I AM THE FOREST
The day after the next, two hours before noon, they passed an object which
Adams remembered well.
It was the big tree which Berselius had pointed out to him as having been
tusked by an elephant; and an hour after they had started from the mid-day
rest, the horizon to the north changed and grew dark.
It was the forest.
The sky immediately above the dark line, from contrast, was
extraordinarily bright and pale, and, as they marched, the line lifted and
the trees grew.
"Look!" said Berselius.
"I see," replied Adams.
A question was troubling his mind. Would Berselius be able to guide them
amidst the trees? Here in the open he had a hundred tiny indications on
either side of him, but amidst the trees how could he find his way? Was it
possible that memory could lead him through that labyrinth once it grew
dense?
It will be remembered that it was a two days' march from Fort M'Bassa
through the isthmus of woods to the elephant country. At the edge of the
forest the trees were very thinly set, but for the rest, and a day's march
from the fort, it was jungle.
Would Berselius be able to penetrate that jungle? Time would tell.
Berselius knew nothing about it; he only knew what lay before his sight.
Toward evening the trees came out to meet them, baobab and monkey-bread,
set widely apart; and they camped by a pool and lit their fire, and slept
as men sleep in the pure air of the woods and the desert.
Next morning they pursued their journey, Berselius still confident. At
noon, however, he began to exhibit slight signs of agitation and anxiety.
The trees were thickening around them; he still knew the way, but the view
before him was getting shorter and shorter as the trees thickened; that is
to say, the mist was coming closer and closer. He knew nothing of the
dense jungle before them; he only knew that the clear road in front of him
was shortening up rapidly and horribly, and that if it continued to do so
it would inevitably vanish.
The joy that had filled his heart became transformed to the grief which
the man condemned to blindness feels when he sees the bright world fading
from his sight, slowly but surely as the expiring flame of a lamp.
He walked more rapidly, and the more rapidly he went the shorter did the
road before him grow.
All at once the forest--which had been playing, up to this, with Berselius
as a cat plays with a mouse--all at once the forest, like a great green
Sphinx, put down its great green paw and spoke from its cavernous heart--
"I am the Forest."
They had passed almost at a step into the labyrinths. Plantain leaves hit
them insolently in the face, lianas hung across their path like green
ropes placed to bar them out, weeds tangled the foot.
Berselius, like an animal that finds itself trapped, plunged madly
forward. Adams following closely behind heard him catching back his breath
with a sob. They plunged on for a few yards, and then Berselius stood
still.
The forest was very silent, and seemed listening. The evening light and
the shade of the leaves cast gloom around them. Adams could hear his own
heart thumping and the breathing of the porters behind him. If Berselius
had lost his way, then they were lost indeed.
After a moment Berselius spoke, as a man speaks whose every hope in life
is shattered.
"The path is gone."
Adams's only reply was a deep intake of the breath.
"There is nothing before me. I am lost."
"Shall we try back?" said Adams, speaking in that hard tone which comes
when a man is commanding his voice.
"Back? Of what use? I cannot go back; I must go forward. But here there is
nothing."
The unhappy man's voice was terrible to hear. He had marched so
triumphantly all day, drawing nearer at each step to himself, to that self
which memory had hidden from him and which memory was disclosing bit by
bit. And now the march was interrupted as if by a wall set across his
path.
But Adams was of a type of man to whom despondency may be known, but never
despair.
They had marched all day; they were lost, it is true, but they were not
far, now, from Fort M'Bassa. The immediate necessity was rest and food.
There was a little clearing amidst the trees just here, and with his own
hands he raised the tent. They had no fire, but the moon when she rose,
though in her last quarter, lit up the forest around them with a green
glow-worm glimmer. One could see the lianas and the trees, the broad
leaves shining with dew, some bright, some sketched in dimly, and all
bathed in gauze green light; and they could hear the drip and patter of
dew on leaf and branch.
This is a mournful sound--the most mournful of all the sounds that fill
the great forests of the Congo. It is so casual, so tearful. One might
fancy it the sound of the forest weeping to itself in the silence of the
night.