Samba

ets the

lp him in his search, and the white man had treated him so kindly that he believed what Nando said. But as the days passed and the canoes went farther and farther up stream, miles away from Banonga, the boy began to be uneasy. More than once he remi

ok upon the boy's face as he followed him about, much as Pat followed Samba. He spoke to Nando about it, but Nando only laughed. Samba began to distrust Nando. What if the man's assurances were false, and there had never been any intention of seeking his father? T

y for certain hardship and many dangers known and unknown. The forest in the neighbourhood of Banonga was as a playground to him; but he could not know what awaited him in a country so remote as this. He had never been more than half a day's journey from home, but he had hear

hip, negro-fashion, a discarded biscuit tin which he had filled with food saved from his meals of the previous day; and Mr. Martindale's knife dangled from his waist cord. It was easy to slip a

. But Samba reflected. Pat did not belong to him, and he had never stolen anything in his life. The dog's master had been good to him: it would be unkind to rob him. And Pat was a fighter: he was as brave as Samba himself, but a great deal more noisy and much less discreet. Samba knew the ways of the forest; it was wise to avoid the dangerous beasts, to match their stealth with stealth; Pat would attack them, and certainly come off worst. No, Pat

s he would at least be safe from pursuit, whatever other dangers he might encounter. At intervals along the bank, too, lay many villages: and Samba was less afraid of beasts than of men. So, choosing by the

angled. At midday he sat down by the edge of a trickling stream to eat his dinner of manioc, then set off again. The forest was now denser than anything to which he had been accustomed near Banonga, and he went more warily, his eyes keen to mark the tracks of animals, his ears alive to catch every sound.

ion in decay. Samba's teeth chattered with the cold, and he could not help longing for Barney's cosy hut and the warm companionship of the terrier. It was time to sleep. Could

ospitable branch, and with his knife whittled a hard dry stick to a sharp point. He selected then a square lump of wood, cut a little hollow in it, and, holding his pointed stick upright in the hollow, whirled it about rapidly between his hands until first smoke then a spark appeared. Having kindled his fire he banked it down with damp moss he found hard by, so as to prevent it from blazing too high and endangering his tree or attracting attention. Then he clim

ave his perch until the glimmer of dawn, pale though it was, gave him light enough to see by. He was ravenously hungry, and did not spare the food left in his tin; many a time he had found food in t

ppened. In this part of the forest beasts appeared to be few. Now and again he heard the rapping noise made by the soko, the gibber of monkeys, the squawk of parrots: once h

brown tough rind. When the evening was drawing on he could find no dry fuel for a fire, and now, instead of seeking a branch for a sleeping place, he looked for a hollow tree which would give him some shelter from the cold damp air of night. Having

tation provided still less food, only a few jack fruit and the wild fruit of the motanga rewarding his search. He was so hungry at midday that he was reduced to collecting slugs

he tree. With all his forest lore, Samba was surprised to find that a python could move so quickly. The instant he heard the angry hiss he crouched low against the trunk, thankful that the reptile had chosen a branch on the other side. Armed only with a knife, he knew himself no match for a twenty-foot python; had he not seen a young hippopotamus strangled by a python no larger than this? Like Brer Rabbit, Samba

of which to make a scanty meal. Constant walking and privation were telling on his frame; his eyes were less bright, his step was less elastic. But there was a great heart within him; he plodded on; he had set out to find his fath

. In the centre of an open space, scarcely twenty feet across, a small man, lighter in hue than the majority of Congolese natives, was struggling to free himself from the grip of a serval which had buried its claws deep in his body and thigh. Two other small men, less even than Samba in height, were leaping and yelling around their comrade, apparently instructing him how to act, though neither made use of the light spears they carried to attack th

ith the other hand. Even a sturdily-built European might well have failed to gain the mastery in a fight with such a foe, and the little man had neither the strength nor the staying power to hold

lutching his broad knife he bounded into the open, reached the fainting man in two leaps, and plunged the blade deep into the creature's side behind the shoulder.

d about from place to place in the forest, and levied toll upon the plantations of larger men. The two little men came to him and patted his arms and jabbered together; but he understood nothing of what they said. By signs he explained to them that he was hungry. Then, leaving their wounded comrade to his fate, they took Samba by the hands and led him rapidly into the forest, following a path which could scarcely have been detected by any ex

one showed any concern for the man left to die; the Bambute acknowledge no ties, and seem to have little family affection. A plentiful dinner of antelope fl

ed: his own parents were alive, he said; he wished for no others. This made the chief angry. The chiefs of some of the big men had often adopted pigmy boys and made slaves of them; it was now his

ifty or sixty bananas, and eat them all. True, he lay moaning and groaning all night, but next morning would be quite ready to gorge an equal meal. Since they did not cultivate the ground themselves, Samba wondered where they obtained their plentiful supply of bananas and manioc. He learnt by and by that they appropriated what they ple

followed up, he struck off through the forest as rapidly as he could. With plentiful food he had recovered his old strength and vigour, and he strode along fleetly, finding his way chiefly by the nature of the ground beneath his feet; for there was no true path

his time were almost certainly on his track. At the best he could hardly have got more than two miles' start. As he threaded his way through the brushwood, hacking with his knife at obstructive creepers, and receiving ma

etwork of interlacing branches, one tree encroaching on another. Choosing a bough overhanging the brook, just above his head, Samba drew himself up into the tree, taking care that no spots of water were left on the branch to betray him. Then, clambering nimbly like a monkey from bough to bough, he made a p

n he liked. There was not only the rustle and creak of parting leaves and bending twigs, and the crack of small branches that snapped under his hand; but his intrusion scared the natural denizens of the forest, and they clattered away with loud cries of alarm-grey parrots in hundred

n two forest giants in close proximity disclosed to his view a stretch of some twenty yards of the stream which he had just crossed on his primeval suspension bridge. What caused him to start and draw himself together, shrinking behind a leafy screen thick enough to hide him even from the practised eyes of the little forest men? There, in the bed of the stream, glancing this way and that, at the water, the banks, the trees on eve

n cast back to the point where they had lost the scent. Could they pick it up again-trace him to the tree and follow him up? He could not tell. They must have been close upon him when he climb