The Settler and the Savage by R. M. Ballantyne (great books to read txt) 📕

men of colossal stature. They sat apart, smoking their huge pipes in silent complacency and comfort, amused a little at the scenes going on around them, but apparently disinclined to trouble themselves about anything in particular.

Supper produced a lull in the general hum of conversation, but when pipes were lit the storm revived and continued far into the night. At last symptoms of weariness appeared, and people began to make arrangements for going to rest.

These arrangements were as varied as the characters of the emigrants.

Charlie Considine and Hans Marais, now become inseparable comrades, cleared and levelled the ground under a mimosa-bush, and, spreading their kaross thereon, lay down to sleep. George Dally, being an adaptable man, looked at the old campaigners for a few minutes, and then imitated their example. Little Jerry Goldboy, being naturally a nervous creature, and having his imagination filled with snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, etcetera, would fain have slept in one of the waggons above the baggage—as did many of the women and children—if he had not been laughed out of his desire by Dally, and induced to spread his couch manfully on the bare ground.

It must not be supposed, however, that Jerry, although timid, was cowardly. On the contrary, he was bold as a lion. He could not control his sensitively-strung nervous system, but instead of running away, like the coward, he was prone to rush furiously at whatever startled him, and grapple with it.

Some families pitched their tents, others, deeming curtains a needless luxury in such magnificent weather, contented themselves with the shelter of the bushes.

Meanwhile the Hottentot attendants replenished the fires, while the boers unslung their huge guns and placed them so as to be handy; for, although elephants and lions were not nearly so numerous as they once had been in that particular locality, there was still sufficient possibility of their presence, as well as of other nocturnal wanderers in the African wilds, to render such precaution necessary. The whole scene was most romantic, especially in the eyes of those who thus bivouacked for the first time in the wilderness. To them the great waggons; the gigantic Cape-oxen—which appeared to have been created expressly to match the waggons as well as to carry their own ponderous horns; the wild-looking Hottentots and Bushmen; the big phlegmatic Dutchmen; the bristling thorns of the mimosas, cropping out of comparative darkness; the varied groups of emigrants; the weird forms of the clumps of cactus, aloes, euphorbias, and other strange plants, lit up by the fitful glare of the camp-fires, and canopied by the star-spangled depths of a southern sky—all seemed to them the unbelievable creations of a wild vision.

Poor Jerry Goldboy, however, had sufficient faith in the reality of the vision to increase his nervous condition considerably, and he resolved to lie down with his “arms handy.” These arms consisted of a flint-lock blunderbuss, an heirloom in his father’s family, and a bowie-knife, which had been presented to him by an American cousin on his leaving England. Twice during that day’s march had the blunderbuss exploded owing to its owner’s inexperience in fire-arms. Fortunately no harm had been done, the muzzle on each occasion having been pointed to the sky, but the ire of the Dutch driver in front of Jerry had been aroused, and he was forbidden to reload the piece. Now, however, observing the preparations above referred to, he felt it to be his duty to prepare for the worst, and quietly loaded his bell-mouthed weapon with a heavy charge of buckshot.

“What’s that you’re after, boy?” asked George Dally, who was making some final arrangements at the fire, before lying down for the night.

“Oh, nothing,” replied Jerry, with a start, for he had thought himself unobserved, “only seein’ to my gun before turnin’ in.”

“That’s right,” said George. “Double-load it. Nothin’ like bein’ ready for whatever may turn up in a wild country like this. Why, I once knew a man named Snip who said he had been attacked one night in South America by a sarpint full forty feet long, and who saved his life by means of a blunderbuss, though he didn’t fire at the reptile at all.”

“Indeed, how was that?” asked Jerry.

“Why, just because his weapon was bell-mouthed an’ loaded a’most to the muzzle. You see, the poor fellow was awoke out of a deep sleep and couldn’t well see, so that instead o’ firin’ at the brute, he fired his blunderbuss about ten yards to one side of it, but the shot scattered so powerfully that one o’ the outside bullets hit a stone, glanced off, and caught the sarpint in the eye, and though it failed to kill the brute on the spot, the wound gave it such pain that it stood up on its tail and wriggled in agony for full five minutes, sending broken twigs and dry leaves flying about like a whirlwind, so Snip he jumped up, dropped his weapon, an’ bolted. He never returned to the encampment, and never saw the big snake or his blunderbuss again.”

“What a pity! then he lost it?” said Jerry, looking with some anxiety at a decayed branch, to which the flickering flame gave apparent motion.

“Yes, he lost the blunderbuss, but he saved his life,” replied Dally, as he lay down near his little friend and drew his blanket over him. “You’d better put the gun between us, my boy, to be handy to both—an’ if anything comes, the one of us that wakes first can lay hold of it and fire.”

There was, we need scarcely observe, a strong spice of wickedness in George. If he had suggested a lion, or even an elephant, there would have been something definite for poor Jerry’s anxious mind to lay hold of and try to reason down and defy, but that dreadful “anything” that might come, gave him nothing to hold by. It threw the whole zoological ferocities of South Africa open to his unanchored imagination, and for a long time banished sleep from his eyes.

He allowed the blunderbuss to remain as his friend had placed it, and hugged the naked bowie-knife to his breast. In addition to these weapons he had provided himself with a heavy piece of wood, something like the exaggerated truncheon of a policeman, for the purpose of killing snakes, should any such venture near his couch.

The wild shrieks of laughter at the neighbouring Hottentot fire helped to increase Jerry’s wakefulness, and when this at last lulled, the irritation was kept up by the squalling of Master Junkie, whose tent was about three feet distant from Jerry’s pillow, and who kept up a vicious piping just in proportion to the earnestness of Mrs Scholtz’s attempts to calm him.

At last, however, the child’s lamentations ceased, and there broke upon the night air a sweet sound which stilled the merriment of the natives. It was the mellow voice of Stephen Orpin singing a hymn of praise, with a number of like-minded emigrants, before retiring to rest. Doubtless some of those who had already retired, and lay, perchance, watching the stars and thinking dreamily of home, were led naturally by the sweet hymn to think of the home in the “better land,” which might possibly be nearer to some of them than the old home they had left for ever—ay, even than the new “locations” to which they were bound.

But, whatever the thoughts suggested, the whole camp soon afterwards sank into repose. Tent-doors were drawn and curtains of waggon-tilts let down. The boers, sticking their big pipes in their hatbands, wrapped themselves in greatcoats, and, regardless of snake or scorpion, stretched their limbs on the bare ground, while Hottentots, negroes, and Bushmen, rolling themselves in sheepskin karosses, lay coiled up like balls with their feet to the fire. Only once was the camp a little disturbed, during the early part of the night, by the mournful howl of a distant hyena. It was the first that the newcomers had heard, and most of those who were awake raised themselves on their elbows eagerly to listen.

Jerry was just dropping into slumber at the time. He sat bolt upright on hearing the cry, and when it was repeated he made a wild grasp at the blunderbuss, but Dally was beforehand. He caught up the weapon, and this probably saved an explosion.

“Come, lie down, you imp!” he said, somewhat sternly.

Jerry obeyed, and his nose soon told that he had reached the land of dreams.

Dally then quietly drew the charge of shot, but left the powder and laid the piece in its former position. Turning over with the sigh of one whose active duties for the day have been completed, he then went to sleep.

Gradually the fires burned low, and gave out such flickering uncertain light, when an occasional flame leaped up ever and anon, that to unaccustomed eyes it might have seemed as though snakes were crawling everywhere, and Jerry Goldboy, had he been awake, would have beheld a complete menagerie in imagination. But Jerry was now in blessed oblivion.

When things were in this condition, that incomprehensible subtlety, the brain of Junkie Brook—or something else—so acted as to cause the urchin to give vent to a stentorian yell. Strong though it was, it did not penetrate far through the canvas tent, but being, as we have said, within a few feet of Jerry’s ear, it sounded to that unhappy man like the united, and as yet unknown, shriek of all the elephants and buffaloes in Kafirland.

Starting up with a sharp cry he stretched out his hand towards the blunderbuss, but drew it back with a thrill of horror. A huge black snake lay in its place!

To seize his truncheon was the act of a moment. The next, down it came with stunning violence on the snake. The reptile instantly exploded with a bellowing roar of smoke and flame, which roused the whole camp.

“Blockhead! what d’you mean by that?” growled George Dally, turning round sleepily, but without rising, for he was well aware of the cause of the confusion.

Jerry shrank within himself like a guilty thing caught in the act, and glanced uneasily round to ascertain how much of death and destruction had been dealt out. Relieved somewhat to see no one writhing in blood, he arose, and, in much confusion, replied to the numerous eager queries as to what he had fired at. When the true state of affairs became manifest, most of the Dutchmen, who had been active enough when aroused by supposed danger, sauntered back to their couches with a good-natured chuckle; the settlers who had “turned out” growled or chaffed, according to temperament, as they followed suit, and the natives spent half an hour in uproarious merriment over Booby’s dramatic representation of the whole incident, which he performed with graphic power and much embellishment.

Thereafter the camp sank once more into repose, and rested in peace till morning.