Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader by R. M. Ballantyne (guided reading books txt) 📕

position, although she made violent and extraordinary efforts to do so. We say extraordinary, because Poopy, being ingenious, hit upon many devices of an unheard of nature to accomplish her object. Among others, she attempted to turn heels over head, hoping thus to get upon her knees; and there is no doubt whatever that she would have succeeded in this, had not the formation of the ground been exceedingly unfavourable for such a manoeuvre.

Corrie had shewn such an amount of desperate vindictiveness, in the way of kicking, hitting, biting, scratching, and pinching, when the savages were securing him, that they gave him five or six extra coils of the rope of cocoa-nut fibre with which they bound him. Consequently he could not move any of his limbs, and he now lay on his side between Alice and Poopy, gazing with much earnestness and no little astonishment at the peculiar contortions of the latter.

“You’ll never manage it, Poopy,” he remarked in a sad tone of voice, on beholding the poor girl balanced on the small of her back, preparatory to making a spring that might have reminded one of the leaps of a trout when thrown from its native element upon the bank of a river. “And you’ll break your neck if you go on like that,” he added, on observing that, having failed in these attempts, she recurred to the heels-over-head process—but all in vain.

“Oh, me!” sighed Poopy, as she fell back in a fit of exhaustion. “It’s be all hup wid us.”

“Don’t say that, you goose,” whispered Corrie, “you’ll frighten Alice, you will.”

“Will me?” whispered Poopy, in a tone of self-reproach; then in a loud voice, “Oh, no! it not all hup yet, Miss Alice. See, me go at it agin.”

And “go at it” she did in a way that actually alarmed her companions. At any other time Corrie would have exploded with laughter, but the poor boy was thoroughly overwhelmed by the suddenness and the extent of his misfortune. The image of Bumpus, disappearing headlong over that terrible cliff, had filled his heart with a feeling of horror which nothing could allay, and grave thoughts at the desperate case of poor little Alice (for he neither thought of nor cared for Poopy or himself) sank like a weight of lead upon his spirit.

“Don’t try it any more, dear Poopy,” said Alice, entreatingly, “you’ll only hurt yourself and tear your frock. I feel sure that some one will be sent to deliver us. Don’t you, Corrie?”

The tone in which this question was put shewed that the poor child did not feel quite so certain of the arrival of succour as her words implied. Corrie perceived this at once, and, with the heroism of a true lover, he crushed back the feelings of anxiety and alarm which were creeping over his own stout little heart in spite of his brave words, and gave utterance to encouraging expressions and even to slightly jovial sentiments, which tended very much to comfort Alice, and Poopy too.

“Sure?” he exclaimed, rolling on his other side to obtain a view of the child, (for, owing to his position and his fettered condition he had to turn on his right side when he wished to look at Poopy, and on his left when he addressed himself to Alice.) “Sure? why, of course I’m sure. D’ye think your father would leave you lying out in the cold all night?”

“No, that I am certain he would not,” cried Alice, enthusiastically; “but, then, he does not know we are here, and will never think of looking for us in such an unlikely place.”

“Humph! that only shews your ignorance,” said Corrie.

“Well, I dare say I am very ignorant,” replied Alice, meekly.

“No, no! I don’t mean that,” cried Corrie, with a feeling of self-reproach. “I don’t mean to say that you’re ignorant in a general way, you know, but only about what men are likely to do, d’ye see, when they’re hard put to it, you understand. Our feelings are so different from yours, you know, and—and—”

Here Corrie broke down, and in order to change the subject abruptly he rolled round towards Poopy, and cried with considerable asperity—

“What on earth d’ye mean, Kickup, by wriggling about your black body in that fashion? If you don’t stop it you’ll fetch way down the hill, and go slap over the precipice, carrying Alice and me along with you. Give it up now, d’ye hear?”

“No, me won’t,” cried Poopy, with great passion, while tears sprang from her large eyes, and coursed over her sable cheeks. “Me will bu’st dem ropes.”

“More likely to do that to yourself if you go on like that,” returned Corrie. “But, I say, Alice, cheer up,” (here he rolled round on his other side,) “I’ve been pondering a plan all this time to set us free, and now I’m going to try it. The only bother about it is that these rascally savages have dropt me beside a pool of half soft mud that I can’t help sticking my head into if I try to move.”

“Oh! then, don’t move, dear Corrie,” said Alice, in an imploring tone of voice; “we can lie here quite comfortably till papa comes.”

“Ah! yes,” said Corrie, “that reminds me that I was saying we men feel and act so different from you women. Now it strikes me that your father will go to all the most unlikely parts of the island first; knowin’ very well that niggers don’t hide in likely places. But as it may be a long time before he finds us”—(he sighed deeply here, not feeling much confidence in the success of the missionary’s search)—“I shall tell you my plan, and then try to carry it out.” (Here he sighed again, more deeply than before, not feeling by any means confident of the success of his own efforts.)

“And what is your plan?” inquired Alice, eagerly, for the child had unbounded belief in Corrie’s ability to do almost anything he chose to attempt, and Corrie knew this, and was proud as a peacock in consequence.

“I’ll get up on my knees,” said he, “and then, once on them, I can easily rise to my feet and hop to you, and free you.”

On this explanation of his elaborate and difficult plan, Alice made no observation for some time, because even to her faculties, (which were obtuse enough on mechanical matters,) it was abundantly evident that, the boy’s hands being tied firmly behind his back, he could neither cut the ropes that bound her, nor untie them.

“What d’ye think, Alice?”

“I fear it won’t do, your hands are tied, Corrie.”

“Oh! that’s nothing. The only difficulty is how to get on my knees.”

“Surely that cannot be very difficult, when you talk of getting on your feet.”

“Ha! that shews you’re a — I mean, d’ye see, that the difficulty lies here, my elbows are lashed so fast to my side that I can’t use them to prop me up, but if Poopy will roll down the hill to my side, and shove her pretty shoulder under my back when I raise it, perhaps I may succeed in getting up. What say you, Kickup?”

“Hee! hee!” laughed the girl, “dat’s fuss rate. Look out!”

Poopy, although sluggish by nature, was rather abrupt and violent in her impulses at times. Without further warning than the above brief exclamation, she rolled herself towards Corrie with such good-will that she went quite over him, and would certainly have passed onward to where Alice lay—perhaps over the cliff altogether—had not the boy caught her sleeve with his teeth, and held her fast.

The plan was eminently successful. By a series of jerks on the part of Corrie, and proppings on the part of Poopy, the former was enabled to attain to a kneeling position, not, however, without a few failures, in one of which he fell forward on his face, and left a deep impression of his fat little nose in the mud.

Having risen to his feet, Corrie at once hopped towards Alice, after the fashion of those country wights who indulge in sack races, and, going down on his knees beside her, began diligently to gnaw the rope that bound her with his teeth. This was by no means an easy or a quick process. He gnawed and bit at it long before the tough rope gave way. At length Alice was freed, and she immediately set to work to undo the fastenings of the other two, but her delicate fingers were not well suited to such rough work, and a considerable time elapsed before the three were finally at large.

The instant they were so, Corrie said, “Now we must go down to the foot of the cliff and look for poor Bumpus. Oh! dear me, I doubt he is killed.”

The look of horror which all three cast over the stupendous precipice shewed that they had little hope of ever again seeing their rugged friend alive. But, without wasting time in idle remarks, they at once hastened to the foot of the cliff by the shortest route they could find. Here, after a short time, they discovered the object of their solicitude lying, apparently dead, on his back among the rocks.

When Bumpus struck the water, after being tossed over the cliff, his head was fortunately downward, and his skull, being the thickest and hardest bone in his body, had withstood the terrible shock to which it had been subjected without damage, though the brain within was, for a time, incapacitated from doing duty. When John rose again to the surface, after a descent into unfathomable water, he floated there in a state of insensibility. Fortunately the wind and tide combined to wash him to the shore, where a higher swell than usual launched him among the coral rocks, and left him there, with only his feet in the water.

“Oh! here he is, hurrah!” shouted Corrie, on catching sight of the prostrate form of the seaman. But the boy’s manner changed the instant he observed the colour of the man’s face, from which all the blood had been driven, leaving it like a piece of brown leather.

“He’s dead,” said Alice, wringing her hands in despair.

“P’rhaps not,” suggested Poopy, with a look of deep wisdom, as she gazed on the upturned face.

“Anyhow, we must haul him out of the water,” said Corrie, whose chest heaved with the effort he made to repress his tears.

Catching up one of Bumpus’s huge hands, the boy ordered Alice to grasp the other. Poopy, without waiting for orders, seized hold of the hair of his head, and all three began to haul with might and main. But they might as well have tried to pull a line-of-battle ship up on the shore. The man’s bulky form was immovable. Seeing this, they changed their plan, and, all three grasping his legs, slewed him partially round, and thus drew his feet out of the water.

“Now, we must warm him,” said Corrie, eagerly, for, the first shock of the discovery of the supposed dead body of his friend being over, the sanguine boy began to entertain hopes of resuscitating him. “I’ve heard that the best thing for drowned people is to warm them; so, Alice, do you take one hand and arm, Poopy will take the other, and I will take his feet, and we’ll all rub away till we bring him too—for we must, we shall bring him round.”

Corrie said this with a fierce look and a hysterical sob. Without more words he drew out his clasp-knife, and, ripping up the cuffs of the man’s coat, laid bare his muscular arm. Meanwhile Alice untied his neckcloth, and Poopy tore open his Guernsey frock and exposed his broad brown chest.

“We must warm that at once,” said Corrie, beginning to take off his jacket, which he meant to spread over the seaman’s breast.

“Stay, my petticoat is warmer,” cried Alice, hastily divesting herself of a flannel garment of bright scarlet, the brilliant beauty of which had long been the