that wild, unearthly yell in the rear of the foe?
All listened. The savages who had been coming on again towards the fortfell back. The cries and yells were redoubled, and the din washorrible, awful!
"Hurrah!" cried Blunt, "we are saved! The friendlies have come!"
And so it was. The battle in the bush raged for fully an hour, then uprushed the scout who had so bravely done his duty. The drawbridge waslowered, and in he dashed, and after him fully a hundred of his owntribe, all in their war-paint, all fully armed, and, ghastly sight!nearly all had scalps hanging to their girdles.
The very next day the fort was deserted, and the march eastward wascommenced. It was a very long and a very toilsome one. But theyreached civilisation safely at last. The friendly Indians thoughtthemselves well rewarded by being presented with the horses. Andconsidering that Captain Blunt and party had obtained the animalscheaply enough, it was no wonder that satisfaction was expressed on bothsides.
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They found the _Gloaming Star_ ready for sea, and after selling theirskins and curios they embarked, and made all sail for the sunny south.All the winter and spring was spent in cruising around the West IndianIslands. They even stretched across to lonely Bermuda, encountering ahurricane on the passage, which well-nigh dismantled the ship, andnecessitated a longer stay at the islands than they desired. Thensouthwards and west, touching at Rio Janeiro, the most romantic andlovely harbour in the world.
Monte Video, however, which they reached at last, did not afterwardsshine in their memories as Janeiro did. Its low flat lands, its shallowseas and fogs, were not impressive in a pleasant way. But they foundthe inhabitants--even then a strange mixture of nationalities--kind andhospitable, and Leonard, Douglas, and Captain Blunt accepted aninvitation to go for sport into the interior.
The roads were terribly rough; there were no railways here in thosedays. The roads were rough and the roads were long, but they foundthemselves at last on the very confines of civilisation. And here theyspent some months, most pleasantly, too, though their adventures werenot without danger. They found the new settlers at war with theIndians, the latter being a most treacherous race, possessing all thecunning, though hardly so much of the extreme cruelty, which forms somarked a characteristic of the Red men of the American wilderness.
Both Douglas and Leonard soon became adepts in riding the half-wildhorses over the plains, and in hunting the emu and llama, in throwingthe lasso and the bolas.
"It seems to me," said Douglas, one day, "that I would like to live inthis wild land for ever and a day."
"It seems to me," replied Leonard, "that I have been here all my life."
Everything was so new in this country, and as they happened to befavoured with fine weather, some brief but terrible storms excepted,everything was so lovely. They were the guests of a rich Spaniard,whose house was a kind of shooting-box in the midst of most charming andwild scenery. It was a house of logs, but most artistically designedand built, with terraces around it, and porticoes and verandahs, overwhich trailed flowers of most beautiful colour, shape, and perfume. Itwas well surrounded--as indeed it needed to be--by a rampart and aditch, and more than once it had to stand a siege. Sometimes theIndians made a raid down that way and drove away the horses. But SenorCabelas had many well-armed servants, and they took a delight infollowing up and fighting Los Indianos, and returning triumphantly,which they invariably did, with the re-captured animals, or most ofthem.
Our heroes were always on the hunting path very early in the morning.They went prepared to shoot or fight anything. Wolves there were inplenty, but they gave the horsemen a wide berth, nor were they reallyworth powder and shot. But far away among the wild hills, thoselong-haired wolves are really a source of very great danger.
But there were panthers or pumas, and a few jaguars, and although noneof these attacked, still once or twice, when at bay, they made aterrible resistance. In a case like this, if a man does not keep cool,or if he allows any nervousness to interfere with his aim, it is ten toone that the jaguar will have the best of the battle, and the huntsmanbe left dead or terribly wounded.
When the day's sport or hunting in the pampas was over and done, whenthe dinner in Senor Cabelas' tall-ceiled room had been discussed, howpleasant it was to get out and sit under the verandah in the cool of asummer's evening, and tell tales, and think and talk of home.
How pleasantly tired and drowsy Leonard and Douglas used to be bybedtime, and how soon they were wrapped in dreamless slumber when theirlimbs were stretched in bed, their heads upon the downy pillows!
How loud the great frogs croaked and snored around the lodge, ay, andeven in it; but their croaking and snoring never once wakened our pampassportsmen!
Book 3--CHAPTER THREE.
HERE AND THERE IN MANY CLIMES.
"Heaven speed the canvas gallantly unfurled, To furnish and accommodate a world, To give the pole the produce of the sun, And knit unsocial climates into one."
"The luxuries of seas and woods, The airy joys of social solitude, Famed each rude wanderer."
Scenes: The shores of South America. The lonely isles of the Pacific,Antarctic Ocean, and Antarctic ice.
If my young reader took an ordinary sized map or chart of the world hecould follow with eye or finger the route, _en voyage_, taken by ourwanderers for the next few months, till we find them amid the lovelyscenery briefly depicted above. Southwards along the eastern shore ofSouth America, but keeping well to sea, and only seeing the wildromantic coast, now and then lying like a blue-grey storm-cloud on thehorizon, sailed the _Gloaming Star_. Leaving the Falkland Islands onthe port beam, they passed the Straits of Magellan, not venturing inthem now; and reaching farther southward, after encountering a terrificgale of wind which tried the timbers of the bonny barque and the mettleof her gallant tars, after having narrowly escaped being crushed duringa dismal fog by heavy ice, they succeeded in weathering the Cape, andstretched away north now, once more along a wild coast--its mountainstowering to the moon--and after many, many dreary weeks at sea, theylanded at the wonderful isle of Juan Fernandez, celebrated, as all know,for having been the prison isle of Alexander Selkirk, the hero of thatbest of boys' books--"Robinson Crusoe."
The hut was still there, and many another curious memento of the sailorhermit, and strange thoughts passed through the wanderers' minds as theywalked on the very beach where, according to Defoe, his hero had seenthe footstep in the sands.
North and west they went now, and in a few weeks fell in with thetrade-winds, although they were not of too great force to preventstunsails being carried alow and aloft.
Bounding over that lovely sea, the _Gloaming Star_ looked like somebeautiful sea-bird.
Whatever might come of it, our heroes were determined to see somethingof the Sandwich Islands. But there was danger in their doing so. Forbut few white men ever ventured there in those days.
ABOUT SAVAGES.
There are, according to my own experience, very great differences, notonly in physique, but in mental qualities, betwixt the savages--as theyare called--of different parts of the world, and even between differenttribes who live in the same vicinity, or within a few hundred miles ofeach other. Look, for example, at the good-natured simplicity of theEskimo Indians, and compare it with the wild, cruel nature of the Redmen of the Rockies, or forest lands of the Far West. Or witness theinnocent, harmless nature of the tribes who dwell south of the Equatoron the eastern shores of Africa, as compared with the treacherousferocity of the Somali Africans, who live but a little way north.
Yet there is a right way and a wrong way of dealing with even thewildest tribes of what I may call fighting savages. There are certainpeculiarities of character which are common to all, and at which, seeingthe manner of life they lead, we cannot wonder. They are allsuspicious, especially as regards the intentions of white men--or "whitedemons" as we are sometimes called--landing on their
coast. They areall greedy, all superstitious in a high degree, and all lawless, andeasily inclined to give vent to unbridled passions of any kind. Allthese traits of character must be borne in mind by any one going amongstthem. Nor must it be forgotten that they are most observant. Theycannot perhaps speak or understand a word of your language, but they canread your face and eye, and almost know your thoughts therefrom. Toshow fear among them is fatal to all success of intercommunication; evento feel fear is bad enough, for you can hardly hide it from theirscrutiny. You must be cool, determined, and kindly withal, but bearyourself as if it were a matter of the greatest indifference to youwhether you have their friendship or not. You must not so much woo_them_ as conduct yourself in a manner that will cause them to woo _you_and seek your good will. It is all, you see, a matter of fact. And Ihave landed among savages with my hands in my pockets, when, had Icarried arms, even a stick, I should have been speared to death in avery