Stanley's Adventures in the Wilds of Africa by Joel Tyler Headley

Author:Joel Tyler Headley [Headley, Joel Tyler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, General
ISBN: 9780343831981
Google: oO_XvgEACAAJ
Publisher: Creative Media Partners, LLC
Published: 2018-10-20T15:58:57+00:00

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CHAPTER XV.

AN INTERVAL OF REST.

The next morning, as Stanley looked out of his tent-door upon the broad and beautiful lake, it was with that intense feeling of satisfaction with which one contemplates a great and perilous undertaking, which, after being well-nigh abandoned, is at last successfully accomplished. The waters, glittering in the morning sun, had but a short time before seemed to him an angry foe, but now they wore a friendly aspect. They seemed to belong to him. Livingstone, and Speke, and Burton, and others had looked on that lake, and sighed in vain to solve the mystery that enveloped it, while he had not only followed its winding shores their entire length, but had sounded its depths and fixed its geographical position forever. His toils were over, and the victory won in this his first great enterprise, and he could well look forward with hope to the great work still before him. His escapes had been wonderful, and he might take them as good omens for the future.

It seemed as if fate delighted to place him in positions of danger, from which there appeared to be no escape, in order to show her power to save him under any and all circumstances. Even now, when contemplating so satisfactorily his success, he was startled by the narrowness of his escape from a danger of which he had never before dreamed. That trouble, disorder and desertion might befall his camp during his absence he had often feared, but now he was told by the men he had left in charge of it, that in a few hours more the expedition would have broken up and disappeared forever.

This was Frank Pocoke's report. He said that a rumor had reached camp that Stanley and his crew had been taken prisoners soon after leaving, and he at once sent off fifty soldiers to effect his release, who found the report false. They had also heard of his fight with the Wamma, and that he was killed. In the meantime a conspiracy had been formed by three neighboring tribes to capture the camp and seize all the goods. It was discovered, and everything put in the best state possible to defeat it, when the whole fell through on account of the sudden death of one of the conspirators and the disaffection of another.

With the report of Stanley's death uncontradicted—nay, corroborated by his long absence—and in view of the dangers surrounding them, the soldiers and men held a meeting to determine what course they should take. He had then been gone nearly a month and a half, and it should not have taken more than half that time to have circumnavigated the lake with a boat that, in a fair breeze, could go five or six miles an hour.

Something must have happened to him; that was certain; and it mattered little whether it was death or captivity. It was finally decided to wait fifteen days longer, or till the new moon, when, if he did not appear, they would strike camp and march back to Unyanyembe.

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