Chapter Seven
“But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth,
This gay profusion of luxurious bliss?
Ill-fated race! the softening arts of peace,
Kind equal rule, the government of laws,
These are not theirs.”
Thomson.
I became the king’s head-counsellor, his prime-minister, so to speak, his chief medicine man. There was not much honour in this, certainly, but nevertheless it procured me some amelioration of my sufferings. There was less of the dungeon after this, and fewer threats of decapitation.
I think the king still hankered after rum, and it was an anxious day for me when some Arab chiefs appeared in camp. Otakooma assembled not only, all his forces but most of his people. Something was going to happen, I knew, but till now I had had no idea of the utter depravity of this wretch.
He was positively going to barter his people for rum. The Arabs would buy them as slaves.
It was terrible to see these same Arabs walking round among the sable mob, as calmly as a farmer does among a herd of cattle, and picking one out here and there. But, oh! the grief, and the agony, and the anxiety displayed in voice and in action by these poor doomed creatures – the scene defies description. Here was the child torn shrieking from its mother’s side, there a wife separated from her husband, or a husband from a weeping wife.
Some indulged their grief quietly, others gave vent to loud howls and lamentations; while others lay moaning and groaning on the ground, ever and anon taking up great handfuls of dust, and throwing it up over their poor heads!
I could not help turning away and shedding tears. But had they been tears of blood they could not have saved these people. They were relentlessly marched away, and I was really glad when night fell, and sleep sealed the eyes of even those who mourned.
It was bright clear moonlight. I rose from my couch, and stole out into the open air. I wanted to think. The close warm atmosphere of the tent seemed to stifle me, and I could not sleep.
I passed slowly up the beaten footpath towards the king’s tent. There was not a single soul astir, it had been a busy exciting day with everyone, and the king had been liberal enough in his offers of rum to his chief favourites; and although some of them ought to have been doing duty as sentinels near to his sacred person, they had preferred retirement and slumber.
I stole away from the camp, and ascended an eminence some distance from it, and sat me down on a rock. It was cool and pleasant here, away from that blood-stained camp. The moonlight flooded all the beautiful country, bathing plain and rock and tree in its mellow rays. The only sounds that broke the stillness were the yapping howl of the cowardly jackal, and farther off in the woods the mournful roar of lions.
It was a lovely scene, but terrible in its loveliness. I buried my face in my hands. I was boldly struggling against my sorrow. How long, I thought, would this life last? Should I live and die among these terrible savages? Escape there seemed none. To attempt it, I knew, would end in failure, and probably in death by torture. I was many hundreds of miles from the sea. I did not even know in what direction Zanzibar lay. No, I must wait for a time, at all events. What mattered a year or two more to one so young as I!
I suppose this last reflection had some kind of a drowsy influence on me, for I lay down with my head on a piece of rock, and with face upturned to the sky, fell fast asleep.
How long I had slept I know not. I awoke with a start: something cold had touched my face, and I had heard a creature breathing close at – almost into – my ear. I started, as well I might. The thing that had waked me was a jackal; but there, not thirty yards away, standing boldly out against the moonlit sky, was a gigantic lioness!
There was astonishment depicted in every line of her great face. Strange to say, at that moment I could not help thinking that she looked far from cruel, and I could not help admiring the splendid animal. I never moved, but gazed as if spell-bound. Probably it was my fixity of look that saved me, for after staring steadily, but wonderingly, at me for fully a minute, she turned round and stalked solemnly off, giving many a look behind, as if expecting I should follow her.
I waited till she was well away. I felt very happy at that moment, and very bold. I went straight back to camp, and approached the tent of the king, and softly entered. He was fast asleep and snoring. In the matter of rum he had been even more liberal to himself than to his followers. There lay the skins of spirits in a corner, not far from the couch of the drunken king. I hesitated not a moment, but seizing the king’s own dagger, I stabbed – not the king, but the skins of rum.
Then I hastened away with my heart in my mouth. Remember, I was very young.
There were terrible doings next day in camp, and, I’m sorry to say, more than one human sacrifice. I, as medicine man and chief sorcerer, went through a great many mummeries, which I managed to make last all the forenoon. I was endeavouring to find out the wretch who had dared to spill the great king’s rum; that is, I was pretending to. There was more than one chief on whose shoulders I permitted my magician’s wand to rest for a while, just by way of a mild revenge, but the lot finally fell once again on an aged billy-goat. I had saved the king, and saved many of his subjects, for when the king was intoxicated, human sacrifices were of everyday occurrence. At ordinary times they were no more numerous than Bank Holidays in our own country.
When it was all over I stole away to the shady banks of a stream to bathe, and lie and watch the kingfishers. It was a favourite resort of mine, whenever I dared be alone.
The warriors of this tribe spent most of their time either on the hunting grounds – forest and plain – or in making raids on their neighbours. I was allowed to join the hunting expeditions, but not the forays. I became an expert horseman. I could ride bare-backed as well as any circus-man I have ever seen since. The king was too fat to ride much, but he used to follow to the chase of the koodoo.
This is a kind of beautiful antelope, and excellent eating, its principal recommendation in the eyes of Otakooma. We often caught the young, and they became as tame as our goats.
Now once having taken it into my head that escape from this country of savages was impossible, strange to say I began to settle down, in everything else except human bloodthirstiness, and soon became a very expert savage, taking a wild kind of pride in my exploits.
Mine was now a life of peril and hardship; adventures to me were of everyday occurrence; I carried my life in my hand; I grew as wily as a jackal, and I hope as bold as a lion. I take no credit to myself for being bold; I had to be so.
The king and I continued friends. At the end of the sixth year of my captivity, Jooma died. He died from wounds received at the horns of a wild buffalo in the forest.
This buffalo-hunting had for me a very great charm, and it certainly was not unattended with danger, for there were times when, headed by an old bull or two, a whole herd of these animals would charge down upon us. This was nothing to me. I could climb trees as well as most monkeys, so I got out of harm’s way, but it was hard upon the savages, who were not always so nimble.
Jooma was terribly tossed and wounded by a bull, and he died at the tree foot. He called me to him before his eyes were for ever closed, and asked me to forgive him for all the ill he had done me, and tried to do me.
“I have been to you one ver bad fellow,” said poor Jooma; “I have want to kill you plenty time. Now I die. You forgive Jooma?”
“I do, Jooma,” I said, and pressed his cold hard hand.
“Ver well,” said the lad, faintly and slowly. “Now I die. Now, I go home – go home – home.”
We buried him just where he lay, between the gnarled roots of a great forest tree, and piled wood over the grave to keep the sneaking jackals at bay.
One morning about two years after this, I was awakened early – indeed it was hardly dawn – by hearing a tremendous uproar and commotion in the camp, with much warlike shouting and beating of those everlasting tom-toms2.
The king was running about wildly – too wildly, indeed, for his weight – and was summoning his warriors to arms.
White men were coming to attack the camp!
This was glorious news for me.
But who, or what could they be, or what could they want?
All that day, from far and near, the warriors of Otakooma came trooping into camp. To do them justice they were fond of fighting, and eager for the fray; they loved fighting for its own sake, but a battle with white men was a thing that did not happen every day.
The old men, the women and children, and the cattle were separated from the main or soldier portion of the tribe, and taken westwards towards the distant hills. So it was evident that Otakooma and his people meant business.
What part should I take in the coming fray? I might have fled, and remained away until the victory was secured by the white men, but this would have been both unkind and cowardly. On the other hand, I would not lift a spear or poise a lance against my own people.
That same evening, after all was hushed in the camp, I sought out the king. He looked at me very suspiciously before I spoke.
I sat quietly in front of him on the ground, and explained to him my situation.
He was wise enough to see exactly how I stood, but he told me there was an easy way out of the difficulty. Early in the morning he would chop off my head. He bore me no grudge, he explained, it was a mere matter of policy.
“Quite right,” I replied, “and, if he chose, he might take my head off then and there. I didn’t at all mind; and would just as soon be without a head as with one.”
The king smiled, and seemed pleased.
“But,” I continued, “you may look at the possession of a head in a different light, so far as your own particular head is concerned. If your people are beaten, you will assuredly lose that head, unless a white man is near to take your part. I will be your friend,” I said, “in this matter, and during the battle I will stand by your person and never leave you.”
Otakooma was delighted at the proposal, and so we arranged matters to our mutual satisfaction, and I felt glad I had come; I had certainly lost nothing by my candour. No one ever does.
Firing began early in the morning. The battle raged till nearly noon, with dreadful slaughter on the side of the savages, who were finally borne backwards a disorganised mob.
I stuck by the king. He did not fly. He felt safe and said so, but he wept to see his children, as he called them, slain before his very eyes.
Oh! the glad sight it was to me, after all these years, to behold the bold bluejackets, and brave marines, dashing after the foe, gun and bayonet in hand!
But a more joyful surprise awaited me when the battle was over; for the very first man to rush up to me and shake me by the two hands was my dear friend Ben Roberts.
“Nie, old boy!” he cried, “I wouldn’t have known you. You’ve grown a man, and what a savage you do look! And do you know, Nie, what all this fighting has been about?”
“No,” I said innocently.
“Why, about you!” He almost shouted the last word, and I could see in his honest eyes the tears which he could hardly keep from failing.
Chapter Eight
“The sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!”
Proctor.
“England, thy beauties are tame and domestic,
To one who has roamed o’er the mountains afar.”
Byron.
Yes, all the fighting had been about me.
Our fellows had not lost the battle that day at Zareppa’s fort; on the contrary, they had given the Arabs a grievous defeat. I had at first been reported killed, but as I was not found among the dead and wounded, search was made for me more inland, and it was soon elicited that I had been carried away prisoner, and no doubts were left in the minds of my shipmates, that I had died by the torture, in order to avenge the death of the pirate chief.
The old Niobe had been wrecked since my incarceration in the land of the savages. Roberts had been made lieutenant, and it was not until he returned to the shores of Africa, several years after, that he heard from friendly Arabs that there was an English prisoner in the hands of a warlike tribe of savages, who lived almost in the centre of the dark continent. After this my dear friend never rested in his hammock, as he himself expressed it, until he had organised the expedition that came to my relief.
What a delightful sensation it was to me to feel myself once more at sea!
“The glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form
Glasses itself in tempest.”
We were homeward bound. I was a passenger, and we had splendid weather, so everything seemed to combine to make me feel joyful and happy. Joyful, did I say? why, there were times when I wanted to run about and shout for joy like a schoolboy, or like the savage that I fear I had almost become.
But I could not run about and shout on board a trim and well-disciplined man-o’-war. The very appearance of the forbade, so at such moments I used to long to be away in the woods again, in order to give proper vent to my exultation.
“White and glassy deck, without a stain
Where, on the watch, the staid lieutenant walked,”
Besides, I had good cause to be staid and sedate. Roberts had heard news that changed the whole course of my life. I was no longer a friendless sailor-boy. My grandfather was dead, and I was the heir to his estate. It was not a very large patrimony, I admit. It was simply a competence, but to me, when I heard it described, it appeared a princely fortune. There would be no longer any need for me to sail the seas. I could settle down in life, or I could choose some honourable career on shore, and, if I was good for anything at all, distinguish myself therein.
Or, stay, I thought, should I become a soldier? “No, no, no,” was the answer of my soul. The war was past and gone; even the terrible Indian Mutiny had been quelled at last. To be a soldier in the field was a career worthy of a king’s son. To be a soldier, and have nothing to do but loll about in some wretched garrison town, play billiards or cricket, have a day’s shooting, English fashion, now and then, be admired by school-misses and probably snubbed by men with more money than brains; no, such a life would not suit me.
I should much prefer, I thought, to stay at home and till my garden. With my jacket off, my shirt-sleeves rolled up, and an axe or spade in hand, I should feel far more free than playing with a useless sword.
Lieutenant Roberts was about to retire from active service in the Royal Navy, and he had already been promised the command of a ship in the Merchant Service. But before he left England he would, he said, see me, his foster-son, well settled down.
The ship was homeward bound. There was nothing but laughing and talking and singing all day long, for many of the poor fellows on board had not placed foot on their native shores for five long years and more. What a glorious place England must be, I mused, to make these men so happy at the prospect of returning to it. How brightly the sun must shine there! How blue and beautiful must be the seas that lave her coasts!
So we presently crossed the Line and sailed north, and north, and north. Past Madeira – and then the brightness began to leave the sky. The wind to me grew chilly, biting, and cruel. The sea became a darker blue, and finally, as we entered the Bay of Biscay, a leaden grey. My hopes of happiness fell, and fell, and fell. Roberts tried all he could to cheer me up, told me of the monster cities I should see, of the ballrooms, of the concert-rooms, and of a multitude of wonderful things, not forgetting cricket and football.
We sailed past the Isle of Wight with a grey chopping sea all around us, grey clouds above us, a bitter cold wind blowing, and a drizzling rain borne along on its wings.
Then we entered Portsmouth harbour, and cast anchor among the wooden walls of England. Finally I landed. Landed, much to my disgust, upon stones instead of soft sand. Landed, still more to my disgust, among crowds of people who stared at me as if I had a plurality of heads, or only one eye right in the middle of my brow. I glanced around me with all the proud dignity of a savage prince. The crowd laughed, and Roberts hurried me on.
I daresay a visit to a fashionable tailor and its subsequent results made me a little more presentable, but I disliked this town of Portsmouth with a healthy dislike, and was glad when my friend took me away.
I had to go to London. The railway amused me, and made me wonder, but used as I was to the quiet of the desert and forest, it deafened me, and the shaking tired me beyond conception.
My solicitor, a prim white-haired man, said he was so glad to see me, though I do believe he was a little afraid of me. Probably not without cause, for at the very moment he was entering into business as he called it, and arranging preliminaries, I was thinking how quickly Otakooma’s savages would rub all the starch out of this respectable citizen. They would not take long to arrange preliminaries with the little man, and as to entering into business, they would do so in a way that would considerably astonish his nerves.
“Bother business!” I exclaimed at last, in a voice that made the prim solicitor almost spring off his chair.
“Oh! my dear sir,” he pleaded, mildly. “We must go into these little matters.”
He ventured to give me two fingers to shake as I left the office with Roberts. I feel sure he was afraid to entrust me with all his hand.
“And as soon as you get home you will telegraph to me; won’t you, Mr Radnor?”
“Telegraph!” I said in astonishment. “Telegraph! and you tell me it is five hundred miles from here to Dunryan. Do you think you can see a fire at that distance? It must be a precious big one I’ll have to light, and the mountains around Dunryan must be amazingly high.”
Both Roberts and the solicitor laughed; they could see that the only idea I had of telegraphing was the building of fires on hill-tops.
I arrived at Dunryan at last – my small patrimony. If I was pleased with it at all, it was simply because it was my own; but everything was so new and so strange and so tame, that as soon as my friend saw me what he called “settled,” and went away to sea and left me, I began, in the most methodical manner possible, to dislike everything round me.
People called on me, but I’m sure they were merely curious to hear my history from my own lips, and partly afraid of me at the same time. They invited me out to tea! Ha! ha! ha! I really cannot help laughing about it now as I write; but fancy a savage sitting down to tea, of all treats in the world, with a company of gossiping ladies of both sexes.
Now my neighbours made me out to be a bigger savage than I really was, because, to do myself justice, I did know a little of the courtesies of civilised life. There was one lady who expressed a wish to have the “dreadful creature” to tea with her. I found out before I went that she had styled me so, though her note of invitation was most politely worded.
The “dreadful creature” did go to tea, intent on a kind of quiet revenge. They could not get a word out of me – neither my hostess nor the three old ladies she had asked to meet me by way of protection. I did nothing but drink cup after cup of tea, handing in my cup to be replenished, and drinking it at once. The bread and butter disappeared in a way that seemed to them little short of miraculous. I saw that they were getting frightened, so I thought I would make them a little soothing speech.
“Ahem!” I began, standing up. I never got any further.
One old lady fainted; another “missed stays,” as a sailor would say, when making for the doorway, and tumbled on the floor; a third fell over the piano-stool. All screamed – all thought I was about to do something very dreadful.
All I did do was to step gingerly out into the hall, pick up my hat, and go off.
I lived in Dunryan for a year. The scenery all around was charming in the extreme. The very name will tell you that Dunryan is in Scotland; the very word Scotland conjures up before the eye visions both of beauty and romance.
But one year even of Scotland, the “land of green heath and shaggy wood,” was enough for me then.
There was no sport, no wild adventure; all was tame, tame, tame, compared to what I had been used to.
But if following game in Scotland seemed tame to me, what could I say of sport in English fashion? I tried both; grew sick of both. Hunting the wild gorilla in the jungles of Africa was more in my line.
One night, soon after the first snow had fallen, a carriage drove up to my door. It was to bear me away to the distant railway-station. The moon was shining brightly down upon our little village as we drove through; here and there in the windows shone a yellow light; but all was silent, and neither the horses’ hoofs nor the carriage wheels could be heard on the snow-muffled street.
It was a peaceful scene, and I heaved one sigh – well, it might have been of regret. For many and many a long year to come I never saw Dunryan again.
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