The Great Quest Part 41

"To join forces," I said,--and in my excitement I spoke aloud,--"in trading human beings? Not that!"

The others turned.

"What are you two talking about?" Matterson asked quickly in his light voice.

"Of one thing and another," I replied, flus.h.i.+ng.

"Come," said Gleazen, boldly, "let us _all_ talk together."

"Dis one beeg war!" the trader cried. "To fight--eet is all we can do. Fighting we go, da's what me, I say. See! Sun, he come up!"

"To that," said Arnold, "we all agree. We, sir, will go with you and fight by your side."

"Good! Me, I's happy. You brave men. Dis one beeg war, but we make plenty war back again."

Then he cried out orders in Spanish, and the camp woke to the activities of the new day; and while some of us held off the blacks, the rest of us ate our morning meal in the first golden sunlight of the dawn, with a hum and bustle of packing and harnessing and herding going on around us.

But all the time the drums beat, and far away we would hear now and then calls and shouts that made the strange trader and Gleazen and O'Hara exchange significant glances.

As with loaded muskets we fell in to guard the caravan, and the porters lifted their bundles, and the herders goaded their beasts, and the captive negroes started hopelessly on the road to the river, and the sudden hush of voices made the trample of feet seem three times louder than before, we heard guns behind us.

"Ha! Dose trade gun, hey?" the trader cried, and fell into Spanish.

Wheeling his horse, he anxiously looked back along the road.

One thing for which we had crossed the sea was lost in a hut overrun by an army of vengeful savages. There was no fortune left for us, I knew, unless it were a fortune gained by bartering human souls; and at that, which lay at the real bottom of all Neil Gleazen's schemes, my heart revolted. What chance should we have had of saving for Seth Upham his s.h.i.+p and what money was left, even if he had lived? Small chance, I admitted.

All day we drove on in a forced march, leaving the war to all appearances far behind us and stopping only at noon, by a clear cold stream in the forest, to eat a hasty meal; and at nightfall, crossing another stretch of prairie, we came to still another forest.

"Here," the trader cried, "here ees one fine leetle river! Here we camp one leetle while! Den we go--like fire--when midnight come, mebbe we see one beeg river!"

That we, who had come the night before from the house on the king's grave, were ready to rest, I can a.s.sure you. Never in all my life have I been so heavy with weariness, nay, with downright exhaustion, as on that evening at the edge of that African forest.

The very beasts were weary after the long day's march. The trader's horse hung its head. The bullocks and goats and sheep plodded on before their noisy herders and scarcely quickened their pace at thrust of goad or snap of whip. The captive negroes, wretched creatures doomed to the horrors of the infamous middle pa.s.sage in the hold of some Cuban or Brazilian slave-s.h.i.+p, wearily dragged along, their chins out-thrust, their hands lashed behind them. The traders' own slaves, bending under the weight of hides and rice and ivory, stumbled as they walked, and even the white men themselves, who had done nothing more than ride or walk over the road, breathed hard and showed drawn faces as they eagerly pushed on or apprehensively looked back.

Into the woods we pressed, thanking in our hearts the Divine Providence that here at least there was no throb of drum, no howling of black heathen, no war at all. The aisles between the great trees were cool and green and inviting. The river rippled over rocks and suggested by its music the luxury of bathing; fruits were to be had for the picking, and there was no doubt in my mind that our hosts would butcher a sheep for the evening meal.

Water, food, and sleep at that moment seemed more desirable than all the dominions of Africa; and water, food, and sleep, I was confident, were but now at hand. Into the forest we marched, for once relaxing the watchfulness that we had maintained since sunrise, and down the trail to the creek that we could hear murmuring on its way over the rocks and through the underbrush. And there, at the end of our long day's journey, the bushes suddenly blossomed in flame.

Guns boomed in our very faces. Up and down the creek fire flashed in long spurts. The wind brought to our nostrils the stinging smell of powder-smoke. Men and beasts were thrown into wild confusion. In the dim light of the forest I saw coming at us from all sides, naked men armed with trade guns and bows and spears and lances. Louder than the shouts and curses behind us, rang the exultant yells before us.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DOWN THE CURRENT

When I was a boy in school, I one day ran across a translation of Homer's Iliad and carried it home and read it afternoons for a week.

During those days I lived in the great pictures of the battles on the plains of Troy, and though afterwards I had seldom thought of them, they had never quite faded from my memory.

It was far indeed from Homer's Iliad to an ambush in an African forest; but the fight that ensued when we walked into that hornets'

nest of black warriors nevertheless brought Homer's story vividly to my mind. The spears, I think, suggested the resemblance; or perhaps the wild swiftness of the fight. First an arrow came whistling through the air and struck one of the men on the throat and went through his neck half the length of the shaft. He spun round, spattering me with dark blood that ran from a severed vein, and went down under the feet of the bullocks without a word. Then the bullocks turned, stampeded by the sight and smell of blood, and crowded back upon the sheep and goats, and the porters dropped their burdens and tried to run. O'Hara threw up his musket and shattered the skull of a huge black who came at him with a knife like the blade of a scythe, and, himself stooping to pick up the knife, grappled with another and died, shrieking, from a spear-thrust up under the ribs. Then one of the porters hurled a bundle at a man who was about to cut him down, and the bundle broke and a shower of yellow gold scattered in front of us, whereupon there was a short, fierce rush for plunder.

Side by side with Arnold Lamont and Gleazen, emptying my pistol into the crowd, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the blacks were cutting their way into the heart of the caravan for slaves and booty.

Imagine, if you can, that motley horde which had rushed upon us out of the wood. Some, naked except for loin cloths, brandished spears and howled like enraged maniacs; some, in queer quilted armor and helmets with ostrich plumes, clumsily wielded trade muskets; some advanced boldly under the cover of s.h.i.+elds and others, ranging through the underbrush, kept up a desultory flight of arrows. It was primitive, unorganized, ferocious war.

"_Mon dieu_, what a spectacle!" Arnold exclaimed; then, "Now, my friends, quick! To the left! While the thieves steal, we yet may escape!"

Up from the melee, streaked with blood and dust, now came the trader. "All, all ees gone!" he wailed, and waved his arms and shrieked and stamped and cursed and jabbered on in Spanish.

Had our enemies been content to delay their plundering until they had killed us all, not one of us would have escaped to tell the true story of that b.l.o.o.d.y day. But at the sight of a rich caravan and loose gold, the blacks, in the twinkling of an eye, were fighting among themselves.

"Quick!" again cried Arnold's voice, strangely familiar in the midst of that grotesquely unreal uproar, and as amazingly precise as ever.

"Quick, gentlemen! It is our only chance."

And with that, he, Gleazen, Matterson, the trader, Abe, and I took to our heels into the bushes. The woods behind the line of the ambush appeared to be deserted. At the foot of a ravine ran the creek. We crossed it by a rude bridge of branches, hastily and silently climbed the opposite bank, and stole off quite un.o.bserved.

A hundred yards farther on, at the sound of a great thrash and clatter, we dove into the undergrowth and lay hidden while a band of blacks tore past us to the scene of battle. But getting hastily up as soon as they were out of sight, we resumed our headlong retreat.

Every bush and tree darkly threatened us. Great rocks, deeply clothed in moss and tumbled so together as to form damp holes and caves, at once tempted us by their scores of hiding-places and filled us with apprehension lest natives might have hidden there before us.

But as if we were playing the old game of follow-my-leader, we scrambled up and down, and in and out, and always hard ahead, until we again heard before us a rumble of voices and pounding feet, and a second time, desperately, flung ourselves into the undergrowth and lay all atremble while half a hundred naked negroes, armed with bows and clubs and spears, came trotting, single file, like wolves, and pa.s.sed us not fifty feet away.

As they disappeared, and while we still dared not move, I saw something stir not five English cubits from my face. I caught my breath and stared at the thing. Ten feet ahead of it; the leaves and ferns rustled, and twenty feet ahead of it then, twitching, it disappeared. I broke out from head to foot in sweat. Unwittingly, we had thrown ourselves down within hand's reach of a great serpent.

Whether or not newly gorged, and so too sleepy to resent our nearness, it moved slowly away through the quivering undergrowth.

When we had put a mile between ourselves and the plundered caravan, Matterson turned with an oath. "Poor Bud!" he said in his hard, light voice. "At least, we'll hear no more of jujus and devils and king's graves."

Gleazen shrugged and turned to the trader. "How far is the river?"

he asked.

"Mebbe one mile--mebbe two."

"Do you, sir, know the road?" Arnold asked.

The trader nodded and spread his hands as if in despair. "Know heem?

I know heem, yes! T'ree, ten, fifty time I come with slave and ivory and hide--now all gone! Forty prime slave all gone! Ev'ytheeng gone!"

Gleazen grunted.

"Let us go to the river," said Arnold.

"Heem reever go by town," wailed the trader. "Heem beeg town! Walls so high and strong!"

"Ah, that is another matter," said Arnold. "But let us go forward at all events. We may, for all that we can tell, strike the river below the town."