss of our messmates. I fear there’s no chance of their findin’ us.”
“Not the least chance in the world, I should say,” returned Harold. “They could not guess in which direction we had gone, and unless they had hit on the right road at first, every step they took afterwards would only widen the distance between us.”
“It’s lucky I was beginnin’ to mend before we was catched,” said Disco, feeling the muscles of his legs; “true, I ain’t much to boast of yet but I’m improvin’.”
“That is more than I can say for myself,” returned Harold, with a sigh, as he passed his hand across his forehead; “I feel as if this last push through the woods in the hot sun, and the weight of that terrible slave-stick had been almost too much for me.”
Disco looked earnestly and anxiously into the face of his friend.
“Wot,” asked he, “does you feel?”
“I can scarcely tell,” replied Harold, with a faint smile. “Oh, I suppose I’m a little knocked up, that’s all. A night’s rest will put me all right.”
“So I thought myself, but I wos wrong,” said Disco. “Let’s hear wot your feelin’s is, sir; I’m as good as any doctor now, I am, in regard to symptoms.”
“Well, I feel a sort of all-overishness, a kind of lassitude and sleepiness, with a slight headache, and a dull pain which appears to be creeping up my spine.”
“You’re in for it sir,” said Disco. “It’s lucky you have always carried the physic in your pockets, ’cause you’ll need it, an’ it’s lucky, too, that I am here and well enough to return tit for tat and nurse you, ’cause you’ll have that ’ere pain in your spine creep up your back and round your ribs till it lays hold of yer shoulders, where it’ll stick as if it had made up its mind to stay there for ever an’ a day. Arter that you’ll get cold an’ shivering like ice—oh! doesn’t I know it well—an’ then hot as fire, with heavy head, an’ swimming eyes, an’ twisted sight, an’ confusion of—”
“Hold! hold!” cried Harold, laughing, “if you go on in that way I shall have more than my fair share of it! Pray stop, and leave me a little to find out for myself.”
“Well, sir, take a purge, and turn in at once, that’s my advice. I’ll dose you with quinine to-morrow mornin’, first thing,” said Disco, rising and proceeding forthwith to arrange a couch in a corner of the hut, which Yambo had assigned them.
Harold knew well enough that his follower was right. He took his advice without delay, and next morning found himself little better than a child, both physically and mentally, for the disease not only prostrated his great strength—as it had that of his equally robust companion—but, at a certain stage, induced delirium, during which he talked the most ineffable nonsense that his tongue could pronounce, or his brain conceive.
Poor Disco, who, of course, had been unable to appreciate the extent of his own delirious condition, began to fear that his leader’s mind was gone for ever, and Jumbo was so depressed by the unutterably solemn expression of the mariner’s once jovial countenance, that he did not once show his teeth for a whole week, save when engaged with meals.
As for Antonio, his nature not being very sympathetic, and his health being good, he rather enjoyed the quiet life and good living which characterised the native village, and secretly hoped that Harold might remain on the sick-list for a considerable time to come.
How long this state of affairs lasted we cannot tell, for both Harold and Disco lost the correct record of time during their respective illnesses.
Up to that period they had remembered the days of the week, in consequence of their habit of refraining from going out to hunt on Sundays, except when a dearth of meat in the larder rendered hunting a necessity. Upon these Sundays Harold’s conscience sometimes reproached him for having set out on his journey into Africa without a Bible. He whispered, to himself at first, and afterwards suggested to Disco, the excuse that his Bible had been lost in the wreck of his father’s vessel, and that, perhaps, there were no Bibles to be purchased in Zanzibar, but his conscience was a troublesome one, and refused to tolerate such bad reasoning, reminding him, reproachfully, that he had made no effort whatever to obtain a Bible at Zanzibar.
As time had passed, and some of the horrors of the slave-trade had been brought under his notice, many of the words of Scripture leaped to his remembrance, and the regret that he had not carried a copy with him increased. That touch of thoughtlessness, so natural to the young and healthy—to whom life has so far been only a garden of roses—was utterly routed by the stern and dreadful realities which had been recently enacted around him, and just in proportion as he was impressed with the lies, tyranny, cruelty, and falsehood of man, so did his thoughtful regard for the truth and the love of God increase, especially those truths that were most directly opposed to the traffic in human flesh, such as—“love your enemies,” “seek peace with all men,” “be kindly affectioned one to another,” “whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” An absolute infidel, he thought, could not fail to perceive that a most blessed change would come over the face of Africa if such principles prevailed among its inhabitants, even in an extremely moderate degree.
But to return, the unfortunate travellers were now “at sea” altogether in regard to the Sabbath as well as the day of the month. Indeed their minds were not very clear as to the month itself!
“Hows’ever,” said Disco, when this subject afterwards came to be discussed, “it don’t matter much. Wot is it that the Scriptur’ says,—‘Six days shalt thou labour an’ do all that thou hast to do, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no work.’ I wos used always to stick at that pint w’en my poor mother was a-teachin’ of me. Never got past it. But it’s enough for present use anyhow, for the orders is, work six days an’ don’t work the seventh. Werry good, we’ll begin to-day an’ call it Monday; we’ll work for six days, an’ w’en the seventh day comes we’ll call it Sunday. If it ain’t the right day,wecan’t help it; moreover, wot’s the odds? It’s theseventhday, so that to us it’ll be the Sabbath.”
But we anticipate. Harold was still—at the beginning of this digression—in the delirium of fever, though there were symptoms of improvement about him.
One afternoon one of these symptoms was strongly manifested in a long, profound slumber. While he slept Disco sat on a low stool beside him, busily engaged with a clasp-knife on some species of manufacture, the nature of which was not apparent at a glance.
His admirer, Jumbo, was seated on a stool opposite, gazing at him open-mouthed, with a countenance that reflected every passing feeling of his dusky bosom.
Both men were so deeply absorbed in their occupation—Disco in his manufacture, and Jumbo in staring at Disco—that they failed for a considerable time to observe that Harold had wakened suddenly, though quietly, and was gazing at them with a look of lazy, easy-going surprise.
The mariner kept up a running commentary on his work, addressed to Jumbo indeed, but in a quiet interjectional manner that seemed to imply that he was merely soliloquising, and did not want or expect a reply.
“It’s the most ’stror’nary notion, Jumbo, between you and me and the post, that I ever did see. Now, then, this here bullet-head wants a pair o’ eyes an’ a nose on it; the mouth’ll do, but it’s the mouth as is most troublesome, for you niggers have got such wappin’ muzzles—it’s quite a caution, as the Yankees say,”—(a pause)—“on the whole, however, the nose is very difficult to manage on a flat surface, ’cause w’y?—if I leaves it quite flat, it don’t look like a nose, an’ if I carves it out ever so little, it’s too prominent for a nigger nose. There, ain’t that a good head, Jumbo?”
Thus directly appealed to, Jumbo nodded his own head violently, and showed his magnificent teeth from ear to ear, gums included.
Disco laid down the flat piece of board which he had carved into the form of a human head, and took up another piece, which was rudely blocked out into the form of a human leg—both leg and head being as large as life.
“Now this limb, Jumbo,” continued Disco, slowly, as he whittled away with the clasp-knife vigorously, “is much more troublesome than I would have expected; for you niggers have got such abominably ill-shaped legs below the knee. There’s such an unnat’ral bend for’ard o’ the shin-bone, an’ such a rediklous sticking out o’ the heel astarn, d’ee see, that a feller with white man notions has to make a study of it, if he sets up for a artist; in course, if hedon’tset up for a artist any sort o’ shape’ll do, for it don’t affect the jumpin’. Ha! there they go,” he exclaimed, with a humorous smile at a hearty shout of laughter which was heard just outside the hut, “enjoyin’ the old ’un; but it’s nothin’ to wot the noo ’un’ll be w’en it’s finished.”
At this exhibition of amusement on the countenance of his friend, Jumbo threw back his head and again showed not only his teeth and gums but the entire inside of his mouth, and chuckled softly from the region of his breast-bone.
“I’m dreaming, of course,” thought Harold, and shut his eyes.
Poor fellow! he was very weak, and the mere act of shutting his eyes induced a half-slumber. He awoke again in a few minutes, and re-opening his eyes, beheld the two men still sitting, and occupied as before.
“It is a wonderfully pertinacious dream,” thought Harold. “I’ll try to dissipate it.”
Thinking thus, he called out aloud,—“I say, Disco!”
“Hallo! that’s uncommon like the old tones,” exclaimed the seaman, dropping his knife and the leg of wood as he looked anxiously at his friend.
“What old tones?” asked Harold.
“The tones of your voice,” said Disco.
“Have they changed so much of late?” inquired Harold in surprise.
“Have they? I should think they have, just. W’y, you haven’t spoke like that, sir, for—but, surely—are you better, or is this on’y another dodge o’ yer madness?” asked Disco with a troubled look.
“Ah! I suppose I’ve been delirious, have I?” said Harold with a faint smile.
To this Disco replied that he had not only been delirious, but stark staring mad, and expressed a very earnest hope that, now he had got his senses hauled taut again, he’d belay them an’ make all fast for, if he didn’t, it was his, Disco’s opinion, that another breeze o’ the same kind would blow ’em all to ribbons.
“Moreover,” continued Disco, firmly, “you’re not to talk. I once nursed a messmate through a fever, an’ I remember that the doctor wos werry partikler w’en he began to come round, in orderin’ him to hold his tongue an’ keep quiet.”
“You are right Disco. I will keep quiet, but you must first tell me what you are about, for it has roused my curiosity, and I can’t rest till I know.”
“Well, sir, I’ll tell you, but don’t go for to make no obsarvations on it. Just keep your mouth shut an’ yer ears open, an’ I’ll do all the jawin’. Well, you must know, soon after you wos took bad, I felt as if I’d like some sort o’ okipation w’en sittin’ here watchin’ of you—Jumbo an’ me’s bin takin’ the watch time about, for Antony isn’t able to hold a boy, much lessyouw’en you gits obstropolous—Well, sir, I had took a sort o’ fancy for Yambo’s youngest boy, for he’s a fine, brave little shaver, he is, an’ I thought I’d make him some sort o’ toy, an’ it struck me that the thing as ’ud please him most ’ud be a jumpin’-jack, so I set to an’ made him one about a futt high.
“You never see such a face o’ joy as that youngster put on, sir, w’en I took it to him an’ pulled the string. He give a little squeak of delight he did, tuk it in his hands, an’ ran home to show it to his mother. Well, sir, wot d’ee think, the poor boy come back soon after, blubberin’ an’ sobbin’, as nat’ral as if he’d bin an English boy, an’ says he to Tony, says he, ‘Father’s bin an’ took it away from me!’ I wos surprised at this, an’ went right off to see about it, an’ w’en I come to Yambo’s hut wot does I see but the chief pullin’ the string o’ the jumpin’-jack, an’ grinnin’ an’ sniggerin’ like a blue-faced baboon in a passion—his wife likewise standin’ by holdin’ her sides wi’ laughin’. Well, sir, the moment I goes in, up gits the chief an’ shouts for Tony, an’ tells him to tell me that I must make him a jumpin’-jack! In course I says I’d do it with all the pleasure in life; and he says that I must make it full size, as big as hisself! I opened my eyes at this, but he said he must have a thing that was fit for a man—a chief—so there was nothin’ for it but to set to work. An’ it worn’t difficult to manage neither, for they supplied me with slabs o’ timber an inch thick an’ I soon blocked out the body an’ limbs with a hatchet an’ polished ’em off with my knife, and then put ’em together. W’en the big jack wos all right Yambo took it away, for he’d watched me all the time I wos at it, an’ fixed it up to the branch of a tree an’ set to work.
“I never, no I never, did,” continued Disco, slapping his right thigh, while Jumbo grinned in sympathy, “see sitch a big baby as Yambo became w’en he got that monstrous jumpin’-jack into action—with his courtiers all round him, their faces blazin’ with surprise, or conwulsed wi’ laughter. The chief hisself was too hard at work to laugh much. He could only glare an’ grin, for, big an’ strong though he is, the jack wos so awful heavy that it took all his weight an’ muscle haulin’ on the rope which okipied the place o’ the string that we’re used to.
“‘Haul away, my hearty,’ thought I, w’en I seed him heavin’, blowin’, an’ swettin’ at the jack’s halyards, ‘you’ll not break that rope in a hurry.’
“But I was wrong, sir, for, although the halyards held on all right, I had not calkilated on such wiolent action at the joints. All of a sudden off comes a leg at the knee. It was goin’ the up’ard kick at the time, an’ went up like a rocket, slap through a troop o’ monkeys that was lookin’ on aloft, which it scattered like foam in a gale. Yambo didn’t seem to care a pinch o’ snuff. His blood was up. The sweat was runnin’ off him like rain. ‘Hi!’ cries he, givin’ another most awful tug. But it wasn’t high that time, for the other leg came off at the hip-jint on the down kick, an’ went straight into the buzzum of a black warrior an’ floored him wuss than he ever wos floored since he took to fightin’. Yambo didn’t care for that either. He gave another haul with all his might, which proved too much for jack without his legs, for it threw his arms out with such force that they jammed hard an’ fast, as if the poor critter was howlin’ for mercy!
“Yambo looked awful blank at this. Then he turned sharp round and looked at me for all the world as if he meant to say ‘wot d’ee mean by that? eh!’
“‘He shouldn’t ought to lick into him like that,’ says I to Tony, ‘the figure ain’t made to be druv by a six-horse power steam-engine! But tell him I’ll fix it up with jints that’ll stand pullin’ by an elephant, and I’ll make him another jack to the full as big as that one an’ twice as strong.’
“This,” added Disco in conclusion, taking up the head on which he had been engaged, “is the noojack. The old un’s outside working away at this moment like a win’-mill. Listen; don’t ’ee hear ’em?”
Harold listened and found no difficulty in hearing them, for peals of laughter and shrieks of delight burst forth every few minutes, apparently from a vast crowd outside the hut.
“I do believe,” said Disco, rising and going towards the door of the hut “that you can see ’em from where you lay.”
He drew aside the skin doorway as he spoke, and there, sure enough, was the gigantic jumping-jack hanging from the limb of a tree, clearly defined against the sky, and galvanically kicking about its vast limbs, with Yambo pulling fiercely at the tail, and the entire tribe looking on steeped in ecstasy and admiration.
It may easily be believed that the sight of this, coupled with Disco’s narrative, was almost too much for Harold’s nerves, and for some time he exhibited, to Disco’s horror, a tendency to repeat some antics which would have been much more appropriate to the jumping-jack, but, after a warm drink administered by his faithful though rough nurse, he became composed, and finally dropped into a pleasant sleep, which was not broken till late the following morning.
Refreshed in body, happy in mind, and thankful in spirit he rose to feel that the illness against which he had fought for many days was conquered, and that, although still very weak, he had fairly turned the corner, and had begun to regain some of his wonted health and vigour.
Chapter Twenty.Harold Appears in a New Character, and Two Old Characters Reappear to Harold.The mind of Yambo was a strange compound—a curious mixture of gravity and rollicking joviality; at one time displaying a phase of intense solemnity; at another exhibiting quiet pleasantry and humour, but earnestness was the prevailing trait of his character. Whether indulging his passionate fondness for the jumping-jack, or engaged in guiding the deliberations of his counsellors, the earnest chief was equally devoted to the work in hand. Being a savage—and, consequently, led entirely by feeling, which is perhaps the chief characteristic of savage, as distinguished from civilised, man,—he hated his enemies with exceeding bitterness, and loved his friends with all his heart.Yambo was very tender to Harold during his illness, and the latter felt corresponding gratitude, so that there sprang up between the two a closer friendship than one could have supposed to be possible, considering that they were so different from each other, mentally, physically, and socially, and that their only mode of exchanging ideas was through the medium of a very incompetent interpreter.Among other things Harold discovered that his friend the chief was extremely fond of anecdotes and stories. He, therefore, while in a convalescent state and unable for much physical exercise, amused himself, and spent much of his time, in narrating to him the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Yambo’s appetite for mental food increased, and when Crusoe’s tale was finished he eagerly demanded more. Some of his warriors also came to hear, and at last the hut was unable to contain the audiences that wished to enter. Harold, therefore, removed to an open space under a banyan-tree, and there daily, for several hours, related all the tales and narratives with which he was acquainted, to the hundreds of open-eyed and open-mouthed negroes who squatted around him.At first he selected such tales as he thought would be likely to amuse, but these being soon exhausted, he told them about anything that chanced to recur to his memory. Then, finding that their power to swallow the marvellous was somewhat crocodilish, he gave them Jack the Giant-killer, and Jack of Beanstalk notoriety, and Tom Thumb, Cinderella, etcetera, until his entire nursery stock was exhausted, after which he fell back on his inventive powers; but the labour of this last effort proving very considerable, and the results not being adequately great, he took to history, and told them stories about William Tell, and Wallace, and Bruce, and the Puritans of England, and the Scottish Covenanters, and the discoveries of Columbus, until the eyes and mouths of his black auditors were held so constantly and widely on the stretch, that Disco began to fear they would become gradually incapable of being shut, and he entertained a fear that poor Antonio’s tongue would, ere long, be dried up at the roots.At last a thought occurred to our hero, which he promulgated to Disco one morning as they were seated at breakfast on the floor of their hut.“It seems to me, Disco,” he said, after a prolonged silence, during which they had been busily engaged with their knives and wooden spoons, “that illness must be sent sometimes, to teach men that they give too little of their thoughts to the future world.”“Werry true, sir,” replied Disco, in that quiet matter-of-course tone with which men generally receive axiomatic verities; “weisraither given to be swallered up with this world, which ain’t surprisin’ neither, seein’ that we’ve bin putt into it, and are surrounded by it, mixed up with it, steeped in it, so to speak, an’ can’t werry well help ourselves.”“That last is just the point I’m not quite so sure about,” rejoined Harold. “Since I’ve been lying ill here, I have thought a good deal about forgetting to bring a Bible with me, and about the meaning of the term Christian, which name I bear; and yet I can’t, when I look honestly at it, see that I do much to deserve the name.”“Well, I don’t quite see that, sir,” said Disco, with an argumentative curl of his right eyebrow; “you doesn’t swear, or drink, or steal, or commit murder, an’ a many other things o’ that sort. Ain’t that the result o’ your being a Christian.”“It may be so, Disco, but that is only what may be styled thedon’tside of the question. What troubles me is, that I don’t see much on thedoside of it.”“You says your prayers, sir, don’t you?” asked Disco, with the air of a man who had put a telling question.“Well, yes,” replied Harold; “but what troubles me is that, while in my creed I profess to think the salvation of souls is of such vital importance, in my practice I seem to say that it is of no importance at all, for here have I been, for many weeks, amongst these black fellows, and have never so much as mentioned the name of our Saviour to them, although I have been telling them no end of stories of all kinds, both true and fanciful.”“There’s something in that sir,” admitted Disco. Harold also thought there was so much in it that he gave the subject a great deal of earnest consideration, and finally resolved to begin to tell the negroes Bible stories. He was thus gradually led to tell them that “old, old story” of God the Saviour’s life and death, and love for man, which he found interested, affected, and influenced the savages far more powerfully than any of the tales, whether true or fanciful, with which he had previously entertained them. While doing this a new spirit seemed to actuate himself, and to influence his whole being.While Harold was thus led, almost unconsciously, to become a sower of the blessed seed of God’s Word, Marizano was working his way through the country, setting forth, in the most extreme manner, the ultimate results of man’s sinful nature, and the devil’s lies.One of his first deeds was to visit a village which was beautifully situated on the banks of a small but deep river. In order to avoid alarming the inhabitants, he approached it with only about thirty of his men, twenty of whom were armed. Arrived at the outskirts, he halted his armed men, and advanced with the other ten, calling out cheerfully, “We have things for sale! have you anything to sell?” The chief and his warriors, armed with their bows and arrows and shields, met him, and forbade him to pass within the hedge that encircled the village, but told him to sit down under a tree outside. A mat of split reeds was placed for Marizano to sit on; and when he had explained to the chief that the object of his visit was to trade with him for ivory—in proof of which he pointed to the bales which his men carried,—he was well received, and a great clapping of hands ensued. Presents were then exchanged, and more clapping of hands took place, for this was considered the appropriate ceremony. The chief and his warriors, on sitting down before Marizano and his men, clapped their hands together, and continued slapping on their thighs while handing their presents, or when receiving those of their visitors. It was the African “thank you.” To have omitted it would have been considered very bad manners.Soon a brisk trade was commenced, in which the entire community became ere long deeply and eagerly absorbed.Meanwhile Marizano’s armed men were allowed to come forward. The women prepared food for the strangers; and after they had eaten and drunk of the native beer heartily, Marizano asked the chief if he had ever seen fire-arms used.“Yes,” replied the chief, “but only once at a great distance off. It is told to me that your guns kill very far off—much further than our bows. Is that so?”“It is true,” replied Marizano, who was very merry by this time under the influence of the beer, as, indeed, were also his men and their entertainers. “Would you like to see what our guns can do?” asked the half-caste. “If you will permit me, I shall let you hear and see them in use.”The unsuspecting chief at once gave his consent. His visitors rose; Marizano gave the word; a volley was poured forth which instantly killed the chief and twenty of his men. The survivors fled in horror. The young women and children were seized; the village was sacked—which means that the old and useless members of the community were murdered in cold blood, and the place was set on fire—and Marizano marched away with his band of captives considerably augmented, leaving a scene of death and horrible desolation behind him. (See Livingstone’sZambesi and its Tributaries, pages 201, 202.)Thus did that villain walk through the land with fire and sword procuring slaves for the supply of the “domestic institution” of the Sultan of Zanzibar.By degrees the murderer’s drove of black “cattle” increased to such an extent that when he approached the neighbourhood of the village in which Harold and Disco sojourned, he began to think that he had obtained about as many as he could conveniently manage, and meditated turning his face eastward, little dreaming how near he was to a thousand dollars’ worth of property, in the shape of ransom for two white men!He was on the point of turning back and missing this when he chanced to fall in with a villager who was out hunting, and who, after a hot chase, was captured. This man was made much of, and presented with some yards of cloth as well as a few beads, at the same time being assured that he had nothing to fear; that the party was merely a slave-trading one; that the number of slaves required had been made up, but that a few more would be purchased if the chief of his village had any to dispose of.On learning from the man that his village was a large one, fully two days’ march from the spot where he stood, and filled with armed men, Marizano came to the conclusion that it would not be worth his while to proceed thither, and was about to order his informant to be added to his gang with a slave-stick round his neck, when he suddenly bethought him of inquiring as to whether any white men had been seen in these parts. As he had often made the same inquiry before without obtaining any satisfactory answer, it was with great surprise that he now heard from his captive of two white men being in the very village about which he had been conversing.At once he changed his plan, resumed his march, and, a couple of days afterwards, presented himself before the astonished eyes of Harold Seadrift and Disco Lillihammer, while they were taking a walk about a mile from the village.Disco recognised the slave-trader at once, and, from the troubled as well as surprised look of Marizano, it was pretty evident that he remembered the countenance of Disco.When the recollection of Marizano’s cruelty at the time of their first meeting flashed upon him, Disco felt an almost irresistible desire to rush upon and strangle the Portuguese, but the calm deportment of that wily man, and the peaceful manner in which he had approached, partly disarmed his wrath. He could not however, quite restrain his tongue.“Ha!” said he, “you are the blackguard that we met and pretty nigh shot when we first came to these parts, eh? Pity we missed you, you black-hearted villain!”As Marizano did not understand English, these complimentary remarks were lost on him. He seemed, however, to comprehend the drift of them, for he returned Disco’s frown with a stare of defiance.“Whatever he was, or whatever he is,” interposed Harold, “we must restrain ourselves just now, Disco, because we cannot punish him as he deserves, however much we may wish to, and he seems to have armed men enough to put us and our entertainers completely in his power. Keep quiet while I speak to him.”Jumbo and Antonio, armed with bows and arrows,—for they were in search of small game wherewith to supply the pot—came up, looking very much surprised, and the latter a good deal frightened.“Ask him, Antonio,” said Harold, “what is his object in visiting this part of the country.”“To procure slaves,” said Marizano, curtly.“I thought so,” returned Harold; “but he will find that the men of this tribe are not easily overcome.”“I do not wish to overcome them,” said the half-caste. “I have procured enough of slaves, as you see,” (pointing to the gang which was halted some hundred yards or so in rear of his armed men), “but I heard that you were prisoners here, and I have come to prove to you that even a slave-trader can return good for evil.Youdid this,” he said, looking at Disco, and pointing to his old wound in the arm; “I now come to deliver you from slavery.”Having suppressed part of the truth, and supplemented the rest of it with this magnificent lie, Marizano endeavoured to look magnanimous.“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Disco, decidedly.“I incline to doubt it too,” said Harold; “but he may have some good reason of his own for his friendly professions towards us. In any case we have no resource left but to assume that he speaks the truth.”Turning to Marizano, he said:—“We are not prisoners here. We are guests of the chief of this village.”“In that case,” replied the half-caste, “I can return to the coast without you.”As he said this a large band of the villagers, having discovered that strangers had arrived, drew near. Marizano at once advanced, making peaceful demonstrations, and, after the requisite amount of clapping of hands on both sides, stated the object for which he had come. He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was a slave-trader, but said that, having purchased enough of slaves, he had visited their village because of certain rumours to the effect that some white men had been lost in these regions, and could not find their way back to the coast. He was anxious, he said, to help these white men to do so, but, finding that the white men then at the village werenotthe men he was in search of, and did not want to go to the coast, he would just stay long enough with the chief to exchange compliments, and then depart.All this was translated to the white men in question by their faithful ally Antonio, and when they retired to consult as to what should be done, they looked at each other with half amused and half perplexed expressions of countenance.“Werry odd,” said Disco, “how contrairy things turns up at times!”“Very odd indeed,” assented Harold, laughing. “It is quite true that we are, in one sense, lost and utterly unable to undertake a journey through this country without men, means, or arms; and nothing could be more fortunate than that we should have the chance, thus suddenly thrown in our way, of travelling under the escort of a band of armed men; nevertheless, I cannot bear the idea of travelling with or being indebted to a slave-trader and a scoundrel like Marizano.”“That’s w’ere it is, sir,” said Disco with emphasis, “I could stand anything a’most but that.”“And yet,” pursued Harold, “it is our only chance. I see quite well that we may remain for years here without again having such an opportunity or such an escort thrown in our way.”“There’s no help for it, I fear,” said Disco. “We must take it like a dose o’ nasty physic—hold our nobs, shut our daylights, an’ down with it. The only thing I ain’t sure of is your ability to travel. You ain’t strong yet.”“Oh, I’m strong enough now, or very nearly so, and getting stronger every day. Well, then, I suppose it’s settled that we go?”“Humph! I’m agreeable, an’ the whole business werry disagreeable,” said Disco, making a wry face.Marizano was much pleased when the decision of the white men was made known to him, and the native chief was naturally much distressed, for, not only was he about to lose two men of whom he had become very fond, but he was on the point of being bereft of his story-teller, the opener up of his mind, the man who, above all others, had taught him to think about his Maker and a future state.He had sense enough, however, to perceive that his guests could not choose but avail themselves of so good an opportunity, and, after the first feeling of regret was over, made up his mind to the separation.Next day Harold and Disco, with feelings of strong revulsion, almost of shame, fell into the ranks of the slave-gang, and for many days thereafter marched through the land in company with Marizano and his band of lawless villains.Marizano usually walked some distance ahead of the main body with a few trusty comrades. Our adventurers, with their two followers, came next in order of march, the gang of slaves in single file followed, and the armed men brought up the rear. It was necessarily a very long line, and at a distance resembled some hideous reptile crawling slowly and tortuously through the fair fields and plains of Africa.At first there were no stragglers, for the slaves were as yet, with few exceptions, strong and vigorous. These exceptions, and the lazy, were easily kept in the line by means of rope and chain, as well as the rod and lash.Harold and Disco studiously avoided their leader during the march. Marizano fell in with their humour and left them to themselves. At nights they made their own fire and cooked their own supper, as far removed from the slave camp as was consistent with safety, for they could not bear to witness the sufferings of the slaves, or to look upon their captors. Even the food that they were constrained to eat appeared to have a tendency to choke them, and altogether their situation became so terrible that they several times almost formed the desperate resolution of leaving the party and trying to reach the coast by themselves as they best might, but the utter madness and hopelessness of such a project soon forced itself on their minds, and insured its being finally abandoned.One morning Marizano threw off his usual reserve, and, approaching the white men, told them that in two hours they would reach the lake where his employer was encamped.“And who is your master?” asked Harold.“A black-faced or yellow-faced blackguard like himself, I doubt not,” growled Disco.Antonio put Harold’s question without Disco’s comment, and Marizano replied that his master was an Arab trader, and added that he would push on in advance of the party and inform him of their approach.Soon afterwards the lake was reached. A large dhow was in readiness, the gang was embarked and ferried across to a place where several rude buildings and barracoons, with a few tents, indicated that it was one of the inland headquarters of the trade in Black Ivory.The moment our travellers landed Marizano led them to one of the nearest buildings, and introduced them to his master.“Yoosoof!” exclaimed Disco in a shout of astonishment.It would have been a difficult question to have decided which of the three faces displayed the most extreme surprise. Perhaps Disco’s would have been awarded the palm, but Yoosoof was undoubtedly the first to regain his self-possession.“You be surprised,” he said, in hisverybroken English, while his pale-yellow visage resumed its placid gravity of expression.“Undoubtedly we are,” said Harold.“Bu’stin’!” exclaimed Disco.“You would be not so mush surprised,—did you know dat I comes to here every year, an’ dat Engleesh consul ask me for ’quire about you.”“If that be so, how comes it thatyouwere surprised to see us?” asked Harold.“’Cause why, I only knows dat some white mans be loss theirselfs—not knowswhatmans—not knows it wasyou.”“Well now,” cried Disco, unable to restrain himself as he turned to Harold, “did ever two unfortnits meet wi’ sitch luck? Here have we bin’ obliged for days to keep company with the greatest Portugee villian in the country, an’ now we’re needcessitated to be under a obligation to the greatest Arab scoundrel in Afriky.”The scoundrel in question smiled and shrugged his shoulders.“Yoosoof,” cried Disco, clenching his fist and looking full in the trader’s eyes, “when I last saw yer ugly face, I vowed that if ever I seed it again I’d leave my mark on it pretty deep, I did; and now I does see it again, but I haven’t the moral courage to touch sitch a poor, pitiful, shrivelled-up package o’ bones an’ half-tanned leather. Moreover, I’m goin’ to be indebted to ’ee! Ha! ha!” (he laughed bitterly, and with a dash of wild humour in the tone), “to travel under yer care, an’ eat yer accursed bread, and—and—oh! there ain’t no sitch thing as shame left in my corpus. I’m a low mean-spirited boastful idiot, that’s wotIam, an’ I don’t care the fag-end of a hunk o’ gingerbread who knows it.”After this explosion the sorely tried mariner brought his right hand down on his thigh with a tremendous crack, turned about and walked away to cool himself.
The mind of Yambo was a strange compound—a curious mixture of gravity and rollicking joviality; at one time displaying a phase of intense solemnity; at another exhibiting quiet pleasantry and humour, but earnestness was the prevailing trait of his character. Whether indulging his passionate fondness for the jumping-jack, or engaged in guiding the deliberations of his counsellors, the earnest chief was equally devoted to the work in hand. Being a savage—and, consequently, led entirely by feeling, which is perhaps the chief characteristic of savage, as distinguished from civilised, man,—he hated his enemies with exceeding bitterness, and loved his friends with all his heart.
Yambo was very tender to Harold during his illness, and the latter felt corresponding gratitude, so that there sprang up between the two a closer friendship than one could have supposed to be possible, considering that they were so different from each other, mentally, physically, and socially, and that their only mode of exchanging ideas was through the medium of a very incompetent interpreter.
Among other things Harold discovered that his friend the chief was extremely fond of anecdotes and stories. He, therefore, while in a convalescent state and unable for much physical exercise, amused himself, and spent much of his time, in narrating to him the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Yambo’s appetite for mental food increased, and when Crusoe’s tale was finished he eagerly demanded more. Some of his warriors also came to hear, and at last the hut was unable to contain the audiences that wished to enter. Harold, therefore, removed to an open space under a banyan-tree, and there daily, for several hours, related all the tales and narratives with which he was acquainted, to the hundreds of open-eyed and open-mouthed negroes who squatted around him.
At first he selected such tales as he thought would be likely to amuse, but these being soon exhausted, he told them about anything that chanced to recur to his memory. Then, finding that their power to swallow the marvellous was somewhat crocodilish, he gave them Jack the Giant-killer, and Jack of Beanstalk notoriety, and Tom Thumb, Cinderella, etcetera, until his entire nursery stock was exhausted, after which he fell back on his inventive powers; but the labour of this last effort proving very considerable, and the results not being adequately great, he took to history, and told them stories about William Tell, and Wallace, and Bruce, and the Puritans of England, and the Scottish Covenanters, and the discoveries of Columbus, until the eyes and mouths of his black auditors were held so constantly and widely on the stretch, that Disco began to fear they would become gradually incapable of being shut, and he entertained a fear that poor Antonio’s tongue would, ere long, be dried up at the roots.
At last a thought occurred to our hero, which he promulgated to Disco one morning as they were seated at breakfast on the floor of their hut.
“It seems to me, Disco,” he said, after a prolonged silence, during which they had been busily engaged with their knives and wooden spoons, “that illness must be sent sometimes, to teach men that they give too little of their thoughts to the future world.”
“Werry true, sir,” replied Disco, in that quiet matter-of-course tone with which men generally receive axiomatic verities; “weisraither given to be swallered up with this world, which ain’t surprisin’ neither, seein’ that we’ve bin putt into it, and are surrounded by it, mixed up with it, steeped in it, so to speak, an’ can’t werry well help ourselves.”
“That last is just the point I’m not quite so sure about,” rejoined Harold. “Since I’ve been lying ill here, I have thought a good deal about forgetting to bring a Bible with me, and about the meaning of the term Christian, which name I bear; and yet I can’t, when I look honestly at it, see that I do much to deserve the name.”
“Well, I don’t quite see that, sir,” said Disco, with an argumentative curl of his right eyebrow; “you doesn’t swear, or drink, or steal, or commit murder, an’ a many other things o’ that sort. Ain’t that the result o’ your being a Christian.”
“It may be so, Disco, but that is only what may be styled thedon’tside of the question. What troubles me is, that I don’t see much on thedoside of it.”
“You says your prayers, sir, don’t you?” asked Disco, with the air of a man who had put a telling question.
“Well, yes,” replied Harold; “but what troubles me is that, while in my creed I profess to think the salvation of souls is of such vital importance, in my practice I seem to say that it is of no importance at all, for here have I been, for many weeks, amongst these black fellows, and have never so much as mentioned the name of our Saviour to them, although I have been telling them no end of stories of all kinds, both true and fanciful.”
“There’s something in that sir,” admitted Disco. Harold also thought there was so much in it that he gave the subject a great deal of earnest consideration, and finally resolved to begin to tell the negroes Bible stories. He was thus gradually led to tell them that “old, old story” of God the Saviour’s life and death, and love for man, which he found interested, affected, and influenced the savages far more powerfully than any of the tales, whether true or fanciful, with which he had previously entertained them. While doing this a new spirit seemed to actuate himself, and to influence his whole being.
While Harold was thus led, almost unconsciously, to become a sower of the blessed seed of God’s Word, Marizano was working his way through the country, setting forth, in the most extreme manner, the ultimate results of man’s sinful nature, and the devil’s lies.
One of his first deeds was to visit a village which was beautifully situated on the banks of a small but deep river. In order to avoid alarming the inhabitants, he approached it with only about thirty of his men, twenty of whom were armed. Arrived at the outskirts, he halted his armed men, and advanced with the other ten, calling out cheerfully, “We have things for sale! have you anything to sell?” The chief and his warriors, armed with their bows and arrows and shields, met him, and forbade him to pass within the hedge that encircled the village, but told him to sit down under a tree outside. A mat of split reeds was placed for Marizano to sit on; and when he had explained to the chief that the object of his visit was to trade with him for ivory—in proof of which he pointed to the bales which his men carried,—he was well received, and a great clapping of hands ensued. Presents were then exchanged, and more clapping of hands took place, for this was considered the appropriate ceremony. The chief and his warriors, on sitting down before Marizano and his men, clapped their hands together, and continued slapping on their thighs while handing their presents, or when receiving those of their visitors. It was the African “thank you.” To have omitted it would have been considered very bad manners.
Soon a brisk trade was commenced, in which the entire community became ere long deeply and eagerly absorbed.
Meanwhile Marizano’s armed men were allowed to come forward. The women prepared food for the strangers; and after they had eaten and drunk of the native beer heartily, Marizano asked the chief if he had ever seen fire-arms used.
“Yes,” replied the chief, “but only once at a great distance off. It is told to me that your guns kill very far off—much further than our bows. Is that so?”
“It is true,” replied Marizano, who was very merry by this time under the influence of the beer, as, indeed, were also his men and their entertainers. “Would you like to see what our guns can do?” asked the half-caste. “If you will permit me, I shall let you hear and see them in use.”
The unsuspecting chief at once gave his consent. His visitors rose; Marizano gave the word; a volley was poured forth which instantly killed the chief and twenty of his men. The survivors fled in horror. The young women and children were seized; the village was sacked—which means that the old and useless members of the community were murdered in cold blood, and the place was set on fire—and Marizano marched away with his band of captives considerably augmented, leaving a scene of death and horrible desolation behind him. (See Livingstone’sZambesi and its Tributaries, pages 201, 202.)
Thus did that villain walk through the land with fire and sword procuring slaves for the supply of the “domestic institution” of the Sultan of Zanzibar.
By degrees the murderer’s drove of black “cattle” increased to such an extent that when he approached the neighbourhood of the village in which Harold and Disco sojourned, he began to think that he had obtained about as many as he could conveniently manage, and meditated turning his face eastward, little dreaming how near he was to a thousand dollars’ worth of property, in the shape of ransom for two white men!
He was on the point of turning back and missing this when he chanced to fall in with a villager who was out hunting, and who, after a hot chase, was captured. This man was made much of, and presented with some yards of cloth as well as a few beads, at the same time being assured that he had nothing to fear; that the party was merely a slave-trading one; that the number of slaves required had been made up, but that a few more would be purchased if the chief of his village had any to dispose of.
On learning from the man that his village was a large one, fully two days’ march from the spot where he stood, and filled with armed men, Marizano came to the conclusion that it would not be worth his while to proceed thither, and was about to order his informant to be added to his gang with a slave-stick round his neck, when he suddenly bethought him of inquiring as to whether any white men had been seen in these parts. As he had often made the same inquiry before without obtaining any satisfactory answer, it was with great surprise that he now heard from his captive of two white men being in the very village about which he had been conversing.
At once he changed his plan, resumed his march, and, a couple of days afterwards, presented himself before the astonished eyes of Harold Seadrift and Disco Lillihammer, while they were taking a walk about a mile from the village.
Disco recognised the slave-trader at once, and, from the troubled as well as surprised look of Marizano, it was pretty evident that he remembered the countenance of Disco.
When the recollection of Marizano’s cruelty at the time of their first meeting flashed upon him, Disco felt an almost irresistible desire to rush upon and strangle the Portuguese, but the calm deportment of that wily man, and the peaceful manner in which he had approached, partly disarmed his wrath. He could not however, quite restrain his tongue.
“Ha!” said he, “you are the blackguard that we met and pretty nigh shot when we first came to these parts, eh? Pity we missed you, you black-hearted villain!”
As Marizano did not understand English, these complimentary remarks were lost on him. He seemed, however, to comprehend the drift of them, for he returned Disco’s frown with a stare of defiance.
“Whatever he was, or whatever he is,” interposed Harold, “we must restrain ourselves just now, Disco, because we cannot punish him as he deserves, however much we may wish to, and he seems to have armed men enough to put us and our entertainers completely in his power. Keep quiet while I speak to him.”
Jumbo and Antonio, armed with bows and arrows,—for they were in search of small game wherewith to supply the pot—came up, looking very much surprised, and the latter a good deal frightened.
“Ask him, Antonio,” said Harold, “what is his object in visiting this part of the country.”
“To procure slaves,” said Marizano, curtly.
“I thought so,” returned Harold; “but he will find that the men of this tribe are not easily overcome.”
“I do not wish to overcome them,” said the half-caste. “I have procured enough of slaves, as you see,” (pointing to the gang which was halted some hundred yards or so in rear of his armed men), “but I heard that you were prisoners here, and I have come to prove to you that even a slave-trader can return good for evil.Youdid this,” he said, looking at Disco, and pointing to his old wound in the arm; “I now come to deliver you from slavery.”
Having suppressed part of the truth, and supplemented the rest of it with this magnificent lie, Marizano endeavoured to look magnanimous.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Disco, decidedly.
“I incline to doubt it too,” said Harold; “but he may have some good reason of his own for his friendly professions towards us. In any case we have no resource left but to assume that he speaks the truth.”
Turning to Marizano, he said:—
“We are not prisoners here. We are guests of the chief of this village.”
“In that case,” replied the half-caste, “I can return to the coast without you.”
As he said this a large band of the villagers, having discovered that strangers had arrived, drew near. Marizano at once advanced, making peaceful demonstrations, and, after the requisite amount of clapping of hands on both sides, stated the object for which he had come. He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was a slave-trader, but said that, having purchased enough of slaves, he had visited their village because of certain rumours to the effect that some white men had been lost in these regions, and could not find their way back to the coast. He was anxious, he said, to help these white men to do so, but, finding that the white men then at the village werenotthe men he was in search of, and did not want to go to the coast, he would just stay long enough with the chief to exchange compliments, and then depart.
All this was translated to the white men in question by their faithful ally Antonio, and when they retired to consult as to what should be done, they looked at each other with half amused and half perplexed expressions of countenance.
“Werry odd,” said Disco, “how contrairy things turns up at times!”
“Very odd indeed,” assented Harold, laughing. “It is quite true that we are, in one sense, lost and utterly unable to undertake a journey through this country without men, means, or arms; and nothing could be more fortunate than that we should have the chance, thus suddenly thrown in our way, of travelling under the escort of a band of armed men; nevertheless, I cannot bear the idea of travelling with or being indebted to a slave-trader and a scoundrel like Marizano.”
“That’s w’ere it is, sir,” said Disco with emphasis, “I could stand anything a’most but that.”
“And yet,” pursued Harold, “it is our only chance. I see quite well that we may remain for years here without again having such an opportunity or such an escort thrown in our way.”
“There’s no help for it, I fear,” said Disco. “We must take it like a dose o’ nasty physic—hold our nobs, shut our daylights, an’ down with it. The only thing I ain’t sure of is your ability to travel. You ain’t strong yet.”
“Oh, I’m strong enough now, or very nearly so, and getting stronger every day. Well, then, I suppose it’s settled that we go?”
“Humph! I’m agreeable, an’ the whole business werry disagreeable,” said Disco, making a wry face.
Marizano was much pleased when the decision of the white men was made known to him, and the native chief was naturally much distressed, for, not only was he about to lose two men of whom he had become very fond, but he was on the point of being bereft of his story-teller, the opener up of his mind, the man who, above all others, had taught him to think about his Maker and a future state.
He had sense enough, however, to perceive that his guests could not choose but avail themselves of so good an opportunity, and, after the first feeling of regret was over, made up his mind to the separation.
Next day Harold and Disco, with feelings of strong revulsion, almost of shame, fell into the ranks of the slave-gang, and for many days thereafter marched through the land in company with Marizano and his band of lawless villains.
Marizano usually walked some distance ahead of the main body with a few trusty comrades. Our adventurers, with their two followers, came next in order of march, the gang of slaves in single file followed, and the armed men brought up the rear. It was necessarily a very long line, and at a distance resembled some hideous reptile crawling slowly and tortuously through the fair fields and plains of Africa.
At first there were no stragglers, for the slaves were as yet, with few exceptions, strong and vigorous. These exceptions, and the lazy, were easily kept in the line by means of rope and chain, as well as the rod and lash.
Harold and Disco studiously avoided their leader during the march. Marizano fell in with their humour and left them to themselves. At nights they made their own fire and cooked their own supper, as far removed from the slave camp as was consistent with safety, for they could not bear to witness the sufferings of the slaves, or to look upon their captors. Even the food that they were constrained to eat appeared to have a tendency to choke them, and altogether their situation became so terrible that they several times almost formed the desperate resolution of leaving the party and trying to reach the coast by themselves as they best might, but the utter madness and hopelessness of such a project soon forced itself on their minds, and insured its being finally abandoned.
One morning Marizano threw off his usual reserve, and, approaching the white men, told them that in two hours they would reach the lake where his employer was encamped.
“And who is your master?” asked Harold.
“A black-faced or yellow-faced blackguard like himself, I doubt not,” growled Disco.
Antonio put Harold’s question without Disco’s comment, and Marizano replied that his master was an Arab trader, and added that he would push on in advance of the party and inform him of their approach.
Soon afterwards the lake was reached. A large dhow was in readiness, the gang was embarked and ferried across to a place where several rude buildings and barracoons, with a few tents, indicated that it was one of the inland headquarters of the trade in Black Ivory.
The moment our travellers landed Marizano led them to one of the nearest buildings, and introduced them to his master.
“Yoosoof!” exclaimed Disco in a shout of astonishment.
It would have been a difficult question to have decided which of the three faces displayed the most extreme surprise. Perhaps Disco’s would have been awarded the palm, but Yoosoof was undoubtedly the first to regain his self-possession.
“You be surprised,” he said, in hisverybroken English, while his pale-yellow visage resumed its placid gravity of expression.
“Undoubtedly we are,” said Harold.
“Bu’stin’!” exclaimed Disco.
“You would be not so mush surprised,—did you know dat I comes to here every year, an’ dat Engleesh consul ask me for ’quire about you.”
“If that be so, how comes it thatyouwere surprised to see us?” asked Harold.
“’Cause why, I only knows dat some white mans be loss theirselfs—not knowswhatmans—not knows it wasyou.”
“Well now,” cried Disco, unable to restrain himself as he turned to Harold, “did ever two unfortnits meet wi’ sitch luck? Here have we bin’ obliged for days to keep company with the greatest Portugee villian in the country, an’ now we’re needcessitated to be under a obligation to the greatest Arab scoundrel in Afriky.”
The scoundrel in question smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Yoosoof,” cried Disco, clenching his fist and looking full in the trader’s eyes, “when I last saw yer ugly face, I vowed that if ever I seed it again I’d leave my mark on it pretty deep, I did; and now I does see it again, but I haven’t the moral courage to touch sitch a poor, pitiful, shrivelled-up package o’ bones an’ half-tanned leather. Moreover, I’m goin’ to be indebted to ’ee! Ha! ha!” (he laughed bitterly, and with a dash of wild humour in the tone), “to travel under yer care, an’ eat yer accursed bread, and—and—oh! there ain’t no sitch thing as shame left in my corpus. I’m a low mean-spirited boastful idiot, that’s wotIam, an’ I don’t care the fag-end of a hunk o’ gingerbread who knows it.”
After this explosion the sorely tried mariner brought his right hand down on his thigh with a tremendous crack, turned about and walked away to cool himself.
Chapter Twenty One.Progress of the Slave-Run—The Deadly Swamp, and the Unexpected Rescue.We will now leap over a short period of time—about two or three weeks—during which the sable procession had been winding its weary way over hill and dale, plain and swamp.During that comparatively brief period, Harold and Disco had seen so much cruelty and suffering that they both felt a strange tendency to believe that the whole must be the wild imaginings of a horrible dream. Perhaps weakness, resulting from illness, might have had something to do with this peculiar feeling of unbelief, for both had been subject to a second, though slight, attack of fever. Nevertheless, coupled with their scepticism was a contradictory and dreadful certainty that they were not dreaming, but that what they witnessed was absolute verity.It is probable that if they had been in their ordinary health and vigour they would have made a violent attempt to rescue the slaves, even at the cost of their own lives. But severe and prolonged illness often unhinges the mind as well as the body, and renders the spirit all but impotent.One sultry evening the sad procession came to a long stretch of swamp, and prepared to cross it. Although already thinned by death, the slave-gang was large. It numbered several hundreds, and was led by Marizano; Yoosoof having started some days in advance in charge of a similar gang.Harold and Disco were by that time in the habit of walking together in front of the gang, chiefly for the purpose of avoiding the sight of cruelties and woes which they were powerless to prevent or assuage. On reaching the edge of the swamp, however, they felt so utterly wearied and dis-spirited that they sat down on a bank to rest, intending to let the slave-gang go into the swamp before them and then follow in rear. Antonio and Jumbo also remained with them.“You should go on in front,” said Marizano significantly, on observing their intention.“Tell him we’ll remain where we are,” said Disco sternly to Antonio.Marizano shrugged his shoulders and left them.The leading men of the slave-gang were ordered to advance, as soon as the armed guard had commenced the toilsome march over ground into which they sank knee-deep at every step.The first man of the gang hesitated and heaved a deep sigh as though his heart failed him at the prospect—and well it might, for, although young, he was not robust, and over-driving, coupled with the weight and the chafing of the goree, had worn him to a skeleton.It was not the policy of the slave-traders to take much care of their Black Ivory. They procured it so cheaply that it was easier and more profitable to lose or cast away some of it, than to put off time in resting and recruiting the weak.The moment it was observed, therefore, that the leading man hesitated, one of the drivers gave him a slash across his naked back with a heavy whip which at once drew blood. Poor wretch; he could ill bear further loss of the precious stream of life, for it had already been deeply drained from him by the slave-stick. The chafing of that instrument of torture had not only worn the skin off his shoulders, but had cut into the quivering flesh, so that blood constantly dropped in small quantities from it.No cry burst from the man’s lips on receiving the cruel blow, but he turned his eyes on his captors with a look that seemed to implore for mercy. As well might he have looked for mercy at the hands of Satan. The lash again fell on him with stinging force. He made a feeble effort to advance, staggered, and fell to the ground, dragging down the man to whom he was coupled with such violence as almost to break his neck. The lash was again about to be applied to make him rise, but Disco and Harold rose simultaneously and rushed at the driver, with what intent they scarcely knew; but four armed half-castes stepped between them and the slave.“You had better not interfere,” said Marizano, who stood close by.“Out of the way!” cried Harold fiercely, in the strength of his passion hurling aside the man who opposed him.“You shan’t give him another cut,” said Disco between his teeth, as he seized the driver by the throat.“We don’t intend to do so,” said Marizano coolly, while the driver released himself from poor Disco’s weakened grasp, “he won’t need any more.”The Englishmen required no explanation of these words. A glance told them that the man was dying.“Cut him out,” said Marizano.One of his men immediately brought a saw and cut the fork of the stick which still held the living to the dying man, and which, being riveted on them, could not otherwise be removed.Harold and Disco lifted him up as soon as he was free, and carrying him a short distance aside to a soft part of the bank, laid him gently down.The dying slave looked as if he were surprised at such unwonted tenderness. There was even a slight smile on his lips for a few moments, but it quickly passed away with the fast ebbing tide of life.“Go fetch some water,” said Harold. “His lips are dry.”Disco rose and ran to fill a small cocoa-nut-shell which he carried at his girdle as a drinking-cup. Returning with it he moistened the man’s lips and poured a little of the cool water on the raw sores on each side of his neck.They were so much engrossed with their occupation that neither of them observed that the slave-gang had commenced to pass through the swamp, until the sharp cry of a child drew their attention to it for a moment; but, knowing that they could do no good, they endeavoured to shut their eyes and ears to everything save the duty they had in hand.By degrees the greater part of the long line had got into the swamp and were slowly toiling through it under the stimulus of the lash. Some, like the poor fellow who first fell, had sunk under their accumulated trials, and after a fruitless effort on the part of the slavers to drive them forward, had been kicked aside into the jungle, there to die, or to be torn in pieces by that ever-watchful scavenger of the wilderness, the hyena. These were chiefly women, who having become mothers not long before were unable to carry their infants and keep up with the gang. Others, under the intense dread of flagellation, made the attempt, and staggered on a short distance, only to fall and be left behind in the pestilential swamp, where rank reeds and grass closed over them and formed a ready grave.The difficulties of the swamp were, however, felt most severely by the children, who, from little creatures of not much more than five years of age to well-grown boys and girls, were mingled with and chained to the adults along the line. Their comparatively short legs were not well adapted for such ground, and not a few of them perished there; but although the losses here were terribly numerous in one sense, they after all bore but a small proportion to those whose native vigour carried them through in safety.Among the men there were some whose strength of frame and fierce expression indicated untameable spirits—men who might have been, probably were, heroes among their fellows. It was for men of this stamp that thegoree, or slave-stick, had been invented, and most effectually did that instrument serve its purpose. Samson himself would have been a mere child in it.There were men in the gang quite as bold, if not as strong, as Samson. One of these, a very tall and powerful negro, on drawing near to the place where Marizano stood superintending the passage, turned suddenly aside, and, although coupled by the neck to a fellow-slave, and securely bound at the wrists with a cord, which was evidently cutting into his swelled flesh, made a desperate kick at the half-caste leader.Although the slave failed to reach him, Marizano was so enraged that he drew a hatchet from his belt and instantly dashed out the man’s brains. He fell dead without even a groan. Terrified by this, the rest passed on more rapidly, and there was no further check till a woman in the line, with an infant on her back, stumbled, and, falling down, appeared unable to rise.“Get up!” shouted Marizano, whose rage had rather been increased than abated by the murder he had just committed.The woman rose and attempted to advance, but seemed ready to fall again. Seeing this, Marizano plucked the infant from her back, dashed it against a tree, and flung its quivering body into the jungle, while a terrible application of the lash sent the mother shrieking into the swamp. (See Livingstone’sZambesi and its Tributaries, page 857; and for a record of cruelties too horrible to be set down in a book like this, we refer the reader to McLeod’sTravels in Eastern Africa, volume two page 26. Also to the Appendix of Captain Sulivan’sDhow-Chasing in Zanzibar Waters, which contains copious and interesting extracts from evidence taken before the Select Committee of the House of Commons.)Harold and Disco did not witness this, though they heard the shriek of despair, for at the moment the negro they were tending was breathing his last. When his eyes had closed and the spirit had been set free, they rose, and, purposely refraining from looking back, hurried away from the dreadful scene, intending to plunge into the swamp at some distance from the place, and push on until they should regain the head of the column.“Better if we’d never fallen behind, sir,” said Disco, in a deep, tremulous voice.“True,” replied Harold. “We should have been spared these sights, and the pain of knowing that we cannot prevent this appalling misery and cruelty.”“But surely it is to be preventedsomehow,” cried Disco, almost fiercely. “Many a war that has cost mints o’ money has been carried on for causes that ain’t worth mentionin’ in the same breath withthis!”As Harold knew not what to say, and was toiling knee-deep in the swamp at the moment he made no reply.After marching about half an hour he stopped abruptly and said, with a heavy sigh,—“I hope we haven’t missed our way?”“Hope not sir, but it looks like as if we had.”“I’ve bin so took up thinkin’ o’ that accursed traffic in human bein’s that I’ve lost my reckonin’. Howsever, we can’t be far out, an’, with the sun to guide us, we’ll—”He was stopped by a loud halloo in the woods, on the belt of the swamp.It was repeated in a few seconds, and Antonio, who, with Jumbo, had followed his master, cried in an excited tone—“Me knows dat sound!”“Wot may it be, Tony?” asked Disco.There was neither time nor need for an answer, for at that moment a ringing cry, something like a bad imitation of a British cheer, was heard, and a band of men sprang out of the woods and ran at full speed towards our Englishmen.“Why, Zombo!” exclaimed Disco, wildly.“Oliveira!” cried Harold.“Masiko! Songolo!” shouted Antonio and Jumbo.“An’ José, Nakoda, Chimbolo, Mabruki!—the whole bun’ of ’em,” cried Disco, as one after another these worthies emerged from the wood and rushed in a state of frantic excitement towards their friends—“Hooray!”“Hooroo-hay!” replied the runners.In another minute our adventurous party of travellers was re-united, and for some time nothing but wild excitement, congratulations, queries that got no replies, and replies that ran tilt at irrelevant queries, with confusion worse confounded by explosions of unbounded and irrepressible laughter not unmingled with tears, was the order of the hour.“But wat! yoos ill?” cried Zombo suddenly, looking into Disco’s face with an anxious expression.“Well, I ain’t ’xac’ly ill, nor I ain’t ’xac’ly well neither, but I’m hearty all the same, and werry glad to see your black face, Zombo.”“Ho! hooroo-hay! so’s me for see you,” cried the excitable Zombo; “but come, not good for talkee in de knees to watter. Fall in boy, ho! sholler ’ums—queek mash!”That Zombo had assumed command of his party was made evident by the pat way in which he trolled off the words of command formerly taught to him by Harold, as well as by the prompt obedience that was accorded to his orders. He led the party out of the swamp, and, on reaching a dry spot, halted, in order to make further inquiries and answer questions.“How did you find us, Zombo?” asked Harold, throwing himself wearily on the ground.“Yoosill,” said Zombo, holding up a finger by way of rebuke.“So I am, though not so ill as I look. But come, answer me. How came you to discover us? You could not have found us by mere chance in this wilderness?”“Chanz; wat am chanz?” asked the Makololo.There was some difficulty in getting Antonio to explain the word, from the circumstance of himself being ignorant of it, therefore Harold put the question in a more direct form.“Oh! ve comes here look for yoo, ’cause peepils d’reck ’ums—show de way. Ve’s been veeks, monts, oh!dayslook for yoo. Travil far—g’rong road—turin bak—try agin—fin’ yoo now—hooroo-hay!”“You may say that, indeed. I’d have it in my heart,” said Disco, “to give three good rousin’ British cheers if it warn’t for the thoughts o’ that black-hearted villain, Marizano, an’ his poor, miserable slaves.”“Marizano!” shouted Chimbolo, glaring at Harold.“Marizano!” echoed Zombo, glaring at Disco.Harold now explained to his friends that the slave-hunter was close at hand—a piece of news which visibly excited them,—and described the cruelties of which he had recently been a witness. Zombo showed his teeth like a savage mastiff, and grasped his musket as though he longed to use it, but he uttered no word until the narrative reached that point in which the death of the poor captive was described. Then he suddenly started forward and said something to his followers in the native tongue, which caused each to fling down the small bundle that was strapped to his shoulders.“Yoo stop here,” he cried, earnestly, as he turned to Harold and Disco. “Ve’s com bak soon. Ho! boys, sholler ’ums! queek mash!”No trained band of Britons ever obeyed with more ready alacrity. No attention was paid to Harold’s questions. The “queek mash” carried them out of sight in a few minutes, and when the Englishmen, who had run after them a few paces, halted, under the conviction that in their weak condition they might as well endeavour to keep up with race-horses as with their old friends, they found that Antonio alone remained to keep them company.“Where’s Jumbo?” inquired Harold.“Gon’ ’way wid oders,” replied the interpreter.Examining the bundles of their friends, they found that their contents were powder, ball, and food. It was therefore resolved that a fire should be kindled, and food prepared, to be ready for their friends on their return.“I’m not so sure about their return,” said Harold gravely. “They will have to fight against fearful odds if they find the slavers. Foolish fellows; I wish they had not rushed away so madly without consulting us.”The day passed; night came and passed also, and another day dawned, but there was no appearance of Zombo and his men, until the sun had been up for some hours. Then they came back, wending their way slowly—very slowly—through the woods, with the whole of the slave-gang, men, women, and children, at their heels!“Where is Marizano?” inquired Harold, almost breathless with surprise.“Dead!” said Zombo.“Dead?”“Ay, dead, couldn’t be deader.”“And his armed followers?”“Dead, too—some ob ums. Ve got at um in de night. Shotted Marizano all to hatoms. Shotted mos’ ob um follerers too. De res’ all scatter like leaves in de wind. Me giv’ up now,” added Zombo, handing his musket to Harold. “Boys! orrer ums! mees Capitin not no more. Now, Capitin Harol’, yoos once more look afer us, an’ take care ob all ums peepil.”Having thus demitted his charge, the faithful Zombo stepped back and left our hero in the unenviable position of a half broken-down man with the responsibility of conducting an expedition, and disposing of a large gang of slaves in some unknown part of equatorial Africa!Leaving him there, we will proceed at once to the coast and follow, for a time, the fortunes of that archvillain, Yoosoof.
We will now leap over a short period of time—about two or three weeks—during which the sable procession had been winding its weary way over hill and dale, plain and swamp.
During that comparatively brief period, Harold and Disco had seen so much cruelty and suffering that they both felt a strange tendency to believe that the whole must be the wild imaginings of a horrible dream. Perhaps weakness, resulting from illness, might have had something to do with this peculiar feeling of unbelief, for both had been subject to a second, though slight, attack of fever. Nevertheless, coupled with their scepticism was a contradictory and dreadful certainty that they were not dreaming, but that what they witnessed was absolute verity.
It is probable that if they had been in their ordinary health and vigour they would have made a violent attempt to rescue the slaves, even at the cost of their own lives. But severe and prolonged illness often unhinges the mind as well as the body, and renders the spirit all but impotent.
One sultry evening the sad procession came to a long stretch of swamp, and prepared to cross it. Although already thinned by death, the slave-gang was large. It numbered several hundreds, and was led by Marizano; Yoosoof having started some days in advance in charge of a similar gang.
Harold and Disco were by that time in the habit of walking together in front of the gang, chiefly for the purpose of avoiding the sight of cruelties and woes which they were powerless to prevent or assuage. On reaching the edge of the swamp, however, they felt so utterly wearied and dis-spirited that they sat down on a bank to rest, intending to let the slave-gang go into the swamp before them and then follow in rear. Antonio and Jumbo also remained with them.
“You should go on in front,” said Marizano significantly, on observing their intention.
“Tell him we’ll remain where we are,” said Disco sternly to Antonio.
Marizano shrugged his shoulders and left them.
The leading men of the slave-gang were ordered to advance, as soon as the armed guard had commenced the toilsome march over ground into which they sank knee-deep at every step.
The first man of the gang hesitated and heaved a deep sigh as though his heart failed him at the prospect—and well it might, for, although young, he was not robust, and over-driving, coupled with the weight and the chafing of the goree, had worn him to a skeleton.
It was not the policy of the slave-traders to take much care of their Black Ivory. They procured it so cheaply that it was easier and more profitable to lose or cast away some of it, than to put off time in resting and recruiting the weak.
The moment it was observed, therefore, that the leading man hesitated, one of the drivers gave him a slash across his naked back with a heavy whip which at once drew blood. Poor wretch; he could ill bear further loss of the precious stream of life, for it had already been deeply drained from him by the slave-stick. The chafing of that instrument of torture had not only worn the skin off his shoulders, but had cut into the quivering flesh, so that blood constantly dropped in small quantities from it.
No cry burst from the man’s lips on receiving the cruel blow, but he turned his eyes on his captors with a look that seemed to implore for mercy. As well might he have looked for mercy at the hands of Satan. The lash again fell on him with stinging force. He made a feeble effort to advance, staggered, and fell to the ground, dragging down the man to whom he was coupled with such violence as almost to break his neck. The lash was again about to be applied to make him rise, but Disco and Harold rose simultaneously and rushed at the driver, with what intent they scarcely knew; but four armed half-castes stepped between them and the slave.
“You had better not interfere,” said Marizano, who stood close by.
“Out of the way!” cried Harold fiercely, in the strength of his passion hurling aside the man who opposed him.
“You shan’t give him another cut,” said Disco between his teeth, as he seized the driver by the throat.
“We don’t intend to do so,” said Marizano coolly, while the driver released himself from poor Disco’s weakened grasp, “he won’t need any more.”
The Englishmen required no explanation of these words. A glance told them that the man was dying.
“Cut him out,” said Marizano.
One of his men immediately brought a saw and cut the fork of the stick which still held the living to the dying man, and which, being riveted on them, could not otherwise be removed.
Harold and Disco lifted him up as soon as he was free, and carrying him a short distance aside to a soft part of the bank, laid him gently down.
The dying slave looked as if he were surprised at such unwonted tenderness. There was even a slight smile on his lips for a few moments, but it quickly passed away with the fast ebbing tide of life.
“Go fetch some water,” said Harold. “His lips are dry.”
Disco rose and ran to fill a small cocoa-nut-shell which he carried at his girdle as a drinking-cup. Returning with it he moistened the man’s lips and poured a little of the cool water on the raw sores on each side of his neck.
They were so much engrossed with their occupation that neither of them observed that the slave-gang had commenced to pass through the swamp, until the sharp cry of a child drew their attention to it for a moment; but, knowing that they could do no good, they endeavoured to shut their eyes and ears to everything save the duty they had in hand.
By degrees the greater part of the long line had got into the swamp and were slowly toiling through it under the stimulus of the lash. Some, like the poor fellow who first fell, had sunk under their accumulated trials, and after a fruitless effort on the part of the slavers to drive them forward, had been kicked aside into the jungle, there to die, or to be torn in pieces by that ever-watchful scavenger of the wilderness, the hyena. These were chiefly women, who having become mothers not long before were unable to carry their infants and keep up with the gang. Others, under the intense dread of flagellation, made the attempt, and staggered on a short distance, only to fall and be left behind in the pestilential swamp, where rank reeds and grass closed over them and formed a ready grave.
The difficulties of the swamp were, however, felt most severely by the children, who, from little creatures of not much more than five years of age to well-grown boys and girls, were mingled with and chained to the adults along the line. Their comparatively short legs were not well adapted for such ground, and not a few of them perished there; but although the losses here were terribly numerous in one sense, they after all bore but a small proportion to those whose native vigour carried them through in safety.
Among the men there were some whose strength of frame and fierce expression indicated untameable spirits—men who might have been, probably were, heroes among their fellows. It was for men of this stamp that thegoree, or slave-stick, had been invented, and most effectually did that instrument serve its purpose. Samson himself would have been a mere child in it.
There were men in the gang quite as bold, if not as strong, as Samson. One of these, a very tall and powerful negro, on drawing near to the place where Marizano stood superintending the passage, turned suddenly aside, and, although coupled by the neck to a fellow-slave, and securely bound at the wrists with a cord, which was evidently cutting into his swelled flesh, made a desperate kick at the half-caste leader.
Although the slave failed to reach him, Marizano was so enraged that he drew a hatchet from his belt and instantly dashed out the man’s brains. He fell dead without even a groan. Terrified by this, the rest passed on more rapidly, and there was no further check till a woman in the line, with an infant on her back, stumbled, and, falling down, appeared unable to rise.
“Get up!” shouted Marizano, whose rage had rather been increased than abated by the murder he had just committed.
The woman rose and attempted to advance, but seemed ready to fall again. Seeing this, Marizano plucked the infant from her back, dashed it against a tree, and flung its quivering body into the jungle, while a terrible application of the lash sent the mother shrieking into the swamp. (See Livingstone’sZambesi and its Tributaries, page 857; and for a record of cruelties too horrible to be set down in a book like this, we refer the reader to McLeod’sTravels in Eastern Africa, volume two page 26. Also to the Appendix of Captain Sulivan’sDhow-Chasing in Zanzibar Waters, which contains copious and interesting extracts from evidence taken before the Select Committee of the House of Commons.)
Harold and Disco did not witness this, though they heard the shriek of despair, for at the moment the negro they were tending was breathing his last. When his eyes had closed and the spirit had been set free, they rose, and, purposely refraining from looking back, hurried away from the dreadful scene, intending to plunge into the swamp at some distance from the place, and push on until they should regain the head of the column.
“Better if we’d never fallen behind, sir,” said Disco, in a deep, tremulous voice.
“True,” replied Harold. “We should have been spared these sights, and the pain of knowing that we cannot prevent this appalling misery and cruelty.”
“But surely it is to be preventedsomehow,” cried Disco, almost fiercely. “Many a war that has cost mints o’ money has been carried on for causes that ain’t worth mentionin’ in the same breath withthis!”
As Harold knew not what to say, and was toiling knee-deep in the swamp at the moment he made no reply.
After marching about half an hour he stopped abruptly and said, with a heavy sigh,—“I hope we haven’t missed our way?”
“Hope not sir, but it looks like as if we had.”
“I’ve bin so took up thinkin’ o’ that accursed traffic in human bein’s that I’ve lost my reckonin’. Howsever, we can’t be far out, an’, with the sun to guide us, we’ll—”
He was stopped by a loud halloo in the woods, on the belt of the swamp.
It was repeated in a few seconds, and Antonio, who, with Jumbo, had followed his master, cried in an excited tone—
“Me knows dat sound!”
“Wot may it be, Tony?” asked Disco.
There was neither time nor need for an answer, for at that moment a ringing cry, something like a bad imitation of a British cheer, was heard, and a band of men sprang out of the woods and ran at full speed towards our Englishmen.
“Why, Zombo!” exclaimed Disco, wildly.
“Oliveira!” cried Harold.
“Masiko! Songolo!” shouted Antonio and Jumbo.
“An’ José, Nakoda, Chimbolo, Mabruki!—the whole bun’ of ’em,” cried Disco, as one after another these worthies emerged from the wood and rushed in a state of frantic excitement towards their friends—“Hooray!”
“Hooroo-hay!” replied the runners.
In another minute our adventurous party of travellers was re-united, and for some time nothing but wild excitement, congratulations, queries that got no replies, and replies that ran tilt at irrelevant queries, with confusion worse confounded by explosions of unbounded and irrepressible laughter not unmingled with tears, was the order of the hour.
“But wat! yoos ill?” cried Zombo suddenly, looking into Disco’s face with an anxious expression.
“Well, I ain’t ’xac’ly ill, nor I ain’t ’xac’ly well neither, but I’m hearty all the same, and werry glad to see your black face, Zombo.”
“Ho! hooroo-hay! so’s me for see you,” cried the excitable Zombo; “but come, not good for talkee in de knees to watter. Fall in boy, ho! sholler ’ums—queek mash!”
That Zombo had assumed command of his party was made evident by the pat way in which he trolled off the words of command formerly taught to him by Harold, as well as by the prompt obedience that was accorded to his orders. He led the party out of the swamp, and, on reaching a dry spot, halted, in order to make further inquiries and answer questions.
“How did you find us, Zombo?” asked Harold, throwing himself wearily on the ground.
“Yoosill,” said Zombo, holding up a finger by way of rebuke.
“So I am, though not so ill as I look. But come, answer me. How came you to discover us? You could not have found us by mere chance in this wilderness?”
“Chanz; wat am chanz?” asked the Makololo.
There was some difficulty in getting Antonio to explain the word, from the circumstance of himself being ignorant of it, therefore Harold put the question in a more direct form.
“Oh! ve comes here look for yoo, ’cause peepils d’reck ’ums—show de way. Ve’s been veeks, monts, oh!dayslook for yoo. Travil far—g’rong road—turin bak—try agin—fin’ yoo now—hooroo-hay!”
“You may say that, indeed. I’d have it in my heart,” said Disco, “to give three good rousin’ British cheers if it warn’t for the thoughts o’ that black-hearted villain, Marizano, an’ his poor, miserable slaves.”
“Marizano!” shouted Chimbolo, glaring at Harold.
“Marizano!” echoed Zombo, glaring at Disco.
Harold now explained to his friends that the slave-hunter was close at hand—a piece of news which visibly excited them,—and described the cruelties of which he had recently been a witness. Zombo showed his teeth like a savage mastiff, and grasped his musket as though he longed to use it, but he uttered no word until the narrative reached that point in which the death of the poor captive was described. Then he suddenly started forward and said something to his followers in the native tongue, which caused each to fling down the small bundle that was strapped to his shoulders.
“Yoo stop here,” he cried, earnestly, as he turned to Harold and Disco. “Ve’s com bak soon. Ho! boys, sholler ’ums! queek mash!”
No trained band of Britons ever obeyed with more ready alacrity. No attention was paid to Harold’s questions. The “queek mash” carried them out of sight in a few minutes, and when the Englishmen, who had run after them a few paces, halted, under the conviction that in their weak condition they might as well endeavour to keep up with race-horses as with their old friends, they found that Antonio alone remained to keep them company.
“Where’s Jumbo?” inquired Harold.
“Gon’ ’way wid oders,” replied the interpreter.
Examining the bundles of their friends, they found that their contents were powder, ball, and food. It was therefore resolved that a fire should be kindled, and food prepared, to be ready for their friends on their return.
“I’m not so sure about their return,” said Harold gravely. “They will have to fight against fearful odds if they find the slavers. Foolish fellows; I wish they had not rushed away so madly without consulting us.”
The day passed; night came and passed also, and another day dawned, but there was no appearance of Zombo and his men, until the sun had been up for some hours. Then they came back, wending their way slowly—very slowly—through the woods, with the whole of the slave-gang, men, women, and children, at their heels!
“Where is Marizano?” inquired Harold, almost breathless with surprise.
“Dead!” said Zombo.
“Dead?”
“Ay, dead, couldn’t be deader.”
“And his armed followers?”
“Dead, too—some ob ums. Ve got at um in de night. Shotted Marizano all to hatoms. Shotted mos’ ob um follerers too. De res’ all scatter like leaves in de wind. Me giv’ up now,” added Zombo, handing his musket to Harold. “Boys! orrer ums! mees Capitin not no more. Now, Capitin Harol’, yoos once more look afer us, an’ take care ob all ums peepil.”
Having thus demitted his charge, the faithful Zombo stepped back and left our hero in the unenviable position of a half broken-down man with the responsibility of conducting an expedition, and disposing of a large gang of slaves in some unknown part of equatorial Africa!
Leaving him there, we will proceed at once to the coast and follow, for a time, the fortunes of that archvillain, Yoosoof.