c Northwestern O O University LIBRARY Evanston, Illinois C^A~a^y^-Y a. LONDON : PRINTED BY U. VIRTUE AND COMPANY, CITY ROAD. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAUB INTRODUCTION I I. THE STAGE-WAGGON 6 IL EDMUND CALVERLEY 15 m. PARTED 26 IV. A TERRIBLE TALE 32 V. A TREACHEROUS CHIEF 49 VI. THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP 64 VII. THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER 78 VHL BURNT WINGS 96 IX. A PRETTY QUARREL I05 X. SAVED FROM A CROCODILE. 117 XL TRAPPED 127 XH. TO THE RESCUE! 138 xm. ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT . l6l XIV. USONGÉ'S CHOICE. .... 177 XV. A BASSLRA WARRIOR 187 XVI. THE CHANCES OF WAR 202 XVH. THE WHITE MEDICINE-MAN 215 XVHL MNASTA'S REVENGE 231 Vm CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIX. A RACE FOR LIFE 251 XX. A DARING VENTURE 272 XXI. A FORLORN HOPE 283 XXH. AN AFRICAN NERO 294 XXIH. BEARDING THE LION IN HIS DEN 306 XXIV. DONNA BEATRIZ 318 XXV. CARRIED OFF 334 XXVI. UNMASKED 343 XXVH. WHAT HE BROUGHT HER 356 XXVIH. NAY TOR 363 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. introduction. The tropical sun was already sinking low in the intensely blue heavens, and its beams fell full on the bare face of the line of sandhills—dotted here and there with clumps of feathery palms and mimosa scrub—that skirted the shore. No sound was heard from the land but the harsh cries and flapping wings of a bevy of sea-birds, as they rose from the beach, circled once or twice in the air, and settled down again almost in the same place as before. Far out on the western horizon, upon the boundless expanse of waters, lay a stately ship; and between the ship and the coast was a man-o'- war's boat, manned by English sailors, and drawing every moment nearer to land. Running the boat into a little cove, half-a-dozen of them leaped ashore, compelling another man— who from his uniform was evidently an officer, and whose arms were bound tightly to his sides with a stout scarf—to accompany them. This he did with manifest reluctance. 1 2 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. He was no sooner ashore than the sailors returned to the boat—with the exception of one of their number, who had deposited a beaker of water and some provisions upon the beach, well out of the reach of the waves—and in spite of the vigorous protests, threats, and even entreaties of their late passenger and prisoner, they proceeded to push out to sea again. In vain the officer—as a matter of fact he was their captain—dashed into the water in pursuit of the retreating boat; guns were raised, cutlasses drawn, and with a volley of execrations he was assured of their intention of shooting or cutting him down should he attempt to follow them. And now the seaman who had until now remained on the beach approached his late commander. " Surely you are not going to desert me too, Harding?" demanded the latter, with a glance full of passion and reproach. The man shrugged his shoulders, saying surlily: "How can I help it, Sir? It's your own fault! This ain't a place where a man would stay for choice, though I've seen worse. But you may thank your stars we h'ain't served you like the rest! Bill Brainham is captain of the Duke of Gloucester now, and I'll cleave to him—I swear I will!" And thereupon he drew his cutlass—only, how¬ ever, to sunder adroitly the bonds which pinned down the captain's arms—then dashing into the surf, he speedily reached the boat, which now shot out seaward at a great rate. For a moment the abandoned man stood gazing INTRODUCTION. 3 as if paralysed, after the mutineers. Suddenly he uttered a sharp exclamation, dashed his hand across his brow, and rushed again into the sea. After some moments' battling with the waves, however, he returned half-exhausted to the beach, as if real¬ izing the utter futility of any attempt to overtake the boat, or of forcing its occupants to restore him to his ship. With a gesture eloquent of anguish and despair, he watched the diminishing speck as it rose on the crest of wave after wave. " And this is the end of it all ! " he muttered bitterly at last. " My ship—my honour—gone ; my career cut short ; and I myself abandoned to starva¬ tion, or worse ! How little I thought when I took over the command of Her Majesty's* ship The Duke of Gloucester, that it would come to this ! Oh, my God !... . Yet better to die here, perhaps, than to struggle back to England to be pointed at as the man who had his ship taken from him and his officers murdered before his very eyes, in a mutiny he was too blind to foresee and too powerless to prevent !" He ground his teeth in his impotent rage and mortification. " Better—a thousand times better—as it is ! And yet—and yet " He flung his hand across his eyes with a choking sob. The thoughts of the strong man left thus alone in his agony had travelled back from that desolate western coast of Africa to the quiet Cornish *Her Majesty Queen Anne. IHE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. village where he had left the wife and child he would never, he thought, see again. Presently he looked up once more. Despair was in his eyes as he cast them over cheerless earth and empty sky, and then turned them seaward again. The boat was invisible now ; it had reached the ship. And what unspeakable yearning filled his heart as he gazed upon the splendid proportions of that noble vessel—his ship—his pride—his love! And now it was lost to him for ever. Let us look at him for a moment as he stands there, straining his wild eyes towards the western horizon, where the tapering masts of the man-of-war are so clearly defined against the sunset sky. He is not much over forty years of age, and there is not a silver hair among his clustering dark curls. He is a handsome man, tall, straight and well-made, and he has the air and look of one accustomed to command obedience. He is a brave man, too—his deeds of the last ten years alone could speak for that. And there are many who know with what a kindly light his grey eyes can shine at times—many of the weak and the suffering who have cause to bless him. A keener, more anxious expression comes into his pale, intent face as he gazes. Alas! the ship is moving, though he will not yet acknowledge it to himself. Already a great part of her hull has disappeared from sight—she sinks lower and lower. And now only her masts are visible. One violent ejaculation bursts from the lips of the watcher. INTRODUCTION. 5 "The treacherous rascals! the ungrateful, mur¬ derous scoundrels ! Let me but meet one of them again ! " He broke off, eagerly following the ship with his eyes until her last streamer sank below the horizon. Still he gazed—he could not bring himself to believe that she was indeed gone. Then the truth dawned upon him. He glanced wildly round—staggered— sank upon a rock, and covering his face with his hands, burst into tears. ****** Night fell, and found him on the same spot still. The place where he had been abandoned was an unknown, desert, and apparently uninhabited coast —and he was alone. CHAPTER L THE STAGE-WAGGON. One dark, stormy evening in December, 1709, the lumbering old stage-waggon which weekly creaked and strained over the weary way between Tavistock and Exeter was crawling along a lane on Dartmoor. The wind shrieked over the bleak hills, blowing the snow into eddies, and ever and anon driving the icy sleet full in the faces of the driver and his team of steaming, jaded horses with a hiss like that of a host of infuriated serpents. What with the ruts and the snowdrifts, the unwieldy vehicle rocked to and fro like a ship at sea, momentarily threaten¬ ing an upset. Add to this the quickly increasing darkness, which rendered it almost impossible to see either side of the road, at this point exposed to all the elements on the crown of a steep hill, and it is scarcely to be wondered at that the long- suffering coachman muttered between his teeth an ardent wish that he had tarried in the warm and comfortable tap-room of the inn at the last hamlet in which he had halted. THE STAGE-WAGGON. 7 The sole passengers were a plainly-dressed woman in widow's weeds—evidently a lady—and a little girl of about ten years of age. The latter, terrified by the storm and by the rolling and swaying of the waggon, was clinging to her mother, looking questioningly up in her face from time to time— only to read in that white face a confirmation of her own fears. " Mamma, do you think the coach will upset ? Mamma, hadn't we better get out and walk ?" "No, dear; the snow would be up to our knees. God will take care of us—pray to Him, as I am doing." The silence was unbroken for awhile save for the furious rattling and jolting of the cranky old stage- waggon, and the screaming of the gale. " Mamma, are you cold ?" came the little voice again. " I could wrap a shawl round your feet " "No, no—don't move, my child," and her mother held her more tightly to her breast. " Hark ! What's that?" Her voice was trembling with fright. " There is somebody riding after us, " said the child, after listening for a moment. " Perhaps a highwayman ! " gasped the widow. " If only we had stayed at the inn ! Guen, don't loose your hold on me for a moment. Heaven have mercy on us ! He's alongside us now ! " "It is a man wrapped up in a cloak, mamma!" "Oh, why did I come?" The poor woman was speaking more to herself than to her child. "He is saying something to the driver—perhaps with a 8 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. pistol to his head ! I must give him my purse at once to save our lives—oh ! where is it ?" "Mamma, don't be so frightened—I think he is riding on. Yes, there he goes." "Perhaps he was no robber after all, then!" There was a pause, and then the lady spoke again, faintly but earnestly. "Guen, my child, I feel very ill. Listen—if anything should happen to me to-night— so that I cannot speak to you again—then you must—Ah ! what is that ?" It was a fresh gust of wind, howling, shrieking and tearing like the furies let loose. In the midst of that wild pandemonium of sound came a hoarse shout from the driver. For a moment the very earth seemed to tremble—the waggon swayed with a sickening motion—heeled slowly over—and then— ♦ *♦*** Under that hill, nestled among tall trees, stood a stately mansion, built of white stone, and known to the country side as Vane Court. And against one of its lower windows upon this eventful evening were pressed three faces, the glow of firelight behind them. The faces were those of a fair, fragile-look¬ ing lady, and of two boys of eleven and thirteen— the elder somewhat sombre of visage; the younger golden-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy and fair to look upon as a young David. "Mother," said this last, "father is sure to be here soon. Neither he nor Darius would think THE STAGE-WAGGON. 9 anything of a storm like that—and Darius is so surefooted!" Next moment both boys joined in a hurrah, as a cloaked figure on a black horse loomed into sight through the gateway. A few minutes later, and the new arrival, drenched and miry, was standing in the wide, oak-wainscoted hall, while his wife removed his dripping cloak and handed it to his elder son to hang up ; and the younger, Leonard, scarcely waited for his father to seat himself by the fireside before engaging in a manful struggle to pull off the great heavy riding- boots. The attempt proved eminently successful— though the task was no easy one, and the last boot, coming off suddenly after a stubborn resistance, caused Master Lenny to turn an involuntary back- somersault into the midst of the half-dozen dogs who occupied the centre of the hearth. .Supper was soon under discussion, while Mr. Vane informed his wife of the satisfactory conclusion of the business that had taken him to Tavistock, and described the condition of the Dartmoor roads. " I have seldom been out in such a storm as this, " he said. " I passed the stage-waggon from Tavistock nearly at the top of the hill there, a quarter of an hour ago ; and upon my word I was glad I was not in it ! Old Sam Belfer was driving, and he, you know, can't see very well at the best of times—but on a night like this " He shook his head. " Heavens, husband ! were there many passengers!?" " On my word, my love, I could hardly see—but I think not. One or two huddled up at one end, oj IO THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. so. I wish now that I had asked them to put up here for the night." "Perhaps they have not gone too far yet," cried the younger boy, starting up. " I'll run upstairs and look out of the window—I shall see the gleam of old Belfer's lantern if they are anywhere within half- a-mile of us." And he was gone. " What nonsense ! " muttered his brother. The next moment the door had flown open again, and Leonard was back in their midst, his face crimson with excitement. " Father ! mother ! the waggon has been upset— or something ! There is a dark mass on the hill, and a horse is plunging and jumping about like a mad thing. Open the window and you'll hear them neighing. Oh, let us take lanterns and go and help them ! Let us all go ! " The whole household was at the windows in a few seconds. Rapidly taking in the situation, Mr. Vane summoned the men-servants to accompany him and made hasty preparations to set forth to the scene of the accident. Having promised his wife to bring the stage-waggon's passengers back with him for shelter, he was about to start, when he found that little Leonard purposed to make one of the party. " Oh, yes, father, do take me," he exclaimed impetuously. "I'll promise not to get in anyone's way—yes, mother, I'll put on anything you like— only let me go! It's different with Hugh—he has a cold. I'm all right." THE STAGE-WAGGON. II A few minutes later he was fighting his way through snow and slush at his father's side. The storm had somewhat abated, but they were still obliged t© shout in order to hear each other speak, and Leonard found he had enough to do to keep pace with Mr. Vane as they breasted the hill and met the fierce blast from the moors. As they neared the scene of the disaster a horse burst out of a snowdrift and galloped past them, the traces streaming broken behind him. The driver's voice was soon heard calling to them in piteous accents, showing that he was at all events alive, it little more. The waggon was lying on its side, the only two wheels which remained attached to the axles, in the air. The harness was tangled and broken by the struggles of the horses, two of which had succeeded in freeing themselves, while another had been so badly injured that it had to be put out of its misery as quickly as possible. Old Belfer had broken his collar-bone and a rib, besides being severely bruised. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr. Vane at length managed to get into the waggon, from which no sound had issued. He emerged from the vehicle with a woman dressed in black in his arms, who was to all appearance dead. He laid her down upon a cloak spread on the roadside, and bent over her. "I am not certain, but I think she is alive," he said. Returning to the waggon, he brought out a 12 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. little girl. Her hood had fallen back, and her long dark hair streamed over his arm. She was very pale and her eyes were closed. At sight of her, Leonard gave a cry. " Oh, father, the poor little girl ! She's not dead —say she's not dead!" "No, no—only stunned, I hope. And now to get them home at once." There was little sleep in Vane Court that night. One of the grooms was despatched on horseback for a doctor, while Mrs. Vane and her assistants busied themselves in the sick-room. The child had soon revived, and dropped into a sound slumber. But the poor mother neither stirred nor spoke. All their efforts proved unavailing. She never recovered full consciousness, and died quietly at daybreak. "How shall I tell her? How shall I break it to her?" Mrs. Vane asked herself next morning, as she opened the door of the room where slept the poor little waif so unexpectedly brought to her doors last night. She never left the child all that day and the ensuing night. The poor little thing clung to her presence, following her about with grave piteous eyes like those of some suffering dumb creature, seeming to ask silently why this had happened to her. It seemed that her name was Gruendolen Pengil- THE STAGE-WAGGON. 13 lan—that she had hitherto lived with her mother a lonely, sequestered life in a village near St. Austell in Cornwall—and furthermore, that she was the only child of a naval officer well-known years ago—first for his gallantry as one of Benbow's lieutenants in the West Indies— then as Sir George Rooke's second in command at the siege of Gibraltar—and who was finally—as it was believed—drowned upon his last voyage, a cruise to the Cape of Good Hope, on which his ship, the Duke of Gloucester, had gone down with all hands. Portions of the wreck had been picked up by other vessels, but no sur¬ vivor of the ill-fated ship's officers or crew had ever returned to tell the tragic tale. It appeared, too, that the little girl was left almost friendless upon the world. She had no idea of the object of her mother's journey to Exeter; it might have been to choose a new abode—or to consult a doctor or a lawyer—for, as was afterwards found, Mrs. Pengillan had left no will, nor had she.made any arrangements for her child's future in case of her own demise. A Cornish clergyman of whom Guendolen had spoken, and to whom the Vanes had sent a message, could tell them little. Upon investigation, however, it transpired that Mrs. Pen- gillan's income, derived from her husband's prize- money and her pension, had for some reason become lately much reduced. What little capital remained in her name had been newly invested that year in the South Sea Company's Stock. The matter was thrown into the Court of Chancery. 14 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. All endeavours to find Guendolen's relatives or connections—and none such appeared to exist— having failed, Mr. Vane acceded to his wife's strong desire, and sent in an application to the proper authorities in London for custody of the child till she should have reached her majority. The appli¬ cation was granted, and little Guen became a per¬ manent inmate and adopted child of Vane Court; to the satisfaction of all its inhabitants, herself included. And there she grew up with Hugh and Leonard Vane. And the time rolled by without a cloud to darken its bright horizon—until the day came when Vane Court was left without a mistress. Thus Guendolen Pengillan was left motherless a second time. CHAPTER n. edmund calyerley. "See what I have found in the lumber-garret!" exclaimed Hugh Vane—now a dark-haired, tolerably well-grown young man of three-and-twenty—as, equipped for riding, he came down the steps in front of Vane Court, holding up a small and ancient leather-bound book. "Oh, there you are at last!" in tones suggestive of rising ire from a tall, broad-chested, handsome youth some two years younger—his brother Leonard, who was adjusting his horse's bridle on the terrace below. "I was just coming to see what had become of you, and " "Yes, Hugh," broke in another voice with a silvery laugh, " I hope you think you have kept us waiting long enough ! Don't you know we are all eagerness to see this wonderful traveller whom Lady Langford has got hold of?—But what is it you have found?" The speaker was Guendolen—now a tall young lady who had barely completed her twentieth year. •5 16 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. She was standing with her back against her bay horse's shoulder, one hand caressing his neck, while the other held up the long skirt of her dark green habit. Her luxuriant dark hair was partly looped up at the back of her stately head, and lay partly in long loose curls upon her shoulders; and her splendid dark grey eyes flashed at this moment with a mischievous light from beneath the wide brim of her shady hat and feathers. Any beholder, looking on her for the first time, must have been amazed at her beauty. " Oh, get on,—get on, for goodness sake, if you're in such a plaguey hurry ! " said Hugh, with sudden ill-temper. "It doesn't matter what I've found— or I can show it to you on the way. But I don't suppose you'd care to see it after all!" " Of course I should, Hugh ! how can you speak so?" expostulated the girl, as—Leonard having put her on her horse—the trio rode off across that very hill on which so fatal an accident had occurred ten years before. " Oh, it's only an old Book of Hours with the name of our ancestor Sir Gervas Vane written in it in old yellow ink. There are several notes in the same hand upon the fly-leaves—one records the fall of his son, 'Hue Vane', at the battle of Tewkesbury, with the date, May 4, 1471." And he tossed it to her a trifle roughly. " Dear me, how oddly he spells ! Here seems to be something about the Earl of Warwick. And this— this must be a prophecy of some sort. Look, Lenny. " EDMUND CALVERLEY. Two—two heddes'—is it?" said Leonard, bend¬ ing over from his horse to look at the little volume she held, until his head almost touched hers. "I can't make head or tail of it." "Listen to this, then." And she read: " ' Two Heddes of the House on Dartemoore sail falle, " 'And a Yunger take Heritage, Bryde, and allé.' " " What fun ! " laughed Leonard. " But perhaps the prophecy has been fulfilled already! No, it hasn't; one head of the house hasn't fallen on Dartmoor yet, let alone two. Perhaps it's to be some two-headed individual, though. You know, Guen, there have been such people—and from Cornwall too." " How could a Cornishman be head of the House of Vane, I should like to know? There, sir, you're answered! " "And who is the 'Younger' who is to take 'heritage, bride, and all?' What a lucky 'Younger' ! That would depend on the bride, though 1 At all events she would be glad not to be obliged to marry a two-headed bridegroom. Again, to be sure, that would depend on the substitute. I suppose a man mightn't be a bad sort of fellow, even if he had two heads!" " That would be his misfortune, not his fault, " said Guen. " Does it not strike you that we are talking nonsense ? " "There may be a battle on Dartmoor some day, 2 18 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. for aught we know, " said Hugh. " The Pretender may come over again " * " Bother the Pretender, " quoth Leonard. " His business is pretty well played out. I'll go out for King George if he does come, though His Majesty is a fat old German. I only wish I had the chance of doing something! Here's my father keeps me at home like a child—and upon my word, it can't go on much longer! It's all very well for Hugh, he's eldest son, and heir to the estate; but I've got to make my own way in the world. I am over twenty-one now, and I mean to do it. If there was any fighting going on anywhere, I'm hanged if 1 wouldn't join the army! " "You know, Lenny," the girl said, in a low voice, " the reason that your father cannot bear to part with you. It is because you are so like her. He has never been the same since she died. But I quite understand how you feel about it," and she sighed. " But you remember, Guennie," he said, more lightly, " we always agreed that I was to be a sailor, like your father. To sail about the world and see strange lands—that is my grand ambition. I'd give my head," he added with energy, '' to be able to go with Edmund Calverley on this expedition of his. I should like to see this ancient 'Kingdom of Kongo', and the great river they talk about, with its 200 miles of cataracts—and all the other strange * The Old Pretender. ÈDMUND CALVERLEY. i g things Andrew Battel and the other old writers tell of, in that part of the world." His cheek flushed and his eyes sparkled. Guen looked at him, but said nothing ; and just then they turned in at a white gate and were riding up to the unassuming mansion known as Lutonvale Manor. Here dwelt the widowed Lady Langford— a lady who had been much attached to Mrs. Vane, and who was now, as ever, a kind friend to "the children," as she called the trio who so often came over from Vane Court to visit her. They were, indeed, as much at home in her house as in their own. The brisk, cheerful old lady—whose only signs of age were the silvery whiteness of her abundant hair, and the gold-headed cane with which she walked—welcomed them warmly. She had hardly explained that her nephew, Mr. Calverley, (who had arrived on the previous day,) was out with his gun, but would be back soon, when the gentleman him¬ self—to them just now an object of such eager interest—walked into the room. Edmund Calverley was a tall, handsome man of two or three and forty, dark-haired, with peculiarly penetrating eyes, and a complexion deeply embrowned by the African sun. He had a trick, when looking at any person or thing new to him, of throwing back his head ; and it was with this habitual gesture that he now surveyed his aunt's guests. Ten years ago he had been obliged to give up his commission in the army in consequence of a wound received at the battle ofMalplaquet—a wound 20 ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. which then threatened to give him severe and lasting trouble; and at the end of the Flanders campaign he had found himself the invalid guest of a worthy Dutchman named Van der Baeken, whom he had made his friend. This gentleman owned property at the mouth of the African river Zaire or Congo— a sea-voyage had been prescribed to Calverley as the best means of recruiting his shattered health— and thus he gladly accepted the merchant's invita¬ tion to accompany him on a trip to the West African Coast. Arrived there, he quickly made the acquaintance of other traders—Dutch, French, and Portuguese— and accompanied several trading expeditions up the country, then so little known. These several expe¬ ditions covered .-at least two years ; and then, bitten by the fever for exploration and discovery, undeterred by exigencies of climate and the frequent troubles arising from his wound, Calverley took service under a wealthy ivory-trader, and with his caravan pene¬ trated further inland than any European had ever done before him—excepting perhaps a devoted padre or two. Many were his adventures ; but becoming involved in conflicts with the natives, he was obliged unwill¬ ingly to return to the coast before he had satisfied himself of the truth or falsehood of the many strange reports current of wonders to be seen in the interior. Other enterprises followed, each one more adventurous than the last—for Calverley was of too restless and stirring a temperament to remain long inactive. At EDMUND CALVERLEY. 21 length, after many years, he returned to England. He might have obtained a new commission in the army had he chosen ; but the Peace of Utrecht had long been signed, and there was little doing in the military line just then. Besides, it so happened that the imagination of that eminent peer of the realm, the Duke of S , had been fired and his interest excited by the reports—brought to him by a certain French Count who had been staying in his house— of the riches and wonders of the Congo country. He interrogated Calverley closely concerning his experiences in that African kingdom—inquired as to the navigability of the river, the chances as to the truth of the tales of dwarfs and giants on the higher river—and finally asked whether he would consent to take the command of an exploring expe¬ dition to those parts. To this length he had probably been instigated by his second son, Lord Francis Pole, who was wild to explore the regions which Calverley and the Comte d'Orlât painted in such glowing colours. The Duke undertook the entire equipment of the expedition, the organisation of which was left entirely to Calverley himself. Lord Francis was only to be second in command, and in everything Calverley, as chief, would receive implicit obedience. The scheme was one after Calverley's own heart, and he did not hesitate. In short, the expedition was now to start in less than a month's time; and, all preparations having been completed, its pro¬ spective leader had found leisure to travel into Devon- 22 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. shire to pay a long-promised visit to Lady Langford, his aunt, and to bid her farewell. " Edmund, let me present you to ' my children', as I call them, " she cried gaily. " This is Miss Guen- dolen Vane—no, Pengillan, I should say—" here the lady and gentleman exchanged a sweeping curtsey and a low bow—"this is Hugh Vane—and this his brother Leonard. Ah! I know you would like to take them both with you to the horrid wilds of Africa!" " And I know one of them who would be very happy to go with you, sir," said Leonard, laughing and colouring a little with becoming modesty as he shook hands with the traveller. "Say you so, sir? then let me tell you I should not be sorry to have you of my party—" and Calverley bent a look of searching but kindly scrutiny upon the young man who stood before him. Leonard's appearance was certainly prepos¬ sessing. He was tall, strong, and upright, looking well in his country-made suit of dark blue cloth— albeit the cut was not quite in the latest fashion, and his ruffles were perhaps a trifle coarser in texture than those to be seen in Bond Street—his curly fair hair tied by a great bow of black ribbon at the nape of his neck—and with his broad frank brow and honest blue eyes. "You are not serious?" Calverley added. " I wish I were ! " Leonard exclaimed involuntarily. " I mean, I wish that I—But, unfortunately, I am not master of my own actions—" and he looked down. EDMUND CALVERLEY. 23 "Ah, Leonard," said Lady Langford, "there is plenty of work in the world for you to do, my child, without going out to get eaten, perhaps, by bloodthirsty African cannibals. Wretches! I can¬ not comprehend how Edmund can bear to go among them. Did you ever see them eat anyone?" and she turned to Calverley. " Will, I can't say that I was ever present at the actual operation, dear aunt," he replied, throwing himself into a chair and showing his fine white teeth in a smile. "But I have come in at the end of a feast; and have even been offered a share of the bill of fare. I hope it is needless to say that I declined ?" "Oh, you are a monster! Don't you think he is, Guen? But I assure you that these three children are simply thirsting to hear of some of your past doings and future plans from your own lips." "I am at their service"—and Calverley bowed gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye. "I have a varied assortment on hand of travellers' tales on every possible subject—most of which I can vouch for as being tolerably authentic—the marvels having been witnessed either by myself, or by my informant, or by my informant's father-in-law, or by his father-in-law's deceased first wife's half-brother's niece's son!" Everyone laughed, and Leonard said: "Did you ever see any of the 'little people' Andrew Battel talks about in his account of his African adventures, sir?" 24 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. " Never—as yet. So you have read Andrew Battel?" "And pray, who may he be?" demanded Lady Langford. " You are getting beyond me, Leonard, child." "A sailor of Queen Elizabeth's time, who was left a prisoner in Angola by the Portuguese, and who dictated an account of his experiences, " replied Calverley. " Do you know Carli's narrative of his life in Kongo? OrMerolla's? They are interesting in a way, though written from the Papist missionary point of view fifty years ago. The Portuguese -padres still have considerable influence at the capital, San Salvador; though not so much as they had twenty years ago, when Casseneuve and Barbot, the slave-traders, were so disgusted by it. I met a good many of them up and down the country when I was there, and some of them were not bad fellows." "Shall you sail up the river, sir?" " Only for a short distance ; then we shall carry boats overland, so as to avoid the cataract region, and strike the river above. We shall visit the King at San Salvador before we ascend the higher river. Then the fun will begin—for, having begun, Heaven only knows where we shall end, or what discoveries we may make—provided that our discoveries do not end ourselves," he added with a laugh. He went on to give them further information concerning the proposed expedition, and described the picturesque and beautiful country to be explored, with its wealth of animal and vegetable life; the EDMUND CALVERLEY. 25 various tribes that inhabited it and their strange customs—with much more ; until Leonard was wild with longing to make one of the exploring party. He had fallen, too, under the spell of Calverley's singularly attractive personality, and had conceived an intense boyish admiration for him. "Guen," he said, in a low tone, as they rode homewards, "I would give everything I possess to follow that fellow up the Congo—or anywhere else, for that matter I" CHAPTER IIL parted. Three days later, and all was changed at Vane Court. A terrible accident had happened ; Mr. Vane had been thrown from his horse while riding on the moor, and killed instantaneously. Thus perished upon Dartmoor one Head of the House of Vane. So sudden was the blow that his children (for Guen might be counted as one of them) felt for a time as if stunned. It was so hard to realize that he was indeed gone, and that they were left alone. Hugh succeeded his father as Squire—Leonard had but a younger son's portion, and his own way to make in the world. He was free to do what he would. And he was not long in making up his mind as to his first step. He would join Calverley's expe¬ dition, if the latter would take him. Late on the day following the funeral, Guen was sitting—a slender, lonely, black-robed young figure— on the great oaken settle by the hearth in the hall. 26 PARTED. 27 The light of the western sun came flooding in through the diamond-shaped window-panes, and gleamed on her dark hair, and on the head of the hound which stood at her knee. She roused her¬ self from some sad dream with a sigh. "We are a lonely pair, you and I, old fellow," she murmured, stroking the dog's head. " What shall we do when your master is gone?" The dog sprang forward with a short bark of welcome, as a step sounded outside, the door opened, and Leonard came in. " Alone, Guen ? " and he came and stood by her side, leaning on the back of the settle. She looked up in his face. "You have something to tell me, Leonard!" she exclaimed, turning pale and making an involuntary movement with her hands as if to clutch his arm. " Yes," he said simply, yet with a certain hesitation. " I have asked Mr. Calverley to take me; and he will." There was a deep silence. The girl broke it. She was paler than before. " Then it is all settled ? " she asked in a low voice. " It is all settled, " Leonard replied. After a pause he went on—"After all, it makes no difference; I should have had to go away, at all events. If I were a sailor, dear, we should be just as far apart as we shall be now—for a time. And I shall come back—if it be God's will." "Yes," the girl said, in a smothered tone. "Yes, Leonard." She could hardly speak. Yet she had been expecting this. 28 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VAJSTE. Leonard went on, speaking with evident effort. " I was so glad when I started to come home and tell you, Guen. And then, as I came along, I began to think—to think of leaving you—and—and it took the gladness out of everything," he ended with a groan which he could not repress. Guen threw up her arms and burst into tears. "Oh, Leonard! Leonard!" she cried out. "Guen—my dear! my dear!" he besought her, kneeling beside her. " Don't cry so, my own darling—what a brute I was to talk so! But do you really care for me so much, my dearest? Oh, tell me if you do—but don't cry! " His arm was round her waist and her pretty dishevelled head had sunk on his shoulder. She was sobbing as if her heart would break. Leonard was beside himself. "Oh Lenny—Lenny," she panted at last. "To ask me if I care for you—oh, my dear—my dear ! " And she broke into fresh sobs. "Guen, my own love," Leonard burst out, "do you know what made me so sad—so miserable— as I came home? It was because I had found out—and what a fool I was never to have found it out before!—That I loved you—loved you, my darling—not as a brother loves a sister, for you are far more to me than the dearest sister—but with my whole heart and soul—now and for ever— now and for ever ! Guen—Guen ! can you care for me like that ? " Guen sobbed on for some moments longer. Then she put her arms silently round Leonard's neck. PARTED. 29 "I do care for you like that, dear, I think," she whispered, when she could speak. She lay still, like a tired but happy child, while he caressed her and murmured tender words. " And when did you first find out that you—how you loved me?" " It seemed to become quite clear to me while you were speaking ; I did not understand it before. But now I know—oh, Leonard!—that you are my very heart's love. Don't—" she continued eagerly, "don't talk of your going away yet; it would kill me. Let us think instead of our happiness. Are you happy, Leonard ? " " So happy, that I would wish this moment to be 'engthened into eternity. Let us think that it will be—oh, my darling! how could I ever leave you ? " " I can hardly believe, " he said, ten minutes later, " that when I came in at that door—how long is it ago ?—I had almost made up my mind not to speak to you—not to tell you what was in my heart; to leave you free—till I came back. But when I saw you—so lonely—and saw your grief—away went all my resolutions. Fancy my thinking that I could keep them ! " "Fancy it, indeed! Oh, Lenny, how could you have been so cruel ! To go away and not tell me! " "I could not have done it, my dearest. And yet—remember, Guennie, that I am penniless—or nearly so. I have nothing to marry on." "We can wait, dear." " And who knows what wonders we may not dis- 30 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANË. cover in this strange land whither we are going? perhaps El Dorado itself! Is not Africa the land of gold? We may all come home rich men; richer than if we had toiled a lifetime," cried Leonard excitedly. " If you must go—* she faltered. " I have promised, Guen. I can't draw back, even if I wanted to. But you don't wish that I should? Think of all I should miss. Besides, we shall be back, at the furthest, in a year's time. And what is a year? I am confident, too, that we shall not return empty-handed. We shall bring ivory—tons of it, perhaps, for they say it is cheap and plentiful. Perhaps gold—perhaps jewels. Oh, Guen—my Guen! I promise you that I will bring you back a treasure! And then !" He caught her in his arms once more and kissed her a dozen times. She looked up at him wistfully. " Bring me back your own true self, my darling, and I shall be content," she murmured. They looked up. Hugh had entered, and the dog, unheeded, was rubbing itself against his legs. Guen's first impulse was to fly; but she checked herself, blushing, as Leonard caught her hand. "Hugh, Guen has promised to be my wife, and I am going away to Africa. You will take care of her for me till I come back?" Hugh's face was blank of everything but bewil¬ derment. " You—you—are going to marry—Guen ? Africa ! Ah—yes, I understand, now. Yes." PARTED. But he still seemed dazed, and responded but mechanically to his brother's hearty shake of the hand. " Poor old Hugh ! he's dumbfounded, " cried Leonard, with his joyous laugh. " He never dreamed of such a thing, you see, Guen." But Guen had disappeared. "I say, Hugh, old fellow, wish me luck! I'm the happiest man on this earth at present." "Yes—oh, of course. What did you say about Africa? Is it settled?" And Leonard plunged into an account of his interview with Calverley, which lasted till the servants came in to lay the table. Two days later he was gone. CHAPTER IV. a terrible tale. JFor a few weeks Guen had been staying at Luton- vale with Lady Langford, when the latter one day received an urgent summons to the sick-bed of her favourite (and now only surviving) brother in North¬ amptonshire. Albeit such a journey was in those days an arduous undertaking, the old lady deter¬ mined to start at once. Guen was her only difficulty, as she could not take her with her—she solved the problem, however, by sending for a young lady protégée of her own—a Miss Mildred Esslemont—to keep the girl company at Vane Court until her return ; and with many charges commended the whole party—including Hugh—to the care of Mrs. Pridet, the capable housekeeper, before she left. Hugh's strange sullen moodiness at this time did not greatly surprise Guen, although it increased rather than diminished as the months rolled on. She was accustomed to his gruff ways and sudden fits of unsociableness, and attributing the present 3* A TERRIBLE TALE. 33 protracted attack to the effects of his father's death and Leonard's departure, pitied him accordingly. His manner, however, was completely changed on his return from a brief absence from home, and it touched her to see him doing his best to please her, and—as she imagined—to cheer her in her anxiety. For there was no letter from Leonard. Lady Langford was detained in Northamptonshire by her brother's continued illness, and wrote that she had heard nothing whatever of her nephew Calverley. She had written to the Duke of S , as the most likely person to be in possession of information as to the Expedition's whereabouts, but he had replied that he knew as little as herself. Guen must not, however, she said, be cast down by this silence, but must remember the difficulties in the way of the transmission of letters from so remote a part of the world as Congo. Even if news had been sent, some accident might very easily have befallen the ship that brought it. The brief improvement in Hugh's behaviour did not continue. He became morose, restless, and excitable—and alas ! it could not long escape Guen's notice that he was always worse—after dinner! Was he becoming a drunkard? One evening he came into the room where she was sitting with Mildred Esslemont, and began brutally to insult Leonard—ending up, as he stood unsteadily clutching at the back of a chair for support, with a declaration of his belief that the expedition had never reached Congo at all, and that every one ? 34 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. of its members were at the bottom of the sea. Then his voice was drowned in the poor girl's passionate reproaches—until the door closed upon her and her companion, and he was left alone, sitting cowed and stupid in the empty room. Next day he apologized humbly for what had passed. But he had destroyed the old relations between himself and Guen, and set up in their place a barrier which could never henceforth be surmounted. "Somehow," she said to Mildred, "I cannot feel as if he were the same Hugh I used to know so well. There is a change—I cannot explain it! Of course I know he would never have spoken—so— if he had been himself ; indeed, he must have been beside himself! But to say such things of my Leonard! It shows how bad his heart must be. Oh, if Lady Langford would only come back!" Little did Guen guess that in the depths of Hugh's sluggish heart had lurked unknown—who knows for how long ?—a dormant passion for herself that had only quickened into life since he had realized that his brother had carried off the prize he might perchance—so it seemed to him—have won. That this passion had daily grown since Leonard's depar¬ ture. That that brief absence from home of his had been a feeble and fruitless effort of his better nature against the evil impulses that were urging him on to treachery to the brother who had left his plighted bride in his care. And that now—though seeing plainly the utter hopelessness of any attempt he A TERRIBLE TALE. 35 could make to wean her heart from her absent love—he was fast losing every scruple he had ever for a moment entertained ! And Lady Langford did not come back. Her brother had recovered, but she herself, worn with long nursing, had fallen ill, and would not be strong enough to travel for some time. It was now a year since the expedition had started. The affairs of the South Sea Company, in which Guendolen's little fortune was invested, were now in everyone's mouth. The failure of the many bubble companies which had been recently started had opened people's eyes, and made the holders of South Sea stock anxious to realize as speedily as might be ; and grave doubts of the great Company's sol¬ vency were beginning to be entertained in some quarters. Guen was now some months over twenty- one ; and one day Hugh surprised her by announcing his intention of journeying to London, with a view, he said, to ascertaining how matters really stood in the City. He was away for more than a month, and returned looking pale and grave, and speaking little. His manner convinced Guen that he had bad news to tell—news unconnected with the South Sea Company ; and the thought brought such a pang of terror to her heart that for some moments she was unable to ask the question that burned upon her tongue. In the meantime Mildred struck in with another. "What do they say in town of the South Sea 36 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Company, Mr. Vane? Surely there can be nothing amiss with the Great Company ?" Hugh looked up with an abstracted air. " The South Sea Company ? Oh, I—I see no cause for uneasiness there. The shares are low at present, but no doubt they will rise again. Of course there are numbers of silly reports flying about, but " (He did not say that since his departure from home he had hardly given two thoughts to the affairs of the Company, or the safety of Guen's fortune.) "Hugh—Hugh!" burst out poor agonized Guen — " have you heard any news of the Expedition ?" Hugh looked at her; then averted his eyes, toying with his knife—they were sitting at the dinner-table. "It doesn't do to believe all people say," he said slowly, at length. " But what do they say ?"—breathlessly. " They say—" and he glanced at her for a second — "they say the worst—but who knows? What is that ? It is only because—there is no news." " But we knew that before, " Mildred hastily inter¬ posed, seeing that Guen had grown ashy pale. " Now that so long a time has passed, we could hardly expect to hear anything of them until they come back. And—think, Guen, dearest—that may be any day now. The year is up. Cheer up—what does it matter what people say? Ships are often not heard of for many years, and yet return safely." Guen tried to smile at her friend. " Yes, dear. But, Hugh," she was continuing, the drawn look of anxiety returning to her face— A TERRIBLE TALE. 37 Hugh suddenly sprang to his feet, upsetting the heavy carved oaken chair on which he had been seated with a crash upon the floor. " There, there ! " he cried impatiently, " what is the use of asking questions? I am tired. I have been on horseback since early this morning. I— I will come to you presently, and answer any more questions you like to ask. But for the present you must excuse me." He held the door open for them to pass out. Guen looked entreatingly at him as she passed him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the ground. In the drawing-room, Guen threw herself upon a couch ; then, sitting up, held out her hands piteously. "Mildred—what do you really think about it? Is he keeping something back from me?" "No—no, dear, I don't think so. I am sure there is nothing new." " And yet he never looked in my face as he spoke; he was afraid of my reading the truth in his eyes ! " "Don't think it, Guen," Mildred said earnestly. "Remember, I don't doubt that he may think that —that there is no hope ; but are you to be guided by his opinion ? Is he not naturally of a despon¬ dent turn?" "You are certainly right there. He is," Guen said, pondering. Three-quarters of an hour passed by, and then the old major-domo entered, with a message. Mr. Vane begged that the ladies would favour him with their company in the study 38 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Guen and Mildred looked at each other, the former with dilating eyes. " Mildred ! " she gasped, " what does it mean?" " Bear up, Guen ; it is nothing—I am certain of it. Some whim—some fancy. Will you humour him ? " Guen's only answer was to catch her by the sleeve and draw her from the room. They had to cross the dining-hall. Some wine still stood on the table. Mildred swiftly poured a little into a glass. "You had better drink this," she said, and held it to her companion's lips. But Guen, with a look from her dark eyes, put it aside and went on to the study. They entered. Hugh was standing by the fire¬ place. He looked strangely pale, and as he placed a chair for Guendolen his hand shook and his lip twitched. But Guen did not sit down. She had never taken her eyes from Hugh's face since she entered the room. "You sent for us, Hugh." Her voice was quite steady, yet it sounded unlike her own. Her cheeks were colourless, but her eyes burned brightly. Hugh looked at her and immediately shifted his eyes. He glanced towards a curtained recess in the corner, where, as Mildred guessed, reposed the spirits with which he had been fortifying himself. Then he turned again to Guendolen. "Had you not better sit down? It will be better, I assure you. No?" He cleared his throat, and laid his hand on the back of a chair. " Guen, I have bad news for you." A TERRIBLE TALE. 39 Guen signed to him to go on. Not a muscle of her face had moved, nor did she take her eyes from his. "Bad news—the worst news. Can you bear it? I spoke with a sailor at the Docks—the mate of a merchant-ship newly arrived from the Southern Seas. I did not tell you this before, for I wished to prepare you ; I see that you are prepared. " He raised his head and looked her in the face. " This man—he is known in Limehouse as Ebenezer Strode—told me of a derelict—a stranded and abandoned ship—which he and his mess-mates had happed upon, several degrees to the south-west of the islands they call the Isles of Cape Verd. "They rowed out to and examined this derelict; she was the Good Queen Anne of London—the name, as you know, of the vessel in which the Expedition to Congo sailed a year ago." "But she had been abandoned?" Guen breathed rather than said. " Yes—but not by all whom she had on board. Two bodies—corpses of common sailors—they found in the bunks where they had died. That ship had had Pestilence for a passenger. And in the officers' cabin they found another corpse." He paused. "Go on and finish with it," said Mildred. " Cannot you see that you are killing her?" And she laid an arm about Guen's waist. "This," continued Hugh, moistening his dry lips with his tongue, " was ten months ago at least. The man in the cabin, Ebenezer said, could hardly 40 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. have been twenty-two years old. He had light, curling hair—was a tall, well-made young fellow— was dressed like a gentleman—and had a curious blue triangular mark under the left ear." Mildred felt a quiver run through Guen's frame from head to foot. Yet she said nothing. " He could not have been dead above twenty-four hours. He was seated, stooping forward, with his head upon his arm on the table before him. They searched his pockets, and found, embroidered on the corner of his handkerchief the initials 'L. V.' in rose-coloured silk. You had worked them, Guen, I know. On one finger there was a ring, which seemed to be composed of a plaited strand of dark hair. And—and—in one of the coat-pockets there was a piece of paper—written all over with the name 'Guen'—' Guendolen'—and sometimes a 'Leo¬ nard' linked with the 'Guendolen'. There was a little money too—they kept that, of course; but they kept nothing else. They sewed up the corpse in a sheet just as they found it, and lowered it overboard. If they took anything from it, I was not told. The mate, indeed, said he put the scrap of paper in his own pocket, intending for the curiosity and the—the pathos of the thing, to show it his wife when he got home; but he lost it on the way." Before the last words, "he lost it on the way," were spoken, Guen had stretched forth one hand towards Hugh in a slow, mechanical way; but now it dropped by her side. Then, putting Mildred's arm gently from her, she turned round. Her face A TERRIBLE TALE. 41 was white as a ghost's, her great beautiful eyes were fixed in an unseeing stare, her lips were slightly parted. Then a voice—clear, strident, but not Guen's natural voice—broke the silence. " My pretty boy"—it said; actually with a horrible suggestion of laughter in its tones—" My pretty boy! he's thinking of me—I knew he was. And so he wrote my name upon the paper—once, twice, thrice. I wish I had been there to see. To see? I can see him now—there—there! * and she pointed before her. " He is coming—coming for me. Leonard ! Leonard!" She held out her two white arms; then reeled slowly round, and fell like a leaden weight, stark, insensible. Mildred just managed to catch her before she reached the floor, lowered her gently, and laid on her lap the lovely head with its ghastly, senseless face and upturned eyes over which she drew the eyelids. She fell the pulse—the heart—it beat faintly. " Quick! " she cried—"wine—you have some there —no, it is too late. Fetch some water—send for the doctor," she added, as Hugh—cadaverous, trembling in every limb and still casting glances of wild terror towards the place to which poor Guen had pointed declaring that she saw Leonard there—came tottering to her side. For a moment longer he seemed physically incapable of further movement, but stood staggeringthere, staring with wide-eyed horror at the pitiful wreck upon the floor ; then, roused by Mildred's energetic commands, 4 Z THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. he hurried to the door and quickly alarmed the house. Help was immediately forthcoming, but nothing they could do availed to break Guen's death-like swoon. The doctor presently arrived, and by his orders they carried her to bed. For hours they watched by her, trying every remedy that could be suggested; and at length the eyes opened. But there was no meaning, no consciousness in them, and soon she sank into another swoon, succeeded by a trance-like stupor. Thus she lay when morning broke—after a night spent by the master of the house in wandering to and fro, bare-headed, under a drizzling rain, upon the moor. She was very ill, they told him, when he returned and asked for her, with a haggard, furtive look on his face. She had received a shock to her brain, and it was possible she might not recover. Day after day dragged slowly on, with alternations from stupor to wild delirium, in which, with the convulsive energy of fever, the poor girl would start up in her bed and shriek out Leonard's name again and again. Sometimes she would be quieter, showing by her half-articulate murmurs that she believed herself with him —sometimes she would drift off into moans of piteous terror of blacks, crocodiles, and savage beasts, from whom she evidently fancied him in danger. The long months of anxiety and suspense— so bravely borne and, when possible, concealed from those about her—culminating in the terrible blow which Hugh had administered—had indeed done their work too well. A TERRIBLE TALE. 43 Hugh was indeed a miserable spectacle during this time. Most of the day he spent alone in his study, striving to drown thought in drink. His face expressed terror, guilt, and sometimes a certain defiance. One day, when things were at the worst, he asked to speak with Mildred for a moment outside the door of the sick-room. There was an agonized fear in his countenance. "Is she dying? Tell me the truth!" he asked hoarsely. " She is very, very ill, " said Mildred, half-sobbing. —" But no one can say yet—until the crisis comes." "See here—" and he gripped her by the arm. " You must not let her die ! Tell her—tell her that he is alive—that he is not dead ! Do you understand? " " But—but it is not true ! " gasped Mildred, gazing at him in blank surprise. "What does that matter?" he hissed with fierce nsistence, tightening his grasp on her wrist till he hurt her cruelly. "What does that matter if it is to save her life ? Tell her so, I say—do you hear ? Tell her he is not dead, so far as anyone can know." " I will try .... But it will be of no use ; she does not know me, nor anyone. And the worst will be over, one way or the other, to-night—so the doctor says." The doctor was right ; the crisis of the fever came that night. After another access of delirium, Guen sank into a torpor of exhaustion from which it seemed for two hours probable that she would never 44 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. awake in this world. The fever, however, passed gradually away, leaving her sleeping as placidly as an infant ; and next morning she opened eyes to which intelligence had returned. That evening, having followed Mildred about the room for some time with wistful eyes which now looked preternaturally large, she whispered : "Have I been ill, dear? I feel so weak and tired." Mildred told her that she had been ill, but was better. " Don't try to talk or think yet, " she added. After a pause, during which she had plainly disre¬ garded Mildred's advice as to thinking, she said : " It seems to me that I have had some very bad dreams—and some good ones. I have seen Leo¬ nard"—her face grew wonderfully soft—"seen him as plainly as I see you. He was so brown—so thin, poor boy ; and what clothes he had were so ragged. But his eyes were the same—so true and loving—and yet so sad. He would have come to me but could not for the gulf that was between us. But he is coming—he is coming ! " Her voice grew dreamy. Presently she spoke again. " There was another dream ; a terrible one. " She shuddered, and a scared look came into her eyes. "I dreamed that someone came to me, and spoke for long. At first his face seemed to be Hugh's face ; but after a time it changed and—Oh, Mildred ! it was horrible, for I knew it was the Devil ! And he told me that my boy—my darling Leonard- was dead. Dead—drowned! but how or where I A TERRIBLE TALE. 45 can't remember. Oh, Mildred ! " and her eyes grew wide with terror—"tell me that it isn't true!" " It isn't true, dearest, " Mildred soothed her promptly, knowing how fatal would agitation be to her in her present state. "Heaven forgive me for the untruth ! " she added under her breath. Guen grew calm, and soon fell asleep. Next morning Mildred met Hugh downstairs. "She is still better?" he said eagerly. "Did you tell her that he was alive ?" "I had to." His face fell. "As soon as she is stronger you must—undeceive her," he said, his tone hardening strangely. " Poor child ! yes—she will be undeceived soon enough. " Hugh looked hard at her. "Mind you do so," he said harshly. "Why—of course—it must be done," in astonish¬ ment. "You don't imagine I doubt the truth of what you told us?" "No, no—certainly not," with evident confusion. "All I meant was that, as you told her the—the other thing, it will be your duty to tell her the— true state of affairs. " He turned and faced her with that peculiar dogged, defiant air she had noted in him of late. "You may leave it to me," she said coldly, and went on her way wondering not a little. That afternoon Guen moaned and tossed in her sleep. " Mildred, " she said on awaking, " I remember 46 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. the rest of that horrible story now—the story that was told me by someone in Hugh's shape. It was about a derelict—the Good Queen Anne ; and—and there was a corpse in the cabin"—Her eyes were questioning all the time with a terrible anxiety in them. Mildred vainly tried to quiet her. " Answer me, Mildred ; have you heard that story ? Do you know it ? Ah ! I see it is not strange to you ! " "Hush, dear, hush. It is true that I have heard that story—but—but * " But you do not believe it—is not that what you would say?" cried Guen. "I knew it! it cannot be true. I saw him so plain in my dream—vision —or whatever it was. Oh Mildred, I believe he is alive ! You are silent—but do you not think Hugh must have been deceived? At first it seemed to me as if it must be true—that horrid tale ; my head spun round, and all was blackness and despair. And then came the other " She became quiet again. Next day Mildred deter¬ mined to catechize Hugh on the subject. She elicited that his informant, the man Ebenezer Strode, had neither seen nor heard anything of the rest of the crew of the Good Queen Anne. She also observed that Hugh evinced a restless impatience under her questioning, and avoided meeting her eyes. He appeared to suspect her of doubting his story ; a suspicion which in itself begot those doubts. And yet—good heavens!—it was surely impossible that he had invented the whole! The tale was too circumstantial. And why should he be guilty of A TERRIBLE TALE. 47 such deliberate and fiendish wickedness? Was it possible that he thought that Guen, believing her lover dead,, might eventually be induced to bestow her hand on himself? For Mildred was in the habit of keeping her eyes open, and she now remembered several little things she had noticed long ago and almost forgotten. "I have been thinking," Guen said to her the following day, turning on her a look fall of a strange expression—" of what Hugh told us—not about the mark under the ear, for another man might have that—but about that paper, scrawled over with our names—Leonard and Guen. My head whirls; did he really tell us that, or did I fancy it in my fever?" That too was Mildred's chief difficulty. Surely Hugh could not have imagined that " touch of nature. " As she hesitated, the housekeeper, who was sitting near the bed, began to cry. "Never mind me, young ladies," she sobbed. "But I can't help crying when I hear of that to which Miss Guen has just alluded—remembering as I do how I saw him doing that very thing the very last day he spent in this sad house—from which the glory departed when he went. 'Twas like this : I happened to go into the hall, and there he was kneeling on the window-seat, very busy with something he was holding against the glass. I went a bit close; and to be sure he was writing 'Guen' and 'Guendolen' and his own name all over a scrap of paper, as if looking how they went 48 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. together-like. Then he saw me, of a sudden, and flushed right up to his hair in the quick way he had. I saw he was a bit vexed-like ; the more as Mr. Hugh had just come in and was looking to see what he was at. And then he laughed, and crushed up the paper into his pocket and jumped up, saying something as if to turn it off. Oh dear! Oh dear ! " She wiped her eyes and left the room. "So Hugh had seen him do it! Ah! " Mildred ejaculated involuntarily. Then rapidly, as she re¬ membered herself—" Guen, dear, I think Mr. Vane was confusing things when he talked of that paper. I do not believe the sailor told him anything about a paper at all." " But what motive could he have in telling me a lie ? " "I think I can guess at a motive. But we will not talk of that now. I must think... But don't despair, Gu en. Take my word for it, there is something behind all this; something that we shall find out in time. Remember your dream; trust rather in that than in anything we have heard." Guen's doubtful eyes lit up. " Yes—I do believe— believe that he is living, somewhere ; and that I shall see him again. Dreams are not always delusions; messages sometimes come by them—and mine was no common dream Though I must question Hugh myself. And I wonder where that sailor is." It may be as well to state here that all inquiries for Mr. Ebenezer Strode proved fruitless. CHAPTER V. A treacherous chief. Just a year previously, the Good Queen Anne had sailed out of the Thames and down the English Channel with Calverley's expedition to South-West Africa on board. They were a cheerful company enough. Leonard quickly made friends with his travelling companions, all of whom were already well-known to each other; but with Calverley himself he got on best of all. The leader of the Expedition had from the first taken a warm and special liking to this last and youngest addition to his staff; which was returned by the young man with a heart-whole enthusiasm that gratified, while it amused, its object. The spirits of all were high and the voyage passed merrily enough. Lord Francis Pole, his friend Mr. Godolphin, Dr. Oakley, and Leonard had applied themselves to picking up some smattering of the principal language of the Lower Congo from Cal- verly, and much amusement was created by the process ; Calverley sometimes refusing to make use of any other language in conversation with his 49 a 50 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. pupils, whose mistakes and random shots were often ludicrous in the extreme. In truth it would have been a dull party indeed which was not inspirited by such a man as their leader, whose fund of gen¬ uine, almost boyish fun would often keep them in roars of laughter for a whole evening. One night after supper, during which Calverley had been enter¬ taining them with an anecdote of strong Hibernian flavouring, one of his auditors exclaimed: " Upon my word, Calverley, I believe you are an Irishman yourself! " "And why wouldn't I be at laste half an Irish¬ man?" asked Calverley, assuming a touch of the brogue for the occasion. " Sure my mother was a Miss O'Donoghue, and it's proud of the connection I am, I can tell ye." There was a delighted chorus of " I knew it ! " " I said so ! " Lord Francis Pole was a tall, fair, goodlooking man, clever, refined, and alert, with a keen sense of humour, and full of pluck and enterprise. His enemies described him as cold and overbearing; but Leonard never found him aught but kind and friendly in the highest degree. Dr. Oakley, too, was good- natured and companionable. As for George Godolphin, he was the man of science—naturalist, botanist and philosopher—given to somewhat high-flown discourse, under which Leonard metaphorically ducked his head. Then there was Charles Asquith—a blunt, bull-necked, bullet-headed young soldier, downright and unsentimental to the last degree; who took A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 51 literally all that was said to him, and was apt to become ireful on slight occasion. The voyage was uneventful. No other vessel, except a slaver bound for Cuba, came within hailing distance; and one fine morning Leonard leaped on deck to find that the Good Queen Anne was standing in for the mouth of the Congo (or Zaire) river. By midday they had passed between the sandy points at the river's mouth, here seven miles wide, and had dropped anchor before a Dutch trading settlement. Boats were soon lowered, for all were eager to set foot on African soil, and within half an hour more Calverley was introducing his officers to Henckelman, the agent of his old friend Van der Baeken. They spent the evening very pleasantly on his cool verandah, and next morning found a row of the negro porters he had procured for them drawn up in his little compound, awaiting inspection. Calverley " passed " some thirty of them, at once ; and leaving the Good Queen Anne behind with a few men in charge of her, the Expedition, in a perfect flotilla of boats and canoes, started up the river. Henckelman had given Calverley letters and messages to the chiefs of several villages on the banks, desiring them to furnish him with carriers. Ntonga, the chief of the first village they came to, received them clad in an elaborate peach-coloured velvet frock-coat of European make, and very little else; and after a prolonged discussion, granted what they wanted. In several days they had got together 5 2 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. the number of native porters they required—no easy task; although Calverley purchased from a party of French slave-traders from forty to fifty slaves, who were thus saved from the horrors of a voyage to the Indies in the hold of a slave-ship. It was pleasant enough to glide swiftly along this narrowing river to the splash of oars wielded by scores of muscular arms, while the sailors sang a jovial chorus, echoed by the not entirely unmusical chant of the slaves. Sometimes they came upon a shoal of hippopotami disporting in the shallows near the banks—sometimes upon a group of natives bathing, fearless of crocodiles. Often they passed a village perched upon the rocks, half hidden by trees and scrub, whence the inhabitants rushed down to the water's edge to stare at and sometimes to hail them. More than once a canoe shot out from shore and came in chase of them with a load of bananas, plantains, ground-nuts, and other produce to barter for cloth, beads, etc. But in many places the people held suspiciously aloof. No doubt the slave-traders had given them ample reason to distrust the whites. Though the sun was hot, the cool sea-breeze, blowing up from the river's mouth, made the air fresh and pleasant; the sky, too, was often cloudy. A few days' voyage brought them to the point where they must disembark and march overland to the capital of the country, christened by the Portuguese San Salvador as long ago as 1490. Further progress by river was effectually stopped by the great A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 53 Yelala Cataract, and by the two hundred miles of cataract region beyond; and it was necessary that Calverley should have an interview with the King of Congo before proceeding further up the country, The English sailors worked like heroes at unlading the boats, but grumbled not a little at their native auxiliaries; and their leader and his officers had their hands full, directing the operations. Asquith and Leonard showed themselves the most energetic members of their chiefs staff on this occasion; the latter shouting himself hoarse in the space of two hours —while the former, losing patience at length with the stupidity and laziness of the blacks, over¬ reached himself in striking at one of these with a light cane he carried, and toppled head-foremost off the slippery rocks into the river. Thence he emerged dripping with water and ruddy with mortification, in no frame of mind equably to meet the jests of his comrades. He turned sulky, indeed, and would hardly speak to them for the rest of the day. Next' morning the Expedition started in a south¬ easterly direction on their seventy miles march. Calverley himself marched at the head of the party, with Leonard by his side as aide-de-camp, while Lord Francis Pole brought up the rear. The march was a laborious one over hill and dale, the road little more than a foot-track through the tall grass, with the sun beating fiercely down. But there were also wooded valleys full of splendid trees— palms, acacias, baobabs, festooned with exquisite creepers—while giant ferns, arums, and other flowers 54 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. clothed the banks of every stream. Sometimes they would catch a glimpse of a herd of antelopes far off upon the plains. One night they had camped on the outskirts of a large village, and Lord Francis Pole and Leonard had gone out in search of game. Returning at dusk, they were skirting the village as they made for camp, when two figures appeared, gliding from the back of one of the huts in the direction of the nearest plantain-grove. Perceiving the Englishmen they checked themselves, hesitated, and then came boldly towards them. What was the astonishment of these last as they perceived that one of the figures was that of a white woman ! The black lace mantilla, thrown back over her shoulder, displayed a face of no mean beauty. Large, dark, lustrous eyes, perfect features, and raven hair would have proclaimed, if her dress had not already done so, that she was of Spanish nationality ; and the old gentleman by her side might have stood for a model of the ancient Spanish hidalgo. He began to speak in his own language, which Lord Francis Pole knew a little ; but finding that his interlocutors were English, he at once referred them to his niece, whom he introduced as "Donna Beatriz de Santo Onfredo de Castronuente"—who could converse with them in their own tongue, her mother having been an Englishwoman. Very prettily the girl—she could hardly have been more than eighteen—spoke, with her Spanish accent. It soon appeared that they were residents of San A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 55 Domingo, in the Indies, where Donna Beatriz had been born, and whence they had been returning to their ancestral home in Cordova when their vessel struck on a reef in mid-ocean and speedily went to pieces. To their knowledge, they were the sole survivors of the wreck, from which they escaped with one sailor upon a tiny raft, the latter being unfortunately washed off and drowned the next day. They were presently picked up by a French ship, sailing to the Congo in quest of slaves. The cap¬ tain, a surly, taciturn fellow, was indisposed to go out of his way to oblige his guests. They would fain have waited at the Portuguese or Dutch settle¬ ments at the river's mouth until a chance of resuming their journey to Spain presented itself—but for reasons known only to himself he refused to put them ashore at either. Finally, misled by glowing accounts of a Euro¬ pean station inland, where they would have every probability of meeting traders returning to the sea- coast who would be willing to escort them thither and to give them a passage to Europe in one of their ships, they had allowed themselves to be brought as far as this village, used as a depot for storing goods by the French. For nearly two months they had waited here, and as yet had seen no caravan bound to the coast. Neither had the Frenchmen returned from their slaving-incursion up the country. The chief, in the pay of these French traders, had at first treated the Spanish Don and his niece well and considerately enough. But latterly this had not 56 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. been the case, and they had determined to accept the first escort that might offer to San Salvador, where they might place themselves at least under the protection of the Christian priests. Donna Beatriz did not state that it was the chiefs evident and increasing admiration for her own beauty which made their departure from his village so urgent a necessity. Knowing their wish to leave him, he had that day sternly forbidden them to hold any intercourse with the newly-arrived column, and had even placed a guard over their hut to prevent their disobeying him. A heavy libation of massanga (the fermented juice of the sugar-cane,) had, however, incapacitated the sentinel ; half the villagers were still absent in their plantations or crowding round the strangers' camp ; and seizing a quiet moment the Spaniards had slipped unobserved from their prison, hoping to be able, under cover of the trees, to reach the Euro¬ peans unseen. The young lady did not, of course, thus fully explain the situation at the moment of meeting Lord Francis Pole and Leonard Vane. They might at any moment be observed, and all that was quite clear from her hurried story was that she and her uncle wished to be at once conducted to their camp and to the presence of their leader. With this desire the Englishmen immediately complied, taking a circuitous route by the plantain groves the better to avoid observation, and entering the encampment at the rear. Calverley, who spoke Spanish fluently, was soon in close converse with Don Miguel de A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 57 Castronuente, and willingly agreed to escort him and his niece as far as San Salvador. Tents were provided for them, and all was done that could ensure their comfort. The Spanish guests had retired to rest, and several of the English officers had followed suit, in spite of the fact that some of the negroes were still making noisy merriment over the remains of their supper round the camp-fires. Calverley, Lord Francis Pole, Leonard, and Godolphin were sitting before the tent of the former, talking over the events of the day before seeing to the setting of the night-watch. " And so we have a lady in the camp ! " said Calverley with a half-rueful laugh. " And an uncom¬ monly pretty one too, I protest. I hope she will do us no mischief before we see the last of her, that's all ! " "H'm! I'm afraid that's past praying for," said Godolphin, glancing at Lord Francis, who sat gazing before him into space. "Frank, my boy, I fear you are hard hit." "Who? I?" exclaimed Lord Francis, rousing himself with a laugh, while a slight flush mounted to his high white forehead. " Nonsense ! But you are right, Calverley; she's an uncommonly lovely girl. Did you ever see such eyes—such coral lips ? Our English beauties have not so much to boast of, after all!" "She might be proud did she know the con¬ quest she has made," said Godolphin, with his habitual half-sneering manner. " So this little gipsy 58 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. has brought Lord Francis Pole, the most fastidious, the most impassive of London beaux, to her feet by a single glance from her bright eyes. My poor Frank, when you exchanged the dangers of fashion¬ able society for the perils of the African wilds, you little thought to fall victim to a woman here ! " "Oh, a truce to your raillery, George. Choose someone else for a whetstone to your wit, if it please you. You think, Calverley, that we shall reach San Salvador in a few days?" "In three, at farthest. We must give the Don a litter as well as his niece, I suppose; he is an old man. What's that stir going on yonder?" "I'll go and see, sir," Leonard said, and left them. In another moment he returned, accompanied by no less a person than Keredua, the chief to whom the village belonged. He was a tall, ill-featured man, clad in a long white shirt, over which leopard-skins were artistically draped. He carried a spear and a long basket-work shield, and his eyes flashed ominously under his heavy brows, as he confronted Calverley, erect in the fire-light. " What does the fellow mean by coming here at this time of night?" muttered Lord Francis. " I asked him as much, " Leonard returned in the same tone, " but he would take no denial. Said he must see our leader." Calverley had meanwhile asked politely to what he owed the honour of this visit, and requested the Chief to be seated. This he declined. It was plain that he suppressed his anger with difficulty. A A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 59 European man and woman, he said, had been left in his charge by his friend, M. de Flamballe, now up the country on a trading expedition. He had had orders from his said friend not to let them out of his sight. He had treated them with every consi¬ deration; nevertheless they had on that evening ungratefully deserted him and joined themselves to the English caravan. He requested that they might be given back to him forthwith. To this Calverley replied quietly that the Chief must know that the European lady and gentleman were not the slaves of M. de Flamballe or of any other man. They were perfectly free to come and go as they themselves chose. The Frenchman had had no right to give any orders that they should be forcibly detained at Keredua's town if they wished to leave it. He had no doubt that they were grateful for the Chiefs kind treatment; but they wished to go to San Salvador. Keredua stamped with rage. "It had been M. de Flamballe's desire that they should remain at his village until his return with his caravan. Then, he would take them wherever they wished to go." "But they were not bound," Calverley pointed out, " to obey M. de Flamballe's wishes as if they were law." "The Frenchmen would be angry when they returned and found that Keredua had let the white people go. They would come no more to his village. No," the Chief shook his head decisively and thrust his long spear into the ground before him. " The ÔO THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANÈ. white man and woman must return. Nay. He would be generous. Let the great mundélé * take Don Miguel—the old man with the white hair—to San Salvador if he liked; but let him leave the woman behind. What did the great mundélé want with women?" Lord Francis Pole, who had perfectly understood what the Chief was saying, here started forward with a wrathful exclamation. But Calverley checked him by a gesture. " It might be asked, " he said, " what the Chief Keredua wanted with a woman. But enough of this, " he went on. " The lady and gentleman have asked me to escort them to San Salvador, and I shall do so. You have no authority to bid them stay, and I have none to refuse them." The African's eyes glowed like coals of fire. " The mundélé will repent this, " he snarled. " Give me the people back, I say, or I will take them." Calverley glanced round him coolly. " Keredua might not find that so easy, " he said drily. And as if by accident, his fingers dropped upon the butt of one of the silver-mounted pistols in his belt. " Besides, " he pursued, " has the Chief considered how this conduct of his will appear in the eyes of King Alvaro, Mwani Congo ? " f There was a sudden flash, as of lighting. So quick was it that only Leonard, who was watching the Chief intently, saw him pluck up his spear and with the * White man. •j- Lord of Congo—title of the Kings of Congo. A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 61 same movement, as it seemed, of his arm, launch it straight at Calverley's breast. But before it could reach its mark, Leonard had bounded forward, caught it as it flew through the air, and flung himself upon Keredua. Lord Francis sprang to his aid, and between them they bore the Chief, fiercely struggling, to the ground. " Gag him! stop his mouth, or he'll bring the whole village about our ears ! " shouted Calverley ; and as he spoke he rushed forward and effectually silenced the writhing African by means of a thick handkerchief, which he stuffed half way down his throat. ''We must get cords and bind him; that's the only way. Keep him down, Pole—sit on him, if necessary! Now, Vane, give me a hand with this rope. It's his own fault." And so saying, he trussed up the treacherous Chief both securely and expeditiously. " How many followers has he brought with him?" he asked of Leonard. "Four or five; but I gave orders they should not be allowed to enter the camp. They can know nothing about this." "That's good. Now clear out of the way and let me speak to the rascal." He walked up to his prostrate enemy. "You're a fool, Chief," he said. " And a childish fool. Did you think to kill me in my own camp and in the midst of my officers? Where did you suppose you would have been the next second, if you had succeeded? 1 am surprised that a man of your 62 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. age and experience should thus give way to a silly, passionate impulse. Your conduct compels me to put upon you the indignity of which I am about to inform you. A message shall be sent to your people to the effect that you have accepted my hospitality, and intend to sleep in my camp to-night. To-morrow morning at daybreak we start for San Salvador, taking you with us. Another message will be left, stating that it is your intention to ac¬ company us for at least part of the way. When we have put a certain distance between us and your village, we will leave you, bound as you are, by the roadside. Some of your young men are quite certain to follow you, and they will soon find you. By that time we shall be tolerably well be¬ yond the reach of your vengeance, if you should be foolish enough to think of attempting any. "You perceive, I hope, that you yourself have driven me to this course of action. You may also perceive that you will be let off more easily than you could possibly have expected. What is there to prevent my killing you? I could very well ex¬ plain that at San Salvador; you had traitorously attempted my life. Or I could carry you with me to King Alvaro and charge you before him. But I don't choose to trouble myself so far. And the quieter you keep about the matter after I have left you, the better it will be for you. So you had best reconcile yourself to your fate, and be thankful you have not got what you deserve." Turning to the knot of men, white and black, A TREACHEROUS CHIEF. 63 who had assembled, he briefly recapitulated to them his purpose, and laid stringent commands upon them to keep secret what had happened. He despatched Leonard with the message to the men who were waiting for Keredua outside the camp, while he superintended the bestowal of the Chief in a tent, over which he placed a strong guard of his white sailors. Their Spanish guests had not been dis¬ turbed by what had passed. Before turning in for the night—or rather for the few hours that remained before they must start— Calverley stopped Leonard, as he was passing him, and pressed his hand. "You saved my life this evening, my boy," he said, in a low tone. "I don't forget that." CHAPTER VI the fight at the hill-camp. Next morning, the camp was early astir. There was no sign of life in the sleeping village as the head of the column moved out and commenced the journey, and only when the rear-guard was well in motion did a few boys and men appear from their huts. To one of these a message, purporting to come from Keredua, was given, saying that their chief intended to accompany the white men for a part of the way: and leaving them staring after it, the caravan departed down the valley. Keredua, still bound and gagged, was carried with them in a covered litter: but a mile from his village the gag was removed, and food was given him. He received it in sulky silence. It was some hours before the tale of last night and the fact that the African chief was with them, an unwilling fellow-traveller, came to the ears of Don Miguel and Donna Beatriz de Castronuente, as they were borne along in their comfortable litters. Donna Beatriz at once requested to speak to one 64 THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 65 of the officers ; and in a few moments, Lord Francis Pole was walking beside her litter. She had thrown aside her mantilla, and looked, to the Englishman's eyes, entrancing. " Pray believe me, Sefior, " she said, in her musical, foreign accents, " when I assure you that my uncle and myself are distressed beyond measure that you and your noble companions should have had trouble on our account. That hateful Chief—from whom I —we have suffered so much!"—she put her tiny lace handkerchief to her eyes, into which the tears had rushed. " And he actually tried to kill your brave captain—Sefior—Sefior—Calverley? ah! thank you. Pray—pray tell him how sorry I am." Lord Francis murmured that he would tell Calverley, and that he would be charmed. The usual cool self-possession of this blasé young man of the world seemed to have strangely forsaken him. "And you too—he might have hurt you, Sefior. Pardon me if I do not at this moment recollect your name? Francis Pole? Ah! did I not hear a person last night address you as—to be sure ! Then I must say My Lord, " smiling sweetly. " And what, if I may presume to ask, causes one of so exalted a rank to expatriate himself thus in this horrible Africa?" Lord Francis gave her a brief account of the purposes of the expedition. She listened attentively. " Ah I " she said with a sigh, when he had finished, " what a prospect ! So you are going among savages, cannibals, men whose heads grow under 5 66 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. their shoulders for aught I know, and the Holy Mother alone knows what other horrors ! And you speak as if you liked it! Truly, men are strange creatures. I can understand why it was that my ancestors and many others used to wander away into the South American forests in search of the golden City of Manoa—ay! and if they found not that city, and though many lost their lives in seeking for it, yet they ofttimes returned laden with bars of silver and of gold. But here you look for no golden city, and there is neither gold nor silver treasure to be found." "We do not know that, Donna Beatriz," Lord Francis interrupted her. "True, we do not expect to find a golden city—but who knows what may be hidden among the African forests ? I have heard that the negroes have legends of great nations inland." "Ah!—legends—dancing marsh-lights that lead brave men to destruction! Often have they done so, and often will, I fear, again. And you—you too will venture on this perilous quest into the Unknown? " She gave him a lingering, pitying glance. Lord Francis met her eyes, and again, though not given to blushing, he coloured up to the temples like a boy. "Yes," he said. "I shall venture. I am the second in command of this expedition, you know, and my father, at home in England, was the prime mover of the whole thing." "And your companions—none of them are lords THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 67 like you? Seflor Calverley is truly a noble-looking gentleman—and so handsome! Then there is one who is sick, is there not? " (Asquith had a touch of fever). "And the physician; he looks a good man. But I like not him with the dark, narrow face, the mocking eyes, and the sneering lips. He is cruel- he is hard—I know it." "Ah, Senora, you are mistaken; my poor friend George Godolphin is not worthy of the evil character you would give him. He is as kind-hearted as any man living, though he veils it under a cloak of cynical philosophy." * Maybe so, " she answered lightly. " He does not please me. But I like the boy—the pretty lad of twenty or little more—with his fair hair and bright face, and the blue eyes which look at me with a kind of shy wonder; as if I were some strangely-plumaged bird whose like he had never seen before. What does he here ? has he no parents, brothers, or sisters to keep him safe at home?" "Leonard Vane is a man, for all his boyish looks. Had it not been for his quickness and adroitness last evening, our leader, Mr. Calverley, would have been run through the body by that black scoundrel's spear. I should have been too late. He is a hand¬ some lad, as you say; but parents he has none. He has one brother, I think. And he is engaged to marry a young lady who from all accounts must be as beautiful as—" He glanced up at Donna Beatrix as if in search of a simile. "As the day," he concluded. "At all events, he is desperately 68 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. in love with her. Anyone who had been long with him would see that." And he smiled as some recollection crossed his mind. "Engaged to marry—And so young! Well, I hope she is worthy of him and will be true to him. Why did she let him go away from her, I wonder? Ah! I like you English always! you know, I am half your country-woman." Here Don Miguel interrupted them to request his niece to translate to him what Lord Francis had been saying to her. She proceeded to relate to him what she had been told of the objects of the expedition, and they had no further private conversation that day. They camped that night by a riverside. At about ten o'clock, Leonard, with Dr. Oakley, was going his rounds from sentinel to sentinel, when one of the men came up to them with the information that natives were skulking about the camp. Their movements had been heard by two of the outposts for some time, and at length they had caught sight of a man's figure silhouetted against the sky upon the hill above them. Even as the man spoke, there was a shout and a scuffle not above two-score yards from where they stood; and rushing forward they were in time to see a dark form race down the river-bank, hotly pursued by two of their own men. Suddenly the latter disappeared from view—one having fallen flat over a stone which lay in his path, while the other dived head-foremost into a hole which in the THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 69 darkness he had been unable to avoid in time, and where he stuck, a pair of legs quivering in the air being all that was visible of him for at least ten seconds. Meanwhile a splash sounded from the river below, and it soon became evident that the native they were in chaise of had saved himself by swimming across. It was too dark to see anything of him, at all events. "Had he stolen anything?" Leonard asked. Nothing had been missed, and it seemed that he could hardly have had time. One of the outposts had caught sight of him trying to slip past him into the camp. Commending the men for their vigilance, Leonard went to report the incident to Calverley. "It is as I expected," the latter said. "Some of Keredua's people are come spying after him, to see if he travels with us willingly, or whether he is with us at all." "Then why don't they come up boldly and ask to see him ?" "Because if he had come with us of his own accord he would be angry at being followed when he had not desired it. We must be doubly wary, and keep them at a safe distance. We don't know how many there are, and this long grass would afford sufficient cover for an army." " The outposts say they don't think there can be more than a dozen or so, from what they hear of their movements." "Yes, but it's impossible to tell accurately. They shall have him back to-morrow, anyhow ; and I give JO THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. them joy of him when they've got him ! I don't want to take him to San Salvador, and he'll hardly be fool enough to try to attack us. He would not have much time to muster any force, for we must reach the capital in less than two days, as I reckon. No, I think he will let well alone, and think himself lucky to have got off so easily." There was no further disturbance that night. Next day, having marched about five miles on their way, Keredua was deposited among the bracken and ferns beneath a spreading baobab, and there left ; Calverley addressing a few words of further warning to him ere departing. There was no doubt that he would soon be discovered and set free, even if his own men failed to come up, for there was a village at no great distance off. The Expedition now sped more blithely along the hilly track which led to San Salvador. As evening approached, Calverley directed the steps of his force to a solitary, almost flat-topped hill which rose in the midst of a wide valley. A stream bounded its base on two sides, and a few huts were perched on its summit. "A capital place this would be to build a fort upon, " he muttered as he surveyed it. " An enemy could hardly approach unobserved." At all events, the porters murmured bitterly at the steep climb at the close of their day's work, and the loads were eagerly cast down on reaching the top. The few natives already in possession of the hill hospitably surrendered their huts, and hastened THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 71 to bring food and water for their visitors' use. The tents were soon up, fires lit, and pots boiling, and in a few hours the encampment had quite a comfort¬ able and homelike appearance. Calverley, however, was more than usually strict in his orders that none of his men were to go far from camp unless in parties of at least half-a-dozen. As the sun set, some who had gone out in quest of fresh meat returned, one party bearing a kudu they had shot, another displaying a brace of black ibis ; others, more prosaically, laden with fowls and pigs they had bought at a neighbouring village. The night passed peacefully until two hours before dawn. Then Leonard was awakened by a hand upon his shoulder. "Vane, my boy," hissed the voice of Lord Francis Pole, "jump up. The rascals are upon us—Kere- dua's lot, I suppose—but the valley is swarming with them. They evidently mean to attack us. Quietly! we mustn't let them know we are on the alert. Bring your fire-lock." The whole camp was awake and on the watch. Calverley had posted his sailors all round the brow of the hill, with their muskets ready. Such of the natives as could be relied on were also armed and placed under command of an officer, to act if need should arise. Calverley seemed to be everywhere at once, directing, arranging, and encouraging. As- quith, weak as he was with fever, had left his couch, and was handling his weapons with eager, trembling fingers, his eyes gleaming with excitement. 72 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. "Won't you let us charge them, sir?" he whis¬ pered. "We should cut them to pieces in a few moments. " " So we might if we had daylight. But, let alone the fact that we can't see them, they must outnumber us ten to one, from what I can make out. i imagine there are at least nine hundred of them round this hill at this moment." The officers now hurried to their posts. Leonard passed Lord Francis standing musket in hand, upon the summit of a mass of rock which overhung the hillside, looking intently down upon the gathering dark masses of men below. He appeared the picture of cool confidence, as he stepped down, a moment later, among his men, to whom he gave in low tones the opinion he had formed as to the numbers and probable tactics of their intending assailants. But a few moments before, he had been reassuring the Spanish Don and his fair niece, who were naturally much terrified. Calverley had stationed himself at the point he thought most likely to be first attacked, according the next post of greatest danger to his second in command. The latter, by this arrangement, found himself almost exactly opposite his leader's position on the further verge of the hill-top. Between them the slaves were crowded together by the dying embers of the fire, near which the goods were stacked ; and here also Donna Beatriz and her aged uncle sat, hand in hand, at a tent-door. Leonard and Asquith were posted to Calverley's THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 73 right, and Godolphin and Dr. Oakley to his left, between him and Lord Francis. The time dragged on, and yet there was no assault. The camp was so still that it seemed to Leonard that he could have heard a pin drop. All round him he heard the hard, quick breathing of the men, as they peered eagerly into the dark valley, listening for every sound. And now the noise of a stone falling was heard. It came from away to their left. Now there came another. Surely the enemy must be creeping up Calverley's side of the hill. They would soon know. Leonard's heart beat so violently that he felt half- suffocated. He longed desperately for the tension to be over—for the foe to come if he were coming. And, strangely enough, in the midst of his excite¬ ment the thought of Guen passed across his mind. Ah ! if she only knew the situation in which he now found himself! And for a second a picture of his love, seated in the little blue morning-room at Vane Court, in her black dress, with white lace around her shoulders, and with her work in her lap, flashed before his mind's eye. She was thinking of him, for her eyes were far away—But the vision was gone. Gone—for what sound was that? A single voice rang through the stillness—" Fire! " —and a crash of musketry followed. Before its echoes had died away and while shrieks and yells arose from the valley beneath, another volley was fired from the opposite edge of the hill. They were assailed front and rear simultaneously; the enemy, 74 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. creeping stealthily up two sides of the hill, had thought to take them by surprise, and were them¬ selves surprised and thrown into confusion by their unexpected reception. For a time they fell back, and to some it might have appeared doubtful whether they would again venture to attack. But Calverley knew better. He had recognised Keredua himself at the head of the storming party. He must have been found by his people almost before the Expedition was out of sight on the preceding forenoon. Burning with revenge and with baffled passion, he had despatched swift-footed messengers to summon his warriors. Carrying only their weapons, these agile mountaineers had covered the distance in half the time that the Expedition, with its long train of tardy, heavily- burdened slaves, had taken to traverse it. Besides, they had made short cuts over steeper and rougher regions among the hills. Presently a voice was heard from the valley, shouting out that if the white men would surrender the two Spaniards, they should even now be allowed to pass on their journey unharmed. Calverley laconically replied that he would do no such thing. Again there was a lull, followed, after what seemed an interminable time, by a fresh and most determined onset. The blacks rushed up the sides of the hill like swarms of ants, heedless of the flying musket- balls. In the dark anything like accuracy of aim was of course impossible. The attack was fiercest THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 75 on the south side, and Lord Francis and his men were soon fighting hand to hand with them. The English, indeed, had their hands full, and for twenty minutes it seemed probable that they might be overborne and their position carried. All did wonders ; and at length the attacking warriors were forced slowly backward down the slopes, suddenly to break and fly. Daylight was dimly breaking over the scene as Calverley hastily reviewed his position. He had lost many men, and many were wounded. Lord Francis Pole had had his left arm broken by a blow from a club, and every officer had sustained one or more gashes. Had the Expedition been less advantageously posted than it was and had it not been for their energetic use of their muskets and pistols, they would probably have fallen easy victims to theii assailants. As it was, however, the steep and rocky ground up which the latter had had to charge under a raking fire from above, and the great stones and boulders which afforded so efficient a shelter to the defenders, presented vast difficulties to the half naked natives who had nothing but their light shields of plaited grass to protect them ; and they seemed now to have utterly lost heart. After a brief conference with his officers, Calverley determined to make a sortie at the head of a small picked body of men, and boldly charging the enemy while they were yet demoralised and cast down by their repulse, to complete the rout and put them to flight. Accordingly, they sallied forth, leaving Asquith (much against his will) with Dr. Oakley and Godolphin 7 6 THF ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. in charge of the position ; Lord Francis, despite his maimed condition, being the most eager volunteer. At first there was little sign of resistance ; Keredua's soldiers retreating before them up the valley. But soon they began to rally round their chiefs; conspi¬ cuous among whom was Keredua himself, in his long white robe and his leopard skins—who was gathering a knot of men around him. Towards this knot Calverley's little band dashed gallantly, scattering natives right and left as they rushed in with drawn swords and cutlasses and clubbed muskets. For a moment the Africans recoiled—then closed around the English party, hiding them entirely from the view of those left on the hill. And now the fight waxed fast and furious. Spears rose and fell, swords gleamed brightly as they swept right and left, and high rose Keredua's war-cry. Leonard's blade snapped in two against a spear-shaft—his opponent had grasped him round the neck, and the flashing death was descending upon him—when a strong hand wrested it aside, and Calverley's sword cleft the native through the shoulder. Single-handed in the most literal sense, Lord Francis Pole, with a grim smile upon his handsome face, steadily hewed his way forward to Keredua himself. And now they had met—the English gentleman and the Congo savage—sword and spear in deadly duel. A jet of blood told that Keredua's spear had not altogether missed its mark—but the dark Chief staggers and falls ; the British steel is standing out an inch behind his back. And Leonard catches his THE FIGHT AT THE HILL-CAMP. 77 friend just in time to prevent him too from falling. A shrill cry goes up—" The Chief is dead—Keredua is slain ! " and the natives falter and quail. With a ringing " hurrah " the white men draw together and charge once more ; and the blacks, panic-stricken, turn and fly helter-skelter to the mountains. The English now are left in possession of the field, strewn with bodies of friend and foe. Alas ! their loss has been heavy! They have conquered —their friends on the hill perceive it and many are hurrying down to meet them—but victors as they are, they are in sorry plight. It was but a halting company that returned to the hill-camp that morning, to have its wounds dressed by Dr. Oakley and his self-constituted assistant, Donna Beatriz. Calverley despatched Godolphin with four men, one of whom was a native guide and interpreter, to San Salvador, there to relate what had occurred and to ask for succour; as he had not carriers enough to transport both the goods and the wounded to the capital, though the latter was now but a few miles distant. Such good use did the messengers make of their time that before nightfall one of King Alvaro's nobles, accompanied by a friendly Portuguese padre and by a train of natives, had arrived in the camp, CHAPTER VII. the royal leopard-tamer. Dom Sebastian, Count of Pemba, as this Congo grandee styled himself, was a striking-looking native of about five-and-thirty, with a tall, fine figure, clad in a somewhat rusty blue cloth coat of antique European make, with elaborate but tattered ruffles, russet breeches, and with a sword by his side. He addressed Calverley in a curious jargon composed of his own language and broken Portuguese, and appeared much relieved on finding that the leader of the Expedition spoke the tongue of the country. The priest, Padre Ignazio, was a little wrinkled, dried-up old man, who welcomed, almost with tears of joy, those lambs of the true fold, Don Miguel de Sant' Onfredo de Castronuente and his niece the Senorita Beatriz. The King, it appeared, was gra¬ ciously pleased to receive the Englishmen favourably, and none the less so for their slaughter of the Chief Keredua; who had ever been a turbulent subject, and whose nephew and successor it was the royal intention to have educated by the priests at San 7» THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 79 Salvador, so that he might not follow in his uncle's steps. Next morning the caravan left the hill-camp and wound its way slowly south, leaving behind for ever the deep-dug graves of those who had fallen in the conflict twenty-eight hours before. The wounded were borne in hammocks and litters, most of them being by this time in a high fever; and, among the English officers of the Expedition, Leonard, Godolphin (who had returned with the Count of Pemba) and Oakley were alone in a con¬ dition to make the journey on foot. (Calverley had brought neither horses, mules, nor donkeys up the country with him, foreseeing that he would only lose them ultimately from the bites of the tsetse and other insect pests, and from unaccustomed and insufficient food.) A few hours of weary tramping—fortunately for the invalids thick clouds veiled the sun's rays—and San Salvador rose before them. After a toilsome climb to the level of the plateau on which the town stands, they found themselves passing through a wide street bordered by small, well-built houses, each fenced round by its hedge of mingomena bushes. Soon they reached the town gates—for they had only yet seen a suburb—and leaving the stone wall, fifteen feet high, which encircled the city, behind them, passed on amidst an ever-increasing throng, as the population turned out to gaze at them. At length they arrived at the quarters which had 8o THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. been already provided for them; the sick men were made comfortable under a roof once more; food was brought them, the goods they had brought with them were safely piled under a shed, and all thoroughly enjoyed the rest and the sensation of shelter and safety. That same evening, Leonard, Godolphin and Oakley, (Calverley being hors de combat owing to a wound in the face) accompanied also by Don Miguel de Castronuente, went to pay their respects to King Alvaro—the third of that name who had ruled over the principality of Congo. His kingdom extended two hundred miles along the coast, and three hundred miles, or thereabouts, inland, and he also received tribute from several neighbouring potentates. But his power was nothing to that of some of his predecessors. In times gone by, the kings of Angola, Loanda, Loango, Kabinda, and Matamba had acknowledged the supremacy of Mwani Congo. From Nyanga in the north to Benguela in the south he had been respected. Then—during the sixteenth century—had come the invasion of that savage horde, the Jagas, who had devastated the whole country, laid San Salvador in ruins, and driven the King, his Court, and the Portuguese ecclesiastics then in Congo to take refuge in the Isle of Horses. Aid arriving from Portugal, the Jagas were routed, the capital rebuilt, and the prosperity of the country re-established for a time. But in 1636 came the great civil war between the King and his rebellious THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 81 subject the Count of Sogno. Troubled times fol¬ lowed, and Dom Antonio I. came to blows with the Portuguese. Thenceforward the relations between Portugal and Congo gradually weakened, until the priests were almost the sole representatives of the former nation who remained in the country. The palace was a handsome building, built, like the cathedral and several of the churches, of ironstone conglomerate. Our Europeans were ushered through a small ante-room, crowded with natives, into a larger room, where, upon a velvet-covered chair placed on a dais, sat the king ; a very dark-skinned elderly man wearing a crimson cap, in front of which gleamed a gold ornament. He was dressed in a full suit of European clothes of a rich crimson colour—long coat, waistcoat, knee-breeches, stockings, and shoes with gold buckles ; and had a handsome sword and sword-belt, the gift of a Dutch trader who had recently visited San Salvador. On the floor behind him squatted his two sons— the elder a sulky-looking lad of seventeen ; the younger not more than ten years old, a bright-faced, intelligent child. A number of natives, more or less handsomely dressed, were standing or walking about the room ; Padre Ignazio stood in a corner convers¬ ing in a low tone with two of these nobles whom he had button-holed ; while small, half-naked pages trotted from one to another of those present with trays of fruit. The king appeared in a gracious mood, and asked the Englishmen many questions about their journey, 6 8a THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. their impressions of the country, and the purposes for which they had come to it With a little assis¬ tance from Padre Ignazio, they found themselves able to conduct a tolerably connected conversation with His Majesty. He remembered Calverley's previous visit to San Salvador quite well, and expressed himself sorry to hear that he had been wounded. He then presented them to several of his chief men, and to his two sons, Dom Alfonso and Dom Garcia, the latter of whom laughed up in Leonard's face and put his hand in his in the most friendly way imaginable. This, as they afterwards heard, was the king's favourite child, and was being educated by the padres, who hoped great things for the future of Congo from his remarkable quickness and docility. "But why?" Leonard asked one day, when good Padre Ignazio was holding forth garrulously on the topic of his little royal pupil and the wonders to be expected of him when he should have grown to man's estate. 8 He is not the King's eldest son ; Dom Alfonso, I suppose, will reign over Congo some day?" The padre looked down and shook his head. " Dom Alfonso is undoubtedly King Alvaro's eldest son," he said. "But I fear me that the youth is of a stubborn spirit. He has ever refused to listen to the voice of instruction, and is no friend to Holy Church. Even to his father he is proud and intract¬ able. It will be an evil day for Congo if he ever holds her destinies in his hands." THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 83 " Then you think, perhaps, that Dom Alvaro will appoint his second son to be his successor, passing over the elder altogether?" "I said not so," replied the priest enigmatically. "Yet who can foretell the future? It may be that this child is a chosen vessel to uphold the light of the true Church amidst the darkness of these heathen lands. Who knows? We are not without hope of moving Dom Alvaro to let him be sent, in due time, to Lisbon, there to be more fully instructed in arts and sciences, and in all knowledge of the civilised world. But we must have patience." Meanwhile the Expedition found its quarters in San Salvador very comfortable, during the lengthened stay necessitated by the slow healing of wounds and the needful purchase of negroes to replace the men it had lost. This last was easily accomplished, and at no very heavy cost ; a stalwart native of from twenty to thirty years old selling for about two pounds sterling! Lieutenant Asquith was now convalescent, and sometimes accompanied Leonard in the rambles he took about the city—sometimes with Dom Sebastian, Padre Ignazio, or some other San Salvador ac¬ quaintance. Many of the nobles, half barbaric as they were, were perfect gentlemen in their way, and were excellent company. Leonard, at all events, got on with them capitally. He fraternized also with one of the Portuguese priests, a young fellow not much older than himself— Padre Fernando by name. This young man, although 84 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. worsted during their first interview in a valiant effort to convert a heretic from the error of his ways, gave up the attempt with complete goodhumour, and was on all occasions most kind and friendly. It was he who took Leonard into the cathedral—a handsome and imposing edifice—and showed him the painted images, the elaborate embroideries, the pictures, and the gold and silver plate which it contained. He also conducted him on a tour round all the churches in the town—no less than ten in number. Several of these, however, were now closed and falling out of repair. In older times San Salvador had been able to boast many more churches than these, as their ruins could testify. * The Spanish Don and his fair niece seemed to feel quite at home amongst all these surroundings. They were well lodged, close to the Cathedral and the monastery, and were under the special protection of the Bishop of the city. No doubt all this was to them a vast improvement upon their life in Keredua's village. They met with much attention from the nobles of San Salvador, and the officers of the Expedition visited them almost daily—notably that wounded hero, Lord Francis Pole, with his arm in a sling, and Lieutenant Asquith. For he too was smitten, and hopelessly so. Leonard perceived this, and so did Calverley, who groaned in spirit as he foresaw the fulfilment of his prophecy. " Didn't I say mischief would come of having a * It is said that there were once twenty-six churches in the town I THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 85 pretty woman in the camp ?" he said to Oakley and Leonard. "Hang her!—not meaning the least dis¬ respect to the Senorita—why couldn't she let the fellows alone? There's Frank Pole—my right-hand man—the coolest-headed fellow I know—bowled over like a ninepin after all his experience ! And now this hot-brained young fool of an Asquith is all glooms and glowerings ! We shall have him at Pole's throat one of these nights, if we don't take care ! I only wish we were well out of this hot-bed of a town ! " Leonard was crossing the great plaza of the town one afternoon in company with his friend Padre Fernando, when little Dom Garcia, the King's younger son, who was coming with his attendants from the monastery, ran up to them and caught the young priest by the hand. "Ah, dear Padre Fernando, I have not seen you for two days ! " he cried. " I was afraid they had sent you away on a tour among the villages, to baptize the children. And Dom Leonardo, the English heretic—I think I should like him nearly as well as I do you if he would stay here. Will you take me with you for a walk? Nay, if I must go home, you must both come with me and see the wild beasts fed. It is just their time; and Dom Leonardo has not seen my father's wild beasts yet at all." " Dom Leonardo" acknowledged that this was true, and that he should very much like to be present for once at feeding-time in the royal menagerie. 86 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. "Why, come along then," said Padre Fernando. "I think I will accompany you, as I have nothing special to do this afternoon, and I have not seen the new leopard, lately added to the collection. Is he very big, Dom Garcia?" "He is big, and very fierce," replied the little prince, who was dancing along beside them. "And oh ! how he growls at you if you go near his cage ! My brother Alfonso likes him, though. At least, he seems to—for he will go and sit opposite him for hours, fixing him with his eye till the beast seems cowed. I daresay he will tame him some day. I like the little lion; they let me play with him sometimes, but not when no one is by. He never bites, but he hits me with his paw now and then—and it is growing rather heavy. Ah, here we are; come this way." And they followed him across the court-yard of the palace and down a long covered passage, which ultimately brought them out in a large oblong yard at the back of the premises. This yard was sur¬ rounded by cages, large or small according to the nature of the creature they contained. One very large one held a tank of water, bordered with grass and overhung by bushes—for it was open to the sky; and here two immense crocodiles were dis¬ porting themselves in all their ungainly loathsome¬ ness. Another great cage confined an unfortunate solitary elephant, now engaged in trumpeting forth his wrongs to earth and heaven. Near him, a variety of graceful antelopes were penned together, looking THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 87 mute reproach from their large, pathetic eyes ; three buffaloes stood sulkily in a corner of their enclosure; while the yelps of jackals and hyenas filled the air. There was a large collection of monkeys of all sizes, several of which Dom Garcia immediately let loose, and which instantly began to scramble over him, one taking up its position on his little stubbly black head, and another on his shoulder. " They have not been fed yet, apparently," remarked Padre Fernando. "The lions and leopards are at the further end of the yard. Ah ! " He stopped short; then, laying one hand on Leonard's shoulder, pointed forward with the other, saying under his breath as he did so: " Look there ! " Leonard looked, and saw a strange sight. The leopard was reared upright with clinging claws against the front bars of its cage, its eyes fixed glaringly upon the figure before it—the figure of a half-grown native lad, who, sitting on a low stone bench before the cage, his elbows on his knees, his chin resting on his hands and his body leaning forward, absorbed and fascinated the raging animal by his intense gaze. The leopard could not take its eyes from his. Ever and anon it would shift its position with a long-drawn deprecating whine ; dropping to the ground for a second, only to raise itself upon the bars again. Never for a moment did its eyes leave the eyes before it, though the foam was dropping from its gnashing jaws. 88 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. "There is Alfonso!" said Dom Garcia, looking up—a terrified expression on his merry little face— from his monkeys. " You had better not go near him. " But Padre Fernando, unheeding, had walked up the yard, followed by Leonard, until he stood at the end of the bench upon which Dom Alfonso sat. They watched him in silence for some moments longer, for neither he nor the leopard had given any sign of having observed their approach. Leonard knew not which to marvel at the most; the mag¬ nificent wild beast, or the young native who wielded such strange power over it. "You prosper in your leopard-taming, Dom Alfonso, " the young priest said quietly at last. At his voice, the youth looked up at him quickly ; and so intense, so malevolent was the hatred which flashed from those dark, fierce eyes, that Leonard instinctively grasped Padre Fernando's arm to draw him away, before the blow, which that look seemed to promise, fell. But no blow came, though the passionate hatred in the young negro's eyes seemed to grow rather than diminish as he gazed at the intruder. Leonard would not have been more com¬ fortable had he known that his friend was perhaps the only man in San Salvador—certainly the only priest—who would have dared to interrupt the heir- apparent to the throne of Congo at that moment. The padre met Dom Alfonso's look without flinching. The latter arose, and his eyes fell on Leonard. "Ah!" he cried with a wild, defiant ring in his THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 89 voice, "and so the fair-haired foreigner has come to see how leopards are tamed? Thinkest thou that I cannot quell that fierce, blood-seeking beast, that raves and rushes yonder, tearing at the bars of his cage as if he would pull them down to make a way for himself to our flesh? Thinkest thou that I cannot again subdue him to my will as I did before? Hear him roar and howl! Wouldst thou see him cowed once more?" Leonard said that he would like very much to witness that interesting, though uncanny, operation. In fact, he would not have been sorry just then of any excuse to turn Dom Alfonso's eyes from himself ; for there was a very strange expression in them, and the idea was growing upon him that the youth was mad. Dom Alfonso turned to the leopard, which as soon as his gaze had been removed, had begun to rage furiously up and down its den, and going forward towards the cage, caught its eye. With a yell of rage it threw itself against the bars, clawing and snarling and turning its head from side to side, as if in the effort to resist the fascination of that gaze. But it did not long resist successfully. By and by it dropped its fore-paws to the ground, and retreated backwards into a corner of its cage, where, still snarling, it crouched, its tail gently beating the ground and its unwilling eyes fixed upon those of its master. And now, step by step, Dom Alfonso advanced slowly to the bars—and for every step of his, the go THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. leopard, cowering and shrinking, dragged itself slowly along the ground to meet him. It was no will of its own which thus drew the animal forward —it was the magnetising power of the African's eyes, which, strive as it might, it was powerless to resist. And now there was scarcely a yard left between fascinator and fascinated. The leopard lay at the feet of his conqueror. The stronger will had triumphed. "Did you ever see anything like that?" Padre Fernando murmured to Leonard. " He must have the soul of a serpent! I have seen a snake draw a little bird to it thus; but a man—never!" " It is horrible ! " said Leonard. There was a stir at the opposite end of the yard. Men had entered bearing fruit, vegetables, rice, manioc, two live kids and a few fowls, as food for the different animals. After them came Dom Sebas¬ tian and another court noble, and no less a dignitary than the Bishop of San Salvador himself, with one of his priests. It was not uncommon for those who had been having audience of the King at this time in the afternoon to repair to the menagerie to see the beasts fed. Little Dom Garcia had joined the new-comers, but his brother ignored their presence, still continuing to hold the grovelling leopard chained to his eye. Padre Fernando, as in duty bound, turned and saluted his Superior. The Bishop was a stout, asthmatic man, who swiftly included the whole scene in a sweeping glance, which passed contemptuously THE ROYAL LEOPARD-/ MER. 91 over both Leonard the heretic, and the princely wild-beast-tamer. The former alone remained stand¬ ing near Dom Alfonso, whose proceedings fascinated him. Turning his eyes for a second from those of the leopard, the young native cast a swift look towards the Bishop and his companions. A terrible look of malice swept across his face. "Ah, devils!" Leonard heard him mutter; "I will let a worse fiend than yourselves loose among you one day. And why not now? why not now?" Again he drew the leopard to him with his eyes— for the animal had drawn back to the centre of the den—and moved closer to the cage. A kid bleated, and the lion in the next den leaped to its bars with a roar which attracted Leonard's attention to it for a moment. The Bishop and his two attendant padres were approaching to see the royal beast fed, and were now close by. Leonard turned his head again—in time to see a fearful sight. Dom Alfonso had flung the door of the leopard's cage wide open, and darting a look of wild revenge towards the priests, was in the act of springing backwards to avoid its leap. There was a blood¬ curdling yell from the wild beast—a dark form bounded through the air, but not in the direction in which the other spectators stood. Then came a shriek of horror such as Leonard never forgot, and Dom Alfonso's own dusky limbs were writhing beneath the weight of the infuriated leopard. The compelling gaze once removed, the slave had become master. g 2 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. With one spring Leonard was beside the struggling mass of man and beast upon the ground. His sword flashed from its sheath and in a trice shore through the thick velvety neck of the leopard, almost divid¬ ing the head from the body. The great jaws, which had seized its intended victim by the shoulder, relaxed—there was a gush of dark blood—the heavy body rolled over ; and Leonard and the others raised Dom Alfonso—ghastly through his dusky skin and saturated from head to foot with the leopard's blood —to his feet. Trembling all over, he tottered to the stone bench and sank upon it, covering his face with his hands. There was a chorus of exclama¬ tions. "How came the door of the cage open?" "Had it been left unfastened?" "Is he much hurt?" * How did it happen ?" Leonard thought it most politic at the moment to hold his peace. After all, he had not actually seen Dom Alfonso unfasten the door. Presently Dom Alfonso rose slowly from the bench and looked down at the prostrate carcase. Then he spurned it with his foot. "I am not hurt, I tell you," he said sullenly, in answer to Dom Sebastian's questions. "At least, nothing to speak of." It was true; the animal's teeth had caught his clothes and merely grazed his skin. He turned to leave the yard; then checked himself. "Who struck that blow?" he asked, looking at Dom Sebastian. All present noticed the strange THE ROYAL LEOPARD-TAMER. 03 expression of baffled malice, rage, and shame stamped on his face. Dom Sebastian pointed to Leonard, who had wiped and put away his sword. "The Englishman," he said frankly, "probably saved your Highness's life by his promptitude. Neither Dom Pedro here nor myself could have reached you in time to save you." Dom Alfonso fixed his peculiar gaze on Leonard, as if he wished to be certain of knowing him again. Then he looked down at the dead leopard once more. "You have spoiled the skin," he muttered queru¬ lously. And without a word of thanks or acknow¬ ledgment, he pushed rudely past the Bishop, and disappeared into the palace. But as Leonard crossed the public square, ten minutes later, by Padre Fernando's side, he confided to the latter his own views of what had just occurred. "That fellow set the leopard free purposely, and in the hope and expectation that it would attack you priests and your Bishop. I am certain of it. He was muttering to himself the moment before—" and Leonard told the young padre what he had overheard Dom Alfonso say. " I think it is very likely," was the thoughtful reply. "He hates all the priests, from the Bishop down to my humble self. And he forgot that the beast which he had exasperated, once freed from his control, would make for him at once—especially when he was nearest." "He must be mad." "Perhaps. At all events, he is a barbarian, and 94 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. nothing will ever make him otherwise. If he should ever come to the throne, he will be a Nero and Caligula rolled into one." " Then that was what Padre Ignazio meant when he said—" " My friend, if you take my advice, you will not repeat anything you may have heard from Padre Ignazio or any other of the fathers on that subject. It is a delicate one, and best not talked about in this city. You understand me?" And he looked full in Leonard's face and smiled. " I think I do. But there is something on foot among you, is there not—There! I won't worry you by asking questions. My dear Padre, what a good fellow you are, though you are a—" Padre Fernando burst out laughing. " Go on ; ' though I am a benighted Papist,' you would say. And my dear Senor Vane, what a good fellow you are too, though you are a heretic! It's a thousand pities. Pray understand that I am most grateful for the compliment." "It's a thousand pities that you are not one of us, if you like ! I cannot understand how it is that a reasonable, sensible man like you can—* Padre Fernando held up his hand. " Enough ! enough ! Begin that kind of talk, and I shall turn tables on you. You had enough of that at our first meeting, had you not? Well, then, 'do unto others as you would that they—' you know the rest, I suppose, you obstinate young heretic? " Leonard laughed, and tried to persuade his friend THE ROY AX LEOPARD TAMER. 95 to come and sup with the Expedition; but he refused, having promised to visit and eat at the house of a very poor sick man and his family that evening, and intending first to go to the market and lade himself with a substantial contribution towards the repast. After that (though this he did not tell Leonard) he had many and divers penances to perform, which would keep him from his rest until far into the night. Poor soull his was a true and earnest heart enough ! Little did Leonard think that the time would come when he would wish that he had stayed his hand until the leopard had rent the life out of his prey—or that his sword could have cleft the throats of both slayer and victim together I CHAPTER VHÏ. burnt wings. And now the time drew near when the Expedition must start on its journey into the unexplored wilds. Two of the wounded had died; all the rest were ready for the road again, including Lord Francis, both of whose arms were equal to any work which might be required of them—and Calverley, strong and ardent as ever, in spite of a great seam down his face, which was no addition to his good looks. Two, however, of his officers were by no means so zealous for their departure on their enterprise as they had been of yore ; not that their spirits had flagged or their courage failed—nothing of the kind. They were as eager to do, dare, and discover as ever they had been ; but—there was an attraction in San Salvador, and one which it was hard to leave behind. Leonard, too, had many farewells to make. Little Dom Garcia seemed much grieved at his departure, and he was genuinely sorry to part from his friend, Padre Fernando. Had he but known under what circumstances they were again to meetl BURNT WINGS. 91 The young Padre was more moved than he cared to show as they shook hands and bade each other farewell. " A safe return to you ; and may I be here to meet you if you come back this way." " Why, where else would you be, my dear Padre ? " "I may be out baptizing in the provinces; or, for aught I know, in Portugal. Yes ; you may have heard from Padre Ignazio that there is a talk of sending our promising little princeling to Lisbon to be educated. Well, if he goes soon, I believe it is to be under my charge. But do not say this to anyone here, for nothing is settled. The King has not given his consent yet; and if he were to hear that we were counting upon it before taking him into consideration, no one knows what might happen. May Heaven be with you, my dear boy—son I won't call you, for you are such an outrageous young heretic you would laugh at the idea of such presumption on the part of one not much older than yourself. Benedicite ! the Saints protect you—I wish I could make you believe there is any chance of that! Farewell! farewell!" Two days before they started, Leonard had happened to come suddenly face to face in the street with Asquith, whom he had hardly seen for almost a week, although they lived in adjoining houses "Hullo, Asquith! are you walking in a dream?" he asked jocosely, touching him on the arm ; for the young soldier did not seem to see him. He looked at him now, however, and with an expression that was absolutely savage. 7 9 8 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. " Hang you ! let me alone, " he growled, shaking off Leonard's hand, and holding on his way doggedly. Leonard stood speechless for a second; then followed. " Something has put you out, Asquith, old fellow, " he said goodnaturedly. "Won't you tell me what it is? perhaps I might help to put it right." The idea that the lieutenant had quarrelled with Godol- phin, whose cool sarcastic manner sometimes seemed to exasperate the former intensely, had crossed his mind. Asquith glared at him. " What do you mean—you impertinent young puppy—by trying to meddle in my affairs?" he spluttered. " What business of yours is it—what I choose to do with myself? Answer me that!" " Good Heavens, Asquith, " cried out Leonard, " you don't suppose I want to meddle in any affairs of yours, do you? I see I was mistaken—I thought you had had some misunderstanding with " " With whom ? " roared Asquith, looking ready to strike him. " With Godolphin—or Calverley—or with some other man. But as I see I was wrong, I beg your pardon heartily for interfering when you had shown so very plainly that you wanted to be let alone. I should have known better. Come—I can't say more than that, can I?" Asquith's hostile gaze abated. "No, of course you can't," he muttered, looking away, and holding out his hand. " I ask your pardon for pitching into you so—couldn't help it—wouldn't wonder, if you knew what a miserable wretch I am ! Wish I could BURNT WINGS. 99 get someone to fight me—put an end to this ; drown myself—something " And with these broken, half-audible words, he hurried away. " What on earth can be the matter with him ? " thought Leonard, as he stood looking after him. " It looks as if he were crossed in love—why, of course! Donna Beatriz—what a fool I was! Cal- verley was right; this is what comes of having a pretty girl in the camp. And she is pretty—though not fit to hold a candle to my Guen. I think the fellows would stare if they saw her. I wonder if the Senorita's given him his congé; surely he can't have been such an ass as to speak, on such a short acquaintance, and with Lord Francis in the field? There's no saying, though. I only hope he won't do himself a mischief." Thus meditating, he returned to the head-quarters of the Expedition. Late at night, he was relieved to see Asquith come in; and next day the latter busied himself in preparations for the start, hardly speaking a word to anyone, and showing by his manner that any attempt to converse with him would be inadvisable. As it was, several explosions ofirritation with the natives rendered it necessary for Calverley to interfere ; an interference which was very ill received. That evening, returning from the market with three laden slaves behind him, Leonard overtook Lord Francis Pole upon the plaza. He looked pale and strange, and answered Leonard's observations at random. 100 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. " Something queer here too, " thought the latter ; " or is it only that he has been saying good-bye ? " But a covert glance at his companion's face decided him that it must be more than that. " Surely she can't have refused him? the girl must be mad if she's done that. What more can she want ? " Lord Francis continued very quiet and abstracted all the rest of the evening, hardly hearing when he was addressed. Leonard noticed Calverley look curiously at his second in command from time to time. Left alone with his leader for a few moments, Leonard ventured to advert to Lord Francis's altered manner. "You had best leave him alone," Calverley said. " I daresay you can guess what has happened ; if you don't, I shall not enlighten you. The little Spanish baggage ! " he burst out angrily after a few minutes, flinging back his head—" I wonder what she means by it? She might know that she's not fit to sweep the ground before him! What is play to her is death to him, for he's no common man. I have always wondered at her making so easy a prey of him, for he is not easily caught ; but when he once loves—" He paused significantly. " He had a disappointment years ago, " he went on, " and they say he never liked any woman since. He was a wild young blood from eighteen to three-and-twenty ; killed his man more than once, as I daresay you have heard. Well, one of them was a good riddance to society, anyway. You can see what he is now. People may say what they like: but I'd stake my BURNT WINGS. IOX faith that he is as honourable, pure, and upright at heart as any child that breathes." " So would I, " said Leonard heartily. " I don't know what the women can be thinking of nowadays, " and Calverley kicked the bale he had been examining across the room to where three or four of its fellows lay. " They are all the same—no, I mustn't say that in your presence, though. And the little Senorita is uncommonly engaging ; I could flirt with her myself, if I had time. She may have meant no harm, either, after all. Still, those Spanish women are born coquettes ; " and he shook his head. "She is half English by birth," said Leonard. He himself went to make his adieux to the fail Beatriz the next morning, and at sight of her soft, child-like eyes reproached himself heavily for his hard suspicions of her. She was unfeignedly grieved at the departure of her friends and rescuers, and the little lace handkerchief came into requisition several times. " I shall never, never forget how kind you English gentlemen have been to my uncle and me," she said earnestly. " I shall always think of the English as the noblest nation in the world; not even second to the Spaniards. I wish we might meet again; for I suppose we shall be gone home long before you return to San Salvador. If you should ever chance to find yourself in Spain, you will not forget that there is a house at Cordova always open to you, will you?" I02 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Leonard promised that he would not forget it, and kissed the little lady's tiny hand as he took leave. At ten o'clock the last farewells had been said, and the Expedition was fairly moving out of the town. Crowds of people lined their route, and followed them across the well-cultivated plain to the verge of the plateau on which the city stood. After a long and steep descent the caravan filed away in a north-easterly direction, and before long had put a range of hills between it and San Salvador. They camped that night in a deep gorge, and resumed their journey at dawn. The country was much the same as that they had already crossed; their way winding over mountains covered with long grass and scrub, and crowned with clumps of palms and other trees—then descending into deep wooded valleys, crowded with every form of tropical vegetation. The villages here were hardly so numer¬ ous as they had been between Banza Bibbi on the Congo River and San Salvador. There were many rivers to be forded, and at one of these, called the Lafu, a negro was dragged under by a crocodile while bathing in the evening, and carried off. Nothing more was ever seen of the poor fellow, though a canoe-full of his comrades searched the river for traces of him and succeeded in killing one of the ugly reptiles. They were awakened that night by a great uproar in the village near which they had camped, and on BURNT WINGS. 103 sending to ascertain the cause found that a herd of elephants had invaded the plantations, and that half the inhabitants had turned out with blazing torches to scare away the unwelcome intruders. Lord Francis Pole and Leonard took a dozen men and went out to assist them. It was a wildly exciting scene; the moon was just issuing from behind the clouds; the natives, yelling, howling and brandishing their torches, formed a vast cordon around the banana-plantations, whence arose a crashing, rending sound. The huge dark forms of the elephants could be dimly seen, as they moved about, spreading devastation wherever they went; and sometimes a great trunk flourishing an entire banana-plant which it had uprooted or broken off, would appear distinctly against the sky. "Oh, if it were not so dark, what a fine pair of tusks one could get!" Leonard exclaimed. "Yes," returned Lord Francis—"though it is dangerous work shooting these great beasts at any time. Ten to one you don't wound them mortally, and then they charge you. You see, these natives are content with trying to frighten them ; they daren't attempt more." The people, indeed, would often rush boldly in among the giant marauders, thrusting their flaming torches in the very faces of the elephants, and darting back when one of the latter made any movement in their direction. What with these tactics, the loud beating of drums and tom-toms, the blowing of ivory trumpets, and the unearthly shrieks and shouts of the natives, I04 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. the elephants soon began to give ground, and before very long were in full retreat; trampling down, alas ! as they went many a crop which they had hitherto spared. At length they were gone, and Lord Francis and Leonard, with their followers, returned to camp, • CHAPTER IX. A pretty quarrel. Lieutenant Asquith still continued moody and irritable. He would hardly speak to Calverley, who had unconsciously offended him in some way, more imaginary than real. Lord Francis he never spoke to at all, though the latter, blank and sad at heart himself with a depth of feeling which Asquith was incapable of conceiving, did not notice it. The wisest course seemed to be to let the young soldier alone until time should have blunted the edge of his disappointment ; yet he resented hotly anything that looked like neglect, while he was ready to take offence at the slightest remark addressed to him. Leonard and Dr. Oakley got on with him better than anyone else—if " getting on" it could be called where matters were at a stand-still. The former, one day, having with great difficulty got his company of laden, grumbling natives up to the shoulder of a steep hill over which the path lay, saw with some concern that Asquith and Godolphin, tbeir caravans being on before them, were walking 105 Io6 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. together at a short distance in front of him. For, as the prophet says, " can two walk together except they be agreed ?" and Leonard knew very well by experience that these two very seldom did agree at the best of times. He soon perceived, as he followed them with his men, that Godolphin was rallying his companion upon his depressed spirits and unsociable ways, and that the latter took it very ill. After a time, he seemed to answer Godolphin with some heat, and the conversation continued briskly, Asquith's tones becoming louder. Presently Leonard was unable to avoid hearing what was said, and the name of Donna Beatriz de Castronuente was distinctly audible. Upon this, Leonard called out to Godolphin, hoping to attract the naturalist's attention by the news that Luis, his Makuta boy, had just picked up a very curious winged beetle; but no answer was returned. " What right have you to impugn the lady's character? What do you know of her?" roared Asquith. " How dare you take her name into your foul mouth ? is it because you know that she would not touch you with a pair of tongs ?" Godolphin gave some sneering reply, which seemed to drive Asquith into a frenzy. He shouted out a torrent of abuse and wild accusations at the top of his voice, and with a final burst of imprecation on his companion for a "vile, evil-tongued coward," struck him in the face. Godolphin had whipped out his sword in a second. Leonard dashed up and threw himself between them. A PRETTY QUARREL. 107 "For Heaven's sake remember who you are and what you are doing ! " he cried. " Godolphin, put up your sword—he does not know what he is saying ; shame on you to exasperate him thus ! Asquith, remember that you are no child, to fly in a peevish passion because " "Get out of the way, boy, before I do you a mischief," shouted Asquith, mad with passion, his eyes glowing like a bloodhound's. " He insulted her—insulted the Senora Beatriz; let me at him!" "And is this the way to honour her?" cried Leonard, half beside himself, striking down their swords with his own—"to brawl about her and bellow out her name before fourscore grinning slaves? Have you forgotten that you are gentlemen? Godolphin, you at least are not a madman; can you not see that this is no place for such a scene?" "You are right; this is no place for such a scene," replied Godolphin slowly. " But you must keep him off me—he is a maniac." "Put up your sword then," cried Leonard, strug¬ gling with Asquith. "The sight of it helps to infuriate him." "I shall do no such thing; I don't want to be murdered." But he moved a few paces backward. "Coward!" yelled Asquith. "You want to run away ! " And he wrenched himself from Leonard's grasp, and would have rushed upon Godolphin had not Leonard again flung himself before him. " Look what you are doing, you fool ! " shouted Godolphin. "You have pinked the wrong man," I08 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. And he pointed to Leonard from whose left arm great gouts of blood were dropping to the ground. Asquith's sword had passed through it above the elbow, in the scuffle. Asquith checked himself and looked at the growing pool upon the rocky path. " Why did you get in my way ? " he growled. "Are you badly hurt?" "It's only my arm—never mind. Do, Asquith, put up your sword. Won't you, now?" implored Leonard, turning very white and reeling as he spoke. Asquith caught hold of him. "Quick—give me your scarf, or the boy will bleed to death," said Godolphin, who had come up. And he bound the scarf tightly round the arm. "Have you any brandy in your flask? I have none. We must make him sit down." And the two men, such fierce enemies a moment ago, sup¬ ported Leonard between them to the hillside, where they seated him, and Godolphin proceeded to admin¬ ister brandy. Asquith was completely sobered now. " What are we to do?" he said. "He can't walk." "Yes, I can—at least I shall be able to directly," said Leonard faintly. "No, you cannot," Godolphin said. "We should have you in a fever in half an hour did we let you attempt it. We must send two of the men on ahead to fetch a litter; yes—and the Doctor. Will you do so ? " Asquith, who seemed half stupefied, complied. "Tell them to say I've had a fall," Leonard roused himself to say. Then he relapsed into a A PRETTY QUARREL. log drowsy, dizzy condition, with a strange swimming in his head, accompanied by a sensation of sickness and blindness. He did not know for how long he sat there. Godolphin sent two of the negroes back by the way the Expedition had come that morning to gather boughs and leaves from the shrubs to hold between Leonard's head and the blazing sun; for there was no shade near. The flies, too, were very troublesome. Leonard was not so far gone, however, that he could not hear a voice, which said presently, close to him : "You will give me satisfaction, I suppose?" " Of course," came the answer, apparently from several miles above his head. " Whenever you please It is I who should ask it." "At the next camp then"—or "the next halt," Leonard was not sure which. But he was too faint to attach much meaning to the words at the moment. They passed across his brain only half comprehended. At last—the waiting-time had seemed hours —the men with the litter arrived, and Leonard was half- assisted, half-lifted into it. Then they started at a quick pace to rejoin the rest of the caravan. A messenger had been sent forward for Dr. Oakley, who was with Calverley, a mile ahead. Presently he met them, and took charge of Leonard. It was time, for the ligatures round his arm had begun to loosen, and the wound was bleeding afresh. Before very long, the swinging pace of his bearers slackened ; presently he was laid down in the grateful shade of a spreading banyan tree, and Dr. Oakley 110 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. was bathing his burning forehead with water which Luis brought from a brook close by. " There was something I wanted to remember and tell you, " he murmured dreamily, looking up. " But it has gone right out of my head." " I daresay you will remember it presently. Are you pretty comfortable now? You should be all right soon if the bleeding does not come on again ; but I'm afraid you have a touch of fever. Do you mind if I leave you for a few minutes? I have a couple of men down with fever to look after. I shall be back directly." With these words the doctor hurried out of sight. There was no sound but the hum of innumerable insects, the chatter of the men grouped about under the trees, as they partook of their midday meal of chikmanga * and bananas ; and the splash of a little cascade among the rocks not far off. Suddenly the words he had last heard pass between Godolphin and Asquith flashed upon Leonard's mind. There would be a duel—at the first opportunity they would slip away from the caravan and fight till one of them fell. It must be prevented at any cost ; Calverley must know, for he alone could stop it. Leonard started up into a sitting posture, but his head felt so intolerably dizzy that he was forced to lie down again. " Luis, are you there ? " "Yes, master, Luis is here." * Prepared manioc. A PRETTY QUARREL. Ill "Where is the White Chief, our leader? Find out quickly, and come and tell me." Luis disappeared. Soon he returned. Calverley was at the further end of the camp, engaged in settling a dispute which had arisen amongst some of the negroes ; but Lord Francis Pole was at that moment coming into camp with a party of stragglers whom he had been bringing up. Leonard was about to send Luis for him ; then hesitated. No; Lord Francis was the last person who should know. Did he interfere, Asquith might drag him too into the quarrel, which might end in the loss of his life—and he worth a dozen Asquiths and Godolphins. No, he must see Calverley, and that instantly. Perhaps at that very moment the fatal preparations might be beginning. He despatched Luis with the most urgent message he could devise, begging Calverley to come to him at once. Ages seemed to pass by, before the well-known quick, firm step was heard, and Calverley came towards him, the Makuta boy at his heels. " My dear Leonard—my dear boy—what is it ? Are you much hurt? how was it?" Leonard was almost too much agitated by this time to speak coherently. " Godolphin and Asquith —they have quarrelled—are going to fight ; they may be at it this instant. Stop them!" "Going to fight, are they? Oh, I'll soon stop that;" and Calverley leant over Leonard and got hold of his wrist. 112 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. " But they may be fighting now ! I heard them arrange it—'at the next halt,' or 'next camp,' they said. It was my duty to let you know. Asquith is terribly in earnest ; it was in trying to hold him back at first that I got this thrust. Oh, it was purely accidental"—as Calverley applied an adjec¬ tive of no benedictory character to the name of Asquith. "But you will prevent it?" " Trust me 1 The scoundrels ! what do they mean by treating me to their petty squabbles on an expe¬ dition like this ? We are like to have work enough to do presently without our officers cutting each other's throats. I'll see to them ; but you keep quiet, my boy, or you'll be delirious in an hour. I'll send Oakley to you." And he strode off, and sent messages to Godolphin and to Asquith, desiring them to come to him immediately. The messengers returned, unable to find either gentleman. Leonard was right ; this was the very time they had chosen for their en¬ counter. Calverley's face was very black as he called half- a-dozen of his most stalwart followers to him, and gave over the charge of the caravan to Lord Francis. "What has happened? where are you going?" the latter asked in amazement. "To look for a couple of lunatics who are at large. Don't go near Leonard Vane at present ; Oakley is with him—that fool Asquith has put his sword through the boy's arm, and he is in a far A PRETTY QUARREL. "3 way to a high fever, what with loss of blood and excitement. I'll explain afterwards. 'Pon my word ! it's enough to make one swear ! " And away went Calverley, crashing through grass and fern, towards the place that struck him as most likely for an unfriendly meeting. He had not far to search. Bursting through a copse of canes and mimosa into a low-lying hollow by the banks of the stream, at some distance below the spot where the caravan had halted, his ear caught the ring of steel before his eyes beheld the combatants. Rushing forward with a kind of lionlike roar, he knocked their swords up with his own. " Now, gentlemen, perhaps you will have the kind¬ ness to tell me what the meaning of this is," he said sternly ; and the look on his face was not that of a man who might be trifled with. "I find one of my officers disabled and in a fever, while two more, instead of attending to their duty, have deserted their commands and gone off to a swamp to try and run each other through the body. Is this the fulfilling of your solemn promises and en¬ gagements to me before we left England? is this your duty and obedience to your leader ? is this the way to succeed in the objects of our Expedition ? Did you come out to Africa to squabble with and kill each other? because if so it's a pity you did not stay at home. We shall probably have to fight savages before long ; how is that to be done if we are fighting like savages among ourselves? Will you answer me that?" 8 114 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. " He insulted a lady to me, " cried Asquith excitedly. "You have no right to interfere between us ! " " He both struck and insulted me," said Godolphin, sullenly. " He must either apologize to me or we must fight it out. My honour demands it." " Then he shall apologize, and so shall you," replied Calverley, who controlled with difficulty the anger which shone from his eyes. "Hush!"—as Asquith shouted "Never!" and tried to pass him. " I am speaking not to you but to Godolphin. I expected better than this of you, Godolphin, and it is you whom I blame the most. I have long observed you both, and I am convinced that you, quite as much as Asquith's foolish temper, are at the bottom of this piece of idiotcy. Do you mean to tell me that you intend to persist in it ? a man of your sense and at your age ! " Godolphin looked very black and sulky as he stood resting the point of his sword upon the ground. " I said he must apologize, " he replied. " As far as I am concerned, I don't mind stating that I had no intention of saying anything against the lady in question. Asquith put an entirely wrong construc¬ tion on my words. I am sorry that he should have so mistaken anything I said; but " " You are sorry that you said anything capable of being so misinterpreted; is not that so ? " interrupted Calverley. Godolphin hesitated a moment, and then said " Yes. " "You hear this, Asquith! What more do you want? Godolphin is sorry for what he said, and A PRETTY QUARREL. I'5 he can say no more than that. Now it is your turn ; be equally generous. You mistook his words— confess that you did not mean half yours. You struck him in your passion, and you know you had no right to do that. Come, my dear fellow"— assuming that winning manner which he knew so well how to use, as Asquith still stood angry and undecided—" look at it like a sensible man. You can afford to pocket your pride; everyone knows that you are a brave man, and it is the act of a brave man gracefully to acknowledge himself in the wrong, when he knows he is so. I know that you are too honest and sincere not to do so." " Godolphin retracts, then ! " Asquith said, un¬ willingly. " Oh, I retract! " replied Godolphin, doggedly. " There ; what more can you have ? Come, Asquith, say you are sorry and shake hands. For my sake ! " It would have been hard indeed for anyone to withstand Calverley when he spoke in that tone. "Well, I apologize, " Asquith said sullenly. "I'm sorry I struck you, and I'm sorry I said all I did." "Now, shake hands!" commanded the master of the ceremonies ; and the late belligerents did so with a very bad grace, especially on Asquith's part. The trio returned soberly to camp, Calverley making conversation as they went. He seized the first opportunity that arose, later, to speak seriously to Godolphin in private; for he had often noticed that, instead of making due allowances for the young soldier's infirmity of temper, he was in the habit of Il6 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. purposely irritating and exasperating him. Godolphin took Calverley's remonstrances in tolerably good part. The latter also spoke to Asquith before the day was over, telling him plainly that the next time that anything of the kind, arising from his quarrelsomeness and want of command over himself, occurred, he, Asquith, must leave the Expedition. CHAPTER X. SAVED FROM A CROCODILE. In three days Leonard's fever had run its course, and though very weak, he was again able to take an interest in all that went on around him as his litter jogged along over hill and dale, through grassy plains and forest paths, upon the daily march. Oakley or one of the other officers usually walked by his side—all, indeed, were wonderfully good to him; the fact being that he had already managed, somehow, to win the hearts of all by his honest, simple, kindly ways—always modest and unassum¬ ing, and always ready to obey orders. They crossed the Inkissi and Nkalama Rivers, and four days later, after much toilsome hill-climbing, found themselves looking down upon the broad and beautiful lake * into which the great Congo River here widens itself out. Forest-clad hills rolled down to its indented shores and green islands dotted its shining expanse. Near the village of Nshassa (346 miles from the sea-coast) * Now called Stanley Pool. 117 118 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. they encamped for the night; the natives requiring much encouragement before they would approach and sell food to the white men's party. The Expedition was by this time considerably in need of fresh food-supplies, and for the last week there had been some murmuring among the men. Next day, therefore, Lord Francis Pole and Godolphin took two boat-loads of men and embarked upon the lake to shoot hippopotami. An exciting scene followed, for a big bull hippopotamus charged one of the canoes, upset its entire crew, including Godolphin himself, into the water, and would undoubtedly have made short work of some of them, had not Lord Francis by a fortunate shot put an end to its career at that moment. The boat quickly righted itself and its late occupants regained their places. In all, they succeeded in shooting, and bringing safely to land no less than four hippopotami—the bull, two cows and a calf. The latter was reserved for the officers' table, where it was voted delicious; the feet when stewed calling forth special expressions of satisfaction. The ship's cook, who had accom¬ panied the Expedition from the Good Queen Anne, concocted from the skin a soup which was declared to be fully equal to turtle. The whole camp that evening was filled from end to end with the odour of roast hippopotamus, and great was the feasting and rejoicing among the native porters. After nearly a week's rest at Nshassa, the boats and canoes were launched—Calverley having sup¬ plemented those which had been carried overland SAVED FROM A CROCODILE. 119 by a number which he purchased from the chiefs at Nshassa and other neighbouring villages. The Expedition was now well provisioned and prepared to start on its voyage of discovery, and presented quite an imposing appearance as, having embarked in its little fleet, it made its way against the rapid current up the unknown Congo. The scenery, as they passed along, was beautiful in the extreme. Banks, islands, and tall red sandstone cliffs were crowned with verdant forest, bush, and jungle in infinite variety of foliage and blossom. Reaches of calm water lay broad and shining like great sheets of silver. White herons and brilliant flamingoes lent diversity to the scene as they rose from the shallows by islet and shore and flew overhead. The panorama was ever changing. Lord Francis Pole remarked that it reminded him of the Rhine, only magnified three or four times. In two days they reached a village called Mswoga ; the highest point upon the river to which Calverley had ever before penetrated. From hence onward all was new to him. Next afternoon, on the Expedition's offering to land at a large village on the right bank, the inhabitants rushed down to the shore in great numbers with spear and shield to oppose them. The blasts of their ivory war-horns and the beating of their great war-drums, whose boom could be heard for miles away, sounded loudly, and the crowds of warriors swelled every moment as reinforcements joined them. Asquith wanted to pour a volley of 120 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. musketry among them, but Calverley negatived the proposition, and gave the order to proceed up river. There was no attempt to pursue them by water, though the hostile natives ran along the shore for a short distance alongside the boats. At a fresh blast of a horn from their village, they suddenly wheeled round and returned. A few minutes later, as the Expedition rounded a promontory which hid the village from them, a solitary canoe appeared in their wake ; but after paddling about, as it seemed, aimlessly for a few moments, it descended the river and was lost to sight. "Are those logs of wood on the bank opposite?" Leonard said to Asquith, in whose boat he was. " No ! I protest they're crocodiles ! What a number of them! and what a length they are!" " There is one of the brutes in the water opposite us," Asquith observed, glancing in the direction which Leonard indicated. " He seems as though he were looking out for something. My word! so he is, and he's off after it, too!" " Look there ! " cried Leonard, looking back— " what is that in the water ! Yonder—behind the boats! As I live, it's a native, trying to swim across the river! The crocodile is after him—put the boat about—put the boat about, at once! we may be in time to save him. Quick ! —that's it—the poor fellow is making for us now. Which will reach him first—we or the crocodile?" The boat flew down-stream like the wind, propelled SAVED FROM A CROCODILE. 121 by willing arms—the black head of the swimmer toiling painfully to meet them. The poor wretch was evidently terribly exhausted and distressed. One moment more and they were alongside him, and Asquith and Leonard, each seizing him by an arm, dragged him into the boat—not a moment too soon, for the crocodile's long flat head and gleaming teeth rose above the water literally at the very heels of his hoped-for prey, and the ravenous jaws closed with a snap just a second too late to secure him. Him? was it 'him' or— " Why, it's a woman ! " burst simultaneously from half-a-dozen mouths, as the poor creature, a finely- formed girl of eighteen or nineteen summers clasped the knees of Asquith as her preserver, and proceeded to invoke ardent blessings on his head. "Here—take her away!" cried the latter, much discomposed. "I can't have the woman clinging round me like this—it won't do at all, my good girl, I tell you! Won't someone take her off me"—with piteous desperation—" before some of the fellows in the other boats see me? I shall never get over it if they do. Here, someone—what are the gabies laughing at?—Vane—will no one—My dear girl—" with frantic earnestness, as the young native's grate¬ ful praises grew more impassioned—"my excellent young woman, you really must leave off, you know. Besides—besides, you're making a great mistake ; I'm not your saviour and deliverer after all—it's this gentleman here whom you ought to thank; he made the boat put back for you and pulled you out. 122 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Hang it ! I forgot she doesn't understand English — " and he hastily and most imperfectly translated his last sentence into Bantu. How much she understood must remain uncertain; at all events Asquith gained his point of transferring her undesirable attentions to Leonard, who gently but firmly took her by the arms, lifted her to her feet and held her there, patting her reassuringly upon the shoulder. Meanwhile the rowers caught up with the flotilla, and drew alongside Calverley's boat, while questions were shouted to them from all sides. " What have you got there ? a woman ? What in the name of wonder was she doing in the river?" and so on. The girl was of a decidedly pleasing appearance, far superior to that of any native—Congoese, Basundi, or Makuta—whom they had yet seen in Western Africa. She was of a dark, blackish-brown colour, with a soft, smooth skin, was tall, slender and grace¬ fully made, with a small head and fine, regular features. She had beautiful eyes and her expression was gentle and modest. Her clothing consisted of a well-dressed skin with a fringe of white hair, which, depending from her left shoulder, where it was fastened by an iron ornament, reached to her knees. Several bright-hued feathers decorated her hair. There was nothing of the negress about her. Her language was a dialect of Bantu, not very difficult to follow. In answer to Calverley's questions she gave them to understand that her name was SAVED FROM A CROCODILE. 123 Garita—that she belonged to the Wahamba* tribe, which dwelt on the Great Water. Cross-questioned, it appeared that by the Great Water she meant, not the river, but a lake at a short distance from its eastern shore, further North. The village from which she had just escaped by swimming had belonged to Mazoko, a chief of the Bateke tribe. This tribe, which owned a great tract of country on both sides of the Great River, had recently made a raid upon the Bakutu, Wahamba, and other tribes living upon the Meini River and upon the lakes, and had brought back with them many captives, she herself being among the number. Many of these they had killed and eaten—being cannibals—and all the Wahambas among her fellow- prisoners had shared this fate. She herself, however, had been preserved as an addition to the household of the chief Mazoko himself, who ever since the raid had been lying dangerously wounded, and who had expired during the previous night. That after¬ noon he was to be buried with great pomp and solemnity, and in order that he might not want for attendants in the world of spirits, no less than ten of his wives and slaves—Garita among them—were to have been interred alive in his grave! The funeral procession had been passing along the bank when the white men and their little army of followers had been descried coming up the river in their fleet of boats and large canoes ; and forthwith the corpse had been deposited in the middle of the ♦Probably some off-shoot of the Wahuma tribe. 124 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. path, the bound women flung down beside it, and the entire population had hurried down to gaze upon the new-comers and to prevent their landing. Garita, being young, strong, and desperate, had soon managed to burst her bonds—she had also set free the woman who lay next her—and leaving her, if she chose, to loose her companions in misfortune, the Wahamba girl had darted down the bank and thrown herself into the water. She knew that it would have been useless to try and hide in the plantations; she would soon have been discovered, and the woods lay so far off that she could hardly have reached them unseen. No, her plan was a bolder one; it was no less than this—to swim the Congo river from island to island until she reached the eastern bank. She expected to reach the nearest island—a forest- covered one—in about fifteen minutes from her start; and from its further side she hoped to make her way onward prosperously, unobserved from the village. Could she once reach the river's further shore, there was the glimmering of a chance (she thought) that she might be able to find her way through grass and forest to her own country again. And at all events, the chance seemed worth the trying for. She found, however, that she had miscalculated the strength of the current; and the shouts of the returning Bateke, as they ran along the riverside parallel with the boats of the Expedition, warned her to keep beneath the shelter of the overhanging SAVED FROM A CROCODILE. 125 banks with their forest of reeds, and not to attempt to strike out for the open water until they had retreated from the shore. It may be imagined what moments of terror she had passed, expecting every moment to be discovered by her pitiless captors. But the eyes of the Bateke were fixed on the flotilla in midstream, and they had not then missed their victim. As the sound of their voices died away, she had struck out boldly across the river; but the current was too much for her—and then she became aware of the crocodiles—saw one make for her, and knew that unless she could reach that canoe which was evidently bearing down to her rescue she was doomed to a death as sure, as dreadful, though far more rapid, than that from which she was seeking to escape. She had been saved, and she was grateful. If her deliverers willed it, she would willingly be their slave—and she turned her gazelle-like eyes from Leonard to Asquith. "No, no—not for me—not on any account!" interpolated Asquith in a great hurry—much as if some delicacy likely to disagree with him had been offered him at the dinner-table. Somehow he had managed to catch her meaning at that point. But if not—Garita continued—then she would humbly pray the great Lords of the White-faces that they would of their kindness set her on shore when they next neared the eastern bank of the river. Or better still, if she might presume to ask such a favour, might they not, as they journeyed up the river, take 126 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. her with them as far as the country of the Bayanzi ? She would cook for them, work for them in any way they chose—and through the Bayanzi country it was but a short distance to the home of her tribe. She prayed so earnestly that Calverley, after a moment's thought, said: " Yes, yes ; let her come along. But if she talks to the men in the boat, or makes herself a nuisance in any way, tell her that ashore she'll go the first time we are near the left bank. We'll have her up after supper to-night, and ask her questions about the tribes and the country ahead. She may prove a treasure to ua And she's a plucky girl and deserves a helping hand." So Garita came with them. CHAPTER XL trapped. It was hard word, this toiling up-stream. Accidents and casualties were not infrequent ; on the river, from reefs, sandbanks and also sunstroke—ashore, from pestilential swamps, from wild beasts, and from hostile natives and their barbed and poisoned arrows. At two places the hostility of the Bateke prevented the Expedition from landing ; and as they passed the mouth of a large river, said to be called the Kassai or Kwa, they were attacked by a number of canoes. Friendly demonstrations proved of no avail, and a discharge of arrows wounded four men in Calverley's boat and two in Asquith's. A few well-directed shots however, cooled the Bateke's ardour for the combat. The food-rations, too, were running very short. Next day they came in sight of a large village upon the west bank. The natives rushed down to the shore, and, friendly signs being made to them, a large canoe was manned and came out to meet them. It was explained to the head-man—a fine, 128 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. intelligent-looking fellow—that the Expedition was passing peaceably up the river, and was in want of food, for which they would pay liberally ; and a sample of their wares was shown him. They were thereupon cordially invited to land ; an invitation which Calverley at first declined, but finally accepted ; the Chief of the community, by name Luzinga, himself coming out from shore to press his hospitality. He was a tall, handsome man of middle-age, with a commanding but frank and kindly presence. He wore a long deer-skin robe, his neck and arms were loaded with chains and bracelets composed of bits of metal, beads, fruit- kernels, carved bits of bone and teeth of all sizes ; and his head was decorated with a kind of coronet of thin metal, into which feathers of many colours were fastened. In his hand was a carved staff ; inlaid with brass and ivory, and with a fly-whisk at the top—for in compliment to his guests neither he nor his subjects carried arms. Calverley and most of his English officers, with a small bodyguard of sailors and Basundi slaves, went ashore accordingly, and leaving the rest of the Expedition with the boats, took seats, as requested, under the thatched verandah in front of the Chiefs house. A brisk trade was soon going on, and the pile of bananas, plantains and other produce rose higher and higher. The crowd, a quiet and well- meaning one enough, increased every moment, and many were the quaint remarks passed upon the white men, whose like had never been seen there before. TRAPPED. 129 Luzinga himself, having asked whence they came and being told that they belonged to a great nation across the sea, became lost in thought for a time. Then he said, touching Calverley's hand with his own and looking at his dusky fingers as if he expected some of the light colour to have come off upon them : "It is true that there is really a country upon earth where all the people are white?" He was informed that there were many such countries. He looked as if he thought they were trying to hoax him. "I have heard," he continued slowly, "of you white men before. The Basundi—a tribe far down the river—have told the Bateke of white traders who come for slaves, ivory, and cassia. Do you not wish for any of these things ? I can sell you much ivory. Look within my house; for as it is are the houses of five-and-thirty of my head-men. We catch many elephants in pits, and from their tusks we make armlets, necklaces, collars, horns, vessels, and other things. Behold for yourselves, and see how much more we have than we require. " And look¬ ing into his hut as he desired, the Englishmen saw that it was literally lined with ivory, which was piled high against its sides. Calverley told him that they would be delighted to trade with him for at least a part of his ivory- store as they returned down the river; but that at present they had further to go. Having done his best to satisfy Luzinga's curiosity as to himself, his 9 130 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. comrades, the country they came from and their purpose in coming, Calverley proceeded to pump him about the tribes and nations which he might expect to find on his higher voyage. Luzinga told him in return that there were many more great rivers ahead, the largest being the Likula, Sanga, and Oubangi rivers which came from the north-west, and the Busira, Ipuki and Lulangu rivers, which flowed from the east. Beyond these there were, he believed, many others, whose names he knew not. As for the tribes, there were the Bayanzi, on the opposite side of the river, and beyond them the Wahamba, the Balolo and many others. Higher up the river lived the Ba Ngala and the Akula. Yes, he had heard of dwarfs; they called them the Watwa — but he had never seen one. The Chief then called forward his nephew and heir, a youth of nineteen or twenty named Umritu, and presented him to Calverley and his companions. Luzinga had sons of his own, but according to the law of succession among these tribes, by which property and title pass from uncle to nephew instead of from father to son, they were excluded from inheriting anything from their father, and were consequently held by him of little account. After some further conversation, the Chief proposed to go through the form of blood-brotherhood with Calverley. The latter had no choice but to consent, knowing that to refuse would give mortal offence, and that, moreover, by this means he would secure Luzinga as a permanent friend and ally to him and TRAPPED. 131 his; no mean consideration, seeing that he was a powerful Chief and that the Expedition had many and probably hostile tribes to face. A disagreeable operation then ensued. Calverley and Luzinga, seated opposite each other, grasped each other's right hands while the medicine-men made a slight incision in the arm of each, causing the two thin threads of blood to flow together. A pinch of salt was then sprinkled on the blood, which was smeared upon the foreheads of both. Meanwhile a native in a high key pronounced curses on the traitor who should turn his back at any time upon his friend, his brother whose blood had mixed with his own—and the rite was concluded. After this, the day being now far advanced, Cal¬ verley ordered the rest of his men to disembark and draw the boats up on the beach, stacking their goods in an enclosure set apart for their use by Luzinga. Now that he was the Chiefs sworn blood- brother, the Expedition might camp in his village with as perfect safety as if it had been monarch of all it surveyed. It must have been a curious sight that night to see white and black men seated together at supper around the same camp-fire in the centre of the village. Luzinga had Calverley on his right hand and Lord Francis on his left; and Asquith, Godolphin, Oaldey, and Leonard sat round among the Chiefs councillors and headmen. Natives stood behind them holding flaring torches, while others hurried to and fro carrying dishes of fish, flesh and fowl, 132 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. bowls of banana-porridge, beans, plantain puddings, sweet potatoes and cassava cakes; also calabashes of malafu, massanga, and plantain wine. A short way behind the party, Garita sat upon the ground, enjoying her full share of the good things ; for Calverley was ever careful that she should be treated with due consideration, wherever they might be. Supper over, pipes of mild but excellent tobacco were supplied to the company. Many of the pipe- bowls were carved and curiously shaped. While smoking was going on, musicians sang, danced, and played on musical instruments which somewhat resembled small harps, the strings being strained across a wooden frame. Both singing and dancing were monotonous ; and the constant rhythmical chant, composed of two or three sentences again and again repeated, together with the alternate clangour of the three or four strings of the harp and the measured stamp of bare feet upon the earth, made Leonard feel very sleepy. The smoke and glare of the torches and the smouldering fire—the shadowy, palm-thatched huts rising out of the gloom around —the dark, indistinct forms of the lofty palms that towered overhead against the dark sky, lit by only a few scattered stars—the whole scene conduced to produce a dreamy, soporific effect; together with the clouds of tobacco-smoke which filled the air, and the now somewhat unusual fact—with the members of the Expedition—that a thoroughly good meal had just been partaken of. He roused himself at last with a start which TRAPPED. 133 nearly knocked him off the wooden stool on which he was sitting—to find that the party was breaking up, that a hand was on his shoulder and that Lord Francis was laughing at him. Pulling himself to¬ gether, he saluted the grave and decorous head-men who had been sitting on either side of him, and followed his companions to the quarters which had been allotted to them. Next day the Expedition remained at Luzinga's for the sake of two of the English sailors who were recovering from fever, and all day long bread and flour-making went on busily. On the following morning they again started up-river, leaving behind six sick and wounded slaves—three Basundi, two Makuta and a Mayakalla—whom Luzinga promised to look after until their return. Calverley and his officers shook hands heartily with the Chief and his head-men on leaving them ; indeed there was some discontent among the men at being obliged to quit the hospitable village so soon. Their leader felt, however, that too much lay before him to permit of his loitering in every pleasant place. It was now nearly six months since he had left England, and he hoped to penetrate considerably further into this unknown continent before thinking of turning back. The difficulties he had already met with and expected yet to encounter did not daunt him; his party was tolerably well equipped, both with men, goods, and ammunition; and the former were hardy, stalwart fellows from the tribes of the Lower Congo—principally Basundi, Makuta and 134 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Mawumba, with a sprinkling of Mayakalla, Kakongo and Bakama. Luzinga and his chiefs stood upon the beach, waving their hands, and shouting out good wishes for a prosperous journey and a speedy return, as the Expedition made their way up-stream ; and soon the friendly natives were lost to their view. The river—here about four miles wide—was crowded with islands and sandbanks. After a hard day's rowing, they camped upon an uninhabited island. Next day they continued their journey, passing many villages whose inhabitants flocked to the shore to gaze upon them but did not attempt to molest them. About three o'clock in the afternoon, Calverley noticed upon an island they were then passing a large flock of goats, and commissioned Godolphin, who was always longing to be ashore for the sake of his natural-history collection, to visit the small village perched upon the rocks and endeavour to buy a few. Godolphin started accordingly; the, natives responded amicably to his friendly overtures and he was soon upon the beach in their midst. As the bargaining promised to occupy time and Calverley was anxious to push on, Asquith asked and obtained permission to wait with his boat for Godolphin, who with his single canoe-full of men might otherwise hardly have been safely left behind; and the rest of the flotilla proceeded on its way. The sky now became dark and overcast—the sun was hidden, and sharp gusts of wind began to blow. TRAPPED. «35 A storm was rapidly coming up, and Calverley looked round for shelter for his men. Most of the islands hereabouts were mere uninhabited tracts of sand, without sufficient trees or cover to accommo¬ date so large a party. Besides, wherever they landed, there they must stay for the night, for the approaching tornado would render the river unfit for rowers that evening. They were now within easy distance of the south bank, which looked inviting enough, and thither the boats, by Calverley's orders, were headed. Before long, they had entered a little creek with a sandy shore, on which a number of native canoes were already drawn up ; and here, having made fast their boats, they landed. Stationing men on the headland to guide Godolphin and Asquith, with their crews, to the spot, Calverley at once set about searching for a suitable camping-place. He soon found one at about a couple of hundred yards back from the river, from which it was screened by a dense belt of bush and trees. In a few minutes the men were hard at work, clearing the ground, and rigging up rough shelters and defences. Axes and billhooks rang in the thickets—piles of lopped branches were sawn hastily into planks, and planted upright in the ground. All was bustle and hurrying to and fro. But sharp eyes had been watching them, though they knew it not, from the surrounding bush ever since they landed. A certain ominous rustle among the leaves and underwood might have warned them of the proximity of a numerous foe; but it passed 136 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. with them merely for the whistling of the wind in the branches and for the sound of the first heavy drops of rain that heralded the approaching storm. The officers hastened about, superintending the men's operations, and working hard themselves. Two bales of goods for barter had burst open as they were thrown upon the ground, and their contents lay strewn about—yellow and crimson cloth, gilt knick-knacks, silk parti-coloured scarves and sashes, and many things tempting to the native's uncultured eye. The thunder was muttering in the far distance now. Soon, the storm would burst. Suddenly, a wild yell arose from the forest on all sides, and Calverley, Pole, Oakley, and Leonard, with the greater part of their men, white and black, saw themselves surrounded by hosts of fierce, black savages, who came bounding down upon them with raised spears, while clouds of arrows whistled through the air. There was no time to do more than hastily draw the men together and shout to them to do their best with whatever weapon—billhook, hatchet or knife—they had in their hands; so sudden and determined was the onslaught. The savage, almost naked warriors were among them in an instant ; the Englishmen brought down a few with their pistols, but were unable, comparatively few and unprepared as they were, to check the onrush of their enemies. Down went Lord Francis Pole with a spear in his shoulder—men were falling in all directions under terrible blows from whirling clubs and battle-axes, from spear-thrusts and dagger-wounds. TRAPPED. 137 The assailants were everywhere, dealing death around them murderously, covering their own bodies dexterously with their long narrow basket-work shields. Calverley, half-stunned from a blow with a club, yet contrived to seize a tall savage by the throat and half-throttle the life out of him. Leonard laid about him desperately with his sword, warding off blow after blow only still to see others descending. Now he was beaten to his knee, the blood from a cut on his head blinding his eyes. All was over with him, he thought; when amidst the infernal din he heard Calverley's voice calling to him to bear up, and felt rather than saw that he was by his side. Yells of triumph, blended with shrieks for mercy, filled the air. Some of the slaves fought gallantly, but the greater number of them broke and tried to fly. Bright steel and crimson blood flickered together before Leonard's swimming eyes; a crashing blow brought darkness over him ; and he knew no more. / CHAPTER XIL TO the rescue I When Godolphin, after long bargaining at the island village, at length succeeded in securing four or five of the coveted goats and returned with his booty to the boat, he found Asquith waiting impatiently for him, and the rest of the Expedition out of sight. " They have landed somewhere along the south bank of the river," the lieutenant shouted to him, " as far as I can make out Q There's a storm coming up, and we'd better make haste and join them." The rowers bent to their oars and pulled across to the mainland. As they approached they perceived two canoes coming rapidly to meet them from the shore. They were full of men belonging to the Expedition. As soon as they were within hail, a sailor stood up in the foremost boat, and called out the fearful and incredible news that Calverley and all the rest had been surprised, set upon, and cut to pieces by savages, in the very act of making a camp. "Impossible! Why did you run away, then?" yelled Asquith. i*8 TO THE RESCUE! *39 "We had no choice," was the reply. "I was left on the shore to look out for you, and some of the blacks with me; when all of a sudden came a frightful howling and screeching in behind the trees, and I knew there was a shindy with the niggers going on. I set off to help them, and so, to do 'em justice, did the fellows with me; but Lord! we had no chance to get near 'em! A lot of savages came charging at us, and all the blacks cut and run; besides, a lot more of our own natives came tearing along for their lives and carried me with 'em." " Come along at once then," cried Asquith. "We shall be in time to reinforce them. " And the boats flew forward. " What do you mean, you rascal, by telling me that Mr. Caverley and the others are cut to pieces, when you say you never went near them?" he roared out presently, standing up in the boat. The other boats had turned and followed his and Godolphin's. "The blacks say so. Here's Mr. Vane's boy, Luis, who saw him go down, and Mr. Calverley over his body, and every other white man among them. We'd best take care how we go near the devils, or they'll do the same for us as they've done for our mates." "You coward! " Asquith bellowed; " I'll put a bullet through your head as soon as we get ashore"— and snatching the oar from the nearest slave, he began to row with frantic energy. Long before they reached the shore a party of natives appeared there, brandishing bows and spears, I40 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. and manifesting an unmistakeable intention to prevent their landing. As soon as the boats were near enough, Asquith gave the word to fire; but four muskets could make but little impression upon two hundred men, whose arrows were all the while flying about their ears. Man after man dropped at his oar, and in a few minutes Godolphin cried out that it was madness to think of landing now ; those who reached the shore alive would be cut down before they could set foot upon it. Their death could be of no avail to their comrades, supposing the latter to be yet alive; let them retreat to the islands, where they might be able to plan some scheme for helping or rescuing those who remained on shore of the Expedition. But Asquith would not listen to reason, until most of the benches in his boat were emptied, and his own left arm was pinned to his side by an arrow. Then—and not till then—he gave the word to fly, and as the boat sped swiftly down the current, and he looked at the dead and dying at his feet—then back at the inhospitable shore they were leaving behind—he tore the arrow from his wound and burst into tears of grief, rage, and despair. They were pursued by the enemy, but only for a short distance. A mile and a half from the scene of the disaster, they landed on an island, and did what they could for their wounded. Asquith did not seem badly hurt; his was only a flesh wound, and the arrow-point—which luckily had not been a barbed one—had merely penetrated the skin over his TO THE RESCUE! 141 libs. He would hardly let Godolphin examine it. "Oh, what does it matter?" he groaned. "We've deserted them—left them behind among those demons yonder! do you think I care whether I live or die, after that? Far better die—far better; and have done with the misery and shame of it for ever ! " " Don't talk like that, Asquith—you know we had no choice. It was our duty to our men—to our¬ selves—to them if they are yet living—to draw off, instead of delivering ourselves up as sheep to the slaughter." "We could have died with them !" Asquith hissed fiercely between his teeth. " Hardly that—if they are dead already, as I fear they may be. Let us cross-question this boy Luis, and the rest who escaped." Godolphin did so, but elicited nothing beyond asseverations from the blacks that they had seen all four of the white officers cut down, and most of the English sailors as well. "I'm afraid it must be so," Godolphin said in a low tone to Asquith. " The boy Luis seemed always to be perfectly devoted to Vane, and would not, I think, tell us that he was dead unless he believed it to be true. To be sure, he might only have been badly wounded, and so might the rest. But is it likely that the savages would not have killed them outright ? Again, on the other hand, these natives are always terrible liars ; they may have invented this story to justify their own running away. Yet 142 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. who would expect slaves to stand by their masters in danger ? " "I only know this," Asquith said doggedly— " that I am going back there to-night, with as many, or as few men as I can beg or bully into accom¬ panying me. You may do as you like." " Well—if you go, I suppose I shall come with you. Listen to that ! " A peal of thunder that seemed as if it must split earth and heaven crashed above them. The rain, which had been falling for the last half-hour, was now coming down in sheets. Nothing but dark-grey water could be seen to right or left. The English¬ men and their followers were crouching in speechless wretchedness beneath a beetling ridge of rocks, which afforded them some shelter from the elements. Again and again the vivid forked lightning lit up a scene of wild chaos and confusion. Ever and anon a rattle as of musketry came from the other islands and from the distant shore, as some great tree tottered and fell before the blast. Fallen trees, boats swept from their moorings, débris of native huts, and once a goat, vainly struggling, were whirled past them down the seething river. The storm raged on for hour after hour, and the lightning alone from time to time illumined the black darkness which had settled down on earth and sky. It was hopeless to think of stirring from that island during the night. Once or twice, as they lay huddled beneath the rocks, Godolphin thought that Asquith was becoming delirious ; but at eleven TO THE RESCUE! 143 o'clock or thereabouts he arose, and standing on the shore looked out into the darkness over the river. "In a few hours," he said, returning to Godol- phin, "we may attempt it." "Listen. I have thought of a plan. Let us go to Luzinga and appeal to him for help. Calverley is his blood-brother, and he will feel bound to do something towards extricating him from this diffi¬ culty. He may not be dead; nothing has proved to us that he is dead." " I have thought of that too. We will make him give us a large force—nay, come with us himself. What tribe do you think these people"—and he nodded up the river—"belong to?" " The Bayanzi, from the Wahamba girl's account. By-the-by, the girl went ashore with them, I suppose. " "Well, Luzinga mentioned that he had a feud with the Bayanzi, didn't he ? and that will make him all the more ready to fight them. Yes; and there¬ fore you must start for Luzinga's as soon as there is any light, and bring all your powers of argument and persuasion to bear upon him." "But what are you going to do, my good fellow?" demanded the elder man in surprise. "You are surely " "Oh, I'm going back, as I told you I should," returned the young soldier carelessly. " Don't argue with me, I warn you; it will do no good. I can't wait—and you know that I can't speak Luzinga's language, nor over two words together of any of their gibberish. I leave all that to you." 144 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. " But you are going to certain death ! " " If I choose to do so, what business is that of yours ?" " I must come with you, if you are so mad. And yet—why waste so much time? We can do no good without help from Luzinga ! " "Exactly"—and Asquith faced him with a hard stare—"and therefore do as I say. You need not throw away your life, even if I choose to throw away mine. And there may be no more lives lost in the matter, after all. Go to Luzinga, and bring him after me with five hundred men." " And if I refuse to go to Luzinga without you ? " "Then you may take your own way; you won't alter mine," was the obstinate answer. There was nothing more to be said. Before dawn the little party on the island had separated; Godolphin with the slaves and the wounded starting for Luzinga's, down the river; and Asquith, with seven sailors and Luis, Leonard's Makuta boy, up the stream to the fatal creek where Calverley and his company had landed on the preceding afternoon. " Good-bye, " Godolphin had said, and mentally added "for ever," as he wrung Asquith's hand at parting as he had never wrung it before or since their now forgotten quarrel. He never expected to see the headstrong, fiery young fellow again. In the dim, grey dawn, Asquith's canoe reached the little creek. They landed, stepping softly, and drawing the canoe from the water, hid it carefully beneath the thick under-growth of shrubs and bushes which grew close to the river's edge. Then they TO THE RESCUE! 145 crept softly up the bank and through the belt of fan-palms and mvule trees above. A few moments, and they came upon the scene of yesterday's sur¬ prise, resistance, and capture. Grass and fern were trampled underfoot; here and there, among the poles and débris of the hastily-commenced stockade and huts, lay corpses, broken spears and other weapons. Eagerly Asquith and his companions hurried up and sought among the cold bodies, sodden with last evening's rain, of the Basundi and Mawumba slaves who had come with them from the King of Congo's realm, for traces of their friends. Here, too, lay the corpses of fourteen English sailors, most of them with their cutlasses still clenched in their hands; and looking upon them, their mates by Asquith's side swore a deep and resolute oath of vengeance. And here lay one of Calverley's silver-mounted pistols, which had escaped the eyes of the savages under a tussock of rank mateté grass. Here were the broken fragments of Leonard's sword, deeply dyed with crimson—and here a knife with "F. P." engraved upon the blade. The ground was trampled into mire. There were signs that many of the enemy too had fallen, but their bodies had been removed. And what had become of the four English officers? Thirty or more of the slaves and nine sailors still remained unaccounted for among the fifty or so of corpses which strewed the clearing. Had they all been made prisoners? or had their bodies been removed by the savages? It was evident that all the bales of goods had been 10 146 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. opened on the spot and their contents rifled. Beads, scraps of cloth, odds and ends of wire and other articles might be found among the grass. The corpses, too, had been plundered of everything likely to take the fancy of barbarians. Suddenly, beneath a heap of corpses that lay half hidden under a dense clump of bush towards the further side of a clearing, a movement was visible. Most of the sailors stood staring, with dropped jaws and dilated eyes, as if they expected to see a ghost, and the Makuta boy, with a terrified gasp of " Nximbi ! " * turned to fly. But Dawson, who had been first mate of the Good Queen Anne, stepped quickly to the spot, and dragging the dead bodies of two Basundi aside, disclosed the sorely-wounded, but still breathing form of Calverley's Mawumba servant, Karatonga. They gave him stimulants, and when he could speak he told them that he had been struck down early in the fight. When he recovered conscious¬ ness, the savages who had attacked them were going about despatching the wounded blacks who lay on the ground. He kept quite quiet, and none of them came his way. Then he saw them carry away the bodies of their own people, and next, by the orders of one who appeared to be a chief among them, they took up the four officers of the Expedition •—the Lion (Calverley) the Leopard (Lord Francis Pole) the Elephant (Oakley) and the Young White Bull (Leonard) and bore them away. As they lifted * "A Witch!" TO THE RESCUE! 147 the white leaders from the ground, he heard "the Lion" groan twice heavily. He thought also that "the Leopard" was alive as they carried him away. He could say nothing with regard to the other two. After that, he had lost his senses again ; regaining them only for a short interval in the midst of the great storm, since when he believed he had lain unconscious. The dense brushwood under which he lay had kept the rain off him—else he must infallibly have perished. As it was, he had escaped the jackals, one or more of which had evidently been prowling about among the dead shortly before Asquith's arrival. Luis thought he had seen one skulk into the thicket as they appeared upon the scene. What was now to be done? Asquith was for going forward at once; there was probably a village close by, whose inhabitants would not yet be astir; and they might possibly be able to ascertain whether Pole, Calverley, and the others had been carried there. Three of the sailors with him lifted poor Karatonga and conveyed him to the shore, where, by Asquith's orders, they would conceal him and themselves in the thick bush. Asquith, meanwhile, accompanied by the mate, Dawson, by the other three seamen and by the boy Luis, crept stealthily along a winding path among the trees, which led him out upon a wide banana- plantation. Beyond this, nestling beneath mighty palms and banyans, the roofs of huts were visible. Evidently the village was a large one. The party approached it silently through the 148 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. plantations. All was still. For an hour or so they wandered noiselessly around it, without seeing or hearing anything which could enlighten them as to the fate of their friends. Luis, the Makuta, who had crept in among the huts, presently returned to them with the news that the people were beginning to stir, so that it would be no longer safe for the white men to remain so near the village. Even as he spoke a drum began to beat, and a procession of women, each bearing a calabash or an earthenware jar upon her head, filed out upon their way to fetch water from the river. Asquith and his seamen accordingly beat a hasty and secret retreat to the shelter of the belt of wood which intervened between the village and the Congo. Luis, however, they left behind to keep watch. Dusky-skinned, like the natives of the place, lithe as a serpent, and active as a monkey, he could slip in and out among the huts of the village itself and skulk in the plantations without attracting remark. Hours passed by. The sun rose high in the heavens, and still Asquith and his men waited in impatient suspense among the acacias and gigantic fern-fronds. At length the young Makuta returned to them. He had observed, he said, that the natives congregated specially near two particular huts, women and boys often going to the entrances and trying to peep in. In such of their talk as he could catch, the words " white men " were several times used. Luis had accordingly watched for his opportunity and crept TO THE RESCUE! 149 close up to the back of one of these huts. Putting his eye to a narrow gap between two of the split palm fronds used in its construction, he distinctly saw and recognised in the two wounded Europeans who lay there, stretched on beds of dried grass and leaves, Calverley and Leonard Vane ! The latter did not move, but lay with closed eyes—the former, as he looked, tossed one of his arms above his head and moaned. What little Luis could see of his face was crimson; he was evidently in a high fever. He had not ventured to approach the other hut, as people were standing about ; and having had one or two scares, thinking himself discovered, he had hastened back to Asquith to report what he had seen. The latter now held a hurried consultation with Dawson. It was plain that until further help arrived from Luzinga's, they could do nothing towards rescuing their fellow-countrymen. Their position, hiding in these woods where they might at any moment be discovered, was dangerous in the extreme, and Asquith judged it best to send the sailors down to the shore; there, with their companions and the wounded Karatonga, to take to the boat and make their way either to some friendly island—that where Godolphin had purchased the goats, for instance—or down the river to Luzinga's. Asquith himself proposed to remain where he was, with Luis, and perhaps Dawson, to keep a watch upon what went on at the village, lest the savages should take it into their heads to remove their hapless prisoners elsewhere. Suddenly, as they were speaking, there was a 150 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. rustle among the bushes close to them, and the next instant the mimosas were pushed aside; and two slender dark-skinned lads, armed with spears and arrows for shooting birds, appeared before them. For a few seconds all were equally surprised—then Luis leaped like a monkey upon the smaller of the two, while Asquith rushed forward with raised sword, intending to stun the other with the flat of the weapon, crying out as he did so: "Hold them!—stop them! they must not return to tell it in the village!" But the agile young savages were too quick for them. With a piercing yell, the elder one leaped backward, flinging his spear with ready hand before he turned and fled like the wind. The second twisted himself free from Luis in the twinkling of an eye, turned a sort of back-somersault and followed his comrade. The English dashed after them to the verge of the wood, tripping themselves up over trailing creepers and matted roots and falling amongst thorns—but in vain. The boys were already nearly half-way across the plantations, both shouting and whooping as they ran. "The whole village will be down upon us in a moment Run, for your lives!" cried Dawson, seizing Asquith's arm. And the five Englishmen and the native boy turned and made for the river at the top of their speed. Another moment and they were dashing across the clearing where over fifty bodies of their faithful slaves and companious lay rotting where they had TO THE RESCUE! fallen, butchered like sheep, the day before. Even as they ran, a fiendish chorus of yells and warcries arose behind them, and they knew that the savage warriors who had slain and captured their friends were on their track. On they rushed through bush and bracken—and now the river stretched before them, as they cried aloud to their comrades hidden near the shore that they must launch the boat and fly. A few moments more, and it was done—the boat had been pushed off into the creek, with the helpless Karatonga lying in its bottom—the Englishmen and the boy Luis had flung themselves into it—oars were plied with frantic haste, and they shot out upon the river. A moment later and their pursuers rushed down the bank and began dragging the canoes that lay there to the water. But Asquith and his little party had got a good start, and the foremost of the three canoes that were soon following them upset through some accident. They dared not, however, turn aside to any of the islands that lay in mid-stream, but held on their way down the river, their progress mightily assisted by the swift current. After chasing them for about three miles, the two canoes behind them, which were heavily-laden with men, gave it up and retreated. They continued to pursue their way down-stream, Asquith seeing nothing better to be done than to proceed to Luzinga's, and urge upon him the necessity for speedy help. " This will certainly be the last time I shall turn my back upon those brutes," Asquith muttered. "The next time—ha!" and he clenched his fist. 15 2 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. All day long they rowed as if life and death hung upon their speed, never pausing once, and only taking food in hurried mouthfuls. Yet to Asquith it seemed as ifthey made but slow progress. Wounded as he had been on the previous day, he could do little but measure the interminable river banks with his eye and feverishly calculate the time it would take them to reach Luzinga's and return with succour to the Bayanzi country. As they neared their journey's end, another terrible misgiving seized him. What if, after all, Luzinga should refuse to help them ! It was quite possible that he might not care to risk his warriors' lives and embroil himself anew with the Bayanzi for the sake of a handful of white men, even though with one of these he had sworn brotherhood. Who was to know what weight these natives attached to their oaths ? The sun had set and darkness was closing in over the narrowing river as the exhausted rowers drew nigh to the villages of the Mhuku—as Luzinga's tribe was called. As they glided along under the cliffs of the right bank, a deep, booming sound struck their ears. " Hark ! " cried Luis, leaping up with dilated eyes. " The war-drums ! Luzinga is summoning his tribes¬ men. He is collecting an army to help us ! " It was true. Louder and louder swelled the alarum of war as they drew nearer, and now they could distinguish the harsh blasts of great ivory horns, blaring intermittently through the din of the drums. TO THE RESCUE ! 153 Ten minutes more, and they sprang ashore, to meet with an effusive welcome from a score of natives, who rushed down the beach to meet them, handed poor wounded Karatonga over to the care of the women, and conducted them swiftly to the Chief's hut. Here they met Godolphin, who told them that Luzinga had at once consented to help them. He evidently considered himself as bound to go to the assistance of his " blood brother, " and had made no difficulty about the matter. He was now gathering his tribesmen and organizing a force to attack the Ngamyeli—which it seemed was the name of that tribe of the Bayanzi which had captured or destroyed the greater part of Calverley's ill-fated Expedition. Luzinga's nephew and heir, Umritu, was all eagerness to accompany the warriors, and it seemed probable that Luzinga would command them in person. Asquith hastily communicated to Godolphin the result of his reconnoitring expedition to the Ngamyeli village, and by the time he had finished speaking, Luzinga came up to them. Godolphin imparted to him the information which Asquith had brought ; at which he nodded his head and looked thoughtful. There was little rest for anyone in the village that night. Through the dark hours drums beat and war-horns brayed incessantly. Men chanted the praises of Luzinga—the father of many warriors— the Rhinoceros—he who tosses his foes from his path as with a horn ; adverting also to the valour of the Buffalo and the wisdom of the Serpent—these last being the names given to Asquith and Godolphin 154 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. by the Basundi and Makuta followers of the Expe¬ dition. When the men ceased singing the women began, and continued the uproar until dawn ; when the whole village roused again into wild activity. Luzinga was out with his chiefs, marshalling his warriors, superintending the serving-out to them of rations, and inspecting the fleet of canoes which was to take them up the river. The men presented a fine and imposing appearance as they stood drawn up upon the beach, with their feather head-dresses, their great bows and spears, and their long shields of plaited red, white, and black wickerwork. Then began the work of embarking them, which was so swiftly carried out that in less than half-an- hour the entire five hundred were on the water in about seventy canoes—Luzinga, Godolphin and Asquith pushing off in the last, which was the Chief's state canoe and had a high carved prow. The appearance of so large a body of canoes manned by armed warriors caused great excitement in the villages by which they passed. They camped that night (for it was hard work pulling up-stream against the current,) upon an island, and started once more before day-break. In a few hours they heard the war-drums booming from the south bank, showing that the Ngamyeli had received information of their coming; probably through the Bayanzi, or by a messenger from some one of the island villages; and soon the shore was alive with hostile crowds, who ran along shaking their spears at the invaders and uttering loud cries of defiance. TO THE RESCUE! 155 As they rounded the headland which concealed from them the creek where Calverley had landed, they perceived nearly a hundred canoes of all sizes, weighted to the water's edge with armed savages, pushing off from the shore and deploying across the river to receive them. The banks swarmed with Ngamyeli. Clearly the enemy had had plenty of time for their preparations to resist an attack, and Luzinga had very seriously under-estimated the strength which they could bring against him. He was dismayed. "Truly they outnumber us almost three to one," he said. "But what then? Shall we turn our backs upon them without striking a blow? Shall it be said that the faces of the Mhuku are as brass but that their hearts are as sodden clay?" "No!" shouted such of his warriors as could hear his voice. "Hear the words of Mwani Luzinga!" Then began a tremendous and terrific fight. The enemy's canoes attacked the Mhuku with the utmost ferocity. The opposing forces poured clouds of arrows into each other's boats; then, ranging alongside, fought hand to hand. Men sprang from one canoe to another, armed with clubs and knives, and terrible was the slaughter which ensued. The surface of the water round the boats was soon covered with floating corpses and with wounded men, strug¬ gling to gain the shore or some neighbouring islet. Canoes were upset and their crews butchered in the water. The Chiefs state canoe was in the thick of the 156 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. combat. Twice it was boarded by the Ngamyeli, and twice the latter were driven back to their own boats, thrown into the river, or hewn down as they came on. Asquith and Godolphin accounted well for all who came in their way; but once the former, in his ardour, sprang into one of the enemy's canoes which lay alongside, after a Ngamyeli who was flying from him, and commenced laying about him with his sword with the utmost fury. For a moment he was in great danger, engaged as he was with four or five at once. Godolphin, however, by two well- timed pistol-shots brought down the men from whose descending weapons he stood in most instant danger; the next moment the canoe upset, and Godolphin and one of the Mhuku pulled Asquith on board with no very serious wound as yet. But matters every minute looked blacker for the attacking force. It was evident that it was hopeless to think of forcing a landing in the face of the powerful force which opposed them. The Mhuku had suffered terribly, bravely though they fought. Luzinga's face was full of rage and grief as he noted the number of warriors he had lost—and now one of his canoes came swiftly through the mêlée to his own, those who manned it crying aloud that the young Umritu, Luzinga's heir, had been shot through the heart by an arrow. Men were dropping on all sides. And now it was that an arrow pierced Asquith's side, and, covered with wounds, he fell with his head hanging over the canoe's side. Godol¬ phin, too, was hurt, though far less severely. TO THE RESCUE! 157 " It is hopeless ! " muttered the Mhuku Chief, with a gesture of tragic despair. "We are losing all and gaining naught—not even honour. Balaisia, sound the note of retreat. " And a dismal, long-drawn wail from an ivory horn sounded over the river. Grodolphin, with a heavy heart, could not but own that he was right, as he bent over the apparently lifeless form of his headlong young soldier-comrade. Things looked to him very dark. This attempted invasion had failed utterly—Calverley and his com¬ panions were further than ever from being rescued, for it was improbable that Luzinga, after his heavy osses, would soon again endeavour to carry out his design with a larger force. And Asquith, he thought, would die. And what—what should he do, alone and friendless as he was ? He could see no answer to that question. And now began a disastrous flight. The enemy's canoes pursued the Mhuku down the river, and a running fight was kept up for some time. It is needless to dwell on the miseries of that retreat- how Mhuku canoes were cut off from their fellows and their crews massacred—how the Mhuku thrice turned to bay and avenged themselves amply upon the foremost Ngamyeli. It was twilight when they once more landed, shorn of full half their numbers, at Luzinga's town—and loud was the lamentation kept up all that night by the women over the slain. Asquith did not die that night, nor the next, nor during the three weeks which followed, although Godolphin daily expected him to succumb to his X58 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. terrible injuries. At last it began to seem as if he might eventually pull through after all. Meanwhile Luzinga went about moodily, his head sunk on his breast. The heavy reverse to his arms and the loss of his nephew, who had been to him as an eldest son and who had grown up under his eye, lay sore at his heart. His own sons were, of course, nothing to him ; they belonged to their mother's relatives, and not to him. He had, indeed, another nephew, who was now his lawful heir—the son of his eldest sister and the brother of the dead Umritu—but he was a mere child and his uncle had never seen him, although he intended to send for him when the days of mourning for Umritu should be over. At present he had no scheme for avenging himself on the Ngamyeli, and he only frowned when Godolphin ventured to suggest that his " blood-brother, " Calverley, had still some claim on him. The idea now struck Godolphin of sending the mate, Dawson, with half-a-dozen of his comrades and a few natives, down the river to the country of Congo, in the forlorn hope of prevailing, either on the King at San Salvador, or on some adventurously disposed trader or sea-captain, to send or bring aid to rescue the English captives from the hands of the Ngamyeli. He could not go himself; because, on the one hand, he could not leave Asquith, who would not be fit to be moved for some time—and because, on the other, he would then hear no news, if there were any, of Calverley and the other pri- TO THE RESCUE! •59 soners, until his return, weeks and perhaps months later. He empowered Dawson to offer a large reward in money, to be payable on their return to England, (for which he counted on the Duke of S ) to any whom he should find able and disposed to make the hazardous venture. The boat accordingly started down-river on its mission; of the success of which Godolphin had, however, very little hope. It was so very unlikely that any trader would put himself so far out of his way and incur such risks, merely on the strength of a promised reward. But the time went on. Godolphin had a sharp touch of malarial fever, but recovered. He and Asquith were sitting one day under the shadow of their hut, out of which they had just managed to crawl—poor, ghastly, crippled skeletons that they were. "I've made up my mind what I shall do as soon as I'm strong enough, Asquith. At least, I don't see what else is to be done. I shall dye myself black—or brown—or dirty ivory—whichever seems to be the fashionable colour among those Ngamyeli; and go among them as a mighty medicine-man, or witch-doctor, or some such abomination. It will be odd if I don't find out something about poor Calverley and Pole and the others, that way. I can speak the language almost perfectly now." Asquith roused himself to answer slowly, in his weak, quavering tones, now like those of an old man—so changed was he from the blunt, dashing IÔO THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Asquith of yore by his months of intense bodily and mental suffering: "I shall come with you, Godolphin. You shall not go without me." " But, my dear fellow, you won't be fit for it for ages yet! And if you were, you are not ready enough at the language. No, no, you mustn't think of it " " Do you suppose I have not been thinking of it all these miserable months? I shall be fit for it before long—and I will come!" " And suppose you will ! " thought Godolphin, who, to say the truth, was simply aghast at Asquith's proposition. He expected to encounter difficulties enough going alone amongst the savages ; but encumbered with a headlong, headstrong fellow like the lieutenant, who was morally certain to bring about a contre-temps on the first opportunity by his blundering impetuosity, he did not like the prospect at all. Few characters could have been found which were less suited to each other than those of these two men. Well had they been named by the natives, "Serpent" and "Buffalo." CHAPTER XIII. accused of witchcraft. We must now return to Leonard, whom we left stunned and rendered unconscious by a heavy blow from the war-club of a Ngamyeli. When next he opened his eyes, it was to find himself in a native hut, on the floor of which he lay weak and helpless, with an agonizing pain in his head, which for long prevented him from thinking or taking notice of anything else. The figures of natives flitted before him from time to time—now and then he was conscious that Dr. Oakley was present and ministering to him; and all along he had a vague, indefinite sense that something terrible had happened—he knew not what. One day, waking from what seemed to him a long dream of pain and trouble, he managed with infinite suffering to turn his head so that instead of contemplating merely the woven stems of palm- fronds which composed the side of the hut, he could look across the little dwelling. No sooner had he done this than he perceived Calverley, who 162 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. lay not far from him, looking deadly pale, his eyes closed, and his clothes stained with blood. Suddenly the recollection of what had happened flashed across Leonard—the scene in the clearing where they had thought to camp for the night sheltered from the storm, and the sudden onslaught of the savages rose before his mind's eye. Where was he, then ? surely in the camp of the Expedition ! No doubt Asquith and Godolphin had come up and reinforced them; and Lord Francis—Stay, had he not a faint remem¬ brance of seeing him fall? But there was Oakley; he had certainly seen him yesterday—to-day—at some time, at all events. Yes, they must certainly be safe in camp. But where were the others? A dark form appeared by his side, peering curiously into his face. It was a native woman. He tried to ask her the name of the place they were in, and was surprised to find that for some time his voice refused to obey his summons. At length, the tears starting to his eyes with the effort, he contrived, in a weak whisper, to make her understand his question. " Ndendé, " she replied, " was what they called the village. Of course he knew that it belonged to the Ngamyeli? " He had not known that, but felt unequal to the strain of further conversation just then, or he might have asked who the Ngamyeli were. Probably, he thought, they were some tribe living higher up the river, whose territory the Expedition had reached since the skirmish in which he had been hurt. He wished that Oakley would come in, or that Calverley ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. 163 would rouse up and speak to him. Surely he could now confusedly remember having heard the boom of native war-drums in the neighbourhood recently ; the noise had almost seemed to split his head in two. He dozed a little, as it seemed to him, during which time someone moved about him, put something cool to his head and gave him some drink. When he re-opened his eyes, the hut was darker, but a lurid glow (from the sunset) stained the wall just above Calverley's head. Leonard looked at him, and felt uneasy about him. Why did he lie so still and look so strange? He tried to call to him, but with no result. He was not dead, for his broad chest heaved slightly from time to time. As Leonard watched him in agonized anxiety, his dark eyes opened and gazed, not at, but past him. " Calverley ! " he said faintly but earnestly. " What are you looking at ? " " Mother"—came the totally unexpected response, in tones utterly unlike the ringing, cheery accents with which Leonard was so well acquainted—" Mother dear, it's all over ! She won't have me, and I suppose I was a presumptuous young ass ever to think she would. Don't you be taking it to heart, dear; I'll get over it, I suppose; they say men do. Anyhow, I'll have plenty of opportunities at this war in Flanders—" He broke off, and lay tossing his head from side to side. Presently he spoke again. "What was I thinking of? Who told me she was dead? Ah!"—drawing his breath with a hissing sound—" but she married him—the other man—first! 164 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Well—then she is nothing to me, after all. And yet—yet—Margery! Margery!—I loved you once! " There was another pause, while Leonard lay horror- stricken. Then the delirious man went on wearily : " It is long, long ago. I thought I had forgotten —and I have—I have." He tried to raise himself on his elbow. " Is that the Duke coming ? Tell him I have important despatches for him—Villeroi reported to be advancing ! " He shouted this out in a loud, hoarse tone ; then sinking back, continued for some time to mutter disjointedly to himself sentences in which the names of the Duke of Marl¬ borough, Prince Eugene, and other leaders of the allied forces in the Netherlands in the wars of the years 1704 to 1706, occurred frequently. It was plain that his mind was in the distant past, dwelling on the scenes of his youth and early manhood. And in the intervals of the feverish dream in which Leonard passed the night, he heard the eager, un¬ natural voice talking constantly—only ceasing at dawn, to succumb to the lethargy of exhaustion. At last, to Leonard's great relief, he saw Oakley enter the hut, followed by two natives. " How is he ? " he asked, looking towards Calverley as the Doctor bent over him. "He's very ill, as you can see for yourself," was the grave reply. "He has a nasty wound in the thigh, and one or two other slighter ones. But he has a splendid constitution, and I hope he will pull through. I suppose he has been delirious? Yes; I expected as much. Lord Francis Pole is in a ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. 165 terrible condition, poor fellow—wounded badly both in head and shoulder. He hasn't the faintest notion where he is, of course—keeps moaning alternately about that little Donna Beatriz, and about his Basundis and Mawumbas ; he thinks he is on the march trying to keep them together. I am very anxious about him. But you seem more yourself to-day, as I am glad to see. How's the pain in your head? better? that's right. Now I don't want you to talk, but to sleep as much as you can." "But, Doctor, do let me ask you a question or two. Who is leading the Expedition ? or have Asquith and Godolphin gone on and left us behind ? They are not dead ?" with a start of horror, as the Doctor shook his head sadly. "Not that I know of. But, my dear boy, you must keep calm ; what does it matter to you what is going on? Your business is to try and get well; then we will talk of these things." "But tell me how the fight in the clearing went on after I was knocked down. Did Asquith and Godolphin come up and beat off the savages?" Dr. Oakley turned his head away without re¬ plying. " I don't understand it, " Leonard said in perplexity. "You can't mean that—that they never came up at all, and—that we are prisoners in these people's hands ! Oh no, it's impossible I Tell me that it's not so, Doctor ! " " My dear boy, I can't tell you that, " Dr. Oakley said, slowly and sadly. " As a matter of fact, I have 166 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. not the least idea where our friends are—whether they attempted to rescue us or not. They may have tried to do so, for about three days after we were brought here the war-drums beat and a great body of men marched away in the direction of the river. Whoever they were fighting, I fear these Ngamyeli, as they call themselves, were victorious, to judge from the triumphal songs that went on all the following night, and from " He checked himself suddenly ; he had been about to add— " the cannibal feasting which took place." Alas ! many a poor fellow, black and white, whom Asquith had missed from among the heap of slain in the clearing, had been thus hideously accounted for. "Then we are prisoners?" burst out Leonard. " How many of us ? " "Four—we three in this hut, and Pole. An order was given by the Ngamyeli Chief in the midst of the fight to take the white men alive. Several of the sailors had, however, already fallen—a few must have escaped into the woods with some of our blacks. At all events, we are the only captives whom I have yet seen. I was merely stunned, and am little the worse in health now. As I gave the Ngamyeli to understand, as well as I could, that I was a 'medicine-man', they at last consented to let me do what little I could for Calverley and you." "And we four are prisoners here, alone among these savages ! " repeated Leonard in a dazed way. " But Asquith and Godolphin will—they must— rescue usl" ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. 167 "I hardly see how they can; unless they can prevail on Luzinga to give them a large enough force—these Ngamyeli are very numerous, I fancy. And how do our friends know that we are alive ? " "Good Heavens! Dr. Oakley—you don't think that they would abandon us?" " If they live, they will not, I think. But remem¬ ber that they may believe us dead." " Then they will seek to avenge us ! " "If they can. Yes, we must believe that help will come sooner or later. Besides, when we are all strong and well again we may escape." He looked anxiously towards Calverley. " Poor Calverley ! " groaned Leonard. " His Expe¬ dition shattered and dispersed—his officers lost or wounded—and he himself helpless and raving! This was not what he looked for when he brought us out to Congo ! And yet he has been a prisoner to savages before this and has escaped! Doctor, tell me—will he recover?" "He may; yes, I think he will. But he may be crippled for a time. Ah! if he were once himself again, he would tell us not to despair, but to bide our time. His sanguine spirit might see some way out of even this coil. Have patience, my boy, and keep your heart up; put your trust in Heaven, for that will never fail us. There is One above who rules all, and we shall come out of this as He wills it. Leave it to Him now; don't think about it, or you will make your head as bad as ever again. I must leave you now, I fear; but I shall come in 168 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. again during the day. Try and eat some of this iruit which they have placed beside you. I can do no more for poor Calverley at present, and I don't like leaving Pole alone." " But, Doctor—how long have we been here—in this village, I mean? " "About a fortnight. Now, go to sleep." And the doctor left the hut, followed by his guards. It was long before Leonard managed to obey his last command, and that evening he had a sharp return of pain and fever. The next day passed to him like a miserable dream, with figures sometimes gliding to and fro, and poor Calverley tossing and raving on the further side of the hut. On the following day both were a little better, and Calverley slept almost continuously. The fever was certainly abating, and next morning he awoke, feeble, but sane and lucid. Oakley was terribly afraid of the consequences when he should become aware of their situation; but it was from Leonard that he first heard of it. " What has happened? " he had asked peremptorily. "Where are we? and where are the others ? " And Leonard was obliged to tell him all, breaking it as gently as he could. Calverley reproached himself bitterly for want of care in posting sufficient sentinels before bringing up his men and stores and commencing to make a camp. He should have had the woods all round his proposed position more thoroughly examined But the good treatment the Expedition had ex- ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. IÔQ perienced at the hands of Luzinga and other natives of the neighbourhood had made him foolhardy, he declared. In vain Leonard pointed out that the enemy had probably crept up after Calverley's reconnaissance had been made. "Then why didn't the outposts hear them ? " was the reply. And he brooded and fretted himself into a fever again, and had no further lucid interval until next day. He was terribly distressed to hear of Lord Francis Pole's precarious condition. " I shall never dare to look his father in the face again if anything happens to him," he muttered— "if I ever get away from this, that is. First the men, the slaves, the stores—all which I had paid for with his money; and now his son—one of the finest fellows who ever lived ! " And when Leonard sought to comfort him and deprecate his self-blame, he would burst out, almost fiercely : " Oh, hold your tongue, Leonard, boy ! you know as well as I do that it's I who have brought you into this miserable scrape. I'd much prefer it if you would curse and swear at me for a bit. Why don't you ? I know you want to, when you think of your Guendolen—the beautiful, tall, dark-eyed girl you left on Dartmoor, my poor boy ! Why did I take you away from her ? vain, self-confident fool that I always was ! " And much more in the same strain. "But we all knew, when we started for Africa, that accidents might happen—that we might have the misfortune to be captured, or killed, or " 170 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. "Yes"—bitterly; "but not through my egregious folly. At least, / never thought so, and I don't think, boy, that you did either. Ah! your hero is fallen from his pedestal now ! " "Nothing of the sort, Calverley; it was not your fault, say what you will. Come, what is the use of blaming yourself for what is past? Let us try to think of plans for escaping, when we are able to move, and when Lord Francis is all right—I am sure Oakley will pull him through. The Expedition may not be utterly destroyed yet; we may meet with Godolphin and Asquith again, and Luzinga will help us. Does he not regard you as his brother, since you and he went through that 'blood-brother¬ hood' business together?" Calverley assented thoughtfully. " I wish, " he said presently, " that it had been any two of you except Godolphin and Asquith who had been left to act together upon their own respon¬ sibility. They have fought shy of each other ever since their quarrel and there is no love lost between them. They are like fire and gunpowder; the least touch from the one will bring about an explosion from the other. They will be able to agree together on no one course—the one will impede the other's action. They will spend their time in quarrelling, and in the end nothing will be done." "I think you wrong Asquith, at all events," Leonard said. "I think that in a contingency like this he would probably lay aside his own private animosities and do all he possibly could to help us." ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. 171 "Maybe so, maybe so. I daresay I may take a black view of things. And if Godolphin is as much Frank's friend as he always thought him, he won't desert him in a hurry. Yet—the chance is but slender " And he relapsed into gloomy contemplation of their position. On the following morning, the Ngamyeli Chief or petty king, called by his subjects Mwani Nikanga, entered the hut accompanied by another striking- looking chief; who was, as the prisoners soon heard, Usongé, king of the Bassira tribe, and the friend and ally of Nikanga. The latter was a man of middle height, immensely broad in the chest and shoulders and long in the arms, with strongly pro¬ nounced features of the negro type and very ugly. The Bassira king was, on the contrary, tall and well, though slenderly, made; his carriage was dignified, and his countenance rather handsome. Both wore leopard-skins draped from the right shoulder, a profusion of brass and iron bracelets and anklets, and necklaces of human and other teeth. Nikanga began to question Calverley as to the country he came from and the way in which white people lived. He had never seen a white man until the arrival of the Expedition, and had up to that time disbelieved the stories he had heard about them. Desirous of gratifying the curiosity aroused in him by their appearance on the fatal day of the massacre in the clearing, he had commanded his warriors to spare the lives of the white leaders, whom they had 17 2 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. watched giving orders to their men with regard to forming their camp, and who were easily distin¬ guishable by their superior dress and equipments. Usongé also appeared much interested in the captives. Oakley afterwards told them that he had put many questions to him of the same nature as Nikanga's. The Doctor was now allowed to walk about the village—always, however, closely watched. He had also a number of native patients, who had come to the " White Healer " to be cured of various diseases. A week passed by—and another. Calverley, Leonard, and Lord Francis Pole were all on the road to recovery—but it was a long and painful road, and for every two steps forward they slipped one backward. Lord Francis was still too weak to sit up, though his strength was returning slowly but surely; and Calverley was the most active of the trio, for he could drag himself with infinite difficulty into the next hut to visit his friend. One morning he was sitting at the open entrance to the hut with Leonard, talking to Dr. Oakley, who was standing by; when the sound of a single drum, beaten in a peculiar manner, struck their ears. The drum sounded from some distance off, but was coming nearer. People were rushing out of their huts and talking excitedly. Quite a large crowd had gathered in a few minutes. King Nikanga and his guest and brother potentate, Usongé, came out of their houses and seated themselves on two carved seats in the centre of the village, beneath a large banyan-tree. " The ding-winti drum ! it is the ding-winti accused of witchcraft. 173 drum ! " some women were saying to each other with scared faces. " Nganga-a-ngomio * is coming to tell us who it was who bewitched Lmolu and caused his death. Nganga-a-moko f said it was a case of witchcraft, and prayed that Nximbi ff, whoever he might be, would let the man be. But the witch was pitiless and so Lmolu died, and his brother has consulted the witch-doctor. And Ngan- ga-a-ngombo is coming now and anyone here present may be accused by him of the crime." "It cannot be my husband, at all events," said one who was gaily draped in yellow cloth, which had once formed part of one of Calverley's bales. "For he only returned yesterday from Yariende, when he had gone to visit his uncle. So he is safe." " And my husband was wounded in the fight upon the river, and has been lying sick at home ever since," said a second. "Let us press forward so that we may see all." And they hurried on. And now the drummer appeared upon the scene, followed by the witch-doctor, whose face was covered by a grotesque mask, and whose neck and arms were loaded with chains and strings of strange objects—principally human bones. He wore a short cloak and kilt of rough buffalo-skin and carried in his hands a long and slender spear of peculiar make, and a carved rattle which he shook as he walked along. He saluted the two kings—then squatted ♦The "witch-doctor." t The " charms-doctor." ft The witch. 174 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. down on the ground in the midst of a circular open space which had been cleared for him in the crowd. "I'll go forward and see what is going on; then I'll come back and tell you about it," said Dr. Oakley to his companions. "One can hardly see from here—the people stand so close. I have often wanted to see one of these witch-dances, and there is evidently going to be one. This Lmolu—the dead man this fuss is all about—is, by-the-way, a poor wretch for whom they asked me to prescribe about a week ago. I saw he could not last long then. I hear that he died last night." And nodding to his friends, the doctor strode away and soon was lost in the crowd. Presently Nganga-a-ngombo rose and began to dance. As he went on, his movements became quicker and quicker—he flung and jerked his limbs about with convulsive energy—and at length, foam¬ ing at the mouth, he fell to the ground and lay like one dead. Soon, however, his body began to twitch spasmodically; and suddenly with a bound he was on his feet again, gyrating and whirling about with wilder contortions than before. The crowd around looked on spell-bound, the excitement becoming intense as the witch-doctor once more fell, and lay rolling and writhing in some kind of fit. It was some time before he recovered himself sufficiently to rise from the ground. He began to dance again, very quietly at first, for he was plainly much exhausted. Soon, however, he increased his speed, culminating suddenly in a swift plunge among ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. 175 the crowd, which scattered to right and left before him, leaving Dr. Oakley standing alone. Straight to him Nganga-a-ngombo directed his headlong rush, and passing him with an eldritch shriek, wheeled round, and just pricked him between the shoulders with the point of his light spear. At this a wild yell went up from the entire assemblage, which instantly closed in upon the doctor. The king (Nikanga) rose from his seat with an angry gesture, and shouted out a command. At once a rush was made towards him, half-a-dozen men dragging forward Dr. Oakley, whom they held by the arms, the collar of his shirt, and wherever else they could get hold of him. The witch-doctor's shrill voice arose above the tumult, proclaiming that the deceased Lmolu, who had most certainly been bewitched, had dreamed of the "White Healer" two nights running before his death. This was an infallible proof that the latter was the Nximbi who had done him to death. Besides, did not all the town know that the White Healer had given Lmolu medicine and pronounced spells over him seven days ago ? He must drink the ordeal poison at once, and prove himself innocent or guilty. There was a roar of applause at this, and Nikanga nodded his head. Then there was a brief silence, broken only by Dr. Oakley's voice, while the throng drew closer and closer around him. His friends could not see him now. " What is this ? what is going on ?" exclaimed Calverley, pulling himself to his feet. " Those fiends 176 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. can never have accused him of compassing the man's death because he doctored him ! Great Heaven ! if I could only get to them ! " " They can't—they can't mean to hurt him!" cried Leonard in agony, also trying to rise. There was a dead silence in that engrossed crowd. Were they forcing the unfortunate Englishman to drink the ordeal poison ? And what would be the result ? Suddenly an appalling howl went up to heaven from a hundred throats, and there was a rush to the centre of the throng. For one second Dr. Oakley was seen lying on the ground—and then spears and clubs rose in the air, and " They are murdering him ! " shouted Calverley, rushing from the hut and across the wide open space round which the town was built, towards the spot where the tragedy was taking place. Fury and despair had given him strength. Leonard too ran out of the hut, but after a few paces, reeled and fell. Calverley dashed on, staggering and half- blinded by the sun until a tall native met him. Calverley aimed a blow at him with his fist—then swayed giddily and dropped at the man's feet. Other natives came up, who lifted both Calverley and Leonard from the dry, hot ground, and carrying them back to their hut, laid them down there and left them. CHAPTER XIV. usongé's choice. Some moments later, Leonard roused from his swoon to see Calverley, groaning with anguish, trying to drag himself across the floor to the door of the hut. "Is he dead?" the former asked. "He must be—he was pinned to the ground by a dozen spears ! I want to see what they have done with his dead body. It is horrible—horrible ! Poor Oakley ! the gentlest and kindest of men—to end like this ! And I powerless to help him ! " A young native—the same who usually waited on them—entered the hut with a gourd of water, some cassava-bread, and bananas. Taking Calverley by the shoulders he pulled him unceremoniously back to his sleeping-place, for the Englishman was too weak and exhausted to resist much. " So you saw the witch-dance, mundelé ! " he said. " Ah ! it was a good one ! See what comes of destroying men by witchcraft ! The White Healer was a desperately wicked witch ; he bewitched Lmolu by his spells and medicines so that he died—but w 12 178 THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Nganga-a-ngom bo soon smelt him out, and he also is dead." " What have they done with his body ?" "Ah, we shall see. At all events you will not have it. Be quiet, mundelé; what is he to you? he was only a witch." "He was no witch. You are a fool and a knave. You and your countrymen have got up this charge against him that you might murder him. What did he ever do to you but good ? Has he not healed many of the Ngamyeli of their diseases ? And yet you slay him ! " The native shrugged his shoulders. "He was a witch," he affirmed. "Why, did he not fall into a swoon after taking the ordeal ? If he had been innocent it would not have hurt him. Every child knows that. If you talk to the people like that, mundelé, they will say that you too must be a witch. Why, whoever heard of anyone ques¬ tioning the decision by ordeal ? My father was once accused of witch-craft, and made to drink the poison ; but he was innocent, and the ordeal proved him so. Consequently he is alive to this day. Ah! Nganga- a-ngombo is wise ; a witch cannot long escape him." And shaking his head solemnly, the native with¬ drew, fastening securely over the door-way the piece of matting which always covered it at night. Neither Calverley nor Leonard could have got out of the hut if they had been capable of the exertion ; and they felt now so ill and exhausted that they USONGÉ'S CHOICE. 179 could hardly move. Calverley scarcely spoke a word for the remainder of the day. He lay with his face turned to the wall, and once Leonard heard him sobbing. Late in the evening four men carried in Lord Francis Pole, and left him with them. Since the murder of Oakley he had lain alone in his hut, unable to stir from weakness, and in a terrible state of mind—for he had gathered that in some way or other the genial, kindly little doctor had been done to death by the natives. By this time he was delirious, and an hour later Calverley also was raving. The hideous noise arising from some festivity going on in the village did not conduce to promote slumber; and when, towards morning, Leonard at last fell asleep, he dreamt that he and his friends were in hell, and that the Ngamyeli were the fiends. Next day their gaoler, Lulabla, brought them food and water as usual. There was a malicious grin on his face. "Your friend the witch will not trouble anyone any more now," he said. " Will you tell me what has been done with his body?" Leonard said. " It was all eaten last night," the savage answered, as if the horror which he related were the most natural thing in the world. "Of course it was handed over to Nganga-a-ngombo and the dead man's relations and friends; it was theirs by right. So they held a feast last night—you must have heard the singing." He paused to contemplate l8o THE ADVENTURES OF LEONARD VANE. Leonard, who had uttered a cry, and covered his eyes with his hand. "He may have been your brother, mundelé, but you must remember that he was a wit