"Much I misdoubt this wayward boy,
Will one day work me more annoy.
I'll watch him closer than before."
Byron.
When I look back now to the first two, or even three, years that I spent
in Otakooma's country, among Otakooma's savages, I wonder that I was not
bereft of reason, or that, knowing escape by death to be in my power, I
did not have recourse to the deadly poison berry that grew in abundance
in many a thicket. Our goats ate freely of this berry, by-the-bye, but
it seemed to have no other effect upon them than to make them lively.
But even at this date, strange to say, there are certain sights and
sounds that never fail to recall to me not merely my life among those
savages, but the very feelings I then had. For instance, in the county
in England where I now reside, the cow-boys, or sheep-herds (I will not
call them shepherds), have a peculiar way of calling to each other; it
is a kind of prolonged shrill quavering shout, and it bears some faint
resemblance to the howl of Otakooma's savages, as heard by night in the
forest. Again, anyone drumming on the table with his finger-nails will
sometimes bring to my mind the feelings I used to have on hearing the
beating of the horrid tom-toms. The beating of tom-toms and the
howling, combined now and then with a shriek as of some poor wretch in
mortal agony and dread, even when I was not present, but probably a
prisoner in my hut, used to tell me as well as words could, that a human
sacrifice was progressing somewhere in the vicinity of the royal palace.
The smell of weeds burning in a field only yesterday depressed me; the
savages were constantly burning fires of different kinds of dried roots
and weeds.
Just one more instance. I would not have a rockery in my grounds or
garden; it would remind me of Otakooma's terrible piles of skulls on
which weeds grew green, and flowers bloomed, and lizards--sea-green
lizards with crimson marks on their shoulders, and lizards the colour of
a starling's breast, that is, metallic-changing colour--used to creep.
If ever at that time I spent a happy hour it was in studying and
wondering at the tricks and manners of the many strange denizens of the
forest. Monkeys, mongooses, and even chameleons I managed to tame.
You see, then, I could not have been very happy. How could I? For at
least two years I lived in constant dread of a violent death, and I
never knew what shape it would take. I might die by the spear of some
angry savage; I might be sacrificed to please some sudden fancy of the
king; I might be burned at the stake or die by the torture.
My enemy--and he ought to have been my friend--was the boy Jooma. He
was jealous, no doubt, of my influence with the king. I tried my best
in every way to please this lad, because he could talk English, but in
vain. He belied me one day after I had been a whole year in the
country, belied me to the king in my presence--he pointed his hand at
me. I struck the hand.
Then, as he threatened to kill me with his knife, I squared up in good
English fashion and let my enemy have one straight from the shoulder.
He went down as if he had been shot.
The fat old king shouted for joy. That boy Jooma had never had a proper
British bleeding nose before in his life, I expect. And he did not like
it. He kept lying on the ground, because he saw me in the attitude to
give him another blow. But the king made him stand up, and for fear of
offending the king I had to put him down again. Then he refused to
rise. The king told him that a cock and a goat and two curs were going
to be carried in procession to the execution ground that afternoon, and
that if he, Jooma, did not fight "the foreign boy" he should head the
procession and finally lose his head. So Jooma had to fight as well as
he could, and although I did not punish him willingly, he was paid out
for many an ill turn that he had done me.
I was a favourite with the king for fully a month after this. He
brought boy after boy for me to thrash. Indeed, three or four times a
day I was fighting. I suppose every boy about the king's village had a
set-to with me. I cannot say I blacked their eyes because they were
already black, but they must have felt my knocks, and I know they did
not love me any the better for it.
I did not know how all this would end, but my heart leaped to my mouth
when one day the king himself, valiant through the rum he had drunk,
stood up and announced his intention of trying conclusions with me
himself.
What could I do?
What would you have done, gentle reader?
I knew I could have thrashed him, for though not old I was very hardy
and wonderfully strong for my years, but I did not want to figure in a
procession. So I submitted to be knocked down. Then I had to get up
and be knocked down again and again. It didn't hurt very much, but
there was indignity attached to it.
The king had found a new pleasure, and every afternoon or evening I was
summoned to the palace yard or grounds, and first I had to fight the
king, then a boy of my own standing. Well, I am afraid that if I
suffered in body and mind from my encounter with the king, I took it out
of the smaller savage to follow. There was some satisfaction in that.
But one day, to show his own wonderful powers of fisticuff, the king
summoned a crowd of his warriors to his palace, and made them form a
great ring. Then I was ordered in and pitted against an Indian boy
bigger than myself. I never cared how big they were, they held their
arms wide and hit downwards as if thumping a piano.
After one or two boys had been disposed of, to the wild delight of the
warriors, the king took a drink of rum and handed the leather bottle to
his chief executioner; then he took off his extra garments--his one boot
and his crown, an old tin kettle without a bottom to it--and stood up in
front of me. I went down several times according to my own programme,
and the savages shook their spears and rattled them against their
shields of buffalo hide, and shouted and shrieked to their hearts'
content.
Then the king hit me rather hard, and I suppose my English pride was
touched, for the next thing I remember is--horror of horrors!--the
sacred person of his Majesty King Otakooma sprawling on the dusty ground
and his nose bleeding.
A silence deep as death fell on all the crowd.
Then there was a rush for me. Spears were at my breast and I expected
only instant death, when the king sprang to my rescue and all fell back.
If I had knelt to him and begged his pardon, even then I might have been
forgiven.
But an English youth to sue on his knees for mercy from a savage! Nay,
it was not to be thought of.
The king sat down.
The king was silent for a space of time. The king took more rum.
Then he ordered ropes of skin to be brought, and I was bound hand and
foot and taken away to a loathsome dungeon.
I knew I was to die next day, and I longed for sunrise to have it past,
for I suffered excruciating agony from the tightness of the cords that
bound me.
The time came. I was to form part in a procession, and did; I was
carried shoulder-high, lying on my back on a kind of bark tray, amid
tom-tom beating, howling, shrieking, and a deal of capering and dancing
that at any other time I should have laughed most heartily at.
At the execution ground goats and cocks were killed, then it came to my
turn.
The king came to have a last look at me. The cords were undone, and I
stood up staggering because my feet were swollen. The king looked at my
hands: they were swollen double the size.
The king rubbed his nose.
The king was thinking.
"Now," he must have thought, "here is a hand (meaning my swollen fist)
that couldn't hurt anybody. What a chance to redeem my lost honour!"
The king took more rum.
Then he started from his throne and shouted. What he said matters
little. At the conclusion of his speech I was again dragged up to fight
the king. If I could have hit him then I would have done so. But with
such hands, how could I? So it ended in my being fearfully punished.
Then there was such shouting and yelling as I had never before heard in
my life. But I was free.
The king took more rum.
For a whole year after this I was kept under almost constant
surveillance, but there was no more fighting.
Sometimes the king and his savages went away on the war-path, for many
weeks together. When they did so, I was confined in a dungeon, and had
no other companions except frogs, lizards, and centipedes. All the food
they gave me was a piece of dried cassava root [the root from which
arrowroot is made], daily, and I had very little water.
But in spite of my hardships, I grew strong and robust. Probably, if I
had not been a friendless orphan, if I had had a mother for instance, or
a father, or sisters, or brothers, in a far-off home to think about, my
misery would have been greater; as it was I had no one, for I believed
that Roberts and all the people of the _Niobe_ had been slain in that
terrible fight at Zareppa's fort.
Amelioration of my sufferings came at last, and in a strange way.
The king fell ill.
The king took more rum.
The king grew worse, and all the sorcery of his medicine men could not
cure him, so I was sent for.
I had seen Jooma putting poison into the rum, and I told the king he had
been poisoned. Who had done so? he asked: the culprit should die. No
human being, I was determined, should die on account of anything I said.
I told him, however, that next day I should fetch the evil creature who
had destroyed the health of the king. Meanwhile the rum was poured on
the ground, and I made him a pill of the poison berry, and a little
scraped cassava root. He saw me mix it. His medicine men assured him
it would be death to take it; I took a pill myself, and when he saw I
did not die, he followed my example, and took two or three. For I had
found out that in small doses this poison berry was medicinal. The king
slept, and awoke refreshed.
Then he called for the culprit who had dared to poison his rum.
I went and found Jooma. I told him that his guilt was discovered, and
that his life was in my hands; that a word from me would march him to
the execution ground. He knelt and prayed for mercy. I told him he
needn't trouble, that Englishmen were far too honourable to harbour
revenge. Then I made him bring a very old and savage billy-goat, and
together we brought it to the king.
The king was greatly pleased. He said he never had liked the looks of
the billy-goat, and he had no doubt that it had worked some deadly spell
upon his rum. So the billy-goat--poor beast--was slain, and after a few
more pills the king got better, and I was chief favourite among all the
tribe.