Kitabı oku: «Haviland's Chum», sayfa 9
Chapter Seventeen.
The Scream in the Forest
“How much further to this village of yours, Somala?”
“We are there now, Sidi. What you call one hour’s march.”
“Always that ‘one hour’ story!”
And the speaker turns away somewhat shortly. The question, put in a kind of mongrel Swahili dialect, was put shortly and with a touch of impatience, for the torrid equatorial heat makes men irritable – white men, at any rate – and the first speaker is a white man. The second is a negroid Arab, hailing from the island of Pemba.
Through the moonlit forest the long file of men is wending, like a line of dark ghosts. There are perhaps three score of them, and most of them carry loads. Some few do not, and of such are the two who have been conversing.
“But,” rejoins the Arab, “it may be written that when we arrive there we shall find no village. Mushâd’s people have been busy of late, and this village lies in his return path.”
“I don’t care whether we find any village or not, so long as we find the water,” is the reply. “What do you say, doctor?” – relapsing into Anglo-Saxon, as he turns to another man, the only other white man of the party.
“Why, that it’s time we did find some. This swamp water is awful bad drinking stuff.”
Under the broad moon it is almost as light as day, and as this strange band emerges into an open space its concomitant elements can be seen to advantage. The man who had first spoken, and who seems to be its leader, is tall, supple, and erect, with straight, regular features; the lower part of the bronzed face is hidden by a thick brown beard, not guiltless even here in these wilds of some attempt at trimming. This, together with his alert and weather-beaten appearance, gives him a much older look than his actual years, for he is quite a young man. The other, he addressed as “doctor,” and whose speech is dashed with just a touch of the brogue, is much older. He is a man of medium height, with a quiet refined face, and his hair is just turning grey. Both are armed with a double-barrelled express rifle, revolver of heavy calibre, and sheath knife. The Arab, Somala, and a few others are also armed with Martini rifles; but the bearers of the loads, who are composed of half a dozen nationalities, carry no firearms, though each has a sheath knife of some sort strapped round him – long or short, straight or curved or double-edged, but all wicked-looking weapons enough.
The line swings along at an even, wiry-paced walk, to the croon of some wild, weird melody. Then, as, the open space passed, they re-enter the forest shade, they stop short, the whole line telescoping together – loads colliding, and men falling with them in confusion. For, from the sombre, mysterious depths in front comes a most horrible and appalling sound.
A scream, so awful in its long-drawn intensity – so fraught with terror and energy and despair – surely such a cry could never have issued from a human throat. Louder and louder it peals through the grim midnight shades, as though some unknown and gigantic monster were in the last throes of a despairing struggle with countless and overwhelming assailants. Of those who hear it, the superstitious natives huddle together, and trembling in every limb, too scared even to bolt, stand bunched like a flock of bewildered sheep. All save a few, that is, for those immediately in attendance on the leaders come of more virile nationality. Even the two white men are conscious of a wave or superstitious fear thrilling through their veins, possibly the result of climate and condition.
“Sidi,” whispers Somala, impressively, indicating the direction whence proceeds the horrible sound, “the village is yonder. Mushâd has been there, and that is the voice of the dead.”
“Not so. It is the voice of some one or something very much alive,” answers the leader. “And I intend to find out all about it. Eh, doctor?”
“Why, of course.”
“Those who are men and not cowards, come with me,” says the leader, shortly.
Not a man of his armed followers hangs back. Even the frightened porters, in terror at being left to themselves in this demon-haunted place, will not stay behind; for, like all natives of an inferior sort, the presence of a resolute white man is to them a potent rallying influence.
Soon the forest opens out again, and there, in the moonlight before them, lie the thatched roofs of a considerable village. Again peals forth that awful, blood-curdling scream, proceeding right from among those primitive dwellings.
“Come along! Let’s make a dash for it!” warns the leader, under the natural impression that some human victim is being barbarously done to death at the hands of its inhabitants. His swarthy followers do not share this opinion, their own pointing to the supernatural, but they will go with him anywhere.
Even as they advance, quickly but cautiously, the leaders are wondering that no volley of firearms or spears greets them. There is something of lifelessness about the place, however, which can be felt and realised even before they are near enough for the scattered skulls and bones to tell their own tale. Now they are through the stockade, and now, rising from right in front of them, peals forth that awful scream once more, and with it a most horrible chorus of snapping and growling and snarling. And rounding the corner of one of the primitive buildings the whole explanation lies before them. A weird and terrible sight the broad moonlight reveals.
In front of one of the huts is a human figure. Yet, can it be? It is that of a man of tall and powerful build, his body covered with blood, his clothing in rags, his hair and beard matted and streaming, his rolling eyes starting from their sockets. In each hand he brandishes a short white club, consisting, in fact, of the leg-bone of a human being, as he bounds and leaps, yelling his horrible, maniacal scream; while around, on three sides of him, a densely packed mass of beasts is swaying and snarling, now driven back by the sheer terror of his maniacal onslaught, then surging forward, as the man, ever keeping his rear secured by the hut door, retires again.
But it is an unequal combat that cannot last. Even the prodigious strength and courage of the assailed cannot hold out against the overwhelming numbers and boldness of the assailants.
Then the tables are turned – and that with a suddenness which is almost laughable. Their approach unperceived, these timely rescuers simply rake the closely packed mass of hyaenas with their fire. The cowardly brutes, driven frantic with the suddenness and terror of this surprise, turn tail and flee, many rolling over and over each other in their rout, leaving, too, a goodly number on the ground, dead or wounded. The latter the natives of the party amuse themselves by finishing off, while their leaders are turning their attention to the rescued man.
“I say, old chap, you’ve had a narrow squeak for it,” says the younger of the two. “We seem to be only just in time. Good thing you yelled out as you did, or we shouldn’t have been that.”
The other makes no reply. Gazing vacantly at his rescuers, he continues to twirl his gruesome weapons, with much the same regularity of movement as though he were practising with Indian clubs prior to taking his morning bath.
“How did you get here?” goes on the leader, with a strange look at his white companion.
“Eh? Get here? Ran, of course.”
“Ran?” taking in the woeful state to which the unfortunate man had manifestly been brought. “Why did you run? Who was after you?”
“The devil.”
“Who?”
“The devil.”
“But – where are your pals? Where are the rest of you?”
“Pals? Oh, dead.”
“Dead?”
“Rather. Dead as herrings, the whole lot. Fancy that!”
The coolness with which the man makes this statement is simply eerie, as he stands there in the moonlight, a horrible picture in his blood-stained rags. More than a doubt as to his sanity crosses the minds of at any rate two of his hearers. Nor do his next words tend towards in any wise dispelling it.
“They were killed, the whole lot of them. Cut up, by Jove! I’m the only man left alive out of the whole blessed crowd. Funny thing, isn’t it?”
“Rather. Who killed them, and where?” And there is a note of anxiety in the tone of the question.
“We were attacked by Rumaliza’s people couple of days’ march back. They surprised us, and I am the only one left alive. But, I say, don’t bother me with any more questions. I’m tired. D’you hear? I’m tired.”
“I expect you are. Well, come along and join us. We’re going to camp down yonder by the water. You’ll want a little overhauling after the cutting and wounding you seem to have gone through, and here’s the very man to overhaul you – Dr Ahern,” indicating his white comrade.
But the response to this friendly overture is astounding.
“Oh, go away. I don’t want you at all. I didn’t ask you to come, and I don’t want you here bothering me. When I do I’ll tell you.” And without another word the speaker turns and dives into the hut again. The two left outside stare blankly at each other.
“A clear case for you, doctor. The chap’s off his chump. Say, though, I wonder if there’s anything in that yarn of his about being attacked by Rumaliza’s people.”
“Might easily be. We’ll have to keep a bright look-out, if any of them are around. But we must get him out.”
“We must.”
The same idea was in both their minds. It was not a pleasant thing to have to creep through that open door with the probability of being brained by a powerful maniac waiting for them in the pitchy darkness beyond.
“I’ll strike a light,” says the younger of the two men. And, taking out his match-box, he passes quickly through the aperture, at the same time striking a couple of wax vestas.
The object of his search is lying in a corner. Beside him, gleaming whitely, are two fleshless skeletons. There is a third, all battered to pieces. It is a weird and gruesome spectacle in the extreme.
But the unfortunate man’s dispositions seem scarcely aggressive as they bend over him. He does not move.
“He’s unconscious,” pronounces the doctor. “That simplifies matters. Pick up that end of him, and we’ll carry him out.”
Chapter Eighteen.
After Ten Years
“I say! Was I very ‘dotty’?”
“Pretty well. But that’s only natural under the circs.”
“Talk much, and all that sort of thing – eh, did I?”
“Oh, yes. The usual incoherencies. But that’s nothing. We’re used to it. In fact, we now and then take a turn at it ourselves when this beastly up-country fever strikes us. Eh, doctor?”
“We do,” answered Dr Ahern, turning away to attend to the unpacking and examination of some scientific specimens, but not before he had added: —
“I wouldn’t talk too much if I were you. It won’t hurt you to keep quiet a little longer.”
A fortnight had gone by since the rescue of the solitary fugitive when in his last and desperate extremity; and, indeed, nothing but the most careful tending had availed to save his life even then – that, and his own constitution, which, as Dr Ahern declared, was that of a bull. Several days of raging and delirious fever had delayed the expedition at the place where it had found him, and then it had moved on again, though slowly, carrying the invalid in an improvised litter. At last the fever had left him, and his wounds were healing; by a miracle and the wonderful skill of the doctor he had escaped blood-poisoning.
The latter’s back turned, the convalescent promptly started to disregard his final injunction.
“I say,” he went on, lowering his voice, “it won’t hurt me to talk a little, will it?”
The other, his tall frame stretched upon the ground, his hat tilted over his eyes, and puffing contentedly at a pipe, laughed.
“I don’t know. Doctor’s orders, you see. Still – well, for one thing, we’ve been wondering, of course, who you are, and how you got into the hobble we found you in.”
“Well, I’m Oakley, and I’ve been inland a year and a half in the plant-hunting line.”
“That so? I’m Haviland, and I’ve been up rather more than two years in the bug-hunting line, as the Americans would call it. Ornithology, too.”
“So! Made a good haul?”
“Uncommonly. We’ve got some specimens here that’ll make our names for us.”
“Let’s see them,” said the other eagerly. “I was – am, in fact – keen on beetles, but I’m professionally in plants now.”
And then these two enthusiasts set to work comparing notes. They clean forgot about the circumstances of their meeting or knowing more about each other; forgot recent perils and the brooding mysteries of the wilderness, as they hammered away at their pet subject, and talked bird and beetle to their hearts’ content. In the midst of which a displeased voice struck in: —
“I’d like to ask if that’s what you call keeping quiet, now.”
Both started guiltily.
“My fault, doctor,” said Haviland. “I let him go on. He’s in the same line as ourselves, you know.”
“Is he? He’ll be in a different line from any of us if he gets thinking he’s all right before he is. Sure, the constitution of a bull won’t pull a man through everything – not quite.”
The patient accepted this grave rebuke with a smile, and lay still. He had not yet put these friends in need in full possession of the facts of his misfortunes, but there was plenty of time for that.
Ten years had gone by since last we saw Haviland, in imminent danger of expulsion from Saint Kirwin’s, and which it is probable he only escaped through a far greater grief than that – the death of his father; and for the most part of that period his career has been pretty much as we find him now – a wandering one, to wit. He had not returned to Saint Kirwin’s, for the potent reason that the parson had left his family in somewhat of straits, and the eldest member thereof was old enough, at any rate, to do something for himself. This had taken the form of a bank clerkship, obtained for him by an uncle. But to the young lover of Nature and the free open air and the woods and fields, this life was one that he loathed. It told upon his health at last, and realising that he would never do any good for himself in this line, the same relative assisted him to emigrate to South Africa. There he had many ups and downs – mostly downs – and then it occurred to him to try to turn his much-loved hobby into a profession. He obtained introductions to one or two scientific men, who, seeing through the genuineness of his gifts, offered him employment, sending him as assistant on scientific expeditions, and finally entrusting the leadership of such entirely to his hands. And he succeeded wonderfully. He had found his line at last, and followed it up with an entire and whole-hearted enthusiasm.
Yet such expeditions were no child’s play. A capacity for every kind of hardship and privation, indomitable enterprise, the multifold perils of the wilderness to face, starvation and thirst, the hostility of fierce savage tribes, treachery and desertion or overt mutiny on the part of his own followers, and the deadly, insidious malaria lurking at every mile in the miasmatic equatorial heat. But the same spirit which had moved those midnight poaching expeditions at Saint Kirwin’s was with Haviland now, and carried him through in triumph. Young as he was – well under thirty – he had already begun to make something of a name for himself as a daring and successful exploring naturalist.
He had kept in touch with Mr Sefton, as much as a correspondence of the few-and-far-between order could so be called, and from time to time obtained the latest news about Saint Kirwin’s. Among other items was one to the effect that after his own departure the Zulu boy, Anthony – otherwise Mpukuza – had turned out badly, had become so intractable and such a power for mischief that the missionary who had placed him there had been invited to remove him. This was done, and they had lost sight of him. Probably he had returned to his own land and reverted to savagery; and this, Haviland thought, was very likely the case. Yet he himself had been in Zululand, and had made frequent inquiries with regard to Mpukuza, but could obtain no satisfactory information, even in the locality where the boy was said to hail from. It was no uncommon thing for missionaries to take away their children and place them in schools, declared the inhabitants, and one case more or less was not sufficiently noteworthy to remain in their recollection. Nor did they know any such name as Mpukuza, and in the ups and downs of a somewhat struggling and busy life the matter faded from Haviland’s mind as well.
As time went on the injured man, in spite of the steamy heat and a drained system, had recovered so as almost to regain his former strength; but, before this, the information he had given to Haviland and the doctor about himself had caused a change in their plans. Briefly, it amounted to this. His expedition, consisting of himself and a German botanist, together with a number of porters, had been surprised at daybreak by a party of Arabs and negroes who he had every reason to believe constituted a gang of Rumaliza’s slave-hunters. So sudden had been the attack that the whole party was completely overpowered. His German comrade was shot dead at his side, and he himself got a cut on the head with a scimitar which nearly put an end to his days, together with a spear thrust in the shoulder. He had a distinct recollection of shooting two of the assailants with his revolver as he broke through them to run, and then for the whole day some of them had chased him. He had been wounded again by a spear, thrown by one who had out-distanced the others, but he had managed to shoot the thrower. Then he had lost his revolver while extricating himself from a swamp into which he had sunk waist-deep; and thus that most helpless object on earth, an unarmed man, and badly wounded into the bargain, had taken refuge in the deserted village to die.
“And precious hard dying you intended to make of it, old chap,” had been Haviland’s comment. “Why, it was the finest thing I ever saw in my life, the way you were laying about you with those old shin-bones. Make a fine subject for one of those groups of sculpture. The Berserk at Bay, one might call it. Eh?”
Well, it was no laughing matter at the time, they all agreed. But the worst of it was, Oakley had explained, that the ruffians who had surprised his camp had, of course, seized everything, including the whole of the specimens he had collected during this expedition, which latter would, therefore, be so much time, trouble, and expense absolutely thrown away. As for his bearers, such of them as had not been massacred had, of course, been seized as slaves, and his property as loot; but it was just possible that the marauders, finding the botanical specimens utterly valueless to themselves, might have left them on the ground, in which event they could be recovered.
If, in their heart of hearts, Haviland and the doctor were not exultant over this idea, it is hardly astonishing; for, at the rate they had travelled while bearing the injured man in their midst, to return to the scene of the tragedy would mean about a fortnight’s march, and that not merely of a retrograde nature, but one which would take them very near an exceedingly dangerous belt of country. But here was a brother scientist, the fruits of his toil and risk, the reward of his enterprise, thrown away, with just a chance remaining of saving them. It was not in these two, at any rate, to let that chance go by, merely at the cost of an extra fortnight’s march and a certain amount of potential danger.
Well, the march had been effected, and here they were at last on the site of Oakley’s ravaged camp. A ghastly spectacle met their gaze. Many of the bearers had been massacred, and the ground was literally strewn with bones, either clean-picked by the ravenous carnivora of the surrounding wilderness, or with mangled tatters of flesh and sinew still depending. Skulls, too; in many cases with the features yet remaining, but all showing the same hideous distortion of the terror and agony which had accompanied their deaths. The remains of the ill-fated German botanist were identified and reverently buried, but everything in the shape of loot which the camp had contained had been borne away by the rapacious marauders.
But to the delight of Oakley, to the delight of all of them, his conjectures had proved correct. Following on the broad track left by the retreating raiders they came upon the lost specimens. The cases had been broken open, and, containing nothing but dried plants, had been thrown away and left. Some had suffered, but the bulk were entirely uninjured, and in his exultation the tragical fate which had overwhelmed his companion and followers was quite overlooked by this ardent scientist. The loot, too, of the camp was nothing. His precious specimens were recovered – that was everything. The doctor and Haviland, moved by vivid fellow feeling, rejoiced with him, and that exceedingly. Yet, could they have foreseen what was before them, their exultation might have been considerably dashed. Their adventures had been many, their lives had been largely made up of perilous and startling surprises; but the greatest of these was yet to come, and that, perchance, at no very distant date.
