THE FORMOSA.
"If once we are free from the town," said Hartly, "we can find
concealment during the day, and by travelling at night may reach the
coast. Then, if we can but obtain a canoe, and pass over to one of
the little isles in the Bight, we might remain there snugly enough,
till some ship ran in on the same unlucky errand which brought poor
Baylis here."
"I pray it may end as you say."
"Courage, Jack! Energy and faith will work miracles!"
"But I imagine----"
"Don't talk of imagination; it may only paralyse you by the fears it
fashions, the danger it suggests; but hush!"
At that moment the fire before the idol flared up broad and redly,
and then the mingled roar of many voices swelled upon the night air.
High above the hedge-rows or kraals for containing cattle, and the
lines of countless huts, formed of turf, of wickered cane, and other
rude materials which the wild vines, creepers, and convolvuli
concealed, rose the lurid flame that blazed before the misshapen god
of Benin; and far across the flat city it cast the shadows of the
tall giraffe trees, which grew in rows around the palace wall.
This red light mingled with the pale white lustre of the moon, which
was just rising at the horizon, from whence its splendour cast long
and steady shadows across the streets, and thereby favoured alike our
concealment and escape.
As we hurried along the empty thoroughfares towards the town wall,
Hartly found at the door of a hut, a war-club, of which he
immediately took possession. It was formed of teak-wood, black as
ebony, ponderously heavy, and its knob was covered by elaborate
carvings.
While our hearts alternately glowed with hope, or sank with
apprehension, unseen we reached the high wall of wood and clay, and
ran alongside it, in search either of an outlet, or some means of
surmounting it; but no wild creepers, no gourd vines or climbing
convolvuli were permitted to grow there.
We had been out of our prison at least half-an-hour without being met
or seen by a single negro.
At last we reached a place where, for more than a hundred feet, the
wall was breached by the recent storm of wind and rain, which had
overturned and beaten its ruins flat on the ground.
With mutual exclamations of joy, we were proceeding to clamber over
the fallen piles of rotten palisades and clay, when a wretched negro,
who appeared suddenly, on perceiving the whiteness of our skins in
the bright moonlight, uttered a loud cry of wonder or alarm!
In an instant we heard the clatter of steel, and at least a dozen of
the King's armed women issued from a kind of wooden tower which stood
near the fallen wall.
Hartly uttered something very like an oath; he struck the negro to
the earth by a blow of his club, and crying--"Follow me, Jack!"
sprang over the scattered ruin, and rushed into the moonlit country
beyond.
Swift of foot and active as these "fair viragoes" were, they proved
no match for us in a race for life or death, especially when
encumbered ty their muskets, asseguys, and red petticoats, which were
covered with heavy beads, lions' teeth, and grass braiding.
Two shots were fired after us, but where the balls went, Heaven only
knows; fortunately, they fell far from us.
On we ran in the full blaze of the moonlight, bathed in perspiration,
now floundering among wild gourds and creeping plants, where little
snakes started up to hiss at us; anon over waste tracts, where lilies
and geraniums covered all the wilderness; then among long and
serrated grass, which cut our shins like saws and sabre-blades. Next
we tore a passage through dense masses of wild canes, then through
fields of maize, or rice, or millet, and often through cattle kraals,
till we reached a wood, where, after taking the precaution of running
in _one_ direction in the full light of the moon, we turned and,
hare-like, doubled in the _other_.
By this manoeuvre, I believe, we baffled our _fair_ pursuers, as we
saw no more of them for the remainder of that night or the following
morning, during the long hours of which we lay close to the earth,
buried and hidden under a cool and shady mass of leaves and jungle.
And there, without water to quench our thirst, and without other food
than a few wild berries that grew within arm's length of our lurking
place, we lay concealed during the whole of the next day.
When night fell, Hartly climbed into a chestnut-tree, and after
looking carefully around him, uttered an exclamation of delight.
"I see the way we must steer, Jack," he added.
"You can see the ocean?"
"Ay, or a large river, rippling in the moonlight to the horizon far
away."
A sigh of joy escaped me.
"And so, Jack, if our company is necessary to complete the happiness
of King Zabadie in the next world, I am sorry for him, as he is
likely to take his long voyage without us."
The chestnut was lofty, and from it Hartly could see on one hand the
distant hills which form the termination of that mighty chain, the
mountains of Kong, and end at the river Formosa. On the other hand,
beyond the flat and open country, he could see the great river
itself, flowing towards the Bight of Benin, along whose shores and by
whose waters lay all our ultimate hope of escape.
We bathed ourselves in a limpid pool to freshen and brace our nerves;
I armed me with a cudgel formed of a young tree torn up by the roots;
Hartly had still his war-club; and resolving to travel only under
cloud of night, as cautiously as possible, and to avoid all negro
camps and villages, we found the highway--if it could be called
so--which leads from the city of Benin towards the Waree.