A Black Scoundrel
When Jane Clayton regained consciousness she saw Anderssen standing
over her, holding the baby in his arms. As her eyes rested upon them an
expression of misery and horror overspread her countenance.
“What is the matter?” he asked. “You ban sick?”
“Where is my baby?” she cried, ignoring his questions.
Anderssen held out the chubby infant, but she shook her head.
“It is not mine,” she said. “You knew that it was not mine. You are a
devil like the Russian.”
Anderssen’s blue eyes stretched in surprise.
“Not yours!” he exclaimed. “You tole me the kid aboard the Kincaid ban
your kid.”
“Not this one,” replied Jane dully. “The other. Where is the other?
There must have been two. I did not know about this one.”
“There vasn’t no other kid. Ay tank this ban yours. Ay am very sorry.”
Anderssen fidgeted about, standing first on one foot and then upon the
other. It was perfectly evident to Jane that he was honest in his
protestations of ignorance of the true identity of the child.
Presently the baby commenced to crow, and bounce up and down in the
Swede’s arms, at the same time leaning forward with little hands
out-reaching toward the young woman.
She could not withstand the appeal, and with a low cry she sprang to
her feet and gathered the baby to her breast.
For a few minutes she wept silently, her face buried in the baby’s
soiled little dress. The first shock of disappointment that the tiny
thing had not been her beloved Jack was giving way to a great hope that
after all some miracle had occurred to snatch her baby from Rokoff’s
hands at the last instant before the Kincaid sailed from England.
Then, too, there was the mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved
in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought
more than any other that had sent her mother’s heart out to the
innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she
had been deceived in its identity.
“Have you no idea whose child this is?” she asked Anderssen.
The man shook his head.
“Not now,” he said. “If he ain’t ban your kid, Ay don’ know whose kid
he do ban. Rokoff said it was yours. Ay tank he tank so, too.
“What do we do with it now? Ay can’t go back to the Kincaid. Rokoff
would have me shot; but you can go back. Ay take you to the sea, and
then some of these black men they take you to the ship—eh?”
“No! no!” cried Jane. “Not for the world. I would rather die than fall
into the hands of that man again. No, let us go on and take this poor
little creature with us. If God is willing we shall be saved in one way
or another.”
So they again took up their flight through the wilderness, taking with
them a half-dozen of the Mosulas to carry provisions and the tents that
Anderssen had smuggled aboard the small boat in preparation for the
attempted escape.
The days and nights of torture that the young woman suffered were so
merged into one long, unbroken nightmare of hideousness that she soon
lost all track of time. Whether they had been wandering for days or
years she could not tell. The one bright spot in that eternity of fear
and suffering was the little child whose tiny hands had long since
fastened their softly groping fingers firmly about her heart.
In a way the little thing took the place and filled the aching void
that the theft of her own baby had left. It could never be the same, of
course, but yet, day by day, she found her mother-love, enveloping the
waif more closely until she sometimes sat with closed eyes lost in the
sweet imagining that the little bundle of humanity at her breast was
truly her own.
For some time their progress inland was extremely slow. Word came to
them from time to time through natives passing from the coast on
hunting excursions that Rokoff had not yet guessed the direction of
their flight. This, and the desire to make the journey as light as
possible for the gently bred woman, kept Anderssen to a slow advance of
short and easy marches with many rests.
The Swede insisted upon carrying the child while they travelled, and in
countless other ways did what he could to help Jane Clayton conserve
her strength. He had been terribly chagrined on discovering the mistake
he had made in the identity of the baby, but once the young woman
became convinced that his motives were truly chivalrous she would not
permit him longer to upbraid himself for the error that he could not by
any means have avoided.
At the close of each day’s march Anderssen saw to the erection of a
comfortable shelter for Jane and the child. Her tent was always pitched
in the most favourable location. The thorn boma round it was the
strongest and most impregnable that the Mosula could construct.
Her food was the best that their limited stores and the rifle of the
Swede could provide, but the thing that touched her heart the closest
was the gentle consideration and courtesy which the man always accorded
her.
That such nobility of character could lie beneath so repulsive an
exterior never ceased to be a source of wonder and amazement to her,
until at last the innate chivalry of the man, and his unfailing
kindliness and sympathy transformed his appearance in so far as Jane
was concerned until she saw only the sweetness of his character
mirrored in his countenance.
They had commenced to make a little better progress when word reached
them that Rokoff was but a few marches behind them, and that he had at
last discovered the direction of their flight. It was then that
Anderssen took to the river, purchasing a canoe from a chief whose
village lay a short distance from the Ugambi upon the bank of a
tributary.
Thereafter the little party of fugitives fled up the broad Ugambi, and
so rapid had their flight become that they no longer received word of
their pursuers. At the end of canoe navigation upon the river, they
abandoned their canoe and took to the jungle. Here progress became at
once arduous, slow, and dangerous.
The second day after leaving the Ugambi the baby fell ill with fever.
Anderssen knew what the outcome must be, but he had not the heart to
tell Jane Clayton the truth, for he had seen that the young woman had
come to love the child almost as passionately as though it had been her
own flesh and blood.
As the baby’s condition precluded farther advance, Anderssen withdrew a
little from the main trail he had been following and built a camp in a
natural clearing on the bank of a little river.
Here Jane devoted her every moment to caring for the tiny sufferer, and
as though her sorrow and anxiety were not all that she could bear, a
further blow came with the sudden announcement of one of the Mosula
porters who had been foraging in the jungle adjacent that Rokoff and
his party were camped quite close to them, and were evidently upon
their trail to this little nook which all had thought so excellent a
hiding-place.
This information could mean but one thing, and that they must break
camp and fly onward regardless of the baby’s condition. Jane Clayton
knew the traits of the Russian well enough to be positive that he would
separate her from the child the moment that he recaptured them, and she
knew that separation would mean the immediate death of the baby.
As they stumbled forward through the tangled vegetation along an old
and almost overgrown game trail the Mosula porters deserted them one by
one.
The men had been staunch enough in their devotion and loyalty as long
as they were in no danger of being overtaken by the Russian and his
party. They had heard, however, so much of the atrocious disposition of
Rokoff that they had grown to hold him in mortal terror, and now that
they knew he was close upon them their timid hearts would fortify them
no longer, and as quickly as possible they deserted the three whites.
Yet on and on went Anderssen and the girl. The Swede went ahead, to hew
a way through the brush where the path was entirely overgrown, so that
on this march it was necessary that the young woman carry the child.
All day they marched. Late in the afternoon they realized that they had
failed. Close behind them they heard the noise of a large safari
advancing along the trail which they had cleared for their pursuers.
When it became quite evident that they must be overtaken in a short
time Anderssen hid Jane behind a large tree, covering her and the child
with brush.
“There is a village about a mile farther on,” he said to her. “The
Mosula told me its location before they deserted us. Ay try to lead the
Russian off your trail, then you go on to the village. Ay tank the
chief ban friendly to white men—the Mosula tal me he ban. Anyhow, that
was all we can do.
“After while you get chief to tak you down by the Mosula village at the
sea again, an’ after a while a ship is sure to put into the mouth of
the Ugambi. Then you be all right. Gude-by an’ gude luck to you, lady!”
“But where are you going, Sven?” asked Jane. “Why can’t you hide here
and go back to the sea with me?”
“Ay gotta tal the Russian you ban dead, so that he don’t luke for you
no more,” and Anderssen grinned.
“Why can’t you join me then after you have told him that?” insisted the
girl.
Anderssen shook his head.
“Ay don’t tank Ay join anybody any more after Ay tal the Russian you
ban dead,” he said.
“You don’t mean that you think he will kill you?” asked Jane, and yet
in her heart she knew that that was exactly what the great scoundrel
would do in revenge for his having been thwarted by the Swede.
Anderssen did not reply, other than to warn her to silence and point
toward the path along which they had just come.
“I don’t care,” whispered Jane Clayton. “I shall not let you die to
save me if I can prevent it in any way. Give me your revolver. I can
use that, and together we may be able to hold them off until we can
find some means of escape.”
“It won’t work, lady,” replied Anderssen. “They would only get us both,
and then Ay couldn’t do you no good at all. Think of the kid, lady, and
what it would be for you both to fall into Rokoff’s hands again. For
his sake you must do what Ay say. Here, take my rifle and ammunition;
you may need them.”
He shoved the gun and bandoleer into the shelter beside Jane. Then he
was gone.
She watched him as he returned along the path to meet the oncoming
safari of the Russian. Soon a turn in the trail hid him from view.
Her first impulse was to follow. With the rifle she might be of
assistance to him, and, further, she could not bear the terrible
thought of being left alone at the mercy of the fearful jungle without
a single friend to aid her.
She started to crawl from her shelter with the intention of running
after Anderssen as fast as she could. As she drew the baby close to her
she glanced down into its little face.
How red it was! How unnatural the little thing looked. She raised the
cheek to hers. It was fiery hot with fever!
With a little gasp of terror Jane Clayton rose to her feet in the
jungle path. The rifle and bandoleer lay forgotten in the shelter
beside her. Anderssen was forgotten, and Rokoff, and her great peril.
All that rioted through her fear-mad brain was the fearful fact that
this little, helpless child was stricken with the terrible
jungle-fever, and that she was helpless to do aught to allay its
sufferings—sufferings that were sure to come during ensuing intervals
of partial consciousness.
Her one thought was to find some one who could help her—some woman who
had had children of her own—and with the thought came recollection of
the friendly village of which Anderssen had spoken. If she could but
reach it—in time!
There was no time to be lost. Like a startled antelope she turned and
fled up the trail in the direction Anderssen had indicated.
From far behind came the sudden shouting of men, the sound of shots,
and then silence. She knew that Anderssen had met the Russian.
A half-hour later she stumbled, exhausted, into a little thatched
village. Instantly she was surrounded by men, women, and children.
Eager, curious, excited natives plied her with a hundred questions, no
one of which she could understand or answer.
All that she could do was to point tearfully at the baby, now wailing
piteously in her arms, and repeat over and over, “Fever—fever—fever.”
The blacks did not understand her words, but they saw the cause of her
trouble, and soon a young woman had pulled her into a hut and with
several others was doing her poor best to quiet the child and allay its
agony.
The witch doctor came and built a little fire before the infant, upon
which he boiled some strange concoction in a small earthen pot, making
weird passes above it and mumbling strange, monotonous chants.
Presently he dipped a zebra’s tail into the brew, and with further
mutterings and incantations sprinkled a few drops of the liquid over
the baby’s face.
After he had gone the women sat about and moaned and wailed until Jane
thought that she should go mad; but, knowing that they were doing it
all out of the kindness of their hearts, she endured the frightful
waking nightmare of those awful hours in dumb and patient suffering.
It must have been well toward midnight that she became conscious of a
sudden commotion in the village. She heard the voices of the natives
raised in controversy, but she could not understand the words.
Presently she heard footsteps approaching the hut in which she squatted
before a bright fire with the baby on her lap. The little thing lay
very still now, its lids, half-raised, showed the pupils horribly
upturned.
Jane Clayton looked into the little face with fear-haunted eyes. It was
not her baby—not her flesh and blood—but how close, how dear the tiny,
helpless thing had become to her. Her heart, bereft of its own, had
gone out to this poor, little, nameless waif, and lavished upon it all
the love that had been denied her during the long, bitter weeks of her
captivity aboard the Kincaid.
She saw that the end was near, and though she was terrified at
contemplation of her loss, still she hoped that it would come quickly
now and end the sufferings of the little victim.
The footsteps she had heard without the hut now halted before the door.
There was a whispered colloquy, and a moment later M’ganwazam, chief of
the tribe, entered. She had seen but little of him, as the women had
taken her in hand almost as soon as she had entered the village.
M’ganwazam, she now saw, was an evil-appearing savage with every mark
of brutal degeneracy writ large upon his bestial countenance. To Jane
Clayton he looked more gorilla than human. He tried to converse with
her, but without success, and finally he called to some one without.
In answer to his summons another Negro entered—a man of very different
appearance from M’ganwazam—so different, in fact, that Jane Clayton
immediately decided that he was of another tribe. This man acted as
interpreter, and almost from the first question that M’ganwazam put to
her, Jane felt an intuitive conviction that the savage was attempting
to draw information from her for some ulterior motive.
She thought it strange that the fellow should so suddenly have become
interested in her plans, and especially in her intended destination
when her journey had been interrupted at his village.
Seeing no reason for withholding the information, she told him the
truth; but when he asked if she expected to meet her husband at the end
of the trip, she shook her head negatively.
Then he told her the purpose of his visit, talking through the
interpreter.
“I have just learned,” he said, “from some men who live by the side of
the great water, that your husband followed you up the Ugambi for
several marches, when he was at last set upon by natives and killed.
Therefore I have told you this that you might not waste your time in a
long journey if you expected to meet your husband at the end of it; but
instead could turn and retrace your steps to the coast.”
Jane thanked M’ganwazam for his kindness, though her heart was numb
with suffering at this new blow. She who had suffered so much was at
last beyond reach of the keenest of misery’s pangs, for her senses were
numbed and calloused.
With bowed head she sat staring with unseeing eyes upon the face of the
baby in her lap. M’ganwazam had left the hut. Sometime later she heard
a noise at the entrance—another had entered. One of the women sitting
opposite her threw a faggot upon the dying embers of the fire between
them.
With a sudden flare it burst into renewed flame, lighting up the hut’s
interior as though by magic.
The flame disclosed to Jane Clayton’s horrified gaze that the baby was
quite dead. How long it had been so she could not guess.
A choking lump rose to her throat, her head drooped in silent misery
upon the little bundle that she had caught suddenly to her breast.
For a moment the silence of the hut was unbroken. Then the native woman
broke into a hideous wail.
A man coughed close before Jane Clayton and spoke her name.
With a start she raised her eyes to look into the sardonic countenance
of Nikolas Rokoff.