In less than an hour we were on the road, stepping out briskly towards the south. A good store of provisions was in our scrip, and we had that comfortable feeling of being independent of the vicissitudes of the hour that accompanies a well-lined purse.
The musicians strode on ahead, Osman leading, and as they went they chattered gaily, and broke out from time to time in snatches of song. Aminé and I walked some distance behind that we might talk more freely, for neither of us felt any desire to increase our intimacy with the minstrels.
"Yúsufu," said Aminé suddenly, when we had left the town behind, "what was it that thou hadst in thy hand when Abduláhi and I came upon thee sitting under the tree?"
"In my hand?" I repeated, considerably disconcerted by the question.
"Yes. Thou didst hide it when I spoke, so I said nothing, because Abduláhi was there."
I was surprised at her discretion, and after a moment's reflection decided to get the explanation over at once. I therefore drew out the locket (which I had not yet sewn up in its hiding place) and opened it. Aminé gazed at the two faces in blank amazement, and for a time spoke not a word.
"What is it?" she asked at length; "is it witchcraft?" and then with sudden suspicion, "who are they? Who is the woman?"
"She is the maid who is to be my wife," I replied, feeling about as comfortable as a polar bear might in a Turkish bath, and perspiring almost as freely. "The old man is her father."
"Thy wife!" exclaimed Aminé hoarsely. "Thou toldest me nothing of this!"
She made a sudden snatch at the locket, which I narrowly evaded, and hastened to stow the precious bauble out of harm's way.
"I will get that thing and fling it in the fire," Aminé declared in a voice husky with anger, "and as to the woman, I will kill her when I meet her."
I made no reply, being not a little distressed at the turn things were taking.
"Why didst not thou tell me?" Aminé continued passionately, "that thou hadst a beautiful wife, one far more handsome than me? I would not have come with thee. Abduláhi would have taken me gladly."
I wished most fervently that he had, but held my peace.
Suddenly she burst into a storm of sobs, beating her breast and moaning aloud, and tearing the coral necklace asunder, she flung it down in the road.
I feigned not to see this, and presently she went back and picked it up, but she did not again overtake me, but continued to follow some twenty or thirty yards behind.
Throughout the day she maintained an attitude of sullen aloofness, never coming near me nor speaking unless under actual necessity, and when she was compelled to address me she spoke with a gruff curtness in extreme contrast to her usual soft and winning manner. Her altered behaviour was viewed with but ill-concealed amusement by the musicians, and Ali took the opportunity to adopt a highly insinuating and sympathetic manner towards her; but his attempts to fish in troubled waters met with no better result than a vehemently uttered threat on her part to break his skull with a large stone.
Late in the afternoon we turned off the road on which we had been travelling, and took a small and indistinct track, which Osman informed me would shorten our journey by a couple of days, and which presently brought us to a tiny hamlet on the bank of the river Tain—a large tributary of the Firráo or Volta. Here Aminé obtained for herself and me a house which stood in a small compound of its own, and she commenced to prepare our meal, leaving the minstrels to make their own arrangements. When the meal was ready she took it into the house, and set it before me in silence; but instead of sitting down with me to share it, she went out into the compound and supped alone by the fire.
By the time I had finished eating the night had closed in and the hut was in darkness, but presently Aminé brought in a large shea-butter lamp or candle and set it on the floor; then she cleared away the remains of the food, and again left me in solitude.
For a long time I sat cross-legged at the end of my mat, watching the shadows dance upon the walls as the unsteady flame flickered in the draught, meditating gloomily upon this new complication in my affairs, and wondering what the end of it would be. My reflections were at length interrupted by the entrance of Aminé, who walked straight up to my mat, and, kneeling down upon it, laid her head upon my feet.
"Wilt thou forgive me, Yúsufu?" she asked meekly, "for the wrong that I have done thee? I was vexed when thou didst show me the face of thy wife, and I saw that she was so fair to look upon, for I feared that thou wouldst love her only and not me. I will trouble thee no more, my husband, nor make strife in thy house, and the beautiful woman shall be as my sister, and I will even be subject to her, and serve her as her bond-maid if it please thee, so that thou shalt love me too. Wilt thou not forgive me, seeing that I am but a woman, and that my folly ariseth out of my love for thee?"
She raised a piteous face to me, and her big eyes were swimming with tears as she made her humble appeal. As to me, I was too much overcome to be capable of any reply, and giving way to a natural, though insane, impulse, I took her head in my hands, and laid her cheek against mine. She uttered a sigh of profound content, and presently rose, and, spreading her mat near mine, curled herself up upon it and there lay, not sleeping, but watching me like some devoted terrier basking upon a rug, with one fond eye fixed upon its master.
I was deeply affected, and very angry with myself, for by thus weakly yielding to my emotion, natural though it was, I had made the situation far worse than it was before, and the bitter disillusionment had to be begun all over again. And then how pitiful it was to see all this noble and faithful love running to waste in a world where it is so precious and so rare; when so many have to pass through life uncared for and alone.
When I came out of the hut in the morning I found Aminé dressed in her old túrkedi, holding a review of our household goods, which were spread out on her mat.
"I have been thinking," she said, "that it seemeth a pity for us to be wearing our fine clothes on this rough journey through the forest, so I have put on my old túrkedi. Wilt thou, too, not wear thy old riga and wondo, and let me put the fine ones in a bundle and carry them?"
It seemed a reasonable suggestion, so taking the old clothing into the hut, I made the change.
"It would be well," said she, as she folded my embroidered riga, "to put in the bundle all that thou needest not for use on the road, so that thou shalt walk more easily."
To this I also agreed, and laid on the mat my watch, pistol, and cartridge box, my purse with the remaining money in it, the bag of gold dust that I had received from Musa, and a few other odds and ends. I kept out a bag of kurdi for our immediate wants, and I wore my two knives—my original knife and the one I had obtained in the mine—stuck through the waist-band of my wondo. The locket I had already hastily stitched into its case, and this hung round my neck.
As Aminé was putting the finishing touches to the bundle, I strolled towards the gate of the compound, and was just stepping out, when Ali strode up hurriedly and with an air of confusion for which I could not at the moment account.
"I have come to look for thee, thou sluggard," said he boisterously. "Wilt thou keep us waiting for ever?"
"I am going to find our landlord, that I may pay him for our lodgings," I replied, but at that moment the man himself appeared and saluted me civilly. I thanked him (in Hausa—which he did not understand) for the loan of his house, and presented him with a handful of cowries, which he received with lively tokens of gratitude, and as Aminé was now waiting with our entire effects upon her head, we made our way to the river, picking up Osman and Baku on the way.
We forded the Tain without difficulty, for there was barely four feet of water in the middle, the river being now at its lowest; but the high, steep banks showed us what a volume it swelled to in the wet season, and we saw that, had we been a month later, it would have been quite impassable. For we were now at the very end of the dry season, and, indeed, one or two showers had fallen while we were at Banda.
The track along which we travelled became more and more obscure as we went on, but Osman picked his way along it with the confidence of a skilled path-finder. I noted, however, with some concern, that in spite of his promise that we should keep to the more open orchard-country, we were already entering the outskirts of the forest. Another thing I noticed before we had been long on the road, and that was that we had evidently crossed a water-parting, for the brooks and little streams that we forded in the early part of the day all ran towards the north-east, evidently going to join the Tain, but about midday we began to meet tiny streams meandering away to the south-west; and in the afternoon we crossed a more considerable—though still small—river, three times in rapid succession, after which it turned westward, and we saw it no more. About an hour after we had crossed this river the sky became suddenly overcast, and the chill of approaching rain was sensible in the air, while the forest was filled with the strange continuous murmur of moving leaves that foretells a storm.
We had passed no village or sign of habitation since leaving the Tain, and Osman assured us that we should meet with none until late on the morrow.
"Wherefore," said he, "we had better make ourselves a shelter against the storm as quickly as we can."
On hearing this we lost no time, but forthwith set about collecting the necessary materials, the minstrels and I cutting long sticks for the framework, while Aminé, armed with one of my knives, mowed down the high elephant grass of the opening in which we were to camp, thus at once clearing a space for the huts, and accumulating a pile of cut grass with which to thatch them. We worked with such a will that in less than an hour we had two tiny wigwam-like huts erected in the middle of the opening, where, if they were more exposed to the rain, they were safe from the principal danger—that of falling trees.
We had just finished the huts and piled inside one of them as many dry sticks as we had been able to find, when the storm burst and the rain fell in torrents. But in spite of the threatening signs of its approach, it was but a small affair after all, and in half an hour the sun was shining again, and there was every promise of a fine night.
"That is well over," observed Ali, putting his head out of the low doorway of his hut. "We can make us a fire outside now, and cook us some food."
"There is mighty little to cook," said Baku, following his leader into the outer air. "It is a pity that we did not stop to catch some of the fish that were swimming about in the river. There were plenty of them, and fine, large ones too."
"For that matter," said Osman, "we might go and catch some now while Aminé tends the fire. I have some hooks that I bought at Táari."
"It is a long way back," I objected.
"We need not go back," replied Osman. "The river is not far from here; I can show thee quite a short way. It should be good fishing after the rain."
"Then we should have to leave Aminé all alone," I said.
"I do not mind being left," said she. "You will be back by the time it is dark. Go and catch some fish while I get the fire ready to cook it."
I at length agreed to "go a-angling" with the musicians, and in a few minutes had made the necessary preparations. A wicker bag—Aminé's original caterpillar bag, in fact—fitted with a sling of creeper, answered as a creel; a ball of cotton yarn from Aminé's private bundle would serve as a line, and Osman had a dozen or so of large, coarse hooks. With these appliances, and such bait as we might pick up, it would be possible to capture some of the fish, provided they were of an unusually unsophisticated and confiding nature.
Osman's short cut to the river turned out as disappointing as short cuts generally do. We scrambled through the thick undergrowth, pushing through thorny bushes and tripping up over the sprawling roots of great trees, but making very little headway, and the manner in which we twisted and turned and altered our course made me fear that Osman had lost his way.
"We should have done better to go by the road," I grumbled, as I extricated myself from the grapnels of a climbing palm; "we should have been there by now, and with less labour."
"The way is rough, indeed," Osman admitted, "but we are nearly there."
He pushed on ahead and disappeared among the trees, and sure enough in a few minutes we heard his cheery announcement:
"Here we are; here is the river at last, and here are the fish, too—swarms of them."
The conditions were certainly favourable enough for sport, for the river, swollen by the rain, was now swift and turbid, and even through the muddy water we could see the fish snapping at the floating insects and débris that had been swept into the stream. Nor was there any scarcity of bait, for snails, large and small, crept upon every bush, and caterpillars and grubs could be collected by the dozen.
Osman served out to each of us four hooks, while I furnished the others with lengths of cotton yarn, and soon we were fully equipped, with the spare hooks stuck in our rigas. A fat, green caterpillar served me for bait, and with my spear as a rod I proceeded to make a trial cast.
The fish were truly most confiding. Quite unsuspicious of the thick white yarn and the great hook, they proceeded to gorge the wriggling bait and came up spluttering on to the bank in the greatest astonishment. It was magnificent, but it was not sport; however, the basket soon began to wax heavy, and visions of broiled fish floated across my mental horizon.
"Where are Ali and Osman?" I asked of Baku, who was fishing a few yards away from me.
"They are further down, just by the bend," he replied.
"If they have been as successful as thou and I, they will have nearly enough," I said, for I had seen Baku hooking the fish out even faster than I was doing. "We must not stay too long, or we shall have the darkness upon us."
"That is true," he answered. "I shall go and collect a few more caterpillars, and then when I have caught three more fish I shall angle no more."
He wound up his line and began searching the bushes, among which I soon lost sight of him. I had just stowed a specially large fish in my basket when, looking up, it seemed to me that the light was beginning to fail.
"Come, Baku," I called out; "here is the evening closing in, and we have to get back. We must start at once."
He did not answer.
"Where art thou, Baku?" I called again, raising my voice, as I wound up my line and stuck the hook in my riga.
There was still no answer.
"Ho, there!" I shouted. "Ali! Osman! Where are you all?"
I listened, but not a sound came back but the cry of a hornbill that had been startled by my shout.
With a sudden pang of suspicion I ran along the bank looking in all directions and shouting at the top of my voice, but no sign of my companions was to be seen nor did my shouts evoke any answer. They had gone, and the stealthy manner of their departure filled me alike with anger and anxiety. For when I would have followed them I realised that I had but the vaguest idea of the direction in which the camp lay. The devious manner in which we had approached the river had completely bewildered me, and I dared not trust myself to plunge into the pathless forest in search of so small a point as our opening. There was only one thing to be done; I must work my way up the river and endeavour to identify the place where we had crossed it, and this would be difficult enough, for, as I have said, the path on which we had been travelling was but an obscure and unfrequented track, and it was now rapidly growing dark. Moreover, I had no means of judging how far I was from the ford, whether it was but a few hundred yards away or a dozen miles; I could not even be certain that this was the same river, although I felt very little doubt that it was.
I at once commenced a systematic examination of the banks, working my way slowly up stream—for the ford undoubtedly lay in that direction—and the more I searched, the more hopeless did the task appear. The night came on apace, and soon I could barely see the ground without stooping. Once or twice I struck off on what I thought looked like a trail, but after following it for a hundred yards or more, found myself in impenetrable bush. And every moment my anxiety grew more and more intense.
As I recalled the incidents of the day the evidence of a settled plot became so manifest that I marvelled at my blindness. I remembered Ali's confusion when I encountered him at the compound gate, where he had without doubt been watching through the fence as Aminé packed the valuables in her bundle; I perceived that Osman's pretended short cut to the river through the trackless bush was but a device to prevent me from finding my way back; and again the sinister question presented itself, "What was their object in all this?" That they intended to make off with the gold was obvious, but what about Aminé? Would they drag her off with them, or would they leave her alone and helpless in the wilderness? With these questions I continued to torture myself, cursing my folly in having associated myself with these villains after what I had seen of them, and still searching with a sinking heart for any trace of our trail on the banks.
It had been dark more than two hours, during which time I had toiled painfully along the brink of the river, now wading in the shallows and now climbing the rugged banks, oblivious alike of the stampede of startled antelopes and the angry growls of beasts of prey, when the rising moon threw a shaft of pale red light through the trees; and at the same moment I seemed to recognise something familiar in the surroundings.
I gazed at the banks and perceived that they shelved in the same manner as I remembered them to have done at the ford. Trembling with mingled hope and anxiety, I eagerly examined the ground by the wan moonlight; and suddenly my heart gave a bound, for there in the soft earth was a familiar little oblong depression, and near it a footprint. The depression was the mark of the heel iron of my spear, as I now made certain by fitting the iron into it, and the little track, indistinct as it was, could yet be made out, meandering away into the forest.
Having definitely ascertained that this was really the path, I hurried forward as fast as I dared in the dim moonlight—for the track in places almost completely disappeared—my anxiety becoming keener with every moment that passed; but with all my haste, a full hour passed, and yet no sign of the camp appeared. A dreadful fear that I had strayed from the track began to be added to my other troubles, and grew momentarily more acute.
Suddenly a breath of wind in my face brought with it the scent of burning wood, and a minute later I perceived through the trees the glow of a fire. In a tumult of excitement I broke into a run, and almost immediately came out into the opening by the two huts.
The large untended fire and the silence of the camp struck me with a chill of foreboding. I rushed forward, calling loudly to Aminé, and, receiving no answer, dragged aside the thatch of our hut and crept in trembling with fear, and reaching out my hand touched a soft, chilly arm.
"Who is it?" I gasped. "Is it thou, Aminé?" and then, receiving no reply, I dashed out of the hut, and snatching a great faggot from the fire, ran back, blowing it into a flame.
Great God! What was this?
It was indeed Aminé!
Aminé with limp disordered limbs, and staring eyes that saw not, with a little pool of blood by her side, and a gaping wound in her breast!
For a full minute I knelt transfixed, holding the shaking brand over her face; then with a hoarse cry I rushed from the hut and flung myself on the earth.
I thought my last moments had come, and that I must die where I lay. My head seemed bursting; a roaring was in my ears, and lights danced before my eyes.
As I slowly recovered, the shock of overwhelming horror and grief became mingled with an access of fury that threatened my reason. I stalked up and down before the huts, shaking my fists and cursing aloud like a maniac. If I could have laid my hands at that moment on the murderers, there is no act of ferocious cruelty of which I should not have been capable. To merely tear them limb from limb or hack them into pieces would have seemed too merciful, in the passion of hatred and rage that now possessed me, and I have since been thankful that I did not then encounter them, for I should certainly have disgraced my civilisation with some horrid act of barbaric vengeance.
Presently I grew calmer, and setting a cotton wick—torn from my riga—to one of the balls of shea butter that lay in her brass cooking-pan near the fire, I made a lamp and carried it into the hut.
Poor child! Poor faithful heart! Was it for this that I had brought her through so many perils and hardships, away from the promise of a home in some far away Hausa city, where she might have shared the love of some husband of her own race and seen her children grow up around her? In a passion of sorrow and bitter regret I stooped and kissed the cold cheek of the sweet barbarian, and knew for the first time how dear she had become to me with her simple faith and love, so childlike and yet so womanly.
As to the details of the foul deed, they were now obvious and plain. The fishing excursion had been deliberately planned to get me out of the way, and Osman's devious wanderings to and fro in the forest were doubtless designed to confuse me as to our direction (for probably the river was really close at hand, as he had said). When we arrived at the river, Ali and Osman must have hurried back almost immediately, while Baku remained for a time to occupy my attention. No doubt the two villains had endeavoured to persuade Aminé to accompany them in their flight (for Ali had ever cast a greedy eye on the handsome Fulah girl), and on her refusing and retreating to the hut to protect our valuables, they had followed her and silenced her resistance by stabbing her to the heart. As to which of them was the actual murderer I had little doubt, but any that I had was quickly resolved, for one of the hands of the poor dead maid was closed and seemed to grasp something, and on my gently opening it I took out a wisp of hair and a couple of red glass beads. Now, the three musicians wore, after the Wongára fashion, a plait of hair on each side of the face. Osman's plaits were plain, Baku's were ornamented with threads of coloured cotton, while Ali had decorated each of his plaits with a bunch of red glass beads.
If curses could have killed, the villainous balafu-player would never again have looked upon the daylight, for I heaped upon him every malediction that my lips could frame or my heart conceive, and I swore that if ever I met him, even though it were under the very walls of the castle, he should not escape until he had paid his debt to the uttermost farthing.
Curses, however, could not undo the dreadful deed nor bring back life to the poor chill body, and there remained the last sad offices to be performed for the lost companion of my wanderings. These I set about with the tears streaming down my face, and many a choking sob, as I recalled the little incidents of our comradeship, and especially the affecting scene of the previous night; reverently I composed the contorted limbs, and closed the eyes that had looked on me with such fond devotion, and with my broad spear-head began to turn up the earth in the floor of the hut.
It was but a shallow grave that I could dig with my imperfect appliances, for the soil was gravelly and hard, and the greater part of the night was spent before the narrow trench was hollowed out. By that time the last of the shea butter was burnt out, and I was faint from want of food, so I went out, and, laying a few of the fish upon the red embers, waited for the dawn, unmindful of the hynas that prowled, moaning and snuffling around the camp.
As the first pale glimmer appeared above the trees, I went back to the hut. The little clay tablet that the poor child had so prized still hung in its bag around her neck. I untied the string and transferred it to my own neck, and having cut off one of the long soft plaits of which she was so justly proud, I lifted the dead girl and tenderly laid her in her narrow bed, spreading her turkedi over her and tucking it around her that I might not see the cold earth fall upon her body. Then I filled in the grave and piled the little mound of earth over her, and going out, securely closed up the doorway of the hut.
The rest of the day I resolved to spend collecting stones with which to build a cairn over the grave, for I could not bear to think of her resting-place being desecrated by the ghoul-like beasts of the night.
I had for a moment had a wild idea of going in pursuit of the murderers, but the futility of this was so apparent that I immediately abandoned it; for apart from the fact that they had many hours' start, I could not tell whether they had gone forward or backward, and it was quite certain that they would take effectual means to avoid being overtaken. I therefore broiled the remainder of the fish, and when I had eaten it and piled up the fire with green wood, I took my mat into the vacant hut to sleep awhile before resuming my labours.
I did not sleep more than two or three hours, notwithstanding my fatigue, for the sun was near the zenith when I arose, and as I wished to complete my task before night, I set to work without delay. There are plenty of large stones to be picked up in most parts of the forest, for the heavy rains lay bare the rocky subsoil wherever there is much slope, so I had little difficulty in finding the material for the cairn, although it was heavy work carrying what I had collected to the camp.
In one of my excursions I took my way, with the wicker bag, down the path that led from the camp, as I had observed the ground to be more stony in that direction, and I had walked barely half a mile when I came to the river, which here made a sweep to the east and then turned away westward again. At this point there was a small rapid, and the bed of the stream was full of waterworn fragments of rock, most of them of considerable size. With these I filled up my bag, but before returning to the camp I baited a couple of my hooks with fragments of snail and secured the lines to overhanging branches so that the baited hooks nearly touched the bottom.
I made several journeys to the river, returning each time with a bag of stones on my head, a number of others in my pocket, and a big one under each arm, and in the course of the afternoon I caught four good sized fish. The day's wants being thus provided for, I proceeded with my melancholy task, and before nightfall I had built up a cairn over poor Aminé's grave that nearly covered the floor of the little hut, and had moreover strengthened the hut itself with a number of thorny branches, which I hoped would effectually prevent the beasts from tearing it open. The short remainder of the daylight I spent in making more secure the hut in which I was to sleep, and in collecting an abundance of firewood; and when the darkness at length closed in I cooked my frugal meal and then made up the fire. I did not turn in for a long time, but sat by the fire, in the blackest dejection, gazing at the crackling sticks, meditating upon my forlorn and hopeless condition, and thinking of the poor murdered girl who lay under the cairn, whom but yesterday I was so anxious to be rid of, and whose cheerful prattle I would have given so much to listen to again.
At length, as I felt that I was becoming sleepy and the prowling beasts were stealing up on all sides, I again fed the fire and banked it up with grass and sods of earth, and retiring to my hut, secured the doorway with strong lashings of creeper.
But I spent a miserable and unrestful night, for as soon as the fire burned low the camp was filled with the most hellish uproar, and several times a vigorous scratching at the frail wall of my hut had to be stopped by a thrust of my spear between the frame poles. Towards morning, however, the hubbub subsided, and I fell into a sound sleep from which I did not waken until the sunlight was streaming in through the chinks in the thatch.
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