Born to Wander Part 21

Skipper James and our heroes got friendly at once. And before they were three days on board they felt as if they had known this kindly skipper all their lives.

"My ship's only a rough one," he had told them frankly; "and your fare may not be first-cla.s.s; but by my song, gentlemen, you are right welcome to the best I have."

It was a Sat.u.r.day night. They had been three weeks at sea, with fine weather nearly all the time, so no wonder all hands were happy, fore and aft.

Now I have said that this skipper was an old-fashioned sailor, and so he was; and this being Sat.u.r.day night, he determined, as he always did, that his men should enjoy themselves forward as much as the officers aft. There was singing, therefore, and dancing, and sea-pie. A glorious sea-pie steamed on the table of the quarter-deck, and a dozen of the same sort aft.

Rory O'Reilly was the mate's name; the life and soul of the mess he was.

He could sing a song or tell a story with any one.

"Dear Captain James," he said to-night, "do tell us a story. Do you believe in the sarpint, sorr?"

Captain James quietly finished his second plate of sea-pie, and put the plate in a corner so stayed up that the ship's motion could not displace it. For this skipper was a most methodical man. Then he took his old brown clay with its tin lid, and proceeded to fill it. He shook out the "dottle," as the unburned portion of tobacco in the bottom was called, and put it carefully on Rory O'Reilly's open palm, held out in a friendly and obliging way for James's benefit. Then he loaded up to near the top with fresh cut, broke up the dottle and put that above, then pinched up the dust and put that over all, then slowly and solemnly lit up. When he had blown a few blasts of such density of volume that further proofs of the pipe's being well lit up were needless, the skipper cleared his throat and commenced--

A STRANGE, STRANGE STORY.

"Rory asked me," he said, "if I believed in the great sea-serpent. He asked me with a kind of incredulous smile on his face, which spoke volumes as to his own disbelief. Well, I am not sitting here to-night to lay proof before you as to the actual existence of sea-serpents of a monstrous size, but I beg to remind my friend here, that not only one or two officers of the mercantile and fighting navies of the world, but dozens have come forward, and given their oath, that such monsters were seen by them, or by their whole crew, at certain times and in certain lat.i.tudes and longitudes. And these men, both at the times of the awful visitations, and at the times of their swearing to what they considered facts, were neither intoxicated nor otherwise out of their minds.

"But my story is not about sea-serpents altogether, though it may throw a new light on those submarine monsters.

"It is a strange, strange story--one told me years and years ago by my gallant old grandfather. I remember, as though it were but yester evening, the first time I heard him tell it.

"Grandfather, mates, had at this time retired from the army. He was of an old Scottish family, that had been crushed at Culloden, so that with the exception of the half-pay a stingy government granted him, he had little else to live upon. He resided in a pretty little cottage about a quarter of a mile from our house, and it used to be my delight to visit him in the gloaming. I would go quietly in, and seat myself on a stool in a corner, and wait to be recognised. By-and-bye I would lead him to speak of the olden times, and of the battles and sieges by sea and land he had taken part in.

"But this story I am going to tell you he has repeated to me again and again, in different words maybe, but the facts were always the same.

"It was in the days of the American war, the war of freedom and independence, which, to my way of thinking, are the birthrights of every man born, and of every nation as well. England, mates, did not fight in an over-gentlemanly fashion in those days, and I think it is a stain on our country's escutcheon that the Indians of the Far West were armed and employed at all.

"But this is not what I am sitting here to discuss, only my grandfather and Tom Turner, a junior of his, both belonged in those days to Pontius Pilate's guards [the 1st, or Royal Scots Regiment], and were stationed at the same place.

"Though Tom was a few years younger than grand-dad, they were inseparables, so to speak, and always in the same 'ploy, whatever that 'ploy might be. To say that they were both Highlanders is equivalent to telling you they were both fond of field sports; and when one day Wild Eye, Chief of the Cheebuk Indians, promised them some first-rate hunting if they could get leave for a few days, you may be sure they were not long in applying for it--ay, and obtaining it, too; for young Tom Turner had a wonderful tongue for getting round his colonel, and, as the troops were in garrison, the services of these officers wouldn't be much missed.

"It was a lovely morning when they set out on their journey west, mounted on three half-bred horses, as fleet as the wind, and just as independent.

"Now it would seem that hiring Indians was a game that in those days two could play at; and though the honour of the idea should be awarded to the British, as having been the inventors, as it were, still t.i.t-for-tat, you know, and everything is fair in war, so the Yankees were not far behind.

"There were, in reality, two different sets of Indians on the warpath, both bent upon getting as many scalps as possible for the decoration of their wigwams, for the Christmas season, as one might say.

"This fact made travelling a very risky kind of a business.

"The first day pa.s.sed over without almost any kind of adventure, only it was summer on the prairie they were pa.s.sing over, and there was no shade of bush nor tree, and the insects were almost as much of a torture as the sun's rays.

"Old Wild Eye, the chief, must have been a clever fellow, indeed, for on this rolling plain there was neither road nor track, except the trails of wild animals; to have followed those would have led my grand-dad a queer dance.

"When the sun went down at last, glaring red through the haze of blue, it got almost cold, but they dared not think of lighting a fire, because of the hostile Indians, so they hobbled their nags, ate their supper, and sat huddled up in their blankets beneath the stars till long past twelve. They were listening to Wild Eye's adventures on the warpath.

"Wild Eye was a border chief, and friendly with the British; in fact, he had been once to Quebec, and so considered himself about half a Christian. Wild Eye was as bald as the back of my watch, and had no more teeth than a tin whistle. He had scars innumerable, only one ear, and about half a nose, for he had been twice put to the torture, and saved as if by a miracle.

"His scalp, he told my grand-dad, hung in many wigwams. The fact is, Wild Eye wore a wig, and when he lost one in warfare, he wore a morsel of buffalo hide until he was able to negotiate with his barber in Ontario. Each wig was paid for not in coin but in land. Each wig cost Wild Eye twenty acres of territory, and they say that the descendants of his barber are millionaires to-day.

"But my grand-dad and his friend fell sound asleep at last, and not even the presence of a grizzly bear, who came round to snuff after the remains of the supper, awoke them until the sun was so high that it nearly hardened the whites of their eyes, as heat does the white of an egg.

"'I say, John,' said Tom Turner to my grand-dad, 'we've got five days'

leave. I feel so happy, that I think we ought to make it a fortnight.'

"But grand-dad laughed. 'No,' he said, 'that wouldn't be fair, Tom.

Let us stick to our furlough, and be back in five days if we can.'

"About evening on the second day they bade farewell to the rolling prairie, and plunged into a deep ravine, and bivouacked in a pine-clad gorge near the banks of a stream. This river was teeming with fish of the most delicate flavour. They caught enough for supper, and once more settled themselves to listen to the tales of the Indian chief.

"There were strange, unearthly noises in the forest that night which my grand-dad could not Understand--shrieks and yells and awful howlings, but he dozed off at last and dreamt he was head keeper in a kind of pandemonium.

"Next morning sport began in earnest, for they found they were near the head-quarters of the grizzly and wilder cinnamon bear.

"Next to our friend the Arctic Bruin, there is no creature in the world with which a man has less chance in a fair stand-up fight than with the cinnamon. I don't say, mates, but that any bear will prefer shuffling off to coming to close quarters, but don't you catch a grizzly or cinnamon unawares behind a rock or a bush. I tell you that the only comfort you can have at that awful moment is the memory that you've made your will, and don't owe your tailor anything to signify.

"Tom Turner was following up a grizzly, who was well on ahead, so he had eyes for nothing else; but on rounding a point on the hill-top, he was startled with a roar that went through him like a rip-saw, and found himself face to jowl with a cinnamon bear. Tom sprang back so suddenly that he burst his waistcoat b.u.t.tons. His musket went off at the same moment, and Bruin made a spring to hug Tom Turner. The bullet found a billet in the beast's neck, but didn't stop his way, and next moment the bear and Tom both were tumbling down, down, down over a precipice. The bear fell on the top of a rock, and was killed. Tom alighted on the top of a juniper tree, and wasn't a bit the worse, for Tom was a tough lad.

"There were three or four bears altogether killed that forenoon, and I daresay a good many more frightened. However, about one o'clock the three friends were seated on the top of a breezy eminence overlooking the bonnie glen, and in sight of their horses, while they enjoyed their lunch or tiffin.

"'What a lovely day!' said Tom, as he lay at full length on the greensward. 'How wildly sublime those hills are! Wooded almost to the summits everyone of them; and look, John, at that river far beneath yonder, like a silver thread winding away through the greenery of the forest. You're not looking, John.'

"'I'm looking at something else,' said my grand-dad.

"Ugh!" cried the Indian chief, springing to his feet, seizing his gun, and pointing with it to a hill-top beyond the ravine.

"There were figures there--dark, creeping figures, no bigger apparently than coyotes.

"They were Indians."

A GALLOP FOR LIFE AND FREEDOM.

"They were Indians sure enough, and doubtless only scouts of a bigger party.

"There was no time to lose. Sport and all was forgotten; they must mount their horses, and be off back to the prairie land. There they would be clear, at least, of an ambush, and could trust to the fleetness of their horses.

"They hurried madly down hill, reaching and mounting their mustangs just as a volley was fired from both sides of the stream, the bullets peppering the trees about, and splashing on the rocks and stones. They were off like the wind next minute. Rough though the path was, round rocks, over fallen trees, and slippery, mossy banks, the good nags kept their feet, and soon the prairie was gained.

"Once fairly in it, they ventured to look behind. To their surprise they found themselves followed by several mounted Indians--a dozen in all, at the very least.

"Out on the open prairie, the half-bred mustangs seemed to fly over the ground, but they were not so fresh as the horses of the pursuers, and the pace soon began to tell, and three out of the four savages came rattling on abreast.

"A bullet or two flew over them. It was evident they must fight. At a given signal, then, they wheeled their horses, and took deadly aim, and next moment there were two empty saddles; again they fired, and the bewildered third Indian came tumbling down over a dead horse.

"But the others came thundering on behind with yells for revenge, yells for blood and scalps.

Away went our gallant trio once again, but now, alas! Tom's horse tripped and fell, and at the same moment the chief's steed was shot.

"They must fight on foot now, and with terrible odds. But they were all determined to sell their lives dearly.