Samba is Missing
Nando was like a child in his humours. His broad face
could not long be overclouded. When the party once
more embarked he performed his work as chief paddler
with his usual cheerfulness. All that day the river washed
the edge of a continuous forest tract--a spur, as Jack
understood from Nando's not too lucid explanations, of the
vast Upper Congo forest that stretched for many hundreds
of miles across the heart of Africa. Jack gazed with great
curiosity, merged sometimes in a sense of awe and mystery,
at the dark impenetrable woodland. It was only a year
or two since he had read Stanley's account of his wonderful
march through the forest, and his vivid recollection
was quickened and intensified by the sight of the actual
scene.
"And are there pigmies in that forest--little men, you
know?" he asked Nando.
"Sartin sure, sah. Me fight fousand hundred little
tiny men: me no 'fraid. Dey shoot plenty good, sah:
one arrow shoot two free birds. Dey hab berrah fine
eye, sah; see what big man no can see. Massa see dem
some day: make massa laugh plenty much."
Here and there, in places where the river widened out,
the travellers came upon herds of hippopotami disporting
themselves in the shallows. Their presence was often
indicated first by strange squeals and grunts: then a huge
head would be seen on the surface of the water as the
beast heard the regular splash of the paddles and was
provoked to investigate its cause; his jaws would open,
disclosing a vast pink chasm; and having completed his long
yawn, and satisfied himself that the strangers intended no
harm, he would plunge his head again beneath the water,
or turn clumsily to wallow in uncouth gambols with his
mates. The negroes always plied their paddles more
rapidly at such spots. Nando told stories of hippopotami
which had upset canoes out of sheer mischief, and of others
which, pricked and teased by native spears, had lain in
wait among the rushes and wrecked the craft of fishers
returning to their homes at dusk.
"Me no 'fraid of little man," said Nando; "me plenty
much 'fraid of hippo."
Now and again a crocodile, disturbed in his slumbers by
the splashing of the paddles or the songs of the men, would
dart out of a creek and set off in furious chase; but finding
the canoe a tougher morsel than he expected, would sink
after a disappointed sniffing and disappear. Occasionally
Mr. Martindale or Jack would take a shot at the reptiles,
but they were so numerous that by and by the travellers
desisted from their "potting," Mr. Martindale regarding
it as a waste of good ammunition.
The natives whom they saw at riverside villages were
now sometimes suspicious, and disinclined to have any
communication with the strangers. Returning from
interviews with them, Nando reported that they had heard of
the massacre at Banonga, and though he assured them
that his employer was no friend of the tyrants, he failed
to convince them: he was a white man; that was enough.
It was with some difficulty, and only after the exercise
of much tact, patience, and good humour on Nando's part,
that he managed to secure enough food to supply the
needs of the men.
Two days passed amid similar scenes. The journey never
became monotonous, for in that wonderful land there is
always something fresh to claim the traveller's attention.
Jack began to give Samba lessons in English, and found
him an apt enough pupil, though, in practising his
newly-acquired words afterwards, the boy, to Jack's amusement,
adopted a pronounced Irish accent from Barney.
On the morning of the third day, when the camp became
active, Barney was somewhat surprised to find that Samba
and Pat did not join him as usual at breakfast. Boy and
dog had gone to sleep together in his tent, and he had not
seen or heard their departure. Breakfast was cleared
away, everything was packed up in readiness for starting,
and yet the missing members of the party had not appeared.
Both were very popular; Samba's unfailing cheerfulness
had made him a general favourite, and Pat's sagacity, his
keen sporting instincts, and the vigour of his barking when
hippopotami or crocodiles came too near the canoe, won
for him a good deal of admiration from the natives.
"What! Samba gone!" exclaimed Mr. Martindale,
when Barney told him of the disappearance. "Have you
called him?"
"Sure me throat is sore wid it, sorr," said Barney,
"and me lips are cracked wid whistling for Pat, bad cess
to 'm."
"The dog has gone too, eh? I reckon Samba's a thief
like the rest of 'em."
"Begging yer pardon, sorr, it takes two to make a thief,
one to steal, the other to be stolen. Pat would never agree
to be stolen, sorr; besides, he would never be such an
ungrateful spalpeen uv a dog, not to speak uv the bad
taste of it, as to desert his ould master for a nigger bhoy."
"Well, what's become of them, then? Nando, where's Samba?"
"Me no can tell, sah. Me fink crocodile eat him, sah.
Little tiny black boy go walk all alone alone night time.
Yah! crocodile come 'long, fink black boy make plenty
good chop. Soosh! little black boy in ribber, crocodile
eat him all up, sah. What for black boy go walk alone?
One time all right, Nando eat manioc[1]; nudder time all
wrong, crocodile eat Samba."
Nando shook his head sententiously; Samba's exploit
on the night of the alarm was evidently still rankling.
"That's not it at all," said Barney. "Pat would niver
permit any crocodile, wid all his blarney, to eat him; and
if a crocodile ate Samba, sure Pat would have been the
first to come and tell us."
"No, it's your Irish that has frightened the boy," said
Jack gravely. "I've been trying to teach him a few
words of English; but I've noticed once or twice, after
I've done with him, that he pronounces the words as if
he'd learnt them in Ireland. No decent black boy could
stand that, you know, Barney."
"Faith, 'tis Irishmen that speak the best English,"
returned Barney; "did I not hear them wid me very own
ears in the house uv Parlimint?"
"Well, Jack, we must go on," said Mr. Martindale.
"I was afraid the boy would be a botheration."
"He has done us a good turn, uncle. Couldn't we wait
an hour or two and see if he appears?"
"It's not business, Jack."
"My dear uncle, it's no use your posing as a hard-hearted
man of business. You know you're quite fond
of the boy."
"Eh! Well, I own he's a likely little fellow, and I sort
of felt he's a part of the concern; in short, Jack, we'll
put in an hour or two and give him a chance."
An hour passed, and Pat made his appearance. He
trotted soberly into the camp, not frisking or barking
joyously as was his wont.
"Arrah thin, ye spalpeen, where's Samba?" cried
Barney as the dog came to him.
Pat hung his head, and put his tail between his legs and
whined.
"Go and fetch him, then," cried Barney.
The terrier looked at his master, turned as if to do
his bidding, then moved slowly round and whined
again.
"Sure 'tis not devoured by a crocodile he is, or Pat
would be in a terrible rage. The bhoy has deserted, sorr,
and Pat's heart is after being broken."
"Well, we'll wait a little longer, Barney," said
Mr. Martindale; "he may turn up yet."
The day wore itself out, and Samba had not returned.
Mr. Martindale and Jack spent part of the time in shooting,
adding a goodly number of wild ducks, a river hog and an
antelope to the larder. Part of the time they watched
the men fishing, or rather harpooning, for they caught the
fish by dexterous casts of their light spears. Towards
evening Mr. Martindale became seriously anxious, and a
little testy.
"I'm afraid a crocodile has made a meal of him, after
all," he said. "I don't reckon he'd any reason for leaving
us; he got good victuals."
"And a good knife, uncle. Perhaps he has gone to
find his father."
"No, I don't bank on that. Too far for a young boy
to go alone, through the forest, too, on foot. Anyway,
he's an ungrateful young wretch to go without saying a
word; I've always heard these blacks don't measure up
to white people in their feelings."
Mr. Martindale delayed his departure until the middle
of the next day in the hope that Samba would return.
Then, however, he declared he could wait no longer, and
the party set off.
Late in the afternoon of the next day they came to a
spot where a gap occurred in the thick vegetation that
lined the bank. Here, said Nando, they must land. Ilola,
the principal village of the chief to whom they were bound,
stood a short distance from the river, and the way to it lay
through the clear space between two forest belts. A quarter
of an hour's walking brought them to the village, a cluster
of tent-shaped grass huts almost hidden in the bush. The
settlement was surrounded by a stockade, and the plantations
of banana, maize, and ground-nuts showed signs of
careful cultivation.
Nando went alone to interview the chief, bearing a
present of cloth and a small copper token which Mr. Martindale
had received from his friend Barnard. The chief
would recognize it as the replica of one given to him. Nando
returned in an hour's time, troubled in countenance.
Imbono the chief, he said, had refused to meet the white man,
or to have any dealings with him. He well remembered
the white man who had cured his son and given him the
token two years before; had they not become blood
brothers! But since then many things had happened.
Dark stories had reached his ears of the terrible consequences
that followed the coming of the white man. One of his
young men--his name was Faraji--who had joined a party
of traders carrying copper down the Congo, had just come
back with dreadful tales of what he himself had seen.
When Imbono was a boy his people had lived in terror of
the white-robed men from the East.[2] There had been a
great white-robed chief named Tippu Tib, who sent his
fighting men far and wide to collect ivory and slaves.
These men knew no pity; they carried destruction
wherever they went, tearing children from parents, husbands
from wives, chaining them together, beating them with
cruel whips, strewing the land with the corpses of slaves
exhausted by long marching or slain because they were
ill or weak.
But terrible as were the warriors of Tippu Tib, surely
the servants of the Great White Chief[3] were more terrible
still; for it often happened that the slave hunters, having
come once, came not again; like a fierce tempest they
passed; but as, when a storm has devastated a forest, new
trees grow and flourish in the room of the old, so when
a village had been robbed of its youth, their places were in
course of time filled by other boys and girls. And even
when the slave hunters came some villagers would escape,
and hide in dens or among the forest trees until the danger
had passed. But the servants of the Great White Chief
were like a blight settling for ever on the land. They came,
and stayed; none could escape them, none were spared,
young or old. Imbono feared the white man; he prayed
him to go in peace; the men of Ilola were peaceable, and
sought not to make enemies, but they had bows and arrows,
and long shields, and heavy-shafted spears, and if need
be they would defend themselves against the stranger.
"I guess this is kind of awkward," said Mr. Martindale
when Nando had finished his report. "You can't trade
with a man who won't see you. Did you explain that
we don't belong to the Great White Chief, Nando?"
"Me say all dat, sah; chief shake him head."
"I suppose you told him our men are not armed?"
"No, sah; me forgot dat, dat am de troof."
"Well, go back; tell the chief that I'm a friend and
want to see him. Say that I'll come into the village alone,
or with Mr. Jack, and we'll leave our guns behind us.
Tell him the white man he saw two years ago said he was
a very fine fellow, and I'll trust myself unarmed among
his people, bows and arrows and spears and all."
Nando went away, and after another hour returned and
said that Imbono, after much persuasion, had agreed to
receive the white man because he was a friend of his blood
brother. Leaving their rifles and revolvers in Barney's
charge, Mr. Martindale and Jack accompanied Nando to
the village. The single entrance to the stockade was
guarded by a throng of tall warriors with curiously painted
skins, and armed with the weapons Nando had described,
carrying in addition knives with long leaf-shaped blades.
"They ain't the daisiest of beauties," said Mr. Martindale
as he passed them.
"Ugly fellows in a scrimmage," said Jack.
They went on, past the first huts, stared at by knots of
the villagers, until they came to the chief's dwelling in the
centre of the settlement. Imbono was a tall, well set up,
handsome negro, standing half a head taller than the men
about him. He received the strangers with grave courtesy,
offered them a cup of palm wine, and motioned them to
two low carved stools, seating himself on a third.
Through Nando Mr. Martindale explained his business,
dwelling on the friendly relations which had existed between
the chief and the white man, and assuring him of his
peaceable intentions and of his absolute independence of the
servants of the Great White Chief. Imbono listened in
silence, and made a long reply, repeating what he had
already said through Nando. Suddenly he turned to the
young man at his side, whom he called Faraji, and bade
him tell the white man what he had seen.
"Ongoko! Ongoko!"[4] exclaimed the other men. Faraji
stepped forward and told his story, with a volubility that
outran Nando's powers as an interpreter, and at the same
time with a seriousness that impressed his hearers.
"I come from Mpatu," he said. "It is not my village:
my village is Ilola. I passed through Mpatu on my way
home. It is no longer a village. Why? The servants
of the Great White Chief had come up the river. They told
the people that the lords of the world, the sons of heaven,
had given all the land to the Great White Chief. Mpatu
belonged no more to the chief Lualu: it belonged to the
Great White Chief. But the Great White Chief was a good
chief; he would be a father to his people. Would he take
their huts, their gardens, their fowls, their children? No,
he was a good chief. Everything that was theirs should
be left to them; and the Great White Chief would keep
peace in the land, and men should live together as brothers.
Only one thing the Great White Chief required of them.
In the forest grew a vine that yielded a milky sap.
This stuff when hardened with acid from another plant
would be of use to the Great White Chief, and he
wished them to collect it for him, and bring to his
servants every fourteenth day so many baskets full. Every
man of Mpatu must bring his share. And they said too
that the Great White Chief was just: for all this rubber
they collected he would pay, in brass rods, or cloth, or salt;
and seeing the Great White Chief was so kind and good, only
a bad man would fail in the task set him, and such bad
men must be punished. And two servants of the Great
White Chief would be left in Mpatu to instruct the people
as to the furnishing of the rubber; and these kind teachers
the men of Mpatu would surely provide with food and
shelter.
"The men of Mpatu laughed at first. Well they knew
the vine! Was there not enough of it and to spare in the
forest? How easily they could collect what was demanded!
How soon would they become rich! And they set the
women and children to weave new baskets for the rubber,
and made ready new and well-built huts for the men who
were to teach them their duty to the Great White Chief.
"But as time went on, woe came to Mpatu. The two
servants of the Great White Chief were bad men, selfish,
cruel. They stalked about the village, treating the people
as their slaves; they seized the plumpest fowls and the
choicest fruits; if any man resisted, they whipped him
with a long whip of hippopotamus hide.
"But the servants of the Great White Chief demanded
still more. It was not only rubber the men of Mpatu
were bade to bring them, but so many goats, so many
fowls, so many fish and cassava and bananas. How could
they do it? The rubber vines near by were soon
exhausted. Every week the men must go farther into
the forest. They had not enough time now to hunt and
fish for their own families. How supply the strangers too?
"Grief came to Mpatu! For long days there was no
man in the village save the chief Lualu and the forest
guards. The women cowered and crouched in their huts.
No longer did they take pride in tidy homes and well-tended
hair; no longer sing merrily at the stream, or croon lullabies
to their babes; all joy was gone from them.
"Some of the men fled, and with their wives and
children lived in the forest, eating roots and leaves. But
even flight was vain, for the forest guards tracked
them, hunted them down. Some they killed as soon
as they found them; others they flogged, chained by
the neck, and hauled to prison. There they are given
heavy tasks, carrying logs and firewood, clearing the
bush, cutting up rubber; and there is a guard over them
with a whip which at a single blow can cut a strip from the
body. Many have died; they are glad to die.
"And now Mpatu is a waste. One day the rubber was
again short; the soldiers came--they burned the huts;
they killed men, women, and children; yea, among the
soldiers were man-eaters, and many of Mpatu's children
were devoured. Only a few escaped--they wander in the
forest, who knows where? I tell what I have seen and
heard."
When Faraji had finished his story, there was silence for
a time. The chief seemed disposed to let the facts sink
into the minds of the white men, and Mr. Martindale was
at a loss for words. Faraji's story, so significantly
similar to what he had himself discovered at Banonga, had
deeply impressed him. Were these atrocities going on
throughout the Congo Free State? Were they indeed a
part of the system of government? It seemed only
too probable--the rubber tax was indeed a tax of blood.
And what could he say to convince Imbono that he
was no friend of the white men who authorized or
permitted such things? How could the negro distinguish?
"'Pon my soul," said the American in an aside to Jack,
"I am ashamed of the colour of my skin."
Then the chief began to speak.
"The white man understands why I will have nothing
to do with him--why I will not allow my people to trade
with him. It may be true that you, O white man, are
not as these others; you may be a friend to the black man,
and believe that the black man can feel pain and grief; but
did not the servants of the Great White Chief say that they
were friends of the black man? Did they not say the
Great White Chief loved us and wished to do us good?
We have seen the love of the Great White Chief; it is the
love of the crocodile for the antelope: we would have none
of it. Therefore I say, O white man, though I bear you
no ill-will, you must go."
Courteously as the chief spoke, there was no mistaking
his firmness.
"We must go and take stock of this," said Mr. Martindale.
"It licks me at present, Jack, and that's a hard
thing for an American to say. Come right away."
They took ceremonious leave of the chief, and were
escorted to their camp at the edge of the stream.
"What's to be done, my boy?" said Mr. Martindale.
"We can't find the gold without the chief's help, unless
we go prospecting at large: we might do that for months
without success, and make Imbono an open enemy into
the bargain. We can't fight him, and I don't want to
fight him. After what we've seen and heard I won't be
responsible for shedding blood; seems to me the white
man has done enough of that already on the Congo. This
is a facer, Jack."
"Never say die, uncle. It's getting late: I vote we
sleep on it. We may see a way out of the difficulty in the
morning."
[1] The native word for any food or meal.
[2] Arab slave raiders.
[3] Leopold II, sovereign of the Congo Free State and king of
the Belgians.
[4] Yes, do so.