The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn Part 12

"'Look to your right, at Pete,'--which is the name by which we usually addressed Fleming--'lying fast asleep there, and see what you'll see,'

replied Dirk.

"I turned my head very cautiously and looked; and there, within less than a fathom of me, was Pete Fleming, lying flat on his back, fast asleep, with a snake coiled up like a cable right in the middle of his chest. The snake's head was resting upon the top flake of his coils, with his cold, cruel eyes gazing straight at us, and his long, black, forked tongue flickering in and out of his mouth in a most suggestively threatening manner.

"'What's the best thing to do?' murmured Dirk in low tones. 'We must do something quickly, for if Pete awakes and stirs as much as an eyelid the beggar will bite him, and then it will be all up with poor Pete.'

"There was a small branch, with a few twigs and a bunch of leaves on the end of it, lying on the ground within reach of my right hand. I contrived to get hold of this without disturbing the snake; then, sitting up suddenly, I thrust the bunch of leaves on the end of the branch straight and hard at the reptile, and--it vanished! That is the only way in which I can convey any idea of the rapidity with which it retreated. The next instant Pete was sitting up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and demanding with many choice forecastle embellishments what I meant by my fool tricks. When we explained to him the danger that he had so narrowly escaped, he had the grace to thank me for my intervention; but we all agreed that the spot had no longer any charm for us, and that it was high time for us to resume our search for a place where we might pa.s.s the night in safety.

"Such a place was by no means easy to find, but ultimately, within a few minutes of sunset, we came upon a sort of shelter among some rocks, of which we at once took possession--for our need was by this time urgent, total darkness being due in about ten minutes. Pete was strongly of opinion that, wherever our shelter might be, we ought to light a fire in front of it to scare away wild beasts, and, possessing a burning-gla.s.s, he took the precaution to make fire with it before the sun sank too low, and to kindle a torch with it for the purpose of lighting our fire. So, having at length found our shelter, we forthwith proceeded to gather materials, light our protective fire, and dispose of ourselves for the night.

"Having found a refuge of sorts, we antic.i.p.ated a good night's rest; but no sooner had darkness closed down upon us than from all quarters there arose a chorus of the most terrifying sounds--roars, barks, bellowings, savage growls, grunts, shrieks--never in my life before had I heard anything like the pandemonium that raged around us! We heard the branches of trees being broken; great stones came rattling and crashing down the steep hill-side behind us, missing our shelter by only what seemed a series of miracles. There were heavy thuds, accompanied by blood-curdling snarls that suggested the progress of life-and-death fights between ferocious beasts; and at frequent intervals we caught, through the smoke of our fire, glimpses of great eyes glaring at us!

Such was our first experience of night life in the wild.

"At length, however, toward morning the racket gradually quieted down, and we s.n.a.t.c.hed a short spell of sleep until sunrise, when we turned out and proceeded to hunt for breakfast. Luck was with us that morning, for we had not gone far when we found the partly eaten carca.s.s of a fine fat deer. The creature had not been dead very long, for the blood about it was scarcely dry, and the meat was quite fresh. We were hungry and not too squeamish, so we got to work upon that deer and cut some fine steaks off a part of him that had not been touched by the thing that had killed him, and, carrying the meat back to our shelter, we made up the fire and cooked ourselves a fine breakfast, finishing off with fruit as a subst.i.tute for the water that we failed to find.

"While partaking of breakfast we discussed our future as castaways.

With our experiences of the past night fresh in his mind Fleming proposed a return to the beach and the construction of a raft, upon which, he suggested, we should paddle off to the wreck, with the view of giving her an overhaul, in the hope of finding something that would repay us for our trouble; but when it came to consideration of details, Dirk and I came to the conclusion that, with nothing but our sheath- knives to serve as tools, the scheme was impracticable. What we might have attempted had we known that you and Billy were alive and still aboard is, perhaps, another matter. Several other schemes of an equally impracticable character were suggested, only to be abandoned after discussion, until finally, failing any more satisfactory plan, we decided that if we could find a nice, comfortable cave to serve as a dwelling we would experiment a bit upon 'Robinson Crusoe' lines, and see how we liked it.

"We found several caves of one sort and another that day; but the most suitable of them were already tenanted, as we could tell immediately that we put our noses inside them. Moreover, many of the tenants happened to be at home when we called, and seemed to resent our presence upon their doorsteps. Therefore, to avoid unpleasantness, we retired, in many cases rather precipitately. Ultimately, however, we came upon a cave that for some inexplicable reason was untenanted, and seemed to be everything that could reasonably be desired. It was situated high up on the side of the hill, and the entrance was so small that we were obliged to bend almost double in order to pa.s.s through. But once past the entrance the cave widened out until its interior was as s.p.a.cious as that of half a dozen forecastles knocked into one, with head-room of ten or twelve feet. It had a beautiful dry, soft, sandy floor, and--best of all--there was a pool of deliciously cool, sweet water at the far end of it--the first fresh water that we had found. And the air was as clean and sweet as the water; no Zoological Gardens odour, or taint of rotting bones, you understand. We took possession at once.

"Vividly remembering our experiences of the night before, our first business was to go out again and collect enough dry stuff to make a fire at the entrance to last all night. We next cut a sufficient quant.i.ty of the long, dry gra.s.s to provide each of us with a comfortable bed, and we completed our arrangements by cutting and conveying to the cave a bunch of bananas big enough to furnish us with a supper that night and breakfast the next morning. Then, having supped, we built and lighted our fire, turned in, and slept soundly all night, notwithstanding that even in our sleep we were conscious of a repet.i.tion of all the weird sounds of the previous night.

"I suppose you will scarcely be anxious to hear the full details of every adventure that befell us during our sojourn in that valley; and indeed, if you did, I am afraid I could not relate them with much pretence to accuracy. Adventures enough and to spare there were, of one sort and another, but I seem to have got them all mixed up together, so that I am unable to say just exactly when any one in particular happened. The wild beasts did not very seriously trouble or interfere with us during the day-time. But the snakes more than compensated for this; they const.i.tuted a perfect terror! We grew so fearful of them at last, especially after our boots gave out, that we scarcely dared to put one foot before the other; indeed it was a snake that finally drove us out of the valley."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

SVORENSSEN RELATES AN INTERESTING STORY.

"It was while we were seeking fruit that the thing happened. We had crossed the valley, and plunged into the forest on the other side, Dirk and I being together while Pete was a few yards away, when suddenly, as we were pa.s.sing under the boughs of a big tree, I heard a kind of _plop_, and at the same instant Dirk gave a yell that very nearly scared me stiff. Glancing round to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, I was horrified to see Dirk enveloped in the coils of an enormous snake, whose ugly head was poised within a few inches of my shipmate's face, the creature's forked tongue flickering in and out of its widely opened jaws. I suppose I shall never be able to explain or account for the impulse that actuated me at this horrid sight, but the fact remains that, without pausing an instant to reflect, I thrust forward my left hand and gripped the snake just behind the head, while with my right I drew my sheath knife across the reptile's throat, pretty nearly severing the head from the body at one stroke. Instantly it became a case of 'stand clear!' The snake uncoiled itself from about Dirk's body, and proceeded to fling itself about on the ground with such terrific violence that the air round about us was presently full of bits of gra.s.s, broken twigs, and flying leaves, while Dirk, yelling like a madman, flung himself upon the writhing body of the reptile, stabbing furiously here and there with his knife--but never touching the snake so far as I could see, while Pete came running up to ascertain what was the matter.

"We got Dirk away from the snake eventually, and helped him back to the cave; and when we got him there we stripped him, to learn the extent of his injuries. To our great relief, we found that there was very little the matter with him; he was much bruised about the body, from his waist to his shoulders, but that was all. It was, however, enough. We agreed that 'Robinson Crusoeing' was not quite all that in our boyhood's days we had believed it to be, and we resolved to return to the beach on the following morning and endeavour to swim off to the wreck.

"When we started to work our way back to the beach we discovered, to our annoyance, that the path which we had cut for ourselves through the scrub had become completely overgrown again, consequently we had all our former work to do over again, with the ants and mosquitoes even more pertinacious in their attentions than before; thus the afternoon was well advanced when at length we once more caught a glimpse of blue water. By that time we were so utterly f.a.gged that we felt it would be folly to attempt a long swim under such conditions; we therefore postponed our attempt until the next day. We saw that the wreck was still on the reef, apparently in no worse condition than when we had last viewed her; and, with our experiences of life ash.o.r.e still fresh in our memories, we told each other what fools we had been in making no attempt to get off to her again as soon as the weather had settled after our first landing.

"Pete Fleming was far and away the keenest of our little party to get aboard again. He directed us to observe how high she was standing out of the water, and expressed the opinion that for that reason it might be possible for us to penetrate to her lazarette, where we should doubtless find a quant.i.ty of tinned stuff that would be infinitely more palatable than the fruit diet upon which we had so long been subsisting, and of which we were all now thoroughly tired; and he was particularly eloquent upon the subject of drink, of which he seemed confident that we should find a considerable quant.i.ty. So keen, indeed, was he, that he was stripped and in the water four or five minutes before Dirk or myself, and was already swimming when we two started to wade in. And then a dreadful thing happened. We were little more than ankle-deep when we heard him utter an awful shriek, and saw him throw up his hands and disappear in the midst of a violent swirl of water. In an instant the terrible truth burst upon us that the poor chap had been seized by sharks--the existence of which in the lagoon we had never suspected--and on the instant Dirk and I, moved by the same impulse, turned and fled back to the beach. The incident effectually cured us of any further desire to reach the wreck; and we never again ventured to attempt any swimming until a few days ago.

"Dirk and I camped on the beach again that night, building a fire round our camping-place as a protection against wild beasts. But some time during the night I happened to awake, to discover that our fire had burned perilously low, and that some seven or eight great brutes were hungrily prowling round us, their eyes gleaming like green lamps, and themselves apparently waiting only until the fire had burned a little lower, or their courage had grown sufficiently to enable them to leap in and seize us. I sprang up, awaking Dirk, and together we heaped fresh brushwood upon the smouldering ashes until the flames leaped up again, and then our visitors left us. But our narrow escape brought home to us realisation of the extreme danger of sleeping in exposed situations; and after breakfast on the following morning we set out to return to our cave in the valley.

"How long we remained there on this occasion I cannot tell you, for we soon lost count of time; but it must have been several months, certainly. For some time we lived exclusively upon fruit; but later on we contrived to secure a morsel of meat now and then. Upon one occasion--I am afraid you will not believe me, but I a.s.sure you it is true--we found a young deer tangled up in the biggest and toughest spider's web you ever saw; and of course we killed and ate the little creature. That spider's web suggested to us the idea of setting traps, which we made of monkey-rope, and in which we sometimes caught small game of one sort or another.

"We should probably have been living in that cave to this day but for another bad scare--and in that case we should never have known that you and Billy had survived the wreck, and should have made no attempt to join you; so perhaps it is just as well for all of us that we had that scare."

I was by no means certain that I fully agreed with Svorenssen's view of this matter; but I said nothing, and the man continued his story.

"There was something very curious and uncanny about that scare, though just exactly what was the nature of it I cannot tell you, for we never found the explanation of the mystery. It was a long time before we observed anything in the least degree strange connected with our surroundings. At first, not only when Pete was with us, but later, when Dirk and I returned alone, we slept soundly all night and every night, but eventually there arrived a time when--when-- Now, how am I to say it so that you will understand me?"

"Ve had disturbin' dreams," prompted Van Ryn.

"Yes," agreed Svorenssen, "that was it; we had disturbing dreams--at least sometimes we thought they were dreams, while at other times we were convinced that they were real. A curious circ.u.mstance in connection with it was that the experiences began for both of us on the same night. It was our practice to build a big fire in front of the cave every night, to prevent the entrance of wild beasts while we slept, and on the night about which I am now going to speak we did it as usual.

"We were never long in dropping off to sleep after we had composed ourselves to rest for the night, and this particular night was no exception to the rule. I don't know how long I had been asleep--but it could not have been long, for our fire outside was still burning brightly and the interior of the cave was brilliantly illuminated by it--when I suddenly started up, broad awake, with my hair on end and the sweat of terror literally streaming from my every pore, for I was feeling more thoroughly scared than I had ever before been, and I was trembling like a leaf, and my teeth were chattering; although at the moment I had not the slightest notion what it was that had frightened me.

"Then I heard Dirk muttering to himself, and looking round I saw that he too was sitting up, looking as terrified as I felt.

"'Wha--what is it, mate?' he stammered. 'What's happened?'

"'That is exactly what I want to know,' said I. 'How come you to be awake?'

"'Hush!' whispered Dirk, in a trembling voice. 'Listen!' and he held up his hand for silence.

"I listened; and--believe me or not as you please, it is the solemn truth I'm telling you--that cave was full of queer little mysterious noises, like people whispering, and the soft tread of feet all about us.

I looked, and Dirk looked, but we could see nothing; yet the sounds continued, now seeming to come from the back of the cave, and then all about us. I believe I should have been far less terrified if I could have _seen_ anything to account for the sounds; but there was nothing.

Panic seized me; I sprang to my feet and rushed, shrieking, out of the cave, dashing headlong right through our fire, and coming a terrible cropper on the rough, sloping ground in front of the cave. In falling I must have stunned myself, for I remember nothing more of what happened that night, but--and this I consider the most extraordinary part of the whole adventure--when I awoke next morning I found myself back in the cave again, lying upon my gra.s.s bed, with Dirk close alongside."

"Ah!" I commented, "quite a queer dream. What had Van Ryn to say about it? I suppose you mentioned it to him?"

"I said dot it vas no dream; for shoost vot happened to Svorenssen, the same thing happened to me," answered Van Ryn, speaking for himself.

"Well, of course, that was very remarkable," I agreed. "Still, it could have been only a dream, since you found yourselves, I understand, in the cave and on your own beds in the morning."

"Yah, dot vas so," a.s.sented Van Ryn. "But vhen ve comes to overhaul ourselfs ve found dot our hands and faces vas badly skinned by our fall outside dot cave, und our hair and beards, as vell as our clothes, vas singed vhere ve had shoomped through the fire."

"Indeed!" said I. "That was certainly remarkable--if you are both quite sure you did not imagine those very peculiar happenings."

"If you mean about our skinned hands and faces, and our singed hair and clothes, there was no imagination about _that_," a.s.serted Svorenssen.

"But about the other--well, when we came to talk about it in broad daylight we were unable to decide whether we had actually heard the sounds, or whether we had dreamed them. You see, it was not as though the thing happened once only; it happened several nights running, and at length it got upon our nerves to such an extent that we could endure it no longer; so we agreed to return to the beach and work our way along- sh.o.r.e, on the look-out for a break in the reef, abreast of which we proposed to camp in the hope that sooner or later a ship might come along, enter the lagoon, and take us off."

"A most sensible plan," said I, "and the only thing I am surprised at is that, to a couple of sailor-men like yourselves, the idea did not come much earlier."

"Ay," agreed Svorenssen, "it is a pity that it did not. Had it done so we should no doubt have discovered that you were still alive much earlier than we did, and found means to signal to you."

"No doubt," said I. "Well, what happened to you after you left the cave the second time?"

"The first thing," replied Svorenssen, "was that we had the misfortune to lose Pete's burning-gla.s.s, which left us without the means to light a fire. That was a terrible loss, for it left us defenceless against the attacks of wild beasts at night, so that we dared not camp anywhere in the open. Dirk remembered having heard that the natives of certain countries made fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and we tried the same plan over and over again. Indeed we spent the better part of several days trying to get fire in that way, but without success; we could not even raise a whiff of smoke. That was about the worst misfortune that happened to us, for without fire to protect us at night, or to cook food during the day, we were continually in difficulties.

But it was not long before we discovered a method of cooking after a fashion without fire. Of course you will understand that the only cooking we had to do was when we were able to obtain a morsel of meat, which was by no means every day. When we succeeded, we used to look about for a rock that had been exposed to the sun's rays for several hours, and when we had succeeded in our search we cut our meat into thin slices and laid it upon the rock, which was hot enough to so far broil our meat as to render it quite eatable.

"We dared not camp out at night, even on the open beach. The beasts were certain to discover us, somehow, and came prowling round, giving us not a minute's peace; and many a narrow escape we had from them. Thus we were compelled to get what sleep we could during the day-time, keeping watch and watch, while at night we did such travelling as was possible. But that was not much, for more often than not we were driven to take refuge in trees, or to retreat into the water, sitting in it up to our necks, with sharks cruising round within a few fathoms of us and occasionally making dashes into the shallow water and running themselves aground in their efforts to reach us. Ah! those were lively times and no mistake; and often enough we used to tell each other that life was not worth living; yet we spared no pains to preserve it.

"Then, as though we had not already enough trouble, Dirk must needs fall sick of a fever of some sort, and became violently delirious. For three nights and four days I could do nothing with him; he was simply stark, staring mad; he would not permit me to approach him, but threatened me with his knife whenever he saw me. The only thing I could do was to keep him just in sight, and a pretty dance he led me, following him into the woods and all over the place--excepting into the water. Luckily for us both he had sense enough to keep clear of that, or the sharks would a.s.suredly have had him. But of course that sort of thing could not long continue, and toward the evening of the fourth day the poor chap collapsed, and, as luck would have it, I found a comparatively safe refuge for him among some rocks, where I looked after and attended to him until he was well enough to be up and about again. But the fatigue, anxiety, and loss of rest told upon me so severely that no sooner was Dirk able to look after himself than I fell ill; and then it was his turn to look after me for about a fortnight.

"Then one day, when I was beginning to pull round a bit, Dirk--who had been out foraging for food--returned to our refuge in a great state of excitement, with the intelligence that he had just seen a sailing boat alongside the wreck. The statement greatly alarmed me, for of course I did not believe a word of it, and my fear was that my chum was suffering a relapse, and was again experiencing delusions. But when I suggested this idea to him he indignantly scouted the idea, repeating his statement and bidding me crawl to the opening of the shelter and see for myself, if I did not believe him.

"I took his advice--it was of course the obvious thing to do--and there, to my amazement, was the boat, unmistakably enough, with her mast stepped, rigging set up, and sails stowed. What was more, after looking intently for several minutes I had the impression that I caught glimpses of one or two people moving about aboard the wreck. We watched all that day, and the next, and the next, every moment expecting to see the boat leave the wreck; and all that time we were trying desperately hard to make a fire and thus create a smoke, so that whoever was aboard the wreck would see it, and come across to ascertain what it meant; but, try as we would, we were unable to manage it. Then one day Dirk went out to look at a trap which he had set in the woods, and upon his return he reported that the boat had left the wreck and was heading along the lagoon in a northerly direction, and that there were two people in her-- a man and a boy; so we naturally concluded that it must be you and Billy, and that you had somehow escaped drowning after all."

"Then," said I to Van Ryn, "if you saw us as distinctly as that, why did you not show yourself on the beach, and wave to attract our attention?"

"I did," replied the Dutchman. "D'ye think I'm such a fool as to miss a chance? But you vas not look my vay, not neither of you. Und though I shout and yell und run along the beach you take no notice, but sail on until at last you sails out of sight."