Page images
PDF
EPUB

like slaves; their spears rust. Where are the white men? Their villages are everywhere, and their shadow covers the land. Where is this village? Its walls are fallen; its hearths are cold; weeds grow where you are sitting."

He ceased, and fell exhausted and panting on the ground. The councillors were trembling with excitement, and when Choko asked the opinion of the eldest, all lifted their spears and shouted that MacGregor must die. Hadj Ali followed up his advantage and suggested that to kill the white man outright would merely rid the world of only one dangerous person, and would do little to prevent the coming European invasion which the witch-doctor had prophesied; whereas to kill him by torture, and let the circumstances of his death be known to his tribe, would deter others from following in his path and preserve the integrity of the Marruma people. Moreover, if the white man's death were slow he might in his dying agony be induced to reveal information about his people that would be politically useful. The councillors shouted approval, and Choko, prompted not by mere bloodthirstiness but by motives of high state policy, decreed that the white man should die by torture next day, that his few remaining followers should witness his death. and that these should then be charged to bear a message to the others of his race, to the effect that a similar death awaited any of them who dared to set foot in the territory of the Marruma tribe.

The meeting broke up and Choko strolled over to see the goats driven into their pens. As he passed his own huts Tembo's mother ran out and called him. "Father of Tembo, father of Tembo, listen." "What news?"

Choko was so great a personage that none but the highest dignitaries in the community might address him by name. To his wives his

"Your son. He is now sitting with the stranger and surely he will be bewitched. Send and call him away."

"Why did you allow this?"

"Indeed, I did not see him go, and when I learned where he was I was afraid."

The hut reserved for strangers was peculiarly constructed. Visitors to the village must of course be sheltered, but it was expedient to exercise a certain amount of supervision over them lest they should work magic against their hosts. For this reason a small peep-hole had been made under the eaves of the hut on the side 'farthest from the door. Through this it was possible without being seen or heard to overlook a stranger and see if he was behaving himself. Choko made a detour, approached the hut from behind and looked through the hole. His son was sitting by the stranger's side sharing with him a pile of millet-meal cakes, smeared with honey, that had been prepared for his supper.

"Tell me another tale such as your mother told you," demanded Tembo, licking his fingers and turning over the remaining cakes to see which had most honey on it.

MacGregor lifted him on to his knees, and pulling one fat toe after another told him the story which begins, "one little pig went to market," adapting it to the range of Tembo's environment.

"Shee! That is not the right game," laughed Tembo. "Thus is it done." He grasped MacGregor's wrist with one hand and with the other pulled each finger in turn, chanting. "This is the shaky little finger. This is his elder brother. This one stops in the middle. This one is the pot-scraper. And this," he struck MacGregor's

name was so sacred that they would utter neither it nor any word that resembled it.

thumb and squealed with glee "is an old fool; let us beat him."

The friendly relations between Tembo and the stranger made the situation very difficult. Choko's favor could always be gained by any one who secured Tembo's goodwill, for his son and the welfare of his tribe were the only things for which he cared. He had condemned MacGregor to death in the interests of his people, but if the stranger had bewitched the little boy, and could not be forced to remove the spell, the consequence of killing him might be disastrous; he might even compel Tembo to accompany him to the spirit-world. In great perplexity Choko walked round to the door of the hut and entered.

"Go your way, Tembo," he said sternly.

But Tembo was the only person who ever defied the chief of the Marruma. He clasped MacGregor's leg with two sticky hands, and stood firm. "I will stay," he said. "He is my brother; I have given him all my goats, and we have exchanged names. He is now Tembo and my name is-is-what is it?-[Tembo gathered his energies for an effort] Magleko."

Among some tribes the ceremony of exchanging names as a token of brotherhood is considered as sacred as is a marriage-vow among Christians; among others it may be lightly broken at the wish of either party. Choko would have been justified in refusing to recognize it on the grounds of Tembo's youth and rank, but he was not accustomed to cross his son's wishes. He sat down and watched the pair in silence. After awhile Tembo, feeling that he had gained his point, began to search MacGregor's pockets for objects of interest.

"My headmen say that you must die," said Choko, presently.

MacGregor affected indifference. "It is easy to kill a naked man," he answered.

Macmillan's Magazine.

Tembo looked up. "He shall not die," he declared stoutly. "He is my brother, and if any touch him I will kill them." He grasped his father's ponderous spear, made a great effort to lift it above his head, overbalanced himself, fell to the ground, and sat there howling.

The discomfiture of MacGregor's champion was so pathetically ludicrous that both men laughed. Choko picked up his little son and tried to console him, making rash promises of gifts if only he would stop crying, but Tembo was not to be comforted. "I don't want anything," he cried between his sobs. "I want him; he is my brother."

"Can you run, stranger?" asked Choko, when Tembo's sobs had partly subsided.

"I cannot, I am too old."

once

"Perhaps; yet I think you will run more before you die. Listen. When night falls there will be a dance. When all are dancing one of your servants shall come to you bearing food enough for one month. Go then quickly, while I am in the same mind. To-morrow, very early, at the time when the fowls come down from their roosts, my people will come to me saying that you have fled. Then I will call to me the young men who can run swiftly, offering a goat for whoever brings your head. If you escape them and reach your own people, tell them that Choko needs ornaments for his gateposts, and the head of the next man of your race that comes within his country shall hang there. Come, Tembo."

"Go, little one," said MacGregor. "Stay; here is a knife. Keep it in memory of the stupid white man who could not tell properly the story of the rabbit. It was the knife of my son, just such a one as you, who died many rains ago. NOW run; your father calls."

Ralph A. Durand.

THE POETRY OF BRIDGES.

[blocks in formation]

idea of a bridge calls up the romance of difficulty overcome and desire fulfilled.

It is a voyage compressed into a walk, it is a substitute for flight, and for a swim. It lets loose a procession of those who otherwise would have to stop on one side of a river or a creek, or narrow channel of the sea, and it does not make the procession burrow like a mole, as a tunnel does, but it carries the men and women safely over in the light of day, with all the pomp of sun and air, and all the feeling of expectation and looking with the eyes upon the place that was so near and yet so far, before the bridge was built. For creatures that have no wings a bridge is the one solution that meets the old desire,

Tendebantque manus ripæ ulterioris amore;

and as we gaze upon some ancient structure like that of Ayr we can but dream, with pleasure, of the generations of men who have passed over it with light or weary feet and had their will upon the other side:

Ye dainty Deacons, and ye douce Con

veners,

To whom our moderns are but causeycleaners;

Ye godly Councils wha hae bless'd this town:

Ye godly Brethren of the sacred gown, Wha meekly gae your hurdies to the smiters:

And (what would now be strange) ye godly Writers:

A ye douce folk I've borne aboon the broo.

Were ye but here, what would ye say or do!

But besides this first thought of what a bridge stands for, there are not a few others that help to enrich the fasci

nation. As Wordsworth stood on Westminster Bridge in the early dawn of a September day he found the place gave him a certain detachment, like that of a ship thrust out a little from land. When you are in the wood you cannot see it for the trees, and when you are in a city you cannot see it for the houses; and there may be no hill at hand to climb, and one cannot always ascend towers and spires. But if you may but walk to the middle of a bridge you will perchance get a sight hidden from street or square or court, and then you will, if you have the artist's or the poet's eye, see what moved him to write:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Then besides what you see from the bridge when you look to the land, there is also (not forgotten by Wordsworth, what may meet your eye when you look below the bridge, and gaze up or down the stream, or perhaps watch its eddying circles close beneath your gaze. The movement of boats passing up stream slowly and painfully, or coming down in delightful pace and ease; the look of a pair or perhaps a small flock of water-birds in the distance, or near at hand; all the romance of an old wharf stretching from the bank into the water, with its suggestion of leisurely merchandise, of lading and unlading-these are the sights to be seen better from a bridge than from anywhere else, and which have stayed the feet of many a passenger, and made him give a few minutes from care or commerce to feed the hunger for beauty that lives in the eyes.

And away from cities and towns, in' the quiet of some retired village, or it may be in the very depth of fields or heath, where only some lonely road has to cross a stream, you will now and then come upon an old bridge which, to a few men or children of the countryside is a favorite haunt and restingplace, for what it has to show. The shepherd and laborer know it, or the boy whose work it is to tend a few cows turned out to graze by the roadside when the meadows are shut up for hay. Let us look with one of them as he leans over the low stone wall and see what it is that makes him SO quietly intent. To-day it is not the water-rat that holds him, or the moorhen swimming in and out of the rushes lower down, or the lampreys clinging like Medusa's hair round a stone: he is in a moralizing mood, but keeps it, happily, till the very end:

Sauntering at ease I often love to lean O'er old bridge walls, and mark the flood below,

Whose ripples, through the weeds of oily green,

Like happy travellers chatter as they go;

And view the sunshine dancing on the arch,

Time keeping to the merry waves beneath.

While on the banks some drooping blossoms parch,

Thirsting for water in the day's hot

breath,

Right glad of mud-drops splash'd upon their leaves,

By cattle plunging from the steepy brink;

Each water-flow'r more than its share receives,

And revels to its very cups in drink:

So in the world, some strive, and fare but ill,

While others riot, and have plenty still.

That was John Clare's summer picture, but such a lover of old bridges is

he that even in winter he cannot resist stopping and leaning in the same place, heedless of cold; and perhaps this other scene may be more fitting to the sea

son:

On Lolham brigs, in wild and lonely mood,

I've seen the winter floods their gambols play

Through each old arch, that trembled while I stood

Bent o'er its wall to watch the dash

ing spray,

As its old station would be wash'd away.

Crash came the ice against the piers, and then

A shudder jarred the arches; yet once more

It breasted raving waves, and stood again

To wait the shock, as stubborn as before.

White foam, brown-crested with the russet soil,

As washed from new ploughed lands, would dart beneath

Then round and round in thousand eddies boil

On t'other side;-then pause as if for breath,

One minute then engulfed-like life in death.

So far we have but touched the way in which a bridge appeals to man's

The Outlook.

heart through his eyes, and noted some of the points by which that appeal is made. But through other senses also the appeal comes:-

I stood on the bridge at midnight
As the clocks were striking the hour.

The lines bring us back to the city with its multitudinous voices of the daytime hushed into silence, with the sound from the clock-tower booming out clear and heavy on the empty air, and only that other soft rushing sound of the water below, pouring through the channel, under the bridge's long black rafters,

As sweeping and eddying through them

Rose the belated tide.

Life and Time seem to make these voices their own and speak to us in a language only a little understood, and yet in tones not wholly sad, however deep; not leaving us quite to ourselves on an island of being, cut off from all beside, but bridging over the gulfs that we see on this side and on that, with the note of a friend's voice on the other shore.

THE LITERARY COINER.*

It may sound paradoxical to say, and yet, for all that, it is a melancholy truth, that fraud and imposture, variously modified, have played almost as important a part, both in history and literature, as anything which is genuine, and really is what it purports to be. On one series of barefaced fictions, the "False Decretals," concocted either in the eighth or ninth century.

"Literary Forgeries." By J. A. Farrer. With an Introduction by Andrew Lang. Longmans, 1907.

was based the great fabric of Papal supremacy over the different national Churches; on another, concocted about the same time, the "Donation of Constantine," was based the pretension of the Popes to the sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the west. On the forgeries of Hardynge and others rested the chief justification of our own Kings to the suzerainty of Scotland. To an impudent forgery, almost certainly the work of Dr. Gauden, afterwards Bishop of Worcester,

« PreviousContinue »