The Golden Pool : a Story of a Forgotten Mine
Copyright© 2024 by R. Austin Freeman
A Catastrophe
In less than an hour we were on the road, stepping out briskly towards the south. A good store of provisions was in our scrip, and we had that comfortable feeling of being independent of the vicissitudes of the hour that accompanies a well-lined purse.
The musicians strode on ahead, Osman leading, and as they went they chattered gaily, and broke out from time to time in snatches of song. Aminé and I walked some distance behind that we might talk more freely, for neither of us felt any desire to increase our intimacy with the minstrels.
“Yúsufu,” said Aminé suddenly, when we had left the town behind, “what was it that thou hadst in thy hand when Abduláhi and I came upon thee sitting under the tree?”
“In my hand?” I repeated, considerably disconcerted by the question.
“Yes. Thou didst hide it when I spoke, so I said nothing, because Abduláhi was there.”
I was surprised at her discretion, and after a moment’s reflection decided to get the explanation over at once. I therefore drew out the locket (which I had not yet sewn up in its hiding place) and opened it. Aminé gazed at the two faces in blank amazement, and for a time spoke not a word.
“What is it?” she asked at length; “is it witchcraft?” and then with sudden suspicion, “who are they? Who is the woman?”
“She is the maid who is to be my wife,” I replied, feeling about as comfortable as a polar bear might in a Turkish bath, and perspiring almost as freely. “The old man is her father.”
“Thy wife!” exclaimed Aminé hoarsely. “Thou toldest me nothing of this!”
She made a sudden snatch at the locket, which I narrowly evaded, and hastened to stow the precious bauble out of harm’s way.
“I will get that thing and fling it in the fire,” Aminé declared in a voice husky with anger, “and as to the woman, I will kill her when I meet her.”
I made no reply, being not a little distressed at the turn things were taking.
“Why didst not thou tell me?” Aminé continued passionately, “that thou hadst a beautiful wife, one far more handsome than me? I would not have come with thee. Abduláhi would have taken me gladly.”
I wished most fervently that he had, but held my peace.
Suddenly she burst into a storm of sobs, beating her breast and moaning aloud, and tearing the coral necklace asunder, she flung it down in the road.
I feigned not to see this, and presently she went back and picked it up, but she did not again overtake me, but continued to follow some twenty or thirty yards behind.
Throughout the day she maintained an attitude of sullen aloofness, never coming near me nor speaking unless under actual necessity, and when she was compelled to address me she spoke with a gruff curtness in extreme contrast to her usual soft and winning manner. Her altered behaviour was viewed with but ill-concealed amusement by the musicians, and Ali took the opportunity to adopt a highly insinuating and sympathetic manner towards her; but his attempts to fish in troubled waters met with no better result than a vehemently uttered threat on her part to break his skull with a large stone.
Late in the afternoon we turned off the road on which we had been travelling, and took a small and indistinct track, which Osman informed me would shorten our journey by a couple of days, and which presently brought us to a tiny hamlet on the bank of the river Tain—a large tributary of the Firráo or Volta. Here Aminé obtained for herself and me a house which stood in a small compound of its own, and she commenced to prepare our meal, leaving the minstrels to make their own arrangements. When the meal was ready she took it into the house, and set it before me in silence; but instead of sitting down with me to share it, she went out into the compound and supped alone by the fire.
By the time I had finished eating the night had closed in and the hut was in darkness, but presently Aminé brought in a large shea-butter lamp or candle and set it on the floor; then she cleared away the remains of the food, and again left me in solitude.
For a long time I sat cross-legged at the end of my mat, watching the shadows dance upon the walls as the unsteady flame flickered in the draught, meditating gloomily upon this new complication in my affairs, and wondering what the end of it would be. My reflections were at length interrupted by the entrance of Aminé, who walked straight up to my mat, and, kneeling down upon it, laid her head upon my feet.
“Wilt thou forgive me, Yúsufu?” she asked meekly, “for the wrong that I have done thee? I was vexed when thou didst show me the face of thy wife, and I saw that she was so fair to look upon, for I feared that thou wouldst love her only and not me. I will trouble thee no more, my husband, nor make strife in thy house, and the beautiful woman shall be as my sister, and I will even be subject to her, and serve her as her bond-maid if it please thee, so that thou shalt love me too. Wilt thou not forgive me, seeing that I am but a woman, and that my folly ariseth out of my love for thee?”
She raised a piteous face to me, and her big eyes were swimming with tears as she made her humble appeal. As to me, I was too much overcome to be capable of any reply, and giving way to a natural, though insane, impulse, I took her head in my hands, and laid her cheek against mine. She uttered a sigh of profound content, and presently rose, and, spreading her mat near mine, curled herself up upon it and there lay, not sleeping, but watching me like some devoted terrier basking upon a rug, with one fond eye fixed upon its master.
I was deeply affected, and very angry with myself, for by thus weakly yielding to my emotion, natural though it was, I had made the situation far worse than it was before, and the bitter disillusionment had to be begun all over again. And then how pitiful it was to see all this noble and faithful love running to waste in a world where it is so precious and so rare; when so many have to pass through life uncared for and alone.
When I came out of the hut in the morning I found Aminé dressed in her old túrkedi, holding a review of our household goods, which were spread out on her mat.
“I have been thinking,” she said, “that it seemeth a pity for us to be wearing our fine clothes on this rough journey through the forest, so I have put on my old túrkedi. Wilt thou, too, not wear thy old riga and wondo, and let me put the fine ones in a bundle and carry them?”
It seemed a reasonable suggestion, so taking the old clothing into the hut, I made the change.
“It would be well,” said she, as she folded my embroidered riga, “to put in the bundle all that thou needest not for use on the road, so that thou shalt walk more easily.”
To this I also agreed, and laid on the mat my watch, pistol, and cartridge box, my purse with the remaining money in it, the bag of gold dust that I had received from Musa, and a few other odds and ends. I kept out a bag of kurdi for our immediate wants, and I wore my two knives—my original knife and the one I had obtained in the mine—stuck through the waist-band of my wondo. The locket I had already hastily stitched into its case, and this hung round my neck.
As Aminé was putting the finishing touches to the bundle, I strolled towards the gate of the compound, and was just stepping out, when Ali strode up hurriedly and with an air of confusion for which I could not at the moment account.
“I have come to look for thee, thou sluggard,” said he boisterously. “Wilt thou keep us waiting for ever?”
“I am going to find our landlord, that I may pay him for our lodgings,” I replied, but at that moment the man himself appeared and saluted me civilly. I thanked him (in Hausa—which he did not understand) for the loan of his house, and presented him with a handful of cowries, which he received with lively tokens of gratitude, and as Aminé was now waiting with our entire effects upon her head, we made our way to the river, picking up Osman and Baku on the way.
We forded the Tain without difficulty, for there was barely four feet of water in the middle, the river being now at its lowest; but the high, steep banks showed us what a volume it swelled to in the wet season, and we saw that, had we been a month later, it would have been quite impassable. For we were now at the very end of the dry season, and, indeed, one or two showers had fallen while we were at Banda.
The track along which we travelled became more and more obscure as we went on, but Osman picked his way along it with the confidence of a skilled path-finder. I noted, however, with some concern, that in spite of his promise that we should keep to the more open orchard-country, we were already entering the outskirts of the forest. Another thing I noticed before we had been long on the road, and that was that we had evidently crossed a water-parting, for the brooks and little streams that we forded in the early part of the day all ran towards the north-east, evidently going to join the Tain, but about midday we began to meet tiny streams meandering away to the south-west; and in the afternoon we crossed a more considerable—though still small—river, three times in rapid succession, after which it turned westward, and we saw it no more. About an hour after we had crossed this river the sky became suddenly overcast, and the chill of approaching rain was sensible in the air, while the forest was filled with the strange continuous murmur of moving leaves that foretells a storm.
We had passed no village or sign of habitation since leaving the Tain, and Osman assured us that we should meet with none until late on the morrow.
“Wherefore,” said he, “we had better make ourselves a shelter against the storm as quickly as we can.”
On hearing this we lost no time, but forthwith set about collecting the necessary materials, the minstrels and I cutting long sticks for the framework, while Aminé, armed with one of my knives, mowed down the high elephant grass of the opening in which we were to camp, thus at once clearing a space for the huts, and accumulating a pile of cut grass with which to thatch them. We worked with such a will that in less than an hour we had two tiny wigwam-like huts erected in the middle of the opening, where, if they were more exposed to the rain, they were safe from the principal danger—that of falling trees.
We had just finished the huts and piled inside one of them as many dry sticks as we had been able to find, when the storm burst and the rain fell in torrents. But in spite of the threatening signs of its approach, it was but a small affair after all, and in half an hour the sun was shining again, and there was every promise of a fine night.
“That is well over,” observed Ali, putting his head out of the low doorway of his hut. “We can make us a fire outside now, and cook us some food.”
“There is mighty little to cook,” said Baku, following his leader into the outer air. “It is a pity that we did not stop to catch some of the fish that were swimming about in the river. There were plenty of them, and fine, large ones too.”
“For that matter,” said Osman, “we might go and catch some now while Aminé tends the fire. I have some hooks that I bought at Táari.”
“It is a long way back,” I objected.
“We need not go back,” replied Osman. “The river is not far from here; I can show thee quite a short way. It should be good fishing after the rain.”
“Then we should have to leave Aminé all alone,” I said.
“I do not mind being left,” said she. “You will be back by the time it is dark. Go and catch some fish while I get the fire ready to cook it.”
I at length agreed to “go a-angling” with the musicians, and in a few minutes had made the necessary preparations. A wicker bag—Aminé’s original caterpillar bag, in fact—fitted with a sling of creeper, answered as a creel; a ball of cotton yarn from Aminé’s private bundle would serve as a line, and Osman had a dozen or so of large, coarse hooks. With these appliances, and such bait as we might pick up, it would be possible to capture some of the fish, provided they were of an unusually unsophisticated and confiding nature.
Osman’s short cut to the river turned out as disappointing as short cuts generally do. We scrambled through the thick undergrowth, pushing through thorny bushes and tripping up over the sprawling roots of great trees, but making very little headway, and the manner in which we twisted and turned and altered our course made me fear that Osman had lost his way.
“We should have done better to go by the road,” I grumbled, as I extricated myself from the grapnels of a climbing palm; “we should have been there by now, and with less labour.”
“The way is rough, indeed,” Osman admitted, “but we are nearly there.”
He pushed on ahead and disappeared among the trees, and sure enough in a few minutes we heard his cheery announcement:
“Here we are; here is the river at last, and here are the fish, too—swarms of them.”
The conditions were certainly favourable enough for sport, for the river, swollen by the rain, was now swift and turbid, and even through the muddy water we could see the fish snapping at the floating insects and débris that had been swept into the stream. Nor was there any scarcity of bait, for snails, large and small, crept upon every bush, and caterpillars and grubs could be collected by the dozen.
Osman served out to each of us four hooks, while I furnished the others with lengths of cotton yarn, and soon we were fully equipped, with the spare hooks stuck in our rigas. A fat, green caterpillar served me for bait, and with my spear as a rod I proceeded to make a trial cast.
The fish were truly most confiding. Quite unsuspicious of the thick white yarn and the great hook, they proceeded to gorge the wriggling bait and came up spluttering on to the bank in the greatest astonishment. It was magnificent, but it was not sport; however, the basket soon began to wax heavy, and visions of broiled fish floated across my mental horizon.
“Where are Ali and Osman?” I asked of Baku, who was fishing a few yards away from me.
“They are further down, just by the bend,” he replied.
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