O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, Gordon Stables [microsoft ebook reader TXT] 📗

But the terrible noise and trumpeting

must have shaken Friday's nerves a bit. He was usually a good shot, but

on this occasion he missed. I loaded at once again, and as the great

brute came down on us, let him have it point-blank. He reeled, but

still came on. I felt rooted to the spot. My life in a moment more, I

thought, would be crushed out of me. Ah! but there must have been a

mist of blood before the tusker's eyes; it was a tree he charged; his

tusk snapped like a pipe-stalk, and the great elephant at once fell

dead."

 

"It was a narrow escape."

 

"Well, it was, but for the matter of that, Nie, who knows but that our

lives may be ever in danger, no matter where we are. A hundred times a

day, perhaps, we are upheld by the kind hands of an unseen Providence,

`our eyes are kept from tears, and our feet from falling.'

 

"Should we be grateful when our lives are spared? I think so, Nie, lad;

only the reckless, and the braggart, and too often the coward, boast of

the dangers they have come through, just as if their own strength alone

had saved them."

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

"They are all, the meanest things that be.

As free to live, and to enjoy that life,

As God was free to form them at the first,

Who in His sovereign wisdom made them all."

 

Cowper.

 

We had just finished lunch by the lake-side at Bala, my friend Ben

Roberts and I, and were thinking of trying the fishing once more, for

the clouds had banked up from the west and obscured the sun's glare, a

little breeze had rippled the water, and everything looked promising,

when the Captain burst out laughing.

 

"Shiver my timbers! as sailors say on the stage, Nie," cried he, "if

there isn't that same old stag-beetle making his way up your jacket

again, intent on revenge."

 

"Plague take it!" I exclaimed, shaking the brute off again; "I have

flicked him away once; I shall have to kill him now."

 

"No you won't," said Ben Roberts; "the world happens to be wide enough

for the lot of us. Let him live. I'm a kind of Brahmin, Nie; I never

take life unless there is dire necessity.

 

"We in England," continued Captain Roberts, "have little to complain

about in the matter of insects; our summer flies annoy us a little, the

mountain midges tickle, and the gnats bite, and hornets sting. But

think of what some of the natives of other countries suffer. I remember

as if it were this moment a plague of locusts that fell upon a beautiful

and fertile patch of country on the seaboard of South Africa. It

extended only for some two hundred miles, but the destruction was

complete.

 

"The scenes of grief and misery I witnessed in some of the villages I

rode through, I shall remember till my dying day.

 

"`All, all gone!' cried one poor Caffre woman who could talk English,

`no food for husband, self, or children, and we can't eat the stones.'

 

"These poor wretches were positively reduced to eating the locusts

themselves."

 

"I shouldn't like to be reduced to eating insects," said I; "fancy

eating a stag-beetle fried in oil."

 

"And yet I doubt," replied the Captain, "if it is a bit worse than

eating shrimps or swallowing living oysters. You've seen monkeys eating

cockroaches?"

 

"Yes, swallowing them down as fast as they possibly could, and when they

couldn't eat any more, stuffing their cheeks for a future feast."

 

"On the old _Sans Pareil_ we had fifteen apes and monkeys, besides the

old cat and a pet bear. Ah! Nie, what fun we did use to have, to be

sure!"

 

"Didn't they fight?"

 

"No, they all knew their places, and settled down amiably enough. The

very large ones were not so nimble, and some of them were very solemn

fellows indeed; the smaller gentry used to gather round these for

advice, we used to think, and apparently listened with great attention

to everything told them, but in the end they always finished up by

pulling their professors by their tails. If at any time they did happen

to find that old cat's tail sticking out of the cage, oh! woe betide it!

they bent on to it half a dozen or more, and it was for all the world

like a caricature of our sailors paying in the end of a rope. Meanwhile

the howls of the cat would be audible in the moon, I should think. Then

up would rush our old cook with the broom, and there would be a sudden

dispersal. But they were never long out of mischief. The little bear

came in for a fair share of attention. You see, he wasn't so nimble as

the monkeys; they would gather round him, roll him on deck, and scratch

him all over. The little Bruin rather liked this, but when three or

four of the biggest held his head and three or four others began to

stuff cockroaches down his throat, he thought it was taking advantage of

good nature; he clawed them then and sometimes squeezed them till they

squeaked with pain or fright. They used to bathe Bruin, though. The

men brought the bath up, then the monkeys teased the bear until he got

on his hind-legs and began clawing the air; this was their chance. They

would make a sudden rush on the poor little fellow, he would step back,

trip, and go souse into the bath. Then the chattering and jumping and

grinning of the monkeys, and the laughing and cheering of the men, made

a fine row, I can tell you. We had two monkeys that didn't brook much

nonsense from the others--an orang, and a long-nosed monkey--we got her

in Sumatra--who looked a very curious old customer. The best of it was

that the sailors taught the long-nosed one to snuff, and the orang to

drink a glass of rum.

 

"As soon as the old orang heard the hammering on the rum-cask to knock

out the bung, he began to laugh, and he beamed all over when his basin

of grog was brought. The other old monkey taking a pinch was a sight to

see. She stack to the box at last, and when any of her friends came to

see her would present it to them with a `hae! hae! hae!' that spoke

volumes."

 

"Any other funny pets on the _Sans Pareil_?"

 

"Oh, yes, lots. We had an adjutant. Ah! Nie, we did use to laugh at

that bird, too. Five feet tall he was, and a more conceited old fop of

a fellow I never did see. He had a pouch that hung down in front.

Well, he used to eat everything, from a cockroach to half a leg of

mutton; and when he couldn't hold any more he used to stuff his pouch.

 

"`Comes in handy, you see,' he seemed to say, alluding to this pouch of

his. `But, dear me!' he would continue, `ain't I a pretty bird? Look

at my pretty little head; there ain't much hair on it; but never mind,

look at my bill. There is a bill for you! Just see me eat a fish, or a

frog, or a snake! And now, look at my legs. Pretty pair, ain't they?

See me walk!'

 

"Then he would set off to promenade up and down the deck till the ship

gave a bit of a lurch, when down he would go, and the monkeys would all

gather round to laugh and jibber, and Snooks, as we called him, would

deal blows with his bill in all directions, which the monkeys, nimble

though they were, had some difficulty in dodging.

 

"`Can't you see,' he would say, `that I didn't tumble at all--that I

merely sat down to arrange my pretty feathers?' And Snooks would retain

his position for about half an hour, preening his wings, and scratching

his pouch with the point of his bill, just to make the monkeys believe

he really hadn't fallen, and that his legs were really and truly

serviceable sea-legs.

 

"I've lain concealed and watched the adjutants in an Indian marsh for

hours; there they would be in scores, and in every conceivable idiotic

position.

 

"Suddenly, perhaps, one would mount upon an old tree-stump, and spread

wide his great wings. `Hullo, everybody!' he would seem to cry, `look

at _me_. I'm the king o' the marsh! Hurrah!

 

"`My foot's upon my native heath,

My name, Macgregor;'

 

"or words to that effect, Nie."

 

"You were always fond of birds, and beasts, and fishes, weren't you,

Ben?"

 

"I was, Nie, lad, and never regretted it but once."

 

"How was that?"

 

"I was down with that awful fever we call Yellow-Jack; and, oh! Nie, it

seemed to me that at first all the awful creatures ever I had seen on

earth or in the waters came back to haunt my dream; and often and often

I awoke screaming with fright. Indeed, the dream had hardly faded when

my eyes were opened, for I would see, perhaps, a weird-looking camel or

dromedary's head drawing away from the bed, or a sea-elephant, a bear,

an ursine seal, or an old-fashioned-looking puffin.

 

"In my fever, thirst was terribly severe, and I used to dream I was

diving in the blue pellucid water of the Indian Ocean, down--down--down

to beds of snow-white coral sands, with submarine flowers of far more

than earthly beauty blooming around me; suddenly I should perceive that

I was being watched by the terrible and human-like eyes of a monk shark,

or--I shudder even now, Nie, to think of it--I should see an awful

head--the uranoscope's--with extended jaws and glaring protruding eyes.

Then I would awake in a fright, shivering with cold, yet bathed in

perspiration. But, Nie, when I began to get well a change came o'er the

spirit of my dreams. The terrible heads, the horrid fishes, and the

slimy monsters of the deep appeared no more; in their place came

beautiful birds, and scenery far more lovely than ever I had clapped a

waking eye upon. So, in one way, Nie, I was rewarded for my love for

natural history."

 

"What a lovely day!" I remarked, looking around me.

 

"Yes," replied Ben; "but do you know what this very spot where we are

now standing puts me in mind of--lake and all, I mean?"

 

"I couldn't guess, I'm sure," I replied.

 

"Well, it is just like the place where I was nearly killed by a panther,

and would have been, but for my man Friday."

 

"He must have been a useful nigger, then," I said, "that man Friday."

 

"He came in precious handy that day, Nie. You see, it was like this:--

Neither he nor I had ever been to South America before; so when we went

away shooting together we weren't much used to the cries of the birds or

beasts of the woods. The birds seemed to mimic the beasts, and reptiles

often made sounds like birds. We had been away through the forest, and

such a forest--ah! Nie, you should have seen the foliage and the

creepers. We had had pretty good sport for strangers. We shot and

bagged everything, snakes and birds and beasts, for I was making up a

bag for the doctor, who was a great man for stuffing and setting up. We

had just sat down to rest, when suddenly the most awful cries that ever

I heard began to echo through the woods.

 

"They came from a thicket not very far away, and at one moment were

plaintive, at the next, discordant, harsh, dreadful.

 

"`Friday,' I cried, starting up and seizing my gun, `there is murder,

and nothing less, being done in that thicket. Let's run down and see.'

 

"`It seems so, massa,' said Friday; `it's truly t'rific.'

 

"We ran on as we spoke, and soon came to the place, and peered

cautiously in.

 

"It was only a howler monkey after all."

 

"And was nothing the matter with him?" I asked.

 

"Nothing at all. It was merely this monkey's way of amusing itself."

 

"Did you shoot him?"

 

"I never shot a monkey in my life, and never