The Cliff Climbers Part 12

No--it was not unbroken. Although it was not the call of the kakur, another sound interrupted the stillness--a sound equally welcome to the ear of the young hunter. It was a rustling among the leaves on the opposite side of the glade; just such as might indicate the pa.s.sage of an animal through the bushes.

Directing his eye towards the spot where the sound appeared to proceed, Caspar saw, or fancied he saw, some twigs in motion. But it was no fancy: for the moment after he not only saw the twigs move, but behind the bush to which they belonged he could just make out a darkish-coloured object. It could be nothing else than the body of the kakur. Although it was very near--for the glade was scarce twenty yards across, and the deer was directly behind the line of low shrubs which formed a sort of selvedge around it--Caspar could not get a good view of the animal. It was well screened by the foliage, and better perhaps by the absence of a bright light: for it was yet only the grey twilight of morning. There was light enough, however, to take aim; and as the intervening branches were only tiny twigs, Caspar had no fear that they would interfere with the direction of his ballet. There was no reason, therefore, why he should delay longer. He might not get a better chance; and if he waited longer, or barked again, the kakur might discover the decoy, and run back into the bushes.

"Here goes, then!" muttered Caspar to himself; at the same time placing himself firmly on one knee, raising his gun and c.o.c.king it.

It was a splendid lock--that upon the right-hand barrel of Caspar's gun--one in which the c.o.c.k, on being drawn to the full, gives tongue to tell that the spring is in perfect order.

In the profound stillness of the morning-air the "click" sounded clear enough to have been heard across the glade, and much further. Caspar even feared that it might be loud enough to affright the deer; and kept his eye fixed upon the latter as he drew back the c.o.c.k. The animal stirred not; but instead--almost simultaneous with the click of his gun, and as if it had been its echo--another click fell upon the hunter's ear, apparently coming from the spot on which the kakur was standing!

Fortunate was it for Caspar that his own spring had clicked so clear-- and fortunate also he had heard that apparent echo--else he might either have shot his brother, or his brother him, or each might have shot the other!

As it was, the second click caused Caspar to start to his feet. Karl at the same instant was seen hurriedly rising erect upon the opposite side of the glade, while both with c.o.c.ked guns in their hands stood eyeing each other, like two individuals about to engage in a deadly duel of rifles!

Had any one seen them at that moment, and in that att.i.tude, their wild looks would have given colour to the supposition that such was in reality their intent; and some time would have elapsed before any action on the part of either would have contradicted this fearful belief: for it was several seconds before either could find speech to express their mutual surprise.

It was something more than surprise--it was awe--a deep tragical emotion of indefinable terror, gradually giving way to a feeling of heartfelt thankfulness, at the fortunate chance that had made them aware of each other's presence, and saved them from a mutual fratricide.

For some seconds I have said not a word was spoken; and then only short exclamations of similar import came trembling from the lips of both.

Both, as if acting under a common impulse, flung their guns to the ground. Then, rushing across the glade, they threw their arms around each other; and remained for some moments locked in a brotherly embrace.

No explanation was needed by either. Karl, after pa.s.sing round the lake by the other side, had strayed by chance in the direction of the glade.

On nearing it, he had heard the barking of a kakur--not dreaming that it was Caspar acting as a decoy. He had answered the signal; and finding that the kakur still kept its place, he had advanced toward the opening with the intention of stalking it. On getting nearer he had ceased to utter the call, under the belief that he should find the deer out in the open ground. Just as he arrived by its edge, Caspar was mimicking the kakur in such an admirable manner, and so energetically, that Karl could neither fail to be deceived as to the character of the animal, nor remain ignorant of its position. The darkish disc visible behind the evergreen leaves could be no other than the body of the deer; and Karl was just about c.o.c.king his rifle, to bore it with a bullet, when the click of Caspar's double-barrel sounding ominously in his ear, fortunately conducted to a far different _denouement_ than that fatal _finale_ which was so near having occurred.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

The signal of the Shikaree.

As if sent to cheer and distract their minds from the feeling of dread awe which still held possession of them, just then the shrill whistle of Ossaroo came pealing across the lake, reverberating in echoes from the cliff toward which he had gone. Shortly after the signal sounded again in a slightly different direction--showing that the shikaree had succeeded in bagging his game, and was returning towards the hut.

On hearing the signal, Karl and Caspar regarded each other with glances of peculiar significance.

"So, brother," said Caspar, smiling oddly as he spoke, "you see Ossaroo with his despised bow and arrows has beaten us both. What, if either of us had beaten him?"

"Or," replied Karl, "what if we had both beaten him? Ah! brother Caspar," added he, shuddering as he spoke, "how near we were to making an end of each other! It's fearful to think of it!"

"Let us think no more of it then," rejoined Caspar; "but go home at once and see what sort of a breakfast Ossy has procured for us. I wonder whether it be flesh or fowl."

"One or the other, no doubt," he continued, after a short pause. "Fowl, I fancy: for as I came round the lake I heard some oddish screaming in the direction of the cliff yonder, which was that taken by Ossaroo. It appeared to proceed from the throat of some bird; yet such I think I have never heard before."

"But I have," replied Karl; "I heard it also. I fancy I know the bird that made those wild notes: and if it be one of them the shikaree has shot, we shall have a breakfast fit for a prince, and of a kind Lucullus delighted to indulge in. But let us obey the signal of our shikaree, and see whether we're in such good luck."

They had already regained possession of their guns. Shouldering them, they started forth from the glade--so near being the scene of a tragical event--and, turning the end of the lake, walked briskly back in the direction of the hut.

On coming within view of it, they descried the shikaree sitting upon a stone, just by the doorway; and lying across his knee, a most beautiful bird--by far the most beautiful that either flies in the air, swims in the water, or walks upon the earth--the peac.o.c.k. Not the half turkey-shaped creature that struts around the farmyard--though _he_ is even more beautiful than any other bird--but the wild peac.o.c.k of the Ind--of shape slender and elegant--of plumage resplendent as the most priceless of gems--and, what was then of more consequence to our adventurers, of flesh delicate and savoury as the choicest of game.

This last was evidently the quality of the peac.o.c.k most admired by Ossaroo. The elegant shape he had already destroyed; the resplendent plumes he was plucking out and casting to the winds, as though they had been common feathers; and his whole action betokened that he had no more regard for those grand tail feathers and that gorgeous purple corselet, than if it had been a goose, or an old turkey-c.o.c.k that lay stretched across his knee.

Without saying a word, when the others came up, there was that in Ossaroo's look--as he glanced furtively towards the young sahibs, and saw that both were empty-handed--that betrayed a certain degree of pride--just enough to show that he was enjoying a triumph. To know that he was the only one who had made a _coup_, it was not necessary for him to look up. Had either succeeded in killing game, or even in finding it, he must have heard the report of a gun, and none such on that morning had awakened the echoes of the valley. Ossaroo, therefore, knew that a brace of empty game-bags were all that were brought back.

Unlike the young sahibs, he had no particular adventure to relate. His "stalk" had been a very quiet one--ending, as most quiet stalks do, in the death of the animal stalked. He had heard the old peac.o.c.k screeching on the top of a tall tree; he had stolen up within bow range, sent an arrow through his glittering gorget, and brought him tumbling to the ground. He had then laid his vulgar hands upon the beautiful bird, grasping it by the legs, and carrying it with draggling wings--just as if it had been a common dunghill fowl he was taking to the market of Calcutta.

Karl and Caspar did not choose to waste time in telling the shikaree how near they had been to leaving him the sole and undisputed possessor of that detached dwelling and the grounds belonging to it. Hunger prompted them to defer the relation to a future time; and also to lend a hand in the culinary operations already initiated by Ossaroo. By their aid, therefore, a fire was set ablaze; and the peac.o.c.k, not very cleanly plucked, was soon roasting in the flames--Fritz having already made short work with the giblets.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO.

THE IBEX.

Big as was the body of the peac.o.c.k, there was not much of it left after that _dejeuner aux doigts_! Only the bones; and so clean picked were they, that had Fritz not already been made welcome to the giblets, he would have had but a scanty meal of it.

The savoury roast did a good deal towards restoring the spirits of the party; but they could not help dwelling upon the indifferent prospect they now had of procuring a fresh stock of provisions--so much changed were circ.u.mstances by their powder having been destroyed.

The bow and arrows of Ossaroo were still left, and other bows could be made, if that one was to get broken. Indeed, Caspar now determined on having one of his own; and practising archery under the tutelage of the shikaree, until he should be able to use that old-fashioned and universal weapon with deadly effect.

Old-fashioned we may well term it: since its existence dates far beyond the earliest times of historical record; and universal: for go where you will into the most remote corners of the earth, the bow is found in the hands of the savage, copied from no model, introduced from no external source, but evidently native to the country and the tribe, as if when man was first created the weapon had been put into his hands by the Creator himself!

Indeed, the occurrence of the bow--with its necessary adjunct, the arrow--among tribes of savages living widely apart, and who, to all appearance, could never have communicated the idea to one another--is one of the most curious circ.u.mstances in the history of mankind; and there is no other way of explaining it, than by the supposition that the propelling power which exists in the recoil of a tightly-stretched string must be one of the earliest phenomena that presents itself to the human mind; and that, therefore, in many parts of the world this idea has been an indigenous and original conception.

The bow and arrow is certainly one of the oldest weapons on the earth-- as well as one of the most universally distributed. It is a subject that, in the hands of the skilled ethnologist, might become one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the human race.

I have said that after eating the peac.o.c.k our adventurers were in better spirits; but for all that, they could not help feeling some little apprehension as to how their food was to be obtained for the future.

Ossaroo's skill had provided their breakfast; but how about their dinner? And after that their supper? Even should something turn up for the next meal, they might not be so fortunate in obtaining the next after that; and this precarious way of subsistence--living, as it were, from hand to mouth--would be a constant exposure of their lives to the chances of starvation.

As soon, therefore, as they had finished with the flesh of the peac.o.c.k-- and while Ossaroo, who continued eating longer than any of them, was still engaged in polishing off the "drumsticks"--the point of replenishing the larder became the subject of their conversation; and all agreed that to get up a stock of provisions had now become a matter of primary importance. They resolved, therefore, to devote themselves entirely to this business--using such means as were in their power for capturing game, and devising other means should these prove insufficient.

First and foremost, then, what were they to have for dinner? Was it to be fish, flesh, or fowl? They did not think of having all three: for in their situation they had no desire for a fashionable dinner. One course would be sufficient for them; and they would only be too thankful to have one course a.s.sured to them.

Whether they would choose to go fishing with Ossaroo's net, and have fish for their dinner, or whether they would try for another peac.o.c.k, or an argus pheasant, or a brace of Brahminy geese; or whether they would take to the woods and search for grander game, had not become a decided point; when an incident occurred that settled the question, as to what they were to have for dinner. Without any exertion on their part-- without the wasting of a single shot, or the spending of an arrow, they were provided with meat; and in quant.i.ty sufficient, not only for that day's dinner, but to ration them for a whole week, with odds and ends falling to the share of Fritz.

They had gone out of the hut again; and were seated, as oft before, on some large stones that lay upon the ground in front. It was a fine bright morning; and, although cold in the shade, the sun shining down upon them, reflected from the white snow on the mountains above, made it warm enough to be pleasant. For that reason, and because there was some smoke inside the hut, where they had cooked their breakfast, they had preferred eating it in the open air; and here also they were holding council as to their future proceedings.

While thus engaged, a sound fell upon their ears that bore some resemblance to the bleating of a goat. It appeared to come down from the sky above them; but they knew that it must be caused by some animal on the cliffs overhead.

On looking upwards, they beheld the animal; and if its voice had already appeared to them to be like that of a goat, the creature itself in its _personal_ appearance, to a very great extent, carried out the resemblance.

To speak the truth, it _was_ a goat; though not one of the common kind.

It was an _ibex_.

Once more Karl had the advantage of his companions. His knowledge of natural history enabled him to identify the animal. At the first glance he p.r.o.nounced it an ibex; although he had never seen a living ibex before. But the goat-like shape of the animal, its s.h.a.ggy coat, and above all, the immense ringed horns curving regularly backward over its shoulders, were all characteristic points, which Karl was able to identify by a comparison with pictures he had seen in books, and stuffed skins he had examined in a museum.

Ossaroo said it was a goat--some kind of a wild goat, he supposed; but as Ossaroo had never before been so high up the mountains, and therefore never in the regions frequented by the ibex, he knew it not. His conjecture that it was a goat was founded on the general resemblance which it bore to a goat; and this Caspar had observed as well as Ossaroo.

They could see the creature from head to foot, standing in a majestic att.i.tude on a prominent point of the cliff; but although it was in reality much larger than the common domestic goat, it was so distant from them as not to appear bigger than a kid. It was _en profile_, however, to their eyes; and against the blue sky they could trace the outlines of the animal with perfect distinctness, and note the grand sweeping curvature of its horns.

The first thought of Caspar was to lay hold of his gun with the idea of taking a shot at it; but both the others interposed to prevent this-- pointing out the impossibility of hitting at such a distance. Although seemingly much nearer, the ibex was considerably more than a hundred yards from where they were seated: for the point of the precipice upon which it stood was quite four hundred feet above the level.