by Jules Verne
CHAPTER XVIII.
AN ANXIOUS VOYAGE.
Thus the canoe drifted on for a week, the forests that for many mileshad skirted the river ultimately giving place to extensive jungles thatstretched far away to the horizon. Destitute, fortunately for thetravellers, of human inhabitants, the district abounded in a largevariety of animal life; zebras, elands, caamas, sported on the bank,disappearing at night-fall before howling leopards and roaring lions.
It was Dick's general custom, as he lay to for a while in theafternoon, to go ashore in search of food, and as the manioc, maize,and sorghum that were to be found were of a wild growth andconsequently not fit for consumption, he was obliged to run the risk ofusing his gun. On the 4th of July he succeeded by a single shot inkilling _pokoo_, a kind of antelope about five feet long, withannulated horns, a tawny skin dappled with bright spots, and a whitebelly. The venison proved excellent, and was roasted over a fireprocured by the primitive method, practised, it is said, even bygorillas, of rubbing two sticks together.
In spite of these halts, and the time taken for the night's rest, thedistance accomplished by the 8th could not be estimated at less than ahundred miles. The river, augmented by only a few insignificanttributaries, had not materially increased in volume; its direction,however, had slightly changed more to the north-west. It afforded avery fair supply of fish, which were caught by lines made of the longstems of creepers furnished with thorns instead of fish-hooks, aconsiderable proportion being the delicate _sandjtkas_, which whendried may be transported to any climate; besides these there were theblack _usakas_, the wide-headed _monndes_, and occasionally the little_dagalas_, resembling Thames whitebait.
He stood face to face with his foe.]
Next day, Dick met with an adventure that put all his courage andcomposure to the test. He had noticed the horns of a caama projectingabove the brushwood, and went ashore alone with the intention ofsecuring it. He succeeded in getting tolerably close to it and fired,but he was terribly startled when a formidable creature bounded alongsome thirty paces ahead, and took possession of the prey he had justwounded.
It was a majestic lion, at least five feet in height, of the kindcalled _karamoo_, in distinction to the maneless species known as the_Nyassi-lion_. Before Dick had time to reload, the huge brute hadcaught sight of him, and without relaxing its hold upon the writhingantelope beneath its claws, glared upon him fiercely. Dick's presenceof mind did not forsake him; flight he knew was not to be thought of;his only chance he felt intuitively would be by keeping perfectlystill; and aware that the beast would be unlikely to give up astruggling prey for another that was motionless, he stood face to facewith his foe, not venturing to move an eyelid. In a few minutes thelion's patience seemed to be exhausted; with a grand stateliness, itpicked up the caama as easily as a dog would lift a hare, turned round,and lashing the bushes with its tail, disappeared in the jungle.
It took Dick some little time to recover himself sufficiently to returnto the canoe. On arriving, he said nothing of the peril to which he hadbeen exposed, but heartily congratulated himself that they had means oftransport without making their way through jungles and forests.
As they advanced, they repeatedly came across evidences that thecountry had not been always, as now it was, utterly devoid ofpopulation; more than once, they observed traces which betokened theformer existence of villages; either some ruined palisades or the_debris_ of some thatched huts, or some solitary sacred tree within anenclosure would indicate that the death of a chief had, according tocustom, made a native tribe migrate to new quarters.
If natives were still dwelling in the district, as was just probable,they must have been living underground, only emerging at night likebeasts of prey, from which they were only a grade removed.
Dick Sands had every reason to feel convinced that cannibalism had beenpractised in the neighbourhood, Three times, as he was wandering in theforest, he had come upon piles of ashes and half-charred human bones,the remnants, no doubt, of a ghastly meal, and although he mentionednothing of what he had seen to Mrs. Weldon, he made up his mind to goashore as seldom as possible, and as often as he found it absolutelynecessary to go, he gave Hercules strict directions to push off intomid-stream at the very first intimation of danger.
A new cause of anxiety arose on the following evening, and made itnecessary for them to take the most guarded measures of precaution. Theriver-bed had widened out into a kind of lagoon, and on the right sideof this, built upon piles in the water, not only was there a collectionof about thirty huts, but the fires gleaming under the thatch, made itevident that they were all inhabited. Unfortunately the only channel ofthe stream flowed close under the huts, the river elsewhere being soobstructed with rocks that navigation of any kind was impossible.Nothing was more probable than that the natives would have set theirnets all across the piles, and if so, the canoe would be sure to beobstructed, and an alarm must inevitably be raised. Every cautionseemed to be unavailing, because the canoe must follow the stream;however, in the lowest of whispers Dick ordered Hercules to keep clearas much as he could of the worm-eaten timber. The night was not verydark, which was equally an advantage and a disadvantage, as while itpermitted those on board to steer as they wanted, it did not preventthem from being seen.
The situation became more and more critical. About a hundred feetahead, the channel was very contracted; two natives, gesticulatingviolently, were seen squatting on the pilework; a few moments more andtheir voices could be heard; it was obvious that they had seen thefloating mass; apprehending that it was going to destroy their nets,they yelled aloud and shouted for assistance; instantly five or sixnegroes scrambled down the piles, and perched themselves upon thecross-beams.
On board the canoe the profoundest silence was maintained. Dick onlysignalled his directions to Hercules, without uttering a word, whileJack performed his part by holding Dingo's mouth tightly closed, tostop the low growlings which the faithful watch-dog seemed resolved tomake; but fortunately every sound was overpowered by the rushing of thestream and the clamour of the negroes, as they hurriedly drew in theirnets. If they should raise them in time, all might be well, but if, onthe other hand, the canoe should get entangled, the consequences couldhardly fail to be disastrous. The current in its narrow channel was sostrong that Dick was powerless either to modify his course or toslacken it.
Half a minute more, and the canoe was right under the woodwork, but theefforts of the natives had already elevated the nets so that theanticipated danger was happily escaped; but it chanced that in makingits way through the obstacle, a large piece of the grass-thatch gotdetached. One of the negroes raised a sudden shout of alarm, and itseemed only too probable that he had caught a sight of the travellersbelow and was informing his companions. This apprehension, too, wasonly momentary; the current had changed almost to a rapid, and carriedthe canoe along with such velocity that the lacustrine village wasquickly out of sight.
"Steer to the left!" cried Dick, finding that the riverbed had againbecome clear.
A stiff pull at the tiller made the craft fly in that direction.
Dick went to the stern, and scanned the moonlit waters. All wasperfectly still, no canoe was in pursuit; perhaps the natives had notone to use; but certain it was that when daylight dawned no vestige ofan inhabitant was to be seen. Nevertheless Dick thought it prudent fora while to steer close under the shelter of the left-hand shore.
Instantly five or six negroes scrambled down the piles.]
By the end of the next four days the aspect of the country hadundergone a remarkable change, the jungle having given place to adesert as dreary as the Kalahari itself. The river appearedinterminable, and it became a matter of serious consideration how toget a sufficiency of food. Fish was scarce, or at least hard to catch,and the arid soil provided no means of sustenance for antelopes, sothat nothing was to be gained from the chase. Carnivorous animals alsohad quite disappeared, and the silence of the night was broken, not bythe roar of wild beasts, but by the cro
aking of frogs in a discordantchorus, which Cameron has compared to the clanking of hammers and thegrating of files in a ship-builder's yard.
Far away both to the east and west the outlines of hills could befaintly discerned, but the shores on either hand were perfectly flatand devoid of trees. Euphorbias, it is true, grew in considerablenumbers, but as they were only of the oil-producing species, and notthe kind from which cassava or manioc is procured, they were useless inan alimentary point of view.
Dick was becoming more and more perplexed, when Hercules happened tomention that the natives often eat young fern-fronds and the pith ofthe papyrus, and that before now he had himself been reduced to thenecessity of subsisting on nothing better.
"We must try them," said Dick.
Both ferns and papyrus abounded on the banks, and a meal was prepared,the sweet soft pith of the papyrus being found very palatable. Jack inparticular appeared to enjoy it extremely, but it was not in any way asatisfying diet.
Thanks to Cousin Benedict, a fresh variety in the matter of food wasfound on the following day. Since the discovery of the "HexapodesBenedictus" he had recovered his spirits, and, having fastened hisprize safely inside his hat, he wandered about, as often as he had achance, in his favourite pursuit of insect-hunting. As he was rummagingin the long grass, he put up a bird which flew but a very shortdistance. Benedict recognized it by its peculiar note, and, seeing Dicktake his gun to aim at it, exclaimed,--
"Don't fire, don't fire! that bird will be worth nothing for food amongfive of us."
"It will be dinner enough for Jack," said Dick, who, finding that thebird did not seem in a hurry to make its escape, delayed his shot for amoment, without intending to be diverted from his purpose of securingit.
"You mustn't fire," insisted Benedict, "it is an indicator; it willshow you where there are lots of honey."
Aware that a few pounds of honey would really be of more value than alittle bird, Dick lowered his gun, and in company with the entomologistset off to follow the indicator, which seemed, by alternately flyingand stopping, to be inviting them to come on, and they had but a littleway to go before they observed several swarms of bees buzzing aroundsome old stems hidden amongst the euphorbias. NotwithstandingBenedict's remonstrances against depriving the bees of the fruits oftheir industry, Dick instantly set to work, and without remorsesuffocated them by burning dry grass underneath. Having secured a goodamount of honey, he left the comb to the indicator as its share of thebooty, and went back with his companion to the canoe.
The honey was acceptable, but it did not do much to alleviate thecravings of hunger.
Next day it happened that they had just stopped for their accustomedrest, when they observed that an enormous swarm of grasshoppers hadsettled at the mouth of a creek close by. Two or three deep theycovered the soil, myriads and myriads of them adhering to every shrub.
"The natives eat those grasshoppers," said Benedict, "and like themtoo."
The remark produced an instant effect; all hands were busied incollecting them, and a large supply was quickly gathered: the canoemight have been filled ten times over.
Grilled over a slow fire, they were found to be very palatable eating,and, spite of his qualms of conscience, Benedict himself made a heartymeal.
But although the gnawings of absolute hunger were thus assuaged, allthe travellers began to long most anxiously for the voyage to come toan end. The mode of transit indeed might be less exhausting to thebodily powers than a land march would have been, but the excessive heatby day, the damp mists at night, and the incessant attacks ofmosquitoes, all combined to render the passage extremely trying. Therewas no telling how long it would last, and Dick was equally uncertainwhether it might end in a few days, or be protracted for a month. Thedirection which the stream was taking was itself a subject ofperplexity.
A fresh surprise was now in store.
As Jack, a few mornings afterwards, was standing at the bow peeringthrough an aperture in the grass canopy above him, he suddenly turnedround and cried,--
"The sea! the sea!"
Dick started forwards, and looked eagerly in the same direction.
A large expanse of water was visible in the horizon, but after havingsurveyed it for a moment or two, he said,--
"No, Jack, it is not the sea, it is a great river; it is running west,and I suppose this river runs into it. Perhaps it is the Zaire."
"Let us hope it is," said Mrs. Weldon earnestly.
Most cordially did Dick Sands re-echo her words, being well aware thatat the mouth of that river were Portuguese villages, where a refugemight assuredly be found.
For several succeeding days the canoe, still concealed by its covering,floated on the silvery surface of this new-found stream. On either sidethe banks became less arid, and there seemed everything to encouragethe few survivors of the "Pilgrim" to believe that they would soon seethe last of the perils and toils of their journey.
They were too sanguine. Towards three o'clock on the morning of the18th, Dick, who was at his usual post at the bow, fancied he heard adull rumbling towards the west. Mrs. Weldon, Jack, and Benedict wereall asleep. Calling Hercules to him, he asked him whether he could nothear a strange noise. The night was perfectly calm, and not a breath ofair was stirring. The negro listened attentively, and suddenly, hiseyes sparkling with delight, exclaimed,--
"Yes, captain, I hear the sea!"
Dick shook his head and answered,--
"It is not the sea, Hercules."
"Not the sea!" cried the negro, "then what can it be?"
"We must wait till daybreak," replied Dick, "and meanwhile we shallhave to keep a sharp look-out."
Hercules returned to his place, but only to continue listening withever-increasing curiosity. The rumbling perceptibly increased till itbecame a continued roar.
With scarcely any intervening twilight night passed into day. Just infront, scarcely more than half a mile ahead, a great mist was hangingover the river; it was not an ordinary fog, and when the sun rose, thelight of the dawn caused a brilliant rainbow to arch itself from shoreto shore.
In a voice so loud that it awoke Mrs. Weldon, Dick gave his order toHercules to steer for the bank:--
"Quick, quick, Hercules! ashore! ashore! there are cataracts closeahead!"
And so it was. Within little more than a quarter of a mile the bed ofthe river sank abruptly some hundred feet, and the foaming watersrushed down in a magnificent fall with irresistible velocity. A fewminutes more and the canoe must have been swallowed in the deep abyss.
