Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

To fight such a mob was out of the question; they used better tactics: they pretended to be overjoyed at meeting them. They were friends, Kenneth told the chief of these negroes, not foes, and wanted to see the king, and brought him presents from the far-off white man’s land.

Shouts of joy from those simple natives now rent the air, and rattling their spears against their shields they led the way towards the camp of the king, a village of adobe and grass huts, built round cocoa-nut palms, in the midst of a great and fertile plain. In the centre of the town, inside a compound, was the square bungalow of King ’Ntango.

’Ntango was in, but did not appear for hours. It would not be royal etiquette to show much curiosity. Meanwhile the native women brought milk and honey and baked plantains, and everything went as merry as a marriage bell.

The king, into whose presence they were ushered at last, was round and squat, very yellow and very fat.

He showered his questions on Kenneth through Essequibo as interpreter.

Where did they come from? What did they want? Were they Arab or foreign? Did they come to steal his wives and little ones? How long did they want to stop? For ever, of course. Where were the gifts? Guns? Yes. Beads? Good. Pistols? Good again. But was this all? Where was the rum? Arab men had been here before, they brought much good rum. What, no rum? Never a skin of rum? Ugh!

With this last ejaculation, which was almost a shriek, the king sprang from the mat on which he had squatted.

“They must die?” he shouted; “die every one of them. The Arab must first die, then the black men. Then the white men. Essequibo he would fatten and kill and eat. Bring chains; away with them! away! away! AWAY!”

The king’s eyes shot fire as he waved his arms aloft, and shouted, “Away, away!” and his lips were flecked with blood and foam.

He was a fearful being to behold, this irate African savage.

Almost at the same moment our heroes were seized rudely from behind, disarmed, and dragged off. They soon found themselves huddled together in one room, with stone walls, slimy, damp, and over-run with creeping things that made them shudder, albeit they were under the very shadow of death.

Towards evening the king sent to “comfort” them; it was very condescending of him. The “comfort” lay in the information that at sunrise next day they would be led out to die, by spear or by knife, as they might choose.

Meanwhile, poor Essequibo’s chains were knocked off, and he was led away to his fattening pen.

Such is life in Central Africa. But stranger things still befell our heroes.

Chapter Twenty

Land of Darkness

Scene: The interior of King ’Ntango’s palace. The king seated on a mat in the middle of the floor of the principal apartment – a large square room with walls of mud and grass. The only furniture, a tall tom-tom, a mat-covered dais, and a heap of empty stone bottles in a corner. Those bottles once contained gin.

It is near sunset, the king is alone. There is no sound to break the silence, except the tap, tap, tap the gecko lizards that crawl on the walls make, as they beat to death the moths they catch.

Yes, the king is alone in his glory, though his spear-armed attendants wait outside. He is quite a study, this savage potentate, to any one fond of an anthropology. Look at him now! he is leaning his fat face on his podgy fingers, his elbows are resting on his knees – he is thinking.

There are but two things in this world that this king dearly loves; one is to see human blood spilled, the other is to drink gin or rum. These last two words are the only English ones he can pronounce or understand. He learnt them from itinerant Arabs, unscrupulous scoundrels, who bought the youth and flower of his people for a bottle each.

The king is thinking; the question that exercises his mind at present is this, “Shall I kill these white men, and laugh to see the red blood flow; or keep two, and send the others back for rum?”

“Room,” this is how he pronounces the word “rum,” and “gin” he calls “geen.”

“Room, room, room,” he mutters to himself, “geen, geen, geen.”

He rises; a thought strikes him. May it not be possible that one, just one full bottle remains still among that heap of empty ones? He goes straight to the heap, and turns them over. No, not one. Still, he has a glimmering notion that in a dazed moment he hid one. Ha! he remembers all of a sudden. He seizes the stick with which he is wont to beat the tom-tom, and hies him to a corner, and speedily unearths, not one bottle, but two.

He is a joyful king now. He whacks the tom-tom, and summons two of his wives to squat beside him; not to help him to drink, but to see him drink.

Then he summons Essequibo, and launches questions at him. “How long will he take to fatten? How long before he be ready to kill? Do the white men tremble to die?”

“No,” Keebo tells him; “they rejoice to die because their spirits will go to a glorious land of flowers and sunshine.”

The king gets blue with rage. He whacks Keebo with the tom-tom stick, and he whacks his wives; then he declares that the white men shall not die, that their spirits shall not go to the glorious land of flowers and sunshine.

Then he drinks “geen,” and cools down.

But Keebo sees his advantage. He expatiates on the mechanical ability and cleverness of white men in general, and of Massa Kennie, Archie, and Harvey in particular, and so inflames the king’s cupidity, that he sends for the white men, and has their chains knocked off in his presence, and tells his sentries they are free, and any one who touches the hem of their garments shall be made food for the blue-bottle flies, and the long-legged “krachaw.” (A kind of carrion-eating heron.)

“Ha! ha! ha!” he yells, “the king will live for ever.”

Then he drinks again, yells again, whacks his wives with the tom-tom stick, and laughs to see them wince; and drinks, and drinks, and drinks, till he falls back asleep, and is borne away by the wives he whacked, and laid tenderly on the daïs.

“Well,” cried Harvey, “this is a queer ending to a day’s march.”

Zona shrugs his square thin shoulders, and Kenneth and Archie laugh.

“Ask those scoundrels,” says Kenneth to Essequibo, “what they have done with our arms and our boat.”

Very submissive are those spear-armed warriors now. They lead them to a wood, and there in the thicket they find everything intact.

“Now, lads, do as I tell you,” said Kenneth.

And here is what our heroes did at Kenneth’s advice. They rolled all their spare arms and ammunition in blankets, dug a hole, buried them, and turned the boat upside down on them. Next they tore up a lot of white and red rags, tied them to strings, and arranged these along, over, and around the boat, in precisely the way you would over a row of peas in the country to keep the sparrows away.

Funny though it may seem, this was quite enough to keep these savage negroes at bay. There was magic in it, they thought, and they gave that wood a wide berth.

Well, our heroes had, after a manner of speaking, to buy their lives.

The king had them before him at daybreak, not to order them to execution, but to give them his royal commands. They were to teach his people to do all the clever things that white men could do; if they failed, the king told them death would be the fate of their teachers.

“We do not fear to die, King ’Ntango,” said Kenneth.

The king looked at him with a merry twinkle in his eye; then he took a sip of “geen” and said, through the interpreter Keebo, —

“You do not fear death? No, you think you go straight to your glorious land of sunshine; but listen, you will not. I will arrange it differently. I will cut from you a leg, an arm, and an ear, – ha! ha! what think you? will the leg, and arm, and ear go first to the land of sunshine, and wait you? Take care, I am a great king, and I have twenty thousand ways to torture without killing.”

Poor Kenneth confessed to himself that the king had the best of the argument, but he replied, —

“If you cut from me an arm or leg, how then shall I teach your people?”

The king smiled grimly, and said, “Go.”

They must propitiate this king, that was evident, in order to gain his favour and their eventual liberty, for slaves they now undoubtedly were to all intents and purposes.

So they set themselves to teach his people to build boats, and sail on the great lake that occupied the centre of the plain; to make articles of furniture and household utility generally; to till the ground and to sow; and lastly, to cook the latter department belonged to Zona, and it greatly pleased the king. It pleased him also to see his men drilled, and to witness their deftness in rowing and sailing, but he saw not the sense of sowing.

“Has not the Great Spirit,” he said to Kenneth, “given us the fruits that grow aloft on the trees, the fish in the water, and the beasts of the field? what need we of more?”

But days rolled into weeks, and weeks into months. The prospect of getting out of this king’s country, either onward to the gold country, or back towards the coast, seemed to get less and less bright. ’Ntango’s men became good soldiers, adept spearsmen; formerly they could send an arrow with terrible precision through a kind of blow-pipe into the breast of a leopard or lion; now they were not afraid to attack these creatures with the spear alone.

But these better soldiers of the king’s were all the better able to watch their prisoners; there was no end to the king’s cunning. Many and many a plan did Kenneth and his brothers in affliction fall upon to try to effect their escape, but every one was frustrated.

“No,” said the king to Kenneth, – “I love you so much now I cannot part with you. You must live with me for ever and ever and ever.”

This was, indeed, a dark prospect.

A whole year passed away; the one comfort of their lives now rested in the fact that they were permitted to enjoy each other’s company. They had built quite a splendid bungalow for themselves, and surrounded it with a beautiful compound and gardens, in which the most delightful flowers bloomed, and where grew the most delicious fruit. Under other circumstances their lives would really have been enjoyable. Wild sports they had also in abundance, and fishing and boating both by lake and on the river, but on these excursions one hundred of the king’s trustiest spearmen always accompanied them, and their bungalow was surrounded by a palisade that they did not build, and for ever guarded by sentries they could not elude.

One good for these poor people Kenneth did effect; he had a meeting-house built, and therein, Sabbath after Sabbath, he taught them to read and to pray, just as he had taught good Essequibo.

It was not long before the king found out Kenneth’s powers as a musician, and at first it was hard on Kenneth, for he was kept playing from morning till night for weeks.

Music lost its power to some extent over the king at length, and latterly it was but rarely he sent for his musician to play. Nor had ’Ntango much of an ear for melody, for Kenneth manufactured a score of “chanters” out of pieces of cane, and taught a score of savages to make an unearthly kind of noise in all kinds of keys; and this pleased the king quite as much as the flute.

Archie thought of a plan at last to get a brief holiday. The first intimation of it was given the king by Essequibo. All the white men, he told him one morning, were ill and dying, and nothing would cure them but permission to explore the country to the nor’-west, the land where gold lay.

The king graciously gave his permission, and the expedition, well guarded, started to prospect for gold. After days and days of toil and travel they reached the El Dorado.

Disappointment and nothing else. Gold there was, but not for the gathering; it was deeply imbedded in veins of quartz, and the strongest machinery would be needed to work it.

Diamonds there were none.

Their gloom increased now. Their hopes of finding fortune had been but a youthful dream, and had ended in making them prisoners to a wild and despotic savage.

If there was any one ray now to illuminate their darkness and despair, it lay in the fact that their visit to the land of darkness had not been quite in vain; they had sowed the seeds of righteousness, and who could say what fruit these might not bear in after-times?

They tried now to make the best of their position, and take things as they came, determined, however, if a chance should arise, to seek safety in flight at all hazards. The river was not far away, and their boat and spare ammunition still lay intact and handy.

Nearly two years passed away.

One night they had retired to their bungalow early. It was Archie’s birthday, and they were going to have a big talk about home.

It was long past twelve o’clock before they thought of lying down. Ere they undressed they went for a walk as usual in their garden, to breathe the odour of the flowers, which the dews of evening never failed to draw out.

The moon was high in the heavens, looking like a little burnished shield in the blue sky, and dimming the light of the thousand twinkling stars. Suddenly from every direction there arose a muttering startled cry, which presently increased to a yell. Smoke, too, began to roll across the sky, increasing every moment, while tongues of flame leaped higher and higher.

They listened thunderstruck.

“Logobo – Logobo – Logobo!” That was the terrible cry.

“Heaven be praised!” cried Kenneth. “Now, boys, now, men, our time has come for freedom or for death. Follow me!”

He grasped his rifle as he spoke, and rushed out. The sentries had fled.

The whole village was in flames, and in the lurid glare, hand to hand in deathly combat, struggled two tribes of savages.

It was no business of our heroes, however. They rushed onwards through the melée, and in a very short time had reached and shouldered their boat.

One hour after, the din of the conflict was muffled in the distance, miles away, and Kenneth and his companions were safe on the river.

They were not free yet, however. Swiftly down the river they sped, racing onwards at all hazards. Daylight found them far away, but not safe. All the country they passed through gave token of the march into the interior of the Logobo men. The villages by the banks were fire-blackened ruins, swollen corpses floated here and there, and half-charred spars.

A week of fearful toil and anxiety, during which they had more adventures and hair-breadth escapes than I could describe in a goodly volume, brought them to the edge of the Logobo land. And here redoubled caution was needed. They could not rush it, as they had done the other part of the river. They must resort to their old tactics of hiding by day and pursuing their way adown the unknown river in the silence of night.

But three days of this work had almost set them free. It was the very last day of their hiding, and near sunset. They had determined to start early, and were longing for six o’clock and speedy darkness. Lower and lower went the sun. Already the gloom of the short twilight was settling down on the still forest, and beasts of prey were beginning to wake up, and yawn – and a fearful sound it is to listen to – when suddenly into the clearing where they stood strutted a Logobo savage in war array.

The yell he gave awakened a thousand others on every side. The whole forest was alive with savages apparently.

“Ping, ping,” from Archie’s revolver, and down dropped the Logobo warrior.

“Quick, men, quick,” cried Kenneth, “to boat, to boat!”

Ah! none too soon; hardly had they launched their frail craft and embarked, ere a flight of spears came from the bush, and poor Essequibo fell.

The gathering darkness favoured them, and they were soon beyond the reach of danger.

Two hours after, the moon had risen; its rays brightened the woods and rocks and sparkled on the river.

Poor Keebo lay in the bottom of the boat across Zona’s knee, his face upturned to the sky.

His life was ebbing fast away.

Near him knelt Kenneth, holding his cold hand.

“I’se goin’, good-bye,” murmured the dying lad. “I’se goin’ to de land – ob sunshine. I see poor mudder soon.”

“Keebo,” said Kenneth, “you know me?”

“Ess, dear Massa Kennie.”

“Now, say after me. O Lord!”

“‘O Lor’!’”

“Receive poor Keebo’s soul.”

“‘Poor Keebo’s soul.’”

“For the blessed Jesu’s sake.”

“‘De bressed Jesu’s sake.’”

There was just one little painful quiver of the limbs, then a gentle soughing sigh, and – Keebo was gone.

Chapter Twenty One

Camp-Life in the Far West

Scene: In the backwoods of British America. Kenneth, Archie, and Harvey are seen sitting around the camp fire. It is a whole hour after sunset, and yet there is plenty of light in the sky. There are rocks and pine trees around, a brawling stream not far off. There is a tall rugged mountain in the distance; its highest peaks are snow-clad. Southwards away, grey clouds are heaped up on the horizon, a slight scimitar-shaped moon is shining in the north-west, and ominous little dark clouds are drifting over it. It is not from this moon that the light comes, but from a strange yellowish after-glow, which tinges all the western horizon, and, mingling with the blue above, evolves a peculiar shade of green.

“Heap more wood on the fire, Archie,” said Kenneth. “I’m growing quite an old man, I think. It is only a year since we left Africa and rounded the Horn, hardly nine months since we bade adieu to civilisation, and became wanderers and vagabonds in this wild dreary land, gold-hunting as usual, and yet it seems to me an age.”

Kenneth pulled his blanket closer round his shoulders as he spoke, and Archie rose to replenish the fire, laughing as he did so.

“When you die of old age,” he said, “I shall make my will, Kennie boy.”

“Oh! but we are sure to find gold,” put in Harvey.

“Well, I don’t know, but it seems to me that this searching for gold is like chasing a wild goose or a will-o’-the-wisp. Don’t you think, Archie, we had better settle down to something more certain if more slow?”

“I do think so,” replied Archie; “and after what Harvey here has told us, that he is the son of poor old Laird McGregor, and rightful heir to the McGregor estates, he ought to go straight away home, turn that old Yankee tyrant out, and regain possession of his own. You cannot break an entail, you know.”

“Heigho!” sighed Harvey, “I have repented my quarrel with my dear old father all my life. It was my proud Highland blood that caused it in the first instance. I rushed away to sea, I changed my name, I made myself out as dead. I thought not of the kind heart I was breaking, of the grey hairs I was bringing down in sorrow to the grave. And how has fate rewarded me? I have been a rover ever since, a wanderer and a vagabond; thrice have riches been within my grasp, thrice has Fortune dashed the cup aside. And am I to go now that my father is in his long home and claim my patrimony? My pride forbids; I’d rather be a ghillie on the old estate, or a keeper, than proud laird of it all.”

“Stay,” said Kenneth, laying his hand kindly on Harvey’s shoulder. “Not for your own sake should you do this thing, but remember you have a mother and sister, still alive it is to be hoped. Do you never think of them?”

Harvey’s hands now covered his face, his form was bent forward, but the heaving of his chest told of the grief that was rending him.

“Think, too, of the Clachan restored, of the old church bell once more calling the people of the glen to worship on the Sabbath mornings. Steve the Yankee, from all accounts, is a tyrant, an oppressor, and a villain. Harvey McGregor, think of seeing your old mother once more in the dear old-fashioned pew.”

“Kenneth McAlpine!” cried Harvey, starting up, “no more of this now, you irritate, you madden me!

“But,” he added, in a more softened tone of voice, “I may promise you just one thing. If we fail this time, if I fail to find fortune, I will return to my mother like the prodigal son I have been. Though fain, oh! how fain I would be to return full-handed, rich!”

“Thank you, Harvey, thank you for this promise. And now for your sake and for all our sakes I trust that fortune will at length favour us.”

The conversation then wandered back to the old, old theme; home at Glen Alva. A strange life these three adventurers had led for the last nine months and over. Wandering from place to place, sleeping by night in the open air when the weather was fine, in caves or huts of pine-wood branches when wet, and sojourning with trappers or even in the wigwams of the Indian when snow covered the ground and the storm winds were howling.

Wandering from place to place prospecting, wandering on and on in search of gold. A strange wild life was theirs, but it suited their tastes; then there was an ever-present hope that had not yet deserted them, a hope and an ambition to become suddenly wealthy as many a man had done before them. Yes, it is true, many a one had found gold and silver, but tens of thousands had found an early grave in searching for it.

Harvey, or let us call him now Harvey McGregor, was in a manner of speaking a genius. He possessed originality of thought, and he never hesitated to put his ideas to the test. He felt sure of one thing, namely, that gold and silver mines were not entirely confined to the southern states of North America. He had found treasure among the mountains of British Columbia, and he meant, so he said, to find it again in such quantities that both he and his friends would be “millionaires in a month.” But luck seemed long of coming. They had wandered all the way from California, and encountered every imaginable danger, in moor and mountain, forest, flood, and fall; and here they were to-night, with no other worldly wealth than the blankets they would presently roll themselves up in, and their guns with a modicum of ammunition.

Only they had youth and health on their side, though even these seemed passing away from poor McGregor. Grief had done its turn; it had hollowed his cheek, and though barely twenty-five, silver threads were already appearing in his brown beard.

“Now pile more wood on the fire, Archie dear lad, and we will go to sleep like good boys, and dream we are back in our dear old glen.”

Archie did as told, and before long all three were sound asleep. They did not care even to do sentry duty. They trusted all to fate.

Silence now, except for the wind soughing through the tall mysterious-looking pine trees, or the occasional bark of fox or scream of night bird. A great cinnamon bear about midnight came snuffing around; he could have rent our sleeping heroes in pieces, but there was nothing cooking to lure him towards the fire. A stray wolf came next, and actually leapt over Kenneth’s legs. He was picking up some scraps of food when McGregor moaned and tossed, and away went the wolf.

“I had such a dream,” cried McGregor next morning. “I say, boys, I told you there was a bank of gold up here, and I for one start digging to-day.”

So he did, and so did all.

The only possible place to commence operations lay close to the banks of a turbulent river that came winding down through a pine-clad mountain land.

Silently, almost solemnly the trio worked, speaking but little, hanging on to their pipes (if I may use so strange a phrase), and hanging on to spade, and pick, and shovel.

All that day, and next, and next. About the coming of the fourth day, there was a shout from McGregor’s claim.

“Hurrah, boys! Hurrah, boys! Run here, lads, run here!”

They did run.

McGregor held up before their astonished gaze a nugget of almost pure gold as big as a baby’s shoe.

More gold was found every day for a week, and in gradually increasing quantities. They were already in possession of about three hundred pounds’ worth. No wonder they rejoiced. No wonder they were merry.

Now, around the camp fire, what stories are told, what songs are sung, what castles in the air are built!

They will all be millionaires. Archie says he is going to have a nice mansion down in the Clachan, and close by the riverside, and will fish there and in the sea just as when he was a boy. Nothing will satisfy Kenneth but a house near the fairy knoll. He pulls out the old Bible, Nannie’s gift, and opens it. There lie the withered flowers, and looking at them sets him a-thinking and a-wondering and a-dreaming.