Part 53 (1/2)

A few hours afterwards, 'Ngaloo might have been seen marching about among Harry's troops, with a sottish kind of a smile on his face.

'Ngaloo was taking lessons in modern warfare. He told Harry, when he met him, that he meant to remodel his own army upon the principles of Googagoo's.

The cross-bows greatly took his fancy. So did the amazons.

He could not tire looking at them, and as soon as he got home, he said, he would arm and drill every one of his wives, and make amazons of them.

”And if they do not be good soldiers,” he added, ”why, there is the tongs.”

He snapped that weapon as he spoke, and cackled and laughed as if he had said something very clever and witty.

The next stupid thing that 'Ngaloo did was to take Harry by the arm, and tell him with a burst of confidence, which was no doubt meant to be very friendly, that when they returned to King Kara-Kara's, and captured the white slaves, Harry should have no less than two of them, and that he, 'Ngaloo, would only keep four to himself.

Harry burst out laughing in the great king's face; but instead of being offended, 'Ngaloo was delighted, for he thought that Generalissimo Harry Milvaine was pleasedly acquiescing in his pretty little arrangement.

'Ngaloo was so delighted that he must needs go and help himself to another dose of his brain-devouring rum or fire-water.

Then he turned his attentions towards Googagoo. He made this honest king a very long speech indeed, laudatory of his own exceeding greatness, and of the comparative insignificance of every other king and chief in creation.

To all of this Googagoo listened with the politeness and urbanity inseparable from his nature.

But the king of the hundred islands, in a return speech, reminded 'Ngaloo that however great and glorious we were in this world, we must all die one day and go to another, where the Great Spirit would judge us according to the deeds done in the flesh, or forgive us if we trusted the Son that He had long, long ago sent to save us.

Alas! 'Ngaloo was not much impressed by the earnest words of Googagoo.

He was silent for a short time, as if in deep thought; then he spoke to the following effect:

”Very likely all you say is true; but I suppose in the next world I will be just as big a chief, and have more territory than I have in this.

For,” he added, ”there is no getting over the greatness of 'Ngaloo.”

It took the united armies a whole week to reach King Kara-Kara's country.

Harry had taken the precaution to keep his people quite separate and well in advance of 'Ngaloo's, and gave strict orders to Walda and his other officers to watch for the slightest signs of, treachery on the part of 'Ngaloo.

Our hero mistrusted him, and perhaps he had reason; but, on the other hand, he need not have done so either, for ”the greatest king in all the world” was so frequently overcome by frequent applications to his fire-water commissariat, that he had to be carried in a gra.s.s-cloth hammock nearly all the way.

It was forest land mostly which they traversed, woods filled with chattering monkeys and bright-winged silent birds, woods in which lions roared and hyaenas laughed all night long, woods often dripping with dank dews, and at times so dark by day that it was difficult to find a way through them.

But anon they would come to open glades and glens among the hills and mountains, with clear streams rippling through them, in which many a l.u.s.ty trout gambolled and fed, with sweet bird-voices and the murmur of insect life, making music in the air, every creature happy and busy, because of the suns.h.i.+ne that gladdened all.

They came at last to the foot of the mountain or conical hill, where Harry's unhappy s.h.i.+pmates were imprisoned.

Some slight show of resistance was made by those beneath, while those at the top and on guard rolled down great stones and rocks upon them.

But Harry's brave fellows, he himself at the head of them--he well knew how to climb a hill--took the place with one wild determined rush.

Many of the a.s.saulters were wounded and some were killed with the descending stones, so that their savage instincts got the better of their judgment, and in spite of all that Harry could do, an ugly scene of carnage took place as soon as the fort was captured. Harry had found his men at last. And not a whit too soon, for at the very moment when, waving his victorious sword on high, he scaled the last parapet, they were being ordered out for instant execution.

Ordered out? From what? Out, dear reader, from one of the most loathsome dungeons it is possible to imagine, dark, slimy, dismal, and filled with noisome vapours, a dungeon that for months they had shared with centipedes and slimy, slow-creeping lizards.