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Updated: June 10, 2025
Suddenly without a word old Sikaso left the fire and strode off into the forest. He was gone for more than an hour and when he came back his look of gloom had vanished. For him he was almost cheerful. He swung his terrible axe in all sorts of fantastic evolutions and hummed to himself his grim chant with a fierce sort of joy.
"Seesanah," echoed the tribesmen, who evidently recognized Sikaso from their greetings. The boys stood grouped in the background Billy Barnes and Lathrop even viewing with some alarm the advance of the savage-looking natives. "Well, he seems to have fallen in with several members of his club," remarked the irrepressible Billy as old Sikaso and the natives talked away at a great rate.
It was Ben who recognized him first: "Sikaso!" he cried, as the figure crumpled up in a heap, completely exhausted. The boys rushed to the fallen man's side as they heard the name. They bathed the huge black's head with water and after a few minutes he opened his eyes and recognized them with a faint smile.
"For," said Frank, "old Muley-Hassan, when he finds we have overreached him, may take a fancy to come back and try to wipe us out." "Muley-Hassan will not fight with the few men he has left," sagely remarked old Sikaso; "when he has many he is brave as a lion, but when his followers are few he fights like the fox with wits against wits and few are his match for cunning."
"I for one am not going to stand calmly by and have my throat cut, or worse still be taken prisoner by this old Muley-Hassan." Old Sikaso glanced approvingly at him. "Well spoken, Four-eyes," said he; "spoken like a son of a warrior."
And so they waited, and had been waiting, while the stirring events we have related had been happening to their missing chums. As if to add to their oppression, old Sikaso mooned about the camp, his eyes rooted to the ground in moody absorption and muttering to himself, "five go three come back," till Frank angrily ordered him to stop.
"Hum," snorted Billy, "four-eyes and red-top that's a nice combination for you! I'd like to do something to show that old chap that we can do just as much as anyone else when it comes to a show-down." This remark, however, was made sotto voce to Lathrop, as Billy really stood in great awe of the six foot-two of ebony flesh and muscle that was Sikaso.
"So you came after all," said Frank, turning to him, after a bend in the, river had hidden the waving Mr. Desplaines from sight and they were settling down in the launch. "Sikaso see in the smoke I come I come. If I see in smoke I no come I no come," remarked the Krooman. "He's traveling light anyhow," remarked Billy.
They were really in equatorial Africa at last, and even as they looked there was a sound borne to their ears that brought home to them strongly how very far away they were from old New York. It was a pulsing, rhythmic beating something like a drum and yet unlike it. They looked questioningly at Sikaso. "Tom-tom," said he briefly. "Is it a friendly village, Sikaso?" inquired Doctor Wiseman.
"One two three four five go to Bambara," he intoned. "Come back one two three. Two die. Sikaso, know." Before any of the astounded party could frame a question or open their lips, the huge figure had stalked to the doorway and vanished. "He'd make a nice, comfortable house-pet that fellow," said Billy, who was the first to speak. "One, two, three, four, five go to Bambara," he mimicked.
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