I had already begun my descent from the tree, when the noise of something coming rapidly through the forest made me scramble into my perch again. And lo! a savage, armed as usual with a long asseguy, but mounted on a swift dromedary, came from amid the trees, and paused by the lonely lake to give his great misshapen nag a drink; and while he did so, in his brawny form and tasselled apeskin apron and sandals, his eyes with their circles of red and yellow paint, the slit under his mouth, his hideous aspect and barbaric trappings, I recognised the brother of Amoo--the King of the Rio Serpientes!
Were both upon my track, or had chance alone brought him here? I knew that if retaken, I had met with more mercy from the lion than from either; and the image of the wife of Amoo, with her sharp knife and basket of herbs and gums, seemed to rise before me.
The savage looked around him, and suddenly turning his dromedary, rode straight towards my place of concealment. I grasped my hoe, resolved if he had seen me, not to yield up my wretched existence without a desperate struggle; but all unconscious of my presence, his sable majesty dismounted, placed his asseguy against the chestnut tree, spread a grass-mat at its root, and seating himself, proceeded quietly to light a species of hubble-bubble, or pipe made from a reed and a nut-shell. Stuffing therein some dried herbs, he applied flint and steel, and began leisurely and literally to enjoy his morning weed.
At his neck I could see poor Robert Hartly's gold locket glittering.
The vicinity of this ferocious and tremendous personage, with the chances of his horde being all within hail, like the band of Roderick Dhu, so greatly alarmed me, that fully a quarter of an hour elapsed before I rallied sufficiently to conceive the idea of appropriating his quiet and docile dromedary (which was cropping the herbage close by), and using it as a means of reaching Cape Coast Castle, the western goal of all my hopes.
I knew that this animal was deemed a miracle of swiftness even in that burning clime, where they will travel with ease fifty miles per day.
The savage King seemed to be asleep, or in a waking doze; but I knew that by habits of danger, activity, and a life spent in the open air, the senses of these people were so acute, that the slightest sound would revive him; and that, if once discovered, he could crush me like a shrimp in his powerful grasp.