Tom Burnaby Part 17

But now that he was free Tom had recovered his wits, and saw that if he was to get clear away he must exercise all his cunning. There was the hut in which the chief, his enemy, lay; there were the guards, sleeping, it was true, but likely to wake at any moment. Around was the village, filled with Arabs, Manyema, and slaves; an alarm would set hundreds of men on the alert, and there was but a slender chance of escaping from so many. Beyond the village, three hundred yards away, was the thin outer belt of the forest; could he but gain that, Tom thought, he might hide and elude pursuit. There was danger from wild beasts, no doubt; but a wild beast was less dangerous than the vengeful Portuguese. It must be a dash for life and liberty, he saw. How was he to escape immediate danger of detection?

His quick eye noticed that Mbutu wore the burnous and turban of an Arab.

With a leaping heart he saw in a flash of thought his way made plain.

It involved manifold risks. "Never venture never win," he said to himself, and proceeded to put his plan into operation. Tying the knife again to the rod, but at an angle to form a crook, he let it down, and hooked up the severed cords that lay at the foot of the tree. He swiftly knotted them to form two strong ropes. Then bidding Mbutu secure the knife and follow him, he crept cautiously along the bough towards the hut. The wind was stiffening to a gale; the horned moon was dipping behind the forest, and the hut lay in shadow. He came to the end of the branch, and crawled on to the roof, Mbutu following close. Moving only when the swaying bough rustled against the thatch, drowning all other sounds, he made his way cat-like across the roof, reached the edge, slid over, and slipped noiselessly down one of the wooden posts supporting the thatch at the distance of a foot from the wall of the hut. He was on the ground on the side farthest from the tree. For some moments he stood and listened. There was a sound of voices not far to his right, and he thought he detected a low murmur from two or three quarters.

Evidently there were many still awake. Tom decided that the plan he had formed offered a better chance of escape than a mere dash for the forest. Taking off the turban with which he had been provided by the hakim, he opened it out, and folded the sheet of linen over and over until it made a long tight roll. In a few whispered words he explained his plan to Mbutu; then, signing to the boy to come after him quietly, he crept through one of the holes in the wall, and found himself inside the hut. On a rude table a small rushlight was burning, by whose glimmer he saw the chief stretched upon his back on a narrow plank, his burnous cast aside, his long form covered with a red blanket. He was fast asleep, with his mouth open, his breath coming and going with long soundless heaves. With heart beating violently in spite of himself, Tom stole behind the Arab, and then whispered to Mbutu that he was to hold the man's head when he gave the signal. Both then stooped; Tom gave a nod; Mbutu pressed the chief's head down firmly with both hands, and at the same instant Tom stuffed the rolled turban into his mouth, and knotted it beneath his neck. He wriggled and half rose upon his elbow; instantly Mbutu's arms were thrown around him, and he was pulled backward and held in a firm grip. Tom had meanwhile run to his feet, and, whipping one of the lengths of cord from his pocket, he swiftly tied the chief's ankles together. Now that it was impossible for the Arab to stand, Tom bade Mbutu a.s.sist him. There was a short struggle, the Arab striving to wriggle out of Mbutu's grasp. It was in vain; with the remaining cord Tom bound the Arab's arms together, and in five minutes after their entrance the chief lay securely gagged and bound.

Without losing a moment Tom donned the Arab's burnous and turban.

"Do you know the nearest way to the forest?" he asked Mbutu.

The Muhima nodded, and Tom told him that, relying upon his disguise, he was going to walk boldly through the camp. If they met anyone, Mbutu was to address him in his own tongue in such a way as to disarm suspicion.

Tom reckoned on his own height to enable him to pa.s.s for the chief.

There was a box of matches by the rushlight; he put that in his pocket, caught up a small bag of nuts that lay beside the Arab, and without bestowing another glance on the prostrate form, whose eyes were glaring at him with all the fury of impotent rage, he walked slowly out of the hut, Mbutu a yard behind.

They went quickly, stepping in the shade of the huts. Their way led past the hut in which the Portuguese was sleeping. The African native is sensitive to the slightest tremor of the ground, and one of the negroes who had accompanied De Castro, and was acting as sentry over him, crouching over a watch-fire, heard the footfall of the two fugitives, and came round the hut towards them. He dimly saw, as he supposed, the tall form of the Arab chief stalking by, accompanied by one of his men.

He stepped back, and at the same moment Mbutu, with a power of mimicry that surprised his master, addressed him in a few quiet words, bidding him keep good watch over the senor, while Tom walked on with a dignified air, as though the negro were beneath his notice. When out of the man's sight they quickened their steps. They reached the outer circle of huts, evaded the watch-fires placed at intervals, crossed the fence and ditch, and, breaking into a run, plunged into the dense bush at the edge of the compound. The fugitives had barely gone two hundred yards when they heard a great outcry in the camp behind. One of the eight guards had awoke and rekindled the dying fire. Glancing at the tree, he discovered that the prisoner was gone. He roused his companions, and with mutual upbraidings they began to dispute who should venture to inform the chief of the escape. Their voices rose in altercation, and De Castro's sentry, hearing the noise, came to see what had happened.

As soon as he knew that the Englishman had escaped, he ran to his master's hut, whence in a moment issued the Portuguese, swearing great oaths at being disturbed when he so much needed rest, and for the moment not understanding what his man said. A glance at the tree apprised him that his antic.i.p.ated victim had escaped his clutches. Heedless of the news that the chief had but just before been seen walking through the camp, he rushed to the hut, and finding Mustapha there bound and gagged, began with frantic haste and fearful imprecations, in which he could not refrain from mingling taunts, to cut him free. Both men were beside themselves with fury. The whole camp was by this time alarmed, and Arabs and Manyema alike cowered before the wrath of their infuriated superiors. De Castro ran wildly about crying for torches, while Mustapha ordered every man in the camp to set off in search of the escaped prisoner, and despatched parties in all directions. He went himself to the hakim's hut, believing that the Arab seen walking in the prisoner's company must be Mahmoud and no other. Meeting the grave physician as he came out to enquire the reason of the uproar, the chief roundly accused him of effecting or conniving at the release of the Englishman. The hakim's face showed neither surprise nor pleasure; he was as coldly imperturbable as ever. Quietly denying that he had had any hand in the escape, he asked the Arab what he expected to gain by wild ill-directed searches in the dark; the torches and the din would only give warning to the fugitives, and help them to elude pursuit.

Mustapha saw the absurdity of his proceedings, and chafed under the cynical scorn of the physician, whose calling and character enforced his unwilling respect. Turning on his heel, he ordered drums to be beaten to recall the search-parties, and enquiry to be made for the traitor in the camp; and when De Castro came up to him, foaming with pa.s.sion and shouting that the whole thing had been planned to spite him, Mustapha bade him keep a still tongue in his head, or he would find himself in the Englishman's place. It wanted still more than three hours to sunrise, and giving orders that the search should be diligently resumed at dawn, the chief returned to his hut.

In the meantime the outcry had at first caused the fugitives to hasten their steps; but, fearing that the rustle and crash of their progress through the bush would arrest the pursuers' attention, they dropped behind a fallen tree. Not many minutes afterwards a party of Manyema who had outstripped the rest, keeping close together in their mutual fear, came within a few yards of Tom's hiding-place. There was one moment of suspense, then they pa.s.sed on with torches burning; but soon the tap-tap of the recalling drums sounded through the wood, and they turned, pa.s.sed within a few paces of where the panting fugitives lay crouched, and retraced their steps to the camp.

"All go back, sah!" whispered Mbutu gleefully. "No catch dis night.

All jolly safe now, sah."

"I hope so," said Tom. "It was a narrow shave, Mbutu. We'll wait till all is quiet, and consider what we had better do."

"Must go on, sah; black men gone; rest by and by; time fink by and by."

They rose and pursued their way into the forest, picking their steps as best they could in the increasing darkness, among trees, profuse gra.s.s, and creeping plants that threw their sprays in intricate mazes across their path. When they had gone about a mile from the camp the forest became so thick that it was impossible to proceed farther that night.

Mbutu suggested that they should climb a tree as the best protection from prowling beasts, and wait until morning. To this Tom agreed, and finding a trunk easy to climb, they got up into its lower branches, and made themselves as comfortable as possible. Their ascent caused a commotion among the feathered denizens of their shelter, and Mbutu declared he heard the gibber of a monkey angry at the disturbance of his ancestral home; but they rested without molestation till the dawn sent feeble glimmers through the foliage, and during that time Mbutu told his story.

His master's disappearance, he said, had caused the utmost consternation and distress to the whole force. After some hours of fruitless search next morning, the major had sorrowfully decided that he must complete the object of his expedition, leaving all further efforts to find Tom until his work was done. Promising, then, a rich reward to any native who should give him information as to the young man's fate, he had continued his march, and arriving at the native chief's village, after a stubborn fight had burnt it to the ground. Most of the inhabitants fled, among them the chief. The major then returned rapidly over his tracks, and spent several days in searching far and wide through the country. Mbutu, meanwhile, had felt sure from the very first that his master was not dead, and had accompanied the expedition in the hope that ere long some trace of him would be found. Then, giving up hope of this, and learning that the major had decided to return to Kisumu, he had resolved to go on the search alone. Slipping away from the column soon after it pa.s.sed the scene of the ambush, he had cut into the woods, and coming upon the dead bodies of Arabs, he had, as a measure of precaution, appropriated the burnous and turban of one of them. Then he sought for the trail of the retreating Arabs, believing that his master was among them. Fortunately they had marched in almost a straight line, so that he tracked them easily until he came to the river where they had sighted the Belgians, and there he was for a time at fault. But he encountered a native, who informed him of the sharp fight at the swamp, and put him on the right track again. Two days before he arrived at the camp he had descried the caravan, and from that moment he dogged it patiently and warily, at one point of the route creeping up so close that he was able to see, from the shelter of a bushy tree, the figure of his master among the Manyema guard. Then he followed up more cautiously than ever, in the hope of discovering some means of effecting the prisoner's release. No opportunity had offered, and his heart sank when he saw the Portuguese join the caravan, still more when, as he peered from a safe hiding-place among the trees, he saw the Arab chief accompany De Castro to the hut where Tom lay. The tying-up had made him desperate. He had thought at first of creeping up and cutting his master free, but every time he took a step forward towards the tree one of the guard moved, or some noise had startled him, as a mouse peeping out from its hole is startled by the faintest sound of movement. Then he had the happy thought to climb the tree, and endeavour to cut his master's bonds from above. The discovery that he could not reach was at first agony, but he was strung up to a pitch of desperation that set all his wits on the alert. He had crept back into the forest and cut the rod to which he had tied the knife; and now, with touching earnestness, he a.s.sured his master that he would never leave him until he was once more safe among his own people.

"Poor old Uncle," said Tom, when Mbutu had ended his story; "how I wish I could let him know I am alive and well and free! And you, Mbutu, how am I to thank you for your faithful service? I can tell you this: that when I do see my friends again, you shall not be forgotten, my boy. But where are we? What are we to do? Do you know anything about this part of the country?"

"Yes, sah; know lot, sah. Forest ober dar, ober dar, ober dar."

He pointed successively in three directions--north, south, and west.

"Then we must go to the east, eh?--the other way, you know."

"No, sah, nebber do; all Arab dat way."

And then he went on to explain that the open country through which the Arab caravan had lately been travelling was the last clear stretch by which their stronghold could be reached. It was wedge-shaped, narrowing as it became engulfed in the forest. The few natives whose hamlets were dotted about it were all in the Arabs' pay, and were treated with special and unusual consideration, in order that they might be disposed to give early tidings of an enemy's approach. Mbutu a.s.sured his master that the Arab chief would at once acquaint the natives all through that district with his prisoner's escape and offer a reward for his capture, expecting him to make his way eastward, where every path and cross-road would be narrowly watched.

"In that case we had better strike southward into the forest," said Tom.

"A pleasant prospect!" he mused. "I have some recollection of reading in one of Stanley's books about this forest: hundreds of miles long, and hundreds broad; one could drop Great Britain and Ireland into it, to say nothing of the kingdom of Man. But I suppose," he said, turning again to Mbutu, "after a time we could safely make a turn to the south-east and reach the River Rutchuru again? What about your own country, Mbutu?

Couldn't we make for that?"

"'Fraid no, sah; my country days and days ober dar." He pointed to the south-west, then looked puzzled, and finally confessed that in the dark he was not quite sure of the direction. "My people all gone dead, sah; live man all stole, huts burnt in big fire. No; Mbutu no fader, no mudder, no pickin: no nuffin--only sah."

"Poor fellow! Well, I see nothing for it but to go into the forest as soon as it is light. We've nothing to keep us warm at night; no food except these nuts I brought. I have no watch and no compa.s.s: you've nothing but a knife; we're both desperately poor, Mbutu, and we'll have to live on our wits, I'm afraid.--Hark! what's that?"

The dawn came up like thunder, indeed. Through the wood resounded the thud-thud of many drums of various tones, some rattling a rapid rat-tat, others booming with deep, hollow, reverberating notes. Mbutu turned his ear towards the sound, listening with peculiar intentness for several minutes. Then he shook his head.

"Not know dat!" he said. He explained that many tribes had their own individual codes of drum-signals, which could only be recognized by their own friends. By means of these information was often telegraphed for miles in a very few minutes, the note of the drum reaching far, and being taken up and repeated from point to point. Though he had never heard these particular notes before, he surmised that the Arab chief was already signalling the escape of his prisoner. It was clearly time to be off. Slipping down from the tree, the two fugitives struck into the forest in a south-westerly direction, and were relieved to hear the drum-taps becoming ever fainter and fainter as they proceeded. When the sounds had died away altogether, they sat down on a fallen tree and made a frugal breakfast of nuts, sipping up the gigantic beads of dew which covered the spreading leaves of plants near the ground. Then they arose and went on their way.

By this time they were well on the outskirts of the great Congo Forest, which stretches for hundreds of miles westward of Lake Albert Edward and the rivers flowing into it. Tom began to be oppressed by a sort of nightmare feeling, which damped his spirits and made him drop his voice to a whisper when he spoke to Mbutu. The silence was awful. Trees large and small, packed so close together that there seemed at a distance barely room to squeeze between them, rose up, some straight of stem, some twisted and warped, others snapped off high above the ground, their foliage interlacing and shutting off all view of sky and sun, the s.p.a.ce beneath as dim as the aisles of some vast cathedral. From tree to tree ran huge festoons of creeper and vine, weaving intricate patterns with each other, clinging in great coils about the trunks. At every fork and on every branch huge lichens were embossed, with broad spear-leaved plants, and cl.u.s.ters of orchid and liana. The sodden forest floor was covered with bush and amoma, save where a group of fallen trees, split or scorched by the lightning, had made a gap and let in the sunlight, and there innumerable baby trees had sprung up, jostling each other in their eagerness to catch the stream of light and heat.

At one point Tom sat down to rest on a prostrate moss-covered trunk. It crumbled into rottenness under his weight, and, looking, he saw that it had been mined by countless termites. Red ants scurried after one another in the wrinkles of the bark, and a huge blue scorpion darted out of a hole, causing Tom to start back with loathing. Near at hand was a shallow pool, green with duckweed, its surface covered with leaves of lotus and lilies, and a green, greasy sc.u.m of microscopic plants. Above this was a crooked tree, whose trunk seemed to have broken out in great ulcerous sores, from which swollen globules of gum exuded, dropping with heavy pong into the pool. Not a sound broke the stillness; the silver trill of the mavis, the strident caw of rooks, the brisk chirp of gra.s.shoppers, all the myriad sounds of an English wood, were absent; and Tom, gazing into the confused ma.s.s of green, his feet chilled on the spongy humus, felt that he was surrounded in very truth by death in life.

Marching on again along a narrow path which seemed a mere tunnel in the forest, Mbutu had often to use his knife to cut away obstructive growths--great sprays of thorn that grabbed at their clothes, caught them under the chin, and seemed bent on cutting their throats.

Presently they came to an abandoned clearing, where the vegetation now grew more luxuriantly than ever; the charred poles of native huts covered with climbing plants of vivid green, mingled with white and purple flowers, forming bowers fit for t.i.tania the fairy queen. Just beyond was a stream, das.h.i.+ng over rocks between banks covered with vegetation, some of the larger trees bending over the current at the height of fifty feet, thus forming a huge shed beneath which hundreds of boats might have been sheltered. Here Tom got Mbutu to cut him a stout cudgel of hard wood from one of the stooping monsters, thinking it might prove useful as they progressed. The pedestrians drank their fill of the delicious water, crossed on the rocks, and forced their way up the opposite bank into the forest again. Half a mile farther on they came to a trickling stream, and beyond it, in a hollow, under a dense canopy of foliage so thick that, but for twinkling points of blue here and there, the sky was invisible, they lighted upon tiny, cage-like habitations no more than three feet high, made of sticks and leaves, and erected in a narrow clearing between clumps of gigantic trees. Mbutu stopped short and uttered a low cry of alarm, looking round with evident apprehension.

"What is it?" asked Tom in surprise, for the boy had hitherto shown himself absolutely fearless.

"Bambute, sah!" he whispered; "little tiny people, berrah tiny small.

Dey shoot poison, sah: one scratch, man dead."

And Mbutu pulled his master away, and did not quit his hold until he had led him half a mile farther into the forest. He then explained that here and there, in such small clearings as they had just traversed, there dwelt little communities of strange dwarf-like people, whose naked bodies were covered with a thin down, and who lived a sort of elfin life, stealing about from glade to glade, hardly ever visible, as difficult to discover as mice in a corn-field. They were skilled in woodcraft and the chase, agile and fleet of foot, and so well versed in poisons that with their toy-like bows and arrows they could kill fowl, and men, and even elephants, with a mere scratch. They could shoot three arrows so rapidly that the last sprang from the bow before the first had reached its mark. They fed on grubs and beetles, honey, mushrooms, and roots, besides coneys and hares and other spoils of the chase, and had a sweet tooth for the potatoes and bananas cultivated by their taller neighbours. Mbutu said that he was not afraid of ordinary negroes or Arabs, they could easily be avoided; but if he and his master stumbled into a nest of dwarfs, he feared they would not escape with their lives.

At noon Tom sat down upon a recently fallen trunk to rest. Mbutu went off by himself to find food, and luckily came upon a deserted clearing where bananas were still growing. He returned with a luscious bunch, and after eating and resting a while, the travellers again resumed their march. The heat of the afternoon had brought out myriad insects that buzzed about their heads, darting in every now and then to sting. Bees, wasps, and ticks innumerable sported hither and thither across their path; sometimes a flock of pigeons would clatter out of a tree, and high over their heads shrilled the mocking notes of parrots.

As the afternoon wore on, the heat became oppressive, suffocating. An ominous heaviness brooded over everything; the dimness deepened into darkness, and a feeling as of an approaching calamity crept over Tom.

Suddenly he heard a faint rumble like artillery far away; through a narrow opening in the forest he saw a spear of white flame dart across from tree to tree; then the silent trees rustled, swayed, and smote their tops one against another like masts straining under heavy canvas in a hurricane. Then roared the thunder; forked lightning flashed pale-green across the tree-tops, and the ma.s.sive trees bent and reeled like rushes, recovering themselves from the first blow, staggering forward, jerked back by the climbing plants around them, clas.h.i.+ng, roaring, screaming like fierce savage warriors in mortal fight. Tom stood still, amazed at the wild warfare, deafened by the reverberating thunder-claps, blinded by the scathing flames of lightning, yet exhilarated as he watched the fray. Then out of the black sky poured a deluge of rain, sheet upon sheet, hissing like water poured on hot iron, every drop as large as a crown-piece, penetrating the cotton garments of the travellers, drenching them in a moment to the skin. For three minutes the torrents fell; then, as suddenly as it had begun, the storm ceased, its fury was extinguished, the sky cleared, the trees stood still, and there was nothing to mark the terrific elemental strife but the streaming foliage, the soaked ground, and two giant stems which, cleft by the lightning, had crashed down and overwhelmed many smaller trees beneath them.

"Whew! that was a storm indeed!" said Tom. "What are we to do now? We can't go on in this sopping state."

"I know, sah; climb tree, dry clothes in sun."

"A novel drying-room!" said Tom with a smile. "Well, let's try it."

The fallen trees lay across others in such a way that they formed a sort of inclined path leading from the ground up into the forks of trees still standing. Tom and the Muhima nimbly climbed up until they were almost at the top of a giant of the woods, and there they sat amid the foliage and easily dried their dripping garments in the fierce sunlight.

When that was done they felt hungry, and after they had reached the ground, Mbutu found some small berries which he a.s.sured his master were perfectly good to eat. Then they went on again. It was impossible to tell how far they had come. Tom had left the direction to Mbutu, who seemed to find the way by instinct. Judging by the height of the sun that it was now about four o'clock, Tom wondered how they were to pa.s.s the approaching night. They had seen no human beings, and few living creatures at all save insects and snakes; Mbutu, indeed, a.s.sured his master that beasts of prey were not much to be dreaded in such dense forest, though he would not be surprised if an elephant should come rus.h.i.+ng out upon them.

They were sitting at the edge of a clearing, with their backs against a huge tree, to rest for a few minutes before starting for the last hour's walk, when Mbutu suddenly clutched Tom by the sleeve. At the same moment Tom heard a curious rhythmic chant, beginning on a low note, skipping three or four tones, and then descending to a chromatic note midway between. Then out of the forest to their left came a strange procession, a line of some thirty little naked figures, well-formed, cheerful-looking, diminutive men less than four feet high, trotting along in single file, their pa.s.sage absolutely soundless save for the crooning chant in time with their footsteps. "Ka-lu-ke-ke, ka-lu-ke-ke," they sang, their voices low and pleasant and melodious, their motions lithe and graceful. They carried bows and arrows, and one, who appeared to be their chief, had a light spear in addition. Without turning their heads they rapidly crossed the glade, and disappeared like gnomes in the forest on the other side.

Mbutu heaved a sigh of relief.

"Bambute!" he said. "No see us dis time; plenty poison dem arrows."

"So those are your pigmies, eh? Upon my word, Mbutu, they looked quite an interesting lot of little fellows. I liked that song of theirs much better than the 'man all alone', you know. We have a saying in my country, 'little and good'; many a little man has been a hero. There's Bobs, you know; ever heard of Bobs? Well, I'll tell you all about him some day. I declare I'm sleepy; there's no hut for us to-night; I think we had better climb that big tree there and sleep on the lowest fork, eh?"

"All right, sah! No dago man now, sah," he added.

"That's true; but we aren't out of the wood yet! We have done well to-day, I think; now for our leafy bed."

Mbutu was asleep as soon his head touched the bough on which he had perched himself. But Tom was awake for hours, pondering on many things.