Part 51 (1/2)

Where is the Eye? Look. Whither shall we look? Look far away towards the western horizon yonder. Are those the crimson clouds that herald the sunset? No, they are too low down on the plain, and a rolling canopy of blue is rising up and meeting the sun.

The southern woods are all on fire. The battlefield itself is soon--

”Wreathed in sable smoke.”

And out from the fire, it would seem, there now rushes an enemy that King Kara-Kara has but little reckoned on meeting.

No wonder he withdraws his men from the sadly weakened phalanxes of the island king, and tries to make his way southwards.

Here he is opposed by the stern fierce amazons, and their ranks are soon strengthened by a cloud of savages, spear-armed, who rush up behind them and fall upon the enemy in their front.

”Scarcely can they see their foes, Until at weapon's point they close, They close in clouds of dust and smoke, With sword-sway and with lance's thrust; And such a yell is there Of sudden and portentous birth, As if men fought upon the earth, And fiends in upper air; Oh! life and death are in the shout, Recoil and rally, charge and rout, And triumph and despair.”

Neither King Googagoo nor Harry could tell what the meaning of this sudden attack on the ranks of Kara-Kara meant. It seemed like an interposition of Providence. So, indeed, they both considered it, and doubtless they were right.

Meanwhile Kara's army, now sadly thinned, fought like veritable fiends.

Escape there seemed none.

The hills to the east were guarded by the island men, there was the lake behind them, the new foe in front, and the woods in the west were all ablaze.

The route was soon complete and the carnage dreadful to contemplate.

So terrible are these fights between African kings that it is no exaggeration to say, that out of all the thousands that Kara-Kara had brought into the field hardly one thousand escaped alive, and they had to force their way through the burning forest, many falling by fire who had come scathless from the field.

King Kara-Kara was among the killed.

He was found, next day, in the midst of a heap of the bodies of those who had rallied round him to the last--

”His back to the field, and his feet to the foe.”

In his hand he still clasped the spear he would never use again.

”Reckless of life, he'd desperate fought, And fallen on the plain; And well in death his trusty brand, Firm clenched within his manly hand, Beseemed the monarch slain.”

Book 4--CHAPTER SIX.

THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED--AFTER THE BATTLE--DEATH OF SOMALI JACK.

Before we can understand the seeming mystery that clings to the end of the last chapter of this tale, we must go a little way back, both as regards time and s.p.a.ce.

All the men Harry had with him in the unfortunate scuttled dhow at the time she was beached were taken, along with little Raggy, by the so-called brother of Mahmoud into the far interior of Africa, and there sold or bartered away as slaves, and, as we already know, Suliemon made what dealers term ”a pretty penny” out of the nefarious transaction.

Escape for the poor fellows so banished seemed impossible, for, although they had had an idea, from the appearance of the sun and stars, that they had been all the time journeying steadily west, with either a little angle of south or of north in it, so cruelly long had the route been, so terrible had been their hards.h.i.+ps, and so great their dangers, that the idea of returning was considered by them as entirely out of the question. Hope did not quite forsake them, however, but they had no means of communicating with the outer world--that is, the world beyond this dark continent. Occasionally they cut letters in the hides of the wild beasts that had been slain, as these skins often found their way to the markets of Zanzibar and Lamoo.

Who knows, they told each other, but some one may see these letters, and come to our a.s.sistance!

But alas! though the letters were seen, and marvelled at and talked about, no government, either English or French, deemed it worth while to send a search and relief expedition.

Yet those ten poor fellows had wives and little ones, had sisters and brothers, and fathers and mothers at home, who were, like Harry's parents, mourning for them as dead.