Harry Milvaine Part 37

For three days and nights Harry and his merry men occupied the cave on the hillside.

At the end of this time they had the satisfaction one evening of seeing a red light gleaming on the western horizon. It was the reflection of the camp-fire of the returning caravan.

Early next morning, almost as soon as sunrise, Mahmoud and his followers pa.s.sed through the forest at the foot of the hill. Harry could even hear them talking, so close were they.

He had the rifles loaded and everything ready to give them a warm reception should they dare to ascend. But they did not. They went through the forest and on their way across a broad sandy plain.

When they had quite disappeared beyond the horizon, Harry gave a sigh of relief. The danger was, comparatively speaking, over for a time. He would now give them a few days' start, then go on behind, for Jack a.s.sured him this caravan route was the only practical way into the interior.

Every night the lions could be heard growling and roaring with that awe-inspiring cough, which they emit, in the woods around the hill. It was well they had a cave to sleep in, for to have lit fires on the hill-top would have ensured the return of Mahmoud and his savage Somalis, and they would have been captured. But a sentinel was set--and Harry took the post time about with Raggy and Somali Jack.

Was Jack really to be trusted? The answer to this is, that the faithfulness of a Somali Indian will be sold to the highest bidder, just like a picture at an auction mart, but it may in time be cemented to the purchaser if he is worthy of it. I have always found that there is a great deal of similarity betwixt the human nature as displayed by Indians and white men, which only proves that the world is much the same all over.

I must add, however, that white men as a rule treat savages with less ceremony and far less justice than they would mete out to one of their own dogs at home. Take an example. Some scoundrelly white trader has been murdered (it is called "murdered," but I should say "killed") by some islanders of the Pacific. This trading fellow had been on sh.o.r.e-- probably not sober--abusing the hospitality held out to him, bullying and swaggering, and doing deeds that, if committed in this country, would secure for him a lengthened period of penal servitude. The worm turns at last and resents. The trader calls his men and a fight ensues; the savages are victorious, the white men slain. By and by in comes a British man-o'-war and demands the surrender of the murderers by the chief or king. Perhaps he does not even know them, refuses to give them up, and therein ensues a wholesale butchery of men, women, and children, and the burning of towns and villages.

I have known this happen over and over again, and I have asked myself, Who is to blame? Certainly not the so-called savages.

Well, boy-readers, if ever any of you happen to be away abroad, in Africa or the Pacific, and have a native as a servant, take my advice: treat him as a human being and a fellow-creature, and you will have no cause to complain, but quite the reverse.

Harry had a good long talk with Jack; he told him he should let him go away any time he wished, but that if he did stay he would have no cause to repent it.

Once more Jack took Harry's hand in both his and bent himself down until his brow touched it, and our hero was satisfied.

On leaving the hill--which, by the way, Harry took possession of in the Queen's name, and called it Mount Andrew, to show he had not forgotten his old friend in the Highlands--they journeyed on through the forest and followed in the very footsteps of Mahmoud's caravan, across plains, through woods, through rivers and mountain glens, camping every night where Mahmoud had camped, and lighting a fire in the very same spot.

The fire was very necessary now, and it had to be kept up all night, for they were in a country inhabited by and given up to, one might say, wild beasts.

Here were lions in scores, hyaenas and jungle-cats.

So all night long these animals made the bush resound with their cries.

Sometimes Harry found it almost impossible to sleep, so terrible was the quarrelling and din. He fell upon a plan at last that in some measure remedied the infliction--that of leaving the bullock or two, or the deer or hartebeest slain for food, a good two or three miles behind. Where the carrion is, there cometh the kite; and so it was in this case--to some extent at all events.

The store of rice that Jack had looted from Mahmoud's camp very soon was done, but they did not want for provisions for all that.

There were fruits of so many kinds, and roots that they dug up, or rather that Jack dug up and roasted in the camp-fire. Then there were plantains, which are excellent cooked in the same primitive style. Some of the forest trees were laden with fruit; the danger lay in eating too much of it. Many of these fruits were quite unknown to Harry, but he was guided by his best man, Jack. With so much fruit, salt was hardly missed, though at first Harry thought it strange to eat meat without it.

Slices from the most tender portions of the animals killed were cut and carried along with them, and towards evening, when the bivouac ground was chosen, and the fire of wood gathered and kindled by Jack and Raggy, the former set to work to prepare the supper.

The roots, yams princ.i.p.ally, were simply buried among the fiery ashes, but a far more artistic method was adopted in grilling the steak: a triangle of green wood was built over the fire as soon as it had died down to red embers, across the triangle bars were fastened, and on this were hung the pieces of juicy flesh. When the bars were nearly burned through, and the wooden triangle itself falling to pieces, then the steak was cooked.

They had fresh air and exercise, and consequently the appet.i.te of mighty hunters. It is hardly necessary, therefore, to add that they really enjoyed their dinners. Fruit followed, then water, which was not always good.

The country they traversed now, though a hilly and fertile one, was, strange to say, deserted.

Still, this is not so strange when we remember that in all probability it has been depopulated by the Arab slaver. Indeed, many parts of the forest gave evidence of having been ravished by fire.

Bravery, I take it, is not a very uncommon quality in the human breast of any inhabitant of our British islands, yet he is the bravest man who _knows_ his danger and still does not fear to face it. In the matter of danger, where ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise. Your first-voyage sailor will retain his presence of mind and coolness, at times when old seafarers are pale with the coldness of a coming evil.

Why? Because he does not know the worst. This is not bravery. It is-- nothing.

If, however, one is so positioned as to know there is danger, but remains in ignorance as to its amount or extent, then he has a bold heart who can quietly meet or court it. I have hinted before in this tale of mine that I claim for my wayward boy, Harry, no _extraordinary_ qualities of mind, and that he had his faults just as you have, reader; so now I need not apologise for him when I confess to you that in the wild African jungle there were many times that his heart beat high with fear. Especially was this so at first. All bold, brave natures are finely strung and sensitive. Harry's was. He did not like the dangers of the darkness, and he dreaded snakes. At the commencement, then, of his wanderings on the dark continent he expected to see one whenever a bunch of gra.s.s quivered or moved, though only a mole might have been at the bottom of it. And I believe at night he heard sounds and saw sights in the bush and on the plains, that had no existence except in his own fervid imagination.

However, a month or two of nomad life hardened him. He noticed that even serpents do not go out of their way to bite people, and that you have only to observe a certain amount of caution, then you may put your hands in your pockets and whistle.

As far as that goes, I believe you might put your hands in your pockets and go whistling up to a lion "on the roam." My ill.u.s.trious countryman, the great General Gordon, did this or something very like it once. _I_ would not, nor would I advise you to do so, reader; but I have to say, as regards my hero, Harry, that familiarity bred in him a contempt for danger that led him to grief.

I will tell you the story after making just one remark. It is this--and happy I would be this minute if I thought you would lay it to heart and remember it. We are apt to pray to our Father to keep us from evil, and then, when something occurs to us, some accident, perhaps, turn round and murmur and say--

"Oh! my prayers have not been heard. G.o.d loves me not."

How know you, I ask, that He in His mercy has not allowed this _little_ misfortune to befall us in order to save us from a _greater_?

Harry was carelessly walking one evening--he was waiting for dinner--in a grove of rugged euphorbias. The evening was very beautiful, the sun declining in the west towards a range of high hills which they had that day pa.s.sed. There was a great bank of purple-grey clouds loftier than the hills; these were fringed with pale gold, else you could not have told which was mountain and which was cloud. There was also a breeze blowing, just enough to make a rustling sound among the cactuses and scrub. This it was probably that prevented Harry from hearing the stealthy footsteps of an enormous lion, until startled by a roar that made the blood tingle in his very shoes.

There he was--the African king of beasts--not twenty yards away-- crouched, swishing his tail on the gra.s.s, and preparing for a spring.

Harry stood spellbound.

Then he tried to raise his rifle.

"No, you don't," the lion must have thought. For at that very moment he sprang, and next Harry was down under him.

He remembered a confused shout, and the sharp ring of a rifle. Then all was a mist of oblivion till he found himself lying near the camp-fire, with Jack kneeling by his side holding his arm.

"I'm not hurt, am I?" said Harry.

"Oh, ma.s.sa, you am dun killed completely," sobbed little Raggy. "All de blood in you body hab run out. You quite killed. You not lib. What den will poor Raggy do?"

It was not so bad as Raggy made out, however. But Harry's wounds were dreadful enough, back and shoulder lacerated and arm bitten through.

Harry had made it a point all the journey since leaving the hill he called Mount Andrew to camp each night on the same place Mahmoud had left days before, and to build the fire in the self-same spot, and on departing in the morning to leave nothing behind that could tell the Arab's sharp-eyed Somalis the ground had been used.

It was well he had taken this precaution, for now he was wounded and ill, and must remain near this place for weeks at least.

Jack, the Somali, was equal to the occasion.

He went away to the forest, and was not long in finding a site for the invalid's camp.

Like that upon Mount Andrew, it was on a hill or eminence, from which the country eastwards could be seen for many, many miles. And here also was a shelter under a rock from the direct rays of the sun.

Next day, and for several days, poor Harry tossed about on his couch in a raging fever.

But Jack proved an excellent surgeon, and Raggy the best of nurses. The former applied cooling and healing antiseptic leaves to Harry's wounds, and bound them tenderly up with bundles of gra.s.s, while the latter hardly ever left his master's couch, except to seek for and bring him the most luscious fruit the forest could afford.

Long, long weary weeks pa.s.sed away, but still Harry lay there in his cave on the hillside too weak to stand, too ill to move.

Between them his two faithful servants had built him a hut of branches and gra.s.s, which not only defended him against the sun, but against the rain as well--for the wet season had now set in. Thunders rolled over the plains and reverberated from the mountain sides, and at times the rain came down in terrible "spatters" that in volume far exceeded anything Harry could ever have dreamt of.

But the rain cooled and purified the atmosphere, and seemed to so revive Harry, that his wounds took on what surgeons call the healing intention.