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Dick Sands, The Boy Captain, a fiction by Jules Verne |
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Part The Second - Chapter 15. An Exciting Chase |
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_ PART THE SECOND CHAPTER XV. AN EXCITING CHASE To say the truth, it was the very vaguest of hopes to which Mrs. Weldon had been clinging, yet it was not without some thrill of disappointment that she heard from the lips of old Alvez himself that Dr. Livingstone had died at a little village on Lake Bangweolo. There had appeared to be a sort of a link binding her to the civilized world, but it was now abruptly snapped, and nothing remained for her but to make what terms she could with the base and heartless Negoro. On the 14th, the day appointed for the interview, he made his appearance at the hut, firmly resolved to make no abatement in the terms that he had proposed, Mrs. Weldon, on her part, being equally determined not to yield to the demand. “There is only one condition,” she avowed, “upon which I will acquiesce. My husband shall not be required to come up the country here.” Negoro hesitated; at length he said that he would agree to her husband being taken by ship to Mossamedes, a small port in the south of Angola, much frequented by slavers, whither also, at a date hereafter to be fixed, Alvez should send herself with Jack and Benedict; the stipulation was confirmed that the ransom should be 100,000 dollars, and it was further made part of the contract that Negoro should be allowed to depart as an honest man. Mrs. Weldon felt she had gained an important point in thus sparing her husband the necessity of a journey to Kazonndé, and had no apprehensions about herself on her way to Mossamedes, knowing that it was to the interest of Alvez and Negoro alike to attend carefully to her wants. Upon the terms of the covenant being thus arranged, Mrs. Weldon wrote such a letter to her husband as she knew would bring him with all speed to Mossamedes, but she left it entirely to Negoro to represent himself in whatever light he chose. Once in possession of the document, Negoro lost no time in starting on his errand. The very next morning, taking with him about twenty negroes, he set off towards the north, alleging to Alvez as his motive for taking that direction, that he was not only going to embark somewhere at the mouth of the Congo, but that he was anxious to keep as far as possible from the prison-houses of the Portuguese, with which already he had been involuntarily only too familiar. After his departure, Mrs. Weldon resolved to make the best of her period of imprisonment, aware that it could hardly be less than four months before he would return. She had no desire to go beyond the precincts assigned her, even had the privilege been allowed her; but warned by Negoro that Hercules was still free, and might at any time attempt a rescue, Alvez had no thought of permitting her any unnecessary liberty. Her life therefore soon resumed its previous monotony. The daily routine went on within the enclosure pretty much as in other parts of the town, the women all being employed in various labours for the benefit of their husbands and masters. The rice was pounded with wooden pestles; the maize was peeled and winnowed, previously to extracting the granulous substance for the drink which they call mtyellé; the sorghum had to be gathered in, the season of its ripening being marked by festive observances; there was a fragrant oil to be expressed from a kind of olive named the mpafoo; the cotton had to be spun on spindles, which were hardly less than a foot and a half in length; there was the bark of trees to be woven into textures for wearing; the manioc had to be dug up, and the cassava procured from its roots; and besides all this, there was the preparation of the soil for its future plantings, the usual productions of the country being the moritsané beans, growing in pods fifteen inches long upon stems twenty feet high, the arachides, from which they procure a serviceable oil, the chilobé pea, the blossoms of which are used to give a flavour to the insipid sorghum, cucumbers, of which the seeds are roasted as chestnuts, as well as the common crops of coffee, sugar, onions, guavas, and sesame. To the women’s lot, too, falls the manipulation of all the fermented drinks, the malafoo, made from bananas, the pombé, and various other liquors. Nor should the care of all the domestic animals be forgotten; the cows that will not allow themselves to be milked unless they can see their calf, or a stuffed representative of it; the short-horned heifers that not unfrequently have a hump; the goats that, like slaves, form part of the currency of the country; the pigs, the sheep, and the poultry. The men, meanwhile, smoke their hemp or tobacco, hunt buffaloes or elephants, or are hired by the dealers to join in the slave-raids; the harvest of slaves, in fact, being a thing of as regular and periodic recurrence as the ingathering of the maize. In her daily strolls, Mrs. Weldon would occasionally pause to watch the women, but they only responded to her notice by a long stare or by a hideous grimace; a kind of natural instinct made them hate a white skin, and they had no spark of commiseration for the stranger who had been brought among them; Halima, however, was a marked exception, she grew more and more devoted to her mistress, and by degrees, the two became able to exchange many sentences in the native dialect. Jack generally accompanied his mother. Naturally enough he longed to get outside the enclosure, but still he found considerable amusement in watching the birds that built in a huge baobab that grew within; there were maraboos making their nests with twigs; there were scarlet-throated souimangas with nests like weaver-birds; widow birds that helped themselves liberally to the thatch of the huts; calaos with their tuneful song; grey parrots, with bright red tails, called roufs by the Manyuema, who apply the same name to their reigning chiefs; and insect-eating drongos, like grey linnets with large red beaks. Hundreds of butterflies flitted about, especially in the neighbourhood of the brooks; but these were more to the taste of Cousin Benedict than of little Jack; over and over again the child expressed his regret that he could not see over the walls, and more than ever he seemed to miss his friend Dick, who had taught him to climb a mast, and who he was sure would have fine fun with him in the branches of the trees, which were growing sometimes to the height of a hundred feet. So long as the supply of insects did not fail, Benedict would have been contented to stay on without a murmur in his present quarters. True, without his glasses he worked at a disadvantage; but he had had the good fortune to discover a minute bee that forms its cells in the holes of worm-eaten wood, and a “sphex” that practises the craft of the cuckoo, and deposits its eggs in an abode not prepared by itself. Mosquitos abounded in swarms, and the worthy naturalist was so covered by their stings as to be hardly recognizable; but when Mrs. Weldon remonstrated with him for exposing himself so unnecessarily, he merely scratched the irritated places on his skin, and said— “It is their instinct, you know; it is their instinct.” On the 17th of June an adventure happened to him which was attended with unexpected consequences. It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. The insufferable heat had driven all the residents within the dépôt indoors, and not a native was to be seen in the streets of Kazonndé. Mrs. Weldon was dozing; Jack was fast asleep. Benedict himself, sorely against his will, for he heard the hum of many an insect in the sunshine, had been driven to the seclusion of his cabin, and was falling into an involuntary siesta. Suddenly a buzz was heard, an insect’s wing vibrating some fifteen thousand beats a second! “A hexapod!” cried Benedict, sitting up. Short-sighted though he was, his hearing was acute, and his perception made him thoroughly convinced that he was in proximity to some giant specimen of its kind. Without moving from his seat he did his utmost to ascertain what it was; he was determined not to flinch from the sharpest of stings if only he could get the chance of capturing it. Presently he made out a large black speck flitting about in the few rays of daylight that were allowed to penetrate the hut. With bated breath he waited in eager expectation. The insect, after long hovering above him, finally settled on his head. A smile of satisfaction played about his lips as he felt it crawling lightly through his hair. Equally fearful of missing or injuring it, he restrained his first impulse to grasp it in his hand. “I will wait a minute,” he thought; “perhaps it may creep down my nose; by squinting a little perhaps I shall be able to see it.” For some moments hope alternated with fear. There sat Benedict with what he persuaded himself was some new African hexapod perched upon his head, and agitated by doubts as to the direction in which it would move. Instead of travelling in the way he reckoned along his nose, might it not crawl behind his ears or down his neck, or, worse than all, resume its flight in the air? Fortune seemed inclined to favour him. After threading the entanglement of the naturalist’s hair the insect was felt to be descending his forehead. With a fortitude not unworthy of the Spartan who suffered his breast to be gnawed by a fox, nor of the Roman hero who plunged his hand into the red-hot coals, Benedict endured the tickling of the six small feet, and made not a motion that might frighten the creature into taking wing. After making repeated circuits of his forehead, it passed just between his eyebrows; there was a moment of deep suspense lest it should once more go upwards; but it soon began to move again; neither to the right nor to the left did it turn, but kept straight on over the furrows made by the constant rubbing of the spectacles, right along the arch of the cartilage till it reached the extreme tip of the nose. Like a couple of movable lenses, Benedict’s two eyes steadily turned themselves inwards till they were directed to the proper point. “Good!” he whispered to himself. He was exulting at the discovery that what he had been waiting for so patiently was a rare specimen of the tribe of the Cicindelidæ, peculiar to the districts of Southern Africa. “A tuberous manticora!” he exclaimed. The insect began to move again, and as it crawled down to the entrance of the nostrils the tickling sensation became too much for endurance, and Benedict sneezed. He made a sudden clutch, but of course he only caught his own nose. His vexation was very great, but he did not lose his composure; he knew that the manticora rarely flies very high, and that more frequently than not it simply crawls. Accordingly he groped about a long time on his hands and knees, and at last he found it basking in a ray of sunshine within a foot of him. His resolution was soon taken. He would not run the risk of crushing it by trying to catch it, but would make his observations on it as it crawled; and so with his nose close to the ground, like a dog upon the scent, he followed it on all fours, admiring it and examining it as it moved. Regardless of the heat he not only left the doorway of his hut, but continued creeping along till he reached the enclosing palisade. At the foot of the fence the manticora, according to the habits of its kind, began to seek a subterranean retreat, and coming to the opening of a mole-track entered it at once. Benedict quite thought he had now lost sight of his prize altogether, but his surprise was very great when he found that the aperture was at least two feet wide, and that it led into a gallery which would admit his whole body. His momentary feeling of astonishment, however, gave way to his eagerness to follow up the hexapod, and he continued burrowing like a ferret. Without knowing it, he actually passed under the palisading, and was now beyond it;—the mole-track, in fact, was a communication that had been made between the interior and exterior of the enclosure. Benedict had obtained his freedom, but so far from caring in the least for his liberty he continued totally absorbed in the pursuit upon which he had started. He watched with unflagging vigilance, and it was only when the hexapod expanded its wings as if for flight that he prepared to imprison it in the hollow of his hand. All at once, however, he was taken by surprise; a whizz and a whirr and the prize was gone! Disappointed rather than despairing, Benedict raised himself up, and looked about him. Before long the old black speck was again flitting just above his head. There was every reason to hope that it would ultimately settle once more upon the ground, but on this side of the palisade there was a large forest a little way to the north, and if the manticora were to get into its mass of foliage all hope of keeping it in view would be lost, and there would be an end of the proud expectation of storing it in the tin box, to be preserved among the rest of the entomological wonders. After a while the insect descended to the earth; it did not rest at all, nor crawl as it had done previously, but made its advance by a series of rapid hops. This made the chase for the near-sighted naturalist a matter of great difficulty; he put his face as close to the ground as possible, and kept starting off and stopping and starting off again with his arms extended like a swimming frog, continually making frantic clutches to find as continually that his grasp had been eluded. After running till he was out of breath, and scratching his hands against the brushwood and the foliage till they bled, he had the mortification of feeling the insect dash past his ear with what might be a defiant buzz, and finding that it was out of sight for ever. “Ungrateful hexapod!” he cried in dismay, “I intended to honour you with the best place in my collection.” He knew not what to do, and could not reconcile himself to the loss; he reproached himself for not having secured the manticora at the first; he gazed at the forest till he persuaded himself he could see the coveted insect in the distance, and, seized with a frantic impulse, exclaimed,— “I will have you yet!” He did not even yet realize the fact that he had gained his liberty, but heedless of everything except his own burning disappointment, and at the risk of being attacked by natives or beset by wild beasts, he was just on the very point of dashing into the heart of the wood when suddenly a giant form confronted him, as suddenly a giant hand seized him by the nape of his neck, and, lifting him up, carried him off with apparently as little exertion as he could himself have carried off his hexapod! For that day at least Cousin Benedict had lost his chance of being the happiest of entomologists. _ |
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