 CHAPTER 25 THE LAST How comes it, said Lieutenant Lindsay de Harald, on the first favorable opportunity that occurred after the meeting described in the last chapter? How comes it that you and Canberra know each other so well? I might reply by asking, said Harald with a smile, how comes it that you are so well equated with Azinte, but before putting that question I will give you a satisfactory answer to your own. Hereupon he gave a brief outline of those events already narrated in full to the reader which bore on his first meeting with the slave girl and his subsequent sojourn with her husband. After leaving the interior, continued our hero, and returning to the coast I visited various towns in order to observe the state of the slaves in the Portuguese settlements. And truly what I saw was most deplorable, demoralization and cruelty, and the obstruction of lawful trade prevailed everywhere. The settlements are to my mind a very pandemonium on earth. Everyone seemed to me more or less affected by the accursed atmosphere that prevails. Of course there must be some exceptions. I met with one at the last town I visited in the person of Governor Littoti. Littoti exclaimed Lindsay, stopping abruptly. Yes, said Harald in some surprise at the lieutenant's matter, and the most amiable man he was. Was, was, what do you mean? Is, is he dead? exclaimed Lindsay, turning pale. He died suddenly just before I left, said Harald. And Margarita, I mean his daughter, what of her? asked the lieutenant, turning as red as he had previously turned pale. Harald noted the change and a gleam of light seemed to break upon him, as he replied. Poor girl, she was overwhelmed at first by the heavy blow. I had to quit the place almost immediately after the event. Did you know her well? asked Lindsay, with an uneasy glance at his companion's handsome face. No, I had just been introduced to her shortly before her father's death, and have scarcely exchanged a dozen sentences with her. It is said that her father died in debt, but of course in regard to that I know nothing, certainly. At parting she told me that she meant to leave the coast and go to stay with a relative at the Cape. The poor lieutenant's look on hearing this was so peculiar, not to say alarming, that Harald could not help referring to it. And Lindsay was so much overwhelmed by such unexpected news and with all, so strongly attracted by Harald's sympathetic manner, that he straightaway made a confident of him. Told him of his love for Margarita, of Margarita's love for Azinte, of the utter impossibility of his being able to take Azinte back to her old mistress now that she had found her husband and child, even if it had been admissible for a lieutenant in the British Navy to return freed Negroes again into slavery and wound up with bitter lamentations as to his unhappy fate and expressions of poignant regret that fighting and other desperate means, congenial and easy to his disposition, were not available in the circumstances. After which explosion he subsided, he was ashamed of having thus committed himself and looked rather foolish. But Harald quickly put him at his ease. He entered on the subject with earnest gravity. It strikes me, Lindsay, he said thoughtfully, after the lieutenant had finished, that I can aid you in this affair. But you must not ask me how at present. Give me a few hours to think over it, and then I shall have matured my plans. Of course, the lieutenant hailed with heartfelt gratitude the gleam of hope held out to him, and thus the friends parted for a time. That same afternoon Harald sat under a palm tree in company with disco, jumbo, cambera, azinte, and oboe. How would you like to go with me to the Cape of Good Hope, cambera, asked Harald the Broccoli, while that, as the chief, threw jumbo. Far away to the south of Africa, answered Harald, you know that you can never go back to your own land now unless you want to be again enslaved. Him say him no want to go back, interpreted jumbo, got all him care for now, azinte and oboe. Then do you agree to go with me, said Harald. To this cambera replied heartily that he did. Why, what do we mean for to do with them, as disco in some surprise? I will get them comfortably settled there, replied Harald. My father has a business friend in Cape Town who will easily manage to put me in the way of doing it. Besides, I have a particular reason for wishing to take azinte there. Ask her jumbo if she remembers a young lady named Signorina Margarita Letoti. To this, azinte replied that she did, and the way in which her eyes sparkled proved that she remembered her with intense pleasure. Well, tell her, rejoined Harald, that Margarita has grieved very much at losing her, and is very anxious to get her back again, not as a slave, but as a friend. For no slavery is allowed in English settlements anywhere, and I am sure that Margarita hates slavery as much as I do, though she is not English, so I intend to take her and cambera and oboe to the Cape where Margarita is living, or will be living soon. We don't stick a trifle, sir, said Disco, whose eyes on hearing this assumed a thoughtful, almost a troubled book. My plan does not seem to please you, said Harald. Please, sir, why shouldn't it please me? In course, you know's best. I was only a little puzzled, that's all. Disco said no more, but he thought a good deal, for he had noted the beauty and sprightliness of Margarita and the admiration with which Harald had first beheld her, and it seemed to him that this rather powerful method of attempting to gratify the Portuguese girl was proof positive that Harald had lost his heart to her. Harald guessed what was running in Disco's mind, but did not care to undeceive him as, in doing so, he might run some risk of betraying the trust reposed in him by Lindsay. The captain of the schooner being bound for the Cape after visiting Zanzibar was willing to take these additional passengers, and the anxious lieutenant was induced to postpone total and irrevocable despair, although Margarita being poor, and he being poor, and promotion in the service being very slow, he had little reason to believe his prospects much brighter than they were before, poor fellow. Time passed on rapid wing as time is notoriously prone to do, and the fortunes of our dramatist Pursone varied somewhat. Captain Romer continued to roam the eastern seas, along with brother captains, and spent his labor and strength in rescuing a few hundreds of captives from among the hundreds of thousands that were continually flowing out of unhappy Africa. Yusuf and Musa continued to throw a boatload or two of damaged cattle in the way of the British cruisers as a decoy, and succeeded on the whole pretty well in running full cargoes of valuable black ivory to the northern markets. The sultan of Zanzibar continued to assure the British council that he heartily sympathized with England in her desire to abolish slavery and to allow his officials, for a consideration, to prosecute the slave trade to any extent they pleased. Portugal continued to assure England of her sympathy and cooperation in the good work of repression, and her subjects on the east coast of Africa continued to export thousands of slaves under the protection of the Portuguese and French flags, styling them free engages. British Indian subjects, the banyans of Zanzibar, continued to furnish the sinews of war which kept the gigantic trade in human flesh going on merrily. Murders, etc., continued to be perpetrated, tribes to be plundered, and harps to be broken, of course legally and domestically, as well as piratically, during this rapid flight of time. But nearly everything in this light has its bright lights and half-tints, as well as its deep shadows. During the same flight of time, humane individuals have continued to urge on the good cause of the total abolition of slavery, and Christian missionaries have continued, despite the difficulties of slave trade, climate, and human apathy, to sow here and there on the coasts the precious seed of gospel truth, which we can trust shall yet be sown broadcast by native hands throughout the length and breadth of that mighty land. To come more closely to the subjects of our tale, Chimbolo, with his recovered wife and child, sought safety from the slavers in the far interior, and continued to think with pleasure and gratitude of the two Englishmen who hated slavery, and who had gone to Africa just in the nick of time to rescue that unhappy slave who had almost been flogged to death, and was on the point of being drowned in the Zambezi in a sack. Mokompa also continued to poetize, as in the days gone by, having made a safe retreat with Chimbolo, and among other things enshrined all the deeds of the two white men in native verse. Yombo continued to extol play, admire, and propagate the life-sized jumping jack to such an extent that unless his career had been cut short by the slavers, we fully expect to find that creature a domestic institution when the slave trade has been crushed and Africa opened up, as in the end it is certain to be. During the progress and continuance of all these things, you may be sure our hero was not idle. He sailed as proposed with Canvira, Azinte, Oboe, Disco, and Jumbo for Zanzibar, touched at the town over which poor Senor Francisco Alfonso Tolita Bignosi Littoti had ruled, that the senorina had taken her departure, followed, as Disco said, in her wake, reached a cape, hunted her up, found her out, and presented to her with Lieutenant Lindsay's compliments, the African chief Canvira, his wife Azinte, and his son, Oboe. Poor Margarita being of a passionately affectionate and romantic disposition went nearly mad with joy, and bestowed so many grateful glances and smiles on Harold that Disco's suspicions were confirmed, and that bold mariner wished her, Margarita, at the bottom of the sea, for Disco disliked foreigners and could not bear the thought of his friend being caught by one of them. Margarita introduced Harold to her aunt, a middle-aged, leather-skinned, excessively dark-eyed daughter of Portugal. She also introduced him to a bosom friend at that time on a visit to her aunt. The bosom friend was an auburn-hair, fair-skinned, cheerful-spirited English girl. Before her, Harold's sea-drifted once without an instant warning fell flat down, figuratively speaking, of course, and remained so, stricken through the heart, the exigencies of her tale require, at this point, that we should draw our outline with a bold and rapid pencil. So Lillahammer was stunned, and so was Jumbo when Harold, some weeks after their arrival at the Cape, informed them that he was engaged to be married to Alice Grey, only daughter of the late Sir Eustis Grey, who had been MP for some country in England, which he had forgotten the name of, Alice not having been able to recall it, as her father had died when she was four years old, leaving her a fortune of next to nothing a year, and a sweet temper. Being incapable of further stunning, Disco was rather revived than otherwise, and his dark shadow was resuscitated when Harold added that Canberra had become Margarita's head gardener, a zinte cooked to the establishment, an oboe, page in waiting, more probably, page in mischa, to the young signorina. But both Disco and Jumbo had a relapse from which they were long of recovering when Harold went on to say that he meant to sail for England by the next mail, take Jumbo with him as ballet, make proposals to his father to establish a branch of their house at the Cape, come back to manage the branch, marry Alice, and reside in the neighborhood of the signorina Margarita Littori's dwelling. You means what you say, I suppose, asked Disco. Of course I do, said Harold, and you're going to take Jumbo as your wally? Yes. Hmm, I'll go too as your keeper. My what? Your keeper, your straight basket butler, for if you ain't a lunatic, you ought to be. But Disco did not go to England in that capacity. He remained at the Cape to assist Canberra at the express command of Margarita, and continued there until Harold returned, bringing Lieutenant Lindsay with him as a partner in the business, until Harold was married and required a gardener for his own domain, until the signorina became Mrs. Lindsay, until a large and thriving band of little Cape colonists found it necessary to have a general storyteller and adventure recounter with a nautical turn of mind, until in short he found it convenient to go to England himself for the gal of his heart who had been photographed there years before, and could be rubbed off neither by sickness, sunstroke, nor adversity. When Disco had returned to the colony with the original of the said photograph and had fairly settled down on his own farm, then it was that he was want at Eventide to assemble the little colonists round him, light his pipe, and through its hazy influence recount his experiences and deliver his opinions on the slave trade of East Africa. Sometimes he was pathetic, sometimes humorous, but however jocular he might be on other subjects, he invariably became very grave and very earnest when he touched on the latter theme. There's only one way to cure it, he was want to say, and that is to bring the Portuguese and Arabs to their marrow bones, put the fleet on the east coast in better work and order, have councils everywhere with orders to keep their weather eyes open to the slave dealers, start two or three British settlements, ports of refuge, on the mainland, hoist the Union Jack, and last, but not least, send them the Bible. We earnestly commend the substance of Disco's opinions to the reader, for there is urgent need for action. There is death where life should be, ashes instead of beauty, desolation in place of fertility, and even while we write, terrible activity in the horrific traffic in Black Ivory. This is the end of Black Ivory by R. M. Valentine. Recording by Tom Weiss, Tom's Audiobooks.com.