The Great White Queen: A Tale of Treasure and Treason Page 4

  CHAPTER IV.

  A STRANGE PROMISE.

  BY the light of the flambeaux the sleek, black, oily-looking nativesmanaged their clumsy craft, which, dipping suddenly now and then, shippedgreat seas, compelling us to hang on for life. The sails creaked andgroaned as they bent to the wind, speeding on in the darkness towards themainland of Africa. To be transferred to such a ship, which I more thansuspected was a slaver, was a complete change after the clean,well-ordered Liverpool liner, and I must confess that, had we not been incharge of Kouaga, I should have feared to trust myself among thatshouting cut-throat crew of grinning blacks. Clinging to a rope I stoodwatching the strange scene, rendered more weird by the flickeringuncertain light of the torches falling upon the swarm of natives whomanned the craft.

  "Are these your mother's people?" I inquired of Omar.

  "Some are. I recognize several as our slaves, the remainder are Sanwi, ornatives of the coast. Our slaves, I suppose, have been sent down to beour carriers."

  "Judging from the manner in which they crawl about this is, I shouldthink, their first experience of the sea," I said.

  "No doubt. Over a thousand English miles of desert and almostimpenetrable bush separates the sea from our kingdom, therefore few, veryfew of our people have seen it."

  "They'll go back with some wonderful tales, I suppose."

  "Yes. They will, on their return, be considered heroes of travel, andtheir friends will hold feasts in their honour."

  As he finished speaking, however, our cumbrous craft seemed suddenly tobe lifted high out of the water, and amid the unearthly yells of thewhole crew we were swept through a belt of foaming surf, until in a fewmoments our keel slid upon the sand.

  I prepared to leap down upon the beach, but in a second half-a-dozenwilling pairs of arms were ready to assist me, and I alighted in themidst of a swarm of half-clad, jabbering natives.

  One of them, elbowing his way towards me, asked in broken English:

  "Massa have good voyage--eh?" whereupon the others laughed heartily athearing one of their number speak the language of the white men. ButKouaga approached uttering angry words, and from that moment the samerespect was paid to me as to Omar.

  We found there was a small village where we landed, otherwise the coastwas wild and desolate. In an uncleanly little hut to which we were takenwhen our boxes were landed and the excitement had subsided, we wereregaled with various African delicacies, which at first I did not findpalatable, but which Omar devoured with a relish, declaring that he hadnot enjoyed a meal so much since he had left "the Coast" for England.But I did not care for yams, and the stewed monkey looked suspiciouslylike a cooked human specimen. My geographical knowledge was not soextensive as it might have been, and I was not certain whether thesenatives were not cannibals. Therefore I only made a pretence of eating,and sat silently contemplating the strange scene as we all sat upon thefloor and took up our food with our fingers. When we had concluded thefeast a native woman served Omar with some palm wine, which, however, hedid not drink, but poured it upon the ground as an offering to the fetishfor his safe return, and then we threw ourselves upon the skins stretchedout for us and slept till dawn.

  At sunrise I got up and went out. The place was, I discovered, even moredesolate than I had imagined. Nothing met the eye in every direction butvast plains of interminable sand, with hillocks here and there, also ofsand; no trees were to be seen, not even a shrub; all was arid, dry andparched up with heat. The village was merely an assemblage of a dozenmiserable mud huts, and so great was the monotony of the scene, that theeye rested with positive pleasure on the dirty, yellow-coloured craft inwhich we had landed during the night. It had apparently once beenwhitewashed, but had gradually assumed that tawny hue that alwayscharacterises the African wilderness.

  Again Omar and I were surrounded by the crowd of fierce-lookingbarbarians, but the twenty stalwart carriers sent down from Mo,apparently considering themselves a superior race to thesecoast-dwellers, ordered them away from our vicinity, at the same timepreparing to start for the interior. Under the direction of Kouaga, whohad already abandoned his European attire and now wore an Arab haick andwhite burnouse, the gang of chattering men soon got their loads of foodand merchandise together--for the Grand Vizier had apparently beenpurchasing a quantity of guns and ammunition in England--hammocks wereprovided for all three of us if we required them, and after a good mealwe at length set out, turning our backs upon the sea.

  After descending the crest of a sand-hill we found ourselves fairly inthe desert. As far as we could see away to the limitless horizon wassand--arid, parched red-brown sand without a vestige of herbage. The windthat was blowing carried grains of it, which filled one's mouth andtasted hot and gritty; again, impalpable atoms of sand were blown intothe corners of one's eyes, and, besides, this injury inflicted on theorgan of vision was calculated by no means to improve one's temper.However, Omar told me that a beautiful and fruitful land lay beyond,therefore we made light of these discomforts, and, after a march of threedays, during which time we were baked by day by the merciless sun andchilled at night by the heavy dews, we at last came to the edge of thewaterless wilderness, and remained for some hours to rest.

  My first glimpse of the "Dark Continent" was not a rosy one. As awell-known writer has already pointed out, life with a band of nativecarriers might for a few days be a diverting experience if the climatewere good and if there was no immediate necessity for hurry. But asthings were it proved a powerful exercise, especially when we commencedto traverse the almost impenetrable bush by the native path, so narrowthat two men could not walk abreast.

  Across a great dismal swamp where high trees and rank vegetation grew inwondrous profusion we wended our way, day by day, amid the thick whitemist that seemed to continually envelop us. But it required a little morethan persuasion to make our carriers travel as quickly as Kouaga liked.At early dawn while the hush of night yet hung above the forest, ourguide would rise, stretch his giant limbs and kick up a sleepingtrumpeter. Then the tall, dark forest would echo with the boom of anelephant-tusk horn, whose sound was all the more weird since it came frombetween human jaws with which the instrument was decorated. The crowd ofblacks got up readily enough, but it was merely in order to light theirfires and to settle down to eat plantains. At length the horn would soundagain, but produce no result. The whole company still squatted, eatingand jabbering away, indifferent to every other sound. The head man wouldbe called for by Kouaga. "Why are your men not ready? Know you not thatthe son of the great Naya is with us?" With a deprecatory smile thehead-man would make some excuse. He had hurt his foot, or had rheumatism,and therefore he, and consequently his men, would be compelled to restthat day. He would then be warned that if not ready to march in fiveminutes, he would be carried captive into Mo for the Great White Queenherself to deal with. In five minutes he would return to Kouaga, sayingthat if the Grand Vizier would only give the men a little more salt withtheir "chop" (food) that evening, they would march.

  Kouaga would then become furious, soundly rating everybody, and declarethat the Naya herself should deal with the whole lot as mutineers;whereupon, seeing all excuses for further halt unavailing, loads wouldbe taken up, and within a few moments the whole string of half-cladnatives would go laughing and singing on the forward path.

  The first belt of forest passed we entered a vast level land covered withscrub, which Omar informed me was the border of the Debendu territory.Proceeding down a wide valley we came at length to the first inhabitedregion. Every three or four miles we passed through a nativevillage--usually a single street of thirty or forty houses. Each houseconsisted, as a rule, of three or four small sheds, facing inwards, andforming a tiny courtyard. The huts were on built-up platforms, with hardwalls of mud, and roofs thatched with palm-leaves, while the front stepswere faced with a kind of red cement. In the middle of each centre ofhabitation we found a tree with seats around it formed of untrimmed logs,on which the elders and head-men of the village would sit, smok
e, andgravely discuss events. As we left each village to plunge boldly onwardthrough the bush we would pass the village fetish ground, well defined bythe decaying bodies of lizards and birds, a grinning human skull or two,broken pots and pieces of rag fluttering in the wind, all offered aspropitiation to the presiding demon of the place, while away in the bush,behind the houses, we saw the giant leaves of the plantain groves thatyielded the staple food of this primitive people.

  Deeper and deeper we proceeded until we came into regular forest scenery,where day after day we pushed our way through solemn shady aisles offorest giants, whose upper parts gleamed far above the dense undergrowthin white pillars against the grey-blue sky. Sometimes we strode down apicturesque sunny glade, and at others struggled through deep darkcrypts of massive bamboo clumps. Here the noisome smell of decayingvegetation nauseated us, for the air in those forest depths is deadly.Beautiful scarlet wax-flowers would gleam high among the dark-greenfoliage of the giant cotton-tree, whose stem would be covered withorchids and ferns and dense wreaths of creeper, while many otherbeautiful blossoms flourished and faded unseen. In that dark dismal placethere was an absence of animal life. Sometimes, however, by day we wouldhear the tuneful wail of the finger-glass bird or an occasional robinwould chirrup, while at night great frogs croaked gloomily and the slothwould shriek at our approach.

  It was truly a toilsome, dispiriting march, as in single file we pushedour way forward into the interior, and I confess I soon began to tire ofthe monotony of the terrible gloom. But to all my questions Omar wouldreply:

  "Patience. In Africa we have violent contrasts always. To-day we aretoiling onward through a region of eternal night, but when we havetraversed the barrier that shuts out our country from the influence ofyours--then you shall see. What you shall witness will amaze you."