Digging for Gold by Robert Michael Ballantyne (websites to read books for free TXT) 📕

is led by his condition to dream of rich feasts. In both cases the result is the same. The dream of food makes the starving man's case more terrible, and the thought of home makes the dreariness of the dark wilderness more dismal.

But what magic there is in a spark of light! The first burst of flame drives all the sad lonesome feelings away, and the blaze of the increasing fire creates positively a home-feeling in the breast. The reason of this is plain enough. Before the fire is kindled the eye wanders restlessly through the dim light that may chance to straggle among the trees. The mind follows the eye, and gets lost among indistinct objects which it cannot understand. The feelings and the faculties are scattered--fixed upon nothing, except perhaps on this, that the wanderer is far, very far, from home. But when the bright glare of the fire springs up, everything beyond the circle of light becomes pure black. The thoughts and feelings are confined within that chamber with the ebony walls, and are forcibly attracted and made to rest upon the tree-stems, the leaves, the flowers, and other objects that glow in the ruddy blaze. Thus the thoughts are collected, and the wanderer feels, once more, something of the _home-feeling_.

It was not long before our travellers realised this agreeable change. The depression of their spirits vanished with the darkness and rose with the leaping flames, until some of the members of the party became quite facetious. This was especially the case when supper had been disposed of and the pipes were lighted. It was then that Rance became chatty and anecdotal in his tendencies, and Jeffson told marvellous stories of Yankee-land, and Douglas, who devoted himself chiefly to his pipe, became an attentive listener and an awkward tripper up of the heels of those who appeared to be "drawing the long-bow," and Meyer looked, if possible, more solid and amiable than at other times, and Frank enjoyed himself in a general way, and made himself generally agreeable, while Joe Graddy became profoundly sententious. Even Bradling's nature appeared to be softened, for he looked less forbidding and grumpy than at other times, and once condescended to remark that a life in the woods was not such a bad one after all!

"Not such a bad one!" cried Joe Graddy; "why, messmate, is that all you've got to say about it? Now I'll give 'e my opinion on that head. This is where it lies--see here." (Joe removed his pipe from his mouth and held up his fore-finger by way of being very impressive.) "I've travelled pretty well now in every quarter of the globe; gone right round it in fact, and found that it _is_ round after all,--'cause why? I went in, so to speak, at one end from the west'ard an' comed out at the same end from the east'ard, though I must confess it all appeared to me as flat's a pancake, always exceptin' the mountainous parts of it, w'ich must be admitted to be lumpy. Hows'ever, as I wos sayin', I've bin a'most all over the world--I've smoked wi' the Turks, an' hobnobbled with John Chinaman, an' scrambled through the jungles of the Indies, an' gone aloft the Himalayas--"

"What, have you seen the Himalayas?" asked Jeffson, with a doubtful look.

"How could I be among 'em without seein' of 'em?" replied Joe.

"Ah, das is goot--vair goot," said Meyer, opening his huge mouth very wide to let out a cloud of smoke and a quiet laugh.

"Well, but you know," said Jeffson, apologetically, "a poor fellow livin' out here in the wilderness ain't just always quite up in the gee-graphical changes that take place on the airth. When was it that they cut a ship canal up to the Himalayas, and in what sort o' craft did ye sail there?"

"I didn't go for to say I sailed there at all," retorted Joe; "I walked it partly, and went part o' the way on elephants an' horses, and went aloft o' them there mountains pretty nigh as far up as the main-topmast cross-trees of 'em; I've also slep' in the snow-huts of the Eskimos, an' bin tossed about in a'most every sort o' craft that swims, but wot I've got to say is this, that of all the things I ever did see, travellin' in Californy beats 'em all to sticks and stivers."

"You've got a somewhat indefinite way of stating things," observed Douglas. "D'ee mean to say that it beats them in a good or a bad way?"

"I means wot I says," replied Joe, with a stern expression of countenance, as he relighted his pipe with the burnt end of a piece of stick. "I means that it beats 'em _both_ ways;--if ye haven't got schoolin' enough to understand plain English, you'd better go home again an' get your edicashun completed."

"I'd do that at once, Joe, if I could only make sure o' finding the schoolmaster alive that reared _you_."

"Ha! goot," observed the German. "Him must be von notable krakter."

Further conversation on this point was cut short by the sudden appearance within the circle of light of an Indian, who advanced in a half-crouching attitude, as if he feared a bad reception, yet could not resist the attraction of the fire.

At that time some of the tribes in the neighbourhood of Bigbear Gully had committed numerous depredations at the diggings, and had murdered several white men, so that the latter had begun to regard the Red Men as their natural enemies. Indeed some of the more violent among them had vowed that they would treat them as vermin, and shoot down every native they chanced to meet, whether he belonged to the guilty tribe or not. The Indian who now approached the camp-fire of the white men knew that he had good ground to fear the nature of his reception, and there is no doubt that it would have been an unpleasant one had it not been for the fact that his appearance was pitiable in the extreme.

He was squalid, dirty, and small, and so attenuated that it was evident he had for some time been suffering from starvation. He wore no clothing, carried no arms of any kind, and was so utterly abject, and so evidently incapable of doing harm to any one, that none of the party thought it worth while to rise, or lay hands on a weapon. When he appeared, Joe Graddy merely pointed to him with the stem of his pipe and said--

"There's a beauty, ain't it? another of the cooriosities of Californy!"

"Starvin'," observed Rance.

"Poor wretch!" exclaimed Frank, as the man advanced slowly with timid steps, while his large sunken eyes absolutely glared at the broken meat which lay scattered about.

"Give him von morsel," suggested Meyer.

"Give him a bullet in his dirty carcase," growled Bradling.

The Indian stopped when within ten paces of the fire and grinned horribly.

"Here, stop up your ghastly mouth wi' that," cried Jeffson, tossing a lump of salt-pork towards him.

He caught it with the dexterity of a monkey, and, squatting down on the trunk of a fallen tree, devoured it with the ravenous ferocity of a famishing hyena. The piece of pork would have been a sufficient meal for any ordinary man, but it quickly vanished down the throat of the savage, who licked his fingers, and, with eyes which required no tongue to interpret their meaning, asked for more!

"Look out!" cried Joe Graddy, tossing him a sea biscuit as one throws a quoit.

The Indian caught it deftly; crash went his powerful teeth into the hard mass, and in an incredibly short time it was--with the pork!

The whole party were so highly amused by this, that they "went in," as Jeffson said, "for an evening's entertainment." One tossed the poor man a cut of ham, another a slice of pork, a third a mass of bread, and so they continued to ply him with victuals, determined to test his powers to the uttermost.

"Try another bit of pork," said Douglas, laughing, as he threw him a cut as large as the first; "you've finished all the cooked meat now."

The Indian caught it eagerly, and began to devour it as though he had eaten nothing.

"He's tightening up like a drum," observed Jeffson, handing him a greasy wedge off a raw flitch of bacon.

"Him vill boost," said Meyer, staring at the Indian and smoking slowly, owing to the strength of his amazement.

"Jack the Giant Killer was a joke to him," muttered Graddy.

"A bottomless pit," observed Rance, referring to his stomach.

The Indian, however, proved that Rance was wrong by suddenly coming to a dead halt and dropping the last morsel he was in the act of raising to his mouth. He then heaved a deep sigh and looked round on the whole party with a radiant smile, which was literally sparkling by reason of the firelight which glittered on his greasy countenance.

"What! stuffed full at last?" exclaimed Jeffson, as they all burst into a fit of laughter.

"Ay, chock full to the beams," said Joe Graddy; "moreover, hatches battened down, topsails shook out, anchor up, and away!"

This was indeed the case. Having eaten as much as he could hold, the poor Indian attempted to rise and walk off, but he suddenly fell down, and rolled about groaning and rubbing himself as if in great agony. The alarmed travellers began to fear that the poor little man had absolutely, as Joe said, eaten himself to death. He recovered, however, in a few minutes, rose again with some difficulty, and went off in the midst of a splendid burst of moonlight which appeared to have come out expressly to light him on his way! His gait was awkward, and he was obliged to sit down every twenty or thirty yards like a man resting under a heavy load. When last seen on his diminutive legs he looked like a huge bloated spider waddling into the obscurity of the forest.

"How disgusting!" perhaps exclaims the reader. True, yet not _much_ more disgusting than the gormandising which goes on among too many civilised men, who, besides possessing better knowledge, have got dyspepsia to inform them that they daily act the part of the Californian savage, while many learned doctors, we believe, tell them that it is not so much quality as quantity that kills.

That eventful night did not terminate, however, with the departure of the Indian. Another scene was enacted, but, unlike the popular mode of theatrical procedure, the farce was followed by a tragedy.

Before lying down to rest, the fire was drawn together, fresh logs were heaped upon it, and a great blaze was made to scare away the wolves. Frank, Jeffson, and Douglas, then rolled themselves in their blankets, and lay down with their feet towards the fire and their rifles beside them. The others lighted their pipes for a finishing whiff--a nightcap as Joe styled it.

They had not sat long thus, making occasional quiet remarks, as fatigued and sleepy men are wont to do before going to rest, when they were startled by the sound of heavy footsteps in the woods. Rance, whose duty it was to keep watch the first part of the night, instantly leaped up and cocked his rifle, while the sleepers awoke, raised themselves on their elbows, and looked