O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas Part 9

The king rubbed his nose.

The king was thinking.

"Now," he must have thought, "here is a hand (meaning my swollen fist) that couldn't hurt anybody. What a chance to redeem my lost honour!"

The king took more rum.

Then he started from his throne and shouted. What he said matters little. At the conclusion of his speech I was again dragged up to fight the king. If I could have hit him then I would have done so. But with such hands, how could I? So it ended in my being fearfully punished.

Then there was such shouting and yelling as I had never before heard in my life. But I was free.

The king took more rum.

For a whole year after this I was kept under almost constant surveillance, but there was no more fighting.

Sometimes the king and his savages went away on the war-path, for many weeks together. When they did so, I was confined in a dungeon, and had no other companions except frogs, lizards, and centipedes. All the food they gave me was a piece of dried ca.s.sava root [the root from which arrowroot is made], daily, and I had very little water.

But in spite of my hards.h.i.+ps, I grew strong and robust. Probably, if I had not been a friendless orphan, if I had had a mother for instance, or a father, or sisters, or brothers, in a far-off home to think about, my misery would have been greater; as it was I had no one, for I believed that Roberts and all the people of the _Niobe_ had been slain in that terrible fight at Zareppa's fort.

Amelioration of my sufferings came at last, and in a strange way.

The king fell ill.

The king took more rum.

The king grew worse, and all the sorcery of his medicine men could not cure him, so I was sent for.

I had seen Jooma putting poison into the rum, and I told the king he had been poisoned. Who had done so? he asked: the culprit should die. No human being, I was determined, should die on account of anything I said.

I told him, however, that next day I should fetch the evil creature who had destroyed the health of the king. Meanwhile the rum was poured on the ground, and I made him a pill of the poison berry, and a little sc.r.a.ped ca.s.sava root. He saw me mix it. His medicine men a.s.sured him it would be death to take it; I took a pill myself, and when he saw I did not die, he followed my example, and took two or three. For I had found out that in small doses this poison berry was medicinal. The king slept, and awoke refreshed.

Then he called for the culprit who had dared to poison his rum.

I went and found Jooma. I told him that his guilt was discovered, and that his life was in my hands; that a word from me would march him to the execution ground. He knelt and prayed for mercy. I told him he needn't trouble, that Englishmen were far too honourable to harbour revenge. Then I made him bring a very old and savage billy-goat, and together we brought it to the king.

The king was greatly pleased. He said he never had liked the looks of the billy-goat, and he had no doubt that it had worked some deadly spell upon his rum. So the billy-goat--poor beast--was slain, and after a few more pills the king got better, and I was chief favourite among all the tribe.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

"But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth, This gay profusion of luxurious bliss?

Ill-fated race! the softening arts of peace, Kind equal rule, the government of laws, These are not theirs."

Thomson.

I became the king's head-counsellor, his prime-minister, so to speak, his chief medicine man. There was not much honour in this, certainly, but nevertheless it procured me some amelioration of my sufferings.

There was less of the dungeon after this, and fewer threats of decapitation.

I think the king still hankered after rum, and it was an anxious day for me when some Arab chiefs appeared in camp. Otakooma a.s.sembled not only, all his forces but most of his people. Something was going to happen, I knew, but till now I had had no idea of the utter depravity of this wretch.

He was positively going to barter his people for rum. The Arabs would buy them as slaves.

It was terrible to see these same Arabs walking round among the sable mob, as calmly as a farmer does among a herd of cattle, and picking one out here and there. But, oh! the grief, and the agony, and the anxiety displayed in voice and in action by these poor doomed creatures--the scene defies description. Here was the child torn shrieking from its mother's side, there a wife separated from her husband, or a husband from a weeping wife.

Some indulged their grief quietly, others gave vent to loud howls and lamentations; while others lay moaning and groaning on the ground, ever and anon taking up great handfuls of dust, and throwing it up over their poor heads!

I could not help turning away and shedding tears. But had they been tears of blood they could not have saved these people. They were relentlessly marched away, and I was really glad when night fell, and sleep sealed the eyes of even those who mourned.

It was bright clear moonlight. I rose from my couch, and stole out into the open air. I wanted to think. The close warm atmosphere of the tent seemed to stifle me, and I could not sleep.

I pa.s.sed slowly up the beaten footpath towards the king's tent. There was not a single soul astir, it had been a busy exciting day with everyone, and the king had been liberal enough in his offers of rum to his chief favourites; and although some of them ought to have been doing duty as sentinels near to his sacred person, they had preferred retirement and slumber.

I stole away from the camp, and ascended an eminence some distance from it, and sat me down on a rock. It was cool and pleasant here, away from that blood-stained camp. The moonlight flooded all the beautiful country, bathing plain and rock and tree in its mellow rays. The only sounds that broke the stillness were the yapping howl of the cowardly jackal, and farther off in the woods the mournful roar of lions.

It was a lovely scene, but terrible in its loveliness. I buried my face in my hands. I was boldly struggling against my sorrow. How long, I thought, would this life last? Should I live and die among these terrible savages? Escape there seemed none. To attempt it, I knew, would end in failure, and probably in death by torture. I was many hundreds of miles from the sea. I did not even know in what direction Zanzibar lay. No, I must wait for a time, at all events. What mattered a year or two more to one so young as I!

I suppose this last reflection had some kind of a drowsy influence on me, for I lay down with my head on a piece of rock, and with face upturned to the sky, fell fast asleep.

How long I had slept I know not. I awoke with a start: something cold had touched my face, and I had heard a creature breathing close at-- almost into--my ear. I started, as well I might. The thing that had waked me was a jackal; but there, not thirty yards away, standing boldly out against the moonlit sky, was a gigantic lioness!

There was astonishment depicted in every line of her great face.

Strange to say, at that moment I could not help thinking that she looked far from cruel, and I could not help admiring the splendid animal. I never moved, but gazed as if spell-bound. Probably it was my fixity of look that saved me, for after staring steadily, but wonderingly, at me for fully a minute, she turned round and stalked solemnly off, giving many a look behind, as if expecting I should follow her.

I waited till she was well away. I felt very happy at that moment, and very bold. I went straight back to camp, and approached the tent of the king, and softly entered. He was fast asleep and snoring. In the matter of rum he had been even more liberal to himself than to his followers. There lay the skins of spirits in a corner, not far from the couch of the drunken king. I hesitated not a moment, but seizing the king's own dagger, I stabbed--not the king, but the skins of rum.

Then I hastened away with my heart in my mouth. Remember, I was very young.

There were terrible doings next day in camp, and, I'm sorry to say, more than one human sacrifice. I, as medicine man and chief sorcerer, went through a great many mummeries, which I managed to make last all the forenoon. I was endeavouring to find out the wretch who had dared to spill the great king's rum; that is, I was pretending to. There was more than one chief on whose shoulders I permitted my magician's wand to rest for a while, just by way of a mild revenge, but the lot finally fell once again on an aged billy-goat. I had saved the king, and saved many of his subjects, for when the king was intoxicated, human sacrifices were of everyday occurrence. At ordinary times they were no more numerous than Bank Holidays in our own country.

When it was all over I stole away to the shady banks of a stream to bathe, and lie and watch the kingfishers. It was a favourite resort of mine, whenever I dared be alone.

The warriors of this tribe spent most of their time either on the hunting grounds--forest and plain--or in making raids on their neighbours. I was allowed to join the hunting expeditions, but not the forays. I became an expert horseman. I could ride bare-backed as well as any circus-man I have ever seen since. The king was too fat to ride much, but he used to follow to the chase of the koodoo.

This is a kind of beautiful antelope, and excellent eating, its princ.i.p.al recommendation in the eyes of Otakooma. We often caught the young, and they became as tame as our goats.

Now once having taken it into my head that escape from this country of savages was impossible, strange to say I began to settle down, in everything else except human bloodthirstiness, and soon became a very expert savage, taking a wild kind of pride in my exploits.

Mine was now a life of peril and hards.h.i.+p; adventures to me were of everyday occurrence; I carried my life in my hand; I grew as wily as a jackal, and I hope as bold as a lion. I take no credit to myself for being bold; I had to be so.

The king and I continued friends. At the end of the sixth year of my captivity, Jooma died. He died from wounds received at the horns of a wild buffalo in the forest.

This buffalo-hunting had for me a very great charm, and it certainly was not unattended with danger, for there were times when, headed by an old bull or two, a whole herd of these animals would charge down upon us.

This was nothing to me. I could climb trees as well as most monkeys, so I got out of harm's way, but it was hard upon the savages, who were not always so nimble.

Jooma was terribly tossed and wounded by a bull, and he died at the tree foot. He called me to him before his eyes were for ever closed, and asked me to forgive him for all the ill he had done me, and tried to do me.

"I have been to you one ver bad fellow," said poor Jooma; "I have want to kill you plenty time. Now I die. You forgive Jooma?"

"I do, Jooma," I said, and pressed his cold hard hand.

"Ver well," said the lad, faintly and slowly. "Now I die. Now, I go home--go home--home."