In Search of the Okapi Part 63

The man pointed a black finger at the river, and on it they saw two black spots. The man's teeth gleamed in a smile and his black eyes sparkled.

They stood up to look, and then Mr. Hume motioned to the boys.

"Let her have it," he said; and they made those levers smoke in the slots, for they saw in those black spots the long face of the jackal and the head of Muata!

They were helped dripping on board, the chief with nothing else than his Ghoorka blade.

Mr. Hume waited for an explanation, and the chief gave it in his calm way, without a smile.

"You wanted two men, great one. I am the second."

"But we go far, while the moon is many times at the full."

"You go towards the setting sun, Ngonyama, and there also goes the son of the Inkosikase."

"But your people?"

"I have said my say with them. They are in peace, and they can live in peace; but is Muata a goat that he should live in a kraal? Wow! I am a Hunter, like this little one;" and he patted the jackal on the head.

"We are only too glad to have you, chief, if your mind is fully made up?"

"See, Ngonyama, I thought to live in ease and grow fat, but the spirit of my mother called out upon me--ay, it fought within me--and I go for the hills and the open plains. Behold, I am no longer chief." He took the long blue feather from his head, and let it glance to the water. "My s.h.i.+eld is your s.h.i.+eld."

He sat down in the bows with his face toward the river, and the boys laughed as they worked the levers.

"Ripping!" said Compton, feeling quite happy, as he touched his precious journal.

"As good as finding a new b.u.t.terfly," said Venning.

Mr. Hume nodded his head gravely several times, and then a smile came into his eyes.

"I guess," he said, "we'll have some good hunting."

And good hunting they had after they had pa.s.sed the Stanley Falls and were in the game country, stretching for hundreds of miles to the Zambesi. Some day, perhaps, we may hear of the adventures they had in their long voyage before at last, a thousand miles off, they touched bottom in the shallows where the mighty Congo narrowed down to a stream that could be crossed at a jump. From the Congo they marched to a tributary of the Zambesi, and at the Victoria Falls, after having gathered a store of ivory, they found an ox-wagon, which took them to Bulawayo; and near Bulawayo the two boys, now stalwart young men, took possession of a farm owned by Mr. Hume, to wait for the return of the Hunter from England, whither he had gone.

On his return they would go north, in order to keep their promise to pick up Muata, whom they left at an Angoni kraal, on another hunting expedition.