Jules Verne For Children: 16 Incredible Tales of Mystery, Courage & Adventure (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
it was time for this long series of moral and physical trials to come to an end. Although drifting on this rapid river was not so fatiguing as had been the walking through the first forests near the coast, still, the excessive heat of the day, the damp mists at night, and the incessant attacks of the mosquitoes, made this descent of the watercourse very painful. It was time to arrive somewhere, and yet Dick Sand could see no limit to the journey. Would it last eight days or a month? Nothing indicated an answer. Had the river flowed directly to the west, they would have already reached the northern coast of Angola; but the general direction had been rather to the north, and they could travel thus a long time before reaching the coast.
Dick Sand was, therefore, extremely anxious, when a sudden change of direction took place on the morning of the 14th of July.
Little Jack was in the front of the boat, and he was gazing through the thatch, when a large expanse of water appeared on the horizon.
“The sea!” he shouted.
At this word Dick Sand trembled, and came close to little Jack.
“The sea?” he replied. “No, not yet; but at least a river which flows toward the west, and of which this stream is only a tributary. Perhaps it is the Zaire itself.”
“May God grant that is!” replied Mrs. Weldon.
Yes; for if this were the Zaire or Congo, which Stanley was to discover a few years later, they had only to descend its course so as to reach the Portuguese settlements at its mouth. Dick Sand hoped that it might be so, and he was inclined to believe it.
During the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th of July, in the midst of a more fertile country, the boat drifted on the silvery waters of the river. They still took the same precautions, and it was always a mass of herbs that the current seemed to carry on its surface.
A few days more, and no doubt the survivors of the Pilgrim would see the termination of their miseries. Self-sacrifice had been shared in by all, and if the young novice would not claim the greater part of it, Mrs. Weldon would demand its recognition for him.
But on the 18th of July, during the night, an incident took place which compromised the safety of the party. Toward three o’clock in the morning a distant noise, still very low, was heard in the west. Dick Sand, very anxious, wished to know what caused it. While Mrs. Weldon, Jack, and Cousin Benedict slept in the bottom of the boat, he called Hercules to the front, and told him to listen with the greatest attention. The night was calm. Not a breeze stirred the atmosphere.
“It is the noise of the sea,” said Hercules, whose eyes shone with joy.
“No,” replied Dick Sand, holding down his head.
“What is it then?” asked Hercules.
“Wait until day; but we must watch with the greatest care.”
At this answer, Hercules returned to his post.
Dick Sand stood in front, listening all the time. The noise increased. It was soon like distant roaring.
Day broke almost without dawn. About half a mile down the river, just above the water, a sort of cloud floated in the atmosphere. But it was not a mass of vapor, and this became only too evident, when, under the first solar rays, which broke in piercing it, a beautiful rainbow spread from one bank to the other.
“To the shore!” cried Dick Sand, whose voice awoke Mrs. Weldon. “It is a cataract! Those clouds are spray! To the shore, Hercules!”
Dick Sand was not mistaken. Before them, the bed of the river broke in a descent of more than a hundred feet, and the waters rushed down with superb but irresistible impetuosity. Another half mile, and the boat would have been engulfed in the abyss.
CHAPTER XIX
S. V.
With a vigorous plow of the oar, Hercules had pushed toward the left bank. Besides, the current was not more rapid in that place, and the bed of the river kept its normal declivity to the falls. As has been said, it was the sudden sinking of the ground, and the attraction was only felt three or four hundred feet above the cataract.
On the left bank were large and very thick trees. No light penetrated their impenetrable curtain. It was not without terror that Dick Sand looked at this territory, inhabited by the cannibals of the Lower Congo, which he must now cross, because the boat could no longer follow the stream. He could not dream of carrying it below the falls. It was a terrible blow for these poor people, on the eve perhaps of reaching the Portuguese villages at its mouth. They were well aided, however. Would not Heaven come to their assistance?
The boat soon reached the left bank of the river. As it drew near, Dingo gave strange marks of impatience and grief at the same time.
Dick Sand, who was watching the animal—for all was danger—asked himself if some beast or some native was not concealed in the high papyrus of the bank. But he soon saw that the animal was not agitated by a sentiment of anger.
“One would say that Dingo was crying!” exclaimed little Jack, clasping Dingo in his two arms.
Dingo escaped from him, and, springing into the water, when the boat was only twenty feet from the bank, reached the shore and disappeared among the bushes.
Neither Mrs. Weldon, nor Dick Sand, nor Hercules, knew what to think.
They landed a few moments after in the middle of a foam green with hairweed and other aquatic plants. Some kingfishers, giving a sharp whistle, and some little herons, white as snow, immediately flew away. Hercules fastened the boat firmly to a mangrove stump, and all climbed up the steep bank overhung by large trees.
There was no path in this forest. However, faint traces on the ground indicated that this place had been recently visited by natives or animals.
Dick Sand, with loaded gun, and Hercules, with his hatchet in his hand, had not gone ten steps before they found Dingo again. The dog, nose to the ground, was following a scent, barking all the time. A first inexplicable presentiment had drawn the animal to this part of the shore, a second led it into the depths of the wood. That was clearly visible to all.
“Attention!” said Dick Sand. “Mrs. Weldon, Mr. Benedict, Jack, do not leave us! Attention, Hercules!”
At this moment Dingo raised its head, and, by little bounds, invited them to follow.
A moment after Mrs. Weldon and her companions rejoined it at the foot of an old sycamore, lost in the thickest part of the wood.
There was a dilapidated hut, with disjoined boards, before which Dingo was barking lamentably.
“Who can be there?” exclaimed Dick Sand.
He entered the hut.
Mrs. Weldon and the others followed him.
The ground was scattered with bones, already bleached under the discoloring action of the atmosphere.
“A man died in that hut!” said Mrs. Weldon.
“And Dingo knew that man!” replied Dick Sand. “It was, it must have been, his master! Ah, see!”
Dick Sand pointed to the naked trunk of the sycamore at the end of the hut.
There appeared two large red letters, already almost effaced, but which could be still distinguished.
Dingo had rested its right paw on the tree, and it seemed to indicate them.
“S. V.!” exclaimed Dick Sand. “Those letters which Dingo knew among all others! Those initials that it carries on its collar!”
He did not finish, and stooping, he picked up a little copper box, all oxydized, which lay in a corner