UP STREAM
Pulling hard at our oars, we rowed up the river, along the shore and
so near it that the shadows of the mangroves almost concealed us. My
breath came in quick, hard gasps; the sweat started from my body and
dripped down my face; every muscle ached from violent exertion. As I
dizzily reeled, I saw, as if it were carved out of wood or stone,
Gleazen's staring, motionless face thrust forth squarely in front of
my own. Then I flopped forward and Gleazen himself caught the oar
from my hands.
We had taken the gig for our expedition, because it was light and
fast; but although we carried four oars, we used only two of them,
mainly because it had been Gleazen's whim to load our baggage
between the after thwarts, so that while two men rowed for
comparatively short spells, the others could take their ease in bow
and stern. And indeed, had our plan to set forth with utmost secrecy
not gone awry, it would have been a comfortable enough arrangement.
I had not dreamed that Gleazen was so strong; he set a stroke that
no ordinary oarsman could maintain; and when Abe Guptil lost time
and reeled on the thwart, Matterson slipped into his place and
fairly lifted the boat on the water.
Of course we could not keep up such a pace for long; but the hard
work in a way relieved our anxiety, as hard work does when one is
troubled; and after each of us, including Uncle Seth, had taken his
turn at the oars until he was dog-tired, we settled down to a saner,
steadier stroke, and thus began in earnest the long journey that
was to be the last stage of our pilgrimage.
By watching the gray lane overhead, where the arching trees failed
to meet above the river, since it was literally too dark to see the
water, we were able to mark out our course; and skirting the tangled
and interwoven roots as nearly as we could, we doggedly fought our
way against the current to the monotonous rhythm of swinging oars,
loud breathing, and hoarse grunts. The constant whisper of the river
so lulled me, weary as I was, that by and by my head drooped, and
the next thing that I knew was a hand on my shoulder and a voice at
my ear calling me to take my turn at rowing.
I woke slowly and saw that Abe Guptil like me was rubbing his eyes,
and that my uncle and Arnold Lamont were lying fast asleep on the
bottom of the boat.
"Come, come," said Gleazen, quietly. "See, now! Mr. Matterson and
I've brought us well on our way. Come, get up and row till it is
fairly light. Wake us then, and we'll haul the boat up and lie in
hiding for the day."
Matterson handed over his oar without a word, and Abe and I fell to
our task.
As the dawn grew and widened in the east, we could see how thickly
the roots of the mangroves intertwined. From the ends of the limbs
small "hangers," like ropes, grew down and took root in the ground.
The trees, thus braced and standing from six to twelve feet in air
on their network of tangled, interwoven roots, were the oddest I had
ever seen.
After a time we came to a large stretch of bush, where innumerable
small palms were crowded together so thickly that among them an
object would have been completely invisible, even in broad day, at a
distance of six feet. In the midst of the bush a great tree grew,
and in the top of it a band of monkeys was swinging and racing and
chattering in the pale light. In an undertone I spoke to Abe about
the monkeys, and he, too, still rowing, turned his head to watch
them. Then, at the very moment when we were intent on their antics,
a new mood seemed to come over them.
I cannot well describe the change, because at first it was so subtle
that I felt it, as much as saw it, and I was inclined to doubt if
Abe would notice it at all. Yet as I watched the little creatures,
which had now ceased their chattering, I suddenly realized that the
boat was beginning to drift with the current. By common impulse,
attracted by the very same thing, both Abe and I had stopped rowing.
As I leaned forward and again swung out my oar, Abe touched my arm.
"Hush!" he whispered. "Wait! Listen!"
Pausing with arms outstretched, ready to throw all my strength into
the catch, I listened and heard a faint _crack_, as of a broken
stick, under the tree in which a moment since the monkeys had been
hard at play.
We exchanged glances.
I now realized that daylight, coming with the swiftness that is
characteristic of it in the tropics, had taken us unawares. The sun
had risen and found Abe and me so intent on a band of monkeys
playing in a tree, that we had neglected to wake the others.
I put out my hand and leaned over the bags to touch Gleazen, the
nearest of the sleepers, when Abe again pressed my arm. Turning, I
saw that his finger was at his lips. Although his gesture puzzled
me, I obeyed it, and we remained silent for a minute or two while
the current carried the boat farther and farther downstream.
Every foot that we drifted back meant labor lost, and I was so
sorely tempted to put an end to our silence that I was on the point
of speaking out, when, distinctly, unmistakably, we heard another
crackle in the bush.
"Pull," Abe whispered, "pull, Joe, as hard as you can."
I leaned back against my oar, heard the water gurgle from under it,
saw bubbles go floating down past the stern, and knew that by one
stroke we had stopped our drifting. With a second swing of the long
blades, we sent the boat once more up against the current. Now we
got back into the old rhythm and went on past the dense palms, until
we again came to the tangled roots of mangroves.
Laying hold of one of the roots, Abe whispered, "Wake 'em, Joe!"
They woke testily, and with no thanks to us, even though it was by
their orders that we called them.
In reply to their questions we told them the whole story, from the
strange hush that came over the monkeys to the second crackling
among the palms; but they appeared not to take our apprehensions
seriously.
"Belike it was a snake," said O'Hara, "a big feller, Them big
fellers will scare a monkey into fits."
"Or some kind of an animal," said Gleazen, curtly. "Didn't I say we
was to be called at daylight? When I say a thing I mean it." He
impatiently turned from us to his intimates. "How about it, Bud;
shall we haul up here for the day?"
"Belike it was only a snake," O'Hara replied, "but 'twas near,
despite of that. Push on, I say."
There was something in the expression of his face as he stared
downstream that made me even more uneasy than before.
"Not so! The niggers will see us in the open and end us there and
then," interposed Matterson. "Moreover, unless the place has
changed with the times, there's a town a scant three miles ahead."
"Belike 'twas only a serpent," O'Hara doggedly repeated, "but 'tis
no place for us here. Let us fare on just half a mile up stream
t'other side the river, in the mouth of the little creek that makes
in there, and, me lads, let us get there quickly."
As we once more began to row, I was confident that O'Hara's talk of
a great serpent was poppy-cock for us and for Uncle Seth, and that
in any case neither Gleazen nor Matterson nor O'Hara cared a straw
about a serpent half a mile away. At the time I would have given
much to know just what shrewd guess they had made at the cause of
that strange crackling; but they dismissed the subject absolutely,
which probably was as well for all concerned; and refusing to speak
of it again, they urged Abe and me to our rowing until at their
direction we bore across the current and slipped through the
trailing branches of the trees, and through the thick bushes and
dangling vines, into the well-hidden mouth of a little creek.
By then the sun was shining hotly and I was glad enough to lean on
my oar and get my breath.
* * * * *
All that day we lay in the thick vegetation of the creek, which to a
certain extent shielded us from the sun, although the warm, damp air
became almost unendurable. Much of the time we slept, but always one
or another of us was posted as a guard, and at high noon an alarm
called us to our weapons.
O'Hara, who happened to be standing watch, woke us without a sound,
one after another, by touching us with his hand.
For a while we saw only the great trees, the sluggish creek, the
slow river, and the interwoven vines; then we heard voices, and
into our sight there swept a long canoe manned by naked negroes, who
swung their paddles strongly and went racing past us down the river.
How, I wondered, had O'Hara known that they were coming? Human ears
could not have heard their voices as far away as they must have been
when he woke us.
It was evident, when the blacks had gone, that Matterson and O'Hara
had made sense of their mumbled gutteral speech.
"I warned ye," O'Hara whispered, glaring at Matterson and Gleazen.
"Had we waited, now, say only a month, they'd not be scouring the
river in search of us."
"Pfaw! Niggers with bows and arrows," Gleazen scornfully muttered.
"Yes, niggers with bows and arrows," O'Hara returned. "But I'd no
sooner die by an arrow than by a musket-ball."
"Die? Who's talking o' dying?" Gleazen whispered. And calmly laying
himself down again, he once more closed his eyes.
"Sure, and I'd not be one to talk o' dying," O'Hara murmured, as he
resumed his guard with a musket across his knees, "was not the curse
o' rash companions upon me."
Matterson, holding aloof from their controversy, solemnly looked
from one of the two to the other. There was that in his eyes which I
did not like to see--not fear, certainly, but a look of
understanding, which convinced me that O'Hara had the right of it.
And now Seth Upham, who had followed all this so sleepily that he
did not more than half understand the significance of what had
occurred, as of old spoke up sharply, even pompously. In that
confused state between sleeping and waking his mind seemed to have
gone back to some mood of months before. "That's all nonsense,
O'Hara; we're safe enough. Gleazen's right." His words fairly
shattered the silence of the marshy woods.
He was the first of us to speak in an ordinarily loud voice, and
almost before he had finished his sentence a bird about as big as a
crow and as black as jet except for its breast and neck, which were
snowy white, rose from a tree above us, and with a cry that to me
sounded for all the world like a crow cawing, circled high in the
air.
Hot with anger, O'Hara struck Seth Upham on the mouth with his open
hand.
That it had been arrant folly for my uncle thus to speak aloud, I
knew as well as any other; and the bird circling above us and crying
out in its slow flight was liable to draw upon us an attack from
heaven only knew what source and quarter. But that O'Hara or any
other should openly strike the man who in his own way had been so
kind to me was something that I could not endure, and my own temper
flamed up as hotly as ever did O'Hara's.
Quick as a flash I caught his wrist, even before he had withdrawn
his hand, and jerked him from the thwart to his knees. With a
devilish gleam in his eye, he threw off my grip and clubbed his
musket.
Before I could draw my pistol he would have brained me, had not
Matterson, with no desire whatever to save me from such a fate, but
apparently only eager to have a hand in the affair, seized me from
behind, lifted me bodily from my seat, and plunged me down out of
sight into the creek.
Of what followed, I know only by hearsay, for I was too much
occupied with saving myself from drowning to observe events in the
boat. But the creek was comparatively shallow, and getting my feet
firmly planted on bottom, I pushed up my head and breathed deeply.
Meanwhile it seems that Arnold Lamont quietly thrust his knife a
quarter of an inch through the skin between two of Matterson's ribs,
thus effectually distracting his attention, while Abe Guptil deftly
caught O'Hara's clubbed musket in his hands and wrenched it away.
As I hauled myself back into the boat, Gleazen sat up and stared,
first at the others who, now that Matterson had knocked Arnold's
knife to one side, were momentarily deadlocked, then at me dripping
from my plunge, then at Seth Upham upon whose white face the marks
of O'Hara's hand still showed red.
"Between you," he whispered angrily, "you _will_ have half the
niggers in Africa upon us."
"He talked," O'Hara muttered, pointing at Uncle Seth.
"You struck him," I retorted.
"'Twas a bird told me they was coming by. 'Twill be that bird surely
will tell them we are here."
Arnold and Abe and I glared angrily at O'Hara and Matterson and
Gleazen, but by common consent we dropped the brief quarrel, and
when, after an anxious time of waiting, the canoe had not
reappeared, we again lay down to sleep.
Yet I saw that Uncle Seth's hand was trembling and that he was not
so calm as he tried to appear; and I knew that, although we might go
on with a semblance of tolerance, even of friendship, the rift in
our little party had grown vastly wider.
Waking at nightfall, we made our evening meal of such cooked
provisions as we had brought from the Adventure, and pushed through
the screen of dense branches, and out on the strongly running,
silent river. Again we bent to the oars and rowed interminably on
against the stream and into the black darkness.
That night we passed a town with wattled houses and thatched roofs
rising in tall cones high on the riverbank, and a building that
O'Hara said was a _barre_ or courthouse. In the town, we saw against
the sky, which the rising moon now lighted, a few orange trees and
palms, and under it, close beside the bank of the river, we
indistinctly made out a boat, which, Gleazen whispered, was very
likely loaded with camwood and ivory. We passed it in the shadow of
the opposite shore, rowing softly because we were afraid that
someone might be sleeping on the cargo to guard it, and went by and
up the river till the pointed roofs of the houses were miles astern.
O'Hara and Gleazen and Matterson talked together, and part of their
talk was bickering among themselves, and part was of the man Bull
who, all alone in the wilderness, was waiting for us somewhere in
the jungle, and part was in Spanish, which I could not understand.
But when they talked in Spanish, they looked keenly at Arnold and
Abe and me, and I found comfort then in thinking that, although
Arnold and I now had no chance to exchange confidences, he was
hearing and remembering every word of their conversation. And all
the time that I watched them, I was thinking of the girl at the
mission.
Remembering my talk with Arnold long ago, when I had expressed so
poor an opinion of all womankind, I felt at once a little amused at
myself and a little sheepish. Who would have thought that, at almost
my first sight of the despised continent of Africa, I should see a
girl whose face I could not forget? That when she spoke to me for
the first time, her low, firm voice would so fasten itself upon my
memory, that I should hear it in my dreams both sleeping and waking?
Poor Uncle Seth! Never offering to take an oar, never exchanging a
word with any of the rest of us, he sat with his elbows on his knees
and his head bowed. Gleazen and Matterson had dropped even their
unkindly humorous pretense of deferring to him. In our little band
of adventurers he who had once been so assertive, so brimful of
importance, had become the merest nonentity.
All that night we went up the river, and all the next day we lay
concealed among the mangroves; but about the following midnight we
came to a place where the banks were higher and the current swifter.
Here O'Hara stood up in the bow of the boat and studied the shore
and ordered us now to row, now to rest. For all of two miles we
advanced thus, and heartily tired of his orders we were, when he
directed us to veer sharply to larboard and enter a small creek,
along the banks of which tall water-grass grew right down to the
channel.
There was barely room for the boat to pass along the stream between
the forests of grass which grew in the water on the two sides; but
as we advanced, the tall grass disappeared, and the stream itself
became narrower and swifter, and the banks became higher. The
country, we now saw, was heavily timbered, and we occasionally came
to logs, which we had to pry out of the way before we could pass.
One moment we would be in water up to our necks, another we would be
poling the boat along with the oars, until at last we grounded on a
bar over which only a runlet gurgled.
There was a suggestion of dawn in the east, which revealed above and
beyond the wood a line of low, bare hills; but when I looked at the
wood itself, through which we must find our way, my courage oozed
out by every pore and left me wishing from the bottom of my heart
that I were safe at sea with Gideon North.
Piling all our goods on the bank, we hid the boat in the bushes and
made camp.
"Hard upon daylight, well be starting," said O'Hara, hoarsely.
"Sleep is it, you ask? Don't that give you your while of sleep? Be
about it. By dark, we'll reach him surely; and if not, we'll be in
the very shadow of the hill."
The man was all a-quiver with excitement. He jerked his shoulders
and twitched his fingers and rolled his eyes. Matterson and Gleazen,
too, were softly laughing as they stepped a little apart from the
rest of us.
I looked at Arnold.
He stood with one hand raised. "What was that?" he asked in a low
voice.
Very faintly,--very, very far away,--we heard just such a yell as we
had heard that night when in defiance of the wizard's warning we
left the Adventure.
Coming to our ears at the particular moment when we most firmly
believed that by consummate craft we had so concealed our progress
up the river as to escape every prying eye and deceive every hostile
black, it both taunted us and threatened us. Three times we heard
it, faintly, then silence, deep and ominous, ensued.