THE GRATITUDE OF HIS WIFE.
In two instances she patted my head and smiled on me, till the
corners of her mouth went up to her ears.
On the last occasion she gave me a large iron knife to sharpen,
indicating by various signs that a very fine edge must be put upon it.
"She is grateful to you for saving her child," said Amoo, who
observed her.
"I am glad of it," said I, with a sigh of mingled bitterness and
impatience.
"She means to show you and the tribe that she is so."
"The tribe too, how?"
"Yah, yah," said Amoo, as he placed one hand on my head, and drew the
right forefinger of the other across his throat, in a way that was
unpleasantly suggestive. Then he laughed and pointed to a gaily
painted canoe that lay among some reeds by the river-side.
"She will assist me to escape in it to a big ship at the Pongos?"
said I with a glow of hope.
Amoo frowned, then he grinned and shook his head.
"What then?" I asked anxiously.
After a good deal of pantomime, with which he endeavoured to aid his
explanations, at last the horrid truth broke upon me!
She wished my caput as a figure-head to her canoe, for which purpose,
after being duly prepared by gums, balms, and herbs, she could make
it suitable. Amoo flatteringly added that such had been her desire
from the first, as "I was the youngest and best-looking of the
prisoners."
Here was a pleasant prospect!
"And it was for this purpose she gave me the long knife to sharpen so
carefully?"
"Yah, yah," replied Amoo, while a glow of rage filled my breast; "and
even now she is gathering herbs on the borders of the wood to boil in
the stone jar with it."
"It--what?"
"Your head."
"I must watch."
"It is of no use to watch," replied Amoo; "sometime, when you are not
thinking of it, she will give you some red berries, that will cause
you to sleep _very sound_; and then with her knife or a sharp
shell--yah, yah!" he concluded by a guttural laugh, and again pressed
his finger round his neck.
"Oh, Heavens!" I exclaimed, "aid me to escape from this atrocious
squaw!"
I asked Amoo if he, in gratitude to me for saving his child, would
aid me to escape; but he shook his head, adding:
"I am the brother of a great king, and must keep my slave."
"Why?"
"To punish the white men, who fatten up our brothers beyond the Sea
of Darkness, and eat them."
After reiterated applications to his gratitude and pity for freedom
or assistance, finding that he was gradually losing his temper and
becoming suspicious; that his snake-like eyes were beginning to gleam
and his thick red nostrils to quiver, I abandoned the subject, and
resuming my hoe, went to my daily task in the patch of garden where
our yams and other esculents grew, and affected to work as usual,
conscious that, for a time, my savage owner was eyeing me with vague
doubts, and while playing ominously with his long reed-like asseguy,
was probably repenting that by his admissions he had put me on my
guard against the artistic views of his better half.
After a time he disappeared, yet I dreaded that it was only to
conceal himself under some of the bushes, or the leaves of the
creeping gourds, to watch me, so I affected to hoe
industriously--yes, and to whistle too, though my heart was sick and
full of dreadful apprehensions. One thing I had resolved, come what
might, never again to commit my head to sleep, or to pass a night
within the same wigwam with that horrible woman.
While revolving in my mind, and almost blind with desperation, what
measures I should take to save myself, to escape from my present
danger and misery, I saw her pass from the wood towards the town of
wigwams. In one hand she held the knife I had sharpened so nicely
for her, in the other a basket filled with herbs--herbs, I doubted
not, for my especial behoof; and she "grinned horribly a ghastly
smile," as she walked on with that shuffling gait peculiar to these
negresses.
My heart swelled with so much rage and hatred at this hideous
creature, that I had some difficulty in repressing a vehement desire
to beat her down with my hoe; but such a proceeding would only have
ensured and accelerated my own destruction; as I knew not what number
of watchful savages might at that moment be eyeing me from amid the
jungle of leaves, flowers, and fruit which bordered the patch wherein
I worked, under a sun so vertical that I had scarcely a shadow.
Lest such a surveillance might be maintained, I resolved as soon as
she disappeared to adopt something of their own subtlety.
I seated myself under a tree among some weeds, as if tired, and then,
after a time, affected to sleep; though keeping watch with open ears
and half-closed eyes, lest any one might approach; but all remained
still around me, save the monotonous hum of the millions of insects
that revolved in the shade of the adjacent wood.
On being assured of this, I crept on my hands and knees into the
jungle, dragging my hoe after me, and going feet foremost on my face
for nearly a hundred yards or so, that I might with my fingers
obliterate all traces of a _trail_; and in this, I was very
successful by raising the crushed grass and shaking the bruised twigs.
At last I reached a runnel, the waters of which I knew would destroy
all scent of my footsteps, and baffle the keen nostrils of those
ferocious dogs, which would certainly be let slip in search of me the
moment I was missed.
Assured that this runnel of water would be a tributary of the Rio
Serpientes, I proceeded up its course for several miles, and in my
anxiety to escape the human race forgetting all about the ferocious
denizens of the African forest--the snakes and other dreadful
reptiles with which the woods, the water, and the bordering deserts
teemed.
I must have proceeded about ten miles without meeting either man or
beast to molest or obstruct me, when evening was beginning to close,
and I found myself nearly exhausted, but within a pleasant thicket of
orange, citron, and chestnut trees, which bordered a pretty lake, and
flourished amid the thousand flowering shrubs of this luxuriant
wilderness.
The necessity for rest forced itself upon me; but I dared not sleep
on the earth lest snakes might assail me, and even in a tree I was
not safe from the panthers, yet I chose my couch in the latter.
Furnished with a large stone, as a missile for defence in any
emergency, grasping the hoe by my teeth, I clambered into a
chestnut-tree, scaring therefrom a whole covey of kingfishers,
copper-coloured cuckoos, and green and flame-coloured parrots.
Then selecting a place where the leafy branches were forked out from
the stem, and grew in such a form that I could rest upon them with
ease, and without fear of falling, I deposited the stone in a hollow
of the tree, and after an hour of anxious and exciting watchfulness,
gradually felt sleep stealing over me--a sleep to which the "drowsy
hum" of the insects, the balmy air of the evening, the lassitude
produced by my recent travel after a day's toil under a burning sun,
all conduced; and so, heedless of everything, at last I slept
profoundly on my awkward perch.