A GRIM SURPRISE
To sleep at that moment would have required more than human
self-control. Forgetting every personal grudge, every cause of
enmity, we huddled together, seven men alone in an alien wilderness,
and waited,--listened,--waited. I, for one, more than half expected,
and very deeply feared, to hear coming from the darkness that
ghostly voice which had cried to us twice already, "White man, I
come 'peak." But, except for the whisper of the wind and the ripple
of the creek, there was no sound to be heard.
The wind gently stirred the leaves, and the creek sang as it flowed
down over the gravel and away through the reeds. The moon cast its
pale light upon us, and the remote stars twinkled in the heavens.
The cries, after that second repetition, died away, and at that
moment did not come back. But our night of adventure was not yet at
an end.
O'Hara deliberately leveled his index finger at the bed of the
stream above us. "Sure, now, and there do be someone there," he
whispered. "Watch now! Watch me!"
Stepping forward, with a slow, tigerish motion, he slightly raised
his voice. "Come you out!" he said distinctly. Then he spoke in a
gibberish of which I could make no more sense than if it had been so
much Spanish.
Before our very eyes, silently, there rose from the undergrowth a
great negro with a spear.
Arnold Lamont gave a quick gasp and I saw steel flash in the
moonlight as his hand moved. Gleazen swore; Matterson started to
his feet; Abe Guptil came suddenly to a crouching position. But
O'Hara, after one sharply in-drawn breath, uttered a name and
whispered something in that same language, which I knew well I had
never heard before, and the negro answered him in kind.
For a moment they talked rapidly; then O'Hara turned to his comrades
and in a frightened undertone said, "The black devils know the
worst."
"Well?" retorted Gleazen, angrily. "What of it?"
"This"--O'Hara's leveled finger indicated the negro--"is
Kaw-tah-bah."
"Well?" Gleazen reiterated, still more angrily.
"The war has razed his village to the ground."
Matterson now stepped forward and looked closely into the negro's
face. Gleazen followed him.
"He laid down eight slave money," said O'Hara. "It was no good. They
knew he was our friend. His wives, his children, his old father, all
are dead."
Now Matterson spoke in the same strange tongue, slowly and
hesitantly, but so that the negro understood him and answered him.
"He says," O'Hara translated, "that Bull built the house on the
king's grave, and they feared him, because he is a terrible man; and
because they feared him they left him alone in his house and brought
the war to his friend, Kaw-tah-bah. Kaw-tah-bah's people are slaves.
His wives, his children, his old father, all are dead. But he did
not betray the secret."
Again Matterson spoke and again the negro answered.
"He says," cried O'Hara, "that Bull is waiting there on the hill by
the king's grave."
The negro suddenly uttered a low exclamation.
Standing as still as so many statues, we heard yet again that faint,
unearthly wail far off in the night, a wail, as before, twice
repeated. The third cry had scarcely died away, when the negro, with
a startled gasp, darted into the brush.
O'Hara raised his hand and called to him to come back; but, never
turning his head, he disappeared like a frightened animal.
Again we were alone in the wilderness.
To me, now, all that formerly I had understood only in vague outline
had become clear in every detail. I knew, of course, that, after
their own ship was wrecked, our quartette of adventurers had sent
Gleazen back to America, to get by hook or crook another vessel to
serve their godless purposes; and I knew that they had implicated my
deluded uncle in something more than ordinary slave trade. Their
talk of the man who had stayed behind for a purpose still further
convinced me that Arnold had been right; I remembered the rough
stones on the table in the cabin the night when I took the four by
surprise. But it was only common sense that, if our first guess were
_all_ their secret, they would have smuggled such a find down to the
coast, and have taken their chance in embarking in the first vessel
that came to port. There was more than that of which to be mindful,
and I knew well enough what.
"I say, now, push forward this very minute," cried O'Hara. "Better
travel a bad road by dark in safety than a good road by day that
will land every mother's son of us in the place where there's no
road back."
"The black devils are hard upon us," Gleazen cried. "Lay low, I say.
Come afternoon we'll sneak along easy like."
"I stand with Bud O'Hara," said Matterson, slowly. "It'll not be so
easy to hit us by moonlight as by sunlight."
"And once we're with Bull in the little fort that he'll have made
for us," Bud persisted, "we'll be safe surely."
"It is harder to travel by night," said Arnold. "But it is easier by
night than by day to evade an enemy."
The others looked at him curiously, as if surprised by his temerity
in speaking out; but, oddly, his seemed to be the deciding voice.
Working with furious haste, we sorted our goods and made them up
into six packs, which we shouldered according to our strength. But
as we worked, we would stop and look furtively around; and at the
slightest sound we would start and stare. Our determination to go
through to the end of our adventure had not flagged when at last we
gathered beside the thicket where we had concealed the boat; but we
were seven silent men who left the boat, the creek, and the river
behind us, and with O'Hara to guide us set off straight into the
heart of Africa.
O'Hara's long sojourn on the continent, which had made him a "black
man" in the sense that he had come to believe, or at least more than
half believe, in the silly superstitions of the natives, had served
him better by giving him an amazing knowledge of the country. That
he was following a trail he had traveled many times before would
have been evident to a less keenly interested observer than I. But
though he had traveled it ever so many times, it was a mystery to me
how he could follow it unerringly, by moonlight alone, through black
tangles of forest growth so dense that scarcely a ray stole down on
the deeply shadowed path.
Passing over some high hills, we came, sweaty and breathless, down
into a rocky gorge, along which we hurried, now skirting patches of
cotton and corn and yams, now making a long détour around a sleeping
village, until we arrived at a wood in a valley where a deep stream
rumbled. And all this time we had seen no sign whatever of any
living creature other than ourselves.
It was already full daylight, and throwing off our burdens, we flung
ourselves down and slept. Had our danger been even more urgent, I
believe that we could not have kept awake, so exhausted were we; and
indeed, we were in greater peril than we had supposed, for all that
day, whenever we woke, we heard at no great distance from our place
of concealment the thump of a pestle pounding rice.
Twelve hours of daylight would easily have brought us to our
destination. But it was slow work traveling in the darkness, and we
still had far to go. Pushing on again that night, we pressed through
a country thickly wooded with tall trees, many of which elephants
had broken down in order to feed on the tender upper branches.
As we passed them, I was thrilled to see with my own eyes the work
of wild elephants in their native country, and should have liked to
stop for a time; but there was no opportunity to loiter, and leaving
the woods behind us, we came at daylight to a brook, which had cut a
deep channel into dark slate rock and blue clay.
Here I conjectured that we should camp for another day, but not so:
our three leaders were strangely excited.
"Sure," O'Hara cried, pointing at a low hill at a distance in the
plain, "sure, gentlemen, and there's our port. Where's the man would
cast anchor this side of it?"
O'Hara, Gleazen, and Matterson stood at one side, and Arnold, Abe,
and I at the other, with my poor uncle in the middle. We had not
concerted to divide thus. Instinctively and unconsciously we
separated into hostile factions, with poor Seth Upham--neither fish,
flesh, nor fowl, as they say--standing weakly between us. But even
so, the enthusiasm of the three was contagious. Weary though we
were, we strongly felt it. We had come so far, all of us, and had
wondered so much and so often about our mysterious errand, that
now, with the end in sight, not one of us, I believe, would have
stopped.
Casting caution to the winds, we swung down into a wild country and
across the broad plain, where, after some three hours of rough hard
travel, we came to the foot of the hill. And in all this time,
except the patches of tilled land that we had passed, the towns that
we had avoided, the thumping of pestles and the occasional sounds of
domestic animals, we had seen and heard no sign of human life. It is
not strange that for the moment I forgot the threats that had caused
us such anxiety. Stopping only to catch our breath and drink and
dash over our faces water from a brook, we started up the hill.
O'Hara, ahead of us all, was like a mad man in his eagerness, and
Matterson and Gleazen were not far behind him. Even Uncle Seth
caught something of their frenzy and assumed an empty show of his
old pompousness and sharp manner.
Up the hill we went, our three leaders first, then, in nervous
haste, between the two parties literally as well as figuratively, my
uncle, then Arnold and Abe and I, who were soon outdistanced, in
that fierce scramble, by all but Uncle Seth.
"Do you know, Joe," Abe said in a low voice, as he gave me a hand up
over a bit of a ledge, "I'd sooner be home on my little farm that
Seth Upham sold from under me, with only my crops and fishing to
look forward to, than here with all the gold in Africa to be got? I
wonder, Joe, if I'll ever see my wife and the little boy again."
"Nonsense!" I cried, "of course you will."
"Do you think so? I'm not so sure."
As we stood for a moment on the summit of the ledge, I saw that we
had chosen a rougher, more circuitous path than was necessary. The
others had gone up a sort of swale on our right, where tall, lush
grass indicated that the ground was marshy. It irritated me that we
should have scrambled over the rocks for nothing; my legs were
atremble from our haste.
"Of course you will," I repeated testily. Then I saw something move.
"See!" I cried. "There goes an animal of some kind."
While for a moment we waited in hope of seeing again whatever it was
that had moved, I thought, oddly enough, of the girl at the mission;
then my thoughts leaped back half round the world to little Topham,
and returned by swift steps, through all our adventures, to the spot
where we stood.
Now the others were bawling at us to come along after them, so Abe
and I turned, not having seen distinctly whatever animal there may
have been, and followed them up the hill.
"Here's the brook!" O'Hara cried, "the brook from the spring!"
He was running now, straight up through the tall grass beside the
tiny trickle, and we were driving along at his heels as hard as we
could go.
"Here's the clearing, and never a blade of grass is changed since I
left it last! O Bull! Here we are! See, men, see! Yonder on the old
grave is the house all wattled like a nigger hut! O Bull! Where are
you? But it's fine inside, men, I'll warrant you. He was laying to
build it good. He said he'd fix it up like a duke's mansion. O Bull!
I say, Bull!"
There indeed was the house, on a low mound, which showed the marks
of sacrilegious pick and shovel. The posts on which it stood were
driven straight down into the hillock. But in reply to O'Hara's loud
hail no answer came from that silent, apparently deserted dwelling.
O'Hara turned and, as if apologizing, said in a lower voice, but
still loud enough for us to hear, "Sure, now, and he must be out
somewhere."
Then he waited for us, and we gathered in a little group and looked
at the wattled hut as if in apprehension, although of course there
was no reason on earth why we should have been apprehensive.
"Well, gentlemen," said Arnold, very quietly, "why not go in?"
Not a man stirred.
O'Hara faced about with moodily clouded eyes. "Well, then," he
gasped, "he _would_ build it on the king's grave."
I am sure that my face, for one, told O'Hara that he only mystified
me.
"Sure, and he was like others I've seen. More than once I warned
him, but he didn't believe in nigger gods. He didn't believe in
nigger gods, and he built the house on the king's grave! On the
king's grave, mind you! He was that set and reckless."
"Gentlemen," said Arnold, again, very quietly, very precisely, "why
not go in?"
All this time my uncle, as was his way except in those rare moments
when he made a pitiful show of regaining his old peremptory manner,
had been standing by in silence, looking from one to another of our
company. But now he hesitantly spoke up.
"He has not been here for some time," he said.
Gleazen turned with a scornful grunt. "Much you know whether he has
or not," he retorted.
"See!" My uncle pointed at the door. "Vines have grown across the
top of it."
Gleazen softly swore, and Matterson said, "For once, Neil, he's
right."
Why we had not noticed it before, I cannot say; probably we were
too much excited. But we all saw it now, and Gleazen, staring at the
dark shadow of the leaves on the door, stepped back a pace.
"By Heaven," he whispered, "I don't like to go in."
"Gentlemen," said Arnold, speaking for the third time, ever quietly
and precisely, "I am not afraid to go in."
When he boldly went up to the house ahead of us, we, ashamed to hang
back, reluctantly followed.
To this day I can see him in every detail as he laid his hand on the
latch. His blue coat, which fitted so snugly his tall, straight
figure, seemed to draw from the warm sunlight a brighter, more
intense hue. His black hair and white, handsome face stood out in
bold relief against the dark door, and the green leaves drooped
round him and formed a living frame.
Setting his shoulders against the door, he straightened his body and
heaved mightily and broke the rusty latch. The hinges creaked
loudly, the vine tore away, the door opened, and in we walked, to
see the most dreadful sight my eyes have ever beheld.
There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton dressed in good
sound clothes. The arms and skull lay on the table itself beside a
great heap of those rough quartz-like stones,--I knew now well
enough what they were,--and the bony fingers still held a pen, which
rested on a sheet of yellow foolscap where a great brown blot marked
the end of the last word that the man they called Bull had ever
written. Between the ribs of the skeleton, through the good coat and
into the back of the chair in such a way that it held the body in a
sitting posture, stuck a long spear.
[Illustration: _There in a chair by the table sat a stark skeleton
dressed in good sound clothes._]
Of the seven of us who stared in horror at that terrible object,
Matterson was the first to utter a word. His voice was singularly
meditative, detached.
"He never knew--see!--it took him unawares."
O'Hara slowly went to the table, leaned over it, and looking
incredulously at the paper, as if he could not believe his eyes,
burst suddenly into a frenzy of grief and rage.
"Lads," he cried, "look there! My name was the last thing he wrote.
O Bull, I warned ye, I warned ye--how many times I warned ye! And
yet ye _would_, _would_, _would_ build the house on the king's
grave. O Bull!"
He drew the yellow paper out from under the fleshless fingers and
held it up for all of us to see, and we read in a clear flowing hand
the following inscription:--
MY DEAR O'HARA:--
Not having heard from you this long time, I take my pen in hand
to inform you that I am well and that despite your silly fears,
no harm has come of building our house on the sightliest spot
hereabouts. Martin Brown, the trader, from whom I bought the
hinges and fittings will carry this letter to you and--
There it ended in a great blot. Whence had the spear come? Why had
Martin Brown never called for the letter? Or had he called and gone
away again?
What scenes that page of cheap, yellowed paper, from which the faded
brown writing stared at us, had witnessed! It was indeed as if a
dead man were speaking; and more than that, for the paper on which
the man had been writing when he died had remained ever since under
his very hands, undisturbed by all that had happened. How long must
the man have been dead, I wondered. The stark white bones uncannily
fascinated me. I saw that the feather had been stripped from the
bare quill of the pen: could moths have done that? A knife could not
have stripped it so cleanly.
Abe Guptil, who had been prowling about, now spoke, and we looked
where he pointed and saw on the floor under a window the print of a
single bare foot as clearly marked in mud as if it had been placed
there yesterday.
"Hm! He saw that the job was done and went away again," said
Gleazen, coolly.
I stared about the hut, from which apparently not a thing had been
stolen, and thought that it was the more remarkable, because there
were pans and knives in plain sight that would have been a fortune
to an African black. The open ink-bottle, in which were a few brown
crystals, the pen, which was cut from the quill of some African
bird, and the faded letter, which was scarcely begun, told us that
the spear, hurled through the open window, had pierced the man's
body and snuffed out his life, without so much as a word of warning.
O'Hara unsteadily laid the letter down and stepped back. His face
was still white. "It's words from the dead," he gasped.
"So it is," said Matterson, "but he's panned out a noble lot of
stones."
As if Matterson's effeminate voice had again goaded him to fury,
O'Hara burst out anew.
"You'd talk o' stones, would ye? Stones to me, that has lost the
best friend surely ever man had? A man that would ha' laid down his
very life for me; and now the niggers have got him and the ants have
stripped his bones! O-o-oh!--" And throwing himself into a rough
chair that the dead man himself had made, O'Hara sobbed like a
little boy.
Matterson and Gleazen nodded to each other, as much as to say that
it was too bad, but that no one had any call to take on to such an
extent; and Gleazen with a shrug thrust a finger into that heap of
stones, slowly, as if he could not quite believe his senses,--little
_he_ cared for any man's life!--while those of us who until now
had been so hypnotized by horror that we had not laid down our packs
dropped them on the floor.
"Ants," O'Hara had said: I knew now why the bones were so clean and
white; why the feather was stripped from the quill.
From the windows of the hut, which stood in a clearing at the very
top of the hill, we could see for miles through occasional vistas in
the tall timber below us. The edge of the clearing, on all sides
except that by which we had approached it, had grown into a tangled
net of vines, which had crept out into the open space to mingle with
saplings and green shrubs. Half way down the hill, where we had
passed it in our haste, I now saw, by the character of the
vegetation, was the spring from which issued the brook whose course
we had followed.
Uncle Seth, who had been striving to appear at ease since the first
shock of seeing the single occupant of the house, came over beside
me; and after a few remarks, which touched me because they were so
obviously a pathetic effort to win back my friendship and affection,
said in a louder voice, "Thank God, _we_, at least, are safe!"
The word to O'Hara was like spark to powder.
Flaring up again, he shrieked, "Safe--_you!_--and you thank God for
it! You white-livered milk-sop of a country storekeeper, what is
your cowardly life worth to yourself or to any one else? You safe!"
He swore mightily. "You! I tell you, Upham, _there_--" he pointed at
the skeleton by the table--"_there_ was a _man_! You safe!"
Withered by the contempt in the fellow's voice, Uncle Seth stepped
back from the window, turned round, and, as if puzzling what to say
next, bent his head.
As he did so, a single arrow flew with a soft hiss in through the
window, passed exactly where his head had just that moment been, and
with a hollow _thump_ struck trembling into the opposite wall. There
was not a sound outside, not the motion of a leaf, to show whence
the arrow came. Only the arrow whispering through the air and
trembling in the wall.
Uncle Seth, as yellow as old parchment, looked up with distended
eyes at the still quivering missile.
"Safe, you say?" cried Gleazen with a hoarse laugh, still letting
those little stones fall between his fingers. The man at times was a
fiend for utter recklessness. "Aye, safe on the knees of
Mumbo-Jumbo!"
I heard this, of course, but in a singularly absent way; for at that
moment, when every man of us was staring at the arrow in the wall,
I, strangely enough, was thinking of the girl at the mission.