XV
Stas instructed Kali also how to shoot from a Remington rifle, and this instruction proceeded more easily than the teaching of the catechism. After ten days' shooting at a mark and at crocodiles which slept on the sandy river banks, the young negro killed a big antelope cob; after that a few ariels and finally a wart-hog. The encounter with the latter, however, almost resulted in the same kind of accident which befell Linde, for the wart-hog, which Kali approached carelessly after the shot, started up suddenly and charged at him with tail upraised. Kali, flinging away the rifle, sought refuge in a tree, where he sat until his cries brought Stas, who, however, found the wild boar already dead. Stas did not yet permit the boy to hunt for buffaloes, lions, and rhinoceroses. He himself did not shoot at the elephants which came to the watering place, because he had promised Nell that he would never kill one.
When, however, in the morning or during the afternoon hours, from above he espied, through the field-glass, herds of zebras, hartbeests, ariels, or springboks grazing in the jungle, he took Kali with him. During these excursions he often questioned the boy about the Wahima and Samburu nations, with which, desiring to go eastward, to the ocean coast, they necessarily must come in contact.
"Do you know, Kali," he asked a certain day, "that after twenty days on horseback we could reach your country?"
"Kali does not know where the Wahimas live," the young negro answered, sadly shaking his head.
"But I know that they live in the direction in which the sun rises in the morning, near some great water."
"Yes! Yes!" exclaimed the boy with amazement and joy; "Basso-Narok! That in our language means, great and black water. The great master knows everything."
"No, for I do not know how the Wahimas would receive us if we came to them."
"Kali would command them to fall on their faces before the great master and before the 'Good Mzimu.'"
"And would they obey?"
"Kali's father wears a leopard's hide—and Kali, too." Stas understood this to mean that Kali's father was a king, and that Kali was his oldest son and the future ruler of the Wahimas.
So he continued to ask further:
"You told me that white travelers visited you and that the older people remember them."
"Yes, and Kali has heard that they had a great deal of percale on their heads."
"Ah!" thought Stas, "so those were not Europeans, but Arabs, whom the negroes on account of their lighter complexion and white dress mistook for white men."
Inasmuch, however, as Kali did not remember them and could not give any more specific details about them, Stas propounded to him other questions.
"Have not the Wahimas killed any of these men dressed in white?"
"No! Neither the Wahimas nor the Samburus can do that."
"Why?"
"For they said that if their blood should soak into the ground the rain would cease to fall."
"I am glad to hear that they believe so."
Stas thought for a while, after which he asked:
"Would the Wahimas go with us to the sea, if I promised them a big quantity of percale, beads, and rifles?"
"Kali goes and the Wahimas also, but the great master would first have to subdue the Samburus, who are settled on the other side of the water."
"And who lives beyond the Samburus?"
"Beyond the Samburus there are no mountains, and there is a jungle, and in it lions."
With this the conversation ended. Stas more and more frequently thought of the great journey towards the east, remembering that Linde had said that they might meet coast Arabs trading in ivory, and perhaps a missionary expedition. He knew that such a journey would be a series of terrible hardships for Nell and full of new dangers, but he realized that they could not remain all their lives on Mount Linde and it was necessary to start soon on the journey. The time, after the rainy season, when water covers the pestilential swamps, and is to be found everywhere, was the most suitable for the purpose. The heat could not yet be felt on the high table-land; the nights were so cool still that it was necessary to be well covered. But in the jungle below it was considerably hotter, and he knew well that intense heat would soon come. The rain now seldom bedewed the earth and the water level in the river lowered daily. Stas assumed that in summer the river would change into one of those "khors," of which he saw many in the Libyan Desert, and that only in the very middle of it would flow a narrow stream of water.
Nevertheless, he postponed the departure from day to day. On Mount Linde it was so well with all, themselves as well as the animals! Nell not only was rid of the fever but of anæmia also; Stas' head never ached; Kali's and Mea's skins began to shine like black satin; Nasibu looked like a melon walking on thin legs, and the King, no less than the horses and the donkey, grew fat. Stas well knew that they would not until the end of the journey find another island like this amidst the jungle sea. And he viewed the future with fear; moreover, they had in the King great assistance and in case of necessity a defense.
Thus a week more elapsed before they commenced preparations for the journey. In moments free from packing their effects they did not cease, however, to send out kites with the announcement that they were going eastward towards some lake, and towards the ocean. They continued to fly them because they were favored by a strong western wind, resembling at times a hurricane, which seized and carried them to the mountains and far beyond the mountains. In order to protect Nell from the scorching heat, Stas constructed from pieces of a tent a palanquin in which the little maid was to ride on the elephant. The King, after a few trials, became accustomed to this not great burden, as well as to the fastening of the palanquin on his back with strong palm ropes. This load after all was a feather in comparison to others with which it was intended to burden him and upon the distribution and tying of which Kali and Mea were engaged.
Little Nasibu was commissioned to dry bananas and grind them into flour between two flat stones. At the plucking of the heavy bunches of fruit he was assisted by the King, at which work they overfed themselves to such an extent that, in the neighborhood of the huts, bananas were soon entirely gone, and they had to go to another plantation lying on the opposite extremity of the table-land. Saba, who had nothing to do, most frequently accompanied them on these excursions.
But Nasibu, for his zeal, almost paid with his life, or at least with captivity of a singular kind. For it happened that once when he was plucking bananas above the brink of a steep hanging rock he suddenly beheld in the rocky gap a hideous face, covered with black hair, blinking at him with its eyes, and displaying white fangs as though smiling. The boy was stupefied from terror at first and then began to scurry away as fast as his legs could carry him. He ran between ten and twenty paces when a hairy arm wound around him, he was lifted off his feet, and the monster, black as night, began to fly with him to the precipice.
Fortunately the gigantic ape, having seized the boy, could run only on two feet, in consequence of which Saba, who was in the vicinity, easily overtook it and buried his fangs in its back. A horrible fight began, in which the dog, notwithstanding his powerful stature and strength, would surely have had to succumb, for a gorilla vanquishes even a lion. Simians as a rule, however, do not relinquish their quarry even though their lives and liberty are in danger. The gorilla, being caught from behind, could not easily reach Saba; nevertheless, having grabbed him by the neck with its left hand it had already raised him, when the ground gave a dull sound under heavy steps and the King appeared.
One light thwack with the trunk sufficed to prostrate with a shattered skull and neck the terrible "forest demon," as the negroes call the gorilla. The King, however, for greater certainty or through inborn fury, pinned the gorilla with his tusks to the ground and afterwards did not cease to wreak his vengeance upon it until Stas, disquieted by the roar and howling, came running up with a rifle and ordered him to stop.
The huge gorilla, with the whites of the eyes rolled up and fangs displayed, terrible still, though not alive, lay in a puddle of blood which Saba lapped and which crimsoned the King's tusks. The elephant trumpeted triumphantly and Nasibu, ashen from terror, related to Stas what had happened. The latter pondered for a while whether or not to bring Nell and show her this monstrous ape, but abandoned the intention, for suddenly he was seized by fear. Of course, Nell often strolled alone over the island. So something similar might befall her.
It appeared, therefore, that Mount Linde was not so safe a shelter as it seemed in the first instance.
Stas returned to the hut and related the incident to Nell, while she listened with curiosity and fear, opening wide her eyes and repeating every little while:
"You see what would have happened without the King."
"True! With such a nurse one need not fear about a child. So then, until we leave, do not move a step without him."
"When shall we leave?"
"The supplies are ready; the packs distributed; so it is necessary only to load the animals and we can start even to-morrow."
"To our papas!"
"If God permits," Stas answered gravely.