The Great Quest Part 42

So forward we went in the darkness, and a slow, tedious journey it was, particularly for Abe and me, who helped Matterson along as best we could; but we avoided the town by the sound of drumming that issued from behind its walls, and having helped ourselves to fruit from the patches of cultivated land that we pa.s.sed, we at last emerged from the darkness of the woods into the half light of a great clearing, and saw a vast, black, living surface on which strange lights played unsteadily. It seemed unbelievable that it really could be the same river that we had left so long ago,--in the sense of all that had happened, so very long ago,--and yet I knew, as I watched Gleazen and Matterson, that it must be the same. The black, swift current recalled to my mind the toil that we had expended in coming so far to so little purpose. In which direction the creek lay that we had entered on our way to the ill-fated hut, I had not the remotest idea; but I looked a long time downstream toward the mission.

Bearing around in a rough half-circle, we worked slowly down the bank, until the walls of the town itself were before us, at a safe distance.

"Our boat," said Matterson, grimly, "is fifty miles away."

"Wait here," said I. "There'll be canoes under the town. I'll get one."

Gleazen made a motion as if to go himself, but Arnold shook his head. "No; let Joe go first. He will learn where the canoes are, and do it more quietly than we."

They all sat down by the edge of the water, and, leaving them, I went on alone. It took all the courage I could muster; but having rashly offered, I would not hesitate.

For one thing, it gave me time to think, and in a sense I desired to think, although in another sense it came to me that I was more afraid of my own thoughts than of all the walled towns in Africa.

The living nightmare through which we had pa.s.sed had left me worn in body and mind. That Uncle Seth, upon whom once I had placed every confidence, should have died so tragic a death, now brought me a fresh burst of sorrow, as if I realized it for the first time. It seemed to me that I could hear his sharp yet kindly voice speaking to me of little things in our life at Topham. I thought of one episode after another in those earlier days, some of them, things that had happened while my mother was alive; others, things that had happened after her death; all, things that I had almost forgotten long before. My poor uncle, I thought for the hundredth time--my poor, poor uncle!

Then suddenly another thought came to me and I straightened up and stood well-nigh aghast. By the terms of my uncle's will, of which more than once he had told me, all that had been his was mine!

The river silently swept down between its high banks, past me who stood where the waves licked at my feet, past the black walls of the town, which stood like a sentinel guarding the unknown fastnesses of the continent of Africa, past high hill and low gravel shoal and bottomless mora.s.s, past pawpaw and pine palm and mangrove, to the mission and the sea.

There I stood, as still as a statue, until after a long time I remembered my errand and, like one just awakened, continued on my way.

I found a score of canoes drawn up on the beach under the town, and very carefully placing paddles by one that was large enough for our entire party, I cautiously returned to the others and reported what I had done. Together we all slipped silently along the sh.o.r.e to the canoes, launched the one that I had chosen, and with a last glance up at the pointed roofs of the houses and the sharpened pickets of the stockade, silently paddled, all un.o.bserved, out on the strong current and went flying down into the darkness.

It had been one thing to row up stream against that current. It was quite another, and vastly easier, even though three of us were entirely ignorant of handling such a canoe, to paddle down the swift waters of midstream. Exerting always the greatest care to balance the ticklish wooden craft, which the blacks with their crude adzes had hewn out of a solid log, we sent it, even by our clumsy efforts, fairly flying past the trees ash.o.r.e; and as it seemed that we had struck the river many miles below the creek where we had left our boat, we had hopes that the one night would bring us within striking distance of the open sea. Indeed, I found myself watching every point and bend, in hope that the mission lay just beyond it.

Estimating that daylight was still two hours away, we drew in sh.o.r.e at Gleazen's suggestion, to raid a patch of yams or plantains.

"A man," he said arrogantly, but with truth, "can't go forever on an empty stomach."

Luckless venture that it was--no sooner did the canoe grate on the beach than a wakeful woman in a hut on the bank set up a squealing and squalling. As we put out again incontinently into the river, we heard, first behind us, then also ahead of us, the roll of those accursed native drums.

To this very day I abhor the sound of drumming. It has a devilishly haunting note that I cannot escape; and small wonder.

We swept on down the current, but now, here and there, the river-banks were alive with blacks, and always the booming of drums ran before us, to warn the country that we were coming. Once, as we pa.s.sed a wooded point, a spear flew over our heads and went hissing into the water, and I was all for putting over to the other bank.

But Arnold, who could use his eyes and ears as well as his head, cried, "No! Watch!"

All at once, under the dark bank of the river, there was screaming and splas.h.i.+ng and floundering. The torches that immediately flared up revealed what Arnold, and now the rest of us, expected to see, but they also revealed indistinctly another and more dreadful sight: on the sh.o.r.e, running back and forth in great excitement, were many men; but in the troubled water a negro was struggling in vain to escape from the toils of a huge serpent, which was wrapping itself round him and dragging him down into the river where it had been lying in wait.

To me, even though I knew that that very negro had been watching for a chance to waylay us, the sight of the poor fellow's horrible death almost overcame me.

Not so with Matterson and Gleazen.

With a curse, Matterson cried, "There's one less of them now." His light voice filled me with loathing.

And Gleazen softly laughed.

On down the river we went, with flying paddles, and round a bend.

But as we pa.s.sed the bend, I looked back, and saw coming after us, first one canoe, then two, then six, then so many that I lost all count.

How far we had come in that one night, I had little or no idea; but it was easy to see by the att.i.tude of those who knew the river better than I, that the end of our journey was close at hand.

Glancing round at our pursuers, Gleazen spoke in an undertone to Matterson, and both they and the trader studied the sh.o.r.e ahead of us.

"A scant ten miles," Gleazen muttered; "only ten miles more."

I felt the heavy dugout leap forward under the fierce pull of our paddles. The water turned away from the bow in foam, and we fairly outrode the current. But fast though we were, the war fleets behind us were faster. By the next bend they had gained a hundred yards, by the next, another hundred. We now led them by a scant quarter of a mile, and if Gleazen had estimated our distance rightly, they would have had us long before we could reach port. But suddenly, all unexpectedly, round the next bend, not half a mile away, the mission sprang into sight.

There it stood, in the early morning sun, as clean and cool and still as if it were a thousand miles away from Africa and all its wars.

"Give me your pistols," Arnold cried; and when we tossed them to him and in frantic haste resumed our paddling, he coolly renewed the priming and one by one fired them at our pursuers.

That the negroes had a gun we then learned, for they retorted by a single shot; but the shot went wild and the arrows that followed it fell short, and our pistols cooled their eagerness. So we swept in to the landing by the mission, and beached the canoe, and ran up the long straight path to the mission house as fast as we could go, while the black canoemen paused in midstream and let their craft swing with the current.

The place, as we came rus.h.i.+ng up to it, was so quiet, so peaceful, so free from any faintest sign of the terrible days through which we had pa.s.sed, that it seemed as if, after all, we had never left it; as if we were waking from a troubled sleep; as if we had spent a thousand years in the still, hazy heat of that very clearing. The face in the window, the opening door, only intensified that uncanny sense of familiarity.

The door opened, and the man we had seen before met us. His eyes were stern and inhospitable.

"What?" said he. "Must you bring your vile quarrels and vile wars to the very threshold of one whose whole duty here is to preach the word of G.o.d?"

"Those," cried Arnold, angry in turn, but as always, precise in phrase and enunciation, "are hard words to cast at strangers who come to your gate in trouble."

"Trouble, sir, of your own brewing," the missionary retorted. "What you have been up to, I do not know. Nor have I any wish to save your rascally necks from a fate you no doubt richly merit."

"Your words are inclusive," I cried.

"They certainly include you, young man. If you would not be judged by this company that you are keeping, you should think twice or three times before embarking with it."

"Father!" said a low voice.

My heart leaped, but I did not turn my head. Down the river, manned by warriors armed to the teeth, came more canoes of the war. Behind them were more,--and more,--and still more.

"Come, come, you sniveling parson," Gleazen bellowed, "where are your guns? Where's your powder? Come, arm yourself!"

The man turned on him with a look of scorn that no words of mine can properly describe.

"You have brought your dirty quarrel to my door," he said in a grim, hard voice. "Now do you wish me to fight your battles for you?"

Steadily, silently, the canoes were swinging insh.o.r.e. I saw negroes running into the clearing. On my left I heard a cry so shrill and full of woe that it stood out, even amid the unG.o.dly clamor of the blacks, and commanded my attention.

The man stepped down from the porch.

"This," he said, turning, "is a house of peace. I order you to leave it. I will go down and talk with these men myself."

"You'll never come back alive!" Matterson cried, and hoa.r.s.ely laughed.

At that the missionary, John Parmenter, merely smiled, and, afraid of neither man nor devil, walked down toward the river and fell dead with a chance arrow through his heart.

There was something truly magnificent in his cold courage, and Gleazen paid him almost involuntary tribute by crying, "There, by heaven, went a brave man!"

But from the door of the house the girl suddenly ran out. Her face was deathly white and her voice shook, but as yet there were no tears in her eyes.