THE GOLDEN POOL.
In the course of a long journey on foot through an uncultivated
country one acquires the faculty of unconsciously observing and
generalising from certain geographical facts. By noticing the
vegetation one can detect at a distance an invisible river or a change
in the soil; in dense forest, the proximity of an unseen range of
hills is inferred from rapidly-flowing streams with beds of shingle,
and the general slope of the country can be judged, apart from
particular inclines, from the average direction of the rivers.
Now, very shortly after leaving Juábin, it became evident that we had
entered a new watershed, for, whereas the streams had previously
flowed mostly in a southerly direction, they now took a course for the
most part towards the north-west, and were, moreover, increasing in
size, the little rivulets giving place, as we travelled northward, to
more considerable streams. It did not, therefore, cause me any
surprise when, on the fifth day after leaving Juábin, we came to the
brink of a large, slowly-flowing river.
A river of any size is, however, always an object of interest to the
traveller, and as we came out into the open space on the bank, we
halted and looked about us curiously. The black, sluggish waters were
spanned by a rude bridge formed of a single gigantic odúm tree, and
on either bank, at each end of the bridge, was a high pile of sticks,
while on the farther side of the river an opening in the trees showed
that the road led into a village.
As we approached the bridge, a man who had been sitting by the pile of
staves rose and held up one hand, while with the other he pointed to
the heap; and although he spoke not a word, our people clearly
understood his meaning, for each of them who carried a stick cast it
on to the pile. Then the man walked on to the bridge and, when he had
passed three-quarters of the way across, halted, and tinkled a kind of
primitive bell. Our men followed him, and each of them, as he reached
the middle of the bridge, drew from his pocket one of the little cloth
packets of gold dust that form the ordinary currency in Ashanti and,
opening it, shook the gold out into the river. I was greatly surprised
at this behaviour on the part of my orthodox friends, but I thought it
wise to do as they did, so, laying my stick upon the wooden cairn, I
took out the smallest of the packets of gold dust with which Pereira
had furnished me, and very reluctantly shook out the contents into the
water.
As I landed on the northern bank, I passed close to the fetish priest
or wizard--for such he evidently was--and examined him with no little
curiosity. He was an emaciated, shrivelled-looking rascal with a sly,
sinister face, and grey hair, and was loaded with necklaces and other
ornaments of cowrie shells. He appeared to resent my earnest
inspection, and Musa, observing this, plucked me by the sleeve and
hurried me away, whispering, “Stare not so, my son; remember that he
dieth early that gazeth into the eye of a wizard.”
Although it was little past noon, Musa decided to camp outside the
village (which I did not require to be told was Tánosu), for we were
now beyond the seat of war and could not only rest in peace, but might
expect to obtain some better food than plantains, of which we were all
heartily sick. We did, in fact, obtain a fine short-haired ram which I
gladly paid for out of my sack of cowries, silencing the protests of
my comrades by stipulating that if I bought the animal, they should
prepare it for eating; and having thus set them a task, I strolled
away to enjoy the unwonted luxury of solitude.
And, indeed, it was necessary that I should be alone for a time, for
my mind was in a veritable ferment. Here was the place just as the old
journal had described it; there were the piles of staves, the wizard,
the bridge, and the toll for the river god. What if this dream should
turn out to be true after all?
Ah! what?
Should I be so very much forward? I had looked upon the river; I might
look upon the wonderful pool; I might even trace the whereabouts of
the cave itself. But what then?
I walked down to the bridge and looked at the pile of staves, which I
now perceived rested on a great mound of black earth--the accumulation
of centuries of decay. I turned away along by the river, and, sitting
down on the bank, rested my elbows on my knees and fell into a
reverie, gazing dreamily at the dark, turbid water as it crept slowly
by.
What if I found the cavern? Should I, even then, be any nearer to its
secret? And then, after all, what concern of mine could that secret
possibly be? Was not my quest a mere wildgoose chase induced by
credulity, mingled with idle curiosity?
I was still turning over these questions, with my eyes fixed on the
water, when I started with a pang of disappointment. There had come
into view a shoal of fishes swimming leisurely up stream and snapping
at an occasional insect on the surface; not such fishes as had been
mentioned in the journal, huge, hideous, and ferocious, but just
ordinary river fish, much like grayling in appearance, and not more
than a foot in length.
Here, then, the narrative had been embroidered by the fancy of the man
Almeida, or of his informants, and if one part of the story was
fabulous, how much more might turn out to be mythical?
In these reflections I was interrupted by the tinkling of a bell, and
looking up, saw the fetish priest approaching with a basket on his
head from which steam was rising. He seated himself close to the
water’s edge, not far from me, and as I was on a higher level I could
watch his proceedings. He laid his basket on the ground beside him,
and I could now see that it was filled with eggs, which he took out
one by one, and squeezing them in his hand began to peel off the
shells, which he threw into the river. The bright-scaled fish gathered
round, snapping at the egg-shells as they sank, and crowding nearer
and nearer to the bank. Suddenly the entire shoal darted off, and then
there loomed through the turbid water a great dark shape, and then
another, and another, until a troop of seven had come into view; and
as they slowly sailed into the clear water under the bank, I could see
them distinctly--huge, smooth-skinned, slate-coloured fish, fully four
feet long, with great blunt heads, and grinning mouths fringed with
rows of worm-like barbules.
When the priest had finished his preparations, he took the peeled
hard-boiled eggs one at a time and cast them out into the stream; and
as each one fell, the hideous brutes rushed at it, lashing the water
into foam and snapping their jaws in a most horrible manner.
As the last of the eggs vanished the fetish man rose, shook out his
basket and departed, and the fish soon disappeared into the dark
depths of the river. The truth of Almeida’s story was again vindicated
and, in spite of my doubts, I was conscious of a feeling of elation
and satisfaction.
I now retraced my steps towards the village, but, being still absorbed
in thought, I missed my way and presently entered it at the farther
end, where I saw a group of children gathered round a blacksmith’s
shop; and, being in an idle frame of mind, I halted to look on. It was
a primitive affair--just a thatched roof on four posts--but the work
was proceeding briskly enough. A sturdy boy sat on the ground between
a pair of goat skins that served as bellows, and, though the forge was
but a wide-mouthed jar sunk in the ground, with a hole in the bottom
for the blast-pipe, the charcoal fire in it glowed brightly. The smith
was at the moment fashioning a spear head on a flat slab of iron-stone
that served as an anvil, holding it with queer little tongs and
tapping it with an absurd little hammer, but shaping it quickly and
skilfully nevertheless.
I was about to move on, when my eye fell on the heap of crude
iron--fresh from some native bloomery or furnace--and I observed an
object that I decided to acquire if possible. This was a rough iron
bar about ten inches long by an inch and a half thick--probably a
half-wrought “pig.” It tapered somewhat to one end, and at the other
it had an irregular cup-like hollow. The general shape--doubtless
accidental--was that of a sounding lead, and for that purpose I
proposed to use it, as will be seen hereafter; but it would be
necessary to have a hole made in it to reeve the line through.
The smith, having finished the spear head, put it aside to cool, and
then observing me for the first time accosted me in very barbarous,
but quite intelligible, Hausa.
I returned his salutation, and, picking up the bar, asked him if he
wished to sell it.
“Yes. I will sell it,” he replied.
“Canst thou make a hole through this end?”
“Certainly I can.”
“And what will the price then be?” I asked.
He considered a moment, and then said, “A thousand kurdi.”
“Very well,” I replied. “Make the hole and I will pay thee.”
He seemed greatly astonished at my accepting his price without
haggling--a thing unheard of in Africa--but he promptly stuck the rod
in the fire and looked out a point to make the hole with, while the
boy worked the bellows.
I fished up out of my capacious pocket the remnants of my bag of
cowries, and had hardly finished counting them out on the ground
before the work was done and the hissing iron plunged into a calabash
of water to cool.
That night our camp outside the village was a scene of roaring
conviviality, for we had passed through the starving wilderness and
now, for the first time, enjoyed the luxury of a hearty meal. And, let
ascetics preach as they will, there is great virtue in a good dinner
“which maketh glad the heart of man,” as anyone would have admitted
who could have seen the beaming faces upon which the red glow of our
camp fire shone that night. Now a man can smile--after a certain
fashion--with his mouth full, whereas conversation under those
circumstances is hardly practicable; whence it happened that the early
part of the entertainment was of a somewhat silent character,
communication being maintained principally by gestures and grins of
satisfaction. But as the evening wore on and the remains of the ram
dwindled into a “frail memorial” of clean-picked bones, and the
roasted yams were scraped out to the very rinds, tongues began to wag
and conversation and anecdote to buzz round the fire.
Naturally enough, the talk fell on the river god of Tano and the
strange customs at the bridge.
“This is a proud god,” remarked Dam-Bornu, “that will not suffer any
man to carry a staff before his face.”
“Say rather a proud devil,” said Musa gravely. “There is no god but
God.”
“It is true,” replied Dam-Bornu, “there is but one God, the wise and
the merciful. But this Tano devil, hast thou ever seen the heathen
people worship him?”
“Never,” answered Musa. “How do they worship?”
“I saw them,” said Dam-Bornu, “when I went to Kumasi, at a town not
far from here. The wizards dressed in strange garments and wore great
wooden faces with horns all painted most horribly, and the people,
too, wore curious garments, and danced round the wizards in a ring,
sweeping the earth with brushes and shaking rattles.”
“Great is the folly of the heathen,” remarked Musa, sententiously,
apparently forgetting the offering he had made to the river god as he
crossed the bridge.
“Hast thou heard the story that Alhassan Ba-Adami tells about the
gods’ treasure house?” asked Dan-jiwa.
“I have not heard it,” replied Musa. “Wilt thou tell us the story,
Alhassan?”
“I will tell what I have heard,” said Alhassan; “but I know not if it
be true or a fable.”
We all settled ourselves to listen, and Alhassan, a quiet,
gentle-mannered man, began, a little shyly because of the sudden
silence:
“It is said that in the days of old, certain Nasaráwa (Christians)
came to this country to search for gold. And they came to a place
called Aboási, where is a great rock and near to it a pool, in which
pool the river Tano beginneth; and finding there much gold, they dug a
mine which they made after the fashion of their country, not only
digging a pit as the black men do, but burrowing deep into the earth
as a mole doth. Now, the people of this country hated the Christians,
and on a certain day, when the white men were working in their mine,
the men of the country arose and took their knives and spears--for in
those days the black people had no guns--and said to one another, ‘Let
us go to the mine and take the white men and kill them; so they shall
trouble us no more, and we shall have their gold.’
“So they came to the mine and went into one of the burrows, but did
not find the white men. Then they went to another burrow, and the
white men were not there. And they went into a third burrow, which was
the deepest of all, and there they saw the Christians with lamps and
torches digging for gold. Then they fell upon the Christians to kill
them, but the white men had guns in the mine with them, and they fired
at the black people. And the voice of the guns went out through the
burrows and shook the earth so that it fell in and buried them, and
they all perished, both the black people and the Christians, and were
never seen again. And it is said that the demon of the river took the
mine for his own, and that his priests serve him there in a temple
underground to this day, and heap up more and more treasure, which
they hide in a strong place deep in the earth; and, moreover, that
these wizards waylay and catch strangers and drag them to the mine,
where they keep them to labour for the river god; but what these
slaves do I did not hear and cannot guess since--so it is said--the
wizards put out their eyes so that, should any of them escape, they
should not be able to tell any of the secrets of the place nor guide
others to the mine. This is what I have been told of the river god,
but whether or not it is true I cannot tell.”
As Alhassan finished speaking, a somewhat uncomfortable silence fell
upon the assembly, and more than one of the men glanced round
nervously towards the village whence the sound of drumming came down
upon the night air.
“Where is this Aboási?” inquired Dan-jiwa.
“It is about two days’ journey from here,” replied Alhassan. “We pass
near to it on the way to Kantámpo--that is to the pool; whereabouts
the mine is I do not know.”
There was another silence and then Musa said--
“Well, we are ten strong men, followers of the Prophet and servants of
the true God. So we need not fear the demons of the heathen. Still, I
like not these wizards, and shall be glad to see the last of their
accursed country.”
We were preparing for a somewhat leisurely start on the following
morning when there filed into the village a caravan led by a fine
stately Hausa, who stalked down the street as though the entire
country belonged to him, until catching sight of Musa, he ran forward
and embraced him with many demonstrations of joy and affection. It
appeared that Imóru (which was the stranger’s name) was an old friend
and fellow townsman of our leader, and had come direct from their
country. So the members of the two caravans sat down joyfully together
to exchange experiences and talk over the news.
I learned that Imóru was travelling first to Cape Coast and thence to
Quittah, where he had a relative who was the _mallam_ or priest to the
Hausa troops with whom he had formerly lived for a time. I asked him
if he knew a Christian named Pereira, and on his replying that he knew
him very well, I determined to make him the bearer of a letter. But I
soon saw, by the interest that my proposal to write a letter aroused,
that I should have to write it in public and that it would be in the
highest degree impolitic to display any knowledge of European language
or letters. When, therefore, Imóru produced from his scrip a sheet of
coarse paper, a reed pen and a little gourd of thick brown ink, and my
comrades gathered round to look on, I contented myself with writing,
in my very best Arabic, a brief but affectionately-worded note stating
that all was well with me so far, and hoping to see my friends again
before long. When I had given Imóru this letter I felt more easy in
my mind with regard to Isabel and her father, for although the missive
told them little, I knew that they would learn all they wished to know
by questioning the bearer.
During the next two days our road lay mostly along the right bank of
the Tano river, although, owing to its windings, we only saw it
occasionally; but we crossed a number of tributary streams, and the
main river rapidly diminished in volume as we ascended towards its
source. About noon on the second day I noticed that the river, which
had now dwindled to quite an inconsiderable stream, had, from being
dark and turbid, suddenly become as clear as crystal; and Alhassan,
who was walking near me, informed me that we had passed the last (or
rather the first) of the tributaries, and that the clear water we saw
came direct from the Aboási pool.
Soon afterwards we halted for our midday rest and meal, and I then
took Alhassan aside and asked him if he knew how far away the pool
was.
“It is quite near to this place,” he replied. “I can show thee the
little path that leads to it from the road.”
“Come then and show it to me,” said I.
As we were starting off, Musa caught sight of us and called out to
know where we were going.
“Yusufu has asked me to show him the little path to the pool,” said
Alhassan.
“What hast thou to do with the pool, Yusufu?” asked Musa suspiciously.
“I have heard much talk of it,” I replied, “and would see for myself
what manner of place it is.”
“The curiosity of fools is the bane of wise men,” exclaimed Musa
angrily. “Because thou speakest little I had thought thee a man of
sense; and now thou wilt bring a mischief on us by prying into the
secrets of the heathen.”
“Surely,” said I, “it is no harm to go and look at the water. It is
there for any man to see.”
“I tell thee the place is sacred and forbidden, and thou must not go
near it,” persisted the old man.
“I am going to see it,” said I, and to save further discussion I
pulled Alhassan by the sleeve and strode off.
In a few minutes we came to a small track that turned off from the
caravan road into the forest.
“This is the path,” said Alhassan. “Shall I come with thee?”
He was brimful of curiosity, but mighty nervous, and would not have
been sorry, I think, if I had refused his company. However, I told him
he might come if he pleased, and we entered the path together; but we
had not gone a couple of hundred yards when we encountered an object
that brought Alhassan to a dead stop.
In the middle of the path and completely barring the way was a
grotesque and frightful figure with long curved horns and great goggle
eyes, seated on a stool and staring stonily before it. It was nearly
life-size and was the more diabolical in aspect because it was really
skilfully modelled and painted, and an additional touch of realism was
imparted by an actual garment of palm fibre.
“Let us go back, Yúsufu,” exclaimed Alhassan in a shaky voice,
surveying the apparition with dismay, as it sat with its little heap
of votive offerings before it; “this place is the abode of devils.
Come away.”
“Go thou and wait for me in the road,” said I. “I am going to see this
pool since I have come so far”; and I pushed past the image and
proceeded along the path.
I could now distinguish the sound of falling water, and walking on
another hundred yards, I came out on to the bank of the pool.
A brief glance round sufficed to convince me that here again Almeida’s
narrative was strictly veracious. The pool was a sheet of water some
hundred and fifty yards across, surrounded by forest. At one end the
bank rose so steeply as to form a kind of cliff, and from one part of
this a small stream of red, muddy water fell into the pool, while at a
little distance from the spring there stood up out of the water a
solitary mass of red rock from which two slender tusk-like fragments
of quartz projected. The spring did not, however, gush out of the
tusked rock as Almeida had described it, but it may have done so
formerly, as it now spouted from the end of a gorge which it had
excavated, in the course of years, in the cliff.
The pool was evidently of considerable depth, even close inshore, and
the water was very clear where I first came out on to the bank; but as
I followed the path along the brink towards the spring, it became more
turbid.
Before returning to the forest path I stood on the bank where the
water was clearest, and attentively examined the bottom, which
appeared to be of a greyish red mud; and as I stood there I was
suddenly startled by the appearance of a shoal of the huge and hideous
fishes such as I had seen at Tánosu. In the clear water they were
horribly distinct, and as they crowded round the bank at my feet and
leered up at me with their dull, glazy eyes, I felt quite a thrill of
horror, and instinctively stepped back a pace lest I should slip down
the bank; and as I did so, something rustled in the bush behind me.
But although I turned round quickly I could see nothing, and concluded
that some animal must have passed through the undergrowth.
When I got back to the road I found Alhassan awaiting me with evident
anxiety, and I had no sooner joined him than he hurried me off towards
the camp.
“Didst thou see the wizards, Yúsufu?” he asked in a whisper.
“Wizards!” I exclaimed. “No, I saw no one.”
“They saw thee,” said he, “for they came along the path soon after
thee, having watched us both from the bush.”
I was sorry to hear this, for not only did I not want to arouse the
suspicions of the fetish men on my own account, but I should hardly
have forgiven myself if I had involved my kind and hospitable
companions in any trouble with the natives. It was also a little
disagreeable to find the priests so watchful and alert, and I took my
way back to the camp in a rather anxious frame of mind.
The meal was nearly finished when we arrived, so we had but a short
rest before the march was resumed; but this turned out to be of little
importance, for before we had gone more than a couple of miles, the
gathering clouds and a certain chill in the air gave warning of a
threatened tornado, although the season of storms had gone by. The
careful Musa, therefore, called a halt, and huts were hurriedly put up
to shelter our persons and merchandise from the rain; but after a time
the clouds drifted away and the slanting rays of the afternoon sun
shone brightly enough on our little encampment. It was, however, too
late to continue our journey, so our men sat about for the rest of the
day chewing kola and talking.
The evening meal was prepared earlier than usual, and when it was
finished we sat round the fire and talked again, until getting tired
of this the men went off one by one, to rest either in huts or by the
fire. I spread my own mat on the side of the fire farthest from the
huts and lay down to think over my plans and wait till my comrades
should be asleep.
The night was at first very dark, but as the time went on and the
drowsy mutter of conversation gradually died away, the sky cleared,
and presently the red beams of the rising moon began to filter through
the trees. I turned out the contents of my great pocket on to the mat
to make sure that I had forgotten nothing. The iron bar or sinker, a
coil of the wiry stem of a creeper three or four fathoms long, a lump
of shea butter wrapped in a piece of rag, a large knife, and my
revolver; these formed my outfit for the night’s expedition, and when
I had “mustered” them I put them back. I had spent the evening in
fitting a shaft to my spear irons, and the finished spear lay by my
mat.
The camp was wrapped in silence except for the ordinary sounds of the
forest. A potto shrieked in a neighbouring tree, an owl hooted, a
couple of flying foxes whistled monotonously as though they were
blowing across gigantic keys, and from the undergrowth came the
squeaky bark of a genet, and the stealthy, secret chuckle of some
prowling civet.
I stood up on my mat and looked round at our little camp. The fire was
already dull, every man was asleep, and the big white moon now sailed
high above the tree tops. I took up my spear, and picking my way
softly past my sleeping comrades, stole off at a rapid pace along the
road towards Aboási.
It was a most eerie walk. The brilliant moonlight made the road in
parts as clear as in broad daylight, for the forest being less dense
here than it had been farther south, the path was fairly open. But on
either side was a wall of impenetrable shadow, and, in places where
the forest closed up, the road itself was as dark as a vault, and I
had to fairly feel my way with the butt of my spear. And, as I went, I
seemed to be accompanied by an invisible multitude. Every clump of
bush stirred as I approached it; the dark undergrowth was all in a
rustle of movement: stealthy steps came to and fro on all sides, and
the air was full of strange whirrings and flutterings.
Several times I was startled by some bulky creature leaping up at my
very feet and bounding away into the shadow, and once, as I was
feeling my way along a stretch of road that was wrapped in absolute
darkness, there appeared in the gloom before me a constellation of
green and shining eyes that flitted and danced to a murmur of soft,
snuffling growls; and when I flourished my spear and rushed at them,
the forest rang out with a peal of wild laughter. It was only a pack
of hyænas, but I breathed more freely when I came out again into the
moonlight and saw that they had left me.
The path to the pool was not difficult to find, for a great
silk-cotton tree stood at the junction and flung its huge serpent-like
roots right across the road; so I strode along it with confidence, and
soon came in sight of the grim idol which stood out, a hideous
silhouette, against the moonlit opening. And certainly if it was
frightful by daylight it now looked truly diabolical, and I half
sympathised with Alhassan as I passed it in the gloom. It was quite a
relief to get out into the open space by the pool; and very lovely the
little lake appeared in the clear moonlight, its farther margin
shrouded under the dark wall of forest and the tall monolith of the
tusked rock faithfully repeated below its quiet surface.
I followed the path round the brink to a place that I had settled upon
at my first visit, where a tree jutted out nearly horizontally, with
its trunk partially immersed in the water. I had chosen this spot for
two reasons. In the first place it was near to the spring, and I had
calculated that, if there was really gold in the bed of the pool, that
gold must be brought by the spring, and, as the heavy gold dust would
settle sooner than the earthy sediment, the bottom in the
neighbourhood of the fountain would be richest in gold. My second
reason was the tree itself, which would form a kind of stage,
convenient to work from.
I now hastily prepared my appliances. Passing the end of the line
through the hole in the iron sinker I made it fast with a couple of
half hitches. Then I took a lump of the shea butter and pressed it
into the hollow at the end of the sinker to form what sailors call an
“arming.” Kicking off my slippers to make my foothold safer, I crept
out on to the tree trunk as far as I could, and, taking the coil of
line in one hand, with the other softly dropped the sinker into the
water, letting the line run through my fingers until I felt the iron
thump on the bottom. Then I drew it up and crawled back on to the bank
to examine it. The arming of shea butter was covered by a thick layer
of greyish mud, but, although I inspected it most minutely, to my deep
disappointment I could not discover a trace of gold.
However, I determined to save the mud for more thorough examination by
daylight, and, to this end, sliced off with my knife the top layer of
the arming and laid the muddy fragment in the rag. I then crept out on
to the tree and again dropped the sinker to the bottom and returned to
shore to see if I had any better fortune this time; but the mud which
adhered to the sticky arming was similar to that brought up by the
first cast--soft grey deposit with never a trace of sparkle or colour.
I was stooping over the rag with the sinker in my hand, comparing the
two soundings, when, chancing to glance up, my eye was attracted by
the swaying shadows of foliage on the white, lichen-clad trunk of a
tree close by; and even as I looked, another shadow appeared on the
tree and slowly moved across it--the shadow of a man’s head.
I remained for an instant petrified; then, as the shadow suddenly
vanished, I sprang to my feet, whirling the sinker round as I rose.
The heavy iron struck some hard object with a dull shock and, as I
faced round, a man staggered backwards and fell, nearly upsetting a
second man who was following close behind. The latter, however,
quickly recovered and, as he rushed at me with an uplifted knife, I
again raised the sinker; but before I could strike, he seized my wrist
with his free hand and made a lunge at my chest with his dagger, which
I barely escaped by grasping his arm below the elbow. So we stood for
near upon a minute, holding one another at arm’s length, tugging and
wrenching, swaying to and fro and trampling upon the prostrate body.
Then we stood stock-still for a few moments, till suddenly, with a
jerk of his arm, he swept the point of his knife within an inch of my
neck, and as I twisted his elbow back, he snapped at my face with his
teeth, snarling like a wild beast.
Meanwhile, as we staggered backward and forward, we were gradually
edging nearer and nearer to the water, and each of us struggled to
back the other towards the bank. We were within a couple of yards of
the brink when my assailant made another sudden lunge at me with his
knife, which again narrowly missed me; but the wrench that I gave his
arm to save myself, turned the weapon, so that its point pricked him
in the pit of his stomach, causing him to recoil so violently that he
lost his footing, letting go my wrist in his confusion. I gave him a
brisk shove so that he staggered back two or three paces, and he stood
for a moment on the very edge of the bank, waving his arms and
striving to recover his balance; then he toppled backwards and fell
with a splash into the water.
He disappeared for an instant only and rose close to the tree, which
he clutched at frantically, and struggled to haul himself up; but the
trunk was wet and slippery, and offered very little hold, so that he
continually slipped back. I debated hurriedly whether I should take
the opportunity to make off, or knock him on the head with the sinker,
and was inclining to the former course--for it was a repulsive idea to
kill a helpless man--when the water around became violently agitated.
The unfortunate wretch gave vent to a yell of agony and horror, and
flinging up his arms, vanished below the surface.
I stood for some moments rooted to the spot, watching the foaming
eddies that told of the awful struggle that was taking place in those
black depths, but, as the prostrate man now began to show signs of
returning animation, I thought it high time to be gone; so, wrapping
the sinker in the rag, I dropped it into my pocket, picked up my
spear, and ran off down the path.
When I got back to the camp all was still and quiet save for the heavy
breathing of my comrades, and my mat lay by the dull fire just as I
had left it. I pushed the ends of the long faggots into the heap of
embers, and as a cheerful flame leaped up, I settled myself on my mat
and immediately fell asleep.