By this time Mbutu had reached his master's side. He relieved him of the burden, and together they swam to the shore, where Tom turned the pigmy urchin on his face and slapped his back and worked his arms about till the little fellow recovered his breath. A lusty cry soon proclaimed that there was vigorous life in the tiny body. Then they carried him with some difficulty along the steep bank to the path by which he had come from the forest. They caught sight of his mother darting like a timid gazelle among the trees. Mbutu at Tom's command called to her to come and fetch her pickin, using all the dialects he knew; she stopped and faced the strangers again, but evidently understood nothing of what the Muhima said, and was too much scared to approach them. In spite of his exhaustion, Tom could not help smiling at the woman's fears.
"Put the little beggar down," he said, "and see him run."
"Want food, sah," expostulated Mbutu; "woman gib food."
"But she wants her baby first; perhaps she thinks we are cannibals, and mean to make a meal of both of them."
Mbutu shrugged, and set the boy, now fully recovered and crying lustily, upon his feet. Instantly he scampered off with wild delight to his mother. She snatched him up, smothered him with kisses, then threw him over her back and ran fleetly into the forest. In vain Mbutu called to her to bring food, shouting that the big white man would give his buttons, his coat, anything, for a chicken and some plantains. His voice only made her run the faster, and soon a turn in the narrow path concealed her altogether from view.
"We'd better go along the path after her," said Tom. "There must be a pigmy village somewhere near, and they're surely human enough to give us food."
"Bambute much bad people," he said. "See white man; no fink; shoot one, two, three; sah dead."
"Bambute no stop fink. Woman say big sah, berrah big; Bambute no wait; all come in one big hurry, shoot sah. Better go away too quick."
"Well, you ought to know them better than I." (He suddenly, in one of those odd flashes of memory that come at the most unlikely moments, remembered Mr. Barkworth's positive statement: "There's no gratitude in these natives!") "Let us go, then; lead the way."