The Golden Pool : a Story of a Forgotten Mine
Copyright© 2024 by R. Austin Freeman
I Return to an Old Trade
As I took my way into the forest soon after daybreak I felt that sense of exhilaration that accompanies a settled purpose. The building of the house had been a necessary labour, but it had delayed me and hindered the execution of my plans. Now I was to begin the actual building of the canoe, and with the commencement of this work my deliverance seemed to come within measurable distance.
The forest is a boat-builder’s paradise. Whatever kind of timber is required, whether large or small, curved or straight, it is to be had for the cutting. The great trees—which did not concern me—tower aloft and spread their crowns of foliage like flat-topped umbrellas, two hundred feet from the ground; and towards the chinks of sky between their giant canopies, multitudes of saplings of all sizes crane up, as smooth, as straight, and as slender as fishing-rods, while lianas or creepers, varying from the thickness of a pack-thread to that of a man’s thigh, hang from tree to tree in great festoons, twining around trunk and branch, and twisting round one another in every conceivable curve and contortion.
If a spar or a straight timber is wanted, all that is necessary is to select a sapling of suitable thickness and cut off the length required, while for a curved timber a liana of the requisite size can be selected and the portion cut out that presents the curve required. On the present occasion I contented myself with the cutting of a good bundle of stout straight rods and a quantity of thin liana to serve as cordage, devoting myself especially to a critical examination of the trees viewed in the light of boat-building material, and I was relieved at meeting with no less than three specimens of the Hon-ton tree, any two of which would, on a pinch, have yielded sufficient bark to cover my canoe.
My first labour, on returning with my load of poles, was to erect a set of four trestles, forming a rough staging on which to build the canoe and from which to launch it when it was finished; and in order to render the launch more easy I made the “ways” with a slight slope towards the water. The place where the staging was erected was by a small bay at the bottom of the valley in which my house was situated—indeed, the ways were only a dozen yards from the door of the house. Here the ground was somewhat swampy and was evidently submerged during the rainy season, so I felt secure against the attacks of the white ants, which, in a drier situation, might have come up in the night and devoured both staging and canoe.
This work, with the necessary intervals for attending to my fishing lines, cooking the fish, and preparing firewood, took up most of the day, and I determined to devote the remainder to felling a young Odúm tree that I had noted growing near the middle of the island. It stood some fifty feet high, and was nine or ten inches in diameter at the base—a considerable thickness to hack through with a knife, especially as the wood is very hard and tough; but it had a fine crown of branches at its summit, which would furnish nearly all the straight wood that I should want, so the labour of felling it would be well spent. However, the darkness came when I had hacked but half through the trunk, and I had to leave it to finish on the morrow.
That night, as I sat by the firelight in my house, I continued to perfect the design of my canoe; but also I gave some serious thought to the question of food, for the diet of fish was becoming excessively distasteful, to say nothing of the shortness of the supply. I was loth to waste my precious time in seeking provisions, but, I must be fed or I could not work; so at last I reluctantly made up my mind to give up the ensuing day, or part of it, to a search for fresh food.
Accordingly, on the following morning, after setting my lines and making up the fire, I sharpened my spear upon a slab of sandstone that I had picked up in the bed of the river, and crossed the shallows to the side of the river that was most distant from the hill. Plunging at once into the forest, I went forward softly, peering in all directions and keeping a careful eye upon the shadows so that I should not lose my way. It was a most tantalising place to a hungry man, for it abounded in game, and fruit was fairly plentiful; but the game—mostly hornbills and parrots—was up in the far-away tree-tops, and the fruit was all strange, and I dared not taste it lest it should be poisonous. Presently, however, I had a stroke of luck, for I came to a tree the trunk of which was covered with a trailing vine bearing numbers of globular fruit somewhat like oranges. I was much tempted to try one of these, and was standing before them irresolute, with watering mouth, when a pair of Diana monkeys came down the creeper, hand over hand, and each picked one of the fruit and retreated to the top regions, where I saw them seat themselves on a branch and nibble off pieces of peel which they spat down on to me. Concluding that what was wholesome for a monkey could not be poisonous to me, I cut off a couple of branches, each bearing a bunch of the fruit, and dropping one bunch into my pocket sat down among the roots of a tree to breakfast off the remaining bunch. As I proceeded with my meal I noticed that a thick milky juice was exuding freely from the cut end of the branch, and before I had finished eating, this sap had begun to grow thicker and more tenacious. Much interested, I was examining the sticky exudation more closely when my attention was diverted by the sound of something moving among the bushes.
I listened. Something—beast or human—was certainly approaching, and was not far off. Very silently I rose to my feet and stood close against the tree, stealthily peeping round the shaded side. As I did so I saw, on a patch of bare earth, a shadow, the appearance of which startled me considerably for the moment, for it exactly resembled the head of the horned image near the Aboási pool. It was not the Sakrobundi devil, however, as I immediately realised, but an antelope with curved horns—probably the demon’s prototype.
I stepped back a pace and stood with my spear poised ready to throw. The shadow came nearer, vanished for a space, and then reappeared on the other side of the tree. A second later the animal’s head appeared, and instantly I flung the spear with all my strength.
The startled beast leaped into the air and bounded away among the bushes with the spear hanging from its neck. I darted after it, and a few paces forward picked up the spear, while I could hear the wounded animal crashing through the undergrowth ahead. The pursuit was not difficult, for the track was marked by great pools of blood, and I had not gone much more than a quarter of a mile when I came upon my victim lying upon the ground dead.
Very fortunately for me, the animal in its flight had gone straight towards the river and had fallen within fifty yards of the bank, so that, when I had ascertained my position, I was able to drag the carcase to the water and tow it down to the island, where I eventually got it ashore close to the staging.
The skinning and cutting-up of the antelope was a formidable task, for the beast was nearly as large as a red stag, and I was considerably exercised in my mind as to how I should dispose of so much meat; for the flies had scented it already, and in the damp heat of the forest it would hardly keep twenty-four hours. At last it occurred to me to hang the joints up in the fire hut, which was always full of smoke and very dry, in the hope that they would become cured, and this plan I adopted, to the disappointment of the flies. In the afternoon I finished felling the Odúm tree, and selected two of its stoutest branches to form the inside keel or kelson of the canoe. These I cut off, so as to leave each one with about two feet of the main stem attached to it, forming an L-piece, which I intended to make into the stem-post and stern-post respectively.
That night I made an interesting discovery. I had dined sumptuously off a lump of grilled venison, and was clearing up the debris, when I bethought me of the fruit with which my pockets still bulged, and endeavoured to pull out the bunch. But it would not come out. A quantity of the milky sap had exuded and, solidifying, had cemented the branch so firmly to the inside of the pocket that I had to turn the latter inside out and cut the stalk free; and when I came to examine the cut surface of the cement I found, to my joy, that it was rubber. My hunting expedition had been a fortunate one indeed, for here was an ideal material with which to make my canoe watertight.
During the following week I worked steadily at the canoe, cutting and shaping the sticks for the frame, and lashing them together by the daylight, and reserving for the evening such tasks as could be done by the light of the fire. These included the making of a few simple tools; for instance, finding that lashings alone would hardly make the frame sufficiently rigid, I determined to fasten the larger timbers together with wooden pegs or “treenails” in addition, and to this end I took my smaller knife out of its handle and sharpened its tang to make a boring tool. Then the treenails themselves had to be cut and shaped, and a mallet made to drive them in with, and in addition, the sticks for the ensuing day’s work had to have their bark peeled off, which bark I tore into narrow strips and twisted into cord for lashings. Finally, I had to make a measuring rule, which I did by marking my own height upon a long rod, adding two inches to make it six feet, and then dividing it up into equal parts with the aid of a piece of cord. So that my evenings were as busy as my days, and I usually turned in early, thoroughly tired.
My well-stocked larder relieved me of any immediate anxiety on the score of food—for the meat became admirably dried and cured in the smoky fire-hut; but I made few demands on my store, since, in the course of some experiments upon the rubber vines, I produced an elastic cord with which I was able to make an excellent catapult, a weapon with which I had been very skilful as a boy; and as pebbles were plentiful in the river bed, I was able to supply most of my wants by this means.
Every morning, as a rule, I made a short journey into the forest for the purpose of marking the position of any rubber vines or Hon-ton trees, so that when I was ready to use them there should be no delay. The vines were fairly abundant, and I found also several other rubber-bearing trees and creepers, so that I did not anticipate any difficulty in obtaining as much rubber as I should want; while as to the Hon-ton or bark trees, a couple would have been enough, and I had marked at least a dozen. From these expeditions I generally brought back a parrot or two, a hornbill, turakow, or other bird, and sometimes a small animal such as a squirrel or a pangolin, and one day I speared a porcupine. Monkeys I could have knocked down with my catapult by the dozen, but I had conscientious scruples (for blood is thicker than water), and avoided any nearer approach to cannibalism than the killing and eating of a potto.
At the end of the week’s work the canoe had made considerable progress. The keel was laid, the stem and stern-posts shaped and strengthened with angle pieces, and the principal ribs or timbers of the midship portion fixed to the keel with tree-nails and strong lashings. The gunwales were also in position, the ends of the ribs joined by cross-bars or deck beams, and on either side of the main kelson (or inner keel) was another, rather lighter one at a distance of twelve inches, so that the floor of the boat would be very strong and rigid.
Before the close of the second week the frame was finished, and very ship-shape it looked. I had at first had some misgivings as to the strength of a boat put together in this way, but I had none now, for although the separate timbers (excepting the kelson) were light and flexible, their number made the construction immensely strong. There were twenty-four ribs on each side, those of the midship portion being in one piece from gunwale to gunwale, and made of curved pieces of tough, springy liana; and the ends of all of them were joined by transverse bars or deck beams, excepting where the opening of the well would be. The ribs were fixed by eight stringers of hard wood on each side, in addition to the gunwales, running from stem to stern and fastened to the stem and stern posts. The fittings, too, were now nearly complete, for the long hours of darkness gave me plenty of time to work at them. The rudder (of the drop pattern like that of a lifeboat) was ready to fix on; four anchors, or rather grapnels, had been made from the hard stem of a bush which bore its branches in whorls of four, and now, with their shanks weighted with stones and their cables of liana secured, were ready for use. Two leeboards of framed sticks covered with bark, a seven foot mast, and the yard and boom were completed, and the fashioning of the paddle—the most arduous task of all—had been commenced. And besides all this, I had accumulated a quantity of liana cordage and a good length of rope made by plaiting strands of fibrous bark.
The most difficult part of the work had now to be attacked—the covering of the frame with its “skin.” The method by which I proposed to do this was to turn the frame bottom upwards and lay the sheets of bark upon it, cutting them to the shape and sewing their edges together with an overlap. Then, when the entire shell or skin was made, I intended to bring the edges together upon the deck with a lacing that I could tighten as the bark stretched until the covering was strained on tightly enough to be permanently fastened.
I spent two whole days tediously stripping the white canvas-like bark from one of the trees that I had marked, and after this I usually devoted half the day to collecting the bark, and the remainder to fitting it to the frame; until I found I had accumulated more material than I was likely to use, and was able to give up the entire day to the work of fitting.
During all this time I had seen but a single human being—a hunter whom I had espied in the forest one morning without being observed by him—and I had marvelled more and more at the absolute desolation of this out-of-the-way corner of the wilderness. But the sense of security that had, in consequence, grown up in me now received a severe shock; for one afternoon, as I was stitching away busily and whistling cheerfully over my work, I was startled by the unmistakable sound of voices. Quickly dropping my needle, I crept up on to the higher ground and peered through the bushes, when, to my horror, I saw two men—apparently hunters—cautiously wading across towards the island, and looking about them very warily. No doubt they had heard my whistling, and had come across to investigate.
For a moment I was doubtful how to act, but as their manner showed hesitation and a little alarm, I thrust my fingers into my mouth and blew a loud shrill whistle; whereupon they turned about, and waded back without any hesitation at all, and disappeared quickly into the forest.
For the time, then, the situation was saved, but the incident caused me very grave anxiety. These men had been easily enough frightened away, but they would talk of what they had heard, and some bolder spirits might come—probably would come, in fact—and in more formidable numbers. With my imperfect weapons I could hardly keep an armed party at bay, and “war palaver” was the very last thing to be desired; besides, the visitors might call in my absence.
In great perplexity I pondered upon the problem as I paced up and down before my house. At length I received a suggestion from an unexpected quarter. In a moment of idleness I had taken the skull of the antelope from the river, where the fish had picked it clean, and fixed it as an ornament above my door; and happening now to glance at it in passing, and again being struck by its resemblance to the image by the pool, I suddenly conceived the idea of sheltering myself behind the superstitions of these forest natives. I remembered the effect the encounter with that hideous effigy had had upon Alhassan—Mahommedan as he was; doubtless upon an actual worshipper of the river god the effect would have been even greater.
Then why should I not turn river god myself? No place of residence could be more appropriate to such a deity than the island on which I lived.
I sniggered a good deal at the notion, which nevertheless commended itself to my judgment; and as the light was waning, I hastily collected the materials for manufacturing a suitable “make up,” and took them into the house. They consisted of a length of curved timber, left over from the canoe frame, a quantity of odds and ends of fibre that had been cut off in sewing the bark together, and one or two furry skins of animals that I had eaten; and with these I spent a busy evening by the firelight preparing for my apotheosis on the morrow.
But when the morrow came, and I looked at the absurd productions of my labour—which appeared for all the world like the properties from some amateur pantomime—I was inclined to pitch them into the river, so preposterous did the whole thing seem. The “make up” included a cap or wig of mixed fur and rubbed fibre, very flowing and dishevelled, to which was attached a pair of curved horns of hard wood and a beard that concealed the fastenings. I had also made a kilt of the same materials, as I should have to discard my clothes—which, indeed, would be little loss, for they were by this time a mere archipelago of holes.
Presently I summoned up courage to try the ridiculous things on, and when I had tied the wig securely in its place and exchanged my rags for the kilt, I went round to the little bay, and stooping over the bank, examined my reflection in the still water. The hideousness of my appearance quite startled me, and I realised for the first time how haggard and emaciated I had become with all this hard work, anxiety, and low diet; and as the wig caused me little discomfort and the kilt none at all, I decided to keep them on for the present.
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