Dick Sands, the Boy Captain Part 21

"There must be snakes, and lions, and tigers."

"Ask your mamma, my boy," said Harris, "whether she ever heard of lions and tigers in America?"

Mrs. Weldon was endeavouring to put her little boy at his ease on this point, when Cousin Benedict interposed, saying that although there were no lions or tigers, there were plenty of jaguars and panthers in the New World.

"And won't they kill us?" demanded Jack eagerly, his apprehensions once more aroused.

"Kill you?" laughed Harris; "why, your friend Hercules here could strangle them, two at a time, one in each hand!"

"But, please, don't let the panthers come near me!" pleaded Jack, evidently alarmed.

"No, no, Master Jack, they shall not come near you. I will give them a good grip first," and the giant displayed his two rows of huge white teeth.

d.i.c.k Sands proposed that it should be the four younger negroes who should be a.s.signed the task of keeping watch during the night, in attendance upon himself; but Actaeon insisted so strongly upon the necessity of d.i.c.k's having his full share of rest, that the others were soon brought to the same conviction, and d.i.c.k was obliged to yield.

Jack valiantly announced his intention of taking one watch, but his sleepy eyelids made it only too plain that he did not know the extent of his own fatigue.

"I am sure there are wolves here," he said.

"Only such wolves as Dingo would swallow at a mouthful," said Harris.

"But I am sure there are wolves," he insisted, repeating the word "wolves" again and again, until he tumbled off to sleep against the side of old Nan. Mrs. Weldon gave her little son a silent kiss; it was her loving "good night."

Cousin Benedict was missing. Some little time before, he had slipped away in search of "cocuyos," or fire-flies, which he had heard were common in South America.

Those singular insects emit a bright bluish light from two spots on the side of the thorax, and their colours are so brilliant that they are used as ornaments for ladies' headdresses. Hoping to secure some specimens for his box, Benedict would have wandered to an unlimited distance; but Hercules, faithful to his undertaking, soon discovered him, and heedless of the naturalist's protestations and vociferations, promptly escorted him back to the general rendezvous.

Hercules himself was the first to keep watch, but with this exception, the whole party, in another hour, were wrapped in peaceful slumber.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hercules himself was the first to keep watch.]

CHAPTER XVII MISGIVINGS.

Most travellers who have pa.s.sed a night in a South American forest have been roused from their slumbers by a matinee musicale more fantastic than melodious, performed by monkeys, as their ordinary greeting of the dawn. The yelling, chattering, screeching, howling, all unite to form a chorus almost unearthly in its hideousness.

Amongst the various specimens of the numerous family of the quadrumana ought to be recognized the little marikina; the sagouin, with its parti-coloured face; the grey mora, the skin of which is used by the Indians for covering their gun-locks; the sapajou, with its singular tuft over the forehead, and, most remarkable of all, the guariba (Simia Beelzebul) with its prehensile tail and diabolical countenance.

At the first streak of daylight the senior member, as choragus, will start the key-note in a sonorous barytone, the younger monkeys join in tenor and alto, and the concert begins. But this morning there was no concert at all. There was nothing of the wonted serenade to break the silence of the forest. The shrill notes resulting from the rapid vibration of the hyoid bones of the throat were not to be heard. Indians would have been disappointed and perplexed; they are very fond of the flesh of the guariba when smoked and dried, and they would certainly have missed the chant of the monkey "paternosters;" but d.i.c.k Sands and his companions were unfamiliar with any of these things, and accordingly the singular quietude was to them a matter of no surprise.

They all awoke much refreshed by their night's rest, which there had been nothing to disturb. Jack was by no means the latest in opening his eyes, and his first words were addressed to Hercules, asking him whether he had caught a wolf with his teeth. Hercules had to acknowledge that he had tasted nothing all night, and declared himself quite ready for breakfast. The whole party were unanimous in this respect, and after a brief morning prayer, breakfast was expeditiously served by old Nan. The meal was but a repet.i.tion of the last evening's supper, but with their appet.i.tes sharpened by the fresh forest air, and anxious to fortify themselves for a good day's march, they did not fail to do ample justice to their simple fare. Even Cousin Benedict, for once in his life at least, partook of his food as if it were not utterly a matter of indifference to him; but he grumbled very much at the restraint to which he considered himself subjected; he could not see the good of coming to such a country as this, if he were to be obliged to walk about with his hands in his pockets; and he protested that if Hercules did not leave him alone and permit him to catch fire-flies, there would be a bone to pick between them. Hercules did not look very much alarmed at the threat. Mrs. Weldon, however, took him aside, and telling him that she did not wish to deprive the enthusiast entirely of his favourite occupation, instructed him to allow her cousin as much liberty as possible, provided he did not lose sight of him.

The morning meal was over, and it was only seven o'clock when the travellers were once more on their way towards the east, preserving the same marching-order as on the day before.

The path was still through luxuriant forest. The vegetable kingdom reigned supreme. As the plateau was immediately adjacent to tropical lat.i.tudes, the sun's rays during the summer months descended perpendicularly upon the virgin soil, and the vast amount of heat thus obtained combined with the abundant moisture retained in the subsoil, caused vegetation to a.s.sume a character which was truly magnificent.

d.i.c.k Sands could not overcome a certain sense of mystification. Here they were, as Harris told them, in the region of the pampas, a word which he knew in the Quichna dialect signifies "a plain;" but he had always read that these plains were characterized by a deficiency alike of water, of trees, and rocks; he had always understood that during the rainy season, thistles spring up in great abundance and grow until they form thickets that are well-nigh impenetrable; he had imagined that the few dwarf trees and p.r.i.c.kly shrubs that exist during the summer only stamp the general scene with an aspect of yet more thorough bareness and desolation. But how different was everything to all this! The forest never ceased to stretch away interminably to the horizon. There were no tokens of the rough nakedness that he had expected. d.i.c.k seemed to be driven to the conclusion that Harris was right in describing this plateau of Atacama, which he had for his part most firmly believed to be a vast desert between the Andes and the Pacific, as a region that was quite exceptional in its natural features.

It was not in d.i.c.k's character to keep his reflections to himself. In the course of the morning he expressed his extreme surprise at finding the pampas answer so little to his preconceived ideas.

"Have I not understood correctly," he said, "that the pampas is similar to the North American savannahs, only less marshy?"

Harris replied that such was indeed a correct description of the pampas of Rio Colorado, and the Ilanos of Venezuela and the Orinoco.

"But," he continued, "I own I am as much astonished as yourself at the character of this region; I have never crossed the plateau before, and I must confess it is altogether different to what you find beyond the Andes towards the Atlantic."

"You don't mean that we are going to cross the Andes?" said d.i.c.k, in sudden alarm.

Harris smiled.

"No, no, indeed. With our limited means of transport such an undertaking would have been rash in the extreme. We had better have kept to the coast for ever rather than incur such a risk. Our destination, San Felice, is on this side of the range, and in order to reach it, we shall not have to leave the plateau, of which the greatest elevation is but little over 1500 feet."

"And you say," d.i.c.k persisted, "that you have really no fear of losing your way in a forest such as this, a forest into which you have never set foot before?"

"No fear whatever," Harris answered; "so accustomed am I to travelling of this kind, that I can steer my way by a thousand signs revealing themselves in the growth of the trees, and in the composition of the soil, which would never present themselves to your notice. I a.s.sure you that I antic.i.p.ate no difficulties."

This conversation was not heard by any of the rest of the party. Harris seemed to speak as frankly as he did fearlessly, and d.i.c.k felt that there might be, after all, no just grounds for any of his own misgivings.

Five days pa.s.sed by, and the 12th of April arrived without any special incident. Nine miles had been the average distance accomplished in a day; regular periods of rest had been taken, and, except that Jack's spirits had somewhat flagged, the fatigue did not seem to have interfered with the general good health of the travellers.

First disappointed of his India-rubber-tree, and then of his humming birds, Jack had inquired about the beautiful parrots which he had been led to expect he should see in this wonderful forest. Where were the bright green macaws? where were the gaudy aras with their bare white cheeks and pointed tails, which seem never to light upon the ground? and where, too, were all the brilliant parroquets, with their feathered faces, and indeed the whole variety of those forest chatterers of which the Indians affirm that they speak the language of nations long extinct?

It is true that there was no lack of the common grey parrots with crimson tails, but these were no novelty; Jack

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Don't Fire!"]

had seen plenty of them before, for owing to their reputation of being the most clever in mimickry of the Psittacidae, they have been domesticated everywhere in both the Old and New worlds.

But Jack's dissatisfaction was nothing compared to Cousin Benedict's. In spite of being allowed to wander away from the rank, he had failed to discover a single insect which was worth the pursuit; not even a fire-fly danced at night; nature seemed to be mocking him, and his ill-humour increased accordingly.

In this way the journey was continued for four days longer, and on the 16th it was estimated that they must have travelled between eighty and ninety miles north-eastwards from the coast. Harris positively a.s.serted that they could not be much more than twenty miles from San Felice, and that by pushing forwards they might expect in eight-and-forty hours to find themselves lodged in comfortable quarters.

But although they had thus succeeded in traversing this vast table-land, they had not seen one human inhabitant. d.i.c.k was more than ever perplexed, and it was a subject of bitter regret to him that they had not stranded upon some more frequented part of the sh.o.r.e, near some village or plantation where Mrs. Weldon might long since have found a suitable refuge.

Deserted, however, as the country apparently was by man, it had latterly shown itself much more abundantly tenanted by animals. Many a time a long, plaintive cry was heard, which Harris attributed to the tardigrades or sloths often found in wooded districts, and known by the name of "ais;" and in the middle of the dinner-halt on this day, a loud hissing suddenly broke upon the air which made Mrs. Weldon start to her feet in alarm.

"A serpent!" cried d.i.c.k, catching up his loaded gun.

The negroes, following d.i.c.k's example, were in a moment on the alert.

"Don't fire!" cried Harris.

There was indeed nothing improbable in the supposition that a "sucuru," a species of boa, sometimes measuring forty feet in length, had just moved itself in the long gra.s.s at their side, but Harris affirmed that the "sucuru" never hisses, and declared that the noise had really come from animals of an entirely inoffensive character.

"What animals?" asked d.i.c.k, always eager for information, which it must be granted Harris seemed always equally anxious to give.

"Antelopes," replied Harris; "but, hush! not a sound, or you will frighten them away."

"Antelopes!" cried d.i.c.k; "I must see them; I must get close to them."