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Samba: A Story of the Rubber Slaves of the Congo

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Title: Samba: A Story of the Rubber Slaves of the Congo

Author: Herbert Strang

Illustrator: W. Rainey


        
Release date: March 5, 2012 [eBook #39061]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39061

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMBA: A STORY OF THE RUBBER SLAVES OF THE CONGO ***




Produced by Al Haines










[Illustration: Cover art]





[Frontispiece: Samba and the crocodile]






SAMBA

A Story of the Rubber Slaves

of the Congo


By

HERBERT STRANG

_Author of "One of Clive's Heroes," "Kobo," "Brown of Moukden," "Tom
Burnaby," etc., etc_



ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM RAINEY, R.I.



"Botofe bo le iwa!--Rubber is Death!"--_Congo Proverb_.



_SECOND EDITION_




LONDON

HENRY FROWDE ------ HODDER & STOUGHTON

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS ------ WARWICK SQUARE, E.C.

1908




Copyright, 1906, by the BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY,

in the United States of America.




_Butler and Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London_




PREFACE

Nearly a generation has passed since King Leopold was entrusted by the
great Powers with the sovereignty of the Congo Free State.  The
conscience of Christendom had been shocked by the stories, brought back
by Stanley and other travellers, of Arab slave raids on the Upper
Congo; King Leopold, coming forward with the strongest assurances of
philanthropic motive, was welcomed as the champion of the negro, who
should bring peace and the highest blessings of civilization to the
vast territory thus placed under his sway.  For many succeeding years
it was supposed that this work of deliverance, of regeneration, was
being prosecuted with all diligence; the power of the slave traders was
broken, towns were built, roads made, railways opened--none of the
outward signs of material progress were wanting.

But of late the civilized world has been horrified to find that this
imposing structure has been cemented with the life blood of the Congo
races; that the material improvements to which the administrators of
Congoland can point, have been purchased by an appalling amount of
suffering inflicted upon the hapless negroes.  The collection of
rubber, on which the whole fabric of Congo finance rests, involves a
disregard of liberty, an indifference to suffering, a destruction of
human life, almost inconceivable.  Those who best know the country
estimate that the population is annually reduced, under King Leopold's
rule, by at least a hundred thousand.  No great war, no famine, no
pestilence in the world's history has been so merciless a scourge as
civilization in Congoland.

Yet owing to mutual jealousies, the Powers are slow to take action, and
while they hesitate to intervene, the population of this great region,
nearly as large as Europe, is fast disappearing.

It has been my aim in this book to show, within necessary limitations,
what the effect of the white man's rule has been.

If any reader should be tempted to imagine that the picture here drawn
is overcoloured, I would commend him to the publications issued by Mr.
E. D. Morel and his co-workers of the Congo Reform Association, with
every confidence that the cause of the Congo native will thereby gain a
new adherent.

I must express my very great thanks to the Rev. J. H. Harris and Mrs.
Harris, who have spent several years on the Upper Congo, for their
kindness in reading the manuscript and revising the proofs of this
book, and for many most helpful suggestions and criticisms.

HERBERT STRANG.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

The Coming of the White Man


CHAPTER II

"Rubber is Death"


CHAPTER III

Monsieur Elbel


CHAPTER IV

Night Alarms


CHAPTER V

The Order of Merit


CHAPTER VI

Samba is Missing


CHAPTER VII

Blood Brothers


CHAPTER VIII

Jack in Command


CHAPTER IX

Samba Meets the Little Men


CHAPTER X

A Trip with a Crocodile


CHAPTER XI

Bula Matadi Comes to Ilola


CHAPTER XII

Samba comes Back


CHAPTER XIII

"Honour thy Father and thy Mother"


CHAPTER XIV

Lokolobolo's First Fight


CHAPTER XV

A Revolt at Ilola


CHAPTER XVI

The House by the Water


CHAPTER XVII

A Buffalo Hunt


CHAPTER XVIII

Elbel's Barrels


CHAPTER XIX

Breaking the Blockade


CHAPTER XX

David and Goliath


CHAPTER XXI

A Dash and all Together


CHAPTER XXII

A Message and a Meeting


CHAPTER XXIII

Elbel Squares Accounts


CHAPTER XXIV

A Solemn Charge


CHAPTER XXV

A Break for Liberty


CHAPTER XXVI

Turning the Tables


CHAPTER XXVII

The Return of Lokolobolo


CHAPTER XXVIII

The Chicotte


Chapter XXIX

Reaping the Whirlwind


Chapter XXX

Sinews of War


Chapter XXXI

Summons and Surrender


Chapter XXXII

The Dawn of Freedom


Chapter XXXIII

Conclusion




ILLUSTRATIONS


PLATE

   I Samba and the Crocodile . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

  II The Finding of Samba

 III A Midnight Encounter

  IV Jack Turns the Tables

   V Jack Rushes Elbel's Camp

  VI Samba Rescued from the Burning Hut

Ilombekabasi and surrounding Country, showing Elbel's first
  camp in foreground

Ilombekabasi and surrounding country, showing the diverted
  stream and Elbel's third camp




"Every boy and youth is, in his mind and sentiments, a knight, and
essentially a son of chivalry.  Nature is fine in him....  As long as
there have been, or shall be, young men to grow up to maturity; and
until all youthful life shall be dead, and its source withered for
ever; so long must there have been, and must there continue to be, the
spirit of noble chivalry.  To understand therefore this first and, as
it were, natural chivalry, we have only to observe the features of the
youthful age, of which examples surround us."

EDWARD FITZGERALD.




CHAPTER I

The Coming of the White Man

Samba lay face downwards upon the yellow sand, amid which his body
shone in the sunlight like polished ebony.  Behind, the rising bank was
thick with trees and shrubs ablaze with colour, overspread with the
delicate tracery of lianas and, creeping plants.  Here was a spot of
red, there a dash of orange; at intervals the pale yellow flowers of
climbing gourds and the mauve blossoms of convolvuli peeped from the
wall of vivid green.  Tiny rills made music as they trickled through
the foliage; and near at hand was a path trodden by herds of antelopes
as they came to drink.

Before, rolled the brown waters of a broad river, rippling over
whitened rocks in the bed, or over the gnarled limbs of fallen trees.
Here, on a sandy islet, flashed the scarlet and blue of little
kingfishers, contrasting with the sober grey of the bittern, or the
black and white of the vulture.  A giant heron perched on a low
overhanging branch, gazing solemnly at the ibis standing solitary by a
distant bush.

On a smooth spot at Samba's right sported innumerable butterflies, blue
and green and crimson, amid bees and dragon-flies lazily basking in the
heat.  Samba had but to stretch out his hand to make prisoners of what
he chose.  But Samba's attention was already occupied.  Looking over
the brink into the placid water, his eye was caught by a small round
soft object lying motionless on the surface.  A tiny crocodile, only a
few inches long, darted from beneath the leaf of a water-lily, in
pursuit of a tinier fish.  The round object suddenly contracted: there
was a ripple on the water, and the baby crocodile found itself in the
grasp of a droll little proboscis that shot out, gripped its hapless
prey, and drew it beneath the surface.  Samba smiled: he knew that just
below lay a trionyx, the owner of that little nostrilled proboscis; he
wasted no sympathy on the baby crocodile, which would never grow big to
snap up little negro boys at the waterside.

All around was silence, save for the hum of insects and the gentle
lapping of the water on the sand.  Then a slight sound caught Samba's
ear, and turning, he saw a handsome young lizard, pied with yellow and
greenish black, flashing along in chase of a fat frog which it had
marked for its own.  A swish of its flexible tail, a snap of its savage
teeth, and ranunculus disappeared--a choice morsel for breakfast.

Such scenes as these gave Samba constant entertainment.  He would often
wander alone from his village, as he had done to-day, carrying his
little broad-bladed dagger in case a snake should cross his path, and
spend hours in the forest or by the river bank, listening to the
chatter of the monkeys and the screams of the parrots, watching the
little stingless bees at their work, mocking the hollow note of the
drumbird or the wild pigeon's doleful call, studying the busy doings of
the multitudinous ants.  There was not a bird or beast or insect within
range of his village with whose ways Samba was not familiar.

The trionyx steered himself down stream; the lizard, swishing his
pliant tail, went off in search of other prey; and Samba's bright eyes
followed the mazy movements of the myriad flies sporting on the surface
of the sunlit water, and the shining fish darting this way and that in
the clear depths.  Suddenly a scream of the fishing eagle caused him to
glance up.  Then a shout made him spring to his feet and look
wonderingly in the direction of the sound.  He knew no fear.  His lithe
dusky body, bare save for a scrap of cloth about his loins and a string
of cowries round his neck, stood erect and alert; his keen intelligent
eyes expressed nothing but surprise and curiosity.  Again came the hail.

"W'onkoe!"[1]

"Em'one!"[2] called Samba in reply.

A boat was being slowly paddled up the stream.  Ten stalwart Baenga
stood at the paddles, bending forward as they made their strokes.  Two
other negroes squatted in the forepart of the boat.  Amidships sat
another figure, the sight of which gave Samba a delightful thrill of
expectation.  It was a white man, with fair hair and beard, clad all in
white.  Could this be Bula Matadi, Samba wondered, the white man whom
his grandfather, the chief Mirambo, had seen long ago at Wanganga?  He
waited, standing still as a rock.  The boat drew nearer, a few more
strokes of the paddle and it came under the bank.  The white man leapt
ashore, followed by the two men who had been seated.  They were big
fierce-looking fellows.  Each carried a long strangely-shaped stick
with a hollow tube; about his waist dangled a bag of skin.  The white
man stepped up to Samba, smiled upon him, patted his woolly head.  Then
one of the negroes began to question him.  Where was his village?  What
was it called?  Who was its chief?  How many huts did it contain?  Was
there much forest about it?  To these questions Samba replied frankly;
surely it was a great honour to his grandfather that the white man
should take such interest in him!  Then came a question that somewhat
amused him.  Did the forest contain _botofe_?[3]  He smiled.  Of course
it did.  Were not the drumsticks in his village made of _botofe_?  What
a strange question to ask of a forest boy!  The white man smiled in
return, and said something in a strange tongue to the negro who had
spoken.  "Take us to your village," said the man; and, nothing loth,
Samba set off like a young deer, the three men following him.

Samba was eleven years old.  His home was the village of Banonga, a
street of bamboo huts thatched with palm leaves and shadowed by the
broad foliage of bananas and plantains and tall forest trees.  His
grandfather Mirambo was the village chief, a tall, strong, wise old
man, a great fighter in his day, his body scarred with wounds, his
memory stored with the things he had seen and done.  Samba's father,
Mboyo (or Isekasamba, "father of Samba," as he was called after his boy
was born), was the old chief's favourite son, a daring hunter, a
skilful fisher, and the most silent man of his tribe.  He had several
wives, but Samba's mother was the best loved of them all, and wore
about her ankles the brass rings that betokened her supreme place in
her husband's affections.  Grandfather, father, mother, all doted on
Samba, and for eleven years he had lived a happy merry life, the pet of
the village.

Nothing had troubled the peace of the little community.  Banonga was a
secluded village, on the outskirts of a dense forest, not far from one
of the innumerable tributaries of the great river Congo.  Life passed
easily and pleasantly for these children of Nature.  In the morning,
ere the sun was up, the men would spring from their simple bamboo beds,
fling their hunting-nets or fishing-baskets on their shoulders, hang
about their necks the charms that would preserve them from accident and
ensure success in the work of the day, and repair to the old chief,
who, sitting on his forked chair in the middle of the street, gave them
the _bokaku_--the blessing without which they never left the village.
"May you be preserved from accident," he would say; "from wild beasts,
from snags in the path and snakes in the grass, and return with great
plenty."  Then they would shout their farewells, and hasten with
light-hearted laughter into the forest or down to the river.

Meanwhile the women had been long astir.  Some, babe on one arm,
calabash in the other, went singing to a forest stream, to bathe their
children and fill their vessels with water for the day's cooking.
Others, with baskets slung upon their backs and rude implements upon
their shoulders, sped to the gardens and cultivated fields, to perform
their simple operations of husbandry, and to return by and by with
manioc, plantains, ground-nuts, which they would prepare against their
husbands' return.  The morning's work done, they would dress their
hair, carefully, even fastidiously; kindle the fires of three
converging logs, and set upon them well-heaped pots of manioc, covered
with leaves of plantain or nongoti to prevent the escape of steam.
Some would prattle or sing lullabies to their babes, others form little
knots and gossip, laughing and jesting without a thought of care.

All day the village was cheered by the merry antics and joyous shouts
of the children at play.  Like children all over the world, the boys
and girls of the Congo delight in mimicking their elders.  The boys
made little hunting-nets and ran hither and thither in mock chase, or
spread their fishing-nets in the stream and gleefully boasted of their
tiny catches.  The girls wove little baskets and played with beads and
shells.  One and all, the children of Banonga were deft with their
fingers, and none so deft as Samba.  He was always busy, shaping now a
mortar for his mother, now a chair for his grandfather, now a wicker
basket so close in texture that he could bring in it water from the
stream without spilling a drop.

Most of all Samba loved to squat by his grandfather's chair in the late
afternoon, when the old chief sat alone, chin on hand, waiting for the
return of the men.  Then, and on dark nights, Mirambo would recite, in
his deep musical voice, interminable stories and legends, of the
spirits that haunted the woods, of the animals he had hunted and slain,
of narrow escapes from the greedy jaws of crocodiles, of fierce fights
with cannibals, of adventurous journeys by field and flood.  Samba
never tired of one story: how, years before, Mirambo had made a long
journey to Wanganga, far, very far away, and had there seen a white
man, who wore cloth all over his body, and had come up the river on a
wonderful smoke-boat, driven by a fiery snorting devil that devoured
insatiably great logs of wood.  Bula Matadi, "breaker of rocks," this
wonderful white man was called; but Mirambo had heard that in his own
country he was called Tanalay.[4]  Samba would listen with all his ears
to his grandfather's long narratives, inwardly resolving that he too,
when he became a man, would take long journeys and see marvellous
things--white men, and smoke-boats, and all.

Then, as the sun draws towards its setting, out of the forest there
come faint strains of song.  Mirambo's monotone ceases: he sits erect,
expectant; the women run out of the huts above which the wreathing
smoke proclaims preparations for the evening meal; the children gather
in a laughing chattering flock at the end of the street.  The sound of
singing draws nearer: at length it stops abruptly, but instantly is
followed by a loud prolonged shout; only Lianza's brazen throat can
utter that sonorous cry:--

"I-yo-li-o!  I-yo-li-o-o!"

And the long-drawn hail of Lianza is broken in upon by the roar of his
companions.  "Yo!" shout eighty men as one.  And out of the forest
spring the dusky band, laden with their spoils, which with an exultant
shout they set down before the chief, amid cries and hand-clapping and
slapping of the thighs by the women and children welcoming their
return.  The flesh is cut up, the fish divided: the women return to
their huts to cook the supper; the children cling about their fathers'
legs and recount the little adventures of the day.  The meal is eaten:
the whole population form a wide circle in the street, and, squatting
on their hams, give themselves up to the joy of watching the gyrations
of the dancing women, who, in their aprons of long grass, decorated
with tinkling bells, whirl around to the barbaric music of drums and
castanets, as the day darkens and the moon throws her silvery beams
upon the scene.

Such were the daily scenes amid which Samba passed his happy boyhood,
in the village of Banonga, whither he was now leading the white
stranger.

The village came in sight, nestling in a glade.  The laughing children
ceased their play, and stood finger in mouth shyly contemplating the
new comers.  The women, busily grinding manioc with pestle and mortar
in the open, looked up with startled glance and fled into their huts,
where they stood peeping from behind the posts of palm.  Mirambo, the
chief, rose from his seat and awaited with dignity the approach of the
white man.  Ceremonious greetings were exchanged.  Then ensued a long
conversation, the white man speaking, his negroes translating to the
chief.  He listened intently, and replied in brief phrases, most often
contenting himself with exclamations of assent--"Inde!" "Ng'oko!" or of
dissent--"Lako!" "O nye!"

_Botofe_!  Yes, he knew where _botofe_ could be found.  And the white
man, the Son of Heaven, wanted _botofe_; it had some value for him?
Well, he should have it.  Who so hospitable as the men of Banonga?
They were not as the men of Kinshassa, who met the white man with cries
of anger, and spears, and knives.  Had not he, Mirambo, seen Bula
Matadi, the friend of the black man?  "When my sons return from their
hunting," said Mirambo, "they shall provide the stranger with all that
he needs.  They shall give him plantains, and fowls, and cakes of
_kwanga_;[5] they shall make ready a hut for him; and _botofe_--yes, if
he needs _botofe_, my young men shall go into the forest and fill their
baskets with _botofe_ for him.  No one shall say but that the white man
is welcome in Banonga."



[1] Are you there?

[2] I am here.

[3] Rubber.

[4] H. M. Stanley.

[5] A preparation of manioc.




CHAPTER II

"Rubber is Death"

"Whew!  This is a warm country, Jack.  There'll soon be nothing left of
us."

"There's plenty at present, uncle," replied Jack Challoner with a
smile.  "Barney can spare less, after all."

"Sure an' that's the truth's truth, sorr.  'Twas the sorrow uv me
mother's heart that I ran to length instid uv breadth.  Whin I was a
bhoy she had to buy breeches always a size too long for me, and me
bones grew so fast they almost made holes in me skin--they did."

"Confound it, man, that's where you score.  The mosquitoes leave you
alone: can't find enough juice in you to make it worth their while to
worry you.  Whereas they suck at me till I'm all ulcers.  Hi!  Nando,
when shall we get to this Banonga we've heard so much about?"

"Berrah soon, sah.  Paddle small small, sah, den Banonga."

Mr. Martindale mopped his brow and drew his white umbrella closer down
upon his head.  He was lying under a grass shelter amidships a dug-out,
with his nephew Jack at his side and his man Barney O'Dowd at his feet.
The clumsy native craft rocked to and fro under the paddles of twelve
stalwart Baenga, who stood, their bodies bent slightly forward, singing
in time with their strokes.  They were paddling against the current of
a stream that forced its brown waters into one of the tributaries of
the Congo.  It was a broiling day.  A rainstorm in the night had
cleared the sky of the haze that commonly covered it, and the sun beat
down out of a dome of fleckless blue, irradiating the crimsons and
purples, the golds and whites, of the rich vegetation on the banks.

"I tell you, Jack," continued Mr. Martindale, "I shall grumble if this
talk of Banonga turns out to be wind.  I don't see what the Congo State
has to gain by exterminating the natives; and we know what liars these
blacks can be."

"Suppose the talk of gold turns out to be wind, uncle?"

"Eh?  What's that?  Wind!  Rubbish!  The difference is that we hear of
Banonga from the blacks; but 'twas Barnard told me of the gold, and
Barnard hasn't got enough imagination to say more than he knows.  No,
the gold is there safe enough; and I tell you I shall be glad when we
get through this Banonga and can proceed to business."

John Martindale was a florid well-preserved man of fifty-five years.
Born in New York, he had early gone west, rapidly made his pile in
California, and retired from the direction of his mines.  But meeting
one day in San Francisco an old friend of his, a queer stick of a
fellow named Barnard, who spent his life in roaming over the world and
making discoveries that laid the foundation of other men's fortunes,
not his own, he learnt from him that clear signs of gold had been
observed in the Maranga district on the Upper Congo.  Mr. Martindale
was very rich; but, like many another man, he found after his
retirement that time hung somewhat heavy on his hands.  He was still
full of energy, and Barnard's story of gold in a new country stirred
the imagination of the old miner.  He decided to take a trip to Africa
and test his friend's information.  As a matter of course he invited
Barnard to accompany him.

"No, no, John," replied his friend.  "I scratched the soil; I know gold
is there; I've no further interest in the stuff.  I'm off to the
Philippines next week.  Go and dig, old fellow, and take plenty of
quinine with you."

It happened that Mr. Martindale's only nephew, Jack Challoner, a lad of
seventeen, was just home from school.  He was an orphan.  His mother,
Mr. Martindale's sister, had married an English barrister of great
ability, who had already made a name at the Parliamentary Bar.  But he
died when his boy was only six years old; two years later his wife
followed him to the grave, and the guardianship of Jack fell to his
uncle, who, being a bachelor without other ties, readily assumed the
charge.  He surprised his friends by the course he took with the boy.
Instead of bringing him to America, he entered him at Bilton and
afterwards at Rugby, declaring that as the boy was English it was only
fair he should receive an English education.  "I read _Tom Brown_ years
ago," he would say, "and if they turn 'em out now as they did
then--well, we can't do better this side of the herring pond."  Jack
spent his holidays either in America, or in travelling about Europe
with his uncle, and the two became great chums.

But when Jack reached his seventeenth birthday Mr. Martindale again
surprised his friends.  "Send him to Oxford?" he said.  "Not much!  He
has had nearly four years at Rugby, he's in the fifth form, and I guess
he's enough book learning to serve his turn.  He's tip-top at sports:
he's a notion of holding his own and helping lame dogs; and I don't
want his nose to turn up, as I believe noses have a trick of doing at
Oxford.  No: the boy'll come home.  I don't know what he's to be; but
I'll soon find out what he's fit for, and then he'll have to work at
it.  The least I could do for his father's sake was to give him an
English education; he'll come back to America for a smartening up."

It was not long after Jack's return that Mr. Martindale met his friend
Barnard.  Since Barnard would not be his companion, Jack should.  "It
will do you no harm to see a little travel off the beaten track," he
said, "and I'm not going to work the gold myself: my mining days are
done.  You may tumble to it; in that case you'll stay in Africa and
take care not to waste my capital.  You may not: that'll be one thing
settled, anyway."

Accordingly, when Mr. Martindale sailed for Europe he took Jack with
him.  With characteristic energy he very quickly settled the
preliminaries.  He obtained for a comparatively small sum from a
Belgian trading company, the holders of a large concession on the Upper
Congo, the mining rights in the Maranga district, on condition of the
company receiving a percentage of the profits.  The first practical
step having been taken, Mr. Martindale's interest in his project became
keen.  He had never travelled out of America or Europe; there was a
certain glamour about an adventure in the heart of Africa; and he was
rich enough to indulge his humour, even if the results of Barnard's
discovery should prove disappointing.

Uncle and nephew sailed for Africa, spent a few days at Boma, travelled
over the cataract railway from Matadi to Leopoldville, and thence went
in a steamer for nearly three weeks up the Congo.  Then, leaving the
main river, they embarked on a smaller steamer, plying on a tributary
stream.  In about a week they arrived at a "head post," whence they
continued their journey, up a tributary of a tributary, by canoe.  This
last stream was quite a considerable river as the term would be
understood in Europe, though neither so broad nor so deep as the one
they had just left.  But this again was insignificant by comparison
with the mighty Congo itself, fed by a thousand tributaries in its
course of fifteen hundred miles from the heart of Africa to the sea.
Mr. Martindale became more and more impressed as the journey
lengthened, and at last burst out: "Well, now, this licks even the
Mississippi!"

But not the Shannon!  Barney O'Dowd was a true Irishman.  Mr.
Martindale had engaged him in London as handy-man to the expedition.
He had been in the army; he had been a gentleman's servant, wardroom
attendant at a hospital, drill-sergeant at a boys' school, 'bus
conductor, cabman, and chauffeur; but in none of these numerous
vocations, he said with a sigh, had he ever grown fat.  He was long,
lean, strong as a horse; with honest merry blue eyes, and curly lips
that seemed made for smiling.  He drove the travellers in a hansom
during the week they stayed in London, and looked so sorrowful when Mr.
Martindale announced his departure that the American, on the spur of
the moment, with bluff impulsiveness, invited him to join the
expedition.

"Sure an' 'tis me last chance, sorr," cried Barney, cheerfully
consenting.  "A sea voyage does wonders for some.  There was Terence
O'Bally, now, as thin as a lath in the ould counthry; he went to
Australia, and by the powers! when he came back to say 'God bless you'
to his ould mother, she did not know him at all at all, he was so full
in the flesh, sorr.  Sure an' I'll come wid ye wid the greatest
pleasure in the world, and plase the pigs I'll fatten like Terence.
Only wan thing, sorr; ye would not have any inshuperable objection to
Pat, sorr?"

"Who on earth's Pat?"

"Just a dog, sorr; a little darlint uv a terrier no fatter than me,
sorr; as kind an' gentle as wan uv the blessed angels.  He has as poor
appetite, sorr, an' sleeps on my coat, so he will not cost ye much for
board and lodging.  And I would thank ye kindly, sorr, if I might but
go home to 'm an' say, 'Pat, me darlint, times is changed.  We are in
luck, Pat.  There's a nice, kind, fat, jolly American gentleman that
takes very kindly to dogs an' Irishmen, an'----'"

"There then, that'll do," said Mr. Martindale, laughing.  "Bring Pat,
if you like.  But he'll have to go if he proves a nuisance."

And so Pat became a member of the party.  And he lay curled up now in
the bottom of the canoe, and cocked an eye as Barney declared with
emphasis that the Congo was a "mighty foine river, sure an' 'tis only
fair to say so; but by all the holy powers 'tis not to be compared wid
the Shannon, blessed be its name!"

It was Pat that sprang first ashore when the paddlers with a resounding
"Yo!" drove the canoe alongside a turfy platform by the bank, worn
level by the treading of innumerable feet.  The dog uttered one sharp
bark, faced round to the river, and stood with ears pricked and stumpy
tail wagging, to watch his master step to land.

"Now, Nando," said Mr. Martindale, when all were ashore, "lead the way.
Not too fast: and not too near skeeters or jiggers."

"Berrah well, sah; me go fust; frighten skeeters all away."

Leaving ten of the crew in the canoe, the rest of the party set off
under Nando's guidance.  He led them through the mass of tall grass
that lined the river bank, across a swampy stretch of heath, where a
narrow path wound in and out among trees large and small, beset by
dense undergrowth and climbing plants.  Insects innumerable flitted and
buzzed around the travellers, provoking lively exclamations from Mr.
Martindale and Jack, and many a vicious snap from the terrier, but
leaving Barney almost untouched.  Once a wild pig dashed across the
path and plunged into the thicket, with Pat barking frantically at its
heels.  Here and there Mr. Martindale caught sight of red-legged
partridge and quail, and sighed for his rifle.  Parrots squawked
overhead; once, from the far distance, muffled by the foliage, came the
trumpet of an elephant; but signs of humanity there were none, save the
meandering track.

At length, however, they came to a clear open space amid the trees,
where, on a low hill, stood a crude open hut, consisting of upright
supports surmounted by a roof of bamboos and leaves, and partly walled
by cloth.

"Berrah nice place, sah," said Nando cheerfully.  "Chief him missis
buried dah."

The travellers approached with curiosity.  Inside the shed they saw a
small image, roughly carved in semblance of a human figure, set upright
in the ground.  At one side lay two or three wicker baskets, at the
other a bottle; in front a big iron spoon stuck out of the soil, and
all around were strewed hundreds of small beads.  Nando explained that
these had been the property of the deceased lady.

"And is she buried under them?" asked Mr. Martindale, stepping back a
pace.

"Bit of her, sah."

"What do you mean--a bit of her?"

"All dey find, sah.  Bula Matadi come, make big bobbery; bang! chief
him missis lib for[1] dead, sah.  Bad man cut up, put in pot, only
little bit left, sah."

Mr. Martindale shivered, then waxed indignant.

"I don't believe it," he declared stoutly.  "Such things aren't done in
these days.  There are no cannibals in these days--eh, Jack?"

"I hope not, uncle.  But are we near Banonga, Nando?"

"Small small, sah, den Banonga."

"Lead on, then," cried Mr. Martindale; "I want to see with my own eyes
whether those fellows were telling the truth."

Some distance down the river, just after camping for the night, Mr.
Martindale's rest had been disturbed by a loud and excited conversation
between his own party and a group of newcomers who had halted to
exchange greetings.  Inquiring the cause of the commotion, he learnt
that the men had brought news of a terrible massacre that had taken
place at Banonga, a village in the forest many miles up stream.  The
villagers had been remiss in their collection of rubber; the agents of
Bula Matadi (which, originally the native name for Sir H. M. Stanley,
had become the name for the Congo Free State) had appeared at the
village with a force of native soldiers, and, according to the
informant, who had received the news from an up-country man, the whole
population had been annihilated.  Mr. Martindale had heard, in America
and England as well as in Africa, strange stories of the administration
of the Congo State; but, like many others, he had been inclined to
pooh-pooh the rumours of cruelty and atrocity as the vapourings of
sentimentalists.  But the stories imperfectly interpreted by Nando on
that pleasant evening by the river made a new impression on him.  He
was a hard-headed man of business, as little inclined to sentimentality
as any man could be; he hated any appeal to the emotions, and unasked
gave large subscriptions to hospitals and philanthropic societies so as
to avoid the harrowing of his feelings by collectors and other
importunate folk; but beneath his rough husk lay a very warm heart, as
none knew better than his nephew Jack; and the stories of cruelty told
by the lips of these natives made him feel very uncomfortable.  At a
distance he could shut his eyes to things--open his purse to deserving
objects and believe that his duty was done; but here, on the spot, this
easy course was not possible.  He did not like discomfort, bodily or
mental; it annoyed him when any external cause ruffled the serenity of
his life; and he made up his mind to pay a visit to Banonga on his way
up the river, test the negroes' story, and prove to his own
satisfaction, as he believed he would do, that it was exaggerated if
not untrue.  That done, he would dismiss the matter from his thoughts,
and proceed to the proper business of his journey without anything to
disturb his peace of mind.

The party left the grave on the hill and followed the same path through
another stretch of forest until they came, almost unawares, upon a
large clearing.

"Banonga, massa," said Nando, stretching out his hand, and looking into
Mr. Martindale's eyes with a glance as of some frightened animal.

"Banonga!  But where are the huts?" said Mr. Martindale.

No one answered him.  The party of five stood at the edge of the
clearing, looking straight before them.  Pat the terrier trotted
around, wagging his stump, and blinking up into their faces as if to
ask a question.  What did they see?  A long broad track, leading
between palms and plantains away into the impenetrable forest.  These
leafy walls were vivid green, but the road itself was black.  A smell
of charred wood and burnt vegetation filled the air.  There was not a
complete hut to be seen.  The space once thronged with a joyous
chattering crowd was now empty, save for ashes, half-burnt logs,
shattered utensils.  Here and there a bird hopped and pecked, flying up
into the trees with shrill scream as Pat sprang barking towards it.
But for these sounds, the silence was as of death.

"Come," said Mr. Martindale, stepping forward.  It was he who led the
way now as the party left the ring of forest and walked into the
clearing.  Barney, coming behind with Nando, groaned aloud.

"Stop that noise!" cried Mr. Martindale, swinging round irritably.
"What's the matter with you, man?"

"Sorrow a bit the matter wid me, sorr; but it just brought into me
mimory a sight I saw in the ould counthry whin I was a bhoy; sure there
was nothing to see there either, and that's the pity uv it."

Mr. Martindale walked on without speaking, poking with his stick into
the black dust of the road.  Nando went to his side, and pointed out
such traces of former habitations as remained: here a cooking pot,
there a half-consumed wicker basket, a broken knife, a blackened
bead-necklace.  And among the other scattered evidences of rapine there
were the remains of human beings--skeletons, separate bones.

"Whoever did this did it thoroughly," remarked Mr. Martindale with
darkening brow.  "But who did it?  I won't believe it was Europeans
till 'tis proved.  There are cannibals here; Nando said so: a cannibal
tribe may have raided the place.  Eh?  But where are the people?"

In the thick undergrowth, beyond the desolated village, crouched a
negro boy.  His cheeks were sunken, his eyes unnaturally bright.  His
left arm hung limp and nerveless; in his right hand he clutched a
broad-pointed dagger.  He had been lying in a stupor until roused by a
sharp sound, the cry of some animal strange to him.  Then he raised
himself slowly and with difficulty to his knees, and peered cautiously,
apprehensively, through the foliage amid which he was ensconced.

He glared and shrank back when he saw that among the strangers moving
about were two white men.  But what was this animal they had brought
with them? he wondered.  Goats he knew, and pigs, and the wild animals
of the forest; he knew the native dog, with its foxy head, smooth
yellowish coat, and bushy tail; but this creature was new to him.
True, it was like a dog, though its brown coat was rough and its tail
stumpy; but he had never seen the dogs of his village trot round their
masters as this was doing, never heard them speaking, as it seemed, to
the men with this quick sharp cry.  The dogs he had known never barked;
their only utterance was a long howl, when they were hungry or in pain.
He hated white men, but loved animals; and, weak as he was, he raised
himself once more, and bent forward, to look at this active dog-like
creature that came and went in apparent joyousness.

A bird flew down from a tree, and alighted hardily within a couple of
yards of the terrier.  This was too much for Pat.  He darted at the
audacious bird, pursued it into the thicket, then came to a sudden
surprised stop when he descried a black form among the leaves.  He
stood contemplating the boy with his honest brown eyes, and his tail
was very active.  Then with one short bark he trotted back to his
master, and looked up at him as if to say: "I have made a discovery;
come and see."  But man's intelligence is very limited.  Barney did not
understand.

"And did the cratur' give ye the slip, then?" he said, patting the
dog's head.

"That's not the point," said Pat's barks; "I want you to come and see
what I have found," and he ran off again towards the thicket, turning
once or twice to see if his master was following.  But Barney paid
little attention to him, and Pat, giving him up as hopeless, went on
alone to scrape acquaintance.  He stood before the boy at a distance of
a yard, blinking at him between the tendrils of a creeper.  Then he
advanced slowly, wagging his stump, poked his nose through the leaves,
and after a moment's sniffing deliberation put out his tongue and
licked the black knee he found there.  The boy made with his closed
lips the humming sound with which the negro of the Congo expresses
pleasure, and next moment the dog's paws were in his hands, and the
two, dog and boy, were friends.

But whoever was a friend of Pat's must also be a friend of Barney
O'Dowd.  It was not long before Pat awoke to a sense of his duty.  He
tried with the negro the plan that had just failed with his master.  He
retreated a little way, cocked his head round and barked, and waited
for the boy to follow.  The latter understood at once; but he shook his
head, and said, "O nye!  O nye!" under his breath, and lay still.  Pat
began to see that there was something keeping the white man and the
black boy apart.  It was very foolish, he thought; they were both such
good fellows: it was quite clear that they ought to be friends; but
what was a dog to do?  He trotted slowly back to Barney, and began to
speak to him seriously, with a bark of very different intonation from
that he had previously employed.

"Well, and what is it wid ye thin?" said Barney.

"He has caught the bird, I expect," said Jack, amused at the dog's
manner, "and wants you to go and see it."

"Sure thin I will," said Barney, "and mutton being scarce, we will have
a new kind uv Irish stew, Pat me bhoy.  But why did ye not bring it, me
darlint?"

He made to follow the dog, whose tail was now beating the air with
frantic delight.  But he had no sooner reached the edge of the
plantation than there was a rustle among the leaves: the boy was
leaving his hiding-place and trying to crawl away into the forest.

"Begorra!" quoth Barney, "'tis a living cratur', and a bhoy, black as
the peat on me father's bog, and not knowing a word uv Irish, to be
sure."

Pat was rubbing his nose on the boy's flank, wondering why he had taken
to going on all fours.  But the negro did not crawl far.  Faint with
weakness, moaning with pain, he sank to the ground.  Pat gave one bark
of sympathy and stood watching him.  Meanwhile Jack had come up.

"A boy, did you say, Barney?  What is he doing here?"

"Sure I would like to know that same, sorr, but niver a word uv his
spache did I learn.  Perhaps he has niver seen a white man, not to say
an Irishman, before, and thinks 'tis a ghost."

"Nando, come here!" called Jack.

The paddler hurried up, followed quickly by Mr. Martindale.

"What's this?  What's this?  A boy!  They're not all killed then."

"I think he's hurt, uncle, and scared.  He tried to crawl away from us,
but seemed too weak."

"Well, lift him up, Barney; we'll see."

Barney approached, but the instant he stretched forth his hands the boy
uttered a piercing shriek, and made to thrust at him with his dagger.

"Come, this will never do," said Mr. Martindale.  "Speak to him, Nando;
tell him we are friends, and will do him no harm."

Nando went up to the boy, and Pat stood by, wagging his tail and
looking inquiringly from one to the other as the negro talked in his
rapid staccato.  A few minutes passed; then Nando turned round and with
a beaming smile said:

"He understan' all same now, sah.  I say massa Inglesa ginleman, blood
brudder Tanalay, oh yes.  He know 'bout Tanalay: he no 'fraid dis time;
he come along along.  He Samba, sah."



[1] i.e. _live for_, an expression commonly used in all kinds of
circumstances by the natives, practically an intensive for various
forms of the verb _to be_.




CHAPTER III

Monsieur Elbel

Samba made no resistance when Nando lifted him and carried him to the
centre of the clearing.  He moaned once or twice as the Baenga pressed
his wounded arm, and almost fainted when he was laid on the ground
before Mr. Martindale.  But a sip from the traveller's flask revived
him, and he smiled.

"That's better," said Mr. Martindale.  "Poor boy!  He looks half
starved.  Have you any food about you, Nando?"

"No, sah: get some one time."[1]

He went off into the thicket, and soon returned with a couple of
scorched bananas.  These Samba devoured ravenously.

"Now I wonder if he could tell us all about it?" said Mr. Martindale.
"Ask him, Nando."

Samba told his story.  His dialect was different from Nando's, but
there is a freemasonry of speech among the tribes of the Congo, and
Nando understood.  It was not so easy for the others to get at the
meaning of Nando's strange jargon as he interpreted, but they listened
patiently, and missed little of the narrative.  Mr. Martindale sat on
an upturned pot, Jack and Barney on charred logs.  Nando squatted
beside Samba on the ground, and Pat thrust his muzzle contentedly
between the boy's knees and seemed to sleep.

[Illustration: The finding of Samba]

One night, when the moon was at the full, a messenger had come into
Banonga village.  The time was at hand when the agent of Bula Matadi
would attend to collect the tax--the weight of rubber exacted by the
Congo State from every able-bodied man.  The messenger reminded the
chief that Banonga had several times been in default.  Only a few men
had hitherto been punished, only a few women carried away as hostages
for the diligence of their husbands.  But the patience of Bula Matadi
was exhausted.  If on this occasion the due measure of rubber was not
forthcoming, the anger of Bula Matadi would blaze, the soldiers would
come, and the men of Banonga would have cause to rue their idleness.

The chief listened in silence.  He was old; his body was bowed, his
spirit broken.  Life in Banonga was no longer the same since the white
man came.  All the joy of life was gone; the people spent their days in
unremitting toil, endeavouring to satisfy the cry of their rulers for
rubber, always rubber, more rubber.  When the messenger arrived the men
were away hunting for rubber, but Mirambo knew that, were they doubled
in number, they could not gather the quantity required.  The vines in
their district were exhausted; the men had not been taught how to tap
them; they destroyed as they went, and now the whole district around
Banonga would not yield half of what was demanded of them.  The poor
old chief trembled when he thought of the woe that was coming to
Banonga, for he now knew from the fate of other villages on the river
what the messenger of Bula Matadi foreshadowed.  Unless his men could
achieve the impossible, find rubber where there was none, the blow
would fall.  And when it fell Banonga would be no more.  The village a
little while ago so happy and prosperous would be destroyed, its people
killed or scattered.  So it had happened to other villages: how could
he hope that Banonga would be spared?  The messenger indeed had spoken
of the leniency of Bula Matadi, but the chief might have reminded him
of the outrages the people had suffered; of the rapacity, the ruthless
brutalities, of the forest guards.  But he said no word of provocation;
only, when the man had gone, Samba heard him mutter the terrible
sentence now too often on his lips: "Botofe bo le iwa: rubber is death!"

The day came: the agent of Bula Matadi appeared, with an armed escort.
The men of Banonga had not returned.  They came dropping in by ones and
twos and threes, worn out with their long quest.  The rubber was
weighed: in many cases it was short; excuses were rejected, entreaties
scoffed at.  The hapless victims suffered taunts, abuse, the terrible
whip.  One, less enduring than the rest, resisted.  This was the
signal.  A dozen rifles were raised--a dozen shots rang out, strong
forms lay writhing in the agony of death.  A brief, sharp struggle;
another fusillade; and the terrified survivors, men, women and
children, fled helter-skelter to the forest, pursued by the shots of
the soldiery, ruthless of age or sex.  A raid was made upon their
deserted huts: everything that had value for the native levies was
seized; then the match was applied, and soon what had once been a
prosperous happy village was a heap of smouldering ruins.

Samba saw it all.  He remained dauntless by his grandfather's side
until a bullet put an end to the old chief's life; then he too fled
into the forest, to find his father and mother, his brothers and
sisters.  But he had delayed too long; one of the sentinels fired at
him as he ran: his left arm was struck.  He struggled on, but his
friends were now out of reach: he could not find them.  For several
days he wandered about, supporting his life on roots and herbs in the
vain search for his people.  Then, growing hourly weaker, he crept back
to his village, hoping that by and by the survivors would return to
their desolated homes, to rebuild their huts, and sow new crops.  But
none came.  He was alone!  And he had lain down among the trees--as he
thought, to die.

"Poor little fellow!" said Mr. Martindale.  "How old is he, Nando?"

"He say ten three years, sah," replied Nando after consulting the boy.

"Thirteen.  He looks older.  This is a pretty kettle of fish.  What can
we do with him?"

"We must take him with us, uncle!" said Jack.

"Take him with us, indeed!  What can we do with him?  We can't hunt for
his father and mother: he'd be of no use to us in our job.  He wants
doctoring: he might die on our hands."

"I learnt a little doctoring in the hospital, sorr," said Barney.
"Sure I think I could mend his arm."

"Well, well, Nando and the other man had better bring him along to the
canoe--gently, you know.  Don't make him squeal."

The two negroes lifted the boy, and the party set off to return to the
river.

"A fine responsibility you have let me in for, Jack," said Mr.
Martindale as they went along.  "I've no notion of a Crusoe and Friday
relationship."

"Why not say Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, uncle?"

"A man of my girth!" said Mr. Martindale, chuckling.  "But joking
apart, Jack, this is a serious business.  What am I to do with the boy,
supposing he gets better?  I am not a philanthropist; I can't start a
boys' home; and the little chap will be of no use to us in our proper
work.  For the life of me I don't see daylight through this."

"We may find him useful in other ways, uncle.  Besides, we may come
across his people."

"And we may not--we may not, Jack.  Still, have your way; only remember
he's your protege; I wash my hands of him.  And mind you, I'm not going
to start a crusade.  There's been terrible work in this village: no
mistake about it; but I'm not convinced it's the doing of white men: in
fact, I refuse to believe it."

"But they're responsible.  They shouldn't employ natives who are so
blackguardly."

"That's where it is, you see.  You Britishers employed Red Indians in
our war of Independence, didn't you?"

"Yes, and Lord Chatham thundered against it, and it was put a stop to."

"They taught you history at Rugby, did they?  Glad to hear it.  Well, I
dare say Leopold will put a stop to it if representations are made to
him.  It's none of my business, but I'll mention the matter when I get
back to Boma.  Now, Sambo----"

"Samba, uncle."

"Bo or ba, it's all the same.  You'll have to be a good boy, Samba.
But what's the good of talking!  He can't understand what I say.
Doesn't know good from bad, I warrant.  Well, well!"

They reached the canoe and laid Samba gently down upon rugs.  The rude
craft was soon under way.  For a time Samba lay asleep, with his arm
about Pat's neck; but by and by, when the paddlers paused in the song
with which they accompanied their strokes, the boy awoke, and began to
sing himself, in a low musical voice that struck pleasantly upon the
ear after the rougher tones of the men.

"Bauro lofundo! (he sang); bauro lofundo!  Bompasu la Liwanga bao
lindela ud' okunda ilaka nkos'i koka."

This he repeated again and again until he was tired and slept once more.

"Very pretty," said Mr. Martindale.  "The boy'd make a fortune in New
York, Jack.  But what does it all mean, anyway?"

"Berrah nice song, sah," said Nando.  "Me tell all 'bout it.  People of
Bauro, sah, plenty bad lot.  Bompasu and Liwanga been and gone after
'long 'long into de forest, not come back till parrots one two free
twenty all dah."

"Well, I can't make much of that.  Doesn't seem to have any more sense
than the songs that our gals sing at home."

But further inquiry brought out the story.  It appeared that a rubber
collector, not satisfied with exacting from the people of Bauro the
usual quantity of rubber, had required them to furnish him by a certain
day with twenty young parrots which he wished to take with him to
Europe.  Being unable to obtain so large a number by the given date,
the people were declared to be surpassingly obstinate and wicked, and
the sentries Bompasu and Liwanga were let loose upon them until the
twenty parrots were delivered.

"Humph!" grunted Mr. Martindale.  "Say, wasn't it Macaulay who said
he'd write a nation's history from its ballads?  Rubber and parrots;
what next, I wonder?  These Congo people have original ideas in
taxation."

"Begorra, sorr," said Barney, "and don't I wish the taxes in the ould
counthry were uv the same kind.  Sure and ivery man in the counthry
would be glad to supply the collectors wid scores uv sparrows or
peewits or any other fowl, and murphies and blackthorns--ivery mortal
thing but money, sorr."

In the course of a few hours the stream they had hitherto been
navigating ran into a larger tributary of the Congo some hundred and
fifty miles above the point where it joined the main river.  The canoe
had scarcely entered the broader river when the crew suddenly stopped
paddling, and Nando, turning round with some excitement, said--

"Smoke-boat, sah."

"What?"

"Smoke-boat nebber dis way before, sah."

"A steamer, eh?"

"A launch flying the Congo State flag, uncle--blue with a golden star,"
said Jack, standing up in the canoe and taking a long look ahead.

Nando explained that the rapids, a day's paddling down stream, had
prevented the State officers hitherto from bringing steam launches into
this part of the river.  Evidently the vessel now approaching must have
been carried, as a whole or in sections, overland past these rapids--a
work of great difficulty and labour, for the rapids were at least three
miles in length, and the shores were at some parts rocky, at others
covered with dense scrub.

Almost before Nando had finished his explanation the canoe had been put
about, and the men began to paddle hard up stream towards the mouth of
the little river, into which the launch could not follow them.

"Hi, now, Nando, what are you about?" cried Mr. Martindale.

Nando replied that it was always best to avoid the State officials.  He
would lie in a creek until the launch was past.

"I don't see why we should run away," said Mr. Martindale.  "However,
after what we've just seen, I've no wish to meet them.  I might say
something that would lead to a row with the Company."

He lit a cigar and lay back in the canoe.  Jack turned flat on his face
and watched the launch.  It was soon clear that Nando's plan was
impossible.  The launch was a swift one: it came on with increased
speed, and when within hailing distance a voice in French called
peremptorily upon the canoe to stop.

"Nando, stop paddling," said Mr. Martindale, leisurely turning round on
his seat.  "Answer their hail, Jack."

"Who are you?" shouted Jack in English.

The foreigner in the bow of the launch was somewhat taken aback.  He
had thought to do the questioning, not to be questioned.  But he
replied stiffly--

"I am Monsieur Elbel, of de Societe Cosmopolite du Commerce du Congo."

The launch was now within a few yards of the canoe.  Monsieur Elbel was
a short thick-set man with reddish hair, and a thick red moustache that
stuck out rigidly a couple of inches on each side of his nose.  He wore
a white topee and white trousers, but his coat was blue, with brass
buttons, and gold lace at the shoulders.  All but himself on deck were
negroes.

Mr. Martindale ordered the paddlers to bring the canoe round, so that
he might face the Belgian.  Then, still seated, he blew out a cloud of
smoke and said--

"Well, I don't know you, Mr. Elbel, and if the work in Banonga yonder
is due to you I don't wish to.  Paddle ahead, Nando."

The crew looked somewhat awestruck, but obediently dropped their
paddles into the stream.  Monsieur Elbel's cheeks had turned a fiery
red several shades deeper than his hair, and the veins upon his
forehead swelled.  The canoe sped past him while he was still
endeavouring to collect himself.  Suddenly a tall negro at his side
threw out his hand, exclaiming: "Ok'ok'ok'oka!"[2]

The Belgian looked in the direction pointed out, and the negro followed
up his exclamation with a rapid excited sentence.  Monsieur Elbel at
once sent the launch in pursuit of the canoe, ran her alongside, and
cried:

"Halt!  I bid you halt.  You are rude.  I vill run you down if you have
not care.  Dat boy I see in your canoe I know him; he belong to my
societe: I demand him to be given up."

"Not so fast, Mr. Elbel.  I treat men as they treat me.  You have no
right to stop me.  I am an American, a citizen of the United States,
travelling in the Free State, which I believe, is open to all the
world.  Besides, I have a patent from your company.  I propose to
continue my journey."

"But--but--I tell you, dat boy is not American: he is subject of Congo
State, in concession of my societe; still vunce, I demand him."

"Sorry I can't oblige you.  The boy is in my service: he has been
wounded--perhaps you know how; nothing but an order from the Free State
courts will compel me to give him up.  And even then I won't, knowing
what I know.  That's flat, Mr. Elbel.  You stop me at your risk.  Go
ahead, Nando."

The negroes dug their paddles into the water, and the canoe darted past
the side of the launch.  Monsieur Elbel bit his moustache and savagely
tugged its ends; then, completely losing control of his temper, he
shouted--

"You hear; I varn you.  You act illegal; you come to seek for gold; dat
is your business: it is not your business to meddle yourself viz de
natif.  I report you!"

The launch snorted away up stream, the canoe continued its journey at a
moderate pace, and each was soon out of sight of the other.

For some minutes Mr. Martindale seemed preoccupied.

"What is it, uncle?" asked Jack after a time.

"I was thinking over what that fellow Elbel said.  He knows more about
our business here than I quite like.  Of course they all know we're
after minerals, but Barnard's find is not the dead secret he thought it
was.  Or say, Jack, d'you think we are being watched?"

"Perhaps he was fishing?"

"I don't think so, for he didn't wait for an answer.  However, we
needn't meet our difficulties half-way.  Anyhow, 'twill do Mr. Elbel no
harm to know that we don't care a red cent for him or any other Congo
man.  I suppose he's in charge of this section.  But what on earth did
the fellow want with the boy?"

Nando, without ceasing to ply his paddle, turned his head and spoke
over his shoulder to Samba, now wide awake.

"Samba say him uncle dah, sah: uncle Boloko, plenty bad man."

"A wicked uncle, eh?"

"He berrah angry, sah, 'cos Samba him fader hab got plenty more wives,
sah; must be chief some day.  Boloko he want to be chief: berrah well:
Banonga men all say 'Lako! lako!'[3] plenty loud.  Boloko berrah much
angry: go to white men: tell berrah bad fings 'bout Banonga men.  Samba
say Banonga men lib for cut off Boloko his head if catch him."

"Wigs on the green, Jack.  Then I guess this Boloko fellow wanted to
get in first.  Well, it doesn't raise my opinion of Mr. Elbel; you know
a man by the company he keeps, eh?"

"And the Company by him, uncle."



[1] Immediately.

[2] Exclamation of surprise.

[3] Exclamation of refusal.




CHAPTER IV

Night Alarms

In the course of an hour or two Mr. Martindale's canoe reached the
camp, on a piece of rising ground immediately above the river.  Here he
found the rest of his party--some fifty strong West African
natives--the three canoes in which they had come up stream lying nose
to stern along the low bank, only the first being moored, the others
roped to it.

The party had reached the spot three days before, and were resting
after the fatigues of their journey.  These had been by no means
slight, for the men had had to haul the canoes through the rapids, and
sometimes to make portages for a considerable distance.  Fortunately
the canoes were not heavily laden.  They contained merely a good stock
of food, and a few simple mining tools.  This was only a prospecting
trip, as Mr. Martindale was careful to explain before leaving Boma.

His friend Barnard's instructions had been clear enough.  The discovery
had been accidental.  Coming one day, in the course of his wanderings,
to the village of Ilola, he happened to learn that the chief's son was
down with fever.  The villagers had been somewhat unfriendly, and
Barnard was not loth to purchase their goodwill by doing what he could
for the boy.  He cured the fever.  The chief, like most of the negroes
of Central Africa, had strong family affections, and was eager to give
some practical token of his gratitude for his son's recovery.  When
taking the boy's pulse, Barnard had timed the beats by means of his
gold repeater.  The chief looked on in wonderment, believing that the
mysterious sounds he heard from the watch were part of the stranger's
magic.  When the cure was complete, he asked Barnard to present him
with the magic box; but the American made him understand by signs that
he could not give it away; besides, it was useful only to the white
man.  Whereupon the chief had a happy thought.  If the yellow metal was
valuable, his friend and benefactor would like to obtain more of it.
There was plenty to be found within a short distance of the village.
The chief would tell him where it was, but him alone, conditionally.
He must promise that if he came for it, or sent any one for it, the
people of Ilola should not be injured; for every month brought news
from afar of the terrible things that were done by the white men in
their hunt for rubber.  Perhaps the same might happen if white men came
to look for gold.

Barnard gave the chief the desired assurance, undertaking that no harm
should come to him or his people if he showed where the gold was to be
found.  The American was then led across a vast stretch of swampy
ground to a rugged hill some three or four miles from Ilola.  Through a
deep fissure in the hillside brawled a rapid stream, and in its sandy
bed the traveller discerned clear traces of the precious metal.

Barnard explained to Mr. Martindale that Ilola was several days'
journey above the rapids on the Lemba, a sub-tributary of the Congo,
and provided him with a rough map on which he had traced the course of
the streams he would have to navigate to reach it.  But even without
the map it might be found without much difficulty: its name was well
known among the natives along the upper reaches of the river, the chief
being lord of several villages.

So far Mr. Martindale's journey had been without a hitch, and he was
now within three or four days of his destination.  It was the custom of
the party to stay at night in or near a native village.  There a hut
could usually be got for the white men, and Barnard had told them that
a hut was for many reasons preferable to a tent.  Sudden storms were
not infrequent in these latitudes, especially at night--a tent might be
blown or washed away almost without warning, while a well-built native
hut would stand fast.  Moreover, a tent is at the best uncomfortably
hot and close; a hut is more roomy, and the chinks in the matting of
which its sides commonly consist allow a freer passage of air.  The
floor too is dry and hard, often raised above the ground outside; and
the roof, made of bamboo and thatched with palm leaves and coarse
grasses, is rain-tight.

Up to the present Mr. Martindale had met with nothing but friendliness
from the natives, and a hut had always been at his disposal.  But he
had now reached a part of the river where the people knew white men
only by hearsay, and could not distinguish between inoffensive
travellers and the grasping agents whose cruelty rumour was spreading
through the land.  The people of the village where he wished to put up
for this night were surly and suspicious, and he decided for once to
sleep in his tent on the river bank instead of in a hut.

The party had barely finished their evening meal when the sun sank, and
in a few minutes all was dark.  Samba had been handed over to Barney,
whose hospital experience enabled him to tend the boy's wound with no
little dexterity, and the boy went happily to sleep in Barney's tent,
his arm round Pat's neck.  Jack shared his uncle's tent.  He had been
somewhat excited by the scenes and events of the day, and did not fall
asleep the moment he lay down, as he usually did.  The tent was very
warm and stuffy; the mosquitoes found weak spots in his curtains and
sought diligently for unexplored regions of his skin, until he found
the conditions intolerable.  He got up, envying his uncle, who was
sound asleep, his snores vying with the distant roars of hippopotami in
the river.  Taking care not to disturb him, Jack stepped out of the
hut, and understood at once why the air was so oppressive.  A storm was
brewing.  Everything was still, as if weighed down by some monstrous
incubus.  Ever and anon the indigo sky was cut across by steel-blue
flashes of forked lightning, and thunder rumbled far away.

Jack sauntered on, past Barney's tent, towards the river bank,
listening to noises rarely heard by day--the grunt of hippopotami, the
constant rasping croak of frogs, the lesser noises of birds and insects
among the reeds.  The boatmen and other natives of the party were a
hundred yards away, beyond the tents he had just left.  Sometimes they
would chatter till the small hours, but to-night they were silent,
sleeping heavily after their toil.

He came to a little eminence, from which he could look down towards the
stream.  Everything was black and indistinguishable.  But suddenly, as
a jagged flash of lightning momentarily lit the scene, he fancied he
caught a glimpse of a figure moving below, about the spot where the
nearest of the canoes was moored.  Was it a wild beast, he wondered,
prowling for food?  Or perhaps his eyes had deceived him?  He moved a
little forward; carefully, for the blackness of night seemed deeper
than ever.  Another flash!  He had not been mistaken; it was a figure,
moving on one of the canoes--a human form, a man, stooping, with a
knife in his hand!  What was he doing?  Once more for an instant the
lightning lit up the river, and as by a flash Jack guessed the man's
purpose: he was about to cut the mooring rope!

Jack's first impulse was to shout; but in a moment he saw that a sudden
alarm might cause the natives of his party to stampede.  The intruder
was alone, and a negro; Why not try to capture him?  Jack was ready
with his hands: his muscles were in good order; he could wrestle and
box, and, as became a boy of Tom Brown's school, fight.  True, the man
had a knife; but with the advantage of surprise on his side Jack felt
that the odds were fairly equal.  He stole down the slope to the
waterside, hoping that the darkness would remain unbroken until he had
stalked his man.  A solitary bush at the very brink gave him cover;
standing behind it, almost touching the sleeping sentry who should have
been guarding the canoes, Jack could just see the dark form moving from
the first canoe to the second.

He waited until the man bent over to cut the connecting rope; then with
three long silent leaps he gained the side of the foremost canoe, which
was almost resting on the bank in just sufficient water to float her.
The man had already made two or three slashes at the rope when he heard
Jack's splash in the shallow water.  With a dexterous twist of his body
he eluded Jack's clutch, and swinging round aimed with his knife a
savage blow at his assailant.  Jack felt a stinging pain in the fleshy
part of the thigh, and, hot with rage, turned to grapple with the
negro.  His fingers touched a greasy skin; the man drew back, wriggled
round, and prepared to leap overboard.  At the moment when he made his
spring Jack flung out his hands to catch him.  He was just an instant
too late; the negro had splashed into the shallow water on the far side
of the canoe, and disappeared into the inky blackness beyond, leaving
in Jack's hands a broken string, with a small round object dangling
from the end.  At the same moment there was a heavy thwack against the
side of the canoe; and Jack, mindful of crocodiles, bolted up the bank.
He turned after a few yards, shuddering to think that the man had
perhaps escaped him only to fall a victim to this most dreaded scourge
of African rivers.  But if he was indeed in the jaws of a crocodile he
was beyond human help.  He listened for a time, but could detect no
sound betraying the man's presence.  Pursuit, he knew, was useless.
Except when the lightning flashed he could scarcely see a yard beyond
him.

[Illustration: A midnight encounter]

Jack did not care to disturb his uncle.  He went round the camp, found
Nando with some difficulty in the darkness, and ordered him to send ten
of the crew to occupy the canoes for the rest of the night.  Then he
went back to his tent, bound up his wound, and stretched himself on his
mattress.  He lay awake for a time, wondering what motive the intruder
could have for damaging the expedition.  At last, from sheer weariness,
he dropped off into a troubled sleep in which he was conscious of a
deluge of rain that descended upon the camp.

The morning however broke clear.  Jack told his uncle what had occurred.

"Humph!" grunted Mr. Martindale.  "What's the meaning of it, I wonder?"

"Do you think it was a move of that Belgian fellow, uncle?"

"Mr. Elbel?  No, I don't.  He has no reason for interfering with us.
I've bought the rights from his company, and as they'll get royalties
on all the gold I find, he's not such a fool as to hinder us."

"But Samba, uncle?"

"Bah!  He was egged on to demand the boy by that villainous-looking
nigger, and his dignity being a trifle upset, he thought he'd try it on
with us.  No, I don't think he was at the bottom of it.  I've always
heard that these niggers are arrant thieves; the villagers were
unfriendly, you remember, and most likely 'twas one of them who took a
fancy to our canoes.  Glad you frightened him off, anyway.  What about
your wound?"

"It's nothing to speak of--a slight flesh wound.  I washed it with alum
solution, and don't think it will give me any bother."

"Lucky it's no worse.  We'll set a careful watch every night after
this.  And take my advice: if you can't sleep, don't go prowling about;
it isn't safe in these parts.  Try my dodge; shut your eyes and imagine
you see forty thousand sheep jumping a patent boundary fence in single
file; or if that don't work, say to yourself: 'How much wood would a
woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?'--and keep on saying
it.  I've never known it fail."

"Perhaps it's a good job I didn't know it last night," replied Jack,
laughing.  "We should have been minus four canoes."

"And all our stores.  But don't do it again, there's a good fellow.
I've paid double passage, and I don't want to go home alone."

The camp was by this time astir.  The natives, chattering like monkeys,
were busily preparing their breakfast.  Barney was engaged in a like
service for the white men, and Samba proved himself to be an adept at
cleaning the fish which some of the men had caught in the early morning.

"Sure an' he'll be a treasure, sorr," said Barney, as he handed Mr.
Martindale his cup of tea and plate of broiled fish.

"Is the boy getting better?"

"As fast as he can, sorr.  'Twas want uv food more than wounds that was
wrong wid him.  All he really needs is a dish uv good honest murphies
twice a day, and sorry I am they do not grow in this haythen counthry."

It was one of Barney's crosses that the only potatoes obtainable _en
route_ were the sweet variety.  Mr. Martindale rather liked them--a
weakness which Barney regarded with sorrow as an injustice to Ireland.

Breakfast finished, the canoes were manned and the expedition resumed
its journey.  Samba kept the negroes amused with his songs and chatter
and clever imitations of the cries of birds and beasts.  His restless
eyes seemed to miss nothing of the scenes along the river.  He would
point to what appeared to be a log cast up on the sand and exclaim
"Nkoli!" and utter shrill screams: and the log would perhaps disappear,
leaving no trace, or move and open a sleepy eye, and Barney ejaculate,
"A crocodile, by all the holy powers!"  Once he drew Jack's attention
to a greenish lizard, some eight inches long, creeping down an ant-hill
towards a tiny shrew mouse.  Spying the enemy, the little creature
darted down the slope, and took a header into the water; but the lizard
came close upon its heels, sprang after it, and dragged it down into
the deep.

"And what do you make of this?" said Jack suddenly, showing Samba the
amulet he had torn from the neck of the midnight marauder.  The boy
started, stared at the piece of bone, looked up in Jack's face and
exclaimed--

"Bokun'oka fafa!"[1]

"Him say belong him uncle," Nando interpreted.

Samba spoke rapidly to Nando.

"Him say belong berrah bad uncle on smoke-boat, sah.  Him say how massa
get him?"

Jack related the incident of the night, Nando translating to the boy,
who listened gravely, but smiled at the end.

"Why does he smile?" asked Jack.

"He say him uncle no lib for good any more: lost medicine ring; he no
fit for do bad fings any more: get cotched ebery time."

"Begorra, sorr, 'tis like me very own uncle Tim, who niver had a day's
luck after he lost the lucky sixpence given to 'm by a ginerous kind
gentleman for holding a horse in Sackville Street whin he was a bhoy.
He had always been unlucky before that, sorr, and sure the lucky
sixpence would have made a rich man uv him in time; but he lost it the
very same day, sorr, and had no luck at all at all."

"Well," said Mr. Martindale, laughing, "if the loss of this amulet
means that the owner will never succeed in any tricks against us, I
congratulate you, Jack.  Will you wear it yourself?"

"No, uncle; I'll give it to Samba."

But Samba, when the charm was given to him, looked at it seriously for
a moment, then his face broke into a beaming smile as he slipped the
string about Pat's neck.

"Mbua end' olotsi!"[2] he cried, clapping his hands.

Pat barked with pleasure and licked the boy's face.

"They're great chums already," remarked Mr. Martindale pleasantly, as
he bit the end off a cigar.

That evening, when the time for camping came, there was no village in
sight from the river, and Nando reported that the nearest lay too far
from the stream to suit his employer.  The banks were thickly wooded,
and it appeared as if there would be some difficulty in finding a space
sufficiently clear for a camp.  But at last the travellers came to a
spot where a stretch of level grassland ran wedge-like into the
vegetation.  At one end the ground rose gradually until it formed a
bluff overhanging the river at a considerable height.  This seemed as
favourable a place as was likely to be discovered, and here the camp
was pitched, the evening meal was eaten, and the travellers sought
repose.

The night was very dark, and deep silence brooded over the
encampment--such silence as the dweller in towns can never know.  Not
even the shriek of a nocturnal monkey or the splash of a fish pursued
by a crocodile broke the stillness.  Every member of the party was
asleep.  But all at once, Samba, lying just within the flap-door of
Barney O'Dowd's tent, one arm pillowing his head, the other clasping
the terrier, was disturbed by a low whine.  He was awake in an instant.
He had never heard Pat whine; the dog barked at everything; why had he
changed his manner of speech?  Samba got up: Pat had left him and stood
in the entrance to the tent; the whine had become a growl.  The boy
followed him, stooped and felt in the dark for his head, then lifted
him in his arms and went out, laying a hand on the dog's muzzle to
silence him.  Like other terriers, Pat objected to be carried.

The whine had wakened Barney also; Pat and he had passed many a night
together.  He heard the slight sound made by Samba's departure, and
rising, went out in his stockings to follow him.  He walked a few yards
in the direction he supposed Samba to have taken; but it was too dark
to see him, and neither boy nor dog made any further sound.  Barney
retraced his steps, and, wandering a little from the way he had come,
stumbled over the sleeping body of one of the men placed as sentinels.
He gave him a kick.

"Get up, you varmint!" he cried.  "Is that the fashion uv keeping
gyard?"

But as soon as he had passed on the man rolled over, gave a grunt, and
was fast asleep again.

Meanwhile Samba had walked on towards the river bank, stopping at
intervals to listen.  He heard nothing; not even the usual nightly
sounds came to him; the surrounding forest seemed asleep.  But
suddenly, Pat became restless and uttered a rumbling growl.  Samba held
him close and whispered to him, and the dog apparently understood, for
the growl ceased.  Then Samba caught the faint sound of paddles
up-stream--a sound so familiar to him that he could not be mistaken.

He crept cautiously along, up the gradual ascent, until he came near
the summit of the overhanging cliff.  Moving stealthily to the edge he
peered over; but in the blackness he could see nothing.  The sound had
ceased.

Feeling his way carefully with his bare feet, Samba slowly made his way
down the grassy cliff until he came near the water's edge, then crept
along the bank up stream.  Again Pat uttered his low growl, but was
instantly silent in response to the boy's whispered warning.  Samba
seemed to find his way by instinct over the uneven ground.  Now and
again he heard a beast scurry away at his approach and rustle through
the bushes or plunge into the river; but he was not afraid: there was
little risk of encountering a dangerous animal, and he was too far
above the sandy level to stumble upon a crocodile lying in wait.

He went on steadily.  It was not a native custom to move about in the
dark hours, and, remembering what had happened the night before, he was
intent upon discovering the business of the mysterious paddlers.  After
Pat's last smothered growl he proceeded more cautiously than ever.  At
last the sound of low voices ahead made him halt.  Whispering again to
Pat, who licked his hand as if to reassure him, he set the dog down and
crept forward again, bending low, and taking care, dark as it was, to
avail himself of every bush for cover.  To judge by the voices, a large
number of men must have gathered at some point not far ahead.  He drew
still nearer.  All at once he halted again, and laid a hand on Pat's
neck.  Among the voices he had distinguished one that he knew only too
well: it was that of his uncle Boloko.  He stood rooted to the spot
with dismay.

A few minutes later his quick ears caught the sound of men moving off
at right angles to the river in a direction that would enable them to
skirt the cliff and come upon the sleeping camp through the forest in
its rear.  In a flash he saw through their scheme.  Bidding Pat in a
whisper to follow him, he turned and hurried back, climbing the face of
the cliffs with a panther's surefootedness, and racing along at his top
speed as soon as he came to the downward slope.  With Pat at his heels
he dashed into Barney's tent.

"Etumba!  Etumba!"[3] he exclaimed breathlessly.  "Ba-lofundu bao
ya!"[4]

And Pat chimed in with three rapid barks.



[1] My father's younger brother.

[2] Good dog!

[3] Fight! (the natives' alarm signal).

[4] The villains are upon us!




CHAPTER V

The Order of Merit

"Bad cess to you, you young varmint!" exclaimed Barney, waking with a
start.  "What do you say at all?"

"Ba-lofundu bao ya!  Boloko!"

"Be jabers if I know what you'd be meaning.  Off!  Run!  Nando!  And
it's pitch dark it is."

The boy scampered, Pat still at his heels.  The dog had evidently been
impressed by Samba's warnings, for he ran silently, without growl or
bark.  They came to the spot where Nando lay, beneath a spreading
acacia.  Samba shook him without ceremony.

"Ba-lofundu bao ya!" he cried.  "Betsua!  Betsua!"[1]

Nando growled and bade him be off; but when the boy poured his story
with eager excitement into the big negro's sleepy ears, Nando at last
bestirred himself, and hurried to Mr. Martindale's tent, bidding Samba
remain at hand.

"Samba him uncle, berrah bad man, come to fight," said Nando
breathlessly when Jack came to the door of the tent.  "Bad man go round
round, hide in trees, come like leopard.  Massa gone 'sleep: massa him
men all lib for big sleep; Boloko shoot; one, two, massa dead all same."

"What, what!" said Mr. Martindale, flinging off his rug.  "Another
alarm, eh?" He pressed the button of an electric torch and threw a
bright light on the scene.

"An attack in force this time, uncle," said Jack.  "Some black fellows
are coming to surprise us in the rear."

"How many are the villains?" said Mr. Martindale, pulling on his
trousers.

"Two, free, hundred, fousand."

"A dozen all told, I suppose!  Well, we'll fight 'em."

"Rather risky that, uncle," said Jack.  "There may be more than a
dozen, after all, and our men are not armed: we two couldn't do much
against a hundred, say."

"True.  Why was I such a fool?  That Britisher at Matadi said I'd
better arm my men, and I wish I'd taken his tip.  We're in a tight
corner, Jack, if the nigger is correct.  Here, Nando, are you sure of
this?"

"Sartin sure, sah.  Me see fousand fifty black men creep, creep 'long
ribber, sah: big lot guns, 'Bini guns, massa, go crack, crack.  Come
all round, sah; run like antelope: no time for massa run away."

Nando's face expressed mortal terror; there was no doubt he believed in
the reality of the danger.

"How did they come?" asked Mr. Martindale.

"In boat, sah."

"Where are they?"

"Small small up ribber, sah."

"And I suppose you've alarmed the camp?"

"No, sah, no.  Me no tell one boy at all."

"Well, it looks as if we're going to be wiped out, Jack.  We can't
fight a hundred armed men.  If our fellows were armed, we might lay a
trap for 'em; but we aren't strong enough for that.  But perhaps if we
show we're ready for 'em, and they're not going to surprise us, they
may sheer off."

"Then why not take the offensive, uncle?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Attack the canoes while the most of them are marching round.  They'd
hear our shots and bolt back, as sure as a gun."

"That's slim.  We'll try it.  Go and wake Barney, Jack."

Barney, however, was already on his way to the tent, Jack explained the
situation to him.

"Here's a revolver, Barney," said Mr. Martindale, as the Irishman came
up.  "You must do the best you can if there's a rush.  Jack and I are
going right away to the river: you're in charge."

Barney handled the revolver gingerly.

"Sure I'd feel more at home wid me shillelagh!" he muttered as he went
away.  Mr. Martindale turned to the negro.

"Now you, Nando, lead the way."

The man's eyes opened wide with fear.

"Me plenty sick in eyes, sah," he stammered.  "Me only see small small.
Boy Samba him eyes berrah fine and good, see plenty quick, massa; he
show way."

"I don't care who shows the way," said Mr. Martindale, too much
preoccupied with his hunting rifle and ammunition to notice the
inconsistency between Nando's statement and the story he had already
told.  Nando called to Samba and told him what was required, and the
party set off, the boy going ahead with Pat, Mr. Martindale and Jack
following with their rifles, and Nando in great trepidation bringing up
the rear.

Mr. Martindale puffed and panted as he scaled the bluff, and breathed
very hard as he followed Samba down the rough descent to the brink of
the river.  When they came to comparatively level ground they halted.

"How far now?" asked Mr. Martindale, in a whisper.

"Small small, massa," replied Nando.

"Well, Jack, when we come near these precious canoes we'll fire both
barrels one slick after the other, then reload."

"And go at them with a rush, uncle?"

"Rush!  How can I rush?  I'm pretty well blown already.  But I could
fetch wind enough to shout.  We'll shout, Jack.  Nando, you'll bawl
your loudest, and the boy too.  If I know these niggers they'll bolt.
And look here, Jack, fire in the air: we don't want to hit 'em.  If
they stand their ground and resist, we can fire in good earnest; but
they won't."

They took a few cautious steps forward, then Samba ran back, clutched
Nando by the arm and whispered--

"Boat dah, sah," said the negro, under his breath.  "Oh! me feel plenty
sick inside!"

"Hush!  Howl, then, when we fire.  Now, Jack, ready?  I'll let off my
two barrels first."

Next moment there was a flash and a crack, followed immediately by a
second.  Nando and Samba had begun to yell at the top of their voices.
Mr. Martindale bellowed in one continuous roll, and Pat added to the
din by a furious barking.  The noise, even to those who made it, was
sufficiently startling in the deep silence of the night.  Jack fired
his two shots, but before his uncle had reloaded there was a yell from
the direction of the canoes, then the sound of men leaping on shore and
crashing through the bushes.  Immediately afterwards faint shouts came
from the forest at the rear of the bluff.

"We've done the trick," said Mr. Martindale with a chuckle.  "Now we'll
get back.  They've had a scare.  Let's hope we shall have no more
trouble to-night."

He flashed his electric torch on the river bank below, and revealed
five large canoes drawn up side by side.

"There must be more than a hundred of them," he added.  "Each of those
canoes can carry thirty men."

On the way back to the camp, they heard renewed shouts as the men who
had marched into the forest broke out again in a wild dash for the
threatened canoes.  The camp was in commotion.  Barney was volubly
adjuring the startled natives to be aisy; but they were yelling,
running this way and that, tumbling over one another in the darkness.
The sight of Mr. Martindale's round red face behind his electric torch
reassured them; and when Nando, who had now quite recovered his
spirits, told them that he, with the white men's assistance, had put to
flight twenty thousand bad men and Boloko, they laughed and slapped
their thighs, and settled down in groups to discuss the event and make
much of Nando during the rest of the night.

There was no more sleep for any of the party except Samba.  He,
satisfied that his new friends were safe, curled himself up on his mat
with the inseparable terrier, and slept until the dawn.  But Mr.
Martindale sat smoking in his tent, discussing the events of the night
with his nephew.

"I don't like it, Jack.  We're on top this time, thanks to a little
bluff.  But there must have been a large number of them to judge by the
canoes and the yells; and but for that fellow Nando we might easily
have been wiped out.  And from what Nando says they are those
villainous forest guards of the Concession.  What's the meaning of it?
It may be that the Concession have repented of their bargain and want
to keep me out, or perhaps Elbel is terrified lest I shall expose him
when I get back to Boma.  Either way, it seems as if we're going to
have a bad time of it."

"I don't think it can be Elbel's doing, uncle.  It's such a risky game
to play, your expedition being authorized by his own people."

"I don't imagine Elbel is such a fool as to attack us officially.  He
can always disavow the actions of those natives.  At any rate, I shall
make a point of getting rifles for the men as soon as I can."

"They can't use them."

"Of course they can't; but you'll have to turn yourself into a musketry
instructor.  Meanwhile I must give that fellow Nando some sort of
reward.  It will encourage him and the others too."

When daylight broke Mr. Martindale went down to the river while Barney
was preparing breakfast.  There was no trace of the enemy.  Presumably
they had set their canoes afloat and drifted down stream in the
darkness.  They had no doubt reckoned on surprising the camp, and their
calculations had been upset by the certainty of meeting with
resistance, the fact that the travellers were poorly armed being
forgotten in the panic bred of the sudden uproar in the night.

After breakfast Mr. Martindale had the men paraded in a semicircle
around the tent, and, sitting on a stool in front of it, with Jack on
one side and Barney on the other, he called Nando forward.

"We are very much pleased with your watchfulness, Nando."

The negro grinned, and with a ludicrous air of importance translated
the sentence to his comrades.

"It is due to you that we were not surprised in the dark: you did very
well, and set an excellent example to the men."

"Me plenty clebber, sah, oh yes!"

"I shall take care in future to have our camp more closely guarded, and
punish any carelessness.  But now, to show how pleased I am with you, I
am going to give you a little present."

Nando's mouth spread from ear to ear.  He translated the announcement
to the negroes, looking round upon them with an expression of
triumphant satisfaction that tickled Jack's sense of humour.  Barney
had shut one eye; his lips were twitching.

"But before I do that," went on Mr. Martindale, "I want you to tell us
how you came to discover the enemy in the darkness."

Nando for a moment looked a little nonplussed, scratching his head and
shifting from foot to foot.  Then inspiration seized him; he
elaborately cleared his throat, snapped his fingers, crossed his arms
on his brawny chest, and began--

"Me no get sleep, me get up and go round about, fink see if massa's
fings all right.  Me stop, go sick inside; one, two eyes like twinkle
twinkle look down out of tree."  He waved his arm towards the acacia
under which he had been sleeping.  "Me fink dis plenty bad; what for
man lib for hide in tree and look at Nando?  Me no 'fraid, no, no; me
walk all same, like me no see nuffin.  Yah! me see all same, wait long
time, man no fit for see Nando.  Bimeby man come down like snake,
creep, creep, 'long, 'long; me go too, what for? 'cos man plenty bad
man, him go 'Bini gun, him go into wood.  What for?  Muss see; s'pose
he go fetch bad man and shoot massa?  He no come dis way 'less he lib
for do bad fings.  Him got 'Bini gun, me got spear; no good!  Me no
'fraid.  Plenty debbils in forest!  Me no 'fraid.  Massa say Nando look
after fings; all same: Nando look after, no 'fraid, 'Bini gun, debbils
and all.  What for?  Massa him Nando him fader and mudder.  S'pose bad
men shoot; s'pose debbil come; all same: muss do what massa say, look
after fings, look after massa.  Me no 'fraid!"

Again Nando paused and scratched his head, looking troubled.  Then his
face cleared; he took a deep breath and continued--

"Me go 'long 'long after bad man.  He come to place no trees, grass all
same: one, two, twenty, fousand bad men dah.  Bad man say 'Kwa te!  Kwa
te!'[2]  Dey talk, oh yes! whish! whish! same as trees when wind make
talk.  Me get behind tree; me hab got two, four, twenty ears.  Me
listen!  Dey say come, creep, creep, bring 'Bini gun; white man all
'sleep; black man come, no nise, shoot: oh my gracious!  White man all
lib for dead!  Me no 'fraid!"

"Who was the chief of these bad men?" interrupted Mr. Martindale.

"Boloko, sah!--Samba him uncle."

"But how could you tell that in the dark?"

"Dey hab got light: one, two, twenty tiny small fire on stick."

"Torches, he means, I suppose," said Mr. Martindale.  "How did you find
your way back in the dark?"

"Yah!  Me know all 'bout dat.  Me lib long time in forest, oh yes!  Me
fight little tiny men; dey plenty small, plenty good fighter all same;
shoot one, two, free arrow; one, two, free fings gone dead.  Me fight
dem; so me find way like leopard."

"Well, you're a clever fellow, and you did very well.  Here is a
present for you."

He took from his pocket a huge bone-handled penknife, and displayed its
various parts one by one: four blades, a corkscrew, a file, a hook, and
an awl.  Nando's eyes opened wide with delight; he chuckled gloatingly
as one after another these treasures came to view.  Mr. Martindale was
shutting them up before handing over the knife when Barney stepped
quietly forward, touched his cap and said--

"If you plase, sorr, before you part wid this handsome presentation,
will I have yer leave to ax Mr. Nando wan question?"

"Why, you can if you like," said Mr. Martindale in surprise.

"Thank you, your honour.  Now Mr. Nando, would you plase tell us if you
ate a big supper uv maniac last night?"

"Manioc, Barney," corrected Jack with a smile.

"Sure that's what I said, sorr!  Would you plase tell his honour, Mr.
Nando?"

The man looked in amazement from one to another.  He seemed to suspect
a pitfall, but was puzzled to make out the bearing of the question.

"Sure I speak plain.  Did ye, or did ye not, eat a big supper uv
anything at all last night?"

"Me eat plenty little manioc," said Nando, thinking he was expected to
defend himself against a charge of gluttony.  "Me no pig like common
black man."

"And you did not get a pain?"--here Barney helped out his meaning with
pantomime--"nor dream all that terrible wild stuff you have just been
telling us?"

"Me no can dream!" cried Nando, indignantly.  "Me say true fings all
same."

"Sure, thin, if your supper didn't give ye the nightmare, mine did.
Begorra! 'twas a mighty terrible dream I dreamt, indeed, Mr. Nando.  I
dreamt you was snoring like a pig--like a common black pig, to be sure;
and there came a little spalpeen uv a black bhoy, a common black bhoy,
and shook ye by the shoulder, and called 'Baa!  Baa!  Bloko!' and some
more I disremimber now; and thin----"

Nando, who had been looking more and more uneasy, here interrupted,
hurriedly addressing Mr. Martindale--

"Me plenty sick inside, sah," he said, pressing his hands to the pit of
his stomach.  "Me eat plenty too much manioc all same."

Crestfallen and abashed the big fellow slunk away, Jack roaring with
laughter, Mr. Martindale looking on in speechless amazement.

"Begorra, sorr," said Barney, "'tis a born liar he is.  He was fast in
the arms uv murphies, or maniac, speaking by the card, till the bhoy
Samba woke him up.  'Twas Samba, sorr, that spied the enemy, and 'twas
me little darlint uv a dog that gave the first alarm.  Give a dog his
due, sorr, and if you plase, give Samba the knife."

Mr. Martindale first looked annoyed, then broke into hearty laughter.
He called for Samba, who came up smiling, with Pat at his heels.

"Where's that villain Nando?" cried Mr. Martindale.  "He shall come and
interpret."

In response to a summons Nando came from behind the crowd of natives.
He had recovered his composure, and translated with glib and smiling
unconcern the story which Samba told.  Only when Mr. Martindale handed
Samba the knife did the negro look sorry.

"Me no lib for eat too big lot manioc nudder time," he said glumly, as
he went away.



[1] Wake up!

[2] Hush!




CHAPTER VI

Samba is Missing

Nando was like a child in his humours.  His broad face
could not long be overclouded.  When the party once
more embarked he performed his work as chief paddler
with his usual cheerfulness.  All that day the river washed
the edge of a continuous forest tract--a spur, as Jack
understood from Nando's not too lucid explanations, of the
vast Upper Congo forest that stretched for many hundreds
of miles across the heart of Africa.  Jack gazed with great
curiosity, merged sometimes in a sense of awe and mystery,
at the dark impenetrable woodland.  It was only a year
or two since he had read Stanley's account of his wonderful
march through the forest, and his vivid recollection
was quickened and intensified by the sight of the actual
scene.

"And are there pigmies in that forest--little men, you
know?" he asked Nando.

"Sartin sure, sah.  Me fight fousand hundred little
tiny men: me no 'fraid.  Dey shoot plenty good, sah:
one arrow shoot two free birds.  Dey hab berrah fine
eye, sah; see what big man no can see.  Massa see dem
some day: make massa laugh plenty much."

Here and there, in places where the river widened out,
the travellers came upon herds of hippopotami disporting
themselves in the shallows.  Their presence was often
indicated first by strange squeals and grunts: then a huge
head would be seen on the surface of the water as the
beast heard the regular splash of the paddles and was
provoked to investigate its cause; his jaws would open,
disclosing a vast pink chasm; and having completed his long
yawn, and satisfied himself that the strangers intended no
harm, he would plunge his head again beneath the water,
or turn clumsily to wallow in uncouth gambols with his
mates.  The negroes always plied their paddles more
rapidly at such spots.  Nando told stories of hippopotami
which had upset canoes out of sheer mischief, and of others
which, pricked and teased by native spears, had lain in
wait among the rushes and wrecked the craft of fishers
returning to their homes at dusk.

"Me no 'fraid of little man," said Nando; "me plenty
much 'fraid of hippo."

Now and again a crocodile, disturbed in his slumbers by
the splashing of the paddles or the songs of the men, would
dart out of a creek and set off in furious chase; but finding
the canoe a tougher morsel than he expected, would sink
after a disappointed sniffing and disappear.  Occasionally
Mr. Martindale or Jack would take a shot at the reptiles,
but they were so numerous that by and by the travellers
desisted from their "potting," Mr. Martindale regarding
it as a waste of good ammunition.

The natives whom they saw at riverside villages were
now sometimes suspicious, and disinclined to have any
communication with the strangers.  Returning from
interviews with them, Nando reported that they had heard of
the massacre at Banonga, and though he assured them
that his employer was no friend of the tyrants, he failed
to convince them: he was a white man; that was enough.
It was with some difficulty, and only after the exercise
of much tact, patience, and good humour on Nando's part,
that he managed to secure enough food to supply the
needs of the men.

Two days passed amid similar scenes.  The journey never
became monotonous, for in that wonderful land there is
always something fresh to claim the traveller's attention.
Jack began to give Samba lessons in English, and found
him an apt enough pupil, though, in practising his
newly-acquired words afterwards, the boy, to Jack's amusement,
adopted a pronounced Irish accent from Barney.

On the morning of the third day, when the camp became
active, Barney was somewhat surprised to find that Samba
and Pat did not join him as usual at breakfast.  Boy and
dog had gone to sleep together in his tent, and he had not
seen or heard their departure.  Breakfast was cleared
away, everything was packed up in readiness for starting,
and yet the missing members of the party had not appeared.
Both were very popular; Samba's unfailing cheerfulness
had made him a general favourite, and Pat's sagacity, his
keen sporting instincts, and the vigour of his barking when
hippopotami or crocodiles came too near the canoe, won
for him a good deal of admiration from the natives.

"What!  Samba gone!" exclaimed Mr. Martindale,
when Barney told him of the disappearance.  "Have you
called him?"

"Sure me throat is sore wid it, sorr," said Barney,
"and me lips are cracked wid whistling for Pat, bad cess
to 'm."

"The dog has gone too, eh?  I reckon Samba's a thief
like the rest of 'em."

"Begging yer pardon, sorr, it takes two to make a thief,
one to steal, the other to be stolen.  Pat would never agree
to be stolen, sorr; besides, he would never be such an
ungrateful spalpeen uv a dog, not to speak uv the bad
taste of it, as to desert his ould master for a nigger bhoy."

"Well, what's become of them, then?  Nando, where's Samba?"

"Me no can tell, sah.  Me fink crocodile eat him, sah.
Little tiny black boy go walk all alone alone night time.
Yah! crocodile come 'long, fink black boy make plenty
good chop.  Soosh! little black boy in ribber, crocodile
eat him all up, sah.  What for black boy go walk alone?
One time all right, Nando eat manioc[1]; nudder time all
wrong, crocodile eat Samba."

Nando shook his head sententiously; Samba's exploit
on the night of the alarm was evidently still rankling.

"That's not it at all," said Barney.  "Pat would niver
permit any crocodile, wid all his blarney, to eat him; and
if a crocodile ate Samba, sure Pat would have been the
first to come and tell us."

"No, it's your Irish that has frightened the boy," said
Jack gravely.  "I've been trying to teach him a few
words of English; but I've noticed once or twice, after
I've done with him, that he pronounces the words as if
he'd learnt them in Ireland.  No decent black boy could
stand that, you know, Barney."

"Faith, 'tis Irishmen that speak the best English,"
returned Barney; "did I not hear them wid me very own
ears in the house uv Parlimint?"

"Well, Jack, we must go on," said Mr. Martindale.
"I was afraid the boy would be a botheration."

"He has done us a good turn, uncle.  Couldn't we wait
an hour or two and see if he appears?"

"It's not business, Jack."

"My dear uncle, it's no use your posing as a hard-hearted
man of business.  You know you're quite fond
of the boy."

"Eh!  Well, I own he's a likely little fellow, and I sort
of felt he's a part of the concern; in short, Jack, we'll
put in an hour or two and give him a chance."

An hour passed, and Pat made his appearance.  He
trotted soberly into the camp, not frisking or barking
joyously as was his wont.

"Arrah thin, ye spalpeen, where's Samba?" cried
Barney as the dog came to him.

Pat hung his head, and put his tail between his legs and
whined.

"Go and fetch him, then," cried Barney.

The terrier looked at his master, turned as if to do
his bidding, then moved slowly round and whined
again.

"Sure 'tis not devoured by a crocodile he is, or Pat
would be in a terrible rage.  The bhoy has deserted, sorr,
and Pat's heart is after being broken."

"Well, we'll wait a little longer, Barney," said
Mr. Martindale; "he may turn up yet."

The day wore itself out, and Samba had not returned.
Mr. Martindale and Jack spent part of the time in shooting,
adding a goodly number of wild ducks, a river hog and an
antelope to the larder.  Part of the time they watched
the men fishing, or rather harpooning, for they caught the
fish by dexterous casts of their light spears.  Towards
evening Mr. Martindale became seriously anxious, and a
little testy.

"I'm afraid a crocodile has made a meal of him, after
all," he said.  "I don't reckon he'd any reason for leaving
us; he got good victuals."

"And a good knife, uncle.  Perhaps he has gone to
find his father."

"No, I don't bank on that.  Too far for a young boy
to go alone, through the forest, too, on foot.  Anyway,
he's an ungrateful young wretch to go without saying a
word; I've always heard these blacks don't measure up
to white people in their feelings."

Mr. Martindale delayed his departure until the middle
of the next day in the hope that Samba would return.
Then, however, he declared he could wait no longer, and
the party set off.

Late in the afternoon of the next day they came to a
spot where a gap occurred in the thick vegetation that
lined the bank.  Here, said Nando, they must land.  Ilola,
the principal village of the chief to whom they were bound,
stood a short distance from the river, and the way to it lay
through the clear space between two forest belts.  A quarter
of an hour's walking brought them to the village, a cluster
of tent-shaped grass huts almost hidden in the bush.  The
settlement was surrounded by a stockade, and the plantations
of banana, maize, and ground-nuts showed signs of
careful cultivation.

Nando went alone to interview the chief, bearing a
present of cloth and a small copper token which Mr. Martindale
had received from his friend Barnard.  The chief
would recognize it as the replica of one given to him.  Nando
returned in an hour's time, troubled in countenance.
Imbono the chief, he said, had refused to meet the white man,
or to have any dealings with him.  He well remembered
the white man who had cured his son and given him the
token two years before; had they not become blood
brothers!  But since then many things had happened.
Dark stories had reached his ears of the terrible consequences
that followed the coming of the white man.  One of his
young men--his name was Faraji--who had joined a party
of traders carrying copper down the Congo, had just come
back with dreadful tales of what he himself had seen.
When Imbono was a boy his people had lived in terror of
the white-robed men from the East.[2]  There had been a
great white-robed chief named Tippu Tib, who sent his
fighting men far and wide to collect ivory and slaves.
These men knew no pity; they carried destruction
wherever they went, tearing children from parents, husbands
from wives, chaining them together, beating them with
cruel whips, strewing the land with the corpses of slaves
exhausted by long marching or slain because they were
ill or weak.

But terrible as were the warriors of Tippu Tib, surely
the servants of the Great White Chief[3] were more terrible
still; for it often happened that the slave hunters, having
come once, came not again; like a fierce tempest they
passed; but as, when a storm has devastated a forest, new
trees grow and flourish in the room of the old, so when
a village had been robbed of its youth, their places were in
course of time filled by other boys and girls.  And even
when the slave hunters came some villagers would escape,
and hide in dens or among the forest trees until the danger
had passed.  But the servants of the Great White Chief
were like a blight settling for ever on the land.  They came,
and stayed; none could escape them, none were spared,
young or old.  Imbono feared the white man; he prayed
him to go in peace; the men of Ilola were peaceable, and
sought not to make enemies, but they had bows and arrows,
and long shields, and heavy-shafted spears, and if need
be they would defend themselves against the stranger.

"I guess this is kind of awkward," said Mr. Martindale
when Nando had finished his report.  "You can't trade
with a man who won't see you.  Did you explain that
we don't belong to the Great White Chief, Nando?"

"Me say all dat, sah; chief shake him head."

"I suppose you told him our men are not armed?"

"No, sah; me forgot dat, dat am de troof."

"Well, go back; tell the chief that I'm a friend and
want to see him.  Say that I'll come into the village alone,
or with Mr. Jack, and we'll leave our guns behind us.
Tell him the white man he saw two years ago said he was
a very fine fellow, and I'll trust myself unarmed among
his people, bows and arrows and spears and all."

Nando went away, and after another hour returned and
said that Imbono, after much persuasion, had agreed to
receive the white man because he was a friend of his blood
brother.  Leaving their rifles and revolvers in Barney's
charge, Mr. Martindale and Jack accompanied Nando to
the village.  The single entrance to the stockade was
guarded by a throng of tall warriors with curiously painted
skins, and armed with the weapons Nando had described,
carrying in addition knives with long leaf-shaped blades.

"They ain't the daisiest of beauties," said Mr. Martindale
as he passed them.

"Ugly fellows in a scrimmage," said Jack.

They went on, past the first huts, stared at by knots of
the villagers, until they came to the chief's dwelling in the
centre of the settlement.  Imbono was a tall, well set up,
handsome negro, standing half a head taller than the men
about him.  He received the strangers with grave courtesy,
offered them a cup of palm wine, and motioned them to
two low carved stools, seating himself on a third.

Through Nando Mr. Martindale explained his business,
dwelling on the friendly relations which had existed between
the chief and the white man, and assuring him of his
peaceable intentions and of his absolute independence of the
servants of the Great White Chief.  Imbono listened in
silence, and made a long reply, repeating what he had
already said through Nando.  Suddenly he turned to the
young man at his side, whom he called Faraji, and bade
him tell the white man what he had seen.

"Ongoko!  Ongoko!"[4] exclaimed the other men.  Faraji
stepped forward and told his story, with a volubility that
outran Nando's powers as an interpreter, and at the same
time with a seriousness that impressed his hearers.

"I come from Mpatu," he said.  "It is not my village:
my village is Ilola.  I passed through Mpatu on my way
home.  It is no longer a village.  Why?  The servants
of the Great White Chief had come up the river.  They told
the people that the lords of the world, the sons of heaven,
had given all the land to the Great White Chief.  Mpatu
belonged no more to the chief Lualu: it belonged to the
Great White Chief.  But the Great White Chief was a good
chief; he would be a father to his people.  Would he take
their huts, their gardens, their fowls, their children?  No,
he was a good chief.  Everything that was theirs should
be left to them; and the Great White Chief would keep
peace in the land, and men should live together as brothers.
Only one thing the Great White Chief required of them.
In the forest grew a vine that yielded a milky sap.
This stuff when hardened with acid from another plant
would be of use to the Great White Chief, and he
wished them to collect it for him, and bring to his
servants every fourteenth day so many baskets full.  Every
man of Mpatu must bring his share.  And they said too
that the Great White Chief was just: for all this rubber
they collected he would pay, in brass rods, or cloth, or salt;
and seeing the Great White Chief was so kind and good, only
a bad man would fail in the task set him, and such bad
men must be punished.  And two servants of the Great
White Chief would be left in Mpatu to instruct the people
as to the furnishing of the rubber; and these kind teachers
the men of Mpatu would surely provide with food and
shelter.

"The men of Mpatu laughed at first.  Well they knew
the vine!  Was there not enough of it and to spare in the
forest?  How easily they could collect what was demanded!
How soon would they become rich!  And they set the
women and children to weave new baskets for the rubber,
and made ready new and well-built huts for the men who
were to teach them their duty to the Great White Chief.

"But as time went on, woe came to Mpatu.  The two
servants of the Great White Chief were bad men, selfish,
cruel.  They stalked about the village, treating the people
as their slaves; they seized the plumpest fowls and the
choicest fruits; if any man resisted, they whipped him
with a long whip of hippopotamus hide.

"But the servants of the Great White Chief demanded
still more.  It was not only rubber the men of Mpatu
were bade to bring them, but so many goats, so many
fowls, so many fish and cassava and bananas.  How could
they do it?  The rubber vines near by were soon
exhausted.  Every week the men must go farther into
the forest.  They had not enough time now to hunt and
fish for their own families.  How supply the strangers too?

"Grief came to Mpatu!  For long days there was no
man in the village save the chief Lualu and the forest
guards.  The women cowered and crouched in their huts.
No longer did they take pride in tidy homes and well-tended
hair; no longer sing merrily at the stream, or croon lullabies
to their babes; all joy was gone from them.

"Some of the men fled, and with their wives and
children lived in the forest, eating roots and leaves.  But
even flight was vain, for the forest guards tracked
them, hunted them down.  Some they killed as soon
as they found them; others they flogged, chained by
the neck, and hauled to prison.  There they are given
heavy tasks, carrying logs and firewood, clearing the
bush, cutting up rubber; and there is a guard over them
with a whip which at a single blow can cut a strip from the
body.  Many have died; they are glad to die.

"And now Mpatu is a waste.  One day the rubber was
again short; the soldiers came--they burned the huts;
they killed men, women, and children; yea, among the
soldiers were man-eaters, and many of Mpatu's children
were devoured.  Only a few escaped--they wander in the
forest, who knows where?  I tell what I have seen and
heard."

When Faraji had finished his story, there was silence for
a time.  The chief seemed disposed to let the facts sink
into the minds of the white men, and Mr. Martindale was
at a loss for words.  Faraji's story, so significantly
similar to what he had himself discovered at Banonga, had
deeply impressed him.  Were these atrocities going on
throughout the Congo Free State?  Were they indeed a
part of the system of government?  It seemed only
too probable--the rubber tax was indeed a tax of blood.
And what could he say to convince Imbono that he
was no friend of the white men who authorized or
permitted such things?  How could the negro distinguish?

"'Pon my soul," said the American in an aside to Jack,
"I am ashamed of the colour of my skin."

Then the chief began to speak.

"The white man understands why I will have nothing
to do with him--why I will not allow my people to trade
with him.  It may be true that you, O white man, are
not as these others; you may be a friend to the black man,
and believe that the black man can feel pain and grief; but
did not the servants of the Great White Chief say that they
were friends of the black man?  Did they not say the
Great White Chief loved us and wished to do us good?
We have seen the love of the Great White Chief; it is the
love of the crocodile for the antelope: we would have none
of it.  Therefore I say, O white man, though I bear you
no ill-will, you must go."

Courteously as the chief spoke, there was no mistaking
his firmness.

"We must go and take stock of this," said Mr. Martindale.
"It licks me at present, Jack, and that's a hard
thing for an American to say.  Come right away."

They took ceremonious leave of the chief, and were
escorted to their camp at the edge of the stream.

"What's to be done, my boy?" said Mr. Martindale.
"We can't find the gold without the chief's help, unless
we go prospecting at large: we might do that for months
without success, and make Imbono an open enemy into
the bargain.  We can't fight him, and I don't want to
fight him.  After what we've seen and heard I won't be
responsible for shedding blood; seems to me the white
man has done enough of that already on the Congo.  This
is a facer, Jack."

"Never say die, uncle.  It's getting late: I vote we
sleep on it.  We may see a way out of the difficulty in the
morning."



[1] The native word for any food or meal.

[2] Arab slave raiders.

[3] Leopold II, sovereign of the Congo Free State and king of
the Belgians.

[4] Yes, do so.




CHAPTER VII

Blood Brothers

But in the morning the situation appeared only more grave.  Provisions
were threatening to run short.  Hitherto there had been no difficulty
in procuring food from the natives met _en route_, and Mr. Martindale's
party had carried with them only a few days' provisions, and the
"extras" necessary for the white men's comfort.  But now they were come
to a less populous part of the country: Imbono's villages were the only
settlements for many miles around; and unless Imbono relaxed the rigour
of his boycott Mr. Martindale's party would soon be in want.

Mr. Martindale was talking over matters with Jack when, from the slight
eminence on which the camp was pitched, they saw a canoe, manned by six
paddlers, pass up stream.  Jack took a look at the craft through his
field glass.

"It's Imbono, uncle," he said; "I wonder what he is up to."

He followed the progress of the canoe for some distance through the
glass; then, looking ahead, his eye was caught by a herd of eight or
nine hippopotami disporting themselves on a reedy flat by the river
bank.

"What do you say, uncle?  Shall we go and get some hippo meat?  It will
relieve the drain on our stores, and Nando told me the men are rather
fond of it."

"We'll go right away, Jack.  We must keep the larder full at any rate.
I suppose we shall have to stalk the beasts."

"I don't think so, uncle.  Those we saw as we came up seemed pretty
bold; they've such tough hides that they've no reason to be much afraid
of the native weapons."

"Well, we'll paddle up to them and see how we get on."

A canoe was launched, and Mr. Martindale set off with Jack, Barney, and
the terrier, Nando and six of the men paddling.  By the time they
arrived opposite the feeding ground several hippos had come out from
the reeds for a bath in the shallows of the river, only their heads and
backs showing above the water.  The rest had moved off into the thicker
reeds and were hidden from sight.

"One will be enough for the present," said Mr. Martindale.  "Our
fellows are great gluttons, but there's enough meat in one of those
beasts to last even them a couple of days; and we don't want it to go
high!"

"Let us both aim at the nearest," suggested Jack.  "Fire together,
uncle: bet you I bag him."

"I guess I won't take you, and betting's a fool's trick anyway.  We'll
aim at the nearest, as you say; are you ready?"

Two shots rang out as one.  But apparently there had been a difference
of opinion as to which of the animals was the nearest.  One of them
disappeared; another, with a wild roar of pain and rage, plunged into
the reeds; the rest sank below the surface.  Nando, knowing the ways of
hippopotami, began to paddle with frantic vigour, and set the canoe
going at a rapid pace down stream, much to the indignation of Pat, who
stood with his forefeet on the side of the canoe, barking fiercely.
Half a minute later a head appeared above the surface some fifty yards
behind; then another and another: but the beasts seemed to have
recovered from the alarm, for after a long cow-like stare at the
receding canoe, they turned and swam ashore, to rejoin their companions
in the reeds.

"Easy all!" said Mr. Martindale.  "We'll give 'em a quarter of an hour
to settle down, then we'll go back.  What about your bet, eh, Jack?"

"It's your hippo, uncle, no doubt of that," said Jack with a rueful
smile.  "An awful fluke, though; you didn't hit once to my twice coming
up stream."

"A fluke, was it?  I kind o' notice that when you young fellows make a
good shot or pull off a good stroke at billiards or anything else, it's
real good play; whereas an old boy like me can only do anything decent
by a fluke."

"Well, you've lost him, anyway.  The hippo hasn't come up."

"Too cocksure, my boy; he's only just below the surface."

The beast mortally wounded by Mr. Martindale's rifle was lying in
shallow water.  Pat could no longer restrain himself.  He leapt
overboard and swam towards the hippo, barking with excitement, and
becoming frantic when he found that it was just out of his reach.  In
his eagerness to attack the animal he even made an attempt to dive, so
comical that all on board the canoe were convulsed with laughter.
Being paddled to the spot, Mr. Martindale found that the beast was
quite dead.

"Now what are we to do with him?" said Mr. Martindale.  "Shall we go
back and send a party to cut him up?"

"No, no, sah," said Nando instantly.  "Tie rope; pull, pull; hippo he
come 'long all behind."

"Tow him, eh?  Very well.  I allow that'll save time."

A rope was fastened firmly about the beast's neck and jaws; the other
end was fixed to the canoe; and the men began to paddle down stream,
towing the hippo.  The tendency of the animal being to sink, the canoe
seemed to Jack to be dangerously low in the water at the stern.  But
they had only a part of the usual complement of men on board, and the
paddlers were among the most skilful on the Congo.  They had gone but a
few strokes when Jack, glancing back, caught sight of Imbono's canoe
returning.  Like Mr. Martindale's it was keeping fairly close to the
bank.  All at once a great shout of alarm broke from the chief's
paddlers; their easy swing was quickened to desperate exertion, and
they pulled out violently towards the middle of the stream.

"By Jove! uncle, a hippo's after them," cried Jack.

Just astern of the chief's canoe, between it and the shore, a huge
hippopotamus, with jaws distended, showing his gleaming tusks, was
swimming along in pursuit.  For a little he gained, and Jack's pulse
beat more quickly with excitement as he saw that the enraged beast was
not more than half a dozen yards from the canoe.  But the gap widened
as soon as the six strong paddlers had settled down to their quickened
stroke.

Imbono, sitting in the stern, had caught sight of the white men as his
canoe cut for a few moments across the current, and with the natural
vanity of the negro he began to show off.  At a word from him one of
the crew dropped his paddle, and, catching up a spear, hurled it at the
pursuing hippo.  There was a hoarse bellow from the animal, and a wild
cheer from the men; the shaft of the spear was seen standing almost
perpendicularly above the hippo's shoulder.  With fierce exertion the
beast increased his pace, and the gap momentarily diminished; but the
negro resumed his paddle, and again the canoe drew away.

As the canoe came almost level with the towed hippo at a considerable
distance towards mid-stream, Imbono ordered the same manoeuvre to be
repeated.  But fortune doubly befriended the pursuing animal.  Just as
the negro was poising his spear, a submerged tree stopped the canoe
with a sudden jerk; the man lost his balance and fell overboard; half
of the crew followed him into the water, the rest tumbled over one
another into the bottom of the canoe.  Imbono had been thrown backward
as the vessel struck the snag.  He had barely time to rise and plunge
into the water when there was a hideous crackling sound; the stern of
the canoe was caught between the hippo's gaping jaws and crunched to
splinters.

The consequences of the chief's temerity would have been amusing but
for his manifest danger.  The negroes were swimming in all directions,
keeping as much as possible under water to escape the eyes of the
hippo; but Imbono, an older man than the rest, was not so expert a
swimmer, and Jack saw with concern that the hippo, leaving the sinking
canoe, was making straight for the chief.

A hippopotamus may be distanced by a canoe, but not by a man swimming.
Imbono did not look behind, but seemed to know instinctively that death
was within a few yards of him, and he struck out more and more
desperately for the bank.

At the moment when the canoe struck the snag, Jack had seized his
rifle; but after the catastrophe, canoe, hippo, and swimming natives
were so intermingled that he could not venture a shot at the beast
without the risk of hitting a man.  The hippo's huge body provided a
target sufficiently broad, indeed; but Jack knew that to strike it
anywhere save at a vital spot would merely add to the beast's rage and
make it doubly formidable to the men in the water.  When he saw the
plight of the chief, however, the great head now only a couple of yards
behind him, the jaws already opening, disclosing the vast red chasm
flanked by gleaming tusks and molars--when Jack saw Imbono thus in the
very article of peril, he could no longer hesitate.  The canoe was
already at rest.  Bidding Nando keep it steady, Jack raised his rifle
to his shoulder and took careful aim.

The chief was gasping for breath after a vain attempt to dodge the
beast by diving; the horrid jaws were just about to snap, when a shot
rang out.  A squealing grunt came from the closing gullet; the uncouth
actions of the beast ceased; and he began to sink slowly and silently
beneath the surface.

"A1!" ejaculated Mr. Martindale.  "That makes up for your miss, Jack."

"Oka moe!"[1] shouted the negroes.  Imbono's men had gained the bank,
but the chief himself, overcome more by his fright than his exertions,
seemed unable to swim any farther.

"Quick, haul him in, Jack," said Mr. Martindale.  "There may be a
crocodile after him next!"

A few strokes of the paddles brought the canoe within reach of the
chief.  Laughing heartily--the negro's laugh is always very near the
surface--Nando and a comrade hoisted Imbono into the canoe.

"Me tell Imbono he oughter die of shame," said Nando gravely.

"What on earth for?" asked Mr. Martindale.

"What for, sah!  Has he not made big puddle in massa's canoe?  He
plenty much wet, sah."

"Well, he couldn't help that.  Tell him we're glad he came off so well.
You need not say anything about the puddle."

But Nando had his own views as to the proper thing to do.  As he spoke
the chief glanced at the pool of water that had flowed from his body,
and replied in a tone that was clearly apologetic.

"He say he die with shame him so wet, sah," said Nando.  "Him no do it
no more.  Say he praise de young Inglesa for shooting de hippo; say he
gib massa de hippo and manioc and bananas and anyfing whatever dat
massa like.  Say he want massa and young massa to be blood brudder.  Me
say berrah good; tell him oughter had sense before."

"That's all right.  We'll accept supplies with pleasure, and pay for
them.  The hippo is Mr. Jack's already, of course.  As for becoming his
blood brothers, I don't just know right off what that means; but if
it'll please him, and doesn't mean any nastiness, we'll think it over."

The canoe, towing Mr. Martindale's hippo, was rapidly paddled down
stream to the encampment, the second beast being left to drift slowly
down the river until, in the course of some hours, it should finally
rise to the surface.  On landing the chief renewed his protestations of
gratitude, then went off to the village, to polish himself up, said
Nando, and replace his ruined headdress, a curious structure of cloth
and feathers stuck on to the chignon into which his hair was gathered.
Mr. Martindale sent back another canoe to find and tow down the dead
hippo.  When it was hauled up on the low sandy bank, Jack and his uncle
went down to examine it.

"You said I missed, uncle," cried Jack.  "What do you make of this?"

He pointed to a furrow ploughed across the full breadth of the beast's
forehead.

"Nothing but a bullet did that, I know.  My shot must have hit him, but
didn't enter the skull.  I suppose he hid in the reeds, and vented his
fury on the chief.  He happened to have a harder skull than your hippo,
uncle; you see it was a fluke after all."

Mr. Martindale slowly cut and lighted a cigar.  Not until he had
watched a big cloud of smoke float across the river did he speak.  Then
he said quietly--

"Just so!"

Somehow Jack felt that he had not the better of the argument.

Before the sun went down, a group of men came from Ilola staggering
under loads of grain and fruit, a quantity large enough to supply the
camp for several days.  That night the men had a royal feast, consuming
so many hippo steaks that Barney professed himself indignant.

"Bedad! 'tis greedy scoundhrels they are," he said, "Wheniver me mother
gave us bhoys a stew--and 'twas not often, ye may be sure, meat being
the price it was--'twas wan tiny morsel uv mutton, and a powerful lot
uv murphies: she said too much meat would spoil our complexion and ruin
our tempers.  And begorra! isn't it meself that proves it!"

Mr. Martindale laughed at Barney's logic.

"I'm not afraid of the niggers' complexions or their tempers," he said;
"I only hope they won't keep up that hullabaloo all night and spoil our
sleep."

The men were indeed very uproarious, and remained around their fires
for the greater part of the night, recounting for the hundredth time
the exciting events of the day, and composing on the spot songs in
praise of the young white man whose fire-stick had slain the terror of
the river.  One of these songs seemed especially to strike their fancy,
and it remained a favourite for many days:--

  Happy Imbono!
  Oh! oh! Imbono!
  Who saved Imbono?
  The good stranger!
  The young stranger!
  The brave stranger!
  Good Jacko!
  Young Jacko!
  Brave Jacko!
  He came to Ilola!
  Happy Ilola!
  Lucky Ilola!
  He saved Imbono
  From five hippos,
  From ten hippos!
  Lucky Imbono!
  Happy Imbono!
  Oh! oh! Imbono!


Next morning, as soon as it was light, Imbono came to pay a visit of
ceremony.  He had got himself up most elaborately for the occasion.  A
strip of yellow cotton was wound about his waist.  His arms were
covered with polished brass rings, and copper rings weighing at least
ten pounds each encircled his wrists and ankles.  A new headdress
decked his hair; and he must have kept his barber busy half the night
in arranging his top-knot and painting his face with red camwood and
white clay.  Pat by no means approved of the change, and barked at him
furiously.

"Whisht, ye spalpeen!" said Barney, calling off the excited dog.  "Sure
'tis only his Sunday clothes!"

Surrounded by a group of his young men, who were again loaded with
offerings of food, the chief began a long speech, which was by no means
abridged in Nando's translation.  He related the incident of the
previous day, omitting none of the most insignificant details,
accounting, as it appeared, for every tooth in the jaws of the huge
animal from which he had been saved.  He went on to say that in
gratitude to the white man he had changed his mind.  No longer would he
withhold food; his young men even now had their hands full of the best
products of Ilola.  No longer would he refuse his friendship; he would
even show the white man the place where the yellow metal was to be
found--on one condition, that the white man would become his blood
brother.  Imbono and the white men would then be friends for ever.

"Well, I'll be very glad to be friends with the chief," said Mr.
Martindale, "and I'm right down obliged to him for agreeing to show me
the location of the gold.  And what's this blood brother business
anyway?  I don't size up to that without knowing something about it,
you bet."

"Me tell all 'bout it, sah.  Imbono hab got knife; he come scratch,
scratch massa his arm; den blood come, just little tiny drop, oh yes!
Den Imbono he lick massa him blood.  Massa he hab got knife too: he
scratch Imbono him arm all same, lick Imbono him blood.  Me fink massa
not like black man him blood--not berrah berrah much.  Den massa gib
Imbono little tiny present--knife, like knife Samba stole from Nando;
Imbono gib massa fowl, or brass ring, or anyfing massa like.  Den massa
and Imbono dey be blood brudder, be friends for eber and eber amen."

"Well, I guess the blood business sounds rather disgusting.  What do
you think, Jack?"

Jack made a grimace.

"Couldn't we leave all the licking to him, uncle?"

Here Nando broke in.  "Me fink massa not like black blood.  All same, I
show de way.  Massa hold Imbono him arm tight, berrah tight, pretend to
lick, get little drop of blood on hand; dat nuff; Imbono pleased."

"If he's satisfied with that I'm willing, so fire away."

The chief beamed when he learnt that the white man had given his
consent.  The ceremony was quickly performed.  Then Imbono handed them
each a copper ring, and received in return a pinch of salt from Mr.
Martindale and a lucifer match from Jack, Nando assuring them that no
more acceptable presents could have been thought of.  Imbono recited a
sort of chant, which was explained to mean that he, his sons, his
friends, the men of Ilola, from that time forth and for evermore would
be the true friends of the white men; everything he had was theirs.
With a suitable reply from Mr. Martindale and Jack the ceremony ended.

Jack noticed when the chief had gone that Nando's face wore a somewhat
woebegone look.

"What's the matter, Nando?" he asked.

"Nando berrah sick, sah.  Imbono hab got present, massa hab got
present, little massa hab got present all same; Nando hab got no
present, no nuffin.  Dat make Nando sick.  Samba hab got Nando him
knife: what for Nando no hab nuffin at all?"

"Seems to me he wants a commission on the transaction," said Mr.
Martindale with a smile.  "Give him something, Jack; he's not a bad
sort."

"I've got a lucky sixpence, uncle; he can string that round his neck.
Here you are, Nando."

The negro took the coin with delight.

"Bolotsi O!" he exclaimed.  "Nando no sick no more.  Him plenty comfy
inside.  All jolly nice now sah: oh yes!"



[1] Bully for you!




CHAPTER VIII

Jack in Command

"We've come out of that better than I expected," said Mr. Martindale,
when the chief had gone.  "I only hope our new brother won't carry his
affection too far.  If he keeps piling in food in this way, our fellows
will wax fat and kick."

"You'll have to give him a hint, uncle.  Proverbs are mostly
old-fashioned rubbish, but there's one that would suit him: 'Enough is
as good as a feast.'"

"Which no nigger would believe.  Now I wonder when he will take us to
find this ore.  The sooner the better, although I calculate he doesn't
know the value of time."

Imbono returned in the course of the afternoon, and said that he would
be ready to conduct the white men to the gold region next day.  But he
stipulated that only his new brothers should accompany him.  To this
condition no one objected but Nando, who appeared to regard it as a
personal slight.

"Berrah well, berrah well," he said, his tone suggesting that he washed
his hands of the business.  "Nando no go, massa no can say nuffin to
Imbono.  Berrah well; all same."

Immediately after breakfast next morning the two set off in Imbono's
company, Jack carried a prospector's pan for washing the soil, Mr.
Martindale having declared that he didn't expect to find nuggets lying
around.  They also carried enough food for the day.  Imbono struck off
due west from the village; then, when well out of sight, he made a
detour, and passing through a couple of miles of dense forest, entered
a broken hilly country, which to Mr. Martindale's experienced eye
showed many traces of volcanic disturbance.  At last, forcing their way
through a belt of tangled copse, with many scratches from prickly
sprays, they came upon a deep gully, at the bottom of which ran a
stream of brownish water, now some twenty feet in breadth.  That it was
much broader at certain seasons was shown by the wide edging of sand
and pebbles at each side.

The chief came to a halt at the edge of the gully, and pointing up and
down the stream, said something in his own language.  Mr. Martindale
nodded his head, but said to Jack--

"I suppose he means we're right there.  Why on earth could not he let
Nando come and do the translating?"

"Show him your watch, uncle!"

At the sight of the watch Imbono nodded his head rapidly and ejaculated
what was clearly an affirmative.  Then he led the way down the rocky
side of the gully, the others scrambling after him.  On reaching the
sandy strand Mr. Martindale bent down and eagerly examined it.  Taking
some of the sand and pebbles in his hand, he stuck a magnifying glass
in his eye and picked them over carefully.

"Looks promising, Jack," he said, with the enthusiasm of an old miner.
"There are little granules of quartz mixed up with the sand, and a
particle or two of iron.  But that don't prove there's gold.  We'll
just try a little experiment."

He emptied a few handfuls of the soil into the pan, filled this with
water from the stream, and moved the pan to and fro so as to give the
water a concentric motion, Jack and the chief watching him with equal
interest.  Every now and then Mr. Martindale would cant off a little of
the water, which carried off some of the lighter sand with it.

"What you may call a process of elimination or reduction," he said.

"_Reductio ad absurdum_, uncle?"

"I hope not.  Guess you're smartening up, Jack."

"Call it survival of the fittest, then."

"Of the thickest, I'd say.  This washing carries off the useless light
sand, and leaves the heavy stuff behind, and it's in that we'll find
gold if at all."

After nearly half an hour's patient manipulation of the pan, there was
left in the bottom a blackish powder and some coarse grains of quartz,
with just enough water to cover them.

"Look at that, my boy," said Mr. Martindale.  "First time you've seen
anything of that sort, I guess."

"But where's the gold, uncle?"

"That's what remains to be seen--perhaps.  Keep your eye on that groove
as I tilt the pan round.  The black stuff is iron-stone; you needn't
trouble about that.  See if it leaves anything else."

He gently tilted the pan so that the water slowly flowed round the
groove, carrying with it the quartz grains and the powder.  Jack
watched narrowly.  After the contents of the pan had made the circuit
two or three times he suddenly exclaimed--

"There's a sort of glitter left behind the powder, uncle."

"I reckon that's enough," said Mr. Martindale, setting down the pan.
"We've hit it, Jack."

Jack could not refrain from giving a cheer.  The chief, who had but
half approved the proceedings at the beginning, caught the infection of
the lad's enthusiasm, and snapped his fingers and slapped his thighs
vigorously.

"We'll have another look higher up," said Mr. Martindale.  "One swallow
don't make a summer--another piece of what you call antiquated rubbish,
Jack.  There's gold here, that's certain; but I don't know whether it's
rich enough to be worth working."

They walked for half a mile up the stream, and Mr. Martindale went
through the same process with the soil there.  He was again rewarded.
This time, however, the trace of gold was more distinct.

"Jack, my boy," he said, "there's a small fortune in the bed of the
stream alone.  But I'm not satisfied yet.  It's up to us now to
discover the mother lode.  To judge by the size of the stream it can't
be far off.  The botheration is we can't talk to the chief, and I say
it's most unbrotherly to refuse us the advantage of an interpreter."

"Well, we've plenty of time, uncle.  I vote we have our lunch and then
go on again."

They sat down on boulders at the edge of the river and ate the manioc
cakes and bananas with which Barney had provided them.  Imbono seemed
pleased when he was invited to share their lunch.  Going into the
forest, he returned with a large leaf which he shaped like a cup, and
in this he brought water from the stream for the white men.

After lunch they followed up the stream.  At intervals Mr. Martindale
stopped to test the gravel, and found always some trace of gold, now
slight, now plentiful.  Some three miles up they came to a confluence.
The stream was joined by a smaller swifter one, which evidently took
its rise in the steep hilly country now becoming visible through the
trees.

"We'll try this, Jack."

"Why?"

"Because the bed's more gravelly than the other.  I guess the big
stream comes out of the forest somewhere; the other will suit our book
best."

They found their progress becoming more and more difficult.  The ground
was more rocky, the sides of the gully were steeper, and the edging of
dry gravel diminished until by and by it disappeared altogether, and
the prospectors had to take off their boots and socks and wade.  There
were trees and bushes here and there on the sides and at the top of the
gully, but the vegetation became more and more scanty as they ascended.
Presently the sound of falling water struck upon their ears, and a
sudden turn of the stream brought them into full view of a cataract.
At this point the gully had widened out, and the water fell over a
broad smooth ledge of rock, dashing on the stones after a descent of
some fifty or sixty feet.

"That's fine!" exclaimed Jack, halting to watch the cascade sparkling
in the sunlight, and the brownish white foam eddying at the foot.

"Grand!" assented Mr. Martindale.  "There's enough water power there to
save many a thousand dollars' worth of machinery."

"I was thinking of the scenery, not machinery, uncle," said Jack, with
a laugh.

"Scenery!  Why, I've got a lot finer waterfall than that on my
dining-room wall.  It isn't Niagara one way or t'other, but it'll do a
lot of mill grinding all the same.  Now, Jack, you're younger than I
am.  I want to see what there is by those rocks ten feet away from the
bottom of the fall.  Strip, my boy; a bath will do you a power of good,
a hot day like this; and there are no crocodiles here to make you feel
jumpy."

Jack stripped and was soon waist deep in the water.  Reaching the spot
his uncle had indicated, he stooped, and found that he could just touch
the bottom without immersing himself.  The water was too frothy for the
bottom to be seen; he groped along it with his hands, bringing up every
now and then a small fragment of quartz or a handful of gravel, which
Mr. Martindale, after inspecting it from a distance, told him to throw
in again.

At last, when he was getting somewhat tired of this apparently useless
performance, he brought up a handful of stones, not to as eyes
differing from what he had seen for the past half hour.  He spread them
out for his uncle, now only two or three yards away, to examine.

"I guess you can put on your clothes now," said Mr. Martindale.  "Why,
hang it, man! you've thrown it away!"

Jack had pitched the stones back into the water.

"I thought you'd done, uncle," he said.

"So I have, and you're done too--done brown.  D'you know you've thrown
away a nugget worth I don't know how many dollars?"

"You didn't tell me what you were after," said Jack, somewhat nettled.
"I couldn't be expected to know you were hunting for nuggets."

"No, you couldn't be expected: and that's just exactly what I brought
you over to America for.  When you've had the kind of smartening up I
mean you to have, you won't talk about what's expected or not expected;
you'll just figure it out that there's some reason in everything, and
you'll use your own share of reason accordingly."

"All right, uncle," replied Jack good-humouredly.  "I might have put
two and two together, perhaps.  At school, you see, they liked us to do
as we were told without arguing.  'Theirs not to reason why'--you know.
Shall I fish for that nugget?"

"Not worth while.  A few dollars more or less are neither here nor
there.  I know what I want to know, and now I think we'd better be
getting.  Put your clothes on.  Our brother Imbono has several times
anxiously pointed to the sun.  He evidently isn't comfortable at the
idea of being benighted in these regions."

Screwing some of the sifted gravel into a bag of leaves, Mr. Martindale
signed to the chief that he was ready to return.  They reached the camp
just as the sun was setting.  In honour of the recent discovery, Mr.
Martindale invited the chief to supper, and gave him a regale which
astonished him.  To see the white man bring peaches out of a closed pot
made Imbono open his eyes; but the sensation of the evening was
furnished by a bottle of soda water.  When the stopper was loosed and
the liquid spurted over, the chief shrank back in amazement, uttering a
startled cry.  Nando, not skilled in European politeness, guffawed
uproariously.

"Him say debbil water, sah.  Yah! yah!"

Nothing would induce Imbono to drink the stuff.  But he took kindly to
tea, and being prevailed on to try a pinch of snuff, he laughed
heartily when the paroxysm of sneezing was over, and asked for more.

"Him say like laugh-cry dust plenty much," said Nando.

When the chief had eaten his fill, Mr. Martindale, with considerable
diplomacy, explained that the discovery of gold was of little use to
him unless he could take men to the spot, and desired the withdrawal of
the prohibition.  Nando took a long time to convey this to Imbono, and
Jack suspected that he was making somewhat lavish promises in the
nature of _quid pro quo_.  Imbono at length agreed to the white man's
request, provided none of the workers he wished to take with him were
servants of the Great White Chief.  He consented also to lead him back
to the cataract next day, so that he might complete his search for the
gold-bearing rocks.

On this second journey Mr. Martindale and Jack were accompanied by two
of their negroes with picks.  On arriving at the spot the men were set
to break away portions of the rocky wall on the left of the cataract.

"You see, Jack," said Mr. Martindale, "the fact that we found gold in
the stream shows that it is still being washed down by the water;
otherwise it would have been swept away or buried long ago.  The rock
must be of a soft kind that offers comparatively little resistance to
the water, and I'm rather inclined to think that not so very many years
ago the cataract was a good deal farther forward than it is now.  Well,
the gold-bearing stratum must run right through the cataract,
horizontally I suspect.  It may not be a broad one, but it will
probably extend some distance on each side of the fall, and a few
hours' work ought to prove it."

As the rock fell away under the negroes' picks, Mr. Martindale and Jack
carefully washed samples of it.  In less than an hour the glittering
trail shone out clear in the wake of the granules of rock as they slid
round the groove.

"So much for the first part of our job," said Mr. Martindale, with a
quiet sigh of satisfaction.  "The next thing is to see if the gold
extends above the cataract."

Under Imbono's guidance the party made their way by a detour to the
river banks above the falls.  After a search of some hours Mr.
Martindale declared himself satisfied that the lode was confined to the
rocks over which the water poured.

"We can't do much more for the present," he said.  "The next thing is
to get machinery for working the ore.  We'll have to go back to Boma.
We can probably get simple materials for working the alluvial deposits
there, but the machinery for crushing the ore must be got from Europe,
and that'll take time.  We'll pack up and start to-morrow."

But after breakfast next morning, when Mr. Martindale had lighted his
morning cigar, he startled Jack by saying suddenly--

"Say, Jack, how would you like to be left here with Barney and some of
the men while I go back to Boma?"

"What a jolly lark!" said Jack, flushing with pleasure.

"Humph!  That's a fool's speech, or a schoolboy's, which often comes to
the same thing.  I'm not thinking of larks, or gulls, or geese, but of
serious business."

"Sorry, uncle.  That's only my way of saying I should like it
immensely."

"I've been turning it over in the night.  I want to make a man of you,
Jack; I want to see if there's any grit in you.  There ought to be, if
you're your mother's boy.  Anyway this will give you a chance.  Things
are this way.  We've struck a fortune here.  Well, I'm an old miner,
and I don't allow anybody to jump my claim.  I don't reckon any one is
likely to jump it; still, you never know.  That fellow Elbel, now; he's
an official of the Belgian company, and he knows what I'm here for.  He
might take it into his head to steal a march on me, and though I've got
the mining monopoly for all this district, you bet that won't be much
of a protection of my claim all these miles from civilization.  So it's
advisable to have a man on the spot, and it's either you or me.  You
don't know anything about mining machinery, so I guess it's no good
sending you to Boma.  Consequently, you must stay here."

"I'm jolly glad of the chance, uncle.  I'll look after your claim."

"Spoiling for a fight, eh?  But we mustn't have any fighting.  Mind
you, all this is only speculation--foresight, prudence, call it what
you like.  I don't calculate on any one trying to do me out of my
rights.  And if any one tries to jump my claim, it won't do for you to
make a fool of yourself by trying to oppose 'em by force.  All you can
do is to sit tight and keep an eye on things till I get back.  I don't
know I'm doing right to leave you: you're the only nephew I've got, and
you can't raise nephews as you raise pumpkins.  But I thought it all
out while you were snoring, and I've made up my mind to give it a
trial.  Patience and tact, that's what you want.  You've got 'em, or
you haven't.  If you have, I reckon it's all right: if you haven't----"

"Your cigar has gone out, dear old man," said Jack, laying his hand on
his uncle's.

"So it has.  I'll try another.  Well, that's settled, eh?  I'll be as
quick as I can, Jack: no doubt I'll find a launch when I reach the
Congo, or even before if Elbel's boss at Makua likes to make himself
pleasant.  But I've no doubt Elbel has coloured up our little meeting
in his report to headquarters.  Anyhow, I should be right back in two
or three months--not so very long after all.  I'll forward some rifles
and ammunition from the first station where I can get 'em: the sale of
arms is prohibited in this State, of course; but that isn't the only
law, by all accounts, that's a dead letter here, and I don't doubt a
little palm-oil will help me to fix up all I want.  You'll have to
teach the men how to use 'em, and remember, they're only for
self-defence in the last extremity.  See?"

"I'll be careful, uncle.  It's lucky we've a friend in Imbono.  I think
we'll get along first-rate.  Nando can do the interpreting till I learn
something of the language."

"Jingo!  I'd forgotten Nando.  That's a poser, Jack.  I shall want him
to pilot me down to Boma.  I can't get along without an interpreter.
That's a nailer on our little scheme, my boy; for of course you can't
stay here without some one to pass your orders to the men."

Jack looked very crestfallen.  The prospect of being left in charge was
very delightful to him, and he had already been resolving to show
himself worthy of his uncle's trust.  The thing he had regretted most
in leaving Rugby was that he would never be in the Sixth and a "power."
He did not shrink from responsibility; and it was hard to have his
hopes of an independent command dashed at the moment of opportunity.
Suddenly an idea occurred to him.  "Are you sure none of the other men
know enough English to serve my turn?" he said.

"Nando said not a man jack of 'em knows it but himself.  I'll call him
up and ask him again."

Nando came up all smiles in answer to the call.  "You told me that none
of the men speak English but yourself," said Mr. Martindale; "is that
true?"

"Too plenty much true, sah.  Me speak troof all same, sah."

"That's unfortunate.  We're going back to Boma.  I wanted to leave Mr.
Jack here, but I can't do that unless he has some one to do the talking
for him.  Go and get the things packed up, Nando."

The negro departed with alacrity.  But not five minutes later he
returned, accompanied by a negro a little shorter than himself, but
otherwise showing a strong resemblance.  Both were grinning broadly.

"My brudder, sah," said Nando, patting the younger man on the shoulder.
"He berrah fine chap.  Him Lepoko.  Speak Inglesa; berrah clebber.
Nando go with big massa, Lepoko stay with little massa; oh yes! all too
fine and jolly."

"Lepoko speaks English, does he?" said Mr. Martindale.  "Then you're a
liar, Nando!"

"No, sah, me no tell lies, not at all.  Lepoko no speak Inglesa all de
time, sah.  What for two speak Inglesa one time?  Too much nise, massa
no can hear what Nando say.  Nando go, all same; massa muss hab some
one can talk.  Berrah well; den Lepoko hab go; can talk all right.  He
show massa what can do."

"One, two, free, forty, hundred fousand," began Lepoko glibly.  "Ten
little nigger boys.  What de good of anyfink?  Way down de Swannee
ribber----"

"That'll do, that'll do!" cried Mr. Martindale, laughing.  "You've got
your interpreter, Jack.  Nando, get ready to start.  Bring nine men
with you, the rest will stay with Mr. Jack.  The fellow was hankering
after the flesh-pots of Boma, I suppose," he added, when Nando had
gone, "and that accounts for his sudden discovery of his brother's
eloquence--too jealous of his own importance to give it away before.
Now there's Barney, Jack.  I don't know how he'll take being left here."

Barney took it very well.  When Mr. Martindale mentioned that he would
be absent for at least two months, he remarked--

"Bedad, sorr, I'll be getting fat at last.  Imbono sent another heap of
maniac this morning, and seeing that I'll have nothing whativer to do
for two months, sure I'll be a different man entirely by the time you
come back."

An hour later the shore was crowded with natives come to bid the white
man farewell.  Imbono was there with all the men of his village.  At
his final interview with Mr. Martindale he had promised to watch
carefully over the welfare of his young blood brother; he would supply
him and his men with food, and defend him from wild beasts and
aggressive black men, and his villagers should at once set about
building new huts for the party.

"Remember, Jack, patience--and tact.  God bless you, my boy."

"Good-bye, uncle.  Hope you'll have a pleasant journey.  And on the way
down keep an eye lifting for Samba."

Then the ten natives struck the water with their paddles, the canoe
glided down the stream, and as it disappeared round a bend of the river
Jack heard the men's voices uplifted in a new song composed for the
occasion.

"What are they singing, Lepoko?" he asked of his new interpreter.

"Me tell massa.

  "Down brown ribber,
  Broad brown ribber,
  White man go
  In canoe.
  Good-bye, Ilola,
  Good-bye, Imbono,
  Good-bye, Jacko,
  Brave Jacko,
  Young Jacko.
  He save Imbono,
  Lucky Imbono;
  Down brown ribber
  White man go."




CHAPTER IX

Samba Meets the Little Men

Samba had cheerfully accompanied Mr. Martindale's expedition, in the
confidence that one of its principal objects, if not indeed its main
one, was the discovery of his parents.  Nando had told him, on the
ruins of Banonga, that the white man would help him in his search, and
the white man had treated him so kindly that he believed what Nando
said.  But as the days passed and the canoes went farther and farther
up stream, miles away from Banonga, the boy began to be uneasy.  More
than once he reminded Nando of his promise, only to be put off with
excuses: the white man was a very big chief, and such a trifling matter
as the whereabouts of a black boy's father and mother could not be
expected to engage him until his own business was completed.

Samba became more and more restless.  He wished he could open the
matter himself to the white men; but the few words of English he had
picked up from Jack and Barney were as useless to him as any
schoolboy's French.  Jack often wondered why there was so wistful a
look upon the boy's face as he followed him about, much as Pat followed
Samba.  He spoke to Nando about it, but Nando only laughed.  Samba
began to distrust Nando.  What if the man's assurances were false, and
there had never been any intention of seeking his father?  The white
men had been kind to him; they gave him good food; he was pleased with
the knife presented to him as a reward for his watchfulness; but all
these were small things beside the fact that his parents were lost to
him.  Had the white men no fathers? he wondered.

At length he came to a great resolution.  If they would not help him,
he must help himself.  He would slip away one night and set off in
search.  He well knew that in cutting himself adrift from the
expedition many days' journey from his old home he was exchanging ease
and plenty for certain hardship and many dangers known and unknown.
The forest in the neighbourhood of Banonga was as a playground to him;
but he could not know what awaited him in a country so remote as this.
He had never been more than half a day's journey from home, but he had
heard of unfriendly tribes who might kill him, or at best keep him
enslaved.  And the white men of Bula Matadi--did not they sometimes
seize black boys, and make them soldiers or serfs?  Yet all these
perils must be faced: Samba loved his parents, and in his case love
cast out fear.

One morning, very early, when every one in the camp was occupied with
the first duties of the day, Samba stole away.  His own treasured knife
was slung by a cord about his neck; he carried on his hip,
negro-fashion, a discarded biscuit tin which he had filled with food
saved from his meals of the previous day; and Mr. Martindale's knife
dangled from his waist cord.  It was easy to slip away unseen; the camp
was surrounded by trees, and within a minute he was out of sight.  He
guessed that an hour or two would pass before his absence was
discovered, and then pursuit would be vain.

But he had not gone far when he heard a joyous bark behind him, and Pat
came bounding along, leaping up at him, looking up in his face, as if
to say: "You are going a-hunting: I will come too, and we will enjoy
ourselves."  Samba stopped, and knelt down and put his arms about the
dog's neck.  Should he take him?  The temptation was great: Pat and he
were staunch friends; they understood each other, and the dog would be
excellent company in the forest.  But Samba reflected.  Pat did not
belong to him, and he had never stolen anything in his life.  The dog's
master had been good to him: it would be unkind to rob him.  And Pat
was a fighter: he was as brave as Samba himself, but a great deal more
noisy and much less discreet.  Samba knew the ways of the forest; it
was wise to avoid the dangerous beasts, to match their stealth with
stealth; Pat would attack them, and certainly come off worst.  No, Pat
must go back.  So Samba patted him, rubbed his head on the dog's rough
coat, let Pat lick his face, and talked to him seriously.  Then he got
up and pointed towards the camp and clapped his hands, and when Pat
showed a disposition still to follow him, he waved his arms and spoke
to him again.  Pat understood; he halted and watched the boy till he
disappeared among the trees; then, giving one low whine, he trotted
back with his tail sorrowfully lowered.

Samba went on.  He had come to the river, but he meant to avoid it now.
The river wound this way and that: the journey overland would be
shorter.  He might be sought for along the bank; but in the forest
wilds he would at least be safe from pursuit, whatever other dangers he
might encounter.  At intervals along the bank, too, lay many villages:
and Samba was less afraid of beasts than of men.  So, choosing by the
instinct which every forest man seems to possess a direction that would
lead towards his distant village, he went on with lithe and springy
gait, humming an old song his grandfather Mirambo had taught him.

His path at first led through a grassy country, with trees and bush in
plenty, yet not so thick but that the sunlight came freely through the
foliage, making many shining circles on the ground.  But after about
two hours the forest thickened; the sunlit spaces became fewer, the
undergrowth more and more tangled.  At midday he sat down by the edge
of a trickling stream to eat his dinner of manioc, then set off again.
The forest was now denser than anything to which he had been accustomed
near Banonga, and he went more warily, his eyes keen to mark the tracks
of animals, his ears alive to catch every sound.  He noticed here the
scratches of a leopard on a tree trunk, there the trampled undergrowth
where an elephant had passed; but he saw no living creature save a few
snakes and lizards, and once a hare that scurried across his path as he
approached.  He knew that in the forest it is night that brings danger.

The forest became ever thicker, and as evening drew on it grew dark and
chill.  The ground was soft with layers of rotted foliage, the air
heavy with the musty smell of vegetation in decay.  Samba's teeth
chattered with the cold, and he could not help longing for Barney's
cosy hut and the warm companionship of the terrier.  It was time to
sleep.  Could he venture to build a fire?  The smoke might attract men,
but he had seen no signs of human habitation.  It would at any rate
repel insects and beasts.  Yes--he would build a fire.

First he sought for a tree with a broad overhanging branch on which he
could perch himself for the night.  Then he made a wide circuit to
assure himself that there were no enemies near at hand.  In the course
of his round he came to a narrow clearing where an outcrop of rock had
prevented vegetation, and on the edges of this he found sufficient dry
brushwood to make his fire.  Collecting an armful, he carried it
unerringly to his chosen tree, heaped it below the hospitable branch,
and with his knife whittled a hard dry stick to a sharp point.  He
selected then a square lump of wood, cut a little hollow in it, and,
holding his pointed stick upright in the hollow, whirled it about
rapidly between his hands until first smoke then a spark appeared.
Having kindled his fire he banked it down with damp moss he found hard
by, so as to prevent it from blazing too high and endangering his tree
or attracting attention.  Then he climbed up into the branch; there he
would be safest from prowling beasts.  The acrid smoke rose from the
fire beneath and enveloped him, but it gave him no discomfort, rather a
feeling of "homeness" and well-being; such had been the accompaniment
of sleep all his life long in his father's hut at Banonga.  Curled up
on that low bough he slept through the long hours--a dreamless sleep,
undisturbed by the bark of hyenas, the squeal of monkeys, or the wail
of tiger-cats.

When he awoke he was stiff and cold.  It was still dark, but even at
midday the sun can but feebly light the thickest parts of the Congo
Forest.  The fire had gone out; but Samba did not venture to leave his
perch until the glimmer of dawn, pale though it was, gave him light
enough to see by.  He was ravenously hungry, and did not spare the food
left in his tin; many a time he had found food in the forest near his
home, and now that he felt well and strong, no fear of starvation
troubled him.  Having finished his simple breakfast, he slung the empty
can over his hip and set off on his journey.

For two days he tramped on and on, plucking here the red berries of the
phrynia, there the long crimson fruit of the amoma, with mushrooms in
plenty.  Nothing untoward had happened.  In this part of the forest
beasts appeared to be few.  Now and again he heard the rapping noise
made by the soko, the gibber of monkeys, the squawk of parrots: once he
stood behind a broad trunk and watched breathlessly as a tiger-cat
stalked a heedless rabbit; each night he lighted his fire and found a
serviceable branch on which to rest.

But on the third day he was less happy.  The farther he walked, the
denser became the forest, the more difficult his path.  Edible berries
were rarer; fewer trees had fungi growing about their roots; he had to
content himself with forest beans in their brown tough rind.  When the
evening was drawing on he could find no dry fuel for a fire, and now,
instead of seeking a branch for a sleeping place, he looked for a
hollow tree which would give him some shelter from the cold damp air of
night.  Having found his tree he gathered a handful of moss, set fire
to it from his stick and block, which he had carefully preserved, and
threw the smouldering heap into the hollow to smoke out noxious
insects, or a snake, if perchance one had made his home there.

The fourth day was a repetition of the third, with more discomforts.
Sometimes the tangled vines and creepers were so thick that he had to
go round about to find a path.  The vegetation provided still less
food, only a few jack fruit and the wild fruit of the motanga rewarding
his search.  He was so hungry at midday that he was reduced to
collecting slugs from the trees, a fare he would fain have avoided.
Fearless as he was, he was beginning to be anxious; for to make a
certain course in this dense forest was well-nigh impossible.

At dusk, when again he sought a hollow tree and dropped a heap of
smouldering herbage into the hole, he started back with a low cry, for
he heard an ominous hiss in the depths, and was only just in time to
avoid a python which had been roused from sleep by the burning mass.
In a twinkling the huge coils spread themselves like a released
watch-spring beyond the mouth of the hole and along the lowermost
branch of the tree.  With all his forest lore, Samba was surprised to
find that a python could move so quickly.  The instant he heard the
angry hiss he crouched low against the trunk, thankful that the reptile
had chosen a branch on the other side.  Armed only with a knife, he
knew himself no match for a twenty-foot python; had he not seen a young
hippopotamus strangled by a python no larger than this?  Like Brer
Rabbit, Samba lay low and said nothing: until the python, swinging
itself on to the branch of an adjacent tree a few feet away,
disappeared in the foliage.  Then, allowing time for the reptile to
settle elsewhere, Samba sought safer quarters.  The python's house was
comfortable, even commodious; but Samba would scarcely have slept as
soundly as he was wont in uncertainty whether the disturbed owner might
not after all return home.

He felt very cramped and miserable when he rose next day to resume his
journey.  This morning he had to start without breakfast, for neither
fruits nor berries were to be had: a search among fallen trees failed
even to discover ants of which to make a scanty meal.  Constant walking
and privation were telling on his frame; his eyes were less bright, his
step was less elastic.  But there was a great heart within him; he
plodded on; he had set out to find his father and mother; he would not
turn back.  The dangers ahead could be no worse than those he had
already met, and no experienced general of army could have known better
than Samba that to retreat is often more perilous than to advance.

In the afternoon, when, having found a few berries, he had eaten the
only meal of the day and was about to seek, earlier than usual, his
quarters for the night, he heard, from a short distance to the left of
his track, a great noise of growling and snarling.  The sounds were not
like those of any animals he knew.  With cautious steps he made his way
through the matted undergrowth towards the noise.  Almost unawares he
came upon an extraordinary sight.  In the centre of an open space,
scarcely twenty feet across, a small man, lighter in hue than the
majority of Congolese natives, was struggling to free himself from the
grip of a serval which had buried its claws deep in his body and thigh.
Two other small men, less even than Samba in height, were leaping and
yelling around their comrade, apparently instructing him how to act,
though neither made use of the light spears they carried to attack the
furious beast.  The serval, its greenish eyes brilliant with rage, was
an unusually powerful specimen of its kind, resembling indeed a leopard
rather than a tiger-cat.  It was bent, as it seemed, upon working its
way upward to the man's throat, and its reddish spotted coat was so
like his skin in hue that, as they writhed and twisted this way and
that, an onlooker might well have hesitated to launch a spear at the
beast for fear of hitting the man.

One of the little man's hands had a grip of the serval's throat; but he
was not strong enough to strangle it, and the lightning quickness of
the animal's movements prevented him from gripping it with the other
hand.  Even a sturdily-built European might well have failed to gain
the mastery in a fight with such a foe, and the little man had neither
the strength nor the staying power to hold out much longer.  Yet his
companions continued to yell and dance round, keeping well out of reach
of the terrible claws; while blood was streaming from a dozen deep
gashes in the little man's body.

Samba stood but a few moments gazing at the scene.  The instinct of the
born hunter was awake in him, and that higher instinct which moves a
man to help his kind.  Clutching his broad knife he bounded into the
open, reached the fainting man in two leaps, and plunged the blade deep
into the creature's side behind the shoulder.  With a convulsive
wriggle the serval made a last attempt to bury its fangs in its
victim's neck.  Then its muscles suddenly relaxed, and it fell dead to
the ground.

Samba's intervention had come too late.  The man had been so terribly
mauled that his life was ebbing fast.  His comrades looked at him and
began to make strange little moaning cries; then they laid him on a bed
of leaves and turned their attention to Samba.  He knew that he was in
the presence of Bambute, the dreaded pigmies of the forest.  Never
before had he seen them; but he had heard of them as fearless hunters
and daring fighters, who moved about from place to place in the forest,
and levied toll upon the plantations of larger men.  The two little men
came to him and patted his arms and jabbered together; but he
understood nothing of what they said.  By signs he explained to them
that he was hungry.  Then, leaving their wounded comrade to his fate,
they took Samba by the hands and led him rapidly into the forest,
following a path which could scarcely have been detected by any except
themselves.  In some twenty minutes they arrived at a clearing where
stood a group of two score small huts, like beehives, no more than four
feet high, with an opening eighteen inches square, just large enough to
allow a pigmy to creep through.  Pigmies, men and women, were squatting
around--ugly little people, but well-made and muscular, with leaves and
grass aprons for all clothing, and devoid of such ornaments as an
ordinary negro loves.

They sprang up as Samba approached between his guides, and a great
babel of question and answer arose, like the chattering of monkeys.
The story was told; none showed any concern for the man left to die;
the Bambute acknowledge no ties, and seem to have little family
affection.  A plentiful dinner of antelope flesh and bananas was soon
placed before Samba, and it was clear that the pigmies were ready to
make much of the stranger who had so boldly attacked the serval.

One of them knew a little of a Congolese dialect, and he succeeded in
making Samba understand that the chief was pleased with him, and wished
to adopt him as his son.  Samba shook his head and smiled: his own
parents were alive, he said; he wished for no others.  This made the
chief angry.  The chiefs of some of the big men had often adopted pigmy
boys and made slaves of them; it was now his turn.  The whole community
scowled and snarled so fiercely that Samba thought the safest course
was to feign acquiescence for the moment, and seize the first
opportunity afterwards of slipping away.

But nearly three weeks passed before a chance presented itself.  The
pigmies kept him with them, never letting him go out of their sight.
They fed him well--almost too well, expecting his powers of consumption
to be equal to their own.  Never before had he seen such extraordinary
eaters.  One little man would squat before a stalk bearing fifty or
sixty bananas, and eat them all.  True, he lay moaning and groaning all
night, but next morning would be quite ready to gorge an equal meal.
Since they did not cultivate the ground themselves, Samba wondered
where they obtained their plentiful supply of bananas and manioc.  He
learnt by and by that they appropriated what they pleased from the
plantations of a neighbouring tribe of big men, who had too great a
respect for the pigmies' poisoned arrows and spears to protest.  Samba
hoped that he might one day escape to this tribe, but a shifting of the
village rendered this impossible, though it afforded the boy the
opportunity for which he had so long been waiting.

On the night when the pigmy tribe settled down in its new home, four
days' journey from the old, Samba took advantage of the fatigue of his
captors to steal away.  He had chosen the darkest hour before the dawn,
and knowing that he would very soon be missed and followed up, he
struck off through the forest as rapidly as he could.  With plentiful
food he had recovered his old strength and vigour, and he strode along
fleetly, finding his way chiefly by the nature of the ground beneath
his feet; for there was no true path, and the forest was almost
completely dark, even when dawn had broken elsewhere.  As the morning
drew on the leafy arcades became faintly illuminated, and he could then
see sufficiently well to choose the easiest way through the obstacles
that beset his course.

Despite all his exertions his progress was very slow.  Well he knew
that, expert though he was in forest travel, he could not move through
these tangled mazes with anything like the speed of the active little
men who by this time were almost certainly on his track.  At the best
he could hardly have got more than two miles' start.  As he threaded
his way through the brushwood, hacking with his knife at obstructive
creepers, and receiving many a scratch from briar and thorn, he tried
to think of some way of throwing the pursuers off the scent; but every
yard of progress demanded so much exertion that he was unequal to the
effort of devising any likely ruse.

Suddenly coming upon a shallow stream about two yards wide that ran
across his line of march, he saw in a flash a chance of covering his
trail.  He stepped into the stream, pausing for a moment to drink, then
waded a few paces against the current, narrowly scanning the bordering
trees.  They showed a close network of interlacing branches, one tree
encroaching on another.  Choosing a bough overhanging the brook, just
above his head, Samba drew himself up into the tree, taking care that
no spots of water were left on the branch to betray him.  Then,
clambering nimbly like a monkey from bough to bough, he made a path for
himself through the trees at an angle half-way between the directions
of the stream and of his march through the forest.  He hoped that,
losing his track in the stream, the Bambute would jump to the
conclusion that he was making his way up or down its bed, and would
continue their chase accordingly.

Among the trees his progress was even slower than on the ground.  Every
now and again he had to return on his tracks, encountering a branch
that, serviceable as it might look, proved either too high or too low,
or not strong enough to bear his weight.  And he was making more noise
than he liked.  There was not only the rustle and creak of parting
leaves and bending twigs, and the crack of small branches that snapped
under his hand; but his intrusion scared the natural denizens of the
forest, and they clattered away with loud cries of alarm--grey parrots
in hundreds, green pigeons, occasionally a hawk or the great blue
plantain-eater.  The screeches of the birds smothered, indeed, any
sound that he himself might make; but such long-continued evidence of
disturbance might awaken the suspicion of the little men and guide them
to his whereabouts.

By and by he came to a gap in the forest.  The clear sunlight was
welcome as a guide to his course; but he saw that to follow the
direction which he believed would bring him towards Banonga he must now
leave the trees.  He stopped for a few minutes to recover breath, and
to consider what he had best do.  As he lay stretched along a bough,
his eye travelled back over the path he had come.  The vagaries of
lightning that had struck down two forest giants in close proximity
disclosed to his view a stretch of some twenty yards of the stream
which he had just crossed on his primeval suspension bridge.  What
caused him to start and draw himself together, shrinking behind a leafy
screen thick enough to hide him even from the practised eyes of the
little forest men?  There, in the bed of the stream, glancing this way
and that, at the water, the banks, the trees on every side, were a file
of Bambute, carrying their little bows and arrows and their short light
spears.  They moved swiftly, silently, some bending towards the ground,
others peering to right and left with a keenness that nothing could
escape.  Samba's heart thumped against his ribs as he watched them.  He
counted them as they passed one after another across the gap; they
numbered twenty, and he was not sure that he had seen the first.

The last disappeared.  Samba waited.  Had his ruse succeeded?  There
was absolute silence; he heard neither footstep nor voice.  But the
little men must soon find out their mistake.  They would then cast back
to the point where they had lost the scent.  Could they pick it up
again--trace him to the tree and follow him up?  He could not tell.
They must have been close upon him when he climbed into the tree;
evidently he had left the path only in the nick of time.  This much he
had gained.  But he dared not wait longer; there was no safety for him
while they were so near; he must on.




CHAPTER X

A Trip with a Crocodile

Samba looked warily round, then began to descend from his perch in the
tree, moving as slowly and with as many pauses as a timid bather
stepping into the water.  Once more he was on the ground.  Pausing only
to throw a rapid glance on all sides, he struck off in a direction at
right angles to the course of the stream, and resumed his laborious
march through the forest maze.

Hour after hour he pushed on without meeting a living creature.  But he
had heard too much of the cunning and determination of the Congo dwarfs
to delude himself with the idea that he had finally shaken them off.
Tired as he was, sweating in the moist oppressive heat, he dared not
rest, even to eat in comfort the food he had brought in his tin.  He
nibbled morsels as he went, hoping that by good speed during the whole
day he might get far enough from the pigmies to make his ultimate
escape secure.

Towards evening he heard in front of him the long monotonous rustle of
a stream foaming over a rocky bed.  He was careful in approaching it:
to meet a crocodile ambushed near the bank would be as dangerous as to
meet a man.  Pushing his way cautiously through the shrubs, he came to
the edge of a broad river, flowing in swift eddies from white rapids
above.  It seemed to Samba that this must be a tributary of the Lemba,
the river on whose bank he had left the white men, and to which, lower
down, he must ultimately make his way.  Pursuit by the white men might
now be safely disregarded; Samba thought he could hardly do better than
keep to the stream, taking his chance of meeting negroes at isolated
villages on the banks.  These, if he met them, would at any rate be
easier to elude than the Bambute.

But the sun was going down, the air becoming chill.  He must find a
shelter for the night and pursue his riverside journey next day.  A
little search revealed, on a bluff above the river, a boulder having a
deep cavity on one side.  Here Samba sat down to eat the little food
left in his tin; then he curled himself up for the night.  Nothing
disturbed his sleep.

In the morning he felt more than usually hungry.  His tin was empty; he
did not care to leave the river and go hunting in the forest, perhaps
vainly, for berries or roots.  A little way down stream he noticed a
spot where the dark surface of the water was scarcely disturbed by a
ripple; was that a deep pool, he wondered, where fish might be?  He
went down to the edge and, leaning flat upon a rock peeped over.  Yes;
in the depths he caught the scaly gleam of darting fish.

Springing up, he went to a swampy patch hard by and cut a long,
straight, stiff reed.  Then he took the hard stick with which he made
fire, and, sharpening the point until it pricked like a needle, he
fitted the wood to the reed so as to make a spear.  With this in his
hand he once more leant over the pool.  He lay still for a few moments,
intently watching; then, with a movement of extraordinary swiftness, he
plunged his spear into the depths, and brought it out with a silvery
trout impaled.  The fish had stopped to nibble at a root in the bank.
When Samba had thus caught three he was satisfied.  He did not pause to
cook the fish.  He split them open, dexterously boned and cleaned them,
and ate them raw.

He had scarcely finished his breakfast when he saw, hurtling down the
rapids above him, a huge forest tree--a mass of green, for most of its
branches in full leaf were still upon it.  Clearly it had not long lost
its grip of earth.  It came swirling towards Samba, every now and then
stopping as its submerged part was caught by some rock, only to be
whirled round and driven past the obstacle by the weight of water
behind.  It made a zigzag course through the rapids, and then floated
peacefully down the still reach of water beneath.

As he watched the tree sailing gently towards him, Samba had an idea.
Why not use it as a raft to carry him on his way?  It was strong enough
to bear his weight; he could hide in the foliage with at least as good
a chance of escaping observation as if he were moving along the banks.

By the time he had grasped the notion the tree was past him.  He sprang
up, raced along until he was level with it, then took a neat header
into the water.  A minute's rapid swimming brought him to the end of
the trunk, which, he saw, had been snapped clean off and was not
encumbered by the roots.  He clambered up, and the trunk was so long
that his trifling weight scarcely depressed its end.  Smiling with
pleasure, he crawled along it until he was in the centre of the leafy
screen.

This, however, now that he was there, did not seem so dense as when he
had viewed it from the bank; he was not concealed so well as he had
hoped.  Every now and again, too, his novel raft gave an ominous lurch
and roll, suggesting that the portion above water might at any moment
change places with that below.  If that happened, Samba wondered, would
he be able to disengage himself from the tangle of branches and swim
clear?  But these momentary fears were banished by the novelty and
excitement of his position.  How delightful it was, after his toilsome
and fatiguing journey through the forest, to float down the river
without effort of his own in a leafy arbour that defended him from the
fierce rays of the sun!  And his voyage had the pleasures of variety.
Sometimes the foliaged top went first; then, when the branches swept
the bottom of the stream in shallow reaches, the trunk swung round and
went broadside to the current.  Sometimes the branches stuck fast, the
current carried the trunk round in a circle, and when an eddy set it
again in motion, the trunk end became the bow of this uneasy ship.
Bump!  That was some rock or sandbank; the tree shook, and Samba was
nearly toppled from his perch.  Nk'oketo![1] It was all right; the
friendly water had washed the tree clear, and Samba was off again, his
black eyes gleaming with fun as he peered between the branches.

It was early in the afternoon, and very hot even for those latitudes.
Everything seemed asleep.  No breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees
along the banks.  The air quivered.  Samba was dozing, lulled by the
gentle motion of the tree, whose progress had not for some time been
checked.

All at once there was a shock.  Samba instinctively clutched a branch
as he felt himself jerked from his seat.  His lumbering vessel was
twirling round; and looking through the leaves, he saw that it was
caught by the head on a sandbank in midstream.

But next moment he felt a shiver run down his spine, and an eery
creeping about the roots of his hair.  Below him, not four feet away, a
gigantic crocodile was staring at him with his cunning baleful eyes.
The swish of the projecting branches upon the sandbank had aroused the
reptile from his siesta on this vantage ground, whence, at the lazy
opening of an eye, he could survey a long stretch of the river.  And he
had awoke to see a plump and tempting black boy at the inconsiderable
altitude of four feet above his snout.

Those who have seen the crocodile only in his hours of ease, lazily
sunning himself on a river bank, or floating with scarcely more than
his eyes and forehead visible on the surface of the stream, may have
come to the comfortable conclusion that he is a slow-moving and
lethargic beast.  But see him rushing at the bank to seize in his
terrible jaws the unwary antelope or zebra that has come to drink, or
to sweep it into the river with a single blow of his mighty tail.
Watch him when, roused from his doze on a sandbank, by the sting of a
rifle bullet on his armour, he vanishes with lightning rapidity beneath
the water.  At one moment to all seeming as lifeless as a log, the next
he is a raging monster, ready to tear and rend any hapless creature
which his inertness has beguiled.

Of the two, Samba and the crocodile, it was the saurian that first
recovered his wits.  His instinct when disturbed at close quarters is
to rush forthwith upon his enemy or victim.  Thus did the crocodile
now.  Considering that he is a beast not built for jumping, the leap he
attempted, with a spasmodic wriggle of his formidable tail, was quite a
creditable feat.  With his teeth he grazed the lower part of the branch
on which Samba sat; and the boy, gazing down into the beast's eyes,
shuddered and shrank away.  Fortunate it was for him that his legs had
not been dangling.  Nothing could then have saved him.

The reptile, slipping back after its failure, maintained its hold on
the lower branches with its forefeet.  Before it could make a second
attempt, Samba had swung himself into the branch above.  The tree
toppled slightly, and for one moment of terror Samba feared he would be
thrown into the very jaws of the monster.  But the sandbank held the
tree firmly, and that peril was past.

With thick foliage between it and the boy, the crocodile saw no chance
of securing its victim from its present position.  But it was
determined not to be balked, and, cunning beast! could afford to wait.
It seemed to know that the boy was only safe so long as he clung to his
perch.  On the sandbank, or in the water, his end would alike be
speedy.  So the reptile slid off the bank into the water, and swam to
the trunk end of the tree, which had been swung round by the current
and was now pointing down stream.  If it could not leap, it could
crawl, and up the trunk the approach to its prey was easy.

Samba's eyes were now wide with fright, as he saw the beast's
intention.  Up a tree on the river bank he could have laughed any
crocodile to scorn; but this sandbank in midstream was ground
peculiarly the creature's own, even though the prey was on a branch ten
feet above it.  With its experience of sandbanks the crocodile knew
there was no permanency in this arrangement.

The attempts of the huge reptile to gain a footing on the trunk had a
result which caused Samba mingled hope and fear.  The tree floated
clear of the bank, and the voyage began again.  But how different were
the circumstances!  In the stern, no longer a cheerful smiling boy,
carelessly watching the slow banks glide by, but a boy whose hands and
feet gripped his perch with anxious tenacity, and whose scared eyes
were quick to mark every movement of the unwelcome, the abhorred,
passenger amidships.  With many a splash of its tail, and many a grunt
of impatient fury, the monster at last made good its footing on the
broad trunk, which under its weight was for more than a quarter of its
length invisible beneath the surface of the water.  For some minutes it
lay still, staring at Samba with unwinking eyes, displaying all its
teeth as if to grin sardonically at its victim.  Samba regretted for
the moment that he had not swarmed down from his perch and attacked the
crocodile with his knife while he was still struggling to mount the
trunk.  But then he reflected that he had after all done wisely, for
the reptile would have slid back into the water, and before Samba could
gain his retreat, he might have been swept off by one swish of the
terrible tail.

Samba, as he had shown more than once, and notably in the recent
incident of the serval, had no lack of courage; but he had never before
been at such close quarters with a crocodile, the most terrible of all
the natural enemies of man in the regions of the Congo.  And as he sat
and watched the glassy stare of the hideous reptile now wriggling inch
by inch towards him, he felt a strange helplessness, a kind of
fascination that seemed to chill and paralyse his power of movement as
of thought.  He had retreated as far as he dared.  His weight had
caused some of the slenderer and more elastic branches to bend towards
the water; he had even imagined that, as he tested them, the pressure
threatened to make the tree revolve.  What his fate would be if the
whirling of the trunk on its axis brought him into the river he well
knew.  The crocodile would slip as nimbly as an eel after him; and,
entangled in the foliage, which to his armoured enemy would offer no
obstacle, he would fall an easy prey.

The crocodile wriggled on, till it came to the place where the first
branch forked from the trunk.  Scarcely more than its own length now
separated it from Samba.  Apparently it had come as near as it cared to
venture; not being a climber, the feat of crawling up the tapering
branch on which Samba was perched was not one to its taste.  It lay
still, with jaws agape, its eyes half-closed in a kind of wicked leer.

Samba tried to look away from the hideous beast, but in vain; he found
his gaze drawn back uncontrollably.  He felt even more subject to the
fascination now that the crocodile's movements had ceased.  The
conviction was growing upon him that sooner or later he would slide
down the branch and fall dreamily into the open jaws.  He was fast
becoming hypnotized.

But he was roused from this dangerous trancelike state by a sudden roll
of the tree.  Perched high as he was, the motion caused him to swing
through an arc of several yards and brought him perilously near the
water.  The danger quickened his faculties: he clung on with a tighter
grip, bethinking himself to look whether his fishing spear, which he
had stuck into the bark, was still safe.  He was relieved to find that
it was undisturbed.  The tree righted itself, and a gleam of hope
lightened Samba's mind when he saw that the crocodile was in the water.
Though, stretched on the trunk, the beast had felt the roll less than
Samba above, it had a less tenacious grip and less ability to adapt
itself; and first the tail, then the rest of its body had slid off.  It
was violently struggling to regain its position, its jaw resting on the
trunk, its forepaws furiously beating the water.

The memory of the reptile's former difficulties in mounting inspired
Samba with an idea, which, impelled equally by terror and hate, he was
prompt to act upon.  The tree was still rocking slightly before
regaining its steadiness, and the crocodile, despite its efforts, was
unable to gain a firm grip on the moving trunk.  All its attention was
engaged upon the accomplishment of its immediate purpose: it would lose
the dainty morsel if it did not once more mount the tree.  Samba was
quick to seize the critical moment.  Spear in hand he crept downwards
along the branch on which he had been perched, careful that his
movements should not divert the crocodile's attention.  Reaching the
junction of the branch with the parent stem, only five or six feet from
the reptile, he let himself down noiselessly into the river on the far
side of the tree, and swam for a second or two until he came opposite
the crocodile.  During these few seconds he had been hidden from the
creature's view by the mass of the trunk, which rose out of the water
to some height above his head.

The crocodile had now managed to get its forepaws on the tree, and in
struggling to hoist itself its snout was raised almost upright,
exposing the soft underside, the sole part in which it is vulnerable to
anything except a very heavy bullet.  Samba caught sight of the tip of
the snout above the tree; here was the opportunity he had hoped for in
making this hazardous experiment.  Taking with his left hand a firm
grip of a wart on the trunk, he raised himself in the water, and with
the right hand drove his spear twice into the monster's throat.  The
crocodile made no sound; a lash of the powerful tail drove up a wave
that caused the tree to rock violently: then the huge body slipped
backwards into the water.

The moment he had driven his spear home Samba let go his hold on the
tree, and trod water until the current brought the foliage to him.
Then he drew himself nimbly up into the branch he had formerly
occupied.  He was breathless, and scarcely yet recovered from his
scare; but there was no sign of the crocodile, and knowing that the
reptile when mortally wounded sinks into deep water, he felt that his
enemy had gone for ever.  He heaved a deep sigh of relief, but chancing
to look back, he noticed with a start of renewed dread that the water
in the wake of the tree was faintly tinged with red.  Was it possible
that the crocodile, though wounded, was still following?  He felt a
shiver thrill through him, and, bending down from his perch, kept his
eyes fixed in a stare on that ominous sanguine thread.

The minutes passed.  Still the water showed that faint persistent
tidge.  Samba was becoming more and more nervous.  Like the reptile's
eyes but a little while ago, that line of red held his gaze in a
strange fascination.  He was still watching it when the tree suddenly
gave a violent lurch, and turned half over.  Samba, whose hold had
relaxed in his nervousness, was flung off the branch into a clump of
bushes at the side of the river, which here began to race rapidly
through a deep gorge.  Scratched and dazed by the fall he picked
himself up slowly.  He rubbed his eyes.  What was this?  He was in the
midst of a group of pigmies, who were pointing excitedly, uttering
their strange coughing cry, to the branches of the tree.  In its lurch
it had been turned almost completely round, so that the foliage
formerly beneath the water was now uppermost.  And there, firmly wedged
in a fork of two boughs, lay the lifeless body of the crocodile.

The Bambute jabbered to Samba, stroked his arms, patted his back,
examined the spear which, though it was broken in his fall, he had not
let go.  From the bank they had witnessed the boy's bold fight, and
they had followed the course of the floating tree until it ran ashore
on a jutting bed of rock.  Samba made signs that he wished to pursue
his journey on foot; but the Bambute shook their heads and grunted and
carried him away with them.  Once more he was a prisoner.



[1] Nothing wrong!




CHAPTER XI

Bula Matadi comes to Ilola

"Well, Barney," said Jack, when Mr. Martindale's canoe had disappeared,
"I don't know how a first mate would feel if he lost his captain in
mid-ocean, but I should fancy he'd feel pretty much as I do now."

"And what sort of feeling is now consuming ye, sorr?"

"Mixed, Barney, very mixed!  I like the idea of being left in charge,
trusted, you know; there's something jolly pleasant about that.  But
that's the point, you see; I am left in charge."

"Sure I see your maning widout your telling me, sorr.  'Tis just the
very same feeling I used to have whin a bhoy, and me mither put the
baby in me arms and tould me to sit wid her on the doorstep.  'Twas a
sweet pretty colleen, an' I thought a powerful deal uv having such a
heap uv loveliness in me arms; but thin, just as you say, sorr, she was
in me arms, an' they being thin an' she being fat--begorra!  I was soon
mighty tired uv it, an' I wished she was ugly so that I might hate her
widout sin."

"I hope I shan't feel quite so bad as that, Barney," said Jack with a
laugh.  "But I own I'm a little anxious with so many people in my
charge."

"And not wan uv them to be trusted, saving Pat and meself."

"And this mining claim of my uncle's to keep an eye on and defend
without using force."

"And wild beasts prowling around----"

"And that villainous uncle of Samba's somewhere in the neighbourhood, I
suppose, waiting a chance to molest us."

"And bedad! if he does, he'll find an Irishman, an Englishman, and a
terrier, Irish by breed and Irish by nature, and them three are a match
for any fifty Blokos, widout a doubt."

"You're an optimist, Barney.  But you're right.  It's silly to meet
troubles half-way.  We had better set about doing something.  I used to
think our house-master kept our noses rather too close to the
grindstone, but I begin to see he was right when he said work was the
best cure for the dumps."

"And for what the advertisements call a tindency to corpilence.  But
what will you be after doing at all, sorr?"

"Well, don't you think that, now our numbers are reduced, it would be
as well to move our camp nearer to Imbono's village?  We shall be here
for a couple of months or so, and if Boloko is still on our tracks we
should be less open to surprise near Ilola.  Besides, it will give the
men something to do.  They'd better build grass huts for the whole
party, and I don't see why we shouldn't try our hands at architectural
improvements."

"Indeed, 'tis a good notion, sorr.  But are ye sure Imbono would be
willing to have us for close neighbours?"

"We can try.  He's my blood brother, you know.  And I dare say we can
put him up to a thing or two."

The chief made no objection to the suggested change of site; indeed, he
offered the assistance of his men in the construction of the new huts.
This, however, Jack declined in the politest terms, thinking it better
to provide plenty of work for his own men until he had had time to take
his bearings.  The new huts were built within a short distance of
Ilola, near a stream.  They were the ordinary grass huts of the
natives, but Jack, seeing a number of wooden slabs taken from the
bottoms of old canoes, had purchased them from Imbono, and when shaped
a little they made a very fair substitute for flooring boards.  The new
settlement was surrounded with a stockade in the native manner, space
enough being left within to accommodate Mr. Martindale and his party
when they should return.

This work occupied a fortnight.  Everything had gone smoothly, save for
trifling squabbles among the natives.  These Jack managed to settle
with little difficulty, in great part through the excellent qualities
of Lepoko, who turned out to be a much better man all round than his
brother Nando.  When the new village was completed, Jack set the men to
make Indian clubs from the trees near at hand, and spent part of the
cool hours in instructing his followers in their use.  They took
readily to the new pastime, and very quickly became proficient in
executing a great variety of intricate figures.  Jack was elated at the
success of his experiment: it not only provided an admirable drill for
the men, but accustomed them to take commands from him and thus
consolidated his authority.

Imbono's men caught the infection: Indian clubs were soon the order of
the day in Ilola; and it gave Jack and Barney no little amusement to
see men, women, and children at all times of the day whirling clubs
around their heads.  Imbono saw that his men's performances were
greatly lacking in rhythm and grace, and he begged his blood brother
(whom he had named Lokolobolo, "strong leg") to allow some of his men
to join in the daily practising.  Jack was nothing loth; the more
influence he could obtain in this way the better his chances of success
in the task his uncle had set him.

He was casting about for some new employment to occupy and interest his
men, when a couple of canoes came up the river bearing a letter from
Mr. Martindale, and a small consignment of Mauser rifles and
ammunition.  The letter was dated from Baraka.


DEAR JACK,--

I've got here safely, no interference, no upsets.  I've managed to get
hold of some rifles--I won't tell you how--and send them to you in
charge of some canoe "boys."  Hope they'll reach you safely.  I've paid
the boys well, and promised them as much more if they return and meet
me with an acknowledgment from you.  I'm off to Boma; will write you
again from there if I can find a means of sending the letter.  Let me
know by the bearer how you are getting on.

On the way down I made more particular inquiries than were possible in
coming up as to the methods of the Congo Government.  At Stanleyville I
met a Frenchman who told me a good deal, and here got rather chummy
with an English missionary on his way home to tell the British public
some of the effects of King Leopold's rule.  One need only look at the
man to see that he is the right sort, with the stuff in him for
martyrdom if the call came.  The things he told me made my skin creep.
Leopold seems t

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