On the following day the sun shone down on a strange scene. Stasch
walked alongside of the steep cliff, stood still in front of each negro,
poured water over each forehead while making the sign of the cross, and
at the same time pronounced the sacred words. And they slept—their
hands and feet shaking, their heads sunk on their chests or held
upright. Though still alive, they resembled corpses. In this manner the
sleepers were baptized in the quiet of the morning, in the light of the
sun, in the silence of the wilderness. The sky was cloudless, highly
arched, gray-blue—as if shrouded in mourning.
Linde was still rational, but became weaker and weaker. After his
bandage had been changed he gave Stasch some papers locked up in a tin
box, and begged him to be especially careful of them; then he ceased to
speak. He could not eat, but he was dreadfully tortured by thirst, and
before sunset he became delirious. He called to some children,
forbidding them to swim out so far in the lake; at last he began to have
convulsions, and afterward sat holding his head in his hands.
On the following day he could not recognize Stasch, and three days
later, at noon, he died without regaining consciousness. Stasch truly
mourned for him a while, then he and Kali carried the body to a nearby
cave, the opening of which they closed with thorns and stones.
Stasch took little Nasibu with him to “Cracow,” and ordered Kali to stay
there, to look after the provisions and keep a large fire burning near
the sleepers at night. Stasch continually rode back and forth between
the two gorges, carrying back to “Cracow” baggage, weapons, and
especially the cartridges for the Remington rifles, out of which he took
the powder he needed to blast the rock that held King a prisoner.
Fortunately Nell’s health improved very much, owing to her daily dose of
quinine, and the great variety of food had given her more appetite and
increased her strength. Stasch left her very reluctantly, and as he felt
that something might happen to her, he forbade her leaving the interior
of the tree during his absence, and closed the opening with branches of
thorny acacia. On account of the increasing duties which had fallen upon
him, he was often obliged to leave her in the care of Mea, Nasibu and
Saba, on whom, by the way, he chiefly relied. He preferred to ride
several times a day to Linde’s camp for provisions rather than leave the
girl too long. This of course meant a great deal of work, but his iron
nature was proof against all fatigue. It took ten days before the things
were properly sorted; those not especially needed were done up in canvas
and the necessary ones were deposited in “Cracow.” The horses were also
brought there, as were a large number of Remington rifles; these burdens
would now fall to the lot of King.
While this was being done, some of the sleepers sprang up in their last
paroxysm, fled wildly into the jungle, and never returned. But there
were others who died on the spot, and still others who rushed off
blindly, dashing their heads to pieces on the rocks in or near the camp.
Kali had to bury them. Two weeks later only one remained, and he soon
expired in his sleep from exhaustion.
At last the time had come to blast the rock and release King. He was now
so tame that at Stasch’s command he lifted him with his trunk and set
him up on his neck. He had also become accustomed to carrying the
burdens which Kali put upon his back by means of a bamboo ladder. Nell
was afraid that one of the pieces was too heavy for him, but the small
load he had on his back seemed no heavier for him than a fly. It was
only now that their baggage—increased by the things Linde had left
them—would be burdensome for him. At first he showed great restlessness
on the approach of Saba, but now he was quite friendly with the dog, and
played with him by throwing him down on the ground with his trunk,
whereupon Saba pretended to bite him. But sometimes he unexpectedly
poured water over the dog, which, of course, the latter considered a
very poor joke.
The children were especially pleased that the intelligent beast
understood everything that was required of him, and that he not only
paid the greatest attention to every command or request, but to every
sign given him. Elephants far outstrip all other animals in this
respect, and King greatly surpassed Saba, who only wagged his tail at
every command and threat from Nell, and then, in the end, did just what
he pleased.
For instance, after several weeks King observed that the person to be
implicitly obeyed was Stasch, and the person who engaged the attention
of every one was Nell. And thus he obeyed Stasch’s commands the most
readily, and loved Nell the dearest. He did not care much for Kali and
ignored Mea.
After Stasch had prepared the blast, he pushed it into the deepest
crack, closed the opening with clay, and only left a tiny hole, out of
which hung a fuse of twisted palm threads rubbed with ground powder. At
last the decisive moment came. Stasch lighted the powdered thread
himself, then ran for his life toward the tree, in which he had
previously shut every one. Nell was afraid that King might become
greatly alarmed, but the boy calmed her by saying that, in the first
place, he had chosen a day when there had been a heavy thunderstorm in
the morning, and, secondly, that wild elephants must have heard the
peals of thunder more than once when the elementary forces of the
heavens had been let loose over the jungle. But nevertheless they sat
there with beating hearts, counting the seconds. At last a terrible
noise shook the air. The bamboo-tree trembled from top to bottom, and
the remains of the mold still left in the tree fell down on their heads.
The next moment Stasch sprang out, and avoiding the bends in the gorge,
made a straight line for the passage.
The results of the explosion were extraordinary. One-half of the chalk
wall had broken into tiny bits, the other into larger and smaller blocks
of stone, which the force of the blast had thrown and scattered quite a
distance.
The elephant was free.
The happy boy at once ran back up the hill, where he met Nell with Mea
and Kali. King had certainly been frightened and had drawn back close to
the edge of the ravine, where he stood with upturned trunk, looking
toward the direction from which such an unusual clap of thunder had
broken out. But as soon as Nell began to call him he stopped moving his
ears from fright, and when she ran down to him through the newly opened
passage he became perfectly calm. But the horses were more frightened
than King, and two of them had fled into the jungle, so that Kali could
not find them again until toward sunset. On the same day Nell led King
back “into the world.” The colossus followed her obediently, like a
small dog. Then he took a bath in the stream, after which he thought of
supper; so leaning his head against a large sycamore-tree, he bent it
like a weak reed, and devoted all his attention to chewing up the fruit
and leaves.
In the evening he returned punctually to the tree, and sticking his
great nose into the opening every minute, he searched so carefully and
persistently for Nell that at last Stasch was obliged to give him a good
smack on his trunk.
Kali was the most pleased with the result of the day, for now he was
relieved from the task of collecting food for the giant, which had not
been at all an easy matter. While preparing a fire to cook the supper
Stasch and Nell heard him singing a new hymn of joy:
“The great man kill people and lions. Yah! Yah! Great man break up rock.
Yah! Elephant breaks his own trees, and Kali can idle and eat. Yah!
Yah!”
The “massika” or rainy season was nearly over. Of course there were
still dark and rainy days, but also some very fine days. Stasch now
decided to move over to the mountain, which Linde had told him about,
and this plan was carried out soon after King’s release. Nell’s health
no longer deterred him, for she was now decidedly better.
Selecting a fine morning, they broke up camp and started for the south.
Now they were no longer afraid of being lost, for the boy had found
among the many other articles of Linde’s outfit a compass and an
excellent telescope, through which far distant places could be plainly
seen. Besides Saba, King, and the donkey, five heavily laden horses were
taken along. King, in addition to the baggage on his back, carried Nell,
who sat on his neck between the enormous ears. She looked as though in a
large armchair. Stasch left the peninsula-shaped promontory and the
baobab-tree without regret, for the remembrance of Nell’s illness clung
to the place. But, on the other hand, the girl looked regretfully at the
rocks, the tree, and the waterfall, and said that she would return again
when she was “grown up.”
But still sadder was the little Nasibu, who had really loved his former
master. Now, as he rode on the donkey at the end of the caravan, he
turned back every minute to look at the place where the body of poor
Linde was to rest till the Day of Judgment.
The wind blew from the north, and the day was very cool. Consequently
they did not need to rest from ten to three, the hours of the greatest
heat, and therefore could go much further than caravans usually do in a
day. The journey was not long, and a few hours after sunset Stasch
perceived the mountain which was to be their destination. In the
distance another chain of hills stood out against the sky, but the
former was much nearer and stood out by itself like an island in the
middle of a jungle sea. When they approached they saw that its
precipitous sides were washed by an arm of the same river on the borders
of which they had previously lived. Its summit was shaped like a round
bowl, and seen from below, seemed to be completely covered by a thick
forest. Stasch figured that as the strip of land in which their
baobab-tree grew was 700 feet high, and this mountain 800 feet higher,
they would be living at an altitude of 1500 feet, and in a climate which
could not be much hotter than that of Egypt. The thought gave him
courage and made him desire to take possession of this natural fortress
as quickly as possible.
They soon found the mountain-pass, which was the only means of reaching
the summit, and immediately began to climb the mountain. An hour and a
half later they had reached the top. The grove they thought they had
seen from below proved to be not only a grove, but a banana-grove. The
sight of this greatly pleased them all, including King; but Stasch was
especially delighted, for he knew that in all Africa there is no food
more strengthening, more healthful, and a better preventive against
illness than flour made of dried bananas. And here was a year’s supply.
Hidden in the foliage of these plants were negro huts, some of which had
been burned during the invasion, and some destroyed by other means;
however, a few remained in fair condition. In the middle stood the
largest, which formerly belonged to the chief of the village. It had
been tastefully constructed out of clay, with a broad roof forming a
sort of veranda around the walls. Here and there in front of the huts
lay single bones and also complete human skeletons, white as chalk, for
they had been thoroughly cleaned by the ants, of whose invasion Linde
had spoken. Many weeks had passed since the invasion of the little
insects, but in the hut there was still a strong scent of formic acid,
and in the dwellings not a trace could be found of the large black
cockroaches—which usually infest the mud huts of the negroes—or
spiders, or scorpions, or any other vermin. Everything had been
destroyed by the terrible “siafu,” and so one could feel confident that
on the entire summit there was not a snake to be found, for even the
boas fall victims to these unconquerable warriors.
After Stasch had led Nell and Mea into the chieftain’s hut, he ordered
Kali and Nasibu to clear away the human bones. The black boy obeyed by
simply throwing them into the stream, and the force of the current
carried them along. But during this work they discovered that Linde had
made a mistake in telling them that they would not find a single living
being on the mountain. The quiet which reigned after the kidnapping of
the inhabitants by the Dervishes, and the tempting look of the bananas,
had enticed a great many chimpanzees, which had arranged something
resembling umbrellas, or small roofs, to protect them from the rain.
Stasch did not want to kill them, so he decided to frighten them away by
shooting into the air. This caused a general confusion, which increased
when Saba’s angry bark was heard, and King, excited by the noise, began
to trumpet vociferously. But the monkeys did not have to seek far to
find a means of retreat, for they galloped to the edges of the cliff and
let themselves down so quickly and with such agility by means of the
trees growing alongside of the banks that King was unable to capture a
single one with his trunk and tusks.
The sun had gone down, and Kali and Nasibu lighted a fire to cook the
evening meal. After Stasch had unpacked the necessary things for the
night, he wended his way to the chief’s hut, of which Nell had already
taken possession. In the hut it was light and cosy, for Nell did not
light the small lamp that had served to illuminate the interior of the
baobab-tree, but a large traveling lamp which they had found among
Linde’s things. As the day had been so cool, Nell did not feel
particularly tired after the journey. She was in a cheerful frame of
mind, which increased when Stasch told her that the bones, which had
frightened her, had been cleared away.
“How good it is to be here,” she said. “Look, even the ground is covered
with asphalt. Here we shall live luxuriously.”
“I shall wait till to-morrow before taking a good look at the whole
settlement,” answered he; “but from what I have already seen to-day I
conclude that it would be a good place to live in all one’s life.”
“If our papas were here, yes, it would then be all right. But what shall
we name this settlement?”
“In geographies this mountain is called Linde Mountain, and this village
is named ‘Nell,’ after you.”
“So, then, I shall also be represented in geography,” said she joyfully.
“Certainly; it will perpetuate your name,” answered Stasch with great
earnestness.