Harry Milvaine: or, The Wanderings of a Wayward Boy

“Yes, Raggy, I know all the rest, and very grateful I am for your pluck, and all that, and if ever we get back again, I’ll report your good and brave conduct, and you’ll be well rewarded. Perhaps they’ll make you a captain, Raggy.”

“Massa is joking.”

“You go home now at once?” the boy asked, after a pause.

“Oh! no, Raggy. That would not be doing my duty. I’m going inland, and I’m going to try to find and redeem, or rescue our poor fellows. It would not be plucky nor brave to go back without them – at all events without trying to find them. Now, Raggy, as we are sure, if spared, to be some considerable time together, I wish you to do me the favour to teach Nanungamanoo to speak English.”

“De yeller nigger wi’ de long name, massa?”

“That is he, Raggy – Nanungamanoo.”

“Oh! lah! massa, I teachee he plenty propah, and suppose he no speak good, I give him five, six, ten stick all same as de schoolmastah ob de Bunting switchee me.”

“You better not try,” said Harry, laughing, “or you may find yourself in the wrong box. But here,” he cried aloud, “Nanungamanoo, where are you?”

Next moment Nanungamanoo stood silently before him awaiting his commands.

“You’ve got too long a name, Nanungamanoo.”

“Yes, sahib.”

“Well, we’ll shorten it. We’ll call you Jack. It’s free and easy.”

Jack expressed his pleasure to have an English name, so Jack he became.

“On all ‘occasions of ceremony or state,’ as the Navy List says, Jack, we will resort to your original designation, and you will be Nanungamanoo again.”

For three days and nights Harry and his merry men occupied the cave on the hillside.

At the end of this time they had the satisfaction one evening of seeing a red light gleaming on the western horizon. It was the reflection of the camp-fire of the returning caravan.

Early next morning, almost as soon as sunrise, Mahmoud and his followers passed through the forest at the foot of the hill. Harry could even hear them talking, so close were they.

He had the rifles loaded and everything ready to give them a warm reception should they dare to ascend. But they did not. They went through the forest and on their way across a broad sandy plain.

When they had quite disappeared beyond the horizon, Harry gave a sigh of relief. The danger was, comparatively speaking, over for a time. He would now give them a few days’ start, then go on behind, for Jack assured him this caravan route was the only practical way into the interior.

Every night the lions could be heard growling and roaring with that awe-inspiring cough, which they emit, in the woods around the hill. It was well they had a cave to sleep in, for to have lit fires on the hill-top would have ensured the return of Mahmoud and his savage Somalis, and they would have been captured. But a sentinel was set – and Harry took the post time about with Raggy and Somali Jack.

Was Jack really to be trusted? The answer to this is, that the faithfulness of a Somali Indian will be sold to the highest bidder, just like a picture at an auction mart, but it may in time be cemented to the purchaser if he is worthy of it. I have always found that there is a great deal of similarity betwixt the human nature as displayed by Indians and white men, which only proves that the world is much the same all over.

I must add, however, that white men as a rule treat savages with less ceremony and far less justice than they would mete out to one of their own dogs at home. Take an example. Some scoundrelly white trader has been murdered (it is called “murdered,” but I should say “killed”) by some islanders of the Pacific. This trading fellow had been on shore – probably not sober – abusing the hospitality held out to him, bullying and swaggering, and doing deeds that, if committed in this country, would secure for him a lengthened period of penal servitude. The worm turns at last and resents. The trader calls his men and a fight ensues; the savages are victorious, the white men slain. By and by in comes a British man-o’-war and demands the surrender of the murderers by the chief or king. Perhaps he does not even know them, refuses to give them up, and therein ensues a wholesale butchery of men, women, and children, and the burning of towns and villages.

I have known this happen over and over again, and I have asked myself, Who is to blame? Certainly not the so-called savages.

Well, boy-readers, if ever any of you happen to be away abroad, in Africa or the Pacific, and have a native as a servant, take my advice: treat him as a human being and a fellow-creature, and you will have no cause to complain, but quite the reverse.

Harry had a good long talk with Jack; he told him he should let him go away any time he wished, but that if he did stay he would have no cause to repent it.

Once more Jack took Harry’s hand in both his and bent himself down until his brow touched it, and our hero was satisfied.

On leaving the hill – which, by the way, Harry took possession of in the Queen’s name, and called it Mount Andrew, to show he had not forgotten his old friend in the Highlands – they journeyed on through the forest and followed in the very footsteps of Mahmoud’s caravan, across plains, through woods, through rivers and mountain glens, camping every night where Mahmoud had camped, and lighting a fire in the very same spot. The fire was very necessary now, and it had to be kept up all night, for they were in a country inhabited by and given up to, one might say, wild beasts.

Here were lions in scores, hyaenas and jungle-cats.

So all night long these animals made the bush resound with their cries.

Sometimes Harry found it almost impossible to sleep, so terrible was the quarrelling and din. He fell upon a plan at last that in some measure remedied the infliction – that of leaving the bullock or two, or the deer or hartebeest slain for food, a good two or three miles behind. Where the carrion is, there cometh the kite; and so it was in this case – to some extent at all events.

The store of rice that Jack had looted from Mahmoud’s camp very soon was done, but they did not want for provisions for all that.

There were fruits of so many kinds, and roots that they dug up, or rather that Jack dug up and roasted in the camp-fire. Then there were plantains, which are excellent cooked in the same primitive style. Some of the forest trees were laden with fruit; the danger lay in eating too much of it. Many of these fruits were quite unknown to Harry, but he was guided by his best man, Jack. With so much fruit, salt was hardly missed, though at first Harry thought it strange to eat meat without it.

Slices from the most tender portions of the animals killed were cut and carried along with them, and towards evening, when the bivouac ground was chosen, and the fire of wood gathered and kindled by Jack and Raggy, the former set to work to prepare the supper.

The roots, yams principally, were simply buried among the fiery ashes, but a far more artistic method was adopted in grilling the steak: a triangle of green wood was built over the fire as soon as it had died down to red embers, across the triangle bars were fastened, and on this were hung the pieces of juicy flesh. When the bars were nearly burned through, and the wooden triangle itself falling to pieces, then the steak was cooked.

They had fresh air and exercise, and consequently the appetite of mighty hunters. It is hardly necessary, therefore, to add that they really enjoyed their dinners. Fruit followed, then water, which was not always good.

The country they traversed now, though a hilly and fertile one, was, strange to say, deserted.

Still, this is not so strange when we remember that in all probability it has been depopulated by the Arab slaver. Indeed, many parts of the forest gave evidence of having been ravished by fire.

Bravery, I take it, is not a very uncommon quality in the human breast of any inhabitant of our British islands, yet he is the bravest man who knows his danger and still does not fear to face it. In the matter of danger, where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise. Your first-voyage sailor will retain his presence of mind and coolness, at times when old seafarers are pale with the coldness of a coming evil. Why? Because he does not know the worst. This is not bravery. It is – nothing.

If, however, one is so positioned as to know there is danger, but remains in ignorance as to its amount or extent, then he has a bold heart who can quietly meet or court it. I have hinted before in this tale of mine that I claim for my wayward boy, Harry, no extraordinary qualities of mind, and that he had his faults just as you have, reader; so now I need not apologise for him when I confess to you that in the wild African jungle there were many times that his heart beat high with fear. Especially was this so at first. All bold, brave natures are finely strung and sensitive. Harry’s was. He did not like the dangers of the darkness, and he dreaded snakes. At the commencement, then, of his wanderings on the dark continent he expected to see one whenever a bunch of grass quivered or moved, though only a mole might have been at the bottom of it. And I believe at night he heard sounds and saw sights in the bush and on the plains, that had no existence except in his own fervid imagination.

However, a month or two of nomad life hardened him. He noticed that even serpents do not go out of their way to bite people, and that you have only to observe a certain amount of caution, then you may put your hands in your pockets and whistle.

As far as that goes, I believe you might put your hands in your pockets and go whistling up to a lion “on the roam.” My illustrious countryman, the great General Gordon, did this or something very like it once. I would not, nor would I advise you to do so, reader; but I have to say, as regards my hero, Harry, that familiarity bred in him a contempt for danger that led him to grief.

I will tell you the story after making just one remark. It is this – and happy I would be this minute if I thought you would lay it to heart and remember it. We are apt to pray to our Father to keep us from evil, and then, when something occurs to us, some accident, perhaps, turn round and murmur and say —

“Oh! my prayers have not been heard. God loves me not.”

How know you, I ask, that He in His mercy has not allowed this little misfortune to befall us in order to save us from a greater?

Harry was carelessly walking one evening – he was waiting for dinner – in a grove of rugged euphorbias. The evening was very beautiful, the sun declining in the west towards a range of high hills which they had that day passed. There was a great bank of purple-grey clouds loftier than the hills; these were fringed with pale gold, else you could not have told which was mountain and which was cloud. There was also a breeze blowing, just enough to make a rustling sound among the cactuses and scrub. This it was probably that prevented Harry from hearing the stealthy footsteps of an enormous lion, until startled by a roar that made the blood tingle in his very shoes.

There he was – the African king of beasts – not twenty yards away – crouched, swishing his tail on the grass, and preparing for a spring.

Harry stood spellbound.

Then he tried to raise his rifle.

“No, you don’t,” the lion must have thought. For at that very moment he sprang, and next Harry was down under him.

He remembered a confused shout, and the sharp ring of a rifle. Then all was a mist of oblivion till he found himself lying near the camp-fire, with Jack kneeling by his side holding his arm.

“I’m not hurt, am I?” said Harry.

“Oh, massa, you am dun killed completely,” sobbed little Raggy. “All de blood in you body hab run out. You quite killed. You not lib. What den will poor Raggy do?”

It was not so bad as Raggy made out, however. But Harry’s wounds were dreadful enough, back and shoulder lacerated and arm bitten through.

Harry had made it a point all the journey since leaving the hill he called Mount Andrew to camp each night on the same place Mahmoud had left days before, and to build the fire in the self-same spot, and on departing in the morning to leave nothing behind that could tell the Arab’s sharp-eyed Somalis the ground had been used.

It was well he had taken this precaution, for now he was wounded and ill, and must remain near this place for weeks at least.

Jack, the Somali, was equal to the occasion.

He went away to the forest, and was not long in finding a site for the invalid’s camp.

Like that upon Mount Andrew, it was on a hill or eminence, from which the country eastwards could be seen for many, many miles. And here also was a shelter under a rock from the direct rays of the sun.

Next day, and for several days, poor Harry tossed about on his couch in a raging fever.

But Jack proved an excellent surgeon, and Raggy the best of nurses. The former applied cooling and healing antiseptic leaves to Harry’s wounds, and bound them tenderly up with bundles of grass, while the latter hardly ever left his master’s couch, except to seek for and bring him the most luscious fruit the forest could afford.

Long, long weary weeks passed away, but still Harry lay there in his cave on the hillside too weak to stand, too ill to move.

Between them his two faithful servants had built him a hut of branches and grass, which not only defended him against the sun, but against the rain as well – for the wet season had now set in. Thunders rolled over the plains and reverberated from the mountain sides, and at times the rain came down in terrible “spatters” that in volume far exceeded anything Harry could ever have dreamt of.

But the rain cooled and purified the atmosphere, and seemed to so revive Harry, that his wounds took on what surgeons call the healing intention.

Raggy was a joyful boy then, and honest Jack, the Somali – for he had proved himself honest by this time – was doubly assiduous in his endeavours to perfect a cure.

One afternoon, while Jack was talking to his master, Raggy, who had been in the forest, ran in breathless and scared.

“Golly-mussy!” he cried, “dey come, dey come. Where shall we hide poor massa? Dey come, dey come.”

Book Three – Chapter Five.

The Return of the Caravans – Night in the Forest – The Dying Slave Boy

Mahmoud had not found the slave-dealing king in quite so good a temper on this journey. The reason was not far to seek. A brother potentate, who dwelt just beyond a range of mountains to the east of him, had by some means or other possessed himself of two white slaves – Greeks they were, and had been brought from very far north. This king was his greatest enemy – near neighbours though they were – and many and deadly were the combats that used to rage among the hills. In fact, their two imperial highnesses lived in a state of continual warfare. Sentinels of both parties were placed day and night on the highest mountains, to spy out the actions of the opposite kingdoms. It was no unusual thing for these sentinels to get to lighting on their own account, and when they did they never failed to chew each other up, though not quite so much so as the Kilkenny cats, of which, as you know, nothing was left but two little morsels of fluff, one tooth and one toe-nail – but very nearly as bad as that. The rival kings did not care a bit; they looked upon the affair as a natural dénouement, and set more sentinels, while the vultures gobbled up whatsoever remained of the last.

But this rival king beyond the hills owned those white slaves, and the king, who loved rum, was very jealous and greatly incensed in consequence. Thrice he had made war upon him with a view of possessing himself of the coveted Greeks, and thrice had he been hurled back with infinite slaughter.

Then Mahmoud had come to him, and the king stated his case while he drank some rum, and Mahmoud promised that next time he returned he would bring him one or more white slaves, that would far outshine those possessed by the king beyond the hills, whose name, by the way, was King Kara-Kara.

But behold Mahmoud had returned, and no white slave with him! Harry, as we know, having escaped.

No wonder, then, that King ’Ngaloo had raged and stormed. This he did despite the fact that the Somalis were called to witness that it was no fault of Mahmoud’s, and that their prisoner had really and truly escaped. King ’Ngaloo had serious thoughts of ordering the priest Mahmoud to instant execution, but was so mollified at the sight of the other gifts brought him that he forgave him.

These gifts were many and varied. Rum came first, then beads, blue, crimson, white and black, and of various sizes, then jack-knives and daggers, white-iron whistles, a drum of large dimensions, a concertina, and a pair of brass lacquered tongs. These last two gifts were the best fun of all, for King ’Ngaloo, squatting in the middle of his tent floor with his wives all round him or near him, would sip rum and play the concertina time about. His playing was peculiar. After he had finished about half a bottle of the fire-water he began to feel his heart warm enough to have some fun, on which he would jump up and with his brass tongs seize one of his wives by the nose, drawing her round and round the tent, she screaming with pain, he with laughter, till one would have thought all bedlam was let loose.

Yes, the king was pacified, and Mahmoud was allowed to depart, with an addition to his caravan of one hundred poor victims who were to be dragged away into slavery.

He went away much sooner than he had intended had he been successful in getting more slaves. And besides, the truth is, Mahmoud was a little afraid that the king might take it into his head to pull him round the tent with the tongs, and Mahmoud had a profound respect for his nose.

I really think it was a pity the king did not do so.

Only it was evident the king had other thoughts in his head, for one day he jumped up, and after practising the tongs exercise on his prime minister for five minutes, he held the instrument of torture aloft and snapped it wildly in the air.

“Teiah roota Kara-Kara yalla golla,” he shouted, or some such words, “I’ll never be content till I seize Kara-Kara by the nose, and the tongs shall be made red-hot for the purpose.”

“I’d send and tell him so,” that is what Mahmoud had suggested.

“Dee a beeseeta – I’ll do so,” said the king.

And away the messenger was sent to King Kara-Kara.

The messenger obeyed his instructions, and King Kara-Kara took much pleasure in cutting off his head, but as this was no more than the messenger had expected there was not much harm done.

But, and it is a big “but,” had King ’Ngaloo only known that at the very time Mahmoud was in his camp or village, his “brother” Suliemon was in that of the rival potentate, and that he had sold him the unfortunate men of the Bunting, Mahmoud would not have been allowed to depart, unless he could have done so without his head. For both Mahmoud and his “brother” were excellent business men, and were not at all averse to playing into each other’s hands.

Before Mahmoud had left the town of this African potentate he was allowed to choose his slaves. He chose, to begin with, a day on which King Kara-Kara had imbibed even more rum than usual. Indeed, he was so absurdly tipsy that he could not hold the tongs.

He was determined to see that he was not cheated for all that, and so, supported on one side by his prime minister, and on the other by one of his priests, the chief executioner, sword in hand, coming up behind, he waddled out to the great square in which the poor unhappy souls, men and women, from whom Mahmoud was to make his choice were drawn up.

The first thing the king did after getting outside was to give vent to an uncontrollable fit of laughing. Nobody knew what he was laughing at, nor, I dare say, did he himself. But he suddenly grew serious, hit his prime minister on the face with his open palm, and asked why he dared laugh in his august presence.

Though his nose bled a little, the minister said nothing; he was used to all the king’s little eccentricities, and this was one of them.

After he had got into the square, the king desired to be informed what the meeting was all about.

“Execution, isn’t it?” That is what he said in his own language.

“That fellow Mahmoud’s white head is coming off, isn’t it? Turban and all? Turban and all, ha! ha! ha! I told him I would do it. And I will.”

No wonder Mahmoud had trembled in his sandals.

But King ’Ngaloo was soon put right.

Then Mahmoud made his choice.

He hesitated not to tear asunder mother and child, husband and wife, sister and brother. It was merely a case of youth and strength with him.

When he had finished, the slaves were at once chained together, and soon after, having bidden farewell to this pretty king, the march was commenced.

There was weeping and wailing among the new-made slaves, and there was weeping and wailing among those left behind.

But what cared Mahmoud?

As they marched away, while ’Ngaloo’s warlike tom-toms were beating, and his chanters sounding, a music that was almost demoniacal, the poor captives as with one accord cast a glance around them at the village – which, savage though it was, had been their home – but which they would never, never see again. Just one wild despairing glance, nothing more. Then heavily fell the lash on the naked shoulders of the last pairs, and on they went.

“Dey come, dey come!” cried Raggy, in despair.

Yes, they were coming – Mahmoud’s caravan and his wretched slaves. They were soon in sight, looking just the same as when last seen, only with that dark and mournful chained line between the swarthy spear-armed Somalis.

Harry prayed inwardly that they might pass on. They did not, but stopped to bivouac on the old camping ground.

And yet our hero could not help admitting to himself that his adventure with the lion that had delayed his journey had really been meant for his good. It had saved his life to all appearance, for Mahmoud had returned far sooner than even Jack – who knew the road and the work before his old master – could have dreamed of.

This only proves, I think, reader, that we are shortsighted mortals, and that our prayers may truly be answered, although things may not turn out just as we would have desired them.

In the morning Mahmoud seemed in no hurry to leave, and the day wore on without very much stir in his camp. It was an anxious day for Harry and his companions, just as it had been a long and anxious night. They never knew the moment the sharp-sighted Somalis might find their trail and track them to their cave on the hill.

The recent rains alone probably prevented so great a catastrophe, else beside that camp-fire a scene of blood would have been enacted that makes one shudder even to think about.

In the afternoon there rushed into Mahmoud’s camp, wildly waving his spear aloft, one of the Somali spies. Then the commotion in the camp grew intense. Mahmoud shortly after left the place all alone, and in less than twenty minutes returned with his so-called brother Suliemon.

This very spot there was the rendezvous for these slave-dealers on their return from their expedition. Behind Suliemon came a vast crowd of chained slaves. There could not have been less than a thousand. How tired they appeared! No sooner was the order to halt given, than they threw themselves on the grass, just as weary sheep would have done returning from a fair.

There was no movement that night, so Harry and his merry men had to lie close like foxes in their lair.

Next morning, however, as early as daybreak, the whole camp was astir, and for nearly two hours the shouting and howling, the firing of guns and cracking of whips were hideous to hear. The scene near the camp-fire was like some awful pandemonium.

But by ten o’clock, as nearly as Harry could judge, every one had gone, and silence once more reigned over forest and plain.

Our hero breathed more freely now, yet it would have been madness for any of them to have ventured forth even yet. Some loitering Somali might have seen him and given instant alarm.

Strange to say, the excitement appeared to have almost restored Harry to health. He no longer felt weak, and he longed to be away on the road again.