Bunyip Land Part 63

I Need not recount what pa.s.sed just then. But few words were spoken, and there was no time for displays of affection. One black had seen and pursued Jimmy, and others might be on our track, so that our work was far from being half done even now.

"Can you walk, sir?" said the doctor sharply.

My poor father raised his face toward the speaker and uttered some incoherent words.

"No, no; he has been kept bound by the ankles till the use of his feet has gone," said Mr Francis, who had remained silent up to now.

"Can't walk--Jimmy carry um," said the black in a whisper. "Don't make noise--hear um black fellow."

"You are tired," said the doctor; "let me take a turn."

Jimmy made no objection, but bore the gun, while the doctor carried my father slowly and steadily on for some distance; then the black took a turn and bore him right to the place where our black followers were waiting, and where Jack Penny was anxiously expecting our return.

"I thought you wasn't coming back," he said as Jimmy set down the burden; and then in a doleful voice he continued, "I couldn't do that, my back's so weak."

But Ti-hi and his friends saw our difficulty, and cut down a couple of long stout bamboos whose tops were soon cleared of leaves and shoots.

Two holes were made in the bottom of a light sack whose contents were otherwise distributed, the poles thrust through, and my poor father gently laid upon the sack. Four of us then went to the ends of the poles, which were placed upon our shoulders, and keeping step as well as we could, we went slowly and steadily on, Mr Francis taking the lead and acting as guide.

Our progress was very slow, but we journeyed steadily on hour after hour, taking advantage of every open part of the forest that was not likely to show traces of our pa.s.sage, and obliged blindly to trust to Mr Francis as to the way.

It was weary work, but no one seemed to mind, each, even Jack Penny, taking his turn at the end of one of the bamboos; and when at last the morning broke, and the bright sunshine showed us our haggard faces, we still kept on, the daylight helping us to make better way till the sun came down so fiercely that we were obliged to halt in a dense part of the forest where some huge trees gave us shade.

Mr Francis looked uneasily about, and I caught his anxious gaze directed so often in different directions that I whispered to the doctor my fears that he had lost his way.

"Never mind, lad," replied the doctor; "we have the compa.s.s. Our way is south towards the coast--anywhere as long as we get beyond reach of the blacks. No, don't disturb him, let him sleep."

I was about to draw near and speak to my father, in whose careworn hollow face I gazed with something approaching fear. His eyes were closed, and now, for the first time, I could see the ravages that the long captivity had made in his features; but, mingled with these, there was a quiet restful look that made me draw back in silence from where the litter had been laid and join my companions in partaking of such food as we had.

Watch was set, the doctor choosing the post of guard, and then, lying anywhere, we all sought for relief from our weariness in sleep.

As for me, one moment I was lying gazing at the long unkempt hair and head of him I had come to seek, and thinking that I would rest like that, rising now and then to see and watch with the doctor; the next I was wandering away in dreams through the forest in search of my father; and then all was blank till I started up to catch at my gun, for some one had touched me on the shoulder.

"There is nothing wrong, my lad," said the doctor--"fortunately--for I have been a bad sentry, and have just awoke to find that I have been sleeping at my post."

"Sleeping!" I said, still confused from my own deep slumbers.

"Yes," he said; "every one has been asleep from utter exhaustion."

I looked round, and there were our companions sleeping heavily.

"I've been thinking that we may be as safe here as farther away,"

continued the doctor; "so let them rest still, for we have a tremendous task before us to get down to the coast."

Just then Jimmy leaped up staring, his hand on his waddy and his eyes wandering in search of danger.

This being absent, his next idea was regarding food.

"Much hungry," he said, "want mutton, want damper, want eatums."

The rest were aroused, and, water being close at hand in a little stream, we soon had our simple store of food brought out and made a refreshing meal, of which my father, as he lay, partook mechanically, but without a word.

The doctor then bathed and dressed his ankles, which were in a fearfully swollen and injured state. Like Mr Francis, he seemed as if his long captivity had made him think like the savages among whom he had been; while the terrible mental anxiety he had suffered along with his bodily anguish had resulted in complete prostration. He ate what was given to him or drank with his eyes closed, and when he opened them once or twice it was not to let them wander round upon us who attended to him, but to gaze straight up in a vague manner and mutter a few of the native words before sinking back into a stupor-like sleep.

I gazed at the doctor with my misery speaking in my eyes, for it was so different a meeting from that which I had imagined. There was no delight, no anguished tears, no pressing to a loving father's heart. We had found him a mere hopeless wreck, apparently, like Mr Francis, and the pain I suffered seemed more than I could bear.

"Patience!" the doctor said to me, with a smile. "Yes, I know what you want to ask me. Let's wait and see. He was dying slowly, Joe, and we have come in time to save his life."

"You are sure?" I said.

"No," he answered, "not sure, but I shall hope. Now let's get on again till dark, and then we'll have a good rest in the safest place we can find."

In the exertion and toil that followed I found some relief. My interest, too, was excited by seeing how much Mr Francis seemed to change hour by hour, and how well he knew the country which he led us through.

He found for us a capital resting-place in a rocky gorge, where, unless tracked step by step, there was no fear of our being surprised. Here there was water and fruit, and, short a distance as we had come, the darkness made it necessary that we should wait for day.

Then followed days and weeks of slow travel through a beautiful country, always south and west. We did not go many miles some days, for the burden we carried made our pa.s.sage very slow. Sometimes, too, our black scouts came back to announce that we were travelling towards some black village, or that a hunting party was in our neighbourhood, and though these people might have been friendly, we took the advice of our black companions and avoided them, either by making a detour or by waiting in hiding till they had pa.s.sed.

Water was plentiful, and Jimmy and Ti-hi never let us want for fruit, fish, or some animal for food. Now it would be a wild pig or a small deer, more often birds, for these literally swarmed in some of the lakes and marshes round which we made our way.

The country was so thinly inhabited that we could always light a fire in some shut-in part of the forest without fear, and so we got on, running risks at times, but on the whole meeting with but few adventures.

After getting over the exertion and a little return of fever from too early leaving his sick-bed of boughs, Mr Francis mended rapidly, his wound healing well and his mind daily growing clearer. Every now and then, when excited, he had relapses, and looked at us hopelessly, talking quickly in the savages' tongue; but these grew less frequent, and there would be days during which he would be quite free. He grew so much better that at the end of a month he insisted upon taking his place at one of the bamboos, proving himself to be a tender nurse to our invalid in his turn.

And all this time my father seemed to alter but little. The doctor was indefatigable in his endeavours; but though he soon wrought a change in his patient's bodily infirmities to such an extent, that at last my father could walk first a mile, then a couple, and then ease the bearers of half their toil, his mind seemed gone, and he went on in a strangely vacant way.

As time went on and our long journey continued he would walk slowly by my side, resting on my shoulder, and with his eyes always fixed upon the earth. If he was spoken to he did not seem to hear, and he never opened his lips save to utter a few words in the savage tongue.

I was in despair, but the doctor still bade me hope.

"Time works wonders, Joe," he said. "His bodily health is improving wonderfully, and at last that must act upon his mind."

"But it does not," I said. "He has walked at least six miles to-day as if in a dream. Oh, doctor!" I exclaimed, "we cannot take him back like this. You keep bidding me hope, and it seems no use."

He smiled at me in his calm satisfied way.

"And yet I've done something, Joe," he said. "We found him--we got him away--we had him first a hopeless invalid--he is now rapidly becoming a strong healthy man."

"Healthy!"

"In body, boy. Recollect that for years he seems to have been kept chained up by the savages like some wild beast, perhaps through some religious scruples against destroying the life of a white man who was wise in trees and plants. Likely enough they feared that if they killed such a medicine-man it might result in a plague or curse."

"That is why they spared us both," said Mr Francis, who had heard the latter part of our conversation; "and the long course of being kept imprisoned there seemed to completely freeze up his brain as it did mine. That and the fever and blows I received," he said excitedly.

"There were times when--"

He clapped his hands to his head as if he dared not trust himself to speak, and turned away.

"Yes, that is it, my lad," said the doctor quietly; "his brain has become paralysed as it were. A change may come at any time. Under the circ.u.mstances, in spite of your mother's anxiety, we'll wait and go slowly homeward. Let me see," he continued, turning to a little calendar he kept, "to-morrow begins the tenth month of our journey.

Come, be of good heart. We've done wonders; nature will do the rest."