THE FORT FALLS
"Now, by the holy," O'Hara whimpered, "it's fight for our lives, or
hand them away like so many maundy pennies."
"Fight, is it?" Gleazen roared. And forgetting his stiff wounds, he
sprang to his feet. "Load those guns! Name of heaven, be quick!"
Why at this particular time the bawling voice of the native should
thus have called us to action is not easy to say, for you would
think that, having become familiar with it, we should have regarded
it with proverbial contempt. But we knew that the deadlock could not
last forever; Seth Upham's fate was all too vivid in our minds; and
I really think that, in the strange voice itself, there was more
than a hint of what was to follow.
Forgotten now was the edict that one party should stay on one side
of the hut, the other on the opposite side. Forgotten, even, was the
bag of stones in Gleazen's pack. Armed with every weapon that the
hut afforded, we stood behind door and window and saw a sight that
appalled the bravest of us.
Straight up the hill from the spring where they had killed Seth
Upham there streamed a raging black horde. The rising moon shone on
their spears and revealed the endless multitudes that came hard at
the heels of the leaders. Their yells reverberated from wall to wall
of the forest and even, it seemed to us, to the starry sky above
them.
As we fired on them, the streamers of flame from our guns darted
into the night and the acrid smoke drifted back to us. But though
they faltered, this time they came doggedly on. Already in the
moonlight we could distinguish individuals; now we could see their
contorted features alive with rage and vindictiveness. That they
would take the hut by storm, there was not the slightest doubt; nor
was there a ray of hope that we should survive its fall.
It was a long, long way from Topham to that wattled hut in a
clearing on the side of an African hill, and in more ways than one
it was a far call from Higgleby's barn. But it was Higgleby's barn
that I thought of then--Higgleby's barn in the pasture, with a light
shining through a crack between the boards, and a boy scaling the
wall under the window; Higgleby's barn in the dark, with tongues of
flame running out from it through the grass. Truly, I thought in
metaphor, which was rare for me, the fire that sprang up so long ago
in Higgleby's barn had already killed Seth Upham, and now it was
going to enfold and engulf us all.
Then I thought of the mission on the river, and the girl whom I had
seen first among the mangroves, then in the darkness on the mission
porch. Did the war actually reach to the coast? And would the war
wipe out "old Parmenter" as Gleazen had said? By heaven, I thought,
it would not and it should not!
All this, of course, takes far longer to tell, than it took to go
coursing through my mind. In the time it took to think it out, not
one black foot struck the ground; not one left the ground. Before
that racing army of negroes had advanced another step, the answer
had come to me; and now, no longer the boy who had climbed in idle
curiosity the wall of Higgleby's barn, but a man to think and act, I
cried from my dry throat:--
"Out of the back window, men! O'Hara, help me brace the door! Out of
the window and over the hill!"
With an oath Gleazen cried, "He's right! They're all coming on us up
the hill! The back way's our only chance!"
O'Hara, in spite of my call for help, led the way out of the back
window; but Arnold paused to jam chairs and boards against the door;
and Gleazen, ever reckless, stooped in the darkness and picked
something up. As we sprang to the window, he came last of all, and I
saw that he, the only one to think of it in that hour of desperate
peril, was of a mind to bring his pack--the pack that had held the
thing for which we had left our homes and crossed the seas. I saw
Matterson clinging to brave Abe Guptil's shoulder, and striving
desperately, with Abe's help, to keep pace with O'Hara, who in all
this time had not got so much as a scratch. I saw the forest wherein
lay our sole hope of safety, and terribly far off it seemed. Then I
rolled out into the moonlight, and ran as if the devil were at my
heels.
Almost at once I heard Gleazen come tumbling after me, and gasp with
a frightful oath that the pack had caught and he had left it.
As we ran, we kept, as far as possible, the house between us and the
blacks, and so intent were they on attacking our little citadel,
that for a moment or two they overlooked our flight.
We heard their cries as they battered down the door, their eager
shouts, their sudden silence, and then the fierce yell of discovery
when they saw us in the moonlight. It occurred to me then that, but
for my poor uncle's death down by the spring, which had very likely
caused them to break their circle and gather there in the open, we
should not have had so easy a time of it when we fled over the hill
behind the hut. Weak though we were, despair was a mighty stimulus
and we ran desperately for the woods; but although we had got a
fair start, the pack was now yelping in full cry on our trail.
The pitiful futility of it all, I thought. Seth Upham was dead--the
stones were lost--we ourselves were hunted for our lives! As I
staggered after the others straight into the wall of almost
impenetrable vines, I turned in the act of wriggling through it and
let fly with my pistol. Compared with the muskets, the pistol made a
dainty little spit of fire and sound, but it served to delay the
foremost negroes, and with our scanty hopes a little brighter for
their hesitation, I struggled on to come up with the others.
It was well for us, after all, that O'Hara had taken the lead. Say
what you will against him, the man knew the country. First, guided
by the general lay of the land, he led us down the hill, through
rocks and brush, straight to a stream where we drank and--warned by
Arnold Lamont--fought against the temptation to drink more than a
tiny fraction of what we desired.
Revived by the plunge into water, we turned and followed O'Hara up
the stream-bed, bending low so that no onlooker could see us,
climbed a great precipitous hill down which the stream tumbled in
noisy cascades that hid every sound of our flight, drank again, and
kept on up into the rocks away from the water. Not daring to raise
our heads above the dry bed of the rainy-season torrent along which
we now hurried, we never once looked back down the slope up which we
had toiled, panting and puffing and reeling; but behind us, far
behind us now, we could hear the shrieks and yells of the
disappointed savages, who, having outflanked the timber into which
we disappeared, and having wasted many minutes in beating through
it, a manoeuvre that their wholesome respect for our firearms had
much delayed, had now come out on the brow of the rocky declivity
leading down to the creek, and were losing much time, if we could
judge by their clamor, in arguing which way we were likely to have
gone.
I wonder if the whole performance to which we owed our lives was not
characteristic of the natives of the African coast? If therein did
not lie just the difference between a people so easily led into
slavery and a people that never, whatever their weaknesses have
been, have yielded to their oppressors? It all happened long ago,
and it was my only acquaintance with black warfare; but surely we
could never thus have thrown American Indians off the scent.
It seemed to me, then, that we had made good our escape and could
run straight for the river, and in my enthusiasm I said as much. But
Arnold and Abe Guptil shook their heads, and O'Hara significantly
raised his hand. "Hark!"
I listened, and realized that an undertone of sound, which I had
heard without noticing it, as one hears a clock ticking, was the
rumble of drums miles and miles away. While I listened, another drum
far to the north took up the grim throbbing note, then another to
the east. Then, mingling with the swelling voice of all the
drums,--how many of them there were, or in how many villages, I had
not the vaguest notion,--I heard human voices down the hill on our
right, and after a time other voices down the hill on our left. I
then knew that however stupid our pursuers might seem, to reach the
river was no such easy task as I had hoped.
For an hour we lay hidden among the rocks, with the world spread out
before us in the moonlight. Here and there were small points of
fire, which shone as if they were stars reflected on water,--we
knew, of course, that there was no water, and that they must,
therefore, be lights of village or camp,--and twice, at a distance
of half a mile, men passed with torches. But for the most part we
lay shoulder to shoulder, with only the moon and the twinkling
points of light to awaken our meditations.
I thought of Uncle Seth dead in the grass by the spring down to
which he had gone so bravely. I thought of the hut in which, so far
as we knew, still lay the skeleton and the bag of pebbles. And while
I was thinking thus, I heard to the southeast the sound of gunshots.
First came several almost together like a volley, then another and
another, then two or three more, and after that, at intervals, still
others.
O'Hara looked first at the sky and then in the direction of the
shooting. "They're attacking a trader's caravan," he said. "There'll
be white men in it, surely. The thing for us to do, my lads, is to
join up with them. They'll have food."
"Aye, but how?" asked Gleazen.
As if in answer to his question,--a terribly discouraging
answer!--we heard, when we stopped to listen, coming up to us out of
the night from every side, near and far, the throbbing of drums.
"Aye, 'how?'" O'Hara repeated.
"Can we not," I asked, "work down toward them and break through the
blacks?"
"The war has gone to the coast by now, and they are attacking all
comers. But it's us they're keen on the trail of, all because Bull
built his house on a king's grave and a blithering idiot killed a
devil. 'Tis true, Joe. If we could work down toward them, come three
o'clock in the morning, it might happen even as you say."
There were no torches, now, to be seen; no voices were to be heard.
There were only the fixed lights shining like stars and the steadily
throbbing drums. Whether or not, back on our trail, the blacks were
still hunting for us, we did not know; but by all signs that we
could see, they were settling quietly down for the remainder of the
night.
"And if it don't happen like you say," O'Hara added as an
afterthought, "we'll be nearer the river surely, and there may be
hope for us yet."
At that he looked at Gleazen and smiled, and Gleazen softly laughed
and nudged Matterson, at which Matterson swore, because Gleazen's
elbow had touched a wound. Then they all three looked at one another
and laughed; and remembering the board in the centre of the hut and
the law that neither side should trespass on the part allotted to
the other, I heartily wished that we had another such board and
another such law. We had agreed upon our truce under the stress of
great danger. Take away that danger, I thought, and there would be
nothing to keep the old coals of hate from springing into flame
anew.
Down from the hilltop we went, slowly picking our way among the
boulders, to still another brawling stream at the foot. There we
drank and waited and reconnoitred, and finally, convinced that we
were in no immediate danger, pushed on after our guide, O'Hara.
He first led us down the ravine and through a wild and wooded
country; but within two miles the sound of drums, which had become
louder and nearer, warned us of a village ahead, and, leaving the
stream, we climbed a hill, passed through scattered patches of
plantains and yams, from which we took such food as would dull the
edge of our hunger, came down again into dense timber, worked our
way through it, and emerged at last into an open space above a broad
plain.
And all this long way faithful Abe Guptil had half carried, half
dragged the great body of Matterson, who fought hard to keep up with
the rest of us and strove to regain the strength that his wound had
taken from him, but who despite his bravest efforts, still was sadly
weak.
As well as we could judge by the interminable drumming, there were
villages on our right and on our left and behind us. By the stars we
estimated that it was still an hour before dawn, and by lights on
the plain we guessed at the location of the camp of which we had
come in search.
We had already wandered so far from the road by which we had come to
the mountain, that it seemed as if only a miracle could bring us
back to the place on the river where we had left our boat; but in
that respect O'Hara was no mean worker of miracles, for his years in
Africa had given him an uncanny judgment of direction and distance.
"Yonder will be the river," he said, pointing slightly to the left;
"and yonder will surely be the camp where we heard guns firing.
Below there'll be a road and the camp will be on the road. I know
this place; I've been here before."
With that he once more plunged down the steep declivity and through
a growth of scrubby trees to a great prairie, where, even as he had
said, a road ran in the direction that our journey led us. Fire not
long since had burned over the meadow, and spears of grass from
fifteen to twenty feet high had fallen across the road and tangled
and twisted so that most of the time we had to bend almost double as
we walked. But in that early morning hour there were no travelers on
the road except occasional deer, which went dashing off through the
grass; and it crossed many streams into which we plunged our hot
faces. With water for our thirst and plantains for our hunger, we
fared on, until, just as dawn was breaking, we came in sight of the
red coals of a fire.
O'Hara raised his hand and we stopped. "The niggers are ahead of
us," he whispered. "Beyond the niggers will be the caravan surely,
and beyond the caravan there'll be more niggers."
"The question, then, my friends," said Arnold, slowly, "is whether
to go round them and on alone, or to go through the blacks and take
our chances on a friendly reception from whoever is camping just
ahead."
"That," said O'Hara, "is the question."
"There's no doubt but they're traders," Gleazen muttered. "We'll
have to fight before we reach the river. The more on our side, the
merrier, I say, when it comes to fighting."
By our silence we assented.
Arnold raised his hand. "It is by surprise, gentlemen, or not at
all. Are you ready?"
Breathing hard, we pressed closer together.
"Quickly, then! Together, and with speed!"
Arnold's voice snapped out the orders as if we were a company of
military. There was something so commanding, so martial, in his
manner and carriage, yet something that fitted him so well and
seemed so much a part of his old, calm, taciturn, wise way, that I
felt a sudden new wonder at him, a feeling that, well though I
thought I had known him, I never had known him.
Then, brought all at once into action by the energy and force of his
command, as was every one of the others, I started at the word as
did they. Together we ran straight through the camp of sleeping
blacks,--so strong was Matterson's spirit, so great his eagerness,
that he now kept pace with us almost without help,--straight past
the coals of their campfire, over the remnants of their evening
meal, over their weapons and shields strewn in the road, and on
toward their picket-line. As they woke behind us, bewildered, and
groped to learn the cause of the sudden disorder, and realized what
was happening, and started up with angry cries, we leaped, one
after another, actually leaped, over a black sentry nodding at his
post, over a frail barrier that they had thrown up to conceal their
movements, and charged down upon a threatening stockade behind which
lay the caravan.
That the caravan kept better watch than their besiegers, we learned
first of all; for even as we leaped the barricade and came racing
down the road, a gun went off in our faces and a cry of warning
called the defenders from their sleep.
"Don't shoot!" O'Hara yelled. "We're white men! Don't shoot!"
All now depended on the men of that caravan. Were they friends or
foes, honest men or thieves, we had cast the dice, and on that throw
our fate waited.
I heard Gleazen bellowing in Spanish and Arnold Lamont calling in
French; then up I came with Matterson and Abe to the crude, hasty
rampart of mud and grass, and over I tumbled upon a man who cried
out in amazement and raised his gun to strike me down, only to
desist at the sight of my white face, which was no whiter than his
own. Arnold was ahead of me; Gleazen and Matterson came in, almost
at the same moment; then came Abe; and last of all, dumb with
terror, O'Hara, who had tripped and fallen midway between the two
barricades and had narrowly escaped perishing at the hands of the
negro guards.
In we came and about we turned, side by side with the strange
whites, and when the hostile spearmen showed signs of rushing upon
us, we gave them balls from musket and pistol to remember us by, and
they faltered and drew back. But that the end was not yet in sight
the thudding of their drums and the growing chorus of their angry
yells unmistakably told us.
"Ha! Dey t'ink dey git us yet," one of the strangers cried, hearing
me speak to Arnold in English. "Dis one beeg war. Where he start,
who know? Dey fight, how dey fight! Dey come down upon us--whee!
Gun, spear--when we start we have feefty slave. Ten we loos' before
war hit us so we know and hit back. Ha! Dis one beeg war!"
"How far, tell me," gasped O'Hara, "has the fighting gone?"
"Leesten!" The stranger lifted his hand. "Hear dem drum? One
here--one dar--one five mile 'way--one ten mile 'way! Oh, ev'ywhere
dem drum! Hear dem yell! How far dis war gone--dis war gone clean to
Cuba! Dis one beeg war, by damn!"
"Has the war," I cried, "reached the mission on the river?"
"Ha! You t'ink you see dat meession, hey? Dat meession, he fall down
long since time, I'll bet. One good t'ing dat war he do."
If only I had never seen the girl by the river, I thought. If only I
could have forgotten her! I turned away. Yet even then I would not
have spared one iota of my brief memories of that girl with the
strong, kind face and quiet voice. If I never saw her again, I still
had something to hold fast. How many times, since Seth Upham went
down to die by the spring, had I thought of that girl as one of the
few people whom I should be glad to see again, and how many times
had I wished that she did not think so ill of me!
"Tell me, you man, where from you come?" the stranger now asked.
"You come _pop_! So! Whee!"
At that Gleazen spoke in Spanish, and the man turned like a cat
taken unawares and looked at him with shrewd, keen eyes. Then
Matterson came up to them and likewise began to talk in Spanish,
and others crowded round them.
Arnold, after listening for a moment, drew me to one side. "See," he
murmured.
Following his gesture, I looked around the camp and saw, in the
middle of the clearing, thirty or forty cowering negroes bound fast
by bamboo withes. Behind them and mingling with them were bullocks
and sheep and goats. Moving restlessly about in the light of
earliest morning were numbers of male and female slaves; and on
every side were baled hides and bundles of merchandise: ivory, rice,
beeswax, and even, it was whispered, gold.
"I fear, my friend," Arnold said in an undertone, "that our hosts
are more to the taste of Gleazen than of ourselves."
"You have heard them talking," I whispered. "Tell me what they
said."
"Only," replied Arnold, "that _we_ have a ship and _they_ have a
cargo; that it will be to our mutual advantage to join forces."
I looked again at the captive negroes, and again thought of the girl
at the mission and of the evil that she had attributed to me.
"To join forces," I said,--and in my excitement I spoke aloud,--"in
trading human beings? Not that!"
The others turned.
"What are you two talking about?" Matterson asked quickly in his
light voice.
"Of one thing and another," I replied, flushing.
"Come," said Gleazen, boldly, "let us _all_ talk together."
"Dis one beeg war!" the trader cried. "To fight--eet is all we can
do. Fighting we go, da's what me, I say. See! Sun, he come up!"
"To that," said Arnold, "we all agree. We, sir, will go with you and
fight by your side."
"Good! Me, I's happy. You brave men. Dis one beeg war, but we make
plenty war back again."
Then he cried out orders in Spanish, and the camp woke to the
activities of the new day; and while some of us held off the blacks,
the rest of us ate our morning meal in the first golden sunlight of
the dawn, with a hum and bustle of packing and harnessing and
herding going on around us.
But all the time the drums beat, and far away we would hear now and
then calls and shouts that made the strange trader and Gleazen and
O'Hara exchange significant glances.
As with loaded muskets we fell in to guard the caravan, and the
porters lifted their bundles, and the herders goaded their beasts,
and the captive negroes started hopelessly on the road to the river,
and the sudden hush of voices made the trample of feet seem three
times louder than before, we heard guns behind us.
"Ha! Dose trade gun, hey?" the trader cried, and fell into Spanish.
Wheeling his horse, he anxiously looked back along the road.
One thing for which we had crossed the sea was lost in a hut overrun
by an army of vengeful savages. There was no fortune left for us, I
knew, unless it were a fortune gained by bartering human souls; and
at that, which lay at the real bottom of all Neil Gleazen's schemes,
my heart revolted. What chance should we have had of saving for Seth
Upham his ship and what money was left, even if he had lived? Small
chance, I admitted.
All day we drove on in a forced march, leaving the war to all
appearances far behind us and stopping only at noon, by a clear cold
stream in the forest, to eat a hasty meal; and at nightfall,
crossing another stretch of prairie, we came to still another
forest.
"Here," the trader cried, "here ees one fine leetle river! Here we
camp one leetle while! Den we go--like fire--when midnight come,
mebbe we see one beeg river!"
That we, who had come the night before from the house on the king's
grave, were ready to rest, I can assure you. Never in all my life
have I been so heavy with weariness, nay, with downright exhaustion,
as on that evening at the edge of that African forest.
The very beasts were weary after the long day's march. The trader's
horse hung its head. The bullocks and goats and sheep plodded on
before their noisy herders and scarcely quickened their pace at
thrust of goad or snap of whip. The captive negroes, wretched
creatures doomed to the horrors of the infamous middle passage in
the hold of some Cuban or Brazilian slave-ship, wearily dragged
along, their chins out-thrust, their hands lashed behind them. The
traders' own slaves, bending under the weight of hides and rice and
ivory, stumbled as they walked, and even the white men themselves,
who had done nothing more than ride or walk over the road, breathed
hard and showed drawn faces as they eagerly pushed on or
apprehensively looked back.
Into the woods we pressed, thanking in our hearts the Divine
Providence that here at least there was no throb of drum, no howling
of black heathen, no war at all. The aisles between the great trees
were cool and green and inviting. The river rippled over rocks and
suggested by its music the luxury of bathing; fruits were to be had
for the picking, and there was no doubt in my mind that our hosts
would butcher a sheep for the evening meal.
Water, food, and sleep at that moment seemed more desirable than all
the dominions of Africa; and water, food, and sleep, I was
confident, were but now at hand. Into the forest we marched, for
once relaxing the watchfulness that we had maintained since sunrise,
and down the trail to the creek that we could hear murmuring on its
way over the rocks and through the underbrush. And there, at the end
of our long day's journey, the bushes suddenly blossomed in flame.
Guns boomed in our very faces. Up and down the creek fire flashed in
long spurts. The wind brought to our nostrils the stinging smell of
powder-smoke. Men and beasts were thrown into wild confusion. In the
dim light of the forest I saw coming at us from all sides, naked men
armed with trade guns and bows and spears and lances. Louder than
the shouts and curses behind us, rang the exultant yells before us.