O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas

Often he used to drink till he fell asleep. Sometimes he would make me sit by him. Once he had his great hand on my shoulder, and kept feeling at my neck.

I afterwards asked Jooma what he meant.

“Nothing he mean,” replied Jooma, grinning, “only feel for proper place to cut your head away. Dat nothing!”

This was pleasant.

At last we arrived in the king’s country, and a small tent was assigned to me near the royal palace.

The country all round, although unfilled, was fertile and lovely in the extreme. Giant cocoa-palms waved on high, some parts of the landscape were wild orchards of the most delicious fruit, the hills were covered with purple heath, the valleys carpeted with grass and flowers of every shape and hue; while the birds that flitted among the boughs, and the monster butterflies that floated from one bright blossom to another, were lovelier than anything you could imagine in your happiest dreams.

To King Otakooma’s country bands of wandering Arabs occasionally came, and visited the king in his summer tent or his winter palace – for he had both. They came to solicit his assistance in the inhuman raids they made upon surrounding tribes of less warlike negroes.

Did I hope for escape through these Arabs? As well might the linnet beg the hawk to deliver her from the talons of the owl.

Chapter Six

“Much I misdoubt this wayward boy,Will one day work me more annoy.I’ll watch him closer than before.”Byron.

When I look back now to the first two, or even three, years that I spent in Otakooma’s country, among Otakooma’s savages, I wonder that I was not bereft of reason, or that, knowing escape by death to be in my power, I did not have recourse to the deadly poison berry that grew in abundance in many a thicket. Our goats ate freely of this berry, by-the-bye, but it seemed to have no other effect upon them than to make them lively.

But even at this date, strange to say, there are certain sights and sounds that never fail to recall to me not merely my life among those savages, but the very feelings I then had. For instance, in the county in England where I now reside, the cow-boys, or sheep-herds (I will not call them shepherds), have a peculiar way of calling to each other; it is a kind of prolonged shrill quavering shout, and it bears some faint resemblance to the howl of Otakooma’s savages, as heard by night in the forest. Again, anyone drumming on the table with his finger-nails will sometimes bring to my mind the feelings I used to have on hearing the beating of the horrid tom-toms. The beating of tom-toms and the howling, combined now and then with a shriek as of some poor wretch in mortal agony and dread, even when I was not present, but probably a prisoner in my hut, used to tell me as well as words could, that a human sacrifice was progressing somewhere in the vicinity of the royal palace.

The smell of weeds burning in a field only yesterday depressed me; the savages were constantly burning fires of different kinds of dried roots and weeds.

Just one more instance. I would not have a rockery in my grounds or garden; it would remind me of Otakooma’s terrible piles of skulls on which weeds grew green, and flowers bloomed, and lizards – sea-green lizards with crimson marks on their shoulders, and lizards the colour of a starling’s breast, that is, metallic-changing colour – used to creep.

If ever at that time I spent a happy hour it was in studying and wondering at the tricks and manners of the many strange denizens of the forest. Monkeys, mongooses, and even chameleons I managed to tame.

You see, then, I could not have been very happy. How could I? For at least two years I lived in constant dread of a violent death, and I never knew what shape it would take. I might die by the spear of some angry savage; I might be sacrificed to please some sudden fancy of the king; I might be burned at the stake or die by the torture.

My enemy – and he ought to have been my friend – was the boy Jooma. He was jealous, no doubt, of my influence with the king. I tried my best in every way to please this lad, because he could talk English, but in vain. He belied me one day after I had been a whole year in the country, belied me to the king in my presence – he pointed his hand at me. I struck the hand.

Then, as he threatened to kill me with his knife, I squared up in good English fashion and let my enemy have one straight from the shoulder. He went down as if he had been shot.

The fat old king shouted for joy. That boy Jooma had never had a proper British bleeding nose before in his life, I expect. And he did not like it. He kept lying on the ground, because he saw me in the attitude to give him another blow. But the king made him stand up, and for fear of offending the king I had to put him down again. Then he refused to rise. The king told him that a cock and a goat and two curs were going to be carried in procession to the execution ground that afternoon, and that if he, Jooma, did not fight “the foreign boy” he should head the procession and finally lose his head. So Jooma had to fight as well as he could, and although I did not punish him willingly, he was paid out for many an ill turn that he had done me.

I was a favourite with the king for fully a month after this. He brought boy after boy for me to thrash. Indeed, three or four times a day I was fighting. I suppose every boy about the king’s village had a set-to with me. I cannot say I blacked their eyes because they were already black, but they must have felt my knocks, and I know they did not love me any the better for it.

I did not know how all this would end, but my heart leaped to my mouth when one day the king himself, valiant through the rum he had drunk, stood up and announced his intention of trying conclusions with me himself.

What could I do?

What would you have done, gentle reader?

I knew I could have thrashed him, for though not old I was very hardy and wonderfully strong for my years, but I did not want to figure in a procession. So I submitted to be knocked down. Then I had to get up and be knocked down again and again. It didn’t hurt very much, but there was indignity attached to it.

The king had found a new pleasure, and every afternoon or evening I was summoned to the palace yard or grounds, and first I had to fight the king, then a boy of my own standing. Well, I am afraid that if I suffered in body and mind from my encounter with the king, I took it out of the smaller savage to follow. There was some satisfaction in that.

But one day, to show his own wonderful powers of fisticuff, the king summoned a crowd of his warriors to his palace, and made them form a great ring. Then I was ordered in and pitted against an Indian boy bigger than myself. I never cared how big they were, they held their arms wide and hit downwards as if thumping a piano.

After one or two boys had been disposed of, to the wild delight of the warriors, the king took a drink of rum and handed the leather bottle to his chief executioner; then he took off his extra garments – his one boot and his crown, an old tin kettle without a bottom to it – and stood up in front of me. I went down several times according to my own programme, and the savages shook their spears and rattled them against their shields of buffalo hide, and shouted and shrieked to their hearts’ content.

Then the king hit me rather hard, and I suppose my English pride was touched, for the next thing I remember is – horror of horrors! – the sacred person of his Majesty King Otakooma sprawling on the dusty ground and his nose bleeding.

A silence deep as death fell on all the crowd.

Then there was a rush for me. Spears were at my breast and I expected only instant death, when the king sprang to my rescue and all fell back.

If I had knelt to him and begged his pardon, even then I might have been forgiven.

But an English youth to sue on his knees for mercy from a savage! Nay, it was not to be thought of.

The king sat down.

The king was silent for a space of time. The king took more rum.

Then he ordered ropes of skin to be brought, and I was bound hand and foot and taken away to a loathsome dungeon.

I knew I was to die next day, and I longed for sunrise to have it past, for I suffered excruciating agony from the tightness of the cords that bound me.

The time came. I was to form part in a procession, and did; I was carried shoulder-high, lying on my back on a kind of bark tray, amid tom-tom beating, howling, shrieking, and a deal of capering and dancing that at any other time I should have laughed most heartily at.

At the execution ground goats and cocks were killed, then it came to my turn.

The king came to have a last look at me. The cords were undone, and I stood up staggering because my feet were swollen. The king looked at my hands: they were swollen double the size.

The king rubbed his nose.

The king was thinking.

“Now,” he must have thought, “here is a hand (meaning my swollen fist) that couldn’t hurt anybody. What a chance to redeem my lost honour!”

The king took more rum.

Then he started from his throne and shouted. What he said matters little. At the conclusion of his speech I was again dragged up to fight the king. If I could have hit him then I would have done so. But with such hands, how could I? So it ended in my being fearfully punished.

Then there was such shouting and yelling as I had never before heard in my life. But I was free.

The king took more rum.

For a whole year after this I was kept under almost constant surveillance, but there was no more fighting.

Sometimes the king and his savages went away on the war-path, for many weeks together. When they did so, I was confined in a dungeon, and had no other companions except frogs, lizards, and centipedes. All the food they gave me was a piece of dried cassava root (the root from which arrowroot is made), daily, and I had very little water.

But in spite of my hardships, I grew strong and robust. Probably, if I had not been a friendless orphan, if I had had a mother for instance, or a father, or sisters, or brothers, in a far-off home to think about, my misery would have been greater; as it was I had no one, for I believed that Roberts and all the people of the Niobe had been slain in that terrible fight at Zareppa’s fort.

Amelioration of my sufferings came at last, and in a strange way.

The king fell ill.

The king took more rum.

The king grew worse, and all the sorcery of his medicine men could not cure him, so I was sent for.

I had seen Jooma putting poison into the rum, and I told the king he had been poisoned. Who had done so? he asked: the culprit should die. No human being, I was determined, should die on account of anything I said. I told him, however, that next day I should fetch the evil creature who had destroyed the health of the king. Meanwhile the rum was poured on the ground, and I made him a pill of the poison berry, and a little scraped cassava root. He saw me mix it. His medicine men assured him it would be death to take it; I took a pill myself, and when he saw I did not die, he followed my example, and took two or three. For I had found out that in small doses this poison berry was medicinal. The king slept, and awoke refreshed.

Then he called for the culprit who had dared to poison his rum.

I went and found Jooma. I told him that his guilt was discovered, and that his life was in my hands; that a word from me would march him to the execution ground. He knelt and prayed for mercy. I told him he needn’t trouble, that Englishmen were far too honourable to harbour revenge. Then I made him bring a very old and savage billy-goat, and together we brought it to the king.

The king was greatly pleased. He said he never had liked the looks of the billy-goat, and he had no doubt that it had worked some deadly spell upon his rum. So the billy-goat – poor beast – was slain, and after a few more pills the king got better, and I was chief favourite among all the tribe.

Chapter Seven

“But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth,This gay profusion of luxurious bliss?Ill-fated race! the softening arts of peace,Kind equal rule, the government of laws,These are not theirs.”Thomson.

I became the king’s head-counsellor, his prime-minister, so to speak, his chief medicine man. There was not much honour in this, certainly, but nevertheless it procured me some amelioration of my sufferings. There was less of the dungeon after this, and fewer threats of decapitation.

I think the king still hankered after rum, and it was an anxious day for me when some Arab chiefs appeared in camp. Otakooma assembled not only, all his forces but most of his people. Something was going to happen, I knew, but till now I had had no idea of the utter depravity of this wretch.

He was positively going to barter his people for rum. The Arabs would buy them as slaves.

It was terrible to see these same Arabs walking round among the sable mob, as calmly as a farmer does among a herd of cattle, and picking one out here and there. But, oh! the grief, and the agony, and the anxiety displayed in voice and in action by these poor doomed creatures – the scene defies description. Here was the child torn shrieking from its mother’s side, there a wife separated from her husband, or a husband from a weeping wife.

Some indulged their grief quietly, others gave vent to loud howls and lamentations; while others lay moaning and groaning on the ground, ever and anon taking up great handfuls of dust, and throwing it up over their poor heads!

I could not help turning away and shedding tears. But had they been tears of blood they could not have saved these people. They were relentlessly marched away, and I was really glad when night fell, and sleep sealed the eyes of even those who mourned.

It was bright clear moonlight. I rose from my couch, and stole out into the open air. I wanted to think. The close warm atmosphere of the tent seemed to stifle me, and I could not sleep.

I passed slowly up the beaten footpath towards the king’s tent. There was not a single soul astir, it had been a busy exciting day with everyone, and the king had been liberal enough in his offers of rum to his chief favourites; and although some of them ought to have been doing duty as sentinels near to his sacred person, they had preferred retirement and slumber.

I stole away from the camp, and ascended an eminence some distance from it, and sat me down on a rock. It was cool and pleasant here, away from that blood-stained camp. The moonlight flooded all the beautiful country, bathing plain and rock and tree in its mellow rays. The only sounds that broke the stillness were the yapping howl of the cowardly jackal, and farther off in the woods the mournful roar of lions.

It was a lovely scene, but terrible in its loveliness. I buried my face in my hands. I was boldly struggling against my sorrow. How long, I thought, would this life last? Should I live and die among these terrible savages? Escape there seemed none. To attempt it, I knew, would end in failure, and probably in death by torture. I was many hundreds of miles from the sea. I did not even know in what direction Zanzibar lay. No, I must wait for a time, at all events. What mattered a year or two more to one so young as I!

I suppose this last reflection had some kind of a drowsy influence on me, for I lay down with my head on a piece of rock, and with face upturned to the sky, fell fast asleep.

How long I had slept I know not. I awoke with a start: something cold had touched my face, and I had heard a creature breathing close at – almost into – my ear. I started, as well I might. The thing that had waked me was a jackal; but there, not thirty yards away, standing boldly out against the moonlit sky, was a gigantic lioness!

There was astonishment depicted in every line of her great face. Strange to say, at that moment I could not help thinking that she looked far from cruel, and I could not help admiring the splendid animal. I never moved, but gazed as if spell-bound. Probably it was my fixity of look that saved me, for after staring steadily, but wonderingly, at me for fully a minute, she turned round and stalked solemnly off, giving many a look behind, as if expecting I should follow her.

I waited till she was well away. I felt very happy at that moment, and very bold. I went straight back to camp, and approached the tent of the king, and softly entered. He was fast asleep and snoring. In the matter of rum he had been even more liberal to himself than to his followers. There lay the skins of spirits in a corner, not far from the couch of the drunken king. I hesitated not a moment, but seizing the king’s own dagger, I stabbed – not the king, but the skins of rum.

Then I hastened away with my heart in my mouth. Remember, I was very young.

There were terrible doings next day in camp, and, I’m sorry to say, more than one human sacrifice. I, as medicine man and chief sorcerer, went through a great many mummeries, which I managed to make last all the forenoon. I was endeavouring to find out the wretch who had dared to spill the great king’s rum; that is, I was pretending to. There was more than one chief on whose shoulders I permitted my magician’s wand to rest for a while, just by way of a mild revenge, but the lot finally fell once again on an aged billy-goat. I had saved the king, and saved many of his subjects, for when the king was intoxicated, human sacrifices were of everyday occurrence. At ordinary times they were no more numerous than Bank Holidays in our own country.

When it was all over I stole away to the shady banks of a stream to bathe, and lie and watch the kingfishers. It was a favourite resort of mine, whenever I dared be alone.

The warriors of this tribe spent most of their time either on the hunting grounds – forest and plain – or in making raids on their neighbours. I was allowed to join the hunting expeditions, but not the forays. I became an expert horseman. I could ride bare-backed as well as any circus-man I have ever seen since. The king was too fat to ride much, but he used to follow to the chase of the koodoo.

This is a kind of beautiful antelope, and excellent eating, its principal recommendation in the eyes of Otakooma. We often caught the young, and they became as tame as our goats.

Now once having taken it into my head that escape from this country of savages was impossible, strange to say I began to settle down, in everything else except human bloodthirstiness, and soon became a very expert savage, taking a wild kind of pride in my exploits.

Mine was now a life of peril and hardship; adventures to me were of everyday occurrence; I carried my life in my hand; I grew as wily as a jackal, and I hope as bold as a lion. I take no credit to myself for being bold; I had to be so.

The king and I continued friends. At the end of the sixth year of my captivity, Jooma died. He died from wounds received at the horns of a wild buffalo in the forest.

This buffalo-hunting had for me a very great charm, and it certainly was not unattended with danger, for there were times when, headed by an old bull or two, a whole herd of these animals would charge down upon us. This was nothing to me. I could climb trees as well as most monkeys, so I got out of harm’s way, but it was hard upon the savages, who were not always so nimble.

Jooma was terribly tossed and wounded by a bull, and he died at the tree foot. He called me to him before his eyes were for ever closed, and asked me to forgive him for all the ill he had done me, and tried to do me.

“I have been to you one ver bad fellow,” said poor Jooma; “I have want to kill you plenty time. Now I die. You forgive Jooma?”

“I do, Jooma,” I said, and pressed his cold hard hand.

“Ver well,” said the lad, faintly and slowly. “Now I die. Now, I go home – go home – home.”

We buried him just where he lay, between the gnarled roots of a great forest tree, and piled wood over the grave to keep the sneaking jackals at bay.

One morning about two years after this, I was awakened early – indeed it was hardly dawn – by hearing a tremendous uproar and commotion in the camp, with much warlike shouting and beating of those everlasting tom-toms2.

The king was running about wildly – too wildly, indeed, for his weight – and was summoning his warriors to arms.

White men were coming to attack the camp!

This was glorious news for me.

But who, or what could they be, or what could they want?

All that day, from far and near, the warriors of Otakooma came trooping into camp. To do them justice they were fond of fighting, and eager for the fray; they loved fighting for its own sake, but a battle with white men was a thing that did not happen every day.

The old men, the women and children, and the cattle were separated from the main or soldier portion of the tribe, and taken westwards towards the distant hills. So it was evident that Otakooma and his people meant business.

What part should I take in the coming fray? I might have fled, and remained away until the victory was secured by the white men, but this would have been both unkind and cowardly. On the other hand, I would not lift a spear or poise a lance against my own people.

That same evening, after all was hushed in the camp, I sought out the king. He looked at me very suspiciously before I spoke.

I sat quietly in front of him on the ground, and explained to him my situation.

He was wise enough to see exactly how I stood, but he told me there was an easy way out of the difficulty. Early in the morning he would chop off my head. He bore me no grudge, he explained, it was a mere matter of policy.

“Quite right,” I replied, “and, if he chose, he might take my head off then and there. I didn’t at all mind; and would just as soon be without a head as with one.”

The king smiled, and seemed pleased.

“But,” I continued, “you may look at the possession of a head in a different light, so far as your own particular head is concerned. If your people are beaten, you will assuredly lose that head, unless a white man is near to take your part. I will be your friend,” I said, “in this matter, and during the battle I will stand by your person and never leave you.”

Otakooma was delighted at the proposal, and so we arranged matters to our mutual satisfaction, and I felt glad I had come; I had certainly lost nothing by my candour. No one ever does.

Firing began early in the morning. The battle raged till nearly noon, with dreadful slaughter on the side of the savages, who were finally borne backwards a disorganised mob.

I stuck by the king. He did not fly. He felt safe and said so, but he wept to see his children, as he called them, slain before his very eyes.

Oh! the glad sight it was to me, after all these years, to behold the bold bluejackets, and brave marines, dashing after the foe, gun and bayonet in hand!

But a more joyful surprise awaited me when the battle was over; for the very first man to rush up to me and shake me by the two hands was my dear friend Ben Roberts.

“Nie, old boy!” he cried, “I wouldn’t have known you. You’ve grown a man, and what a savage you do look! And do you know, Nie, what all this fighting has been about?”

“No,” I said innocently.

“Why, about you!” He almost shouted the last word, and I could see in his honest eyes the tears which he could hardly keep from failing.

Chapter Eight

“The sea! the sea! the open sea!The blue, the fresh, the ever free!”Proctor.“England, thy beauties are tame and domestic,To one who has roamed o’er the mountains afar.”Byron.

Yes, all the fighting had been about me.

Our fellows had not lost the battle that day at Zareppa’s fort; on the contrary, they had given the Arabs a grievous defeat. I had at first been reported killed, but as I was not found among the dead and wounded, search was made for me more inland, and it was soon elicited that I had been carried away prisoner, and no doubts were left in the minds of my shipmates, that I had died by the torture, in order to avenge the death of the pirate chief.

The old Niobe had been wrecked since my incarceration in the land of the savages. Roberts had been made lieutenant, and it was not until he returned to the shores of Africa, several years after, that he heard from friendly Arabs that there was an English prisoner in the hands of a warlike tribe of savages, who lived almost in the centre of the dark continent. After this my dear friend never rested in his hammock, as he himself expressed it, until he had organised the expedition that came to my relief.