O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, Gordon Stables [microsoft ebook reader TXT] 📗

evening I was

summoned to the palace yard or grounds, and first I had to fight the

king, then a boy of my own standing. Well, I am afraid that if I

suffered in body and mind from my encounter with the king, I took it out

of the smaller savage to follow. There was some satisfaction in that.

 

But one day, to show his own wonderful powers of fisticuff, the king

summoned a crowd of his warriors to his palace, and made them form a

great ring. Then I was ordered in and pitted against an Indian boy

bigger than myself. I never cared how big they were, they held their

arms wide and hit downwards as if thumping a piano.

 

After one or two boys had been disposed of, to the wild delight of the

warriors, the king took a drink of rum and handed the leather bottle to

his chief executioner; then he took off his extra garments--his one boot

and his crown, an old tin kettle without a bottom to it--and stood up in

front of me. I went down several times according to my own programme,

and the savages shook their spears and rattled them against their

shields of buffalo hide, and shouted and shrieked to their hearts'

content.

 

Then the king hit me rather hard, and I suppose my English pride was

touched, for the next thing I remember is--horror of horrors!--the

sacred person of his Majesty King Otakooma sprawling on the dusty ground

and his nose bleeding.

 

A silence deep as death fell on all the crowd.

 

Then there was a rush for me. Spears were at my breast and I expected

only instant death, when the king sprang to my rescue and all fell back.

 

If I had knelt to him and begged his pardon, even then I might have been

forgiven.

 

But an English youth to sue on his knees for mercy from a savage! Nay,

it was not to be thought of.

 

The king sat down.

 

The king was silent for a space of time. The king took more rum.

 

Then he ordered ropes of skin to be brought, and I was bound hand and

foot and taken away to a loathsome dungeon.

 

I knew I was to die next day, and I longed for sunrise to have it past,

for I suffered excruciating agony from the tightness of the cords that

bound me.

 

The time came. I was to form part in a procession, and did; I was

carried shoulder-high, lying on my back on a kind of bark tray, amid

tom-tom beating, howling, shrieking, and a deal of capering and dancing

that at any other time I should have laughed most heartily at.

 

At the execution ground goats and cocks were killed, then it came to my

turn.

 

The king came to have a last look at me. The cords were undone, and I

stood up staggering because my feet were swollen. The king looked at my

hands: they were swollen double the size.

 

The king rubbed his nose.

 

The king was thinking.

 

"Now," he must have thought, "here is a hand (meaning my swollen fist)

that couldn't hurt anybody. What a chance to redeem my lost honour!"

 

The king took more rum.

 

Then he started from his throne and shouted. What he said matters

little. At the conclusion of his speech I was again dragged up to fight

the king. If I could have hit him then I would have done so. But with

such hands, how could I? So it ended in my being fearfully punished.

 

Then there was such shouting and yelling as I had never before heard in

my life. But I was free.

 

The king took more rum.

 

For a whole year after this I was kept under almost constant

surveillance, but there was no more fighting.

 

Sometimes the king and his savages went away on the war-path, for many

weeks together. When they did so, I was confined in a dungeon, and had

no other companions except frogs, lizards, and centipedes. All the food

they gave me was a piece of dried cassava root [the root from which

arrowroot is made], daily, and I had very little water.

 

But in spite of my hardships, I grew strong and robust. Probably, if I

had not been a friendless orphan, if I had had a mother for instance, or

a father, or sisters, or brothers, in a far-off home to think about, my

misery would have been greater; as it was I had no one, for I believed

that Roberts and all the people of the _Niobe_ had been slain in that

terrible fight at Zareppa's fort.

 

Amelioration of my sufferings came at last, and in a strange way.

 

The king fell ill.

 

The king took more rum.

 

The king grew worse, and all the sorcery of his medicine men could not

cure him, so I was sent for.

 

I had seen Jooma putting poison into the rum, and I told the king he had

been poisoned. Who had done so? he asked: the culprit should die. No

human being, I was determined, should die on account of anything I said.

I told him, however, that next day I should fetch the evil creature who

had destroyed the health of the king. Meanwhile the rum was poured on

the ground, and I made him a pill of the poison berry, and a little

scraped cassava root. He saw me mix it. His medicine men assured him

it would be death to take it; I took a pill myself, and when he saw I

did not die, he followed my example, and took two or three. For I had

found out that in small doses this poison berry was medicinal. The king

slept, and awoke refreshed.

 

Then he called for the culprit who had dared to poison his rum.

 

I went and found Jooma. I told him that his guilt was discovered, and

that his life was in my hands; that a word from me would march him to

the execution ground. He knelt and prayed for mercy. I told him he

needn't trouble, that Englishmen were far too honourable to harbour

revenge. Then I made him bring a very old and savage billy-goat, and

together we brought it to the king.

 

The king was greatly pleased. He said he never had liked the looks of

the billy-goat, and he had no doubt that it had worked some deadly spell

upon his rum. So the billy-goat--poor beast--was slain, and after a few

more pills the king got better, and I was chief favourite among all the

tribe.

 

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