FLIGHT.
In this precarious situation I must have been asleep for some hours,
when awakened by a dreadful sound, and with a start so nervous that I
nearly fell from my roost upon the long, reedy grass below.
This sound was the roaring of a lion!
I had heard it often in menageries at home; but there the sound was
feeble as the bay of a house-dog when compared to the dread roar,
which rolled along the ground and rent the still air of the morning
in that lone African forest. A terror possessed me; yet, grasping my
hoe, while quivering in every fibre, I gazed with keen anxiety
between the leaves of the chestnut-tree for the approaching enemy.
Ignorant alike of his powers of leaping and scenting, I knew not
whether the lion might, on discovering me, at once spring up like a
tree-leopard, which can pursue its prey, like a cat, from branch to
branch. Oh, how I longed for a good rifle--a sharp sword--a
dagger--for any other weapon than the miserable wooden club (for the
hoe was no better) with which I was armed at that moment.
The lilac light of dawning morn poured through the thick green vista
of the wild forest, and the little lake which lay near my
chestnut-tree shone white as a sheet of milk, bordered by countless
gaudy tulips and opening flowers.
The sun was yet below the horizon, but every dew-drenched herb, and
leaf, and tree, were distinctly visible in the clear pale light that
overspread the sky.
Every pulse quickened, and all my energies became wound up to the
utmost pitch by excitement, when I saw the mighty lord of the
wilderness--a vast dun-coloured lion, with his large round head and
shaggy mane, powerful legs, his close round body and tufted tail,
that shook wrathfully aloft as he trotted past swiftly, bearing a
dead sheep in his mouth.
Passing almost under the tree, and round the margin of the lake, he
disappeared in the forest; but a sense of his terrible presence
seemed to linger about me still. My doubts and irresolution were
increased; the dangers of the wilderness in which I wandered, alone
and unarmed, became more vividly impressed upon me, and for a time I
almost regretted that I had left the coast, and the protection of my
savage task-masters. But then the wife of Amoo, and her hideous
desire for possessing my head!
"Hope is the bounty of God!" thought I, and as the forest remained
still and quiet--at least, as no sound reached my ear, save the
increasing hum of the myriads of insects warming into life and sport
in the light and heat of the rising sun--I resolved to descend from
my perch, and follow the track of any stream which might lead to the
coast, for by the sea--the open, free, wide sea--lay my only hope of
escape from this dangerous and detested shore.
Remembering the geographical form of Africa, as represented on the
map, I knew that if I could, by any means, proceed westward for about
two hundred and fifty miles or so round the Bight of Benin, I should
be so near our settlement at Cape Coast Castle as to be in safety.
But how, in such a country, was this to be accomplished?
I had already begun my descent from the tree, when the noise of
something coming rapidly through the forest made me scramble into my
perch again. And lo! a savage, armed as usual with a long asseguy,
but mounted on a swift dromedary, came from amid the trees, and
paused by the lonely lake to give his great misshapen nag a drink;
and while he did so, in his brawny form and tasselled apeskin apron
and sandals, his eyes with their circles of red and yellow paint, the
slit under his mouth, his hideous aspect and barbaric trappings, I
recognised the brother of Amoo--the King of the Rio Serpientes!
Were both upon my track, or had chance alone brought him here? I
knew that if retaken, I had met with more mercy from the lion than
from either; and the image of the wife of Amoo, with her sharp knife
and basket of herbs and gums, seemed to rise before me.
The savage looked around him, and suddenly turning his dromedary,
rode straight towards my place of concealment. I grasped my hoe,
resolved if he had seen me, not to yield up my wretched existence
without a desperate struggle; but all unconscious of my presence, his
sable majesty dismounted, placed his asseguy against the chestnut
tree, spread a grass-mat at its root, and seating himself, proceeded
quietly to light a species of hubble-bubble, or pipe made from a reed
and a nut-shell. Stuffing therein some dried herbs, he applied flint
and steel, and began leisurely and literally to enjoy his morning
weed.
At his neck I could see poor Robert Hartly's gold locket glittering.
The vicinity of this ferocious and tremendous personage, with the
chances of his horde being all within hail, like the band of Roderick
Dhu, so greatly alarmed me, that fully a quarter of an hour elapsed
before I rallied sufficiently to conceive the idea of appropriating
his quiet and docile dromedary (which was cropping the herbage close
by), and using it as a means of reaching Cape Coast Castle, the
western goal of all my hopes.
I knew that this animal was deemed a miracle of swiftness even in
that burning clime, where they will travel with ease fifty miles per
day.
The savage King seemed to be asleep, or in a waking doze; but I knew
that by habits of danger, activity, and a life spent in the open air,
the senses of these people were so acute, that the slightest sound
would revive him; and that, if once discovered, he could crush me
like a shrimp in his powerful grasp.
"Can I not kill him?" thought I, as furious thoughts began to fill my
mind; "my hoe is too light--ha! the stone!"
I snatched the stone, which with difficulty I had conveyed up the
tree overnight, as a missile against wild animals, and poised it in
my hands. It was nearly twelve pounds weight, and the woolly skull
of the King was immediately below me; but it might be thick as that
of an elephant, so the missile would prove more harmless than a ball
of worsted.
If I missed, death to me was certain; if I slew or stunned him, I had
an equal certainty of escape. Then I thought of poor Captain Baylis,
of his tortured wife, of Hartly, and of that horrible butchery by the
steep rocks of the river Gabon, and a glow of merciless fury filled
my soul!
The stone shot from my hand, and, bathed in blood, quivering and
senseless, the brutal King of the Snake River rolled among the long
dry grass, with foam issuing from his mouth, and the aperture below
it.
Swift as lightning I descended the tree--all cramped and stiff by a
night passed amid its branches; caught his dromedary by the bridle,
sprang upon its back, snatched up the asseguy as a weapon for
defence, and, without casting a glance to ascertain whether I had
been guilty of actual regicide, or had merely given him a crack upon
his imperial crown, urged the animal I bestrode westward at furious
speed, through a grove of pale green orange trees, where the rich
dewy fruit hung like balls of gleaming gold in the light of the
morning sun.