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- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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It was daybreak when they were roused from these delights by a hyena’s howl, and awoke to find that they were speechless with thirst, their eyes inflamed, and their whole frames burning.
Saddling the horses at once, they rode forward, and in a couple of hours reached a hill near the top of which there was a projecting rock.
“Don’t let me raise your hopes too high,” said Hans, pointing to the rock, “but it is just possible that we may find water there.”
“God grant it!” said Considine.
“Your horse is fresher than mine,” said Hans, “and you are lighter than I am—go first. If there is water, hail me—if not, I will wait your return.”
With a nod of assent the youth pushed forward, gained the rock, and found the place where water had once been, a dry hole!
For a few minutes he stood gazing languidly on the plain beyond the ridge. Despair had almost taken possession of his breast, when his eye suddenly brightened. He observed objects moving far away on the plain. With bated breath he stooped and shaded his eyes with his hand. Yes, there could be no doubt about it—a party of horsemen and bullock-waggons! He tried to cheer, but his dry throat refused to act. Turning quickly, he began to descend the hillside, and chanced to cough as he went along. Instantly he was surrounded by almost a hundred baboons, some of gigantic size, which came fearlessly towards him. They grunted, grinned, and sprang from stone to stone, protruding their mouths and drawing back the skin of their foreheads, threatening an instant attack. Considine’s gun was loaded, but he had lived long enough in those regions to be fully aware of the danger of wounding one of these creatures in such circumstances. Had he done so he would probably have been torn to pieces in five minutes. He therefore kept them off with the muzzle of his gun as he continued the descent. Some of them came so near as to touch his hat while passing projecting rocks. At last he reached the plain, where the baboons stopped and appeared to hold a noisy council as to whether they should make a great assault or not. He turned and levelled his gun.
“Come,” thought he at that moment, “don’t do it, Charlie. You have escaped. Be thankful, and leave the poor brutes alone.”
Obeying the orders of his conscience, he re-shouldered his gun and returned to his friend, whom he found reclining under a low bush, and informed him of what he had seen. The young Dutchman jumped up at once, and, mounting, rode round a spur of the hill and out upon the plain. In an hour they had overtaken their comrades, but great was their dismay on finding that they had long ago consumed every drop of water, and that they were suffering from thirst quite as much as themselves.
“Never mind,” said Lucas Van Dyk; “let me comfort you with the assurance that we shall certainly reach water in a few hours.”
The hunter was right. Some hours before sunset the oxen and horses quickened their pace of their own accord—sure sign that they had scented water from afar. Shortly after, they came in sight of a stream. The excitement of all increased as they pushed forward. They broke into a wild run on nearing the stream; and then followed a scene which is almost indescribable. The oxen were cast loose, the riders leaped to the ground, and the whole party, men, oxen, and horses, ran in a promiscuous heap into the water.
“Wow, man, Jerry, hae a care; ee’ll be squizzen atween the beasts,” said Sandy Black, as the active Jerry passed him in the race.
The Scot’s warning was not without reason, for next moment Jerry was up to the knees in the stream between two oxen, who, closing on each other, almost burst him. Easing off, they let him drop on hands and knees, and he remained in that position drinking thankfully. The whole place was quickly stirred up into a muddy compound like pea-soup, but neither man nor beast was particular. They struggled forward and fell on their knees—not inappropriately—to drink. One man was pushed down by an ox, but seemed pleased with the refreshing coolness of his position, and remained where he was drinking. Another in his haste tumbled over the edge of the bank and rolled down, preceded by an impatient horse, which had tripped over him. Both gathered themselves up, somehow, with their lips in the water,—and drank! Young Rivers, happening to gain the stream at a point where oxen and horses were wedged together tightly, tried to force in between them, but, failing in this, he stooped to crawl in below them. At that moment Slinger the “Tottie” gave a yell in Dutch, and said that a horse was trampling on him; whom Dikkop consoled by saying that he was fast in the mud—and so he was, but not too fast to prevent drinking. Meanwhile the Dutchmen and the knowing ones of the party restrained themselves, and sought for better positions where the water was clearer. There they, likewise, bent their tall heads and suggested—though they did not sing—the couplet:
“Oh that a Dutchman’s draught might be
As deep as the ro–o–olling Zuyder-Zee!”
The limit of drinking was capacity. Each man and beast drank as much as he, or it, could hold, and then unwillingly left the stream, covered with mud and dripping wet! Oh, it was a delicious refreshment, which some thought fully repaid them for the toil and suffering they had previously undergone. The aspect of the whole band may be described in the language of Sandy Black, who, beholding his friends after the fray, remarked that they were all “dirty and drookit.”
Soon after this the explorers passed beyond the level country, and their sufferings were for the time relieved. The region through which they then passed was varied—hilly, wooded, and beautiful, and, to crown all, water was plentiful. Large game was also abundant, and one day the footprints of elephants were discovered.
To some of the party that day was one of deepest interest and excitement.
Charlie Considine, who was, as we have said, an adept with the pencil, longed to sit down and sketch the lordly elephant in his native haunts. Andrew Rivers and Jerry Goldboy wanted to shoot him, so did George Rennie and the Mullers and Lucas Van Dyk. More moderate souls, like Sandy Black, said they would be satisfied merely to see him, while Slinger and Dikkop, with their brethren, declared that they wanted to eat him.
At last they came in sight of him! It was a little after mid-day. They were traversing at the time a jungle so dense that it would have been impassable but for a Kafir-path which had been kept open by wild animals. The hunters had already seen herds of quaggas, and buffaloes, and some of the larger sorts of antelopes, also one rhinoceros, but not yet elephants. Now, to their joy, the giant tracks of these monsters were discovered. Near the river, in swampy places, it was evident that some of them had been rolling luxuriously in the ooze and mud. But it was in the forests and jungles that they had left the most striking marks of their habits and mighty power, for there thorny brakes of the most impenetrable character had been trodden flat by them, and trees had been overturned. In traversing such places the great bull-elephant always marches in the van, bursting through everything by sheer force and weight, breaking off huge limbs of the larger trees with his proboscis when these obstruct his path, and overturning the smaller ones bodily, while the females and younger members of the family follow in his wake.
A little further on they came to a piece of open ground where the elephants had torn up a number of mimosa-trees and inverted them so that they might the more easily browse on the juicy roots. It was evident from appearances that the animals had used their tusks as crowbars, inserting them under the roots to loosen their hold of the earth, and it was equally clear that, like other and higher creatures, they sometimes attempted what was beyond their strength, for some of the larger trees had resisted their utmost efforts.
As these signs multiplied the hunters proceeded with increased vigilance and caution, each exhibiting the peculiarity of his character, more or less, by his look and actions. The Mullers, Van Dyk, Rennie, Hans, and other experienced men, rode along, calmly watchful, yet not so much absorbed as to prevent a humorous glance and a smile at the conduct of their less experienced comrades. Considine and Rivers showed that their spirits were deeply stirred, by the flash of their ever-roving eyes, the tight compression of their lips, the flush on their brows, and the position of readiness in which they carried their guns—elephant-guns, by the way, lent them by their Dutch friends for the occasion. Sandy Black rode with a cool, sober, sedate air, looking interested and attentive, but with that peculiar twinkle of the eyes and slightly sarcastic droop at the corners of the mouth which is often characteristic of the sceptical Scotsman. On the other hand, Jerry Goldboy went along blazing with excitement, while every now and then he uttered a suppressed exclamation, and clapped the blunderbuss to his shoulder when anything moved, or seemed to move, in the jungle.
Jerry had flatly refused to exchange his artillery for any other weapon, and having learned that small shot was useless against elephants, he had charged it with five or six large pebbles—such as David might have used in the slaying of Goliath. Mixed with these was a sprinkling of large nails, and one or two odd buttons. He was a source of constant and justifiable alarm to his friends, who usually compelled him either to ride in front, with the blunderbuss pointing forward, or in the rear, with its muzzle pointing backward.
“There go your friends at last, Jerry,” said Van Dyk, curling his black moustache, with a smile, as the party emerged from a woody defile into a wide valley.
“What? where? eh! in which direction? point ’em out quick!” cried Jerry, cocking the blunderbuss violently and wheeling his steed round with such force that his haunch hit Sandy Black’s leg pretty severely.
“Hoot, ye loupin’ eedyit!” growled the Scot, somewhat nettled.
Jerry subdued himself with a violent effort, while the experienced hunters pointed out the elephants, and consulted as to the best plan of procedure.
There were fifty at least of the magnificent animals scattered in groups over the bottom and sides of a valley about three miles in extent; some were browsing on the succulent spekboom, of which they are very fond. Others were digging up and feeding among the young mimosa-thorns and evergreens. The place where the hunters stood was not suitable for an attack. It was therefore resolved to move round to a better position. As they advanced some of the groups of elephants came more distinctly into view, but they seemed either not to observe, or to disregard, the intruders.
“Why not go at ’em at once?” asked young Rivers in an impatient whisper.
“Because we don’t want to be killed,” was the laconic reply from Diederik Muller.
“Don’t you see,” explained Van Dyk, with one of his quiet smiles, “that the ground where the nearest fellows stand is not suitable for horsemen?”
“Well, I don’t see exactly, but I’ll take your word for it.”
While they were speaking, and riding through a meadow thickly studded over with clumps of tall evergreens, Considine observed something moving over the top of a bush close ahead of him.
“Look out there!” he exclaimed, but those in advance had already turned the corner of a bush, and found themselves within a hundred paces of a huge male elephant.
Jerry at once pointed the blunderbuss and shut his
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