Then I said, taking him by the arm and leading him a little aside, “Can you bear this any longer? For I cannot. I am minded to flee this place, Cristovão.”
“On your oath?”
“Indeed. This very night will I go, for I think it better for me to venture my life for my liberty than to live any longer in this miserable town,” said I, the words rising up out of some powerful spring within my soul where they had too long been penned.
He pressed his face close to mine and grinned widely, so that I saw a fortune in yellow gold inlaid into his crooked teeth, and he said, “I will go with you, Andres, and we will take our risks together.” And he clasped his arm against mine in an intricate and interwoven way that was, I think, a sign of blood-bond among the Cigano kind.
So were we resolved, and then we were swept along in our own vigor, never hesitating. Whilst we worked we planned our plan, which was to steal a canoe and slip from the fort under darkness, not just the two of us but a whole band of escapers, for we agreed there would be safety in numbers when we were abroad in the jungle. Cristovão said he would procure ten of his fellows to go with us, and so he did, seven Portugals and three more Gypsies, all of them known to me as strong and trustworthy men.
In that tropic land the night falls swiftly once the sun goes away, and if there is no moon the darkness is absolute, owing to the thickness of the jungle vapors and the heaviness of the twined vines that tangle with one another through the tops of the trees. This was a night of no moon; and in the second hour of darkness we rose from our huts and went out from the compound surrounding the fort. We aroused no suspicion among the guards because we did go a few men at a time, and also because that they were lulled by the heat and sluggishness of the place, that in time can turn even the most vigilant of men into an imbecile and dullard.
Through the moist and fevered glades of that close-walled jungle we went one by one until we were at the little quay beside the river. There I found that Cristovão and another Gypsy had overcome the sentinel of the canoes. Simao, one of the Portugals, did take from his sleeve a blade, and make ready to thrust it into the man’s belly, but quickly was he stopped by Cristovão, who seized his wrist most forcibly.
“Nay,” he whispered, “be not a fool! If we slay him, and then we are retaken, what will become of us?”
I had my doubts of that, thinking it mattered little, for if we were retaken it would go hard with us whether we had this sentinel’s blood upon our souls or no. Yet never have I favored slaying the innocent, and this man had done me no wrong. So I gave my agreement, and instead of killing him we did tie him with ropes of living vine pulled down from the trees, and stuffed into his mouth a thick wad of herbage to silence him.
Then we selected the best of the canoes, that was long and trim and stood like a proud lordling above the water. Aboard it we stowed our muskets and powder and shot and a little supply of the golden wheat called masa mamputo, which is Guinea wheat or more accurately American maize, that was the only food we were able to obtain as we departed.
“Go, Piloto,” said Cristovão. “Get you to the bow, and guide us, and I will stand in the stern.”
We twelve escapers then did clamber into the canoe, I taking my place fore, and each of us wielding an oar as we pushed ourselves free and set off down the black and swiftly coursing river in the dead of the night.
2
Free men!
That morning slaves, and by night we were our own masters on a voyage of departure!
In silence we did glide on the Kwanza’s dark breast. Along both sides of the river the trees rose like towering palisados, and animals of the night cried out their terrible howls. With sharp dedication did we keep ourselves to the center channel, lest we crack ourselves against the shore. Sometimes in the night we saw red eyes gleaming, or yellow ones, along the margin of the river: hippopotamuses, or coccodrillos, or perchance some monster even worse. One of the Portugals, a certain Pero, began to tell a story of a journey by canoe he had had on the Mbengu in the campaign of Don João de Mendoça, saying, “It was like this, by night, and the river much narrower, and as we paddled east we were halted by an eddy in the current, and then there rose beneath us a river-horse as big as an elephanto, that overthrew our craft entirely, and scattered us in the water.”
“Be quiet,” said the Gypsy Duarte Lagosta, “or we will feed you to the coccodrillos. We need no such gloomy tales to dishearten us here.”
“I meant only to tell you how we escaped, when—”
“Tell us after we are overthrown,” said Duarte Lagosta, and the Portugal was silent.
I brooded little about meeting a river-horse in the night, but gave much more thought about fetching up into some one of the muddy isles that dot the river. For that could easily happen, and if we were beached we would be coccodrillo-meat before we could get ourselves afloat. Many times had I navigated this river, but never at night, and not in six years; yet I strained at my memories of it, contriving to recollect from the curves and swerves of it the places where the islands lay. Perhaps I did overlook a few, but yet we did not go aground. And as dawn began to creep into the sky above the treetops we found ourselves in a better part of the river, that I knew to be the territory of a little lord styled Mani Kabech, that has a territory in the province of Lamba, which is subject to Portugal.
Morning showed us a heavy sultry world of huge trees, palms and cedars and ironwood, and most especially the great bulging ollicondis, that are like houses in themselves, all spongy within, with trunks that hold rainwater, from which birds do drink. All of this was woven together like a tapestry by the festoons and drapings of the gigantic green creepers, thick as the greatest of serpents, overhead. Though it was daytime the forest was dark— O! it was dark dark dark!—and that was a good thing, for we had had more than our necessary share of sun in the Masanganu labor, and this was a kind coolness to us.
Here we went on shore with our twelve muskets, powder, and shot. We sunk our canoes, because they should not know where we had gone on shore. We made a little fire in the wood, and scorched our Guinea wheat, to relieve our hunger. Later we gathered some honey from the crotch of a great tree, where bees did fly about. And a Gypsy showed us which palm-trees were good to eat, by felling the slender young ones and biting out the pale tender succulent shoots that came from the heart of them.
All morning we rested here and ate, and talked of our plans. Since that we had had no sleep on the night of our escape, we took it now, some of us closing our eyes and some standing watch. Our vigilance was addressed more against deadly beasts of the jungle than against Portugals, for we did not think we would be pursued as far as this point.
As soon as it was dark, we took up our journey again, and marched all that night through the most difficult of thick enforestation, taking what we hoped to be a direction of north-north-west. In this everyone turned to me for counsel, I being regarded as a skilled navigator, and in every opening of the vines I did study the pattern of the stars and draw my sage advice, so it seemed, from the array of the constellations. But also I took good care to note the position of the river, that was far more useful, for it was flowing along on our left hand a short way below us and was a present guide to our way.
But then the river diverged from us, which could not be helped, for our goal was the kingdom of the Kongo in the north, and the Kwanza, if we followed it, would bring us to the sea some leagues south of São Paulo de Loanda, a city we did not dare approach. So now I did navigate by guesswork alone, and by bluff, doing my best. It is far much easier to find one’s way on the open sea betimes, for all its dearth of landmarks, than it is when one is in a jungle where every tree does look the image of his brother, and giveth one false information, which is worse than none at all.