"now, by the holy," o'hara whimpered, "it's fight for our lives, or hand them away like so many maundy pennies."
"fight, is it?" gleazen roared. and forgetting his stiff wounds, he sprang to his feet. "load those guns! name of heaven, be quick!"
why at this particular time the bawling voice of the native should thus have called us to action is not easy to say, for you would think that, having become familiar with it, we should have regarded it with proverbial contempt. but we knew that the deadlock could not last forever; seth upham's fate was all too vivid in our minds; and i really think that, in the strange voice itself, there was more than a hint of what was to follow.
forgotten now was the edict that one party should stay on one side of the hut, the other on the opposite side. forgotten, even, was the bag of stones in gleazen's pack. armed with every weapon that the hut afforded, we stood behind door and window and saw a sight that appalled the bravest of us.
straight up the hill from the spring where they had killed seth upham there streamed a raging black horde. the rising moon shone on their spears and revealed the endless multitudes that came hard at the heels of the leaders. their yells reverberated from wall to wall of the forest and even, it seemed to us, to the starry sky above them.
as we fired on them, the streamers of flame from our guns darted into the night and the acrid smoke drifted[pg 269] back to us. but though they faltered, this time they came doggedly on. already in the moonlight we could distinguish individuals; now we could see their contorted features alive with rage and vindictiveness. that they would take the hut by storm, there was not the slightest doubt; nor was there a ray of hope that we should survive its fall.
it was a long, long way from topham to that wattled hut in a clearing on the side of an african hill, and in more ways than one it was a far call from higgleby's barn. but it was higgleby's barn that i thought of then—higgleby's barn in the pasture, with a light shining through a crack between the boards, and a boy scaling the wall under the window; higgleby's barn in the dark, with tongues of flame running out from it through the grass. truly, i thought in metaphor, which was rare for me, the fire that sprang up so long ago in higgleby's barn had already killed seth upham, and now it was going to enfold and engulf us all.
then i thought of the mission on the river, and the girl whom i had seen first among the mangroves, then in the darkness on the mission porch. did the war actually reach to the coast? and would the war wipe out "old parmenter" as gleazen had said? by heaven, i thought, it would not and it should not!
all this, of course, takes far longer to tell, than it took to go coursing through my mind. in the time it took to think it out, not one black foot struck the ground; not one left the ground. before that racing army of negroes had advanced another step, the answer had come to me; and now, no longer the boy who had climbed in idle curiosity the wall of higgleby's barn, but a man to think and act, i cried from my dry throat:—
"out of the back window, men! o'hara, help me brace the door! out of the window and over the hill!"
[pg 270]
with an oath gleazen cried, "he's right! they're all coming on us up the hill! the back way's our only chance!"
o'hara, in spite of my call for help, led the way out of the back window; but arnold paused to jam chairs and boards against the door; and gleazen, ever reckless, stooped in the darkness and picked something up. as we sprang to the window, he came last of all, and i saw that he, the only one to think of it in that hour of desperate peril, was of a mind to bring his pack—the pack that had held the thing for which we had left our homes and crossed the seas. i saw matterson clinging to brave abe guptil's shoulder, and striving desperately, with abe's help, to keep pace with o'hara, who in all this time had not got so much as a scratch. i saw the forest wherein lay our sole hope of safety, and terribly far off it seemed. then i rolled out into the moonlight, and ran as if the devil were at my heels.
almost at once i heard gleazen come tumbling after me, and gasp with a frightful oath that the pack had caught and he had left it.
as we ran, we kept, as far as possible, the house between us and the blacks, and so intent were they on attacking our little citadel, that for a moment or two they overlooked our flight.
we heard their cries as they battered down the door, their eager shouts, their sudden silence, and then the fierce yell of discovery when they saw us in the moonlight. it occurred to me then that, but for my poor uncle's death down by the spring, which had very likely caused them to break their circle and gather there in the open, we should not have had so easy a time of it when we fled over the hill behind the hut. weak though we were, despair was a mighty stimulus and we ran desperately for the woods;[pg 271] but although we had got a fair start, the pack was now yelping in full cry on our trail.
the pitiful futility of it all, i thought. seth upham was dead—the stones were lost—we ourselves were hunted for our lives! as i staggered after the others straight into the wall of almost impenetrable vines, i turned in the act of wriggling through it and let fly with my pistol. compared with the muskets, the pistol made a dainty little spit of fire and sound, but it served to delay the foremost negroes, and with our scanty hopes a little brighter for their hesitation, i struggled on to come up with the others.
it was well for us, after all, that o'hara had taken the lead. say what you will against him, the man knew the country. first, guided by the general lay of the land, he led us down the hill, through rocks and brush, straight to a stream where we drank and—warned by arnold lamont —fought against the temptation to drink more than a tiny fraction of what we desired.
revived by the plunge into water, we turned and followed o'hara up the stream-bed, bending low so that no onlooker could see us, climbed a great precipitous hill down which the stream tumbled in noisy cascades that hid every sound of our flight, drank again, and kept on up into the rocks away from the water. not daring to raise our heads above the dry bed of the rainy-season torrent along which we now hurried, we never once looked back down the slope up which we had toiled, panting and puffing and reeling; but behind us, far behind us now, we could hear the shrieks and yells of the disappointed savages, who, having outflanked the timber into which we disappeared, and having wasted many minutes in beating through it, a manœuvre that their wholesome respect for our firearms had much delayed, had now come out on the brow of the rocky declivity leading down to the creek, and[pg 272] were losing much time, if we could judge by their clamor, in arguing which way we were likely to have gone.
i wonder if the whole performance to which we owed our lives was not characteristic of the natives of the african coast? if therein did not lie just the difference between a people so easily led into slavery and a people that never, whatever their weaknesses have been, have yielded to their oppressors? it all happened long ago, and it was my only acquaintance with black warfare; but surely we could never thus have thrown american indians off the scent.
it seemed to me, then, that we had made good our escape and could run straight for the river, and in my enthusiasm i said as much. but arnold and abe guptil shook their heads, and o'hara significantly raised his hand. "hark!"
i listened, and realized that an undertone of sound, which i had heard without noticing it, as one hears a clock ticking, was the rumble of drums miles and miles away. while i listened, another drum far to the north took up the grim throbbing note, then another to the east. then, mingling with the swelling voice of all the drums,—how many of them there were, or in how many villages, i had not the vaguest notion,—i heard human voices down the hill on our right, and after a time other voices down the hill on our left. i then knew that however stupid our pursuers might seem, to reach the river was no such easy task as i had hoped.
for an hour we lay hidden among the rocks, with the world spread out before us in the moonlight. here and there were small points of fire, which shone as if they were stars reflected on water,—we knew, of course, that there was no water, and that they must, therefore, be lights of village or camp,—and twice, at a distance of half a mile,[pg 273] men passed with torches. but for the most part we lay shoulder to shoulder, with only the moon and the twinkling points of light to awaken our meditations.
i thought of uncle seth dead in the grass by the spring down to which he had gone so bravely. i thought of the hut in which, so far as we knew, still lay the skeleton and the bag of pebbles. and while i was thinking thus, i heard to the southeast the sound of gunshots.
first came several almost together like a volley, then another and another, then two or three more, and after that, at intervals, still others.
o'hara looked first at the sky and then in the direction of the shooting. "they're attacking a trader's caravan," he said. "there'll be white men in it, surely. the thing for us to do, my lads, is to join up with them. they'll have food."
"aye, but how?" asked gleazen.
as if in answer to his question,—a terribly discouraging answer!—we heard, when we stopped to listen, coming up to us out of the night from every side, near and far, the throbbing of drums.
"aye, 'how?'" o'hara repeated.
"can we not," i asked, "work down toward them and break through the blacks?"
"the war has gone to the coast by now, and they are attacking all comers. but it's us they're keen on the trail of, all because bull built his house on a king's grave and a blithering idiot killed a devil. 'tis true, joe. if we could work down toward them, come three o'clock in the morning, it might happen even as you say."
there were no torches, now, to be seen; no voices were to be heard. there were only the fixed lights shining like stars and the steadily throbbing drums. whether or not, back on our trail, the blacks were still hunting for us,[pg 274] we did not know; but by all signs that we could see, they were settling quietly down for the remainder of the night.
"and if it don't happen like you say," o'hara added as an afterthought, "we'll be nearer the river surely, and there may be hope for us yet."
at that he looked at gleazen and smiled, and gleazen softly laughed and nudged matterson, at which matterson swore, because gleazen's elbow had touched a wound. then they all three looked at one another and laughed; and remembering the board in the centre of the hut and the law that neither side should trespass on the part allotted to the other, i heartily wished that we had another such board and another such law. we had agreed upon our truce under the stress of great danger. take away that danger, i thought, and there would be nothing to keep the old coals of hate from springing into flame anew.
down from the hilltop we went, slowly picking our way among the boulders, to still another brawling stream at the foot. there we drank and waited and reconnoitred, and finally, convinced that we were in no immediate danger, pushed on after our guide, o'hara.
he first led us down the ravine and through a wild and wooded country; but within two miles the sound of drums, which had become louder and nearer, warned us of a village ahead, and, leaving the stream, we climbed a hill, passed through scattered patches of plantains and yams, from which we took such food as would dull the edge of our hunger, came down again into dense timber, worked our way through it, and emerged at last into an open space above a broad plain.
and all this long way faithful abe guptil had half carried, half dragged the great body of matterson, who fought hard to keep up with the rest of us and strove to[pg 275] regain the strength that his wound had taken from him, but who despite his bravest efforts, still was sadly weak.
as well as we could judge by the interminable drumming, there were villages on our right and on our left and behind us. by the stars we estimated that it was still an hour before dawn, and by lights on the plain we guessed at the location of the camp of which we had come in search.
we had already wandered so far from the road by which we had come to the mountain, that it seemed as if only a miracle could bring us back to the place on the river where we had left our boat; but in that respect o'hara was no mean worker of miracles, for his years in africa had given him an uncanny judgment of direction and distance.
"yonder will be the river," he said, pointing slightly to the left; "and yonder will surely be the camp where we heard guns firing. below there'll be a road and the camp will be on the road. i know this place; i've been here before."
with that he once more plunged down the steep declivity and through a growth of scrubby trees to a great prairie, where, even as he had said, a road ran in the direction that our journey led us. fire not long since had burned over the meadow, and spears of grass from fifteen to twenty feet high had fallen across the road and tangled and twisted so that most of the time we had to bend almost double as we walked. but in that early morning hour there were no travelers on the road except occasional deer, which went dashing off through the grass; and it crossed many streams into which we plunged our hot faces. with water for our thirst and plantains for our hunger, we fared on, until, just as dawn was breaking, we came in sight of the red coals of a fire.
o'hara raised his hand and we stopped. "the niggers are ahead of us," he whispered. "beyond the niggers will[pg 276] be the caravan surely, and beyond the caravan there'll be more niggers."
"the question, then, my friends," said arnold, slowly, "is whether to go round them and on alone, or to go through the blacks and take our chances on a friendly reception from whoever is camping just ahead."
"that," said o'hara, "is the question."
"there's no doubt but they're traders," gleazen muttered. "we'll have to fight before we reach the river. the more on our side, the merrier, i say, when it comes to fighting."
by our silence we assented.
arnold raised his hand. "it is by surprise, gentlemen, or not at all. are you ready?"
breathing hard, we pressed closer together.
"quickly, then! together, and with speed!"
arnold's voice snapped out the orders as if we were a company of military. there was something so commanding, so martial, in his manner and carriage, yet something that fitted him so well and seemed so much a part of his old, calm, taciturn, wise way, that i felt a sudden new wonder at him, a feeling that, well though i thought i had known him, i never had known him.
then, brought all at once into action by the energy and force of his command, as was every one of the others, i started at the word as did they. together we ran straight through the camp of sleeping blacks,—so strong was matterson's spirit, so great his eagerness, that he now kept pace with us almost without help,—straight past the coals of their campfire, over the remnants of their evening meal, over their weapons and shields strewn in the road, and on toward their picket-line. as they woke behind us, bewildered, and groped to learn the cause of the sudden disorder, and realized what was happening, and started up[pg 277] with angry cries, we leaped, one after another, actually leaped, over a black sentry nodding at his post, over a frail barrier that they had thrown up to conceal their movements, and charged down upon a threatening stockade behind which lay the caravan.
that the caravan kept better watch than their besiegers, we learned first of all; for even as we leaped the barricade and came racing down the road, a gun went off in our faces and a cry of warning called the defenders from their sleep.
"don't shoot!" o'hara yelled. "we're white men! don't shoot!"
all now depended on the men of that caravan. were they friends or foes, honest men or thieves, we had cast the dice, and on that throw our fate waited.
i heard gleazen bellowing in spanish and arnold lamont calling in french; then up i came with matterson and abe to the crude, hasty rampart of mud and grass, and over i tumbled upon a man who cried out in amazement and raised his gun to strike me down, only to desist at the sight of my white face, which was no whiter than his own. arnold was ahead of me; gleazen and matterson came in, almost at the same moment; then came abe; and last of all, dumb with terror, o'hara, who had tripped and fallen midway between the two barricades and had narrowly escaped perishing at the hands of the negro guards.
in we came and about we turned, side by side with the strange whites, and when the hostile spearmen showed signs of rushing upon us, we gave them balls from musket and pistol to remember us by, and they faltered and drew back. but that the end was not yet in sight the thudding of their drums and the growing chorus of their angry yells unmistakably told us.
"ha! dey t'ink dey git us yet," one of the strangers[pg 278] cried, hearing me speak to arnold in english. "dis one beeg war. where he start, who know? dey fight, how dey fight! dey come down upon us—whee! gun, spear—when we start we have feefty slave. ten we loos' before war hit us so we know and hit back. ha! dis one beeg war!"
"how far, tell me," gasped o'hara, "has the fighting gone?"
"leesten!" the stranger lifted his hand. "hear dem drum? one here—one dar—one five mile 'way—one ten mile 'way! oh, ev'ywhere dem drum! hear dem yell! how far dis war gone—dis war gone clean to cuba! dis one beeg war, by damn!"
"has the war," i cried, "reached the mission on the river?"
"ha! you t'ink you see dat meession, hey? dat meession, he fall down long since time, i'll bet. one good t'ing dat war he do."
if only i had never seen the girl by the river, i thought. if only i could have forgotten her! i turned away. yet even then i would not have spared one iota of my brief memories of that girl with the strong, kind face and quiet voice. if i never saw her again, i still had something to hold fast. how many times, since seth upham went down to die by the spring, had i thought of that girl as one of the few people whom i should be glad to see again, and how many times had i wished that she did not think so ill of me!
"tell me, you man, where from you come?" the stranger now asked. "you come pop! so! whee!"
at that gleazen spoke in spanish, and the man turned like a cat taken unawares and looked at him with shrewd, keen eyes. then matterson came up to them and likewise[pg 279] began to talk in spanish, and others crowded round them.
arnold, after listening for a moment, drew me to one side. "see," he murmured.
following his gesture, i looked around the camp and saw, in the middle of the clearing, thirty or forty cowering negroes bound fast by bamboo withes. behind them and mingling with them were bullocks and sheep and goats. moving restlessly about in the light of earliest morning were numbers of male and female slaves; and on every side were baled hides and bundles of merchandise: ivory, rice, beeswax, and even, it was whispered, gold.
"i fear, my friend," arnold said in an undertone, "that our hosts are more to the taste of gleazen than of ourselves."
"you have heard them talking," i whispered. "tell me what they said."
"only," replied arnold, "that we have a ship and they have a cargo; that it will be to our mutual advantage to join forces."
i looked again at the captive negroes, and again thought of the girl at the mission and of the evil that she had attributed to me.
"to join forces," i said,—and in my excitement i spoke aloud,—"in trading human beings? not that!"
the others turned.
"what are you two talking about?" matterson asked quickly in his light voice.
"of one thing and another," i replied, flushing.
"come," said gleazen, boldly, "let us all talk together."
"dis one beeg war!" the trader cried. "to fight—eet is all we can do. fighting we go, da's what me, i say. see! sun, he come up!"
[pg 280]
"to that," said arnold, "we all agree. we, sir, will go with you and fight by your side."
"good! me, i's happy. you brave men. dis one beeg war, but we make plenty war back again."
then he cried out orders in spanish, and the camp woke to the activities of the new day; and while some of us held off the blacks, the rest of us ate our morning meal in the first golden sunlight of the dawn, with a hum and bustle of packing and harnessing and herding going on around us.
but all the time the drums beat, and far away we would hear now and then calls and shouts that made the strange trader and gleazen and o'hara exchange significant glances.
as with loaded muskets we fell in to guard the caravan, and the porters lifted their bundles, and the herders goaded their beasts, and the captive negroes started hopelessly on the road to the river, and the sudden hush of voices made the trample of feet seem three times louder than before, we heard guns behind us.
"ha! dose trade gun, hey?" the trader cried, and fell into spanish.
wheeling his horse, he anxiously looked back along the road.
one thing for which we had crossed the sea was lost in a hut overrun by an army of vengeful savages. there was no fortune left for us, i knew, unless it were a fortune gained by bartering human souls; and at that, which lay at the real bottom of all neil gleazen's schemes, my heart revolted. what chance should we have had of saving for seth upham his ship and what money was left, even if he had lived? small chance, i admitted.
all day we drove on in a forced march, leaving the war to all appearances far behind us and stopping only at noon, by a clear cold stream in the forest, to eat a hasty[pg 281] meal; and at nightfall, crossing another stretch of prairie, we came to still another forest.
"here," the trader cried, "here ees one fine leetle river! here we camp one leetle while! den we go—like fire—when midnight come, mebbe we see one beeg river!"
that we, who had come the night before from the house on the king's grave, were ready to rest, i can assure you. never in all my life have i been so heavy with weariness, nay, with downright exhaustion, as on that evening at the edge of that african forest.
the very beasts were weary after the long day's march. the trader's horse hung its head. the bullocks and goats and sheep plodded on before their noisy herders and scarcely quickened their pace at thrust of goad or snap of whip. the captive negroes, wretched creatures doomed to the horrors of the infamous middle passage in the hold of some cuban or brazilian slave-ship, wearily dragged along, their chins out-thrust, their hands lashed behind them. the traders' own slaves, bending under the weight of hides and rice and ivory, stumbled as they walked, and even the white men themselves, who had done nothing more than ride or walk over the road, breathed hard and showed drawn faces as they eagerly pushed on or apprehensively looked back.
into the woods we pressed, thanking in our hearts the divine providence that here at least there was no throb of drum, no howling of black heathen, no war at all. the aisles between the great trees were cool and green and inviting. the river rippled over rocks and suggested by its music the luxury of bathing; fruits were to be had for the picking, and there was no doubt in my mind that our hosts would butcher a sheep for the evening meal.
water, food, and sleep at that moment seemed more desirable than all the dominions of africa; and water,[pg 282] food, and sleep, i was confident, were but now at hand. into the forest we marched, for once relaxing the watchfulness that we had maintained since sunrise, and down the trail to the creek that we could hear murmuring on its way over the rocks and through the underbrush. and there, at the end of our long day's journey, the bushes suddenly blossomed in flame.
guns boomed in our very faces. up and down the creek fire flashed in long spurts. the wind brought to our nostrils the stinging smell of powder-smoke. men and beasts were thrown into wild confusion. in the dim light of the forest i saw coming at us from all sides, naked men armed with trade guns and bows and spears and lances. louder than the shouts and curses behind us, rang the exultant yells before us.
