initial commit of ebook 37327HEADmain

1 files changed, 4461 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/37327.txt b/37327.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..daea145
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37327.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4461 @@
+Project Gutenberg's O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, by Gordon Stables
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas
+
+Author: Gordon Stables
+
+Release Date: September 6, 2011 [EBook #37327]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O'ER MANY LANDS, ON MANY SEAS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas
+By Gordon Stables
+Published by Cassell and Company Limited, London, Paris, New York.
+This edition dated 1884.
+
+O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, by Gordon Stables.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+O'ER MANY LANDS, ON MANY SEAS, BY GORDON STABLES.
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+  "And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
+  Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
+  Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
+  I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
+  Were a delight...
+  For I was, as it were, a child of thee."
+
+  Byron.
+
+Not a breath of wind from any direction.  Not a cloud in the sky, not a
+ripple on the ocean's blue.  Only when a bird alighted on the water,
+quisling rings of silver formed all around it, and widened and widened,
+but soon were lost to view.  Or when a fish leaped up, or the dorsal fin
+of some monster shark appeared above the surface, the sea about it
+trembled for a time, trembled and sparkled as if a shower of diamonds
+had suddenly fallen there.
+
+And a broad low swell came rolling in from the Indian Ocean, as if the
+bosom of the sea were moving in its sleep.  But landwards, had you
+looked, you might have seen it break in a long fringe of snowy foam on a
+beach of yellow sand; and, had you listened, the distant hum and boom of
+those breakers would have fallen on your ears in a kind of drowsy
+long-drawn monotone.
+
+The brave ship _Niobe_ [this word is pronounced as if spelt "Ni-o-bee"]
+slowly rose and slowly fell, and gently rocked and rolled on this
+heaving tide, and sometimes her great sails flapped with the vessel's
+motion, but, alas! not with the rising wind.
+
+No, not with the rising wind, but whenever they moved, the officer who
+paced up and down the white-scoured quarter-deck, would glance above as
+if in hope; then he would gaze seawards, and anon shorewards, wistfully,
+wishfully, uneasily.
+
+Uneasy, indeed, was the feeling on the minds of all on board.
+
+The vessel was far too near the shore, the wind had been dead for hours,
+but it had died away suddenly, and the glass had gone tumbling down.
+That it would come on to blow again, and that before long, everyone from
+the captain to the dark-skinned Kroo-boy was well aware.  But from what
+direction would the wind come?  If from the east, strong though the
+_Niobe_ was, close to the wind though she could sail, well-officered and
+manned though she was, there was more than a probability she would be
+dashed to pieces on that sandy beach.
+
+And small mercy could the survivors, if any, expect from the savage
+Somali Indians, and the still more cruel Arabs, who dwelt in the
+wretched little towns and villages on the coast.  For the ship was here
+in the Indian Ocean for the avowed purpose of putting down slavery and
+piracy, and by slavery and piracy those Arabs lived.
+
+It was in the days before steam-power was generally adopted by our navy,
+when sailors were sailors in reality, and not merely in name.
+
+The crew of the _Niobe_ numbered about seventy, all told fore--and--aft.
+She carried ten good guns, and an unlimited supply of small arms,
+cutlasses, and boarding pikes.  The timbers of this brave craft were of
+the toughest teak, ay, and her men were hearts of oak.  They feared
+nothing, they hated nothing, save uncertainty and inaction.  All that
+they longed for was to be accomplishing the object of their cruise.
+
+Had you been on board the _Niobe_ when the wind was blowing half a gale,
+and the ship ripping through the waves with, maybe, green seas hitting
+her awful thuds at times, and the foam dashing high over the main or
+fore-tops, you would have found the men as merry and jolly as boys at
+cricket.  Had you been on board when the battle raged, and the cannon
+roared, and balls crashed through her sides or rigging, when splinters
+flew and men dropped bleeding to the deck, you would have found nought
+save courage and daring in every eye, and calmness in every hand.
+
+But to-day, at the time our story opens, there was neither laughing,
+joking, nor singing to be heard.  The men clustered quietly about bows
+or fo'c'sle, or leaned lazily over the bulwarks watching the vessel
+roll--for at one moment she would heel over till the cool clear water
+could be touched with the hand, and the next she would raise her head or
+side until a yard at least of her copper sheathing shone in the sunlight
+like burnished gold.
+
+There was no sound to break the stillness save the far-off boom of the
+breakers; so quiet was it that the sound of even a rope's-end thrown on
+deck grated harshly on the ear, and a whisper could be heard from one
+end of the ship to the other.
+
+"Bill," said one sailor to another, biting off the end of a chunk of
+nigger-head tobacco, "I don't half like this state of affairs."
+
+"And I don't like it either, Jack," was the reply, "but I suppose we
+must put up with it."
+
+"Do ye think it would be any good to whistle for the wind, Bill?"
+
+"Whistle for your grandmother," replied Bill, derisively.
+
+"Bill," persisted Jack, "they do tell me--older men, I mean, tell me--
+that whistling for the wind is sure to bring it."
+
+"Ay, lad, if you whistle long enough.  Look here, Jack, don't be a
+superstitious donkey.  I've seen five hands at one time whistling for
+the wind; but, Jack, they nearly whistled the whites o' their eyes out."
+
+"And the wind didn't come?"
+
+"Never a breath.  Never a puff."
+
+"Hand in sail!"  This was an order from the quarter-deck.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir."  This was an answer from for'ard.
+
+"Thank goodness," cried Jack and Bill both.  "Better something than
+nothing."
+
+There was plenty of bustle and stir and din now, for a time at least,
+and bawling of orders, and shrill shriek of boatswain's pipe.  But when
+all was done that could be done, silence once more settled down on the
+ship--lethargy claimed her again as its own.
+
+"I think, sir," said the boatswain, touching his cap to the officer on
+watch, "I think, and I likewise hope, the wind'll come off the land when
+it does come, sir.  Anyhow, if it doesn't commence to blow for the next
+ten hours we'll get away into the open sea."
+
+"You're an old sailor, Mr Roberts, and know this coast better than I
+do, so I like to hear you say what you do.  Well, sure enough, the sun
+will be down in three hours, then we may get a bit of a land breeze.
+But the falling glass, Mr Roberts!  I don't like the falling glass!"
+
+"No more do I, sir, and I've seen a tornado in these same waters, and
+the glass not much lower than it is now."
+
+Leaving these two talking on the quarter-deck, let us take a look down
+below.
+
+Within a canvas screen, that formed a kind of a square tent on the main
+deck, a cot was swung in which there lay, apparently asleep, the fragile
+form of a young woman.  A woman, a mother, and still to all appearance
+but little more than a girl.
+
+Presently the screen was gently lifted, and a young soldier, dressed in
+the scarlet jacket of a sergeant of the line, glided in, dropped the
+screen again, then silently seating himself on a camp stool beside the
+cot, he began to smooth the delicate little snow-white hand that lay on
+the coverlet.  Then her eyelids lifted, and a pair of orbs of sad sweet
+blue looked tenderly at the soldier by her side.
+
+She smiled.
+
+"Oh, Sandie!" she said, "I've had such a dear delightful dream.  I
+thought that our darling had grown up into such a beautiful child, and
+that you, and he, and I, were back once more, wandering among the bonnie
+hills, and over the gowany braes of bonnie Arrandale.  I thought that
+father had forgiven us, Sandie, and kissed and blessed our boy, and was
+laughing to see him stringing gowans into garlands, and hanging them
+around the neck of our old and faithful Collie."
+
+"Cheer up, dear wife," said the young sergeant, kissing her pale brow.
+"Oh! if you only knew how much good it does my heart to see you smiling
+once again.  Yes, dear, and I too have good hopes, brave hopes, that all
+will yet be well with us.  I was but a poor corporal when you fell in
+love with me, Mary; when, despite the wishes of your father, who would
+have wedded you to the surly old laird of Trona, and to lifelong misery,
+I made you my wife.  Your father knew I had come of gentle blood--that
+Dunryan belongs by rights to me--but he saw before him only the humble
+soldier of fortune; and he cursed me and spurned me.
+
+"But see, dear, look at these stripes on my arm, behold the medal.  I
+carry already a sergeant's sword; that sword I hope to wave and wield on
+many a field of battle, and with its aid alone, though friendless now, I
+mean to earn both fame and glory, ay, and with it win my spurs.  Then,
+Mary, the day will come when your father will be glad to own me as a
+son.
+
+"But sleep now, dear; remember, the doctor says you are not to move.
+Sleep; nay, you must not even talk.  See, I have brought my guitar; I
+will sit here and sing to you."
+
+He touched a few chords as he spoke, then sang low, sweet, loving songs
+to her, and ere long she was back once more in the land of dreams.
+
+The sun sank lower and lower in the heavens, and at last leapt like a
+fiery ball down behind the waves.  A short, very short twilight
+succeeded, a twilight of tints, tints of pink, and blue, and yellow.
+Sky and ocean seemed to meet and kiss good-night.  Then shadows fell,
+and the stars shone out in the eastern sky, and twinkled down from
+above, and finally glittered even over the distant hills of the western
+horizon: then it got darker and darker.
+
+But no breeze came off the shore, and this was in itself full ominous.
+
+The captain was now on deck with his first lieutenant.
+
+"We cannot be very many miles," he said, "off the river."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the lieutenant, "I reckon I know what you are
+thinking about.  If we cannot keep off from the shore in the event of
+its coming on to blow, you would try to cross the bar."
+
+"I would," replied the captain.  "It would indeed be a forlorn hope, but
+better that than certain destruction."
+
+"I fear, sir, it would be but a choice of deaths."
+
+"Better die fighting for life, though," said the captain, "than without
+a struggle."
+
+"Quite true," said the other, "and once over the bar we could get round
+the point and shelter would be certain.  But that terrible bar, sir!"
+
+It was far on in the middle watch ere the storm that had been brewing
+came on at last.  It came from the east, as the captain had feared it
+would.  Clouds had first risen up and gradually obscured the stars.
+Among these clouds the lightning flashed and played incessantly, but for
+a long time no thunder was heard.  This, at last, began to mutter, then
+roll louder and louder, nearer and nearer, then a bank of white was seen
+creeping along the sea's surface towards the ship, and almost
+immediately after the wind was upon her, she was on her beam ends with
+the sea dashing through her rigging, and the storm seeming to hold her
+down, but gradually she righted and sprang forward like an arrow from a
+bow, and apparently into the very teeth of the wind.
+
+The ship had been battened down and made ready in every way hours before
+the gale began, and well was it for all on board that preparations had
+thus been made.
+
+She was headed as near to the wind as she would sail, but for some time
+it seemed impossible for her to keep off the shore.  Gradually, however,
+the wind veered more to the south, and she made a good offing.  But the
+storm increased rather than diminished; still the good ship struggled
+onwards through darkness and danger.
+
+The royal masts had been got down early on the previous afternoon so as
+to reduce top-hamper to a minimum, but the pitching and rolling were
+frightful, yet she made but little water.
+
+Towards morning, however, fire and wind and waves appeared to combine
+together for the destruction of the ship.  The gale increased suddenly
+to all the fury of a hurricane, the roaring of the wind drowned even the
+rattle of the thunder, a ball of fire quivered for a moment over the
+fore-top-mast, then rent it into fragments, ran along a stay and
+splintered the bulwarks ere it reached the water, while at the same
+moment the whole ship was engulphed by a solid sea that swept over her
+bows, and carried away almost everything it reached, bulwarks, boats,
+and men.
+
+Then, as if it had done its worst, the gale moderated, the sea became
+less furious, the thunder ceased to roll, the lightning to play, and in
+half an hour more the grey light of morning spread over the ocean, and
+on the eastern horizon a bank of lurid red showed where the sun was
+trying to struggle through the clouds.
+
+With bulwarks ripped away and boats gone, the _Niobe_ looked little
+better than a wreck, while, sad to relate, when the roll was called five
+men failed to answer.  Five men swept away during the darkness and
+tempest, five brave hearts for ever stilled, five firesides at home in
+merrie England made to mourn for those whom their friends would sadly
+miss, but never, never see again!
+
+But see: the gale begins once more with redoubled fury, and to the
+horror of that unhappy ship, the wind goes round to meet the sun.
+
+"I fear, sir," said the lieutenant to the captain, "that nothing can now
+save us.  We must die like men."
+
+"That we will, I trust," replied the captain, "but we will die doing our
+duty to the very last.  Is there any one on board who knows this coast
+well?"
+
+"The boatswain, sir, Mr Roberts."
+
+"Send for him."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir."
+
+"Mr Roberts, what think you of the outlook?"
+
+"A very poor one, captain.  But I have been looking at the land, sir,
+and hazy though it is I find we are right off the bar of Lamoo."
+
+"Why, then, we must have been driven back many many miles; we were off
+Brava last night."
+
+"I reckon, sir, we made up our leeway at times like, when there was a
+bit of a shift of wind, and lost it again when it veered.  But our only
+chance now is to head for that bar, sir."
+
+"You've been over it?"
+
+"I have, sir, many is the time; and I'll try to pilot the good _Niobe_
+over it now."
+
+"Very well, Mr Roberts, you shall try; if you succeed, you are a made
+man, if you fail--"
+
+"All," said the boatswain, "I knows what failure'll mean, sir."
+
+Half an hour afterwards, stripped of nearly every inch of canvas save
+what sufficed to steer her, with four men at the wheel, and the sturdy
+pilot guiding them with hand movements alone--for his voice could not be
+heard amid the raging of the storm and awful roar of the breaking
+billows that were everywhere around them--the brave _Niobe_ was rushing
+stem on through the mountain seas that rolled shorewards over the most
+dreaded bar on all the African coast.
+
+It is impossible to describe the turmoil and strife of the waves when
+the vessel was once fairly on the bar; and to add to the terror of the
+scene more than once she struck the sandy bottom with a force that made
+every timber creak and groan.  Next moment she would be swallowed up
+apparently in boiling, breaking, swirling water, but rising again on the
+crest of a wave, she would shake herself free and rush headlong on once
+more.
+
+But look at her now: she is on the very top of a curling avalanche, and
+speeding shorewards with it, her jibboom and bowsprit, and even part of
+her bows, hang clear over that awful precipice of water, and if the ship
+moves faster than the breaker beneath her then her time is come.
+
+It is a moment of awful suspense, but it is only a moment, for in
+shorter time than pen takes to describe it, the billow seems to sink and
+melt beneath her; again she bumps on the sand, but next minute amidst a
+chaos of snowy foam she is hurled into the deep water beyond.
+
+An hour afterwards the _Niobe_ is lying snugly at anchor in a little
+wooded bay, with all her sails furled, and nothing to tell of the
+dangers she has just come through, save the splintered mast, the ragged
+rigging, and sadly-torn bulwarks.
+
+But the wind goes moaning through the mangrove forest, where birds and
+beasts are crouching low for shelter among the gnarled boughs and roots,
+and although the water around the _Niobe_ is calm enough, the storm
+roars through her upper rigging, and she rocks and rolls as if out at
+sea.
+
+The youthful sergeant is sitting beside the cot within the screen, but
+his head is bowed down with grief, and a sorrow such as men feel but
+once in a life-time is rending his heart.  The little white hand of his
+wife still lies on the coverlet, but it is cold now as well as white.
+The heart that loved him had ceased to beat--
+
+  "And closed for aye the sparkling glance
+  That dwelt on him sae fondly."
+
+All his bright visions of yesterday have fled away, all his hopes are
+crushed, his very soul seems dead within him.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+At the very time the gale was raging its fiercest, and the sea
+threatening every minute to engulph the ship, the lady's life had passed
+away, and he who sits here pen in hand was left without a mother's care.
+Born on the stormy ocean, rocked in infancy on the cradle of the deep,
+no wonder he loves the sea, and can look back with pleasure even to the
+dangers he has encountered and gone through.
+
+As the sea on which he was born, so stormy has been the life of him who
+tells this tale.
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+  "Majestic woods of every vigorous green,
+  Stage above stage, high waving o'er the hills;
+  Or to the far horizon wide diffused,
+  A boundless deep immensity of shade."
+
+  Thomson's "Seasons."
+
+  "Hearts of oak!" our captain cried, "when each gun
+  From its adamantine lips,
+  Spread a death-shade round the ships,
+  Like the hurricane eclipse of the sun."
+
+  Campbell.
+
+There are two events in the history of a man, of which he himself in
+writing his autobiography can hardly be expected to give any very clear
+account, namely, his birth and his death.  To describe the former, he
+would require to be born with his eyes very wide open indeed, and
+instead of a silver spoon in his mouth, which they tell me some children
+are born with, a silver pencil-case behind his ear; to describe the
+latter, a man would need to be a prophet in reality.  How is it then, it
+may be asked, that I, Niobe Radnor, am able with truthfulness and
+accuracy to give an account of the occurrences that were taking place
+around me when I first made my appearance on "the stage of life."  For
+the ability to do so, I am indebted to the only father I ever knew, my
+true and trusty old friend Captain (formerly boatswain) Ben Roberts, who
+supplies me with the facts.
+
+Yonder he is, sitting out on the rose lawn there, as I write, book in
+hand, his white beard glittering in the spring sunshine, and his jolly
+old round red face surmounted by an immensity of straw hat--just as if
+_his_ complexion _could_ be spoiled, just as if a complexion that has
+borne the brunt of a thousand storms, been scathed and scarred in
+battle, blistered by many a fierce and scorching summer sun, and
+reddened by the snows of many a hard and stormy winter, _could_ be
+spoiled.
+
+Ah! dear old Ben! he is getting old, wearing up towards the threescore
+years and ten--
+
+  "--That form
+  That short allotted span.
+  That binds the few and weary years
+  Of pilgrimage to man."
+
+Yes, Ben is getting old.  As oaks get old, so is my faithful friend
+getting old.  As oaks in age are hard and tough, and defiant of the
+gales that rage through the forest, uprooting mighty trees, so is Ben my
+friend; and for all the storms he has weathered, I trust I shall have
+him by me yet for years and years to come.  Ben is so buoyant and fresh,
+it always instils new blood into my veins merely to talk to him.  "Ben,
+my boy," I often say, "you are, by your own confession, some twenty
+years my senior, and yet I believe you feel as young and even younger
+than I do."
+
+"Well, Nie," he replies, "I believe it's the heart that does it, you
+know.
+
+  "For old as I am, and old as I seem,
+  My heart is full of youth.
+
+  "Eye hath not seen, tongue hath not told,
+  And ear hath not heard it sung,
+  How buoyant and bold, though it seem to grow old,
+  Is the heart for ever young.
+
+  "For ever young--though life's old age
+  Hath every nerve unstrung;
+  The heart, the heart, is a heritage
+  That keeps the old man young."
+
+He always calls me "Nie" for short, "because," he added once, by way of
+explanation, "your name is a heathenish kind of one at best, but a
+person is bound to make the most of it."
+
+I cannot deny that Ben is right; my name is a heathenish one.  How did I
+come by it?  I will tell you.  I was born, as you know, at sea, in the
+Indian Ocean, in the _Niobe_, whilst she was cruising in that region in
+the search of slavers--born not long before the appearance of that
+terrible gale of wind described in the first chapter of this story, when
+the tempest was at its fiercest, and the stormy waves were doing their
+worst; born on board a vessel which seemed doomed to certain
+destruction.  And it is the custom of the service to call a child by the
+name of the ship in which he first sees the light of day.
+
+I never knew a father's love or a mother's tender care, for the gentle
+lady who gave me birth lived but a little after that event; but she
+bequeathed me all she had--her blessing--and died.  In a glade in the
+gloomy depths of an African forest my mother is sleeping, in the shade
+of a banian tree.  I stood by that lonely grave one morning not many
+years ago.  The ground, I remember, was all chequered with sunshine and
+with shade from the tree above; little star-like primulas grew here and
+there.  Among these and the fallen leaves sea-green lizards were
+creeping; high overhead bright-winged birds sang soft lullabies, and
+every time the wind moved the boughs a whole shower of sparkling drops
+fell down, like tears.
+
+And my father?  He never seemed to rally after my mother's death until
+one hour before his own, just a fortnight and a day from that on which
+he had followed her to her grave in the forest like one dazed.  He did
+not appear in his mess-place after this.  He took no food, he spoke to
+no one, he spent his time mostly within the screen by the empty cot
+where my mother had been--in grief.
+
+About the tenth day he suffered my friend Roberts (the boatswain) to
+lead him like a child to the spare cabin where his baby boy was
+sleeping; and in a daze he had seen her loved remains laid to rest
+beneath the tree.  He bent over the grave for a moment, and then for the
+first time he burst into tears.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The _Niobe_ remained for ten days where she had cast anchor, in order to
+make good repairs.
+
+It was a very quiet spot in which she lay, a kind of bay or bight, as
+the sailors called it, with mangrove trees growing all around it close
+down to the water's edge, except at the one side where the great river
+stole silently away seaward, its current seeming hardly to affect in any
+degree the waters in the bay itself.
+
+At last all repairs were finished, and the "clang, clang, clang" of the
+carpenters' hammers, that had been till now incessant all day long, and
+far into the night, was hushed, sails were shaken half loose, and the
+_Niobe_ only waited for a breeze to bear her down the river and across
+the great and dreaded bar, where, even in the calmest weather, the
+breakers rolled and tumbled mountains high.
+
+But the breeze seemed in no hurry to come.  During the day those dull
+dreamy woods and forests lay asleep in the sunshine, and stirred not
+leaf or twig, and the creatures that dwelt therein were as silent as the
+woods around them.  Had you landed on that still shore, and wandered
+inland through the trees, you would have seen great lizards enjoying
+themselves in patches of sunlight, an occasional monkey enjoying a nap
+at a tree foot or squatting on a bough blinking at the birds that--
+open-beaked as if gasping for more air--sat among the branches too
+languid to hop or fly.  But except a startled cry at your presence
+emitted by some of these, hardly any other sound would have fallen on
+your ears.
+
+The only creatures that seemed to be busy were the beetles on the ground
+and the bees, the latter long, dark, dangerous-looking hornets that flew
+in clouds about the lime and orange-trees, and behaved as if all the
+forest belonged to them, the former of all shapes and sizes, and of
+colours more brilliant than the rainbow.  No doubt they knew exactly
+what they were about and had their ideas carefully arranged, but what
+their business was in particular would have puzzled any human being to
+tell--why they dug pits and rolled little pieces of stones down them, or
+why they pulled pieces of sticks along bigger than themselves, dropped
+them, apparently without reason, and went in search of others.  There
+was, one would have thought, no method in the madness of these strange
+but lovely creatures: it looked as though they were doomed to keep
+moving, doomed to keep on working, and doing something, no matter what.
+
+In the great river itself sometimes small herds of hippopotami would
+appear, especially in parts where the water was shallow.  They came but
+to enjoy a sunshine bath and siesta.
+
+But at night both forest and river seemed to awaken from their slumbers.
+
+The river cows now came on shore to feed, and their grunting and
+bellowing, that often ended in a kind of shriek, mingled [Two pages
+missing here].
+
+"Well, my friend, how much for your bananas, and that bottle of honey,
+and those eggs, and fowls?  Come, I'll buy the lot," said the boatswain.
+
+"De Arab chief come in big ship, two three week ago.  De ship he hide in
+de bush.  He come to-night when de moon am shine.  He come on board you
+big ship, plenty knife, plenty spear, plenty gun, killee you all for
+true.  Den he take all de money and all de chow-chow.  Plenty much
+bobbery he makee, plenty much blood he spillee, plenty much murder.
+Sweeba tell you for true."
+
+While this conversation was going on the fruit, eggs, and fowls were
+being handed on board and money thrown into the boat, which was quickly
+concealed by the natives in their cummerbunds.
+
+They found themselves richer than they had ever been before in their
+lives.
+
+"But why do you come and tell us?" then inquired Roberts.  (Roberts, by
+the way, was the only one the native would converse with.  He had
+eagerly requested the captain and officers to keep away, for fear of
+exciting the suspicion of those who he averred were lurking in the
+forest.)
+
+"What for I come and tellee you?" he replied.  "English have been good
+to me many time 'fore now.  Arab chief he bad man.  He come to my house,
+he tie me to a tree by de neck.  He think I dead.  Den he takee my poor
+wife away, and all de poor piccaninnies.  My poor ole mudder she berry
+bad.  She not fit to trabbel away to de bush, so he cut her head off,
+and trow her in de blaze.  He burn all my hut, all my house.  I not lub
+dat Arab chief berry berry much."
+
+"I shouldn't think you did," was the reply; "but now, my friend, if all
+goes well come back to-morrow, and we will reward you."
+
+About eight o'clock that same night, the full moon rose slowly up over
+the woods, bathing the trees in a soft blue haze, but changing the
+river, 'twixt the ship and the distant shore, into a broad pathway of
+light that shimmered and shone like molten gold.  There was hardly a
+cloud in the heaven's dark blue, and the stars shone with unusual
+brilliancy.
+
+No one was visible on the _Niobe's_ decks, and never a light burned
+aloft, but, nevertheless, sentinels were watching the water on all
+sides, and down below the crew, fully armed, were waiting.  The guns
+were all ready to run out, and there was no talking save in whispers,
+and when any one had occasion to cross the deck he did it so lightly
+that you could scarcely have heard his footfall.
+
+Except the officers of the watch, all others were in the saloon or
+ward-room.  They too were armed, but passing the time in quietly playing
+draughts and other games.  Instead of being in his cabin, the captain
+was there along with his officers.
+
+Presently the boatswain, whose duty it was to keep one of the
+night-watches, came quietly in to make a report.
+
+"There are no signs yet, sir.  The forest is quiet enough, except for
+the birds and beasts.  It is very bright now.  If they do come, we will
+have light enough to give 'em fits."
+
+"I hope they will, then," replied the captain; "I sincerely trust that
+tall native wasn't a-gammoning us."
+
+"I feel sure enough he wasn't, sir."
+
+"Hark!" cried the captain.
+
+It was the sentry's hail.  Next moment his rifle rang out on the night
+air.  It seemed to be caught up by the echoes of the forest, and the
+sound multiplied indefinitely, but there was instant evidence that this
+was no echo.
+
+A long line of fire swept across the forest shore, and bullets rattled
+through the rigging or on the vessel's sides.
+
+The attack was about to commence.
+
+Guns were speedily run out in the direction from which the volley had
+come, and just by way of showing the enemy that the _Niobe_ was
+prepared, two loaded with shrapnel were fired.
+
+The yell of rage and pain that rang through the forest, told plainly
+enough that some of the savages had bitten the dust.  The battle had
+begun.
+
+But it was not to be a fight of rifle against big guns.  The Arabs,
+unless at close quarters, are ever at disadvantage.  The chief who led
+this particular band bore a fierce and implacable hatred to the English
+race, more especially to those who wore the blue uniform of the Royal
+Navy.  Many a time had he been thwarted in his designs by the ubiquitous
+British cruiser, and, sword in hand, he had sworn by Allah--sworn on his
+"book"--to have revenge.
+
+His time, it almost seemed, had come to-night.  Though far south when
+the first news of the disaster to the _Niobe_ had been brought to him by
+a swift-footed Somali spy, Zareppa had lost no time in setting sail in
+his largest dhow--he was the proud owner of many--and making his way
+north.
+
+It was no trouble for this daring piratical slaver to cross the bar even
+on a light wind.  He had stolen up the river by night unseen, and soon
+after planned his attack.
+
+Now at the very moment that a whole fleet of canoes filled with armed
+Somalis and Arabs left the forest shore, under cover of volley after
+volley from the bush, Zareppa, the pirate chief, was stealing round the
+corner of the bay with over a hundred of his best warriors, who were
+lying down so that they might not be seen, to attack the _Niobe_ on the
+other quarter.
+
+Swiftly came they while guns thundered forestward, and all hands lay on
+the port side to repel boarders.  It looked as though the fate of the
+good ship were sealed.
+
+Till this moment the soldier sergeant--my father--had lain apparently
+helpless and apathetic in a screen berth on the main deck.  But the
+sound of warfare will stir the blood of even a dying soldier, as the
+blast of a bugle does that of the aged and worn-out war-horse.  No
+sooner had the firing commenced than he started from his cot and
+speedily dressed himself, often tottering as he did so.
+
+Captain Roberts tells me that even then my father could hardly have
+known what he was about: that all he could have been certain of was that
+a fight was going on, and it was his duty to be in it.
+
+Grasping sword and pistol, he rushed on deck.  Still staggering, and
+gazing wildly around him, almost the first thing he saw was the approach
+of Zareppa's boats.  He was all alive now, he rushed across the deck,
+and more by gesture than by voice made the commander aware of the
+terrible danger.
+
+None too soon.  Already the heads of the foremost boarders were
+appearing above the bulwarks.  But our men were speedily divided into
+two parties, and in a minute more the battle was raging fiercely on both
+sides of the deck.
+
+"Deen!  Deen!  Deen!" was the fierce and shrill Arab war-cry.
+
+"Hurrah! hurrah!" was the bold and answering shout of our marines and
+bluejackets.
+
+The tall form of Zareppa seemed everywhere.  It towered high on the
+bulwarks.  It was seen springing down on deck, and vaulting backwards,
+and wherever it came death followed in its wake.
+
+Soon no sound even of pistol was heard.  It was a hand-to-hand fight
+_on_ deck, for the _Niobe_ had been boarded: hand to hand, and breast to
+breast; cutlass and sword 'gainst Somali dagger and Arab spear.  There
+were the shrieks of pain, the cries of exultation, and horrible oaths as
+well, I blush to say, mingling with the groans of the dying in this
+dreadful _melee_.
+
+How peacefully the moon shone--how quiet and lovely and still the forest
+looked all around!  How great the contrast 'twixt man and nature!
+
+But, see! the fight is finished.  The enemy are borne backwards into the
+sea.  Our fellows hack them down as they fly, for they are wild with the
+excitement of the strife.
+
+But high on the poop a young soldier is engaged in a deadly strife with
+the Arab chief himself.  All his skill would hardly save Zareppa.  For
+several minutes the duel seemed to rage.  Then with a wild rash the Arab
+dashed forward on the soldier, his sword passed through his body and--my
+father fell dead.
+
+"English dogs!" shouted Zareppa, standing for a moment on the bulwarks
+with bleeding sword upheld.  "Dogs of English, Zareppa's day will come!
+Beware!"
+
+He would have vaulted into the sea, but up from behind the very place
+where he stood rose a dark naked figure.  A dagger gleamed one instant
+in its hand, and next was plunged into the back of the chief, who gave a
+fearful shriek.
+
+"Ha! ha! aha!" yelled this strange figure, "Zareppa's day _hab_ come.
+Plenty quick.  Ha!"
+
+The Arab chief fell face forward on the deck.
+
+It was the negro Sweeba, who had brought the news of the intended
+attack.
+
+From his own side of the river he had heard the firing and the wild
+shouts that told of the raging combat, and had speedily launched his
+rude canoe, intent on revenge for the murder of his poor wife and babes.
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+  "Hope, with her prizes and victories won,
+  Shines in the blue of my morning sun,
+  Conquering hope with golden ray,
+  Blessing my landscape far away."
+
+  Tupper.
+
+Not a single prisoner was taken.
+
+Those who were not fatally wounded had sprung overboard.
+
+The rest of the night passed in quietness, but when day broke, the sun
+shone on a sad and ghastly scene.  There still lay about broken
+cutlasses, spears, torn pieces of cloth, and all the _debris_ of fight,
+and blood, blood everywhere.
+
+On one side of the deck, with upturned faces, lay in ghastly array the
+dead of the enemy, on the other our own poor fellows had been put, and
+carefully covered with flags.
+
+All hands were summoned to prayers, to bury the dead and clear up decks.
+
+When, after service, the commander and his officers--alas! among those
+who lay beneath the Union Jack were one or two officers--went round to
+view the bodies, to their astonishment, they found that Zareppa had
+gone.
+
+He had only shammed death, then, in order to escape!
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Incidents of the very saddest character are soon forgotten in the
+service.  It is as well it should be so.  But a battle is no sooner
+fought than the decks are carefully washed, the damages all made good,
+and even rents and holes in the ship's side, that might well redound to
+her honour, are not only carefully repaired but painted over.  And
+whenever a vessel has had sails torn in a gale of wind, sailors are put
+to mend them on the following day.
+
+For modesty always goes hand-in-hand with true valour.
+
+In a fortnight after the fight in the river the brave _Niobe_ was once
+more at sea, and looking all over as smart a craft as ever sailed.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Just as I wrote these lines my good friend, Captain Roberts, looked over
+my shoulder.
+
+"Ay, lad," he said, "and she _was_ a smart craft too.  They don't make
+such ships now, and they couldn't find the men to man 'em if they did.
+I tell you, Nie, it was a sight that used to make Frenchmen stare to see
+the old _Niobe_ taking down top-gallant masts."
+
+"Well, my dear old sea-dad," I replied, "of course you are fond of the
+good old times.  It is only natural you should be."
+
+"But they _were_ times.  Why, nowadays they could no more do the things
+we did than they could pitch a ball o' spun yarn 'twixt here and
+Jericho.  I'm right, lad, I tell you, and I should know."
+
+"Oh!"  I replied, "for the matter of that, I was living in those brave
+old days as well as yourself."
+
+"Yes, so you were," cried the old captain, laughing.  "You were borne on
+the books o' the old _Niobe_ as well as myself, and a queer little chap
+you were when first we met.  Heigho! time flies: it's more'n forty years
+ago, Nie."
+
+"Wait half a minute," I said, for I knew the old man was going to spin
+me a yarn that I was never tired of hearing--the story of my own early
+years.  Why was it that I liked to hear him tell the tale over and over
+again, you may ask.  For this reason--he never told it twice quite the
+same: always the same in the main incidents, doubtless, but with
+something new each time.
+
+"Wait half a minute."
+
+"Ay, ay, lad!"
+
+I brought out the little table and set it down under his favourite tree
+on the lawn, and placed thereon his favourite pipe and his pouch.
+
+The old sailor smiled, and drew his great straw chair up and sat down,
+and I threw myself on the grass and prepared to listen.
+
+The captain had his two elbows on the table; he was teasing the tobacco,
+and when he began to speak he was evidently following out some train of
+thought, and addressing the tobacco, not me.
+
+"As saucy a wee rascal he turned out as ever put a foot on board a
+ship," said Captain Roberts.
+
+"Whom are you talking about, old friend?"  I asked.
+
+"I'm talking about baby Nie," replied the captain, still addressing the
+tobacco.  "I wonder, now, what would have become of him, though, if it
+hadn't been for old Bo'swain Roberts.  Why, he would have died.  Died?
+Ay, but I wouldn't see poor Sergeant Radnor's baby thrown to the sharks,
+not for all the world.  Fed him first on hen's milk [the name given by
+sailors to egg beaten up in water].  Didn't do well on that.  `Cap'n,'
+says I to the skipper one day, `soon's we go to Zanzibar we must get a
+nanny-goat for the young papoose, else he'll lose the number of his
+mess, and the doctor will have to mark him D.D.'  [discharged dead.]
+`Very well, Roberts,' says the skipper, `that's just as you like.'
+
+"Now our purser was a mean old fellow.  `Nanny-goat!' he cries, when I
+went to ask him for the money.  `What next, I wonder? the service is
+going to the deuce.  No, Her Majesty pays for no nanny-goats, I do
+assure ye.'
+
+"I just touches my hat and marches off to our dear old doctor.  I knew
+he had a kindly heart.  `Nanny-goat,' cries he, `why, of course the
+darling baby'll have a nanny-goat.  We'll keep it out of the sick-mess
+fund, and mark it down medical comforts.'  [Note 1.]  `Excuse me, sir,'
+said I, catching hold of the doctor's hand--it was as rough as my
+own--`but you're a brick.'
+
+"And that, `Nie,' is how you came for the first five years o' your life
+to be called nothing else but young `medical comforts.'"
+
+"Five years!"  I said, "that is a long spell for a ship to be on one
+station."
+
+"Ay, lad, you're right.  But ships were ships in those days.
+
+"Young `medical comforts'," he continued, "as they called you, in less
+than four years was a deal smarter than any monkey on board.  Not that
+he could climb quite so high, maybe, but he was more tricky, and that is
+saying a lot.  And it was among the monkeys that `medical comforts'
+would mostly be, too.
+
+"But the monkeys all seemed to like you, Nie; they would tease each
+other, and fight each other, but they never touched you.  There was one
+animal in particular, and he was your favourite, the queerest old chap
+you ever saw.  We got him down in Madagascar, and they called him the
+Ay-ay.  Doctor always said he was a being from another world, a kind of
+a spirit, and the men used to be afraid of him.  He had hands like a
+human being, but the middle finger was much longer than the others, and
+not thicker than a straw.  When only a baby, he used to dip this long
+skinny finger in milk and give you to suck, and when you went to sleep
+he never left your side.  Sometimes he would stroke your face and say,
+`Ay-ay' as tenderly as if he'd been a mother to you.  But the men always
+declared it was `Nie, Nie,' he'd be saying.
+
+"But you had one pet on board that maybe you mind on--the Albatross?"
+
+"I do," said I, "young as I must have been at the time."
+
+"People say," the captain went on, "they've never been tamed; but there
+he was, sure enough, in an immense great hencoop, that the doctor had
+made for him, and there you'd be in front of him often enough, though he
+would have cut the nose of anyone but yourself; and never a flying-fish
+was caught you didn't get hold of, and take to him.  The men got small
+share of these.  But, bless you, Nie, you were the ship's chief pet, and
+the men would have gone through fire and water for you any hour of the
+day or night.
+
+"The jealousies there used to be about you, too, Nie!  Why, lad, if it
+had been a young lady it couldn't have been worse.  Jealousies, Nie, ay,
+and more than jealousies, for our fellows didn't need much to make them
+strip to the waist and fight.  Fact is, when times were dull with us, I
+think they rather liked the excuse.  I've heard a row got up for'ard
+just in the following fashion:
+
+"You would be playing on Davis's knee.
+
+"`Give us half an hour o' the wee chap,' Bill would say.
+
+"`Go along,' Davis would reply, `you 'ad him all day yesterday.'
+
+"`He's smilin' to me,' Bill would say.
+
+"`Smilin' _at_ you, you mean,' Davis would answer derisively.
+
+"`Smilin' at your ugly face.  Why, that mouth o' yours couldn't be made
+any bigger 'athout shifting your ears back.'
+
+"This would be enough.
+
+"`Come below,' Bill would cry, `and I'll see if a big ugly lubber like
+you is to cheek me!'
+
+"`Go with him, Davis!' half a dozen would cry.  `_I'll_ hold the
+youngster!'
+
+"And there would be such a scramble to get you, that I used to wonder
+you weren't torn to pieces.  And all the while that animal with the long
+skinny middle finger would be jumping around like a demon and crying--
+
+"`Ay-ay!--Ay-ay!--Ay-ay!'
+
+"As he never cried like this without all the monkeys following suit, and
+all the parrots whistling and shrieking--on occasions like these, Nie,
+there was five minutes of a rough ship, I can tell you."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  Medical comforts are luxuries for the sick, bought at the
+surgeon's discretion out of the sick-mess fund.
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+  "Still onward, fair the breeze nor rough the surge,
+  The blue waves sport around the stern they urge;
+  Far on the horizon's verge appears a speck,
+  A spot--a mast--a sail--an armed deck."
+
+  Byron.
+
+"Well, Ben," I said, "life must have been very pleasant to me then."
+
+"And isn't it now, Nie? isn't it now, lad?  Look at the beautiful old
+place that you have around you--all your own; you ought to be thankful.
+Listen to the birds on this delightful morning, their songs mingling
+with the cry o' the wind through the poplars.  And, lad, you cannot draw
+a breath out on the lawn here, without inhaling the odour of honey, and
+the perfume of flowers."
+
+"You are quite poetic, Ben Roberts," I replied.
+
+"Quite enough to make the barnacliest old tar that ever lived feel
+poetic, Nie," quoth Ben.
+
+"Well, fill your pipe again, Ben."
+
+"Ha! ha!" laughed the old man, "fill my pipe again, eh?  That means
+heave round with another yarn, eh?"
+
+"Something very like it," I said.
+
+"Well," said the captain, "an old man is to be forgiven if he does get a
+little bit gossiping now and then, and wanders from his subject, and I
+always was fond of a bit o' pretty scenery, Nie--pretty bits like the
+old mill by the riverside down yonder."
+
+"And a bit of fishing and shooting, Ben?"
+
+"Ay, lad.  But memory is at this moment taking me back to one of the
+loveliest bits o' woodland landscape in the world.  What a poem our
+Robbie Burns could have written there!  You were still the _Niobe's_
+pet, but old enough now to be left at times without your sea-dad.  Away
+miles and miles into the wooded interior of Africa, we were a good long
+distance south the Line, and just sitting down, me and my mates, to a
+snack o' lunch on the banks of a roaring tumbling brook, where we'd been
+bathing.  We'd had a smartish week's shooting, and were thinking of
+returning to the ship the very next day.
+
+"Our guns were lying carelessly enough at some little distance, when
+suddenly a branch snapped, and before any of us could have stood up to
+defend ourselves, had it been an unfriendly Arab, or a savage Somali, a
+dark skin pushed the branches aside and stood before us.
+
+"It was our faithful Sweeba, the negro who had brought us the news of
+Zareppa's intended attack on the night your poor father was killed, Nie.
+
+"`Sweeba, what on earth brings you here?' says I.
+
+"`Commander's orders,' said Sweeba, saluting.
+
+"Now Sweeba was always dressed when on board like a British sailor, but
+here he was almost as naked as the stem of a palm-tree.
+
+"`What have you done with your clothes, Sweeba?'  I asked.
+
+"`I expect he has pawned them,' said little Brown, our purser's clerk.
+
+"`I not can run muchee wid English clothes,' Sweeba said modestly.
+
+"`And so you hid them in the bush, eh?'
+
+"`Ah!  Massa Roberts,' replied the negro, smiling; `you berry much
+clebber.'
+
+"`Well, and what are the commander's orders?'
+
+"`You come back plenty much quick.'
+
+"`Ship on fire?'
+
+"`No, sah.'
+
+"`Anything happened to Nie?'
+
+"`No, sah.  Nie and de monkey all right, sah.'
+
+"`Well, explain.'
+
+"`Only dis, sah, we goin' to fight Arab dhow.'
+
+"We were all up quick enough at this intelligence.  We didn't stop to
+finish our luncheon.
+
+"`Lead the way, Sweeba,' I cried.
+
+"And off went Sweeba through the forest, we following in Indian file.
+We didn't take more of the game with us than we could easily carry, so
+the jackals had a good feed that night.
+
+"It was a long and a rough road to travel.  You know the style of thing,
+Nie; the dark dismal woods, the broad swamps, the hills and the wide
+stony uplands, where never a thing lives or thrives, bar the lizards and
+a few snakes, and then last of all the mangrove forests.  Our anxiety to
+get back made us hurry all the more.  We made forced marches, and burned
+but two camp fires ere we reached the coast.
+
+"The ship we had left lying at anchor in a little wooded creek.  We
+returned to find it gone.
+
+"`Massa, massa; we too late,' cried Sweeba.  `Now de Arab men come quick
+and kill us all for true.'
+
+"`Where is the nearest village, Sweeba?'
+
+"`Long way, sah; long way, and no good.  Dey kill Englishman.  No gib
+mooch time to tink.'
+
+"`Well, we're in a fix, I think,' I said.
+
+"`Not a bit of it,' cried a cheery voice close behind us; and looking
+round there stood little Midshipman Leigh, of the starboard watch.  The
+young rascal had heard us coming, and hidden his boat among the trees,
+making his men lie close, as he expressed it, to see how we'd look.
+
+"Our orders were to follow the _Niobe_ south, where she had gone to
+pitch into a whole fleet of piratical slavers, and it was currently
+reported that our old friend Zareppa was admiral of the pirates, and
+thirsting for his revenge.
+
+"What a lovely day it was, Nie; the sea as blue and tranquil as the eye
+of a beautiful child."
+
+"More poetry, old tar," I said.
+
+"Wait a bit," said Captain Roberts.  "Well, we cruised along down the
+coast with just enough sea-breeze to bear us onwards and keep the oars
+in-board.
+
+"We expected to find our ship at a little island called Chaksee, where
+she would wait us; or, if absent when we went home, as our middy called
+it, we could wait till she returned to this rendezvous.
+
+"There wasn't a sail in sight when we started, nor a speck on the
+ocean's breast, except a jumping skip-jack now and then, or a big shark
+asleep on the surface, with a bird perched upon his protruding fin.
+
+"The breeze held, and very pleasant it was, and most of us, I think,
+were asleep at the moment the outlook at the bows sang out--
+
+"`Sail ho!'
+
+"`Where away?' cried the midshipman.
+
+"`Rounding the point yonder, sir.'
+
+"The midshipman scrambled forward, and we were all alert enough now.
+She wasn't a dhow, and no one could make anything of her at first, but
+we soon made her out to be one of those low freeboard one-masted craft
+that the Portuguese had in those days as coasters, and which they often
+used as slavers or even pirates.
+
+"`She seems very low in the water,' said the midshipman, `Is she too big
+to fight, Mr Roberts?'
+
+"`A deal too big,' I replied, `We'd better let her alone, I think.'
+
+"We got to windward of her anyhow, so we could have a peep on board.  We
+loaded with ball cartridge, and stood by for whatever might happen.
+
+"The strange craft stood right on her course, and never seemed to heed
+us, though the lowering glance her captain gave us showed he bore us no
+good will.  She was crowded with a rascally crew of Portuguese and
+negroes, and many bore ghastly wounds, that showed she had been in a
+recent fray; and it afterwards turned out that she had had a brush with
+the _Niobe_, but escaped.
+
+"On her deck were four or five biggish guns.  Discretion in this case
+was evidently then the better part of valour, for she could easily have
+blown us out of the water, but she seemed too disheartened for anything
+else but flight.
+
+"I think we were pleased also to escape an encounter that would
+certainly have ended in disaster.
+
+"The wind fell about sunset, then oars were got out, and, laden as we
+were, it was a stiffish pull.  All in the dark too, until eight o'clock,
+when the moon rose, half hidden at first by a bank of greyish clouds,
+which she soon surmounted, and then shone out with a splendour that you
+only see in one part of the world."
+
+"And that," said I, interrupting him, "is the Indian Ocean."
+
+"True, Nie, true," said Roberts.
+
+"We were among islands now, some bare and level, others wooded, a few
+with lofty cocoa-palms.
+
+"We had just landed on one of the latter, because owing to the cocoa-nut
+trees there would be, as you know, Nie, a few natives, and we expected a
+bit of hot supper.  We had drawn our boat well up on the sandy beach of
+a little cove, hidden by some scraggy bushes when--
+
+"`Look, look!' cried our purser's clerk.
+
+"All eyes were directed seaward.
+
+"Two great dhows stealing out to sea!  They were off in the same
+direction that we were going, and from the cut of their sails we could
+tell they were pirates, that is Arab fighting slavers.
+
+"`I say, Mr Roberts,' said the middy, `I wouldn't tackle those, would
+you?'
+
+"`We'd never see England again if we did,' I replied.
+
+"`Well,' said the boy, `I'm precious hungry, aren't you, Mr Roberts?'
+
+"`I could do with a pick,' I replied.
+
+"Then young Leigh gave his orders like a prince.
+
+"`Bear a hand, lads,' he cried, `and get supper; gather sticks, light a
+fire, on with the pot; some of you run to the village and bring half a
+dozen fowls.  Cut up the bacon.  Did you bring the onions?  Smith, if
+you've forgotten the onions, I'll have you flogged.'
+
+"`Then I won't be flogged,' said Smith.
+
+"Well, Nie, the remembrance of that stew, that cock-a-leekie soup, made
+gipsy-fashion in that lonely island of the ocean, makes me truly hungry
+to think of even now."
+
+"Shall I get you a ham sandwich, Roberts?"  I asked provokingly.
+
+"A ham sandwich!" he cried, "What! sawdust and paint, and the memory of
+that stew hovering round one like the odours of Araby the Blest?  Don't
+insult me, Nie.  I tell you, boy, that a hungry man might have been
+content to dine off the steam.  There!
+
+"Well, we had a good long rest after supper."
+
+"You needed it, I should think," I said, laughing.
+
+"None o' your sauce," said the old captain.  "We rested, and smoked our
+pipes, and looked on the sea.  Oh! to see the moonlight dancing on the
+rippling waves!"
+
+"I can easily imagine it, because I've often seen the like myself," I
+replied.
+
+"It was late that night when we got to Chaksee.  The ship was in behind
+the rocks so snug that we thought at first she wasn't there.
+
+"All on board were glad to see us, including Nie himself."
+
+"How old would I be then, Roberts?"
+
+"About five.  The _Niobe_, it seems, was ordered down to the Cape to
+refit; all her crew were to return to England, but, as you know, I
+preferred to stop in the old ship with the new crew.  I'm like the cats,
+I don't like to move.
+
+"The captain and I had a long talk.  He treated me just as if I'd been a
+commissioned officer.  He told me he had found a whole nest of pirates,
+that he had given one fits a day or two before, and meant to pepper the
+others soon if he had a chance.  They were over there, he said, pointing
+to the African coast, and he would have them.
+
+"The commander of the _Niobe_, indeed, was in high glee.  He had been
+ordered home, he said, but he would wait for those piratical scoundrels
+and old Zareppa if it were a month.  Then, surely, if he destroyed him
+and his ships his country would, in some way or other, requite his good
+services, and either promote him or give him a better command.
+
+"We lay snug behind the rocks at Chaksee for two whole days.  Our
+top-gallant masts were down, and no one in passing the island could have
+told there was a vessel there at all.
+
+"On a hill, not far off, two men were kept always on the outlook.
+
+"On the morning of the third day the signalmen left their posts and
+hurried towards the ship.
+
+"Three large piratical dhows, carrying the blood-red flag of the Arab
+nation, were bearing down towards the island.  They turned out to be the
+very same we'd seen two nights before, in company with another and much
+larger one.
+
+"We determined not to frighten them off by coming out too soon.  We
+didn't know then that these fellows rather courted fight than otherwise.
+
+"All sails were loosened and at last we got clear, took up the boats
+that had been heading us, lifted sails, and stood out to meet them.
+
+"Every man was at his post.  The marines lying down on deck under arms,
+the bluejackets, stripped to the trousers, standing by the guns on both
+decks.  There was a glorious breeze blowing.  Oh!  Nie, lad, it was just
+the morning for a fight.  My old blood dances in my veins yet at the
+very thoughts of it.
+
+"I must say that those Arabs managed their little craft beautifully.
+The largest one was the first to advance, and the first to receive and
+return our fire.  She had even the daring and pluck to fire at us."
+
+"Did she succeed?"
+
+"She did, alas! and she poured a broadside into us that made our upper
+deck like shambles.  Meanwhile the other two dhows were at us, _on_ us
+almost, for we were sometimes fighting gun to gun, and we had to fight
+on both sides of our vessel at once.
+
+"The commander of the _Niobe_ wanted all his wits about him, for it was
+a trying time.
+
+"We had one advantage over the pirates, namely, our marines.
+
+"The pirates had muskets, it is true, but either they were very bad
+ones, or they couldn't use them properly, one or the other.
+
+"We stationed our marines in the tops and rigging, and every shot told
+home, every bullet got its billet.
+
+"There were times during the fight when all the combatants seemed to
+pause.  It was as if the ships were taking breath, but in reality we
+stopped to allow the smoke of battle to clear away, for our ship was
+surrounded, so to speak, and all our gear was hanging anyhow.
+
+"The impetuosity of the attack of Arabs fighting at sea is very similar
+to the way in which they charge on _terra firma_; it is furious while it
+lasts.
+
+"It lasts as long as hope promises brightly, when it goes it goes at
+once, and, except in the case of fanatics in a religious war, there is a
+wild stampede.  Victory for a time hung in the balance, then it seemed
+to sway to the side of the enemy, because the _Niobe_ became for a time
+unmanageable.
+
+"It was a trying time to the nerves of the bravest of us.  There would
+be small mercy accorded to those among our poor fellows who happened to
+fall into Zareppa's bands.
+
+"The commander held a hurried consultation with his first lieutenant, at
+which I was present.  It was over in two minutes; in ten minutes more,
+during which time the battle raged with unabated fury, we had all the
+sails set which the few hands that could be spared were able to clap on
+her, and were clearing sheer away from the scene of action, steering as
+close to the wind as possible.  And the _Niobe_ could luff too, I can
+tell you.
+
+"Shots tore through our rigging as we fled, or seemed to fly, and
+derisive jeers and cheers, worse by far than bullets, were fired after
+us, till we were out of earshot, out of reach.  We replied not either by
+shot or shout.  We drew the big dhow after us--and that was all we
+wanted--as near as she could come.  We even let her gain on us, and her
+shots began to tell again.  Then all sail was clapped on, and next--
+
+"`Ready about,' was the cry.
+
+"Ah!  Nie, my boy, it was a beautiful sight, and a supreme moment.
+
+"We thundered down on that devoted pirate.  She never even divined our
+intention.  We might overwhelm her perhaps, she thought.  She prepared
+to out-manoeuvre us.  Then all seemed to become confusion on board her.
+Mind, she was over-manned to begin with, her rigging too was badly
+damaged, and her decks hampered with her dead and dying.
+
+"In a minute more we had hurtled into her.  We actually cut her in two;
+she sank before our eyes, almost before we could sheer off."
+
+At this part of his yarn, poor old Captain Roberts stopped.  I feel sure
+he was thinking of that dreadful scene; that, long ago though it was, he
+saw again that blood-stained ship sinking beneath the waves, with its
+living freight, many of them innocent slaves.
+
+He filled his pipe before he resumed.
+
+"Ah, well! poor misguided wretches, to do them justice they died
+bravely, and cheered wildly as they sank beneath the billows."
+
+"And so," I said; "Zareppa escaped even yet."
+
+"Yes, it was a plucky thing.  He swum out from the wreck ere she sank,
+and one of the dhows ran up even under our guns, and picked him out of
+the water.
+
+"Then both got clear away."
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+  "Like mountain cat that guards its young.
+  Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung."
+
+  Scott.
+
+  "He watched me like a lion's whelp,
+  That gnaws and yet may break its chain."
+
+  Byron.
+
+"Ben Roberts, dear old friend," I said, as soon as the captain had
+finished.  "I remember that sea-fight which you have just so graphically
+described."
+
+"And pray," said he, "what and how much of it could you remember, seeing
+you were down below, and were so well used to guns thundering over your
+baby head, that you often went to sleep during general quarters?  Now,
+just you tell me."
+
+"Well," I replied, "I suppose it must have been the collision at the
+conclusion, for I was knocked all of a heap off the chair, and the Ay-ay
+and I threw ourselves into each other's arms and wept."
+
+"Yes, lad, and I found you, when I went down to my cabin, in each
+other's arms, and both fast asleep."
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+I myself, dear reader, must now resume the thread of my narrative, from
+the place where Captain Roberts gives it up.
+
+When the crew of the _Niobe_ returned to their native land from the
+Cape, and the new crew joined, I remained with my foster-father--my dear
+old sea-dad.
+
+From the Cape we sailed straight to Bombay, it being found that the old
+_Niobe_ would require to go into dry dock.
+
+I remember being dazzled with all I saw in Bombay, except those terrible
+Towers of Silence, on which the dead bodies of the Parsees are exposed
+to be devoured by birds.  What I think struck me most was the gorgeous
+dresses of the natives, and the enormous amount of gold and silver
+ornaments they wore about them; bangles, and bracelets, and jewelled
+noselets, and ear-rings as big as cymbals, or the brass plates that
+barbers hang out in front of their doors.  If I wondered at the natives,
+the natives wondered at me--the piccaninny sailor-boy, as they called
+me--for I was now dressed out quite like a man-o'-war's man.
+
+From Bombay we returned to our cruising ground, which was at that time
+called the Cape station, and stretched all along the entire east coast
+of Africa, from the Cape to the Red Sea, including not only Madagascar
+with its circlet of tiny islets, but Mozambique, the Comoro Islands, and
+Seychelles as well.  Were I to tell you all my adventures on these
+shores, I should have no space to devote to sketches probably quite as
+interesting.
+
+Let me come then as speedily as I may to the one great event of my life:
+my capture by that arch-fiend Zareppa, and my treatment while a prisoner
+for ten long years in the wildest part of the interior of Africa.
+
+As soon as we reached Zanzibar, I being then of the ripe age of six
+years, the captain called me aft, and Roberts the boatswain came along
+with me.
+
+"My man," said the captain to me, "You are six now, and it is high time
+you were rated."
+
+I began to cry.  A rating I thought meant a flogging, and I had seen
+poor fellows tied up over and over again and flogged until the blood
+gushed out of their backs.
+
+"It is nothing," said the kindly captain; "I'm going to make a man of
+you."
+
+"Oh!"  I said, and wiped my eyes.
+
+"But," continued the captain laughing, "We'll make a second-class boy of
+you first."
+
+Roberts laughed now.
+
+"I'll teach him sir," he said, saluting the captain, "to splice and reef
+and steer."
+
+"Well, away you go," said the captain, "and see, my little man, that you
+do all you are told."
+
+I touched my forelock, and went away forward with the good boatswain; so
+proud that I'm sure I didn't feel my feet touching the deck.
+
+My education had begun long before; it continued now, and I hope I did
+my duty.
+
+For the next four years we had plenty of chasing of ships, plenty of
+cruising, plenty of jollity and fun, both on shore and afloat, and now
+and then a pitched battle.
+
+We had never seen Zareppa again, but we had often and often heard of
+him.  We knew that he was in the habit of marching into the interior
+upon peaceful negro villages lying about the Equator, burning them, and
+capturing the inhabitants as slaves.
+
+Oh! boys at home, if you but knew the horrors of the slave trade; if you
+could but realise even a tithe of the misery and wretchedness and
+fearful crimes included in that one word "slavery," as applied to Africa
+alone, you would not deem yourself entitled to the proud name of British
+boy, until you had registered a vow to do all that may ever lie in your
+power, be that little or be it much, by deeds or by words alone, to wipe
+out the curse.
+
+Had you seen what I have seen of it, had you sojourned where I have
+sojourned, you would have witnessed deeds that would harrow your mind to
+think of even till your dying day.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+My life on board the _Niobe_ was altogether a very pleasant one; the
+best part of it was the long glorious cruises we used to have in open
+boats.  Fancy, if you can, going away in a well-found boat, away from
+your ship entirely for, perhaps, a month or six weeks at a time, in the
+glorious summer weather, with the blue sky above, the blue sea below,
+and hardly ever more wind than sufficed to cool and fan you, and to
+raise the sea into a gentle ripple.  We cruised along the coast, we
+cooked our food on shore--and oh! what jolly "spreads" they used to be,
+what soups, what stews!--we cruised along the coast, and we sailed or
+pulled up rivers, and into many a lovely wooded creek, going everywhere,
+in fact, where there was a chance of capturing a slaver, or of making a
+prize.  When the slave ships ran we chased them, when they fired on us
+we fought them, and they were always beaten.  They might win a race, but
+never a battle.  We were some fifty men strong; we never stopped,
+therefore, for an invitation to go on board; we went, sword or cutlass
+in hand, and they were bound to give way.
+
+But to me, I think, the glad sense of being away from the ship and of
+leading a free and roving life, was the greatest part of the pleasure,
+and I used to be so sorry when we bore up at last for the rendezvous
+where we were to meet our ship.
+
+That, then, was the bright side of the picture of my life in these glad
+old days.  And I must confess that it really had not a dark one,
+although sadness used to steal over my heart, when letters came from
+what others called home--England.
+
+Home!  To me the word had no other meaning except the wide ocean, and
+yet when I saw others reading their letters with such joy depicted on
+every countenance, well--it was very foolish of me, no doubt--but I used
+to steal away into some quiet corner, and weep.
+
+"Now, my lad," cried Roberts to me one day.  "Get that twopenny-ha'penny
+cutlass of yours out, and prepare to go on shore.  We're going up
+country to fight those rascally Arabs.  We are going to storm Zareppa's
+own stronghold."
+
+"Hurrah!"  I shouted; "And you will really take me with you, Mr
+Roberts?"
+
+"That I will, lad; and you're not your father's son unless you know how
+to behave yourself in presence of a foe."
+
+I said nothing; but at that moment I almost thought that Roberts
+instigated an act on my part, which followed some days after this.  Had
+he not mentioned Zareppa and my father in two consecutive sentences--my
+father and my father's slayer?
+
+"Oh!"  I said inwardly, "could I but meet the man face to face!"  What a
+childish thought, you will say, for a mere stripling, with a
+twopenny-ha'penny cutlass!  The cutlass, by the way, was a middy's dirk,
+of which I felt very proud indeed.
+
+The boats were called away.  The expedition against the Arab stronghold
+was going to be "a big thing," as Roberts said, so every man that could
+be spared from the ship joined it.
+
+Our guide was poor Sweeba.  This negro had but one thought in life;
+namely, to avenge the murder of his family.  I'm afraid that revenge is
+a very human though an improper feeling; and it is easy enough to
+understand, without attempting to justify, Sweeba's thirst for
+vengeance.  I hope that I myself shall never forget that Bible text
+which says--
+
+  "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay."
+
+The utmost caution was necessary in passing up through the forest and
+jungle, for we were surrounded by enemies on all sides.  However, we
+made forced marches in silence and all by night, and in three days'
+time, being favoured by fortune, we arrived in front of Zareppa's
+stronghold, and within two miles of the place.  We lay closely hidden
+till daybreak, a good two hours, sending Sweeba forward to scout.  He
+returned shortly with the intelligence that the Arabs were in great
+force, and had both camels and cavalry, and that they had also thrown up
+a strong earthwork on the hill around their position.
+
+Before sunrise we were ready; a mere band we were, but a brave one,
+about one hundred and twenty in all, bluejackets and marines.  Ere the
+sun had mounted over the forest land we were close upon Zareppa's
+position, and in the darkness our fellows had even cut out a company of
+war and baggage camels.  It was here that the fighting first began, but
+taken by surprise, the camel-drivers, after a faint show of resistance,
+fled hurriedly up towards the fort.
+
+It was now daylight, but the beams of the sun were sadly shorn by the
+smoke that arose from the fort as a tremendous volley was fired to check
+our advance.  Under cover of this volley down thundered the foe to the
+charge.  But little more than two hundred yards intervened between the
+fort and our fellows.  Yet many a horse lost its rider, many a brave and
+stately Arab bit the dust, ere the enemy reached us.
+
+I cannot describe what followed.  No one can give an account of anything
+save his own experience in a fight like this.  The enemy fought with
+terrible courage.  Again and again were they foiled, again and again did
+they return to the charge with redoubled determination.  They leaped on
+our very bayonets, over their own wounded, and their dead and dying fell
+together in heaps.  But all in vain.  Zareppa at last, despairing of
+success, withdrew his daring followers.
+
+"Now, lads," cried our commander, "follow me into the fort.  They have
+shown us how Arabs fight; we will now show them what true Britons can
+do.  Hurrah!"
+
+The wild "Deen! deen!" of the Arab is nothing in strength of volume to
+the stern British "Hurrah!"  It is a war-cry that has struck terror into
+the hearts of foemen on every land on which the sun shines.  It is a
+war-cry that means business.  It meant business to-day, as our fellows
+dashed up that hill and entered the fort.  Then the fighting commenced
+in deadly earnest; the Arabs had leaped from their chargers, which were
+held in readiness in the rear, and fought with swords only, even their
+spears being for a time discarded.  Our fellows fought with sword, with
+bayonet, or with butt-end, and men fell fast on both sides.
+
+Only once during this fight Roberts was near me, but then his good sword
+saved me from a fearful cut.  "Back to the rear, boy," I heard him yell;
+"you're too young for this work."
+
+But, look! yonder is the chief, yonder is Zareppa.  Though I had never
+seen him before, an instinct seemed to tell me that that was the man who
+had slain my father.  I flew at him--foolishly enough, no doubt--flew at
+him as if I had been a wild cat.  I clutched his belt and raised my arm
+to strike.  He bore me to the ground by a blow from his sword-hilt.  He
+seemed to scorn to fight with such as I.
+
+Next moment he himself was down.  Sweeba had felled him, but was, in his
+turn, cut down almost immediately.  On the ground I grappled again with
+the pirate chief.  It seems all like a dream now, but I have little
+doubt my agility saved me, and enabled me to make such good use of my
+dirk that Zareppa never rose again.
+
+Years after this I knew we had gained this fight, but now, as for me, I
+was taken prisoner, bound hand and foot, and carried into the interior.
+After the death of their chief, the Arabs had fought only long enough to
+secure possession of the boy who had killed their leader.  This done,
+they mounted and fled.
+
+I was, it would seem, reserved for the torture.  But the king of a
+warlike tribe fancied the boy for a white slave, and the cupidity of the
+Arabs overcame their love even for vengeance--I was sold into slavery.
+
+Then began a long, dreary march into the interior.  It is only fair to
+say, however, that from the commencement King Otakooma was not unkind to
+me.  He ordered my wrists to be untied, and I was set free--such freedom
+as it was, for with a mob of savages around me I dared not attempt to
+escape.  Indeed, I cared little now what became of me, and for the first
+few days I refused all food.  Then nature asserted herself, and I ate
+greedily of the fruit that grew plentifully everywhere in the country
+through which we were passing.
+
+I had pulled what appeared to me a most delicious-looking large berry,
+when suddenly I heard our chief shriek.
+
+"_Oa eeah wa ka_!" and at the same moment the fruit was dashed from my
+hand ere I could convey it to my lips.  I knew from this it was poison.
+Then the chief called me towards him, and placed me on the grass, and
+put before me a plate of boiled paddy [a kind of rice] and a bright
+glittering dagger.  I knew what he meant, and chose the paddy.  Then the
+king laughed till his fat sides shook again.  He was a sort of
+half-caste Arab, I suppose, and yellow, not black.  Perhaps his colour
+made him king, for his followers were very black, tall, wiry, and
+savage-looking.
+
+The king on the other hand simply looked good-humouredly idiotic, but I
+found out afterwards that he could be both cruel and fierce, and though
+not a cannibal, he was addicted to human sacrifices.  Piles of skulls
+adorned his palace grounds.  He built them up like rockeries, and
+flowers actually grew on them, although they had never been planted.
+
+As soon as I had eaten the rice, he patted my cheek and asked me,
+through a boy interpreter, if I would have some rum.  I refused; upon
+which a cocoa-nut half full and the dagger were again placed before me.
+
+I drank the rum, and I learned a lesson; and whenever afterwards the
+king asked me to do anything that I had scruples at performing, I
+pretended to be exceedingly eager to do it--and thus got off.
+
+Our adventures on our journey inland were many and varied.  Under other
+circumstances I should have enjoyed them, but every mile west was taking
+me away from all I held dear in the world, so no wonder my heart sank
+within me and that I loathed the savages, loathed the fat old king, and
+even the boy interpreter, although he was the only one with whom I could
+converse.
+
+Jooma was his name, and he turned out no friend to me.  He entertained
+me from the first with terrible stories about the cruelties of the tribe
+I was going amongst, tales that made me long for death and my very blood
+run cold.
+
+Then I thought of the poison berry, and was strangely tempted to eat a
+few.  Thank Heaven, I did not give way to the fearful temptation!  It is
+an awful thing for a human soul to hurry unbidden into the presence of
+its Maker.
+
+One adventure thrilled me at first with delight, afterwards with grief.
+We met and attacked a caravan of English travellers.  I was bound to a
+horse and strictly guarded, at a distance from the scene of action.  I
+do not know what occurred, but from the exultant looks of the savages on
+their return, and from the blood-stained booty they brought with them, I
+feared the worst.
+
+Another adventure I remember was a night attack on our camp by a
+rhinoceros.  The savages fled before the infuriated brute more speedily
+than they would have done before a human foe.
+
+But my experience, gained since then, is that rhinoceroses are not as a
+rule dangerous animals, although a great many marvellous stories are
+told about them, usually travellers' tales.
+
+Sometimes the hill and the jungle gave place to wide marsh lands,
+through which the cattle were driven first, the horses following, and
+last of all the foolish old king on his litter, with his rum bottle
+beside him.
+
+Often he used to drink till he fell asleep.  Sometimes he would make me
+sit by him.  Once he had his great hand on my shoulder, and kept feeling
+at my neck.
+
+I afterwards asked Jooma what he meant.
+
+"Nothing he mean," replied Jooma, grinning, "only feel for proper place
+to cut your head away.  Dat nothing!"
+
+This was pleasant.
+
+At last we arrived in the king's country, and a small tent was assigned
+to me near the royal palace.
+
+The country all round, although unfilled, was fertile and lovely in the
+extreme.  Giant cocoa-palms waved on high, some parts of the landscape
+were wild orchards of the most delicious fruit, the hills were covered
+with purple heath, the valleys carpeted with grass and flowers of every
+shape and hue; while the birds that flitted among the boughs, and the
+monster butterflies that floated from one bright blossom to another,
+were lovelier than anything you could imagine in your happiest dreams.
+
+To King Otakooma's country bands of wandering Arabs occasionally came,
+and visited the king in his summer tent or his winter palace--for he had
+both.  They came to solicit his assistance in the inhuman raids they
+made upon surrounding tribes of less warlike negroes.
+
+Did I hope for escape through these Arabs?  As well might the linnet beg
+the hawk to deliver her from the talons of the owl.
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+  "Much I misdoubt this wayward boy,
+  Will one day work me more annoy.
+  I'll watch him closer than before."
+
+  Byron.
+
+When I look back now to the first two, or even three, years that I spent
+in Otakooma's country, among Otakooma's savages, I wonder that I was not
+bereft of reason, or that, knowing escape by death to be in my power, I
+did not have recourse to the deadly poison berry that grew in abundance
+in many a thicket.  Our goats ate freely of this berry, by-the-bye, but
+it seemed to have no other effect upon them than to make them lively.
+
+But even at this date, strange to say, there are certain sights and
+sounds that never fail to recall to me not merely my life among those
+savages, but the very feelings I then had.  For instance, in the county
+in England where I now reside, the cow-boys, or sheep-herds (I will not
+call them shepherds), have a peculiar way of calling to each other; it
+is a kind of prolonged shrill quavering shout, and it bears some faint
+resemblance to the howl of Otakooma's savages, as heard by night in the
+forest.  Again, anyone drumming on the table with his finger-nails will
+sometimes bring to my mind the feelings I used to have on hearing the
+beating of the horrid tom-toms.  The beating of tom-toms and the
+howling, combined now and then with a shriek as of some poor wretch in
+mortal agony and dread, even when I was not present, but probably a
+prisoner in my hut, used to tell me as well as words could, that a human
+sacrifice was progressing somewhere in the vicinity of the royal palace.
+
+The smell of weeds burning in a field only yesterday depressed me; the
+savages were constantly burning fires of different kinds of dried roots
+and weeds.
+
+Just one more instance.  I would not have a rockery in my grounds or
+garden; it would remind me of Otakooma's terrible piles of skulls on
+which weeds grew green, and flowers bloomed, and lizards--sea-green
+lizards with crimson marks on their shoulders, and lizards the colour of
+a starling's breast, that is, metallic-changing colour--used to creep.
+
+If ever at that time I spent a happy hour it was in studying and
+wondering at the tricks and manners of the many strange denizens of the
+forest.  Monkeys, mongooses, and even chameleons I managed to tame.
+
+You see, then, I could not have been very happy.  How could I?  For at
+least two years I lived in constant dread of a violent death, and I
+never knew what shape it would take.  I might die by the spear of some
+angry savage; I might be sacrificed to please some sudden fancy of the
+king; I might be burned at the stake or die by the torture.
+
+My enemy--and he ought to have been my friend--was the boy Jooma.  He
+was jealous, no doubt, of my influence with the king.  I tried my best
+in every way to please this lad, because he could talk English, but in
+vain.  He belied me one day after I had been a whole year in the
+country, belied me to the king in my presence--he pointed his hand at
+me.  I struck the hand.
+
+Then, as he threatened to kill me with his knife, I squared up in good
+English fashion and let my enemy have one straight from the shoulder.
+He went down as if he had been shot.
+
+The fat old king shouted for joy.  That boy Jooma had never had a proper
+British bleeding nose before in his life, I expect.  And he did not like
+it.  He kept lying on the ground, because he saw me in the attitude to
+give him another blow.  But the king made him stand up, and for fear of
+offending the king I had to put him down again.  Then he refused to
+rise.  The king told him that a cock and a goat and two curs were going
+to be carried in procession to the execution ground that afternoon, and
+that if he, Jooma, did not fight "the foreign boy" he should head the
+procession and finally lose his head.  So Jooma had to fight as well as
+he could, and although I did not punish him willingly, he was paid out
+for many an ill turn that he had done me.
+
+I was a favourite with the king for fully a month after this.  He
+brought boy after boy for me to thrash.  Indeed, three or four times a
+day I was fighting.  I suppose every boy about the king's village had a
+set-to with me.  I cannot say I blacked their eyes because they were
+already black, but they must have felt my knocks, and I know they did
+not love me any the better for it.
+
+I did not know how all this would end, but my heart leaped to my mouth
+when one day the king himself, valiant through the rum he had drunk,
+stood up and announced his intention of trying conclusions with me
+himself.
+
+What could I do?
+
+What would you have done, gentle reader?
+
+I knew I could have thrashed him, for though not old I was very hardy
+and wonderfully strong for my years, but I did not want to figure in a
+procession.  So I submitted to be knocked down.  Then I had to get up
+and be knocked down again and again.  It didn't hurt very much, but
+there was indignity attached to it.
+
+The king had found a new pleasure, and every afternoon or evening I was
+summoned to the palace yard or grounds, and first I had to fight the
+king, then a boy of my own standing.  Well, I am afraid that if I
+suffered in body and mind from my encounter with the king, I took it out
+of the smaller savage to follow.  There was some satisfaction in that.
+
+But one day, to show his own wonderful powers of fisticuff, the king
+summoned a crowd of his warriors to his palace, and made them form a
+great ring.  Then I was ordered in and pitted against an Indian boy
+bigger than myself.  I never cared how big they were, they held their
+arms wide and hit downwards as if thumping a piano.
+
+After one or two boys had been disposed of, to the wild delight of the
+warriors, the king took a drink of rum and handed the leather bottle to
+his chief executioner; then he took off his extra garments--his one boot
+and his crown, an old tin kettle without a bottom to it--and stood up in
+front of me.  I went down several times according to my own programme,
+and the savages shook their spears and rattled them against their
+shields of buffalo hide, and shouted and shrieked to their hearts'
+content.
+
+Then the king hit me rather hard, and I suppose my English pride was
+touched, for the next thing I remember is--horror of horrors!--the
+sacred person of his Majesty King Otakooma sprawling on the dusty ground
+and his nose bleeding.
+
+A silence deep as death fell on all the crowd.
+
+Then there was a rush for me.  Spears were at my breast and I expected
+only instant death, when the king sprang to my rescue and all fell back.
+
+If I had knelt to him and begged his pardon, even then I might have been
+forgiven.
+
+But an English youth to sue on his knees for mercy from a savage!  Nay,
+it was not to be thought of.
+
+The king sat down.
+
+The king was silent for a space of time.  The king took more rum.
+
+Then he ordered ropes of skin to be brought, and I was bound hand and
+foot and taken away to a loathsome dungeon.
+
+I knew I was to die next day, and I longed for sunrise to have it past,
+for I suffered excruciating agony from the tightness of the cords that
+bound me.
+
+The time came.  I was to form part in a procession, and did; I was
+carried shoulder-high, lying on my back on a kind of bark tray, amid
+tom-tom beating, howling, shrieking, and a deal of capering and dancing
+that at any other time I should have laughed most heartily at.
+
+At the execution ground goats and cocks were killed, then it came to my
+turn.
+
+The king came to have a last look at me.  The cords were undone, and I
+stood up staggering because my feet were swollen.  The king looked at my
+hands: they were swollen double the size.
+
+The king rubbed his nose.
+
+The king was thinking.
+
+"Now," he must have thought, "here is a hand (meaning my swollen fist)
+that couldn't hurt anybody.  What a chance to redeem my lost honour!"
+
+The king took more rum.
+
+Then he started from his throne and shouted.  What he said matters
+little.  At the conclusion of his speech I was again dragged up to fight
+the king.  If I could have hit him then I would have done so.  But with
+such hands, how could I?  So it ended in my being fearfully punished.
+
+Then there was such shouting and yelling as I had never before heard in
+my life.  But I was free.
+
+The king took more rum.
+
+For a whole year after this I was kept under almost constant
+surveillance, but there was no more fighting.
+
+Sometimes the king and his savages went away on the war-path, for many
+weeks together.  When they did so, I was confined in a dungeon, and had
+no other companions except frogs, lizards, and centipedes.  All the food
+they gave me was a piece of dried cassava root [the root from which
+arrowroot is made], daily, and I had very little water.
+
+But in spite of my hardships, I grew strong and robust.  Probably, if I
+had not been a friendless orphan, if I had had a mother for instance, or
+a father, or sisters, or brothers, in a far-off home to think about, my
+misery would have been greater; as it was I had no one, for I believed
+that Roberts and all the people of the _Niobe_ had been slain in that
+terrible fight at Zareppa's fort.
+
+Amelioration of my sufferings came at last, and in a strange way.
+
+The king fell ill.
+
+The king took more rum.
+
+The king grew worse, and all the sorcery of his medicine men could not
+cure him, so I was sent for.
+
+I had seen Jooma putting poison into the rum, and I told the king he had
+been poisoned.  Who had done so? he asked: the culprit should die.  No
+human being, I was determined, should die on account of anything I said.
+I told him, however, that next day I should fetch the evil creature who
+had destroyed the health of the king.  Meanwhile the rum was poured on
+the ground, and I made him a pill of the poison berry, and a little
+scraped cassava root.  He saw me mix it.  His medicine men assured him
+it would be death to take it; I took a pill myself, and when he saw I
+did not die, he followed my example, and took two or three.  For I had
+found out that in small doses this poison berry was medicinal.  The king
+slept, and awoke refreshed.
+
+Then he called for the culprit who had dared to poison his rum.
+
+I went and found Jooma.  I told him that his guilt was discovered, and
+that his life was in my hands; that a word from me would march him to
+the execution ground.  He knelt and prayed for mercy.  I told him he
+needn't trouble, that Englishmen were far too honourable to harbour
+revenge.  Then I made him bring a very old and savage billy-goat, and
+together we brought it to the king.
+
+The king was greatly pleased.  He said he never had liked the looks of
+the billy-goat, and he had no doubt that it had worked some deadly spell
+upon his rum.  So the billy-goat--poor beast--was slain, and after a few
+more pills the king got better, and I was chief favourite among all the
+tribe.
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+  "But what avails this wondrous waste of wealth,
+  This gay profusion of luxurious bliss?
+  Ill-fated race! the softening arts of peace,
+  Kind equal rule, the government of laws,
+  These are not theirs."
+
+  Thomson.
+
+I became the king's head-counsellor, his prime-minister, so to speak,
+his chief medicine man.  There was not much honour in this, certainly,
+but nevertheless it procured me some amelioration of my sufferings.
+There was less of the dungeon after this, and fewer threats of
+decapitation.
+
+I think the king still hankered after rum, and it was an anxious day for
+me when some Arab chiefs appeared in camp.  Otakooma assembled not only,
+all his forces but most of his people.  Something was going to happen, I
+knew, but till now I had had no idea of the utter depravity of this
+wretch.
+
+He was positively going to barter his people for rum.  The Arabs would
+buy them as slaves.
+
+It was terrible to see these same Arabs walking round among the sable
+mob, as calmly as a farmer does among a herd of cattle, and picking one
+out here and there.  But, oh! the grief, and the agony, and the anxiety
+displayed in voice and in action by these poor doomed creatures--the
+scene defies description.  Here was the child torn shrieking from its
+mother's side, there a wife separated from her husband, or a husband
+from a weeping wife.
+
+Some indulged their grief quietly, others gave vent to loud howls and
+lamentations; while others lay moaning and groaning on the ground, ever
+and anon taking up great handfuls of dust, and throwing it up over their
+poor heads!
+
+I could not help turning away and shedding tears.  But had they been
+tears of blood they could not have saved these people.  They were
+relentlessly marched away, and I was really glad when night fell, and
+sleep sealed the eyes of even those who mourned.
+
+It was bright clear moonlight.  I rose from my couch, and stole out into
+the open air.  I wanted to think.  The close warm atmosphere of the tent
+seemed to stifle me, and I could not sleep.
+
+I passed slowly up the beaten footpath towards the king's tent.  There
+was not a single soul astir, it had been a busy exciting day with
+everyone, and the king had been liberal enough in his offers of rum to
+his chief favourites; and although some of them ought to have been doing
+duty as sentinels near to his sacred person, they had preferred
+retirement and slumber.
+
+I stole away from the camp, and ascended an eminence some distance from
+it, and sat me down on a rock.  It was cool and pleasant here, away from
+that blood-stained camp.  The moonlight flooded all the beautiful
+country, bathing plain and rock and tree in its mellow rays.  The only
+sounds that broke the stillness were the yapping howl of the cowardly
+jackal, and farther off in the woods the mournful roar of lions.
+
+It was a lovely scene, but terrible in its loveliness.  I buried my face
+in my hands.  I was boldly struggling against my sorrow.  How long, I
+thought, would this life last?  Should I live and die among these
+terrible savages?  Escape there seemed none.  To attempt it, I knew,
+would end in failure, and probably in death by torture.  I was many
+hundreds of miles from the sea.  I did not even know in what direction
+Zanzibar lay.  No, I must wait for a time, at all events.  What mattered
+a year or two more to one so young as I!
+
+I suppose this last reflection had some kind of a drowsy influence on
+me, for I lay down with my head on a piece of rock, and with face
+upturned to the sky, fell fast asleep.
+
+How long I had slept I know not.  I awoke with a start: something cold
+had touched my face, and I had heard a creature breathing close at--
+almost into--my ear.  I started, as well I might.  The thing that had
+waked me was a jackal; but there, not thirty yards away, standing boldly
+out against the moonlit sky, was a gigantic lioness!
+
+There was astonishment depicted in every line of her great face.
+Strange to say, at that moment I could not help thinking that she looked
+far from cruel, and I could not help admiring the splendid animal.  I
+never moved, but gazed as if spell-bound.  Probably it was my fixity of
+look that saved me, for after staring steadily, but wonderingly, at me
+for fully a minute, she turned round and stalked solemnly off, giving
+many a look behind, as if expecting I should follow her.
+
+I waited till she was well away.  I felt very happy at that moment, and
+very bold.  I went straight back to camp, and approached the tent of the
+king, and softly entered.  He was fast asleep and snoring.  In the
+matter of rum he had been even more liberal to himself than to his
+followers.  There lay the skins of spirits in a corner, not far from the
+couch of the drunken king.  I hesitated not a moment, but seizing the
+king's own dagger, I stabbed--not the king, but the skins of rum.
+
+Then I hastened away with my heart in my mouth.  Remember, I was very
+young.
+
+There were terrible doings next day in camp, and, I'm sorry to say, more
+than one human sacrifice.  I, as medicine man and chief sorcerer, went
+through a great many mummeries, which I managed to make last all the
+forenoon.  I was endeavouring to find out the wretch who had dared to
+spill the great king's rum; that is, I was pretending to.  There was
+more than one chief on whose shoulders I permitted my magician's wand to
+rest for a while, just by way of a mild revenge, but the lot finally
+fell once again on an aged billy-goat.  I had saved the king, and saved
+many of his subjects, for when the king was intoxicated, human
+sacrifices were of everyday occurrence.  At ordinary times they were no
+more numerous than Bank Holidays in our own country.
+
+When it was all over I stole away to the shady banks of a stream to
+bathe, and lie and watch the kingfishers.  It was a favourite resort of
+mine, whenever I dared be alone.
+
+The warriors of this tribe spent most of their time either on the
+hunting grounds--forest and plain--or in making raids on their
+neighbours.  I was allowed to join the hunting expeditions, but not the
+forays.  I became an expert horseman.  I could ride bare-backed as well
+as any circus-man I have ever seen since.  The king was too fat to ride
+much, but he used to follow to the chase of the koodoo.
+
+This is a kind of beautiful antelope, and excellent eating, its
+principal recommendation in the eyes of Otakooma.  We often caught the
+young, and they became as tame as our goats.
+
+Now once having taken it into my head that escape from this country of
+savages was impossible, strange to say I began to settle down, in
+everything else except human bloodthirstiness, and soon became a very
+expert savage, taking a wild kind of pride in my exploits.
+
+Mine was now a life of peril and hardship; adventures to me were of
+everyday occurrence; I carried my life in my hand; I grew as wily as a
+jackal, and I hope as bold as a lion.  I take no credit to myself for
+being bold; I had to be so.
+
+The king and I continued friends.  At the end of the sixth year of my
+captivity, Jooma died.  He died from wounds received at the horns of a
+wild buffalo in the forest.
+
+This buffalo-hunting had for me a very great charm, and it certainly was
+not unattended with danger, for there were times when, headed by an old
+bull or two, a whole herd of these animals would charge down upon us.
+This was nothing to me.  I could climb trees as well as most monkeys, so
+I got out of harm's way, but it was hard upon the savages, who were not
+always so nimble.
+
+Jooma was terribly tossed and wounded by a bull, and he died at the tree
+foot.  He called me to him before his eyes were for ever closed, and
+asked me to forgive him for all the ill he had done me, and tried to do
+me.
+
+"I have been to you one ver bad fellow," said poor Jooma; "I have want
+to kill you plenty time.  Now I die.  You forgive Jooma?"
+
+"I do, Jooma," I said, and pressed his cold hard hand.
+
+"Ver well," said the lad, faintly and slowly.  "Now I die.  Now, I go
+home--go home--home."
+
+We buried him just where he lay, between the gnarled roots of a great
+forest tree, and piled wood over the grave to keep the sneaking jackals
+at bay.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+One morning about two years after this, I was awakened early--indeed it
+was hardly dawn--by hearing a tremendous uproar and commotion in the
+camp, with much warlike shouting and beating of those everlasting
+tom-toms [Note 1].
+
+The king was running about wildly--too wildly, indeed, for his weight--
+and was summoning his warriors to arms.
+
+White men were coming to attack the camp!
+
+This was glorious news for me.
+
+But who, or what could they be, or what could they want?
+
+All that day, from far and near, the warriors of Otakooma came trooping
+into camp.  To do them justice they were fond of fighting, and eager for
+the fray; they loved fighting for its own sake, but a battle with white
+men was a thing that did not happen every day.
+
+The old men, the women and children, and the cattle were separated from
+the main or soldier portion of the tribe, and taken westwards towards
+the distant hills.  So it was evident that Otakooma and his people meant
+business.
+
+What part should I take in the coming fray?  I might have fled, and
+remained away until the victory was secured by the white men, but this
+would have been both unkind and cowardly.  On the other hand, I would
+not lift a spear or poise a lance against my own people.
+
+That same evening, after all was hushed in the camp, I sought out the
+king.  He looked at me very suspiciously before I spoke.
+
+I sat quietly in front of him on the ground, and explained to him my
+situation.
+
+He was wise enough to see exactly how I stood, but he told me there was
+an easy way out of the difficulty.  Early in the morning he would chop
+off my head.  He bore me no grudge, he explained, _it was a mere matter
+of policy_.
+
+"Quite right," I replied, "and, if he chose, he might take my head off
+then and there.  I didn't at all mind; and would just as soon be without
+a head as with one."
+
+The king smiled, and seemed pleased.
+
+"But," I continued, "you may look at the possession of a head in a
+different light, so far as your own particular head is concerned.  If
+your people are beaten, you will assuredly lose that head, unless a
+white man is near to take your part.  I will be your friend," I said,
+"in this matter, and during the battle I will stand by your person and
+never leave you."
+
+Otakooma was delighted at the proposal, and so we arranged matters to
+our mutual satisfaction, and I felt glad I had come; I had certainly
+lost nothing by my candour.  No one ever does.
+
+Firing began early in the morning.  The battle raged till nearly noon,
+with dreadful slaughter on the side of the savages, who were finally
+borne backwards a disorganised mob.
+
+I stuck by the king.  He did not fly.  He felt safe and said so, but he
+wept to see his children, as he called them, slain before his very eyes.
+
+Oh! the glad sight it was to me, after all these years, to behold the
+bold bluejackets, and brave marines, dashing after the foe, gun and
+bayonet in hand!
+
+But a more joyful surprise awaited me when the battle was over; for the
+very first man to rush up to me and shake me by the two hands was my
+dear friend Ben Roberts.
+
+"Nie, old boy!" he cried, "I wouldn't have known you.  You've grown a
+man, and what a savage you do look!  And do you know, Nie, what all this
+fighting has been about?"
+
+"No," I said innocently.
+
+"Why, about _you_!"  He almost shouted the last word, and I could see in
+his honest eyes the tears which he could hardly keep from failing.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  A tom-tom is a kind of kettle-drum.  It is simply a log of wood
+hollowed out at one end, and a dried skin stretched over it.
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+  "The sea! the sea! the open sea!
+  The blue, the fresh, the ever free!"
+
+  Proctor.
+
+  "England, thy beauties are tame and domestic,
+  To one who has roamed o'er the mountains afar."
+
+  Byron.
+
+Yes, all the fighting had been about me.
+
+Our fellows had not lost the battle that day at Zareppa's fort; on the
+contrary, they had given the Arabs a grievous defeat.  I had at first
+been reported killed, but as I was not found among the dead and wounded,
+search was made for me more inland, and it was soon elicited that I had
+been carried away prisoner, and no doubts were left in the minds of my
+shipmates, that I had died by the torture, in order to avenge the death
+of the pirate chief.
+
+The old _Niobe_ had been wrecked since my incarceration in the land of
+the savages.  Roberts had been made lieutenant, and it was not until he
+returned to the shores of Africa, several years after, that he heard
+from friendly Arabs that there was an English prisoner in the hands of a
+warlike tribe of savages, who lived almost in the centre of the dark
+continent.  After this my dear friend never rested in his hammock, as he
+himself expressed it, until he had organised the expedition that came to
+my relief.
+
+What a delightful sensation it was to me to feel myself once more at
+sea!
+
+  "The glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
+  Glasses itself in tempest."
+
+We were homeward bound.  I was a passenger, and we had splendid weather,
+so everything seemed to combine to make me feel joyful and happy.
+Joyful, did I say? why, there were times when I wanted to run about and
+shout for joy like a schoolboy, or like the savage that I fear I had
+almost become.
+
+But I could not run about and shout on board a trim and well-disciplined
+man-o'-war.  The very appearance of the
+
+  "White and glassy deck, without a stain
+  Where, on the watch, the staid lieutenant walked,"
+
+forbade, so at such moments I used to long to be away in the woods
+again, in order to give proper vent to my exultation.
+
+Besides, I had good cause to be staid and sedate.  Roberts had heard
+news that changed the whole course of my life.  I was no longer a
+friendless sailor-boy.  My grandfather was dead, and I was the heir to
+his estate.  It was not a very large patrimony, I admit.  It was simply
+a competence, but to me, when I heard it described, it appeared a
+princely fortune.  There would be no longer any need for me to sail the
+seas.  I could settle down in life, or I could choose some honourable
+career on shore, and, if I was good for anything at all, distinguish
+myself therein.
+
+Or, stay, I thought, should I become a soldier?  "No, no, no," was the
+answer of my soul.  The war was past and gone; even the terrible Indian
+Mutiny had been quelled at last.  To be a soldier in the field was a
+career worthy of a king's son.  To be a soldier, and have nothing to do
+but loll about in some wretched garrison town, play billiards or
+cricket, have a day's shooting, English fashion, now and then, be
+admired by school-misses and probably snubbed by men with more money
+than brains; no, such a life would not suit me.
+
+I should much prefer, I thought, to stay at home and till my garden.
+With my jacket off, my shirt-sleeves rolled up, and an axe or spade in
+hand, I should feel far more free than playing with a useless sword.
+
+Lieutenant Roberts was about to retire from active service in the Royal
+Navy, and he had already been promised the command of a ship in the
+Merchant Service.  But before he left England he would, he said, see me,
+his foster-son, well settled down.
+
+The ship was homeward bound.  There was nothing but laughing and talking
+and singing all day long, for many of the poor fellows on board had not
+placed foot on their native shores for five long years and more.  What a
+glorious place England must be, I mused, to make these men so happy at
+the prospect of returning to it.  How brightly the sun must shine there!
+How blue and beautiful must be the seas that lave her coasts!
+
+So we presently crossed the Line and sailed north, and north, and north.
+Past Madeira--and then the brightness began to leave the sky.  The wind
+to me grew chilly, biting, and cruel.  The sea became a darker blue, and
+finally, as we entered the Bay of Biscay, a leaden grey.  My hopes of
+happiness fell, and fell, and fell.  Roberts tried all he could to cheer
+me up, told me of the monster cities I should see, of the ballrooms, of
+the concert-rooms, and of a multitude of wonderful things, not
+forgetting cricket and football.
+
+We sailed past the Isle of Wight with a grey chopping sea all around us,
+grey clouds above us, a bitter cold wind blowing, and a drizzling rain
+borne along on its wings.
+
+Then we entered Portsmouth harbour, and cast anchor among the wooden
+walls of England.  Finally I landed.  Landed, much to my disgust, upon
+stones instead of soft sand.  Landed, still more to my disgust, among
+crowds of people who stared at me as if I had a plurality of heads, or
+only one eye right in the middle of my brow.  I glanced around me with
+all the proud dignity of a savage prince.  The crowd laughed, and
+Roberts hurried me on.
+
+I daresay a visit to a fashionable tailor and its subsequent results
+made me a little more presentable, but I disliked this town of
+Portsmouth with a healthy dislike, and was glad when my friend took me
+away.
+
+I had to go to London.  The railway amused me, and made me wonder, but
+used as I was to the quiet of the desert and forest, it deafened me, and
+the shaking tired me beyond conception.
+
+My solicitor, a prim white-haired man, said he was _so_ glad to see me,
+though I do believe he was a little afraid of me.  Probably not without
+cause, for at the very moment he was entering into business as he called
+it, and arranging preliminaries, I was thinking how quickly Otakooma's
+savages would rub all the starch out of this respectable citizen.
+_They_ would not take long to arrange preliminaries with the little man,
+and as to entering into business, they would do so in a way that would
+considerably astonish his nerves.
+
+"Bother business!"  I exclaimed at last, in a voice that made the prim
+solicitor almost spring off his chair.
+
+"Oh! my dear sir," he pleaded, mildly.  "We _must_ go into these little
+matters."
+
+He ventured to give me two fingers to shake as I left the office with
+Roberts.  I feel sure he was afraid to entrust me with all his hand.
+
+"And as soon as you get home you will telegraph to me; won't you, Mr
+Radnor?"
+
+"Telegraph!"  I said in astonishment.  "Telegraph! and you tell me it is
+five hundred miles from here to Dunryan.  Do you think you can see a
+fire at that distance?  It must be a precious big one I'll have to
+light, and the mountains around Dunryan must be amazingly high."
+
+Both Roberts and the solicitor laughed; they could see that the only
+idea I had of telegraphing was the building of fires on hill-tops.
+
+I arrived at Dunryan at last--my small patrimony.  If I was pleased with
+it at all, it was simply because it was my own; but everything was so
+new and so strange and so tame, that as soon as my friend saw me what he
+called "settled," and went away to sea and left me, I began, in the most
+methodical manner possible, to dislike everything round me.
+
+People called on me, but I'm sure they were merely curious to hear my
+history from my own lips, and partly afraid of me at the same time.
+They invited me out to tea!  Ha! ha! ha!  I really cannot help laughing
+about it now as I write; but fancy a savage sitting down to tea, of all
+treats in the world, with a company of gossiping ladies of both sexes.
+
+Now my neighbours made me out to be a bigger savage than I really was,
+because, to do myself justice, I did know a little of the courtesies of
+civilised life.  There was one lady who expressed a wish to have the
+"dreadful creature" to tea with her.  I found out before I went that she
+had styled me so, though her note of invitation was most politely
+worded.
+
+The "dreadful creature" did go to tea, intent on a kind of quiet
+revenge.  They could not get a word out of me--neither my hostess nor
+the three old ladies she had asked to meet me by way of protection.  I
+did nothing but drink cup after cup of tea, handing in my cup to be
+replenished, and drinking it at once.  The bread and butter disappeared
+in a way that seemed to them little short of miraculous.  I saw that
+they were getting frightened, so I thought I would make them a little
+soothing speech.
+
+"Ahem!"  I began, standing up.  I never got any further.
+
+One old lady fainted; another "missed stays," as a sailor would say,
+when making for the doorway, and tumbled on the floor; a third fell over
+the piano-stool.  All screamed--all thought I was about to do something
+very dreadful.
+
+All I did do was to step gingerly out into the hall, pick up my hat, and
+go off.
+
+I lived in Dunryan for a year.  The scenery all around was charming in
+the extreme.  The very name will tell you that Dunryan is in Scotland;
+the very word Scotland conjures up before the eye visions both of beauty
+and romance.
+
+But one year even of Scotland, the "land of green heath and shaggy
+wood," was enough for me then.
+
+There was no sport, no wild adventure; all was tame, tame, tame,
+compared to what I had been used to.
+
+But if following game in Scotland seemed tame to me, what could I say of
+sport in English fashion?  I tried both; grew sick of both.  Hunting the
+wild gorilla in the jungles of Africa was more in my line.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+One night, soon after the first snow had fallen, a carriage drove up to
+my door.  It was to bear me away to the distant railway-station.  The
+moon was shining brightly down upon our little village as we drove
+through; here and there in the windows shone a yellow light; but all was
+silent, and neither the horses' hoofs nor the carriage wheels could be
+heard on the snow-muffled street.
+
+It was a peaceful scene, and I heaved one sigh--well, it might have been
+of regret.  For many and many a long year to come I never saw Dunryan
+again.
+
+CHAPTER NINE.
+
+  "The dismal wreck to view
+  Struck horror to the crew."
+
+  Old Song.
+
+The earlier history of a human being's life is engraved upon his mind as
+with a pen of steel.  After one comes to what are termed years of
+discretion, the soul is not so impressionable, and events must be of
+more than usual interest to be very long remembered.  The story, then,
+of a chequered life cannot be told with even a hopeful attempt at
+minuteness, unless a log has been kept day after day and year after
+year; and my opinion is, that although diaries are often most
+religiously commenced, especially about New Year's time, they are seldom
+if ever kept up very long.
+
+My own adventures, and the scenes I passed through in the first stages
+of my existence, were not, as the reader already knows, of a kind to be
+very easily forgotten, even had my mind never been very impressionable.
+It was easy enough, therefore, to record them in some kind of
+chronological form.
+
+The few adventures I and my friend Ben Roberts tell in the pages that
+follow, and our sketches of life, are given as they occur to our memory;
+often brought back to our minds by the incidents of our present everyday
+life.
+
+But I do not think that even if Ben and I live as long as Old Parr, we
+shall either tire of spinning our yarns, or fall short of subject
+matter.
+
+Let me say a word or two about the place I live in now, and where Ben so
+often pays me a visit.
+
+We call it Rowan Tree Villa.
+
+It stands mid-way up a well-wooded hill, about two and a half miles from
+a dreamy, drowsy old village, in one of the dreamiest, drowsiest nooks
+of bonnie, tree-clad Berkshire.
+
+The top of the hill is covered by tall-stemmed pine trees, and from this
+eminence you can see, stretching far away below, all the undulating
+country, the fertile valley of the Thames, and the river itself winding
+for many and many a mile through it--a silver thread amidst the green.
+
+From the top of this hill, too, if you take the trouble to climb it, you
+can have a bird's-eye view of Rowan Tree Villa.
+
+There it is, a pretty, many-gabled cottage, with a comfortable-looking
+kitchen garden and orchard behind it, and a long, wide lawn in front.
+Now this lawn has one peculiarity.  From the gate on each side up to the
+terrace in front of the house sweeps a broad carriage drive, bounded on
+both its sides, first by a belt of green grass, carefully trimmed and
+dotted here and there with patches of flowers, and secondly by two rows
+of rowan trees (the mountain ash), trained on wires, and forming the
+prettiest bit of hedge-work you could easily imagine.
+
+If you were Scotch, and looked at that hedge even for a moment, the
+words, and maybe the air as well, of the Baroness Nairne's beautiful
+song would rise in your mind--
+
+  "Thy leaves were aye the first in spring,
+      Thy flowers the summer's pride;
+  There was nae sic a bonnie tree
+      In a' the country side.
+  And fair wert thou in summer time,
+      Wi' a' thy clusters white,
+  And rich and gay thy autumn dress
+      Of berries red and bright.
+                  Oh, rowan tree!"
+
+Well, it is June to-day--an afternoon in June; a day to make one feel
+life in every limb--a day when but to exist is a luxury.  The roses are
+bending their heads in the sweet sunshine, for there is not a cloud in
+Heaven's blue.  The butterflies are chasing each other among the flowers
+on the lawn, where we recline among the daisies, and the big velvety
+bees go droning and humming from clover blossom to clover blossom.
+
+"Strange, is it not, my dear Ben," I said, "that on such a day as this,
+and in the midst of sunshine, I should bethink me of some night-scenes
+at sea and on land?
+
+"I remember well my first experience of a storm by night in the Northern
+Ocean.  We were going to the Arctic regions, cruising in a sturdy and,
+on the whole, not badly fitted, nor badly found ship.
+
+"The anchor was weighed, the sails were set, and spread their wings to
+the breeze; the crew had given their farewell cheer, and the rough old
+pilot, having seen us safely out of Brassy Sound, had shaken the captain
+roughly by the hand, and wishing us `God-speed and safely home,' had
+disappeared in his boat round a point.
+
+"We were once more on the deep and dark blue ocean.  Then the night
+began to fall, and soon the only sound heard was the tramp, tramp on
+deck, or the steady wash of the water, as our vessel ever and anon
+dipped her bows or waist in the waves.
+
+"The captain had given his last orders on deck, and came below to our
+little saloon, the only occupants of which were myself and the ship's
+cat.
+
+"Poor Pussy was endeavouring, rather ineffectually, to steady herself on
+the sofa, and looked very much from home, while I myself was trebly
+engaged: namely, in placing such articles as were constantly tumbling
+down into a safer and steadier position, in keeping the fire brightly
+burning, and in reading a nautical book.
+
+"There was a shade of uneasiness on the captain's face as he looked at
+the barometer; and when he entered his state-room, and presently after
+emerged dressed in oilskins and a sou'-wester hat, I felt as sure we
+were going to have a dirty night as though he had rigged himself out in
+sackcloth and ashes.
+
+"He sat down, and, calling for some coffee, invited me to join in a
+social cup.
+
+"`Is there plenty of sea-room?'  I inquired.
+
+"`Very little sea-room,' he replied; `but she must take her chance.'
+
+"Then we relapsed into silence.
+
+"About an hour or two after this it became a difficult matter to sit on
+a chair at all, so much did the vessel pitch and roll.
+
+"The captain had gone on deck, and as I had neither the need nor the
+desire to follow him, I threw myself on the sofa, at the risk even of
+offending my good friend and companion, Pussy.
+
+"The storm was now raging with terrible fury.
+
+"Two watches were called to shorten sail, and the din and noise of
+voices could be distinctly heard rising high over the dashing of the
+waves, and the whistling of the wind among the rigging and shrouds.
+Every timber was stretched, every plank seemed to creak and wail in
+agony; yet the good ship bore it well.
+
+"Tired of the sofa I turned into bed, hoping to have a few hours of
+sleep; but was very soon obliged to turn out again, having been awakened
+from a pleasant dream of green fields, pine-clad hills, and a broad,
+quiet river, where ferns and water-lilies grew, by the crashing of
+crockery in the steward's pantry.  It sounded as if bottles, dishes,
+plates, and cups were all in a heap in the middle of the floor breaking
+each other to infinitesimal pieces.  And that is precisely what they
+were doing.
+
+"Things in the saloon were fast verging into a state of chaos, and
+appeared to be making very merry in my absence.  The fender and
+fire-irons presided over the musical department.
+
+"The captain's big chair was dancing very emphatically, but rather
+clumsily, with the coal-scuttle as a partner; the table was bowing to
+the sofa, but the sofa begged to be excused from getting up.  The only
+reasonable-looking article of furniture in the room was a chair, which
+was merely staggering around with my coat on, while the cat had gone to
+sleep in my sou'-wester; and while endeavouring to restore quiet and
+order, I was thrown below the table like a pair of old boots, where, for
+the want of ability to do anything better, I was fain to remain.
+
+"`Clear away the wreck!'  I could now hear the captain's voice bawling,
+for our fore-mast had gone by the board.
+
+"_His_ voice was not the only one I heard.  On passing the man at the
+wheel, I heard the captain ask, `What! are you getting afraid, man?'
+And the brave British voice that so firmly replied `Not at all, sir!'
+explained better than printed volumes could have done the secret of all
+our naval greatness; for to hearts like his, and hands like his, in many
+a dark and stormy night, Britannia entrusts her honour, and bravely is
+it kept and guarded.
+
+"Musing on this fact, I fell soundly to sleep beneath the table, and
+when I awoke the storm had ceased.
+
+"There are few situations in which a healthy man can be placed that are
+more full of discomfort than that of being at sea in a small ship during
+a storm.  I do not refer to a mere `capful of wind;' I mean a great-gun
+gale.  There is, literally speaking, no rest for the sole of the foot.
+Tossed about in all directions, in vain do you seek to exchange your
+chair for the sofa.  Probably you are sent rolling off on to the deck,
+and thankful you ought to be if the cushions are the only things that
+follow you.  Flesh-sore and weary, perhaps you seek for solace in a cup
+of tea: thankful you may be again if the steward succeeds in pouring it
+into your cup, instead of spilling it down your neck.  Then, if you so
+far forget the rules of the sea as to place it for a moment on the table
+without a hand to guard it, you are instantly treated to a gratuitous
+shower-bath.
+
+"Still the ocean has its pleasures and its charms as well as the land.
+My mind, even now, carries me back and away to a scene very different
+from that which I have just been describing.
+
+"I am sitting in my little cabin.  It is a summer's evening, and all is
+peace within and around my barque.  Yonder is my bed, and the little
+port close by my snow-white pillow is open, and through it steals the
+soft, cool breeze of evening, and wantonly lifts and flutters the little
+blue silken hangers.  Not far off I can catch glimpses of the wooded
+hills and flowery valleys of a sunny land.  And night after night the
+light wind that blows from it is laden with the sweet breath of its
+flowers; and between there lies the ocean, asleep and quiet and still,
+and beautiful with the tints of reflected clouds.
+
+"Often in the cool night that succeeds a day of heat have I lain awake
+for hours, fanned by the breath of the sea, gazing on the watery world
+beneath and beyond me, and the silvery moon and tiny stars, that make
+one think of home, till sleep stole gently down on a moonbeam, and
+wafted me off to dreamland.
+
+"But in witnessing even the war of the elements at sea, a sailor often
+finds a strange, wild pleasure.  Enveloped in the thundercloud you mount
+with every wave to meet the lightning's flash, or descend, like an
+arrow, into the gulf below--down, down, down, till the sun, lurid and
+red, is hidden at last from view by the wall of black waters around you.
+
+"Or fancy the picture, which no artist could depict, of a ship far away
+in ocean's midst by night in a thunderstorm.  Dimly through the murky
+night behold that tumbling sea, lighted only by its own foam and the
+occasional flash from the storm-cloud.  See that dark spot on the sea;
+it is a ship, and living souls are there--human beings, each with his
+own world of cares and loves and thoughts that are even now far away,
+all in that little spot.  Whish! now by the pale lightning's flash you
+can see it all.  The black ship, with her bare poles, her slippery,
+shining deck and wet cordage, hanging by the bows to the crest of that
+great inky wave.  What a little thing she looks, and what a mighty ocean
+all around her; and see how pale appear the faces of the crew that
+`cling to slippery shrouds,' lest the next wave bear them into eternity.
+
+"Whoever has been to prayers at sea during a storm has had a solemn
+experience he will never forget."
+
+"Perhaps there is no more impressive ocean-scene ever beheld by the
+sailor," said Captain Ben Roberts, "than the phosphorescent seas
+witnessed at times in the tropics."  But though far more common in these
+regions than in the temperate zones, this extraordinary luminosity of
+the water is sometimes observed around our own coasts.
+
+"I shall always remember," he continues, "the first time I witnessed the
+phenomenon, though I've often seen it since.
+
+"What a happy day we had had, to be sure!  We were a party of five--I
+but a schoolboy, my comrades little more.  It was the first time I had
+been to that most bewitching of western islands called Skye.  We had
+started off one morning early on a ramble.  We simply meant to go
+somewhere--anywhere, so long as we did not come back again for a night
+or two.  Not that we were not happy enough in the old-fashioned manse of
+K--.  But we wanted change, we wanted adventure if we could find any,
+and if we did not, then probably we should be able to make some.  There
+was, at all events, the wild mountain peak of Quiraing to be climbed,
+with its strange top--the extinct crater of a burning mountain.  Ah! but
+long before we came anywhere near it, there was a deal to be done.
+
+"We had started from the beautiful little bay of Nigg, keeping a
+northerly course over a broad Highland upland.
+
+"It was the month of June; the heather was not purple yet, but it was
+long and rank and green, and it was inhabited by many a curious wild
+bird, whose nests we hunted for, but did not rob; we saw some snakes,
+too, and one of us killed a very long one, and we all thought that boy a
+very hero, though I know now it was no more dangerous or deadly than a
+tallow candle.
+
+"But the best fun we got was when we took to horse-catching.  There was
+not much harm in this after all.  There were dozens of ponies roaming
+wild over the green moor, and if they allowed themselves to be caught
+and ridden for miles through the heather, why, it did not hurt them;
+they soon danced back again.
+
+"We laughed, and screamed, and whooped, loud enough to scare even the
+curlews, and that is saying a good deal.  I'm not sure, indeed, that we
+didn't scare the eagles from their eeries; at all events we thought we
+did.  Then we began to ascend Quiraing, a stiff climb and somewhat
+hazardous; and light-hearted though we were, I believe we were all
+impressed with the grandeur of the view we caught from between the
+needle-like rocks that form one side.
+
+"We went down to the plains below more quickly than we came up.
+
+"Presently we came to a little Highland village close to the sea, and
+there, to our joy, we found that a large fishing-boat was going round
+the northernmost and east part of the island to Portree, the capital.
+For a trifle we managed to take a passage.  We had lots of bread and
+cheese in our wallets, and we had some money in our pockets, good
+sticks, and stout young hearts; so that we should not be badly off even
+although we should have to trudge on foot back again to the old manse.
+Which, by the way, we had to.
+
+"Our voyage was a far longer one in time than we had expected it would
+be, because the wind fell.  But the beauty of the scenery, the hills,
+the strange-shaped mountains, the rocks and cliffs, with waterfalls
+tumbling sheer over them and falling into the sea; the sea itself, so
+calm and blue, and the distant mainland, enshrouded in the purple mist
+of distance, repaid us for all, and made the day seem like one long,
+happy dream.
+
+"But daylight faded at last, and just as the gloaming star peeped out
+there came down upon our boat a very large shoal of porpoises, which the
+boatman gravely assured us at first was the great sea-serpent.  These
+creatures were in chase of herrings, but they were so reckless in their
+rush and so headlong, that we were fain to scream to frighten them off,
+and even to arm ourselves with stones from the ballast, and throw at
+those that came too near.
+
+"Night fell at last, and we were still at sea, and the stars came out
+above us.  But if there were stars above us there were stars beneath us
+too; nay, not only beneath us, but everywhere about and around us.  The
+sea was alive with phosphorescent animalculae; the wake of the boat was
+a broad belt of light behind us, every ripple sparkled and shone, and
+the water that dripped from the oars looked like molten silver."
+
+"Ah!" said I, "that was one of your first experiences of the open sea,
+wasn't it, Ben?"
+
+"I was only a boy, Nie," replied my friend.  "I've had many a sleep in
+the cradle of the deep since then."
+
+"I was reading this morning," I said, "of that terrible shipwreck in the
+Atlantic.  It puts me in mind of the loss of the _London_.  I was in the
+Bay of Biscay in that very gale, Ben; our vessel unmanageable, wallowing
+in the trough of the seas, the waves making a clean breach over us; and,
+Ben, at the very darkest hour of midnight, we saw, by the lightning's
+gleam, a great ship stagger past us.  We were so close that we could
+have pitched a coil of rope on board.  There were no men on her decks;
+her masts were carried away, and her bulwarks gone, and it was evident
+she was foundering fast.  There were more ships lost, Ben, that night in
+the Bay of Biscay than ever we shall know of--
+
+  "`Till the sea gives up its dead.'"
+
+CHAPTER TEN.
+
+  "Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,
+  Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court."
+
+  Thomson's "Seasons."
+
+"I don't think," said I, as Captain Ben Roberts and I sat at breakfast
+one day in a homely old hotel in Bala, North Wales, "I don't think, Ben,
+my boy, I ever ate anything more delicious in the way of fish than these
+same lovely mountain trout."
+
+"Well, you see," replied my friend, "we caught them ourselves, to begin
+with; then the people here know exactly how to cook them.  But, Nie,
+lad, have you forgotten the delicious fries of flying-fish you used to
+have in the dear old _Niobe_?"
+
+"Almost, Ben; almost."
+
+"Well, I can tell you that you did use to enjoy them, all the same."
+
+"Ay, and I've enjoyed them since many and many is the time in the
+tropics, and especially in the Indian Ocean."
+
+"So have I," said Ben Roberts.  "Funny way they used to have of catching
+them, though, in the old _Sans Pareil_.  Of course you know they will
+always fly to a light if held over the ship's side?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, but the orders were not to have lights kicking about the deck at
+night, either naked or in a lantern; so some of our fellows--not that I
+at all approve of what they did--utilised a wild cat the doctor kept in
+a cage.  When they came on deck to keep the middle watch--we were on a
+voyage from Seychelles to the Straits of Malacca--they would swing him,
+cage and all, over the stern.  His eyes would be gleaming like bottled
+wildfire.  'Twasn't long, I can tell you, before the flying-fish sprang
+up at the cage.  Old Tom put out his claws and hooked some of them in;
+but lots flew on board, and they were being fried five minutes
+afterwards."
+
+"I quite believe you, Roberts," I said; "though some would call that a
+traveller's tale.  But just look at that lovely pair of Persian cats in
+the corner there, Ben; it seems almost impossible to believe they can
+belong to the same family as the wild cat you've been speaking about."
+
+"Yes, Nie, civilisation is a wonderful thing when it can extend even to
+the lower animals.  You were once a savage yourself too, Nie.  Think of
+that."
+
+"I shan't think about it," I replied.  "None of your sauce, my worthy
+friend.  What were you doing at Seychelles, and what were you doing with
+a wild cat on board?"
+
+"We had queerer things than wild cats on board, Nie; the fact is, we
+were what they call cruising on special service.  We had a fine time of
+it, I can tell you.  We seemed to go everywhere, and do nothing in
+particular.  At the time we had that wild cat on board, Nie, we had
+already been three years in commission, and had sailed about and over
+almost every ocean and sea in the world."
+
+"What a lot of fun and adventure you must have had, Ben!  Wish I had
+been with you."
+
+"You were in the Rocky Mountains then, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, and in Australia, and the Cape.  You see, I had a turn after gold
+and diamonds wherever I thought I could find them.  But help yourself
+and me to some more of those glorious trout, and spin your yarn."
+
+"Let us get away out of doors first, Nie.  On this lovely summer's day
+we should be on the lake."
+
+So we were, reader, one hour afterwards; but the sun was too bright;
+there were neither clouds nor wind, and the fish wouldn't bite; so we
+pulled on shore, drew up our boat, and seated ourselves at the shady
+side of a great rock on a charming bit of greensward, and there we
+stayed for hours, Ben lazily talking and smoking, I listening in a
+dreamy kind of way, but enjoying my friend's yarn all the same.
+
+"Yes," said Ben, "we were on special service.  One day we would be
+dredging the bottom of the sea, the next day taking soundings.  One day
+we would be shivering under polar skies, the next roasting under a
+tropical sun."
+
+"Come, come, be easy, Ben; be easy," I cried, half-rising from the
+grass.  "If you were under polar skies one day, how, in the name of
+mystery, could you be in the tropics next, Captain Roberts?  I shall
+imagine you are going to draw the long bow, as the Yankees call it."
+
+"Well, well, Nie; the fact is, we passed so pleasant an existence in the
+_Sans Pareil_, that time really glided away as if we had been in
+dreamland all the while.  We sailed away to the far north in the early
+spring of the year.  We didn't go after either seals or whales; but we
+did have the sport for all that.  Our captain was one of those real
+gentlemen that you do find now and then commanding ships in the Royal
+Navy.  Easy-going and complacent, but a stickler for duty and service
+for all that.  There wasn't a man or officer in the ship who wouldn't
+have risked his life at any moment to please him--ay, or laid it down in
+duty's cause.  Indeed, the men would any day do more for Captain Mann's
+nod and smile, than they would do for any one else's shouted word of
+command.
+
+"We dredged our way up north to Greenland.  It was a stormy spring.  We
+often had to lie-to for a whole week together; but we were a jolly crew,
+and well-officered, and we had on board two civilians--Professor kind of
+chaps I think they were--and they were the life and soul of the whole
+ship.  Whenever we could we took soundings, and hauled up mud and
+shingle and stuff from the bottom of the dark ocean, even when it was a
+mile deep and more.  But when that mud was washed away, and the living
+specimens spread out and arranged on bits of jet-black paper, what
+wonders we did see, to be sure!  Our Scotch doctor called them
+`ferlies': he called everything wonderful a `ferlie.'  But these
+particular ferlies, Nie, took the shape of tiny wee shells of all the
+colours in the rainbow, and funny wee fishes, some not bigger than a
+pin-point.  But, oh! the beauty, the more than loveliness of them!  The
+roughest old son of a gun on board of us held up his hands in admiration
+when he saw them.  We cruised all round Spitzbergen, and all down the
+edge of the eastern pack ice.  We shot bears and foxes innumerable;
+walruses, narwhals, seals, and even whales fell to our guns; while the
+number of strange birds we bagged and set up would have filled a museum.
+
+"Some of those walruses gave us fun, though.  I remember once we fell
+amidst ice positively crowded with them.  They seemed but little
+inclined to budge, either.  Again and again we fought our way through
+them; but the number seemed to increase rather than diminish, till at
+last our fellows--we were two boats' crews--were thoroughly exhausted,
+and fain to take to the boats.  Was the battle ended then?  I thought it
+was only just beginning, when I saw around us the water alive with
+fierce tusked heads evidently bent on avenging the slaughter of their
+comrades.
+
+"Our good surgeon was as fond of sport as anyone ever I met, but he
+confessed that day he had quite enough of it.  At one time the peril we
+were in was very great indeed.  Several times the brutes had all but
+fastened their terrible tusks on the gunwale of our boat.  Had they
+succeeded, we should have been capsized, and entirely at their mercy.
+
+"The surgeon, with his great bone-crushing gun, loaded and fired as fast
+as ever fingers could; but still they kept coming.
+
+"`Ferlies'll never cease,' cried the worthy medico, blowing the brains
+clean out of one who had almost swamped the boat from the stern.
+Meanwhile it fared but badly with the other boat.  The men were fighting
+with clubs and axes, their ammunition being entirely spent.  One poor
+fellow was pierced through the arm by the tusk of a walrus and fairly
+dragged into the water, where he sank before he could be rescued.
+
+"The ship herself bore down to our assistance at last, and such a rain
+of bullets was poured upon the devoted heads of those walruses that they
+were fain to dive below.  The noise of this battle was something
+terrible; the shrieks of the cow walruses, and the grunting, groaning,
+and bellowing of the bulls, defy all attempts at description.
+
+"What do you think," continued Captain Roberts, "I have here in my
+pocket-book?  Look; a sketch of a strangely fantastic little iceberg the
+doctor made half an hour after the battle.  He was a strange man--partly
+sportsman, partly naturalist, poet, painter, all combined."
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"No, not he; I'll warrant he is busy sketching somewhere in the interior
+of Africa at this very moment.  But I loved Greenland so, Nie, that old
+as I am I wouldn't mind going back again.  The beauty of some of the
+aurora scenes, and the moonlight scenes, can never be imagined by your
+stay-at-home folk.  We went into winter quarters.  Well, yes, it was a
+bit dreary at times; but what with fun and jollity, and games of every
+kind on board, and sledging parties and bear and fox hunts on shore on
+the ice around us, the time really didn't seem so very long after all."
+
+"What say you to lunch, Ben, my boy?"  I remarked.
+
+"The very thing," replied my friend; "but first and foremost, just shake
+that ferocious-looking stag-beetle off your shoulder; he'll have you by
+the ear before you know where you are."
+
+"Ugh!"  I cried, knocking the beast a yard away.  The creature turned
+and shook his horrid mandibles threateningly at me, for a stag-beetle
+never runs away.  Although admiring his pluck, I could not stand his
+impudence, so I flicked him away, and he fell into the lake.
+
+"Ah!  Nie," Captain Roberts said, "if the wild beasts of the African
+jungle were only half as courageous and fierce as that beetle, not so
+many of our gay sportsmen would go after them.  Only fancy that creature
+as big as an elephant!
+
+"Well, Nie, in that cruise of ours, we had no sooner got back to England
+and been surveyed than off we were down south, across the Bay of Biscay.
+No storms then; we could have crossed it in the dinghy boat.  Visited
+Madeira.  You know, Nie, how grand the scenery is in that beautiful
+island."
+
+"And how delicious the turtle!"  I said.
+
+"True, O king!" said Ben; "the bigwigs in London think they know what
+turtle tastes like, but they're mistaken; there is as much difference
+between the flavour of a turtle newly caught, and one that has been
+starved to death as your London turtles are, as there is between a bit
+of cork and a well-boiled cauliflower."
+
+"Bravo!  Ben, you speak the truth."
+
+"Then we visited romantic Saint Helena.  It used to be called `a rock in
+the middle of the ocean.'  How different now!  A more fertile and
+luxuriant place there isn't in all the wide, wide world.  We called at
+Ascension next; well, that is a rock if you like, not a green thing
+except at the top o' the hill [it has since been cultivated].  But the
+birds' eggs, Nie, and the turtle.  It makes me hungry to think of them
+even now.
+
+"We had whole months of sport at the Cape and in South Africa, and all
+up the coast as far as Zambesi.  We visited Madagascar; more sport
+there, and a bit of honest fighting; then on to the Comoro islands--more
+romantic scenery, and more fighting; then to Zanzibar.  Captured prizes,
+took soundings, dredged, and went on again.  On, to Seychelles, then to
+Java, Sumatra, Penang, then back to India, and thence to Africa, the Red
+Sea, Mocha; why, it would be easier far to mention the places we did not
+visit.  But the best of it was that we stayed for months at every new
+place where we cast anchor."
+
+"Visited Ceylon, I dare say?"
+
+"Yes, hid, and had some rare sport elephant-shooting.  I tell you what,
+Nie, there was some clanger attached to that sort of thing in those
+days, but now it is little better than shooting cows, unless you get
+away into the little-known regions of equatorial Africa; there you still
+find the elephant has his foot--and a big one it is--upon his native
+soil.  But I remember once--I and my man Friday--being charged by two
+gigantic tuskers, and the whole herd rushing wildly down to their
+assistance.  It was a supreme moment, Nie.  I thought my time was come;
+I would have given anything and everything I possessed to get up into
+the top of the palm-tree close beside me.
+
+"`Now, Friday,' I cried, `be steady if you value your own life and
+mine.'
+
+"I fired, and my tusker dropped.  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 will, Nie; it appears to me
+almost as bad as shooting a human being.
+
+"`We'll go back to the lake-side now, Friday,' I said, `and have
+dinner.'
+
+"Alas!  I had no dinner that day, Nie, nor for many a long day to come.
+
+"There is no fiercer wild beast in all the forests or jungles than the
+cougar or puma, and none more treacherous.  I have an idea myself that
+the darker in colour the more courageous and bloodthirsty they are;
+however that may be, I would any day as soon fight hand-to-hand with a
+man-eating tiger as I would with some of the monstrous pumas I have seen
+in South America.  And yet I have heard sportsmen despise them, probably
+because they have never met one face to face as I have done, and as I
+did on the day in question.
+
+"We were quietly returning, Friday and I, to the place where we had left
+our provisions and bags, when he suddenly cried, `Look, massa! look
+dere!'  We had disturbed one of the largest boa-constrictors I had ever
+seen, and it was moving off, strange to say, instead of boldly attacking
+us, but hissing and blowing with rage as it did so.  It looked to me
+like the trunk of some mighty palm-tree in motion along the ground.
+
+"`Fire!'  I cried; `fire!  Friday.'
+
+"The crack of both of our rifles followed in a second, but though
+wounded, the terrible creature made good its escape.
+
+"I hurried after him, loading as I went, and thus got parted for a short
+time from my faithful servant and body-guard.
+
+"I soon discovered, to my sorrow, the reason why the boa had not
+attacked us.
+
+"In these dense forest lands, the wildest animals prey upon each other.
+Thus the boa often seizes and throttles the life out of even the puma,
+agile and fierce though it be.  This particular boa had been watching a
+puma, evidently, when we came up.  The brute gave me not a moment to
+consider, nor to finish my loading.
+
+"I yelled in terror as I found myself seized by the shoulder.  I
+remember no more then.
+
+"Friday had boldly rushed to my rescue.  He struck the puma over the
+head with his useless rifle.  The beast sprang backwards fully fifteen
+feet, and prepared to give Friday battle, but the brave fellow was on
+him, knife in hand, in a moment.  Friday told me afterwards that he
+literally flung himself on the puma.  Had he missed his aim, he would
+never have had another chance, but deep into the monster's very heart
+went the dagger, and he never moved a muscle more.  Friday was
+unwounded."
+
+"And you, Ben?"
+
+"Fearfully cut in the shoulder with the puma's teeth, cut in the back
+with the talons of his fore feet, and lacerated in the stomach with his
+hind.  They have an ugly way of cutting downwards with those talons of
+theirs, few who have felt it are likely to forget."
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+                  "Wide-rent, the clouds
+  Pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame unquenched
+  Th' unconquerable lightning straggles through
+  Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls,
+  And fires the mountains with redoubled rage."
+
+  Thomson.
+
+My old friend Captain Roberts is quite a remarkable man in his way--yes,
+I might go farther and say, in many of his ways.  As a pedestrian, for
+example, there are few young men can beat him.  When he and I make up
+our minds to have a walk, the elements do not prevent us.  We start and
+go through with it.
+
+But in summer or spring weather, when the roads are not quite ankle-deep
+in mud, we dearly love to mount our tricycles and go for a good long
+spin.  We like to return feeling delightfully hungry and delightfully
+tired; then we dine together, and after dinner, when good old Ben gets
+his pipe in full blast, it would indeed do your heart good to listen to
+him.  Everything or anything suggests a yarn to Ben, or brings back to
+his mind some sunny memory or gloomy recollection.
+
+One day last summer we started for a ride, for the morning looked very
+promising, and the roads were in splendid form.  We followed the course
+of the Thames upwards, and about noon found ourselves enjoying our
+frugal luncheon near a pretty little reach of the river, one of the
+thousand beautiful spots by the banks of this famous old stream.
+
+As the clouds, however, began to bank up rather suddenly in the west,
+and as they soon met and quite hid the sun, and as the day was still and
+sultry, we expected, what we soon got, a thunderstorm.  Neither my
+friend nor I am very shy, when it comes to the push, so we ran for
+shelter, and just as the thunder began to roll and the raindrops to
+fall, we got our 'cycles comfortably housed in a farmer's shed.
+
+The farmer was not content, however, until he had us both indoors in his
+comfortable parlour.  He threw the window wide open, because, he said,
+the glass drew the lightning; so there we sat with the thunder rattling
+overhead, the rain pattering on the grass and sending up delicious
+odours of red and white clover, while the lightning seemed to run along
+the ground, and mix itself up with the sparkling rain-rush in quite a
+wonderful way.
+
+"Terrible thunder!" said Captain Roberts.  "Terrible! puts me in mind of
+South America."
+
+The farmer looked eagerly towards him.
+
+The farmer's wife entered with tea, and this completed our feeling of
+comfort.
+
+"You've got something to tell us, Ben," I said.  "There is something
+which that storm reminds you of.  Better out with it, without much
+further parley."
+
+"Ah, well," he said, "I suppose I must.  Not that it is very much of a
+story; only, gentlemen, it is true.  I haven't lived long enough yet to
+have to invent yarns.  I haven't told half what I've seen and come
+through.  But not to weary you--what delicious tea, ma'am!"
+
+"So glad it pleases you, sir."
+
+"I've sailed around a good many coasts in my time; but I think you will
+find scenery more charming on the seaboard of some parts of South
+America than in any other country in the world.  Round about Patagonia,
+now, what can beat the coast line for grandeur and stern beauty?
+Nothing that I know of.
+
+"But farther north--on the shores of Bolivia, for instance--the scenery
+is just a trifle disappointing; the coast is low and sandy, and very
+rough in places.
+
+"They call the ocean that laves it the Pacific.  Bless my soul! friends,
+had you but seen it one day in the month of April, 18--, you wouldn't
+have said there was much `pacific' about it.  The bit of a barque I was
+coasting in was on a lee-shore, too, and there was nothing short of a
+miracle could save her.  We all saw that from the first.  That miracle
+never took place.  We were carried on shore--carried in on top of a
+mountain wave, struck with fearful force, and broke in two in less than
+an hour.
+
+"It was a wonder anybody was saved.  As it was, seven of us got on shore
+one way or another, and there we lay battered and bruised.  The sun
+dried one half of our clothes; then we rolled round, and he dried the
+other.  We had tasted no food for four-and-twenty hours, for we had been
+battened down, and all hands had to be on deck.  So when a case rolled
+right up to our very feet we weren't long looking inside it, and glad
+enough to find some provisions in the shape of tinned soup.
+
+"Stores floated on shore next day, and spars, and one thing and another,
+so we rigged a tent, and made ourselves as much at home as it was
+possible for shipwrecked mariners to do.
+
+"We had been shipwrecked apparently on a most inhospitable shore.  To
+say there wasn't a green thing in sight would hardly be correct.  Bits
+of scrubby bushes grew here and there in the sand, and a kind of strong
+rough grass also in patches; but that was all.  Inland, the horizon was
+bounded by a chain of mountains; to the west was the ocean, calm enough
+now, very wide and dark and blue, with not even an island to break its
+monotony.
+
+"It was a poor look-out for us, only we all agreed that it would be
+better to stay where we were until our wounds and bruises were somewhat
+healed, and until we had gathered sufficient strength to explore the
+country.
+
+"We had plenty to eat and drink where we were; we could not tell how we
+might fare elsewhere.  Only we were quite out of the way of ships, and
+our provisions would not last for ever.
+
+"For the first three or four days, I may say we did nothing else but
+bury our dead.  Sad enough employment, you must allow.  But after this a
+breeze of wind sprang up, which during the night increased to a gale,
+blowing right on to the shore.  When the darkness lifted, to our great
+joy we found our ship, or rather the pieces of her that had in a sort of
+way held together, floated high and dry on the beach.
+
+"Had we wished now to become Crusoes we should have had every
+convenience, for we not only got provisions of all kinds out of the
+wreck, but boxes of stores, guns, and ammunition.  For the last we were
+very grateful; and rough sailors though we were, we did not forget to
+kneel down there on the sands and thank the Giver of all good, not only
+for having mercifully spared us from the violence of the sea, but for
+giving us this earnest of future good fortune.
+
+"The hawk scents the quarry from afar, and early next morning we were
+not surprised to receive a visit from some armed Indians.  They rode on
+horses and on mules that seemed as fleet as they were sure-footed.
+These Indians were kind enough to express a wish, not over-politely
+worded, to possess samples of our various stores.  We gave them to eat
+as much as they liked; but when they attempted to pillage the wreck, we
+first and foremost smilingly and persuasively hinted our disapproval of
+such a proceeding.
+
+"This hint not being taken, we tried another: we levelled guns at them,
+and they fled.
+
+"They came again the next day; and we made them many presents, and asked
+them, in broken Spanish and a deal of sign language, to conduct us
+safely over the mountains to the nearest Bolivian town or settlement.
+
+"They were in all about twenty, and if they were half as bad in heart as
+they looked, then they were indeed scoundrels of the first water.  But
+we numbered seven--seven bold hearts and true, and we were well armed,
+and able enough to drive a bargain with these fellows to our mutual
+advantage.
+
+"We did so in this way: we were to have several horses and five mules,
+which should be laden with all our own especial baggage.  They--the
+Indians--should have as much as they liked of the stores that remained.
+
+"They appeared to consent to this willingly enough.  So we made our
+packs up--taking the best of everything, of course, and whatever was of
+the greatest value.
+
+"It was now well on in the afternoon, so we determined to start on our
+journey inland the very next morning.  The Indians had still half a
+dozen good mules left, and they at once set about making preparations
+for loading them.
+
+"There was a deal of squabbling and wrangling over the division, and
+more than once they seemed coming to blows.
+
+"As soon as they had chosen all they could carry, we set about piling up
+the rest of the wreckage in a heap, preparatory to setting fire to it.
+This was absolutely necessary, for if anything was left behind it would
+be but a short convoy those Indians would give us.  They would hide
+their mule packs among the mountains and hurry back for more.
+
+"They were very much displeased, therefore, to see what we were about.
+
+"But nothing cared we; and just as the sun dipped down into the western
+ocean we set fire to the immense pile.
+
+"When darkness fell, and the flames leaped high into the air, the scene
+was one worthy of the brush of a Rembrandt.  The sea was lit up for
+miles with a ruddy glare; the sands were all aglow with the blaze; the
+Indians and their mules thrown out in bold relief looked picturesque in
+the extreme, while we, the white men, armed to the teeth, and carefully
+watching the Indians, though not in any way to give them cause for
+alarm, formed a by no means insignificant portion of the scene.
+
+"We were early astir the next day, and on the road before the sun had
+begun to peep down over the eastern hills.
+
+"We marched in single file, an old grey-bearded Indian leading the van
+as our guide.
+
+"Before many hours we had left the sandy hills along the seashore, and
+had entered the mountain defiles.
+
+"Scenery more rugged, wild, and beautiful I had seldom clapped eyes
+upon, either before or since.  At the same time we could not help
+feeling thankful that we had obtained the guidance of these Indians,
+treacherous though they no doubt were, for we never could have made our
+way otherwise across this range of rugged mountains, nor through the
+wild entanglement of forest.
+
+"By day many a wild beast crossed our pathway, but only seldom we shot
+them, and we never followed far; we were shipwrecked sailors trying to
+make our way to some semi-civilised town, where we could live in some
+degree of safety until we found out the lay of the land, as our mate
+called it, and fell in at last with some British ship.
+
+"These fellows, our guides, could tell us nothing, but they led us day
+after day towards the east and the north.
+
+"We kept a strict watch over their every movement, and it was well we
+did so.  At night we bivouacked but a little distance from their camp,
+and had separate fires and separate sentries.
+
+"Almost every evening after supper they made themselves madly drunk with
+the wine they had received from us, and without which they would have
+refused to guide us at all.
+
+"After four days' wandering we arrived, during a pitiless storm of
+thunder and rain, at a strange and semi-barbarian village.  The houses
+or huts were built upon piles, and the inhabited portion of them stood
+high above the ground; you had to ascend to this on a sort of hen's
+ladder.
+
+"The street itself at the time we entered the town was more like a river
+than anything else.  But we were glad enough to find shelter of any
+kind, drenched to the skin as we were, and wet and weary as well.
+
+"Next day was bright and clear again, and it seemed to me that every one
+of the villagers turned out to see us start.  They appeared to be
+peaceable enough, so we made little presents to the women, and advised
+our Indian guides to do the same.  They were not inclined to part with
+anything, however, and evidently looked upon us as fools for what we
+did.
+
+"Our march that day was across vast plains and swamps towards another
+mountain-chain, more rugged and grand than any we had yet seen.
+
+"We chatted pleasantly and sang as we rode on, for the Indians assured
+us that in two days more we should arrive at a very large and populous
+city, where plenty of rich white men lived, with splendid houses, broad
+paved streets, hotels, and even palaces.  We bivouacked that night at
+the very foot of the chain of mountains, and next morning entered and
+rode through gloomy glens and dark woods, and the farther we rode the
+wilder the country seemed to become.  Yet some of the woodland scenes
+were inexpressibly lovely.  We came out at last on the brow of a hill,
+just as the sun was setting over the distant forest, and bathing with
+its golden glory a scene as lovely as it was sad and melancholy.
+
+"A vast plain in the centre of an amphitheatre of hills, clad almost to
+their summits with lofty trees, a broad river meandering through this
+plain, and on both banks thereof what appeared from where we stood to be
+a city of palaces.  Alas! on entering it we found it a city of ruins.
+Trees and shrubs grew where the streets had been, the gardens had
+degenerated into jungles; we saw wild beasts hiding behind the
+mouldering walls, and heard them growl as we passed; and we saw monster
+snakes and lizards wriggling hither and thither, and these were the only
+inhabitants of this once large and populous town.
+
+"Yet in the halls of its palaces the banquet had once been spread, and
+gaiety, mirth, and music had resounded in its streets and thoroughfares,
+till war came with murder and pestilence, and then all was changed.  The
+city's best sons were sent to work in mines, or slain; the city's
+fairest daughters marched away in chains to become the slaves of their
+terrible foes.
+
+"I could not help thinking of all this as I rode through this ruined
+city of the plain, and sighed as I did so.  The words and music of the
+sad old song came into my mind:
+
+  "`So sinks the pride of former days
+      When glory's thrill is o'er.
+  And hearts that once beat high with praise
+      Now feel that pulse no more.'
+
+"But the sun set and night came on, and with it storm and darkness."
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+  "Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak.
+  Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear."
+
+  Byron.
+
+My friend Ben paused for a moment.
+
+A sheet of lightning almost blinded us.  It was followed instantaneously
+by one of the most terrific peals of thunder I have ever heard in this
+country.
+
+"It was in just such a storm as this," said Captain Roberts, "that we
+took shelter in the ruins of an old fort.  We tethered our mules
+outside, and we had not even the heart to keep the Indians from sharing
+our quarters.  For once, and it was the last time, we ate with them,
+drank with them, and talked to them.  How little we suspected them of
+treachery!
+
+"We found plenty of dry wood in the old fort and soon had a roaring fire
+with which to warm up our soup and cook our vegetables.
+
+"`Who goes sentry to-night?'  I said to the mate.
+
+"`Well,' replied the mate, `I guess we'd better draw for it.  He'll have
+a wet skin whoever does it.'
+
+"It was just after dinner when this conversation took place.
+
+"`But,' continued the mate, stretching himself before the fire, `I
+expect it will be between you and me, for, look, the other fellows have
+all gone to sleep, and I feel so drowsy I really--don't--know--how
+long--'
+
+"He said no more; he was asleep.
+
+"`Poor fellows,' I said to myself, as I took up my gun and prepared to
+leave the room, `they're tired.  I'll station myself here by the door,
+where I can be in the dry and still see all that is going on.'
+
+"The storm continued with unabated violence.  The rain came down in
+sheets; the thunder seemed to rend the old fort and shake it to its very
+foundation, while the lightning was everywhere; the whole world looked
+as if on fire.  Night was coming on, and rude though our shelter was, I
+felt thankful we were not out in the gloom of the forest.
+
+"`How soundly they sleep!'  I said to myself about half an hour after
+when I went to heap more wood on the five.  `How I envy them!  I'll sit
+a moment and think.  The Indians are not so bad as they look.  First
+impressions are not always--the--best.'
+
+"The next thing I was conscious of was hearing voices close beside me.
+It was the Indians bending over me and over my companions, and seeming
+to listen for our breathing.
+
+"`They're dead,' one said.
+
+"`Better make sure,' said another.
+
+"Then with half-open eyes I could see drawn daggers gleaming in the
+fire-light; but I was unable to stir hand or foot; I felt like one in
+some dreadful nightmare.  I tried to shriek, but my voice failed me.
+Then, `O God, be merciful to us!'  I inwardly prayed, `for our hour is
+come.'
+
+"Two Indians advanced, knives in hand, towards the mate.  One pulled his
+head back, the other had his arm uplifted to strike, when suddenly he
+sprang back appalled.
+
+"Was it sent as in answer to my prayer?  I know not; yet I firmly
+believe nothing happens by chance.  The electric fluid had entered by
+the roof, shattering the masonry and scattering the fire.  It gleamed on
+the uplifted knife of the would-be assassin; he dropped it, and with arm
+paralysed and hanging by his side fled shrieking from the building.  The
+others uttered exclamations of terror and surprise, and quickly followed
+the first.
+
+"I remember no more then.  Daylight was shimmering in through the broken
+roof of the building, and the fire had long gone out, when I awoke
+shivering, and started to my feet.
+
+"Almost at the same moment the mate jumped up.  He was the first to
+speak.
+
+"`We have been drugged,' he cried, pressing his hand to his aching head.
+
+"`Drugged?'  I answered.  `Yes, fools that we were to trust those
+scoundrels; we've been drugged, and, doubtless, robbed.'
+
+"The mate looked very pale and ghastly in the early light of the
+morning; probably I myself looked little better.  My surmise was right:
+the Indians had gone.  They had taken all our goods and our pack-mules
+with them, and driven away the spare animals.  Thank goodness, they had
+left us our arms and ammunition.
+
+"Not even on the morning after the shipwreck did we poor fellows feel so
+miserable as we did now, seated round a meagre meal of bananas and
+gourds.
+
+"But we were intent on regaining our goods.
+
+"Clever though these Indians might be if alone and unencumbered, they
+could hardly go fast, nor far at a time, through forest and jungle with
+horses and laden mules.  Nor could they go anywhere without leaving a
+trail that even a white man could pick up and follow.
+
+"The rain of the previous night favoured us.  We soon found the trail,
+and, better still, we had not gone very far ere a sound fell upon our
+ears that caused us to pause and listen.  It was soon repeated--the
+neighing of a horse.  I sprang into the jungle, and there, to my joy,
+found not only the horse I had ridden, but two others and some mules
+besides.  The poor brutes were quietly browsing on the herbage and the
+tender leaves of young palm-trees, but were evidently delighted to see
+us.
+
+"We went on now with more comfort, and had good hope of speedily coming
+up with the pillaging Indians, of whom we never doubted we could give a
+good account.
+
+"Somewhat to our surprise we found they were taking a westerly
+direction, instead of going east and by north, as they had been leading
+us.  They were either then bent upon returning to their own village, or
+making their way to some seaport where they could sell their plunder.
+If this latter surmise was the correct one, we were comparatively safe;
+if the former, any chance we had of recapturing our goods lay in our
+being able to come up with them before they were reinforced by members
+of their own tribe.  This thought made us redouble our exertions.  But
+we were weak for want of food and from the effects of the drug that had
+been administered to us on the previous evening, so that our progress
+was not so great as we wished it to be.
+
+"The trail continued all day to lead us through the jungle; but before
+sunset we found ourselves out in the open, on the brow of a hill that
+overlooked a vast, almost treeless, swamp.  It was bounded on the
+further horizon by a chain of mountains--spurs, no doubt, of the
+ubiquitous Andes.  Away to the left, and just under the hills, we could
+see smoke rising, and had no doubt that here our friends were encamped.
+
+"We speedily held a council of war, at which we discussed the best plan
+for attacking the Indians.
+
+"We stirred not then till long past nine o'clock, when the moon rose and
+flooded all the landscape.  Then we took to the swamp.  It was a
+terrible ride: at times our horses floundered in the quagmires, at other
+times they had to swim, to our imminent danger of being devoured by the
+huge alligators with which the place seemed to swarm.  We startled the
+birds from their beds in the reeds, the wild beasts from their lairs in
+the patches of jungle, and herds of fleet-footed creatures fled,
+bounding away towards the forest at sight of us.  It was a dangerous
+ride.  But we cared for nothing now; it was life or death with us.  We
+must reach the camp of the Indians, conquer them, or die in the attempt.
+
+"All night we rode, struggling and fighting against fearful odds; but at
+five o'clock in the morning, or about one hour before sunrise, we left
+the plain and entered the forest, determined to take our foes by
+surprise.  The ride through the tangled forest, without any pathway save
+that made by the beasts, was one of extreme difficulty.  But we were
+free at last; and tethering our horses, we prepared for the attack.  We
+could see the Indians on a small plateau not three hundred yards beneath
+us, asleep by their smouldering fires.  But we were on the brow of a
+hill, they much nearer the plain; beneath was a precipice, overhung with
+trailing shrubs and creepers, fully five hundred feet in depth, which it
+was impossible to descend without risk of being seen.
+
+"The place the Indians had chosen for a camping-ground was fortified by
+nature.  Probably that is the reason they had not troubled to set a
+sentry.  We saw our advantage at once; it was to make a detour, gain the
+level of the plain, then creep up the hill upon them, attacking both in
+flank and rear.
+
+"We carried out our plans most successfully.  Few but sailors could have
+climbed up the rocks which led to the plateau.  So steep were they that
+in some places the loosening of a stone or one false step might mean
+death.
+
+"Just as we were at the very brink of this precipice, and within twenty
+yards of where the enemy lay, a bough snapped with a loud report, and
+next moment they were all up and on the alert.
+
+"There was no need for further concealment; we speedily showed
+ourselves, poured a volley into their bewildered ranks, and before they
+could recover from their surprise we were on them with our muskets,
+which we used as clubs.
+
+"They were nearly three to one.  They fought like fiends.  So did we,
+and the battle for a time was desperate.  They were beaten at last, and
+the few who remained alive ran shrieking away towards the rocks.  We
+cared but little how they fared.
+
+"Our mate and another man were wounded, but not severely, and in two
+days' time we were able to resume our journey.
+
+"Providence was kind to us.  We came upon a broad old war-road that led
+through the forest and jungles and plains towards the setting sun, and
+in one week more we were overjoyed to find ourselves standing on a
+hill-side overlooking a verdant plain, with a river and a town, and
+beyond it the blue sea itself, studded with the ships of many nations.
+
+"And those who climb the hills in Greenland in spring-time to catch the
+first rays of the returning sun, were not more joyful than we were now.
+We laughed and shouted, and I believe the tears rolled down over our
+cheeks.
+
+"But we did not forget to kneel down there, and, with our faces on the
+ground, thank in silence the kind Father who had led us through so many
+troubles and dangers.  And now, Nie, the storm is gone.  We must thank
+these good people for their kind hospitality, and start."
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+  "Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
+  Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
+  The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
+  And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad.
+  The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike.
+  No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;
+  So hallow'd and so gracious is the time."
+
+  Shakespeare.
+
+It was Christmas Eve.  It was going to be an old old-fashioned
+Christmas, too, there was no mistake about that.  And to-night the snow
+lay fully two feet deep on the lawn in front of Rowan Tree Villa.  The
+sky was overspread with masses of darkest cloud that were being
+continually driven onward on the wings of a fierce north wind, seldom
+permitting even one solitary star to peep out.  The storm roared through
+the leafless elm trees, and shrieked and moaned among the giant poplars.
+It was indeed a wild and wintry night.
+
+Ah! but it didn't prevent my old and faithful Ben from making his
+appearance, though what with his long white beard, his snow-clad coat,
+and his round, rosy, laughing face, when I went myself to open the hall
+door to him, I really took him for King Christmas himself.
+
+But half an hour afterwards, when the crimson curtains were closely
+drawn, when the table was laden with good cheer, the two great
+Newfoundlands sleeping on the ample hearthrug, old Polly asleep on her
+perch, the cat singing on the footstool, and the kettle on the hob, with
+Ben at one side of the fire, his pipe in full blast, and myself at the
+other, you would have admitted we looked just as snug and jolly as there
+was any occasion to be.
+
+"Well, Nie, lad," said Ben, "this is what I call the quintessence of
+comfort.  Heave round with a yarn."
+
+"Just the thing," said I; "but what shall it be?"
+
+"Well, we're cosy enough here, that's certain, Nie, and as contrasts are
+pleasant sometimes, why, let's hear of some doings of yours in the ice
+and snow."
+
+"So let it be, Ben; I will tell you of a Christmas I once spent in the
+Arctic Ocean."
+
+"Not a very jolly one, I suppose," Ben replied.
+
+"Not so dull as you might imagine, I can tell you.  Ours was a brave
+brig, as strong as iron and oak could make us.  It seemed to me that
+there were no icebergs big enough to hurt us.  We had spent the summer
+whaling in Baffin's Bay.  The sport we had, so far as birds and bears
+and seals and foxes were concerned, was as good as anyone could have
+wished; while the wild grandeur of the scenery, and the very desolation
+of some of it, are painted on the tablets of my memory, and will remain
+for ever.  But we had not the fortune to kill a single whale.
+
+"Then winter came on us all at once, and we found ourselves frozen in,
+in one of the dreariest packs of ice it has ever been my lot to lie in.
+The days got shorter and shorter, till the sun at last went down to rise
+no more for months.  We had the glorious aurora, though, and moonlight
+and stars, but sometimes for weeks together snows fell and storms raged,
+and we were enveloped in total darkness and a silence deep and awful as
+that of the very vaults of death.  We managed, despite the weather, to
+give Christmas a welcome, and were gay enough for a time.  Perhaps it
+was our very gaiety at this season that caused us to be so gloomy and
+disheartened afterwards.
+
+"Sickness came, the black death almost decimated our crew, and when, in
+the cold bleak spring-time, the sun returned, and the ice opened and
+allowed us to stagger southwards, though the whales were plentiful,
+there were not men enough to man the boats, and hardly enough to set the
+sails.
+
+"I had been an invalid; indeed, I had barely escaped with life, and it
+would be long ere I was fit again for the wild roving existence and wild
+sports in which my soul was so much bound up.
+
+"`Come with me, sir,' said our captain when we reached New York at last.
+`I'm going south for the good of my health, and I have cousins near San
+Francisco, and it is right welcome we both shall be.'
+
+"`Are they ladies?'  I asked.
+
+"`Ay, and dear good sisterly girls at that,' he answered.
+
+"My savage nature rather rebelled against the society of ladies, Ben;
+bears and wolves were more in my line.  But I could not offend my kind
+friend, so consented to go.
+
+"`We'll take it easy,' he said, `and have a look at the land as we go
+south.'
+
+"We did take it easy.  We visited all the lovely and enchanting scenery
+of the Adirondacks, then went slowly south and west; we lingered for
+weeks in the Yellowstone Park.  It was summer, all the woods and forests
+were astir with life, the prairies gay with gorgeous flowers; there was
+joy all around us; we drank in health in every breath we breathed.
+
+"I felt myself no longer an invalid when we arrived at the home of my
+captain's cousins, an old-fashioned log mansion, with verandahs and
+porticoes around which gigantic creepers flower-laden trailed and
+twined, and cooled the sun's rays that sifted through their leaves, ere
+they entered the beautifully-furnished rooms.  There were wide, grassy,
+park-like lawns, terraces, and fountains, and everything that wealth
+could bestow or luxury suggest adorned this lovely spot.  The owner was
+a retired planter.  His servants were still slaves, but the master was
+kindness itself to even the meanest of them.
+
+"I would now fain have resumed my old life, and gone with rod or gun in
+hand to the forest, the mountain, and stream.  But I was not to be
+permitted to do so.  I must still consider myself an invalid.  Such were
+the orders of my captain's cousins.  So I became a willing captive, and
+did all that the dear kind-hearted girls told me.
+
+"And, indeed, sitting under the shade of a cool and leafy orange-tree,
+the air perfumed with its delightful scent, with Letitia quietly sewing
+beside me, and Miriam reading `The Lady of the Lake,' was as good a way,
+Ben, of passing a drowsy summer's afternoon as any I ever tried."
+
+"Didn't you fall in love?" asked Ben slyly.
+
+"Don't ask any questions," I replied.  "Stir the fire, my boy; just hear
+how the wind is roaring, and the hail rattling against the panes."
+
+"Ugh!" said Ben, with a little shudder as he applied the poker to the
+blazing coals.  "Well, go on, Nie."
+
+"When I got still a little stronger, we, the captain's cousins and I,
+used to go for long rambles to the hills and woods, and sometimes south
+to a picnic or dance.
+
+"There are giants in the forests of California, Ben.  Once, I remember,
+our ball-room was the stump of an old tree, the lofty pines its walls,
+and the blue sky its roof.
+
+"As I happened one day to let out rather inadvertently that I was,
+virtually speaking, a homeless man, a wanderer over the wide, wide
+world, my good host said bluntly, but kindly:
+
+"`Then, my dear sir, you are a prisoner here for the next six months.
+Come, I won't take a word of denial.'
+
+"Well, I had to give in, if only for the simple reason that both the
+girls added their influence to that of their father; I promised to stay,
+and didn't repent it.
+
+"Though I say it myself, Ben, I was soon a favourite with all the slaves
+about the old estate.  I daresay I had my favourites among them; it is
+only natural.  One of these was Shoe-Sally, another was Shoe-Sally's
+little brother Tom.  They were both characters in their way, and both
+oddities.  Shoe-Sally was quite a personage about the old mansion.  She
+seemed to do anything and everything, and to be here, there, and
+everywhere all at the same time.  Shoe-Sally also knew everything, or
+appeared to do so, and she was just as black and shiny as the shoes she
+polished.  Sally was bound up in a little brother of hers called Tom.
+
+"`Leetle tiny Tom,' she told me one day, `is so cleber, sah.  He read de
+good Book all same's one parson, sah.  Make parson hisself one o' dem
+days.  Sure he will, sah.'
+
+"But Tom had a deadly enemy in the person of Joliffe the overseer, a
+perfect brute of a fellow, with slouching gait and murderous eye.  How
+his master retained him so long I don't know, but he had been overseer
+for more than ten years, I was told.  Well, he might have been useful in
+some ways, but he was terribly cruel.  He did not dare to let his master
+see him with a whip in his hand, but he had a short thick one in his
+pocket with which he flogged the poor slaves most unmercifully.
+
+"Once Shoe-Sally came running to me; I was playing with a little pet dog
+belonging to Tom:
+
+"`Oh! for mussy sake, come quick, sah!' she shrieked; `Massa Joliffe he
+done whip my pooh brudder most to death.'
+
+"I followed her quickly enough, and I never want to see again what I saw
+then.  Joliffe had stripped the poor black boy, tied him up in the
+stable, and was lashing him across the face and shoulders.  He had
+injured one eye badly, and the blood was flowing everywhere about.
+
+"`You cowardly savage!'  I roared.
+
+"Ben, I have a hard fist.  That wretch's head was under my arm in a
+moment, and I simply punched it till I was tired, then I threw him into
+the stall and let him have a bucket of water over him by way of a
+reviver.  Joliffe's face was a sight to see for some weeks.  I told my
+host what I had done, and the verdict was, `Serve Joliffe right!'
+
+"Poor Shoe-Sally came to thank me with the tears streaming over her
+honest black cheeks.
+
+"`For what you hab done dis day,' sobbed Sally, `Hebbin will bress you
+ebery hour in your life.  And, oh, sah!' she added, `Sally will die for
+you!'
+
+"I shudder even now, Ben, my friend, when I think of how true, how
+terribly true, the latter part of this little grateful speech turned
+out.
+
+"Time passed, and I felt happier far in that old Californian home than I
+believe I ever did anywhere before.  I never once, however, met Joliffe
+the overseer, but he scowled a dreadful scowl at me, and I knew he was
+inwardly vowing deep revenge.  As for the little boy, Tom, he was taken
+entirely out of the overseer's charge, and became message-boy and
+`buttons' about the house.
+
+"It was before the tremendous civil war had broken out in America, Ben,
+and I was very young and just a bit romantic.  Perhaps I really was in
+love with dear Miriam.  At all events, there was nothing I would not
+have done for her, and I was never so perfectly, so serenely happy as
+when in her sweet presence.  But everyone loved Miriam, ay, every slave
+about the place, and every beast and every bird.  The wandering Indians
+that occasionally came around looked upon her as some being better than
+themselves, and I believe that even when they were on the war-path she
+might have gone to their camps, or to their fastnesses in the
+wilderness, and need have dreaded nought of ill.
+
+"It came to pass that Miriam was invited to spend a week at the house of
+a friend who lived some twenty miles from the old mansion.
+
+"Her father took her over, and--for sake of the drive we shall say,
+Ben--I went along with him.  I never enjoyed any drive so much, at all
+events.  At the end of the week, as my host was not over well, I boldly
+volunteered to go alone for Miriam, and my proposition was accepted.
+
+"I should sleep one night at the house where she had gone, and together
+we should drive home next day.  I knew every foot of the road and every
+feature of the scenery; even should we be belated, there would be bright
+moonlight.  At any time, a ride through the forests and hills of the far
+West, when the full moon is shining down from a clear sky, is a treat to
+be remembered, but with such companionship as I should enjoy, why, it is
+bliss, Ben, and nothing less.
+
+"Now, something out of the common occurred on the very day I left to
+bring Miriam home.  It was this: both Joliffe and Shoe-Sally were
+missed.  Poor Tom was disconsolate in the extreme, and went about all
+the forenoon with tears coursing along his nose, almost as big as the
+silver buttons he wore on his jacket.
+
+"That same day at noon a strange meeting took place between two braves,
+apparently Indians, in one of the deepest and darkest nooks of the great
+forest.  The spot was on the brink of a deep canon almost filled up with
+fallen trees, the result of some terrible storm.
+
+"One savage, who evidently belonged to the warlike Apaches, and was a
+chief, sat quietly and meditatively smoking.  The other leaned upon his
+club, and did all the talking, and this most energetically.
+
+"`Ugh!' said the sitting chief; `but the paleface and I am at peace.  I
+like it not.  I care not for his scalp.'
+
+"`But think of the gold I offer you,' said his companion; `think of the
+fire-water it will buy you.  You will be happy for ever with such wealth
+and riches, and think of the _prize_.  You are a great chief, this
+paleface girl will be brighter than the sunshine in your wigwam, sweeter
+far than the wild bee's honey.  Think.'
+
+"Nearer and nearer to a rifted tree not far from these two men crept a
+dark figure, moving along low on the ground, and as silently as a snake
+glides, till their every word became audible, their every gesture
+visible.
+
+"There was much more that the club-armed savage said which need not be
+repeated.  Suffice it to say that the listener heard all, or heard
+enough, then retired with the same stealthy gliding motion as it had
+approached.
+
+"Miriam and I set out about noon next day on our return journey.
+
+"With our spirited horse, and light waggonette, three hours would have
+taken us home easily.  But we did not hurry the horse, and it was two
+o'clock ere we had accomplished half the distance.
+
+"`We must be quick,' cried Miriam, looking at her watch with some degree
+of anxiety depicted on her lovely face.
+
+"She had hardly spoken these words ere an Indian woman tearing a child
+on her back in her blanket, suddenly appeared at the bend of the road,
+and begged for a few coppers.  I felt too happy to refuse, and drew up.
+The woman leaned against the wheel, a silver coin glittered in her hand,
+and next moment we had driven on.
+
+"Our path now wound along through a beautiful forest, and close by the
+banks of a lake.
+
+"The view was charming in the extreme, and I could not help stopping for
+just a moment that we might gaze on it.  The day was hot and still;
+there was silence on the hills, silence on pine wood and lake, broken
+only by an occasional plash as a fish leaped up, or a bird stirred the
+glassy waters with glad wing.  We were almost close to the edge of a
+fearful precipice.
+
+"`Get me that flower,' murmured Miriam, pointing to a deep crimson
+anemone that grew by the side of the road.
+
+"I sprang down to get it.  I had hardly reached the ground ere one of
+the front wheels flew off and rolled over the rock; it took all my
+strength to support that side of the machine, until Miriam should
+alight.
+
+"My thoughts at once reverted to the Indian woman who had leaned against
+the wheel.  She had doubtless drawn the linch-pin.
+
+"There was treachery of some kind in the wind.  But what could it mean?
+I never for a moment thought of Joliffe and his possible revenge.
+
+"As quickly as fingers could work, I took out the horse and tied him to
+a tree, then I backed the carriage into a sheltering corner of the rock,
+and hardly had I done so ere the whole forest resounded with the howling
+of vengeful savages.
+
+"I had expected no assistance from Miriam, and was surprised to get it.
+But the dear girl had all the courage and coolness in danger of a true
+American woman.  Armed with a revolver each, we gave those Redskins a
+warm reception; and though the bullets rattled on the rocks behind us
+like the hail on our window panes, Ben, they retired discomfited.
+
+"We could hardly expect to remain where we were much longer, and hope
+itself was sinking in my heart, when the yelling was renewed, and the
+Indians came on a second time to the attack.
+
+"Ah! but help was at hand.  Savages can _yell_, but there is nothing so
+blood-stirring as the wild `hurrah!' of a Briton or an American.
+
+"We heard it now, and sent back cheer for cheer.
+
+"I can hardly describe the scene that followed.  It was a fierce
+_melee_, a hand-to-hand contest, and dreadful while it lasted.  But the
+Redskins were beaten, Ben, at length, as Redskins always have been in
+the long run who crossed sword or spear against civilised man.
+
+"For the life of me I could never tell how long that fight continued.
+It might have been but five minutes--it might have been an hour.
+
+"But there, in the midst of the dead and the dying, stood Miriam, locked
+in her father's arms.
+
+"Ben," I continued, after a pause, "the most mournful part of my tale
+remains to be told.  It was poor, droll, innocent Shoe-Sally who had
+followed Joliffe to the forest that day, dodged him while he disguised
+himself, and crept after him, and listened to all he had said to the
+Apache chief.  She had hurried home again and exposed his treachery, and
+as it happened our friends were on the spot barely in time to save our
+lives."
+
+"And Shoe-Sally?" said Ben; "what became of her?"
+
+"We found her among the dying.
+
+"`My brudder, my brudder!' was all she ever said ere death stepped in
+and closed the scene."
+
+There was moisture in my friend's eyes as he bent down to stir the fire.
+
+"`Poor Sally!' he said; `and were these her last words?  Well, Nie, we
+are all of us brothers and sisters in this world.'"
+
+Yes, my dear readers, all of us, as Ben said, black or white.  Remember
+that.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, by Gordon Stables
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O'ER MANY LANDS, ON MANY SEAS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37327.txt or 37327.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/3/2/37327/
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.