Ran Away to Sea Part 8

For more than a mile we walked through this wonderful wood, and, although we had admired it so much on first entering it, we were now very desirous of getting out of it. It was not that it was a gloomy forest: on the contrary, it was rather cheerful, for the light, pinnated leaves permitted the sun to shine through, and just screened his rays sufficiently to make it pleasant and cool. It was, therefore, rather cheerful than gloomy. The reason why we so soon grew tired of it was, that it was anything but agreeable under foot. The ground, as I have already remarked was strewed with the fallen fruits. The whole surface was literally covered with them, just like an an apple-orchard after a stormy night, only that the palm-nuts lay thicker upon the ground than I had ever seen apples--so thick that there was no picking of steps among them, and in some places it was impossible to set down the foot without treading upon and crushing them. Now the pulpy outer part, when thus crushed, is almost as gummy and sticky as cobblers' wax, and the consequence was, that walking over the nuts was no easy matter--in short it was both difficult and disagreeable. Sometimes a whole cl.u.s.ter of them would adhere to the soles of our shoes, or, slipping from under our feet, would threaten us with a fall, and thus our advance was continuously impeded or interrupted. It was quite as difficult to make way as it would have been through deep snow or over ice, and it must have taken us a full hour to get to the other side of the wood.

We reached it at length, and were very glad to see trees of another kind, which, although far less beautiful than the palms, and with far more gloomy shadows beneath them, grew upon ground that offered us good footing, and we were now able to proceed without the danger of falling at every step, or spraining our ankles.

Through this shadowy forest we kept on, but as no game of any kind was seen we soon became tired of it, as we had been of the palms. In fact, travelling through thick timber is very tiresome to persons who are not used to it--that is, to those who have not been reared in a forest-covered country, or used to a forest life. To such, the scene, however striking at first, however picturesque it may be, soon appears tame and monotonous. There is a great sameness in it--the trees are alike, the vistas that now and then open out all resemble one another; the ground, bare of gra.s.s or covered with withered leaves, presents but little attractions, either to the foot or the eye, and the traveller wearies of listening to his own tracks, oft repeated, and longs for a piece of open ground where he may look upon the blue sky above him, and press the green carpet of gra.s.s beneath his feet.

Just in this wise did my companion and myself long to get out of the deep wood and into some more open kind of country, where we might see to a good distance around us, and where Ben thought we should be far more likely to find game.

Our longings were gratified. We had advanced about a quarter of a mile beyond the palm-wood, when the forest appeared to end in front of us.

We saw the sun streaming through the trees, and a bit of blue sky as big as a main-sail, and from this we knew there was an opening in the timber.

We hastened forward with joyful antic.i.p.ations; and a hundred yards farther on came out upon the edge of a beautiful plain, that stretched as far beyond as the eye could reach, with scarcely a tree to intercept the prospect. Here and there only stood single trees, or little clumps, just as if the plain was a great park and these had been planted; but there was no house within sight nor any sign of the presence of man.

We saw some animals, however, upon the plain which my companion believed to be deer; but I again differed with him about the kind, for I knew by their horns that they were antelopes.

No matter about that--we were both equally glad to see them--and whether they proved to be deer or antelopes we were desirous of having a shot at them.

We stopped for awhile, under cover of the bushes, to reconnoitre and plan how we might approach them. Of course there was no other way than to "stalk" them; and that could only be done by taking advantage of the little copses of trees that were interspersed over the plain. One of these, we noticed, was not very distant from the spot where the herd was browsing, and we had fine hopes of being able to get into it un.o.bserved.

As soon as we had taken all the bearings we set out; and after gliding from clump to clump--sometimes on our feet, in crouching att.i.tude, and sometimes crawling upon our hands and knees--we at length got behind the particular grove, near which was the game.

We took great pains to worm our way through the copse, for it was a perfect thicket, and so full of th.o.r.n.y trees, such as acacias and aloes, that we got well scratched for our pains.

At length, however, we came near enough to the other side for our purpose; and, with quick beating pulses, we perceived that the antelopes had kept the ground, and were now within range of the "Queen Anne." Of course I had no design of firing my pistol. That would only have been to waste powder and shot; and I had merely kept along with Ben to be near and enjoy the sport.

Ben was not slow about the work. He saw that there was no time to be lost, for the timid antelopes were seen to toss up their tiny snouts and snuff the gale, as if they suspected that some enemy was near.

My companion just then protruded the muzzle of "Queen Anne" through a bush, and, resting the long barrel upon a branch, took aim and blazed away.

And the herd ran away--every hoof and horn of them--so fast, that before the echoes of the huge musket had died among the trees of the forest, there was not an antelope in sight upon that wide plain, nor any other living creature except Ben Brace and myself!

Ben thought he must have hit the animal at which he had aimed; but no sportsman likes to acknowledge that he has missed entirely: and if we were to believe the accounts of hunters, there must be an incredible number of wounded beasts and birds that contrive to make their escape.

The fact was, that Ben's shot was too small for such game; and if he had hit a hundred times with it, he could not have killed so large an animal as these antelopes were.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

Ben was now sorry he had not brought a bullet with him, or, at all events, some slugs. Larger shot he could not have brought, as there was none on board the barque. But, indeed, in starting out our ambition had not soared so high; neither my companion nor I had antic.i.p.ated meeting such fine game as a herd of antelopes, and we had prepared ourselves just as we should have done for a day's fowling about the downs of Portsmouth. Birds we expected would be the princ.i.p.al game to be met with, and, therefore, birds, and small ones only, had anything to fear from us. It is not likely that Ben would have shot the vulture had he not crept so near; and then, even the small shot, projected so powerfully by the huge piece, had penetrated its body and killed it.

We therefore greatly regretted not having provided ourselves with "slugs," or a bullet or two, out of which we could easily have made them.

Regrets were to no purpose, however. We were too far from the barque to go back for them. It would be no joke walking so far in the great heat that there was--besides, by going directly back we should have to pa.s.s once more through the palm-wood, and this we had determined to avoid by going round it on our return. No; we could not think of taking the backtrack just then. We must do the best we could without the slugs, and, so resolving, Ben once more loaded "Queen Anne" with the snipe-shot, and we marched on.

We had not gone very far when a singular sort of a tree drew our attention. It stood all alone, though there were others of a similar kind at no great distance. The others, however, were much smaller, and it was the largest that had drawn our attention. Indeed, though the smaller trees bore a general resemblance to this one--so that you could tell they were of the very same kind--yet they differed very considerably from it, both in form and aspect; and, but for the peculiarity of the leaves, one might have taken them for trees of altogether distinct species. The leaves of both, however, were exactly alike, and from this and other indications it was evident that both were trees of the same kind, only that a difference of age had created a difference in their aspect--as great as would be between a chubby, rosy-cheeked child and a wrinkled old man of eighty. The small trees, and consequently the younger ones, rose upon a straight, round stem, only a few feet in height. Each was about the height of a full-grown man, while the stem itself, or trunk as it should more properly be called, was full as thick as a stout man's body; and what was curious in a tree, it was even thicker at the top than at the base, as if it had been taken out of the ground and re-planted wrong end upwards! Upon this clumsy-looking trunk there was not a single branch--not even a twig, but just upon its top grew out a vast tuft of long, straight spikes that resembled broad-sword blades, only that they were of a green colour. They pointed in every direction, radiating from a common centre, so as to form a large head somewhat roundish, or globe-shaped.

Any one who has seen an aloe or a yucca-plant will be able to form some idea of the foliage of the singular tree upon which my companion and I stood gazing in wonderment. The leaves were more like those of the yucca than the aloe--indeed, so like the yucca was the whole tree, that, from what I afterwards saw of yucca-trees in Mexico and South America, I am convinced that these are very near the same kind--that is, they were of the same habit and family, though, as I also learned afterwards, esteemed different by botanists.

Then I had never seen a yucca, much less a tree of the kind we were gazing at; of course I could only guess at what they might be.

Ben thought they were palms; but Ben was wrong again, for he was no great discriminator of genus or species. His opinion was based upon the general aspect which the trees--that is, the smaller ones--presented.

Certainly, with their single, regularly rounded stem, crowned by the radiating circle of leaves, they had something of the peculiar look of palm-trees, and a person entirely ignorant of botany, who had never seen one of the sort before, would, in all likelihood, have p.r.o.nounced as my companion had done, and called them palms. In the eyes of a jolly-tar, all trees that have this radiating foliage, such as aloes, and yucca, and the zamias of South Africa, are palm-trees; therefore it was natural for Ben to call the trees in question by this name. Of course he saw they were different from the oil-palms among which he had been wandering; but Ben knew there were several sorts of palm-trees, although he would not have believed it had he been told there were a thousand. I should have been compelled to agree with Ben, and believe these strange trees to be veritable palms--for I was no more of a botanist than he-- but, odd as it may appear, I was able to tell that they were not palms; and, more than that, able to tell what sort of trees they actually were.

This knowledge I derived from a somewhat singular circ.u.mstance, which I shall relate.

Among the small collection of my boy books there had been one that treated of the "Wonders of Nature." It had been my favourite, and I had read it through and through and over and over again a dozen times, I am sure. Among these "wonders" figured a remarkable tree, which was said to grow in the Canary Islands, and was know as the "dragon-tree of Oritava." It was described by the celebrated traveller, Humboldt, who measured it, and found its trunk to be forty-five feet in girth, and the tree itself about fifty in height. It was said to yield, when cut or tapped, a red juice resembling blood, and to which the name of "dragons'-blood" has been given; hence the tree itself is called the "dragon-tree," or, sometimes the "dragons'-blood tree"--though it is to be observed, that several other kinds of trees that give out a red juice are also known by this name. The trunk of this tree, said the traveller, rose almost of equal thickness to the height of twenty feet, when it divided into a great number of short, thick branches, that separated from the main stem like the branches of a candelabrum, and upon the end of each of these was a thick tuft of the stiff, sword-shaped leaves--the same as I have above described. Out of the midst of these leaves grew the pannicles, or flower-spikes, and the bunches of small, nut-like fruit.

Now the strangest part of Humboldt's account was, that this individual tree was known to the Spaniards on their first discovery of the Canary Islands--more than four centuries ago--and that from that time to the present it has increased scarcely perceptibly in dimensions. Hence the great traveller infers that it must be one of the oldest trees in the world--perhaps as old as the earth itself!

Now all this account except the last part of it--which of course is only a philosophic conjecture--I believe to be true, for I have myself visited the Canaries and looked upon this vegetable wonder, which is still standing near the town of Oritava, in the island of Teneriffe.

Unfortunately, since Humboldt's visit, the tree, instead of increasing in dimensions, has become less. During a storm, in the month of July, 1819, one half of its enormous crown was broken off by the wind, but the tree still continues to grow; and, as it is a great favourite of the inhabitants, the wound has been plastered up, and the date of the misfortune inscribed over the spot.

No doubt the great care taken of this venerable vegetable will ensure its surviving for another century at least.

Now you will be wondering what all this after-knowledge about the dragon-tree of Oritava has to do with Ben Brace, myself, or the trees that had fixed our attention on the plain. I shall tell you then what it has to do with us. In the book of which I have spoken there was a picture given of the Oritava tree. It was but a rude affair--a common woodcut--but for all that it gave a very good idea of the aspect of the great vegetable; and I well remember every leaf and branch of it--so well that, when I afterwards saw the tree itself, I recognised it at once. But what was still more singular: as soon as I set my eyes upon the large tree that had brought my companion and myself to a stand, the old picture came vividly before my mind, and I was convinced that it was a tree of the same sort as that described in my book. Yes; there was the thick, stout trunk, all gnarled and knotted with the marks of where the leaves had once grown--there were the short, clublike branches, separating from each other at the head--at the blunt ends of each were the fascicles of bayonet-shaped leaves, and the pannicles of greenish-white flowers--all exactly as in the picture! I was convinced that the venerable vegetable before us was no palm, but a true dragon-tree; perhaps as old as that of Oritava.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

I communicated my convictions to Ben, who still persisted in calling the tree a palm. How should I know what sort of a tree it was, since I had never seen one before? I told Ben of the book and the picture but he was still incredulous.

"Well then," said I, "I'll tell you how we can prove whether I am right or no."

"How?" demanded Ben.

"Why, if the tree bleeds it must be a dragon."

"Bleeds?" echoed Ben, "why, my boy, ain't you mad? who e'er heard o' a tree bleedin'?"

"Run sap, I mean."

"Oh that be hanged, lad! Sure you know that any sort o' tree 'll run sap; 'ceptin' it be a dead 'un."

"But not red sap!"

"What! you think yon ere tree 'ud run red sap, do ye?"

"I am almost sure of it--red as blood."

"Well, if it do then I'll believe 'ee, my lad; but it are precious easy to try. Let's go up to it, and gie it a prod with the knife, and then we'll see what sort o' sap it's got in its ugly veins--for dang it, it are about the ugliest piece o' growin' timber I e'er set eyes on; ne'er a mast nor spar to be had out o' it, I reckon. It sartinly are ugly enough to make a gallows of. Come on, my lad!"

Ben started forward towards the tree, and I followed him. We did not walk particularly fast, as there was no need to be in a hurry. The tree was not likely to run away from us like the birds and beasts. There were no signs of motion about it; and it would have taken a strong wind to have stirred, either its leaves or branches. It had a look of great firmness, and more resembled cast-iron than a vegetable substance; but as we drew nearer, its forbidding aspect was to some extent relieved by the appearance of its flowers, the strong fragrance of which reached our nostrils from a great distance off.

Immediately around the tree, and for several yards outwards, there was a bed of tall, sedge-looking gra.s.s. It was withered, and of a yellowish colour, not unlike a piece of standing wheat, but much taller. It appeared a little trampled and tossed, as if some heavy animal had been pa.s.sing through it, and in one or two places had rolled in it. This might all very naturally be, in a country where large animals abound.

The antelopes might have been there, resting themselves under the shade, and taking advantage of the fine gra.s.s to couch upon.

Neither my companion nor I took any heed of these signs, but walked boldly up to the tree; and Ben, without more ado, drew his great jack-knife, and struck the blade forcibly into the bark.

Whether there came out red juice or yellow juice, or any juice at all neither of us waited to see; for as if the stroke of the knife had been a signal, a huge animal leaped up out of the gra.s.s, not twenty feet from where we stood, and remained gazing at us. To our horror we saw that it was a lion! It needed no naturalist to recognise this fellow. The dun-coloured body, with dark, s.h.a.ggy mane--the broad, full face, and wrinkled jaws--the fierce, yellow eye, and bristled, cat-like snout, were not to be mistaken.