CHAPTER XXIV--BENEE'S STORY--THE YOUNG CANNIBAL QUEEN

I cannot help saying that in forbearing to talk to or to question poor Benee on the evening of his arrival, our young heroes exhibited a spirit of true manliness and courage which was greatly to their credit.

That they were burning to get news of the unfortunate Peggy goes without saying, and to hear at the same time Benee's own marvellous adventures.

Nor did they hurry the poor fellow even next day.

It is a good plan to fly from temptation, when you are not sure you may not fall. There is nothing dishonourable about such a course, be the temptation what it may.

Roland and Dick adopted the plan this morning at all events. Both were awake long before sunrise; long before the beautiful stars had ceased to glitter gem-like high over mountains and forest.

The camp was hardly yet astir, although Burly Bill was looming between the lads and the light as they stood with honest Brawn in the big tent doorway. Over his head rose a huge cloud of fragrant smoke, while ever and anon a gleam from the bowl of his meerschaum lit up his good-humoured face.

It had not taken the lads long to dress, and now they sauntered out.

The first faint light of the dawning day was already beginning to pale the stars. Soon the sun himself, red and rosy, would sail up from his bed behind the far green forest.

"Bill!"

"Hillo! Good-morning to you both! I've been up for hours."

"And we could not sleep for--thinking. But I say, Bill, I think Benee has good news. I'm burning to hear it, and so is Dick here, but it would be downright mean to wake the poor fellow till he is well rested. So, for fear we should seem too inquisitive, or too squaw-like, we're off with bold Brawn here for a walk. Yes, we are both armed."

When the lads came back in about two hours' time, they found Benee up and dressed and seated on the grass at breakfast.

When I say he was dressed I allude to the fact that he very much needed dressing, for his garments were in rags, his blanket in tatters. But he had taken the clothes Bill provided for him, and gone straight to the river for a wash and a swim.

He looked quite the old Benee on his return.

"Ah!" said Bill, "you're smiling, Benee. I know you have good news."

"Plenty good, Massa Bill, one leetle bitee bad!"

"Well, eat, old man; I'm hungry. Yes, the boys are beautiful, and they'll be here in a few minutes."

And so they were.

Brawn was before them. He darted in with a rush and a run, and licked first Benee's ears and then Bill's. It was a rough but a very kindly salute.

In these sky-high regions of Bolivia, a walk or run across the plains early in the morning makes one almost painfully hungry.

But here was a breakfast fit for a king; eggs of wild birds, fish, and flesh of deer, with cakes galore, for the Indians were splendid cooks.

Then, after breakfast, Benee told the boys and Bill all his long and strange story. It was a thrilling one, as we know already, and lost none of its effect by being related in Benee's simple, but often graphic and figurative language.

"Oh!" cried impulsive Dick, when he had finished, and there were tears in the lad's eyes that he took small pains to hide, "you have made Roland and me happy, inexpressibly happy, Benee. We know now that dear Peggy is well, and that nothing can harm her for the present, and something tells me we shall receive her safe and sound."

Benee's face got slightly clouded.

"Will it not be so, Benee?"

"The Christian God will help us, Massa Dick. Der is mooch--plenty mooch--to be done!"

"And we're the lads to do it," almost shouted Burly Bill.

"Wowff! Wowff!" barked Brawn in the most emphatic manner.

In another hour all were once more on the march towards the land of the cannibals.

----

Life at the court of Queen Leeboo, as her people called poor Peggy, was not all roses, but well the girl knew that if she was to harbour any hopes of escape she must keep cool and play her game well.

She had all a woman's wits about her, however, and all a woman's wiles. Vain Peggy certainly was not, but she knew she was beautiful, and determined to make the best use of the fact.

Luckily for her she could speak the language of this strange wild people as well as anyone, for Charlie himself had been her teacher.

A strangely musical and labial tongue it is, and figurative, too, as might be expected, for the scenery of every country has a certain effect upon its language.

It was soon evident that Queen Leeboo was expected to stay in the royal camp almost entirely.

This she determined should not be the case. So after the royal breakfast one morning--and a very delightful and natural meal it was, consisting chiefly of nuts and fruit--Queen Leeboo seized her sceptre, the poisoned spear, and stepped lightly down from her throne.

"That isn't good enough," she said, "I want a little fresh air."

Her attendants threw themselves on their faces before her, but she made them get up, and very much astonished they were to see the beautiful queen march along the great hall and step out on to the skull-decorated verandah.

The palace was built on a mountain ledge or table-land of small dimensions. It was backed by gigantic and precipitous rocks, now most beautifully draped with the greenery of bush and fern, and trailed over by a thousand charming wild flowers.

Leeboo, as we may call her for the present, seated herself languidly on a dais. She knew better than to be rash. Her object was to gain the entire confidence of her people. In this alone lay her hopes of escape, and thoughts of freedom were ever uppermost in her mind.

This was the first time she had been beyond the portals of her royal prison-house, but she determined it should not be the last.

While her attendants partially encircled her she gazed dreamily at the glorious scenery beyond and beneath her.

From her elevated position she could view the landscape for leagues and leagues on every side. Few of us, in this tame domestic land that we all love so well, have ever visited so beautiful a country as these highlands of Bolivia.

Fresh from the hands of its Maker did it seem on this fresh, cool, delightful morning. The dark green of its rolling woods and forests, the heath-clad hills, the streams that meandered through the dales like threads of silver, the glittering lakes, the plains where the llamas, and even oxen, roamed in great herds, and far, far away on the horizon the serrated mountains, patched and flecked with snow, that hid their summits in the fleecy clouds; the whole formed as grand and lovely a panorama as ever human eyes beheld.

But it was marred somewhat by the immediate surroundings of poor Leeboo.

Oh, those awful skulls! "Is everything good and beautiful in Nature," she could not help asking herself, "except mankind?"

Here was the faint odour of death, and she beheld on many of these skulls the mark of the axe, reminding her of murder. She shuddered. Her palace was but a charnel-house. Those crouching creatures around her, waiting to do her bidding or obey her slightest behest, were but slaves of tyrant masters, and every day she missed one of the youngest and fairest, and knew what her doom would be.

And out beyond the gate yonder were her soldiers, her guards. Alas, yes! and they were her keepers also.

But behold! yonder comes the great chief Kaloomah, her prime minister, and walking beside him is Kalamazoo.

Kaloomah walks erect and stately, as becomes so high a functionary. He is stern in face even to grimness and ferocity, but as handsome in form as some of the heroes of Walter Scott.

And Kalamazoo is little more than a boy, and one, too, of somewhat fragile form, with face more delicate than is becoming in a cannibal Indian.

Kalamazoo is the only son of the late queen. For some reason or other he wears a necklace of his mother's red-stained teeth. Probably they are a charm.

Both princes kneel at Leeboo's feet. Leeboo strikes both smartly on the shoulders with her sceptre and bids them stand up.

"I would not have you grovel round me," she says in their own tongue, "like two little pigs of the forest." They stand up, looking sheepish and nonplussed, and Leeboo, placing one on each side of her--a spear-length distant,--looks first at Kaloomah and then at Kalamazoo and bursts into a silvery laugh.

Why laughs Queen Leeboo? These two men are both very natural, both somewhat solemn. Not even little pigs of the forest like to be laughed at.

But the queen's mistress of the robes--let me call her so--has told her that she is expected to take unto herself a husband in three moons, and that it must be either Kaloomah or Kalamazoo.

This is now no state secret. All the queen's people know, from her own palace gates to the remotest mud hut on this cannibalistic territory. They all know it, and they look forward to that week of festivity as children in the rural districts of England look forward to a fair.

There will be a monster carousal that day.

The soldiers of the queen will make a raid on a neighbouring hill tribe, and bring back many heads and many hams.

If Kaloomah is the favourite, then Kalamazoo will be slain and cooked.

If the queen elects to smile on Kalamazoo with his necklace of the maternal molars and incisors, then Kaloomah with the best grace he can must submit to the knife.

Yet must I do justice to both and say that it is not because they fear death that they are so anxious to curry favour with the young and lovely queen. Oh no! for both are over head in love with her.

And a happy thought has occurred to Leeboo. She will play one against the other, and thus, in some way to herself at present unknown, endeavour to effect her escape from this land of murder, blood, and beautiful scenery.

So there they stand silently, a spear-length from her dais, she glorying in the power she knows she has over both. There they stand in silence, for court etiquette forbids them to speak until spoken to.

Very like a couple of champion idiots they are too. Big Kaloomah doesn't quite know what to do with his hands, and Kalamazoo is fidgeting nervously with his necklace, and apparently counting his dead mother's teeth as monks count their beads.

Leeboo rises at last, and, gathering the loose portion of her skirts around her, says: "Come, I would walk."

She is a little way ahead, and she waves her spear so prettily as she smiles her sweetest and points to the grimly ornamental gate.

And after hesitating for one moment, both Kaloomah and the young prince follow sheepishly.

The guards by the gate, grim, fully armed cut-throats, seeing that her majesty expects obedience, fall back, and the trio march through.

But I do not think that either of Leeboo's lovers is prepared for what follows.

If they had calculated on a solemn majestic walk around the plateau, they were soon very much undeceived.

Leeboo had no sooner begun to breathe the glorious mountain air, than she felt as exuberant as a child again. Indeed, she was but little else. But she placed her spear and sceptre of royalty very unceremoniously into Kaloomah's hand to hold, while she darted off after a splendid crimson specimen of dragon-fly.

Kaloomah looked at Kalamazoo. Kalamazoo looked at Kaloomah.

The one didn't love the other, it is true, yet a fellow-feeling made them wondrous kind. And the feeling uppermost in the mind of each was wonder.

Kaloomah beckoned to Kalamazoo, and pointed to the queen. The words he spoke were somewhat as follows:

"Too much choorka-choorka! Suppose the queen we lose--"

He pointed with his thumb to his neck by way of completing the sentence.

"Too much choorka-choorka!" repeated the young prince. "You old--you stop her."

"No, no, you young--you run quick, you stop her!"

That dragon-fly gave Leeboo grand sport for over half an hour. From bush to bush it flitted, and flew from flower to flower, over rocks, over cairns, and finally down the great hill that led to the plain below.

Matters looked serious, so both lovers were now in duty bound to follow their all-too-lively queen.

When they reached the bottom of the brae, however, behold!--but stay, there was no behold about it. Queen Leeboo was nowhere to be seen!