FLIGHT CONTINUED.
Steering my course westward, so closely as I could judge, I rode
rapidly through wild and pathless places; and when mounted on an
animal so sure and swift of foot, I felt more confident of escape
from any savages in whose way I might fall.
I was not without a dread of wild animals, for the furious lion and
the stealthy panther roam everywhere through the forests of Africa;
and though nearly the whole day passed without meeting one of either
species, hundreds of pernicious serpents, black, or brown, or green
and scaly, with glaring eyes, hissed at me from amid the long rank
grass; while brightly pinioned birds flew about me, and horrid
baboons and monkeys, of all kinds and sizes, leaped and frisked on
every hand, springing from branch to branch of the trees, where they
swung madly to and fro by their tails as I passed.
At a distance rose the smoke of fires, with the dome-shaped wigwams
of three negro villages; but these I avoided by keeping far off, and
without tarrying a moment for food or refreshment, pushed on
westward, through a broad plain where the maize, cassava, and pulse
were cultivated in little patches. On, on where the banana, the
papaw, the lemon, orange, and tamarind trees grew wild in thickets;
where the spotted giraffe, the striped zebra, and the graceful little
antelope, made their lair, and trembled when they heard the roar of
the lion of Libya.
On, on I rode to reach the castle of Cape Coast, and urged the
dromedary to his utmost speed.
Leaving the plain, at the end of which the sun was setting now, I
continued my way still westward across a long tract of desert sand;
and now for the first time I paused to look around me.
On the borders of this desert grew some wild lotus trees.
Dismounting, I took some of their farinaceous berries with joy to
assuage my hunger, and found their flavour to resemble sweet
ginger-bread.
After a draught of water from a runnel--water that was actually
tepid--I remounted with difficulty, as my strength was nearly gone
now; having ridden the livelong day under a burning sun, which left
the sand so hot that it scorched my feet, while the finely pulverized
grains of it were floating in a cloud about me, and filling my mouth
and eyes as it whirled in eddies when the faint evening wind passed
over the arid waste, rippling up its surface as if it was water.
At a distance appeared some bustards and long-legged cranes; but no
other living thing, as the setting sun, vast, round, and blood-red,
after shedding a steady crimson glare across the desert waste, sank
beneath the horizon.
At the quarter of his declension, I perceived a grove of trees, and
fearing to remain all night on the open waste, rode swiftly towards
them; but they were farther off than I imagined, and seemed to recede
as I progressed, so deceptive is the distance of a level sandy
desert; thus night was far advanced when I reached the shelter of
their foliage, and overcome by a lassitude--a total
prostration--there was no resisting, I had just strength sufficient
to throw the bridle of the dromedary over the branch of a tree, and
to roll off his back upon a bank of soft turf, when a heavy sleep
fell on me.
Waking next morning, stiff, cramped, and drenched with dew, I looked
round for my four-footed friend, but he had disappeared, and not a
trace of him remained.
Thus, after all the toil and travelling of the past day, my prospects
were little better than before.
But the forest scene was lovely! It was full of scarlet and golden
blossoms, all bright as the glossy plumage of the parrots that
nestled amid the foliage; while the perfume of the orange and lemon
trees, which the dew of the past night had refreshed, filled the
morning air with delicious fragrance; and now the mighty hum of a
myriad great insects loaded it with monotonous and perpetual sound.
On the outskirts of the wood, between me and the far-stretching vista
of the white sandy desert, my eye suddenly detected the tall dark
figure of a savage, stalking about with a long asseguy in his right
hand. He was naked, all save a scanty scarlet grass-cloth around his
body.
Coiled up in my lurking-place, I watched with considerable interest
the motions of this man of the wilderness. Supple, brawny, and
strong, he had the form of a bronze Hercules, the agility of an
antelope, and the eye of an eagle. He had detected the footmarks of
the dromedary, and gliding about, with a light stealthy step, and a
keen prowling eye, he tracked them with his face near the ground,
until he came close to where I lay, but never, the while, did he
venture _within_ the actual boundary of the wood.
Suddenly his eye fell upon me!
He started; uttered a shrill cry, and poised his long asseguy, as if
about to launch it; then he lowered it, and uttered a whoop, which
brought some twenty or thirty other savages around him.
They all pointed to me in a manner and with expressions that seemed
to indicate surprise or rage; they gesticulated violently, and by
what they said, I could learn that by being _within_ the forest, I
was guilty of an act of sacrilege. Their language seemed a dialect
of that spoken by the tribe I had lied from, on the north bank of the
Gabon.