DUE SOUTH
When Berselius and Meeus returned to Fort M'Bassa Adams, who met them,
came to the conclusion that Berselius had been drinking. The man's face
looked stiff and bloated, just as a man's face looks after a terrible
debauch. Meeus looked cold and hard and old, but his eyes were bright and
he was seemingly quite himself.
"To-morrow I shall start," said Berselius. "Not to-day. I am tired and
wish to sleep." He went off to the room where his bed was, and cast
himself on it and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The innocent may wonder how such a man would dare to sleep--dare to enter
that dark country so close to the frontier of death. But what should the
innocent know of a Berselius, who was yet a living man and walked the
earth but a few years ago, and whose prototype is alive to-day. Alive and
powerful and lustful, great in mind, body, and estate.
* * * * *
Before sunrise next morning the expedition was marshalled in the courtyard
for the start.
A great fire burned in the space just before the house, and by its light
the stores and tents were taken from the go-down. The red light of the
fire lit up the black glistening skins of the porters as they loaded
themselves with the chop boxes and tents and guns; lit up the red fez caps
of the onlooking "soldiers," their glittering white teeth, their white
eyeballs, and the barrels of their rifles.
Beyond and below the fort the forest stretched in the living starlight
like an infinite white sea. The tree-tops were roofed with a faint mist,
no breath of wind disturbed it, and in contrast to the deathly stillness
of all that dead-white world the sky, filled with leaping stars, seemed
alive and vocal.
It was chill up here just before dawn. Hence the fire. Food had been
served out to the porters, and they ate it whilst getting things ready and
loading up. Berselius and his companions were breakfasting in the guest
house and the light of the paraffin lamp lay on the veranda yellow as
topaz in contrast with the red light of the fire in the yard.
Everything was ready for the start. They were waiting now for the sun.
Then, away to the east, as though a vague azure wind had blown up under
the canopy of darkness, the sky, right down to the roof of the forest,
became translucent and filled with distance.
A reef of cloud like a vermilion pencil-line materialized itself, became a
rose-red feather tipped with dazzling gold, and dissolved as if washed
away by the rising sea of light.
A great bustle spread through the courtyard. The remaining stores were
loaded up, and under the direction of Félix, the porters formed in a long
line, their loads on their heads.
As the expedition left the compound it was already day. The edge of the
sun had leaped over the edge of the forest, the world was filled with
light, and the sky was a sparkling blue.
What a scene that was! The limitless sea of snow-white mist rippled over
by the sea of light, the mist billowed and spiralled by the dawn wind,
great palm tops bursting through the haze, glittering effulgent with dew,
birds breaking to the sky in coloured flocks, snow, and light, and the
green of tremendous vegetation, and over all, new-built and beautiful, the
blue, tranquil dome of sky.
It was song materialized in colour and form, the song of the primeval
forests breaking from the mists of chaos, tremendous, triumphant, joyous,
finding day at last, and greeting him with the glory of the palms, with
the rustle of the n'sambyas tossing their golden bugles to the light, the
drip and sigh of the euphorbia trees, the broad-leaved plantains and the
thousand others whose forms hold the gloom of the forest in the mesh of
their leaves.
"I have awakened, O God! I have awakened. Behold me, O Lord! I am Thine!"
Thus to the splendour of the sun and led by the trumpet of the wind sang
the forest. A hundred million trees lent their voices to the song. A
hundred million trees--acacia and palm, m'bina and cottonwood, thorn and
mimosa; in gloom, in shine, in valley and on rise, mist-strewn and
sun-stricken, all bending under the deep sweet billows of the wind.
At the edge of the forest Berselius and Adams took leave of Meeus. Neither
Berselius nor Meeus showed any sign of the past day. They had "slept it
off." As for Adams, he knew nothing, except that the villagers had been
punished and their houses destroyed.
The way lay due south. They were now treading that isthmus of woods which
connects the two great forests which, united thus, make the forest of
M'Bonga. The trees in this vast connecting wood are different from the
trees in the main forests. You find here enormous acacias, monkey-bread
trees, raphia palms and baobabs; less gloom, and fewer creeping and
hanging plants.
Berselius, as a rule, brought with him a taxidermist, but this expedition
was purely for sport. The tusks of whatever elephants were slain would be
brought back, but no skins; unless, indeed, they were fortunate enough to
find some rare or unknown species.