In Search of the Okapi Part 6

"Ow--ay, that is better; now a little water."

Still keeping his eyes fixed on the man and his beast, Mr. Hume held out a hand for a cup, and with a moistened handkerchief bathed the cracked and swollen lips. The eyes of both the man and his beast continued fixed on the hunter, following his every movement, and never straying to the ring of faces round, showing white in the glare of the light. The strong fingers moved swiftly here and there, loosening the hide ropes that bound the legs and arms, and then rubbing ointment with a strong smell of eucalyptus into the bruised skin.

"So--now a little broth for the man, cook, and a sc.r.a.p of meat for the jackal. Gently, gently, cook; don't scare them, and don't crowd in, you others."

"Ay, ay," burst out the captain, in a sudden fury. "What's the whole s.h.i.+p's company doing here? Is this a garden-party, Mr. Robbins?"

"Get forward!" roared the mate, in a voice that sent the jackal almost crazy with renewed fright; and at the creature's wild cry the sailors hurried off, muttering that they had taken a whole cargo of misfortune aboard.

The hunter looked reproachfully at the mate, who was mounting to the bridge, and then began once more to soothe the frightened animal, which in time took a bit of raw meat he proffered. The man drank his broth, and then sat up to stare about him with quick glances.

When lying down he had seemed black, but, now that he was in the light, it was seen that he was more mahogany than black, with a more prominent nose and thinner lips than are usually found with the negroid stock. His hair, however, was in little tufts, and the white of his eyes had the smoky hue of the negro. As he sat, Mr. Hume rubbed the back of his neck, and fed him with broth, a mouthful at a time, and as this went on the fierce black eyes again and again returned from their swift, suspicious range to the hunter's face.

"He seems to grow stronger," said Venning.

"Fetch a rug from my cabin; we will make him a bed in his own canoe.

He will rest easier there till the morning."

The rug was brought, and the man nodded his head as it was arranged comfortably; then, with another long intent look at the hunter, he settled himself down with a sigh, spoke a word to his strange companion, which at once curled itself at his feet, and was asleep.

"Now, boys," said Mr. Hume, "you go to bed. I will watch here, and in the morning, maybe, we will find out the mystery."

In the morning the steamer was on the yellow waters of the Congo, and the boys forgot even about the strange couple in their first view of the mighty river; but the sight of a native-manned canoe, shooting out from the mist which hung in wisp over the waters, recalled the incident. They found Mr. Hume in an easy-chair, drinking his early morning cup of coffee, and at his feet, stretching along the scuppers, was the canoe, still with its crew aboard and asleep, though the jackal slept apparently with one eye open. The canoe was, they saw, made out of a single tree-trunk, and was thickly coated with the slime of the river, a heavy, sodden, roughly shaped craft, most unlike the light boat that skimmed into view from out the mist.

"What do you make of it?" said Mr. Hume, after the two boys had made a long inspection.

"It seems to me," said Venning, "that the jackal has a very dark coat."

"That is so; it is unusually dark. What does that suggest to you?"

"Well, as the colour is adapted to the nature of the country in which the animal hunts, I should say that the jackal came from a wooded district."

"Good. And what is your opinion, Compton?"

Compton bent down to examine the bows. "Look here, sir," he said; "there is a prayer to Allah carved in Arabic on a leaden medallion, and fixed into the wood."

"Is that so?" and the hunter looked at the signs with interest. "I had not seen that. And it means----"

"That Arabs had something to do with the making of the canoe."

"Umph! I doubt very much if it is Arab-built. That talisman may have been found by a native and fixed on--though that is impossible;" and Mr. Hume pondered. "The Arabs may have taken the canoe from the native owner and fixed in the medallion."

"He's awake," said Venning; and the three of them saw that the man, without so much as a movement of surprise at his awakening under such altered circ.u.mstances, was keenly observing them.

After he had gravely inspected each in turn, he sat up and raised his hand in salutation. The rug slipped off his shoulders, showing his bare breast, with every rib exposed, and clearly outlined in blue was the form of an animal.

"A totem!" exclaimed the hunter.

"Otter," said Venning.

"Ask the steward if he has the porridge ready that I ordered."

Venning ran off, and returned with a basin of thick oatmeal porridge. The man took it gravely, made another salutation, and ate the whole.

"There's nothing wrong with him," said Mr. Hume, with a smile. "Now we'll get him out of that and fix him up comfortably. I like his looks, and have hopes that he will be useful."

They removed him to a deck-chair, whither he was followed by the jackal, who was in such a state of suspicion that he declined food.

"What I think," said Mr. Hume, in answer to the boys, who wanted his explanation, "is this--that the man and the jackal have come from the interior."

"From the Great Forest?"

"Probably from the Great Forest; for these reasons--that the men who shaped the canoe had no knowledge of the coast-built craft with their high bows; that the man is of a different race from the coast tribes; and because the jackal, from his dark markings, is evidently from a thickly wooded region. That is merely a theory, which does not help us much, and certainly does not explain how he came to be bound and gagged in a canoe at sea hundreds of miles from the forest. However, the main point is that we have got him, and having got him, will keep him."

"Against his will, sir?"

"Oh, I reckon he will be only too thankful for our protection."

"I should think, sir," said Venning, "the fact of his totem being an otter proves that his tribe derives its living mainly from fish."

"That is plausible; but it may, again, be a sign of chieftains.h.i.+p, and a chief I have no doubt he is. Maybe he was sent adrift by some rival faction; but that can scarcely be, for he would not have survived a long journey; and, again, the canoe would have gone aground."

"There is another explanation," said Compton, with a grin. "He may not have come down the river at all. He may have been set adrift from one of those s.h.i.+ps we pa.s.sed for insubordination."

"s.h.i.+ps do not carry canoes or jackals," said Venning, who had made up his mind that the castaway was from the forest, and from nowhere else.

They went down to breakfast, and the morning was occupied in getting their kit and packages together. At noon the steamer was berthed at a pier, and their packages were transferred to a paddle-wheeler, which was to take them over three hundred miles up the wide estuary to a Belgian station. Thence, perhaps, they would proceed hundreds of miles further by another river steamer before they took to their own boat.

"Why, we may be days before we really get to work," said Venning, when the vastness of the Congo was forced on his attention by a casual reference to "hundreds of miles."

"Days--weeks, my boy, before we come to the fringe of our field. The river is more than half the length of the Continent; its length is half the distance by sea from Southampton to the Cape, and, next to the Amazon, it pours a greater body of water into the sea than any river in the world."

"Africa," said Compton, "seems to be the driest and the wettest, in parts, of any country; and all its great rivers, except the Nile, run to waste."

"They'll keep," said Mr. Hume. "When the old world gets tired, worn out, and over-populated, it will find use for these big, silent, deserted rivers, that would carry the s.h.i.+ps of the world on their yellow waters."

CHAPTER IV

THE STORY OF MUATA

They went from the wide estuary into the true river, with a width that opened out at times to twenty miles; and while the white men sweltered on the sticky decks, the rescued man grew in strength.

When they reached Stanley Pool his skin was like satin again, with a polish on it from the palm-oil he rubbed in continually.

And when he found his strength he found use for his tongue, and in the speech he made to his rescuers. Mr. Hume caught the meaning of a few words of Bantu, Compton detected a phrase or two in Arabic, and Venning, who had been schooling himself since they pa.s.sed Banana Point at the river mouth, picked out other words in the tongue of the river tribes.

The meaning of his speech, when they had made a mosaic of the different understood facts, was this--that he was a great man in his own land, but only a child now, being without arms or men, but that if the white men ever came to his place, he would be a father and a mother to them. He would throw his s.h.i.+eld before them, and protect them with bow and spear.

After this they sat together learning a polyglot speech that would serve roughly as a medium of exchange.