The Rover of the Andes: A Tale of Adventure on South America, R. M. Ballantyne [world of reading .txt] 📗

or voluntarily, who can tell which, and what right has man to say dogmatically that it cannot be the latter? Thousands of cooing doves, legions of chattering parrots, made the air vocal; millions of little birds of every size and hue twittered an accompaniment, and myriads of mosquitoes and other insects filled up the orchestra with a high pitched drone, while alligators and other aquatic monsters beat time with flipper, fin, and tail.

Breakfast, consisting of excellent fish, eggs, maize, jaguar-steak, roast duck, alligator-ragout, and chocolate, was prepared outside the Indian hut. The hut itself was unusually clean, Tiger being a peculiar and eccentric savage, who seemed to have been born, as the saying is, in advance of his generation. He was a noted man among his brethren, not only for strength and prowess, but for strange ideas and practices, especially for his total disregard of public opinion.

In respect of cleanliness, his hut differed from the huts of all other men of his tribe. It was built of sun-dried mud. The furniture consisted of two beds, or heaps of leaves and skins, and several rude vessels of clay. The walls were decorated with bows, arrows, blow-pipes, lances, game-bags, fishing-lines, and other articles of the chase, as well as with miniature weapons and appliances of a similar kind, varying its size according to the ages of the little Tigers. Besides these, there hung from the rafters—if we may so name the sticks that stretched overhead—several network hammocks and unfinished garments, the handiwork of Mrs Tiger.

That lady herself was a fat and by no means uncomely young woman, simply clothed in a white tunic, fastened at the waist with a belt—the arms and neck being bare. Her black hair was cut straight across the forehead, an extremely ugly but simple mode of freeing the face from interference, which we might say is peculiar to all savage nations had not the highly civilised English of the present day adopted it, thus proving the truth of the proverb that “extremes meet”! The rest of her hair was gathered into one long heavy plait, which hung down behind. Altogether, Madame Tiger was clean and pleasant looking—for a savage. This is more than could be said of her progeny, which swarmed about the place in undisguised contempt of cleanliness or propriety.

Stepping into the hut after kindling the fire outside, Quashy proceeded to make himself at home by sitting down on a bundle.

The bundle spurted out a yell, wriggled violently, and proved itself to be a boy!

Jumping up in haste, Quashy discommoded a tame parrot on the rafters, which, with a horrible shriek in the Indian tongue, descended on his head and grasped his hair, while a tame monkey made faces at him and a tame turtle waddled out of his way.

Having thus as it were established his footing in the family, the negro removed the parrot to his perch, receiving a powerful bite of gratitude in the act, and invited the wife of Spotted Tiger to join the breakfast-party. This he did by the express order of Lawrence, for he would not himself have originated such a piece of condescension. Not knowing the dialect of that region, however, he failed to convey his meaning by words and resorted to pantomime. Rubbing his stomach gently with one hand, he opened his mouth wide, pointed down his throat with the forefinger of the other hand, and made a jerky reference with his thumb to the scene of preparations outside.

Madame Tiger declined, however, and pointed to a dark corner, where a sick child claimed her attention.

“O poor t’ing! what’s de matter wid it?” asked Quashy, going forward and taking one of the child’s thin hands in his enormous paw.

The little girl must have been rather pretty when in health, but there was not much of good looks left at that time, save the splendid black eyes, the lustre of which seemed rather to have improved with sickness. The poor thing appeared to know that she had found in the negro a sympathetic soul, for she not only suffered her hand to remain in his, but gave vent to a little squeak of contentment.

“Stop! You hold on a bit, Poppity,” said Quashy, whose inventive capacity in the way of endearing terms was great, “I’ll fetch de doctor.”

He ran out and presently returned with Lawrence, who shook his head the moment he set eyes on the child.

“No hope?” inquired Quashy, with solemnity unspeakable on his countenance.

“Well, I won’t say that. While there is life there is hope, but it would have been more hopeful if I had seen the child a week or two sooner.”

After a careful examination, during which the father, who had come in, and the mother looked on with quiet patience, and Manuela with some anxiety, he found that there was still room for hope, but, he said, turning to Quashy, “she will require the most careful and constant nursing, and as neither Tiger nor his wife understands what we say, and Pedro may not be back for some days, it will be difficult to explain to them what should be done. Can you not speak their dialect even a little?” he added in Spanish to Manuela.

She shook her head, but said quietly—

“Me will nurse.”

“That’s very kind of you, and it will really be a charity, for the child is seriously ill. She is a strangely attractive little thing,” he continued, bending over her couch and stroking her hair gently. “I feel quite as if I had known her a long time. Now, I will give you instructions as well as I can as to what you have to do. Shall I give them in Spanish or English?”

Quite gravely the Indian girl replied, “Angleesh.”

“Very well,” said he, and proceeded to tell Manuela how to act as sick-nurse. When he had finished, the girl at once stepped up to Tiger’s wife with a winning smile, patted her shoulder, kissed her forehead, and then, pointing to the little invalid with a look of profound intelligence, went out of the hut. Presently she returned with some of the gravy of the alligator-ragout, sat down beside the little one, and began to administer it in small quantities. Evidently the child was pleased both with the food and the angel of mercy who had found her, for she nestled in a comfortable way close to Manuela’s side. Lawrence observed, when the latter looked round for something she wanted, that her eyes were full of tears.

“I knew I was right,” he muttered to himself as he returned to the fire, where Quashy had already spread out the breakfast, “she certainly must be a princess of the Incas. They were notoriously celebrated for their gentle and amiable qualities, even at the time of Pizarro’s conquest.”

What more passed in his mind we cannot tell, for he ceased to mutter, and never revealed his subsequent thoughts to any one.

“Now, Quashy,” said Lawrence, when breakfast was over, “we are left here in what we may style difficulties. The Indians don’t understand Spanish or English, so until Pedro returns we shall have to get along as best we can by signs.”

“Bery well, massa, I hope you knows how to talk by signs, for its more dan dis nigger do.”

As he spoke he threw an ear of maize at a monkey which sat on a branch overhead gazing at the party with an expression of the most woebegone resignation. He missed his aim, but none the less did that monkey change its look into a glare of intense indignation, after which it fled shrieking, with hurt feelings, into the woods.

“I’m not much up in the language of signs,” said Lawrence, “but we must try our best.”

Saying which he arose, and, touching Tiger on the shoulder, beckoned him to follow.

With the lithe, easy motions of the animal after which he was named, the Indian rose. Lawrence led him a few paces from the fire, and then, putting himself in the attitude of a man discharging an arrow from a bow, suddenly let the imaginary arrow fly, looked at the savage, touched his own breast, and smiled.

So did Quashy, with compound interest. Spotted Tiger looked puzzled, shook his head, and also smiled.

“He t’ink you wants him to shoot you,” said Quashy.

“No, no, that’s not it,” said Lawrence, with a somewhat abashed look at the Indian. “I want you to take us out shooting—hunting, you know—hunting.”

As Tiger did not know the word “hunting” he continued to shake his head with a puzzled air.

Every one who has tried it knows what a silly, almost imbecile, feeling comes over one when one attempts the communication of ideas in dumb show. Feelings of this sort affected our hero very keenly. He therefore, while continuing the pantomime, kept up a running or interjectional accompaniment in the English language.

“Look here, Tiger,” he said, impressively, taking up two sticks which he made to represent a bow and arrow, and placing them in position, “I want to go hunting with you—hunting—shooting the jaguar.”

“Yes, de jaguar—tiger, you know,” said Quashy, who, in his anxiety to get the savage to understand, imitated his master’s actions, and could not refrain from occasionally supplementing his speech.

As a tiger-skin chanced to be hanging on a bush near to the fire, Lawrence completed his pantomime by throwing his mimic arrow against that.

A gleam of intelligence suffused the face of the savage. Stalking into his hut, he returned with a bow considerably longer than himself, and an arrow, also of great length. Retiring to a distance from the jaguar-skin above referred to, he bent his bow quickly, and sent an arrow straight through the middle of it, thereafter raising himself with a look of pride.

“Why, the fellow thinks I want him to show off his powers of shooting,” said Lawrence.

“So he do—de idjit!” said Quashy.

With much anxiety of expression, great demonstration of vigorous action, and many painful efforts of inventive genius, the two men tried to convey their wishes to that son of the soil, but all in vain. At last in desperation Quashy suddenly seized the jaguar-skin, threw it over his own shoulders, placed a long pole in Lawrence’s hands, and said—

“Now, massa, you look out, I’s agwine to spring at you, and you stick me.”

He uttered a mighty roar as he spoke, and bounded towards his master, who, entering at once into the spirit of the play, received him on the point of his spear, whereupon the human jaguar instantly fell and revelled for a few seconds in the agonies of death. Then he calmly rose.

“Now,” said he, with a look of contempt, “if he no understan’ dat, it’s ’cause he hain’t got no brains.”

At first the Indian had gazed at this little scene with a look of intense astonishment. When it was finished he burst into a fit of hearty laughter. Evidently it was the best piece of acting he had seen since he was born, and if he had been other than a savage, he must certainly have shouted “bravo!” perhaps “encore!” and clapped his hands.

“Boh! he’s a born idjit!” cried Quashy, turning away in disgust, but a new idea seemed to flash into his fertile brain.

“Stop a bit!” he suddenly exclaimed, seizing a piece of flat bark that lay at his feet. On this, with the point of a charred stick, he drew a triangular form, with three dots in it for two eyes and a nose. An oval attached to this represented a body; at the other end a long waving line served for a tail; four short lines below indicated legs. This creature he covered all over with spots.

“There,” he cried, sticking it into a bush, and glaring at the Indian, “jaguar!—jaguar!”

Catching up the pole which Lawrence had thrown down, he rushed at this jaguar, and pierced it through the heart. Thereafter, in hot haste, he picked up Tiger’s bow and arrows, ran down to the river, put them into a small canoe, and thrust it into the water. Holding on