DOWN THE CURRENT
When I was a boy in school, I one day ran across a translation of
Homer's Iliad and carried it home and read it afternoons for a week.
During those days I lived in the great pictures of the battles on
the plains of Troy, and though afterwards I had seldom thought of
them, they had never quite faded from my memory.
It was far indeed from Homer's Iliad to an ambush in an African
forest; but the fight that ensued when we walked into that hornets'
nest of black warriors nevertheless brought Homer's story vividly to
my mind. The spears, I think, suggested the resemblance; or perhaps
the wild swiftness of the fight. First an arrow came whistling
through the air and struck one of the men on the throat and went
through his neck half the length of the shaft. He spun round,
spattering me with dark blood that ran from a severed vein, and went
down under the feet of the bullocks without a word. Then the
bullocks turned, stampeded by the sight and smell of blood, and
crowded back upon the sheep and goats, and the porters dropped their
burdens and tried to run. O'Hara threw up his musket and shattered
the skull of a huge black who came at him with a knife like the
blade of a scythe, and, himself stooping to pick up the knife,
grappled with another and died, shrieking, from a spear-thrust up
under the ribs. Then one of the porters hurled a bundle at a man who
was about to cut him down, and the bundle broke and a shower of
yellow gold scattered in front of us, whereupon there was a short,
fierce rush for plunder.
Side by side with Arnold Lamont and Gleazen, emptying my pistol into
the crowd, I saw out of the corner of my eye that the blacks were
cutting their way into the heart of the caravan for slaves and
booty.
Imagine, if you can, that motley horde which had rushed upon us out
of the wood. Some, naked except for loin cloths, brandished spears
and howled like enraged maniacs; some, in queer quilted armor and
helmets with ostrich plumes, clumsily wielded trade muskets; some
advanced boldly under the cover of shields and others, ranging
through the underbrush, kept up a desultory flight of arrows. It was
primitive, unorganized, ferocious war.
"_Mon dieu_, what a spectacle!" Arnold exclaimed; then, "Now, my
friends, quick! To the left! While the thieves steal, we yet may
escape!"
Up from the mêlée, streaked with blood and dust, now came the
trader. "All, all ees gone!" he wailed, and waved his arms and
shrieked and stamped and cursed and jabbered on in Spanish.
Had our enemies been content to delay their plundering until they
had killed us all, not one of us would have escaped to tell the true
story of that bloody day. But at the sight of a rich caravan and
loose gold, the blacks, in the twinkling of an eye, were fighting
among themselves.
"Quick!" again cried Arnold's voice, strangely familiar in the midst
of that grotesquely unreal uproar, and as amazingly precise as ever.
"Quick, gentlemen! It is our only chance."
And with that, he, Gleazen, Matterson, the trader, Abe, and I took
to our heels into the bushes. The woods behind the line of the
ambush appeared to be deserted. At the foot of a ravine ran the
creek. We crossed it by a rude bridge of branches, hastily and
silently climbed the opposite bank, and stole off quite unobserved.
A hundred yards farther on, at the sound of a great thrash and
clatter, we dove into the undergrowth and lay hidden while a band of
blacks tore past us to the scene of battle. But getting hastily up
as soon as they were out of sight, we resumed our headlong retreat.
Every bush and tree darkly threatened us. Great rocks, deeply clothed
in moss and tumbled so together as to form damp holes and caves,
at once tempted us by their scores of hiding-places and filled us
with apprehension lest natives might have hidden there before us.
But as if we were playing the old game of follow-my-leader, we
scrambled up and down, and in and out, and always hard ahead, until
we again heard before us a rumble of voices and pounding feet, and
a second time, desperately, flung ourselves into the undergrowth
and lay all atremble while half a hundred naked negroes, armed with
bows and clubs and spears, came trotting, single file, like wolves,
and passed us not fifty feet away.
As they disappeared, and while we still dared not move, I saw
something stir not five English cubits from my face. I caught my
breath and stared at the thing. Ten feet ahead of it; the leaves and
ferns rustled, and twenty feet ahead of it then, twitching, it
disappeared. I broke out from head to foot in sweat. Unwittingly, we
had thrown ourselves down within hand's reach of a great serpent.
Whether or not newly gorged, and so too sleepy to resent our
nearness, it moved slowly away through the quivering undergrowth.
When we had put a mile between ourselves and the plundered caravan,
Matterson turned with an oath. "Poor Bud!" he said in his hard,
light voice. "At least, we'll hear no more of jujus and devils and
king's graves."
Gleazen shrugged and turned to the trader. "How far is the river?"
he asked.
"Mebbe one mile--mebbe two."
"Do you, sir, know the road?" Arnold asked.
The trader nodded and spread his hands as if in despair. "Know heem?
I know heem, yes! T'ree, ten, fifty time I come with slave and ivory
and hide--now all gone! Forty prime slave all gone! Ev'ytheeng
gone!"
Gleazen grunted.
"Let us go to the river," said Arnold.
"Heem reever go by town," wailed the trader. "Heem beeg town! Walls
so high and strong!"
"Ah, that is another matter," said Arnold. "But let us go forward at
all events. We may, for all that we can tell, strike the river below
the town."
So forward we went in the darkness, and a slow, tedious journey it
was, particularly for Abe and me, who helped Matterson along as best
we could; but we avoided the town by the sound of drumming that
issued from behind its walls, and having helped ourselves to fruit
from the patches of cultivated land that we passed, we at last
emerged from the darkness of the woods into the half light of a
great clearing, and saw a vast, black, living surface on which
strange lights played unsteadily. It seemed unbelievable that it
really could be the same river that we had left so long ago,--in the
sense of all that had happened, so very long ago,--and yet I knew,
as I watched Gleazen and Matterson, that it must be the same. The
black, swift current recalled to my mind the toil that we had
expended in coming so far to so little purpose. In which direction
the creek lay that we had entered on our way to the ill-fated hut, I
had not the remotest idea; but I looked a long time downstream
toward the mission.
Bearing around in a rough half-circle, we worked slowly down the
bank, until the walls of the town itself were before us, at a safe
distance.
"Our boat," said Matterson, grimly, "is fifty miles away."
"Wait here," said I. "There'll be canoes under the town. I'll get
one."
Gleazen made a motion as if to go himself, but Arnold shook his
head. "No; let Joe go first. He will learn where the canoes are, and
do it more quietly than we."
They all sat down by the edge of the water, and, leaving them, I
went on alone. It took all the courage I could muster; but having
rashly offered, I would not hesitate.
For one thing, it gave me time to think, and in a sense I desired to
think, although in another sense it came to me that I was more
afraid of my own thoughts than of all the walled towns in Africa.
The living nightmare through which we had passed had left me worn in
body and mind. That Uncle Seth, upon whom once I had placed every
confidence, should have died so tragic a death, now brought me a
fresh burst of sorrow, as if I realized it for the first time. It
seemed to me that I could hear his sharp yet kindly voice speaking
to me of little things in our life at Topham. I thought of one
episode after another in those earlier days, some of them, things
that had happened while my mother was alive; others, things that had
happened after her death; all, things that I had almost forgotten
long before. My poor uncle, I thought for the hundredth time--my
poor, poor uncle!
Then suddenly another thought came to me and I straightened up and
stood well-nigh aghast. By the terms of my uncle's will, of which
more than once he had told me, all that had been his was mine!
The river silently swept down between its high banks, past me who
stood where the waves licked at my feet, past the black walls of the
town, which stood like a sentinel guarding the unknown fastnesses of
the continent of Africa, past high hill and low gravel shoal and
bottomless morass, past pawpaw and pine palm and mangrove, to the
mission and the sea.
There I stood, as still as a statue, until after a long time I
remembered my errand and, like one just awakened, continued on my
way.
I found a score of canoes drawn up on the beach under the town, and
very carefully placing paddles by one that was large enough for our
entire party, I cautiously returned to the others and reported what
I had done. Together we all slipped silently along the shore to the
canoes, launched the one that I had chosen, and with a last glance
up at the pointed roofs of the houses and the sharpened pickets of
the stockade, silently paddled, all unobserved, out on the strong
current and went flying down into the darkness.
It had been one thing to row up stream against that current. It was
quite another, and vastly easier, even though three of us were
entirely ignorant of handling such a canoe, to paddle down the swift
waters of midstream. Exerting always the greatest care to balance
the ticklish wooden craft, which the blacks with their crude adzes
had hewn out of a solid log, we sent it, even by our clumsy efforts,
fairly flying past the trees ashore; and as it seemed that we had
struck the river many miles below the creek where we had left our
boat, we had hopes that the one night would bring us within striking
distance of the open sea. Indeed, I found myself watching every
point and bend, in hope that the mission lay just beyond it.
Estimating that daylight was still two hours away, we drew in shore
at Gleazen's suggestion, to raid a patch of yams or plantains.
"A man," he said arrogantly, but with truth, "can't go forever on an
empty stomach."
Luckless venture that it was--no sooner did the canoe grate on the
beach than a wakeful woman in a hut on the bank set up a squealing
and squalling. As we put out again incontinently into the river, we
heard, first behind us, then also ahead of us, the roll of those
accursed native drums.
To this very day I abhor the sound of drumming. It has a devilishly
haunting note that I cannot escape; and small wonder.
We swept on down the current, but now, here and there, the
river-banks were alive with blacks, and always the booming of drums
ran before us, to warn the country that we were coming. Once, as we
passed a wooded point, a spear flew over our heads and went hissing
into the water, and I was all for putting over to the other bank.
But Arnold, who could use his eyes and ears as well as his head,
cried, "No! Watch!"
All at once, under the dark bank of the river, there was screaming
and splashing and floundering. The torches that immediately flared
up revealed what Arnold, and now the rest of us, expected to see,
but they also revealed indistinctly another and more dreadful sight:
on the shore, running back and forth in great excitement, were many
men; but in the troubled water a negro was struggling in vain to
escape from the toils of a huge serpent, which was wrapping itself
round him and dragging him down into the river where it had been
lying in wait.
To me, even though I knew that that very negro had been watching for
a chance to waylay us, the sight of the poor fellow's horrible death
almost overcame me.
Not so with Matterson and Gleazen.
With a curse, Matterson cried, "There's one less of them now." His
light voice filled me with loathing.
And Gleazen softly laughed.
On down the river we went, with flying paddles, and round a bend.
But as we passed the bend, I looked back, and saw coming after us,
first one canoe, then two, then six, then so many that I lost all
count.
How far we had come in that one night, I had little or no idea; but
it was easy to see by the attitude of those who knew the river
better than I, that the end of our journey was close at hand.
Glancing round at our pursuers, Gleazen spoke in an undertone to
Matterson, and both they and the trader studied the shore ahead of
us.
"A scant ten miles," Gleazen muttered; "only ten miles more."
I felt the heavy dugout leap forward under the fierce pull of our
paddles. The water turned away from the bow in foam, and we fairly
outrode the current. But fast though we were, the war fleets behind
us were faster. By the next bend they had gained a hundred yards, by
the next, another hundred. We now led them by a scant quarter of a
mile, and if Gleazen had estimated our distance rightly, they would
have had us long before we could reach port. But suddenly, all
unexpectedly, round the next bend, not half a mile away, the mission
sprang into sight.
There it stood, in the early morning sun, as clean and cool and
still as if it were a thousand miles away from Africa and all its
wars.
"Give me your pistols," Arnold cried; and when we tossed them to him
and in frantic haste resumed our paddling, he coolly renewed the
priming and one by one fired them at our pursuers.
That the negroes had a gun we then learned, for they retorted by a
single shot; but the shot went wild and the arrows that followed it
fell short, and our pistols cooled their eagerness. So we swept in
to the landing by the mission, and beached the canoe, and ran up
the long straight path to the mission house as fast as we could go,
while the black canoemen paused in midstream and let their craft
swing with the current.
The place, as we came rushing up to it, was so quiet, so peaceful,
so free from any faintest sign of the terrible days through which we
had passed, that it seemed as if, after all, we had never left it;
as if we were waking from a troubled sleep; as if we had spent a
thousand years in the still, hazy heat of that very clearing. The
face in the window, the opening door, only intensified that uncanny
sense of familiarity.
The door opened, and the man we had seen before met us. His eyes
were stern and inhospitable.
"What?" said he. "Must you bring your vile quarrels and vile wars to
the very threshold of one whose whole duty here is to preach the
word of God?"
"Those," cried Arnold, angry in turn, but as always, precise in
phrase and enunciation, "are hard words to cast at strangers who
come to your gate in trouble."
"Trouble, sir, of your own brewing," the missionary retorted. "What
you have been up to, I do not know. Nor have I any wish to save your
rascally necks from a fate you no doubt richly merit."
"Your words are inclusive," I cried.
"They certainly include you, young man. If you would not be judged
by this company that you are keeping, you should think twice or
three times before embarking with it."
"Father!" said a low voice.
My heart leaped, but I did not turn my head. Down the river, manned
by warriors armed to the teeth, came more canoes of the war. Behind
them were more,--and more,--and still more.
"Come, come, you sniveling parson," Gleazen bellowed, "where are
your guns? Where's your powder? Come, arm yourself!"
The man turned on him with a look of scorn that no words of mine can
properly describe.
"You have brought your dirty quarrel to my door," he said in a grim,
hard voice. "Now do you wish me to fight your battles for you?"
Steadily, silently, the canoes were swinging inshore. I saw negroes
running into the clearing. On my left I heard a cry so shrill and
full of woe that it stood out, even amid the ungodly clamor of the
blacks, and commanded my attention.
The man stepped down from the porch.
"This," he said, turning, "is a house of peace. I order you to leave
it. I will go down and talk with these men myself."
"You'll never come back alive!" Matterson cried, and hoarsely
laughed.
At that the missionary, John Parmenter, merely smiled, and, afraid
of neither man nor devil, walked down toward the river and fell dead
with a chance arrow through his heart.
There was something truly magnificent in his cold courage, and
Gleazen paid him almost involuntary tribute by crying, "There, by
heaven, went a brave man!"
But from the door of the house the girl suddenly ran out. Her face
was deathly white and her voice shook, but as yet there were no
tears in her eyes.
"Father!" she cried, and ran down the path, where occasional arrows
still fell, and bent over the dead man.
"Come up, you little fool," Gleazen shouted. "Come back!" Then he
jumped and swore, as an arrow with a longer flight than its fellows
passed above his head.
The canoes were drawing in upon the shore, very cautiously,
deliberately, grimly, in a great half-moon, and more of them were
arriving at every moment.
I leaped from the porch and sped down beside the girl.
"Come," I cried, "you--we--can do nothing for him."
"Is it you?" she said. "You--I--go back!"
"Come," I cried hoarsely.
"Don't leave him here."
I bent over and lifted the body, and staggering under its weight,
carried it up into the house and laid it on the couch in the big
front room.
All this time the noise within and without the mission was
deafening. The blacks on the river were howling with fury, and those
ashore, who had not already fled to the woods, were wailing in grief
and terror. Gleazen and Arnold Lamont had joined forces to organize
a defense, the one raving at the arrant cowards who were fleeing
from first sight of an enemy, while the other turned the place
upside down in search of arms. And still the blacks on the river
held off, probably for fear of firearms, though there were
indications that as their numbers grew, they were screwing up their
courage to decisive action.
The girl, suddenly realizing the object of Arnold's search, said
quietly, "There are no weapons."
Arnold threw his hands out in a gesture of despair.
"If you wish to leave," she coldly said, "there is a boat half a
mile downstream. You can reach it by the path that leads from the
chapel. No one will notice you if you hurry."
"Then," I cried, "we'll go and you shall come with us."
Gleazen spoke to the trader in Spanish.
Abe Guptil was beside me now and Arnold behind me. We three, come
what would, were united.
A louder yell than any before attracted our attention, and
Matterson, who stood where he could see out of the window, called,
"They're coming! Run, Neil, run!"
At that he turned and fled, with the others after him.
I stopped and looked into the girl's gray eyes.
"Come!" I cried, "in heaven's name, make haste!"
I had clean forgotten that the dead man by whom the girl was
standing was her father; but her next words, which were spoken from
deepest despair, reminded me of it grimly.
"I will not leave him," she said.
"You must!"
"I cannot."
"What," said I, "would he himself have had you do?"
Her determination faltered.
"Come! You cannot do anything more for him! Come."
She shook her head.
"Then I shall stay," I said.
"No," said she, and I saw that there was a change in her manner
toward me. "You will go and I--I--"
Then she whistled and cried, "Paul! Paul!"
The great black Fantee servant whom I had seen with her in the canoe
on that day when first we met, appeared suddenly.
"Come," she said.
I now saw that Arnold Lamont was running back to the door of the
room.
"Quick!" he called. "_Mon dieu_, be quick!"
He stepped aside and let her go through the door first.