The stream nowhere exceeded 150 feet in breadth. The floating islands moved at the same pace as the canoe, and except from some unforeseen circumstance, there could be no apprehension of a collision. The banks were destitute of human inhabitants, but were richly clothed with wild plants, of which the blossoms were of the most gorgeous colours; the Asclepias, the gladiolus, the clematis, lilies, aloes, Umbelliferae, arborescent ferns and fragrant shrubs, combining on either hand to make a border of surpassing beauty. Here and there the forest extended to the very shore, and copal-trees, acacias with their stiff foliage, bauhinias clothed with lichen, fig-trees with their masses of pendant roots, and other trees of splendid growth rose to the height of a hundred feet, forming a shade which the rays of the sun utterly failed to penetrate.
Occasionally a wreath of creepers would form an arch from shore to shore, and on the 27th, to Jack’s great delight, a group of monkeys was seen crossing one of these natural bridges, holding on most carefully by their tails, lest the aerial pathway should snap beneath their weight. These monkeys, belonging to a smaller kind of chimpanzee, which are known in Central Africa by the name of sokos, were hideous creatures with low foreheads, bright yellow faces, and long, upright ears; they herd in troops of about ten, bark like dogs, and are much dreaded by the natives on account of their alleged propensity to carry off young children; there is no telling what predatory designs they might have formed against Master Jack if they had spied him out, but Dick’s artifice effectually screened him from their observation.
Twenty miles further on the canoe came to a sudden standstill.
“What’s the matter now, captain?” cried Hercules from the stern.
“We have drifted onto a grass barrier, and there is no hope for it, we shall have to cut our way through,” answered Dick.
“All right, I dare say we shall manage it,” promptly replied Hercules, leaving his rudder to come in front.
The obstruction was formed by the interlacing of masses of the tough, glossy grass known by the name of tikatika, which, when compressed, affords a surface so compact and resisting that travellers have been known by means of it to cross rivers dry-footed. Splendid specimens of lotus plants had taken root amongst the vegetation.
As it was nearly dark, Hercules could leave the boat without much fear of detection, and so effectually did he wield his hatchet that, in two hours after the stoppage, the barrier was hewn asunder, and the light craft resumed the channel.
It must be owned that it was with a sense of reluctance that Benedict felt the boat was again beginning to move forward; the whole voyage appeared to him to be perfectly uninteresting and unnecessary; not a single insect had he observed since he left Kazonndé, and his most ardent wish was that he could return there and regain possession of his invaluable tin box. But an unlooked for gratification was in store for him.
Hercules, who had been his pupil long enough to have an eye for the kind of creature Benedict was ever trying to secure, on coming back from his exertions on the grass-barrier, brought a horrible-looking animal, and submitted it to the sullen entomologist.
“Is this of any use to you?”
The amateur lifted it up carefully, and having almost poked it into his nearsighted eyes, uttered a cry of delight—
“Bravo, Hercules! you are making amends for your past mischief; it is splendid! it is unique!”
“Is it really very curious?” said Mrs. Weldon.
“Yes, indeed,” answered the enraptured naturalist; “it is really unique; it belongs to neither of the ten orders; it can be classed neither with the Coleoptera, Neuroptera, nor to the Hymenoptera: if it had eight legs I should know how to classify it; I should place it amongst the second section of the Arachnida; but it is a hexapod, a genuine hexapod; a spider with six legs; a grand discovery; it must be entered on the catalogue as ‘Hexapodes benedictus.’ ” Once again mounted on his hobby, the worthy enthusiast continued to discourse with an unwonted vivacity to his indulgent if not over attentive audience.
Meanwhile the canoe was steadily threading its way over the dark waters, the silence of the night broken only by the rattle of the scales of some crocodiles, or by the snorting of hippopotamuses in the neighbourhood. Once the travellers were startled by a loud noise, such as might proceed from some ponderous machinery in motion: it was caused by a troop of a hundred or more elephants that, after feasting through the day on the roots of the forest, had come to quench their thirst at the riverside.
But no danger was to be apprehended; lighted by the pale moon that rose over the tall trees, the canoe throughout the night pursued in safety its solitary voyage.
XVIII
An Anxious Voyage
Thus the canoe drifted on for a week, the forests that for many miles had skirted the river ultimately giving place to extensive jungles that stretched far away to the horizon. Destitute, fortunately for the travellers, of human inhabitants, the district abounded in a large variety of animal life; zebras, elands, caamas, sported on the bank, disappearing at nightfall before howling leopards and roaring lions.
It was Dick’s general custom, as he lay to for a while in the afternoon, to go ashore in search of food, and as the manioc, maize, and sorghum that were to be found were of a wild growth and consequently not fit for consumption, he was obliged to run the risk of using his gun. On the 4th of July he succeeded by a single shot in killing a pokoo, a kind of antelope about five feet long, with annulated horns, a tawny skin dappled with bright spots, and a white
