the foliage and thecreepers. We had had pretty good sport for strangers. We shot andbagged everything, snakes and birds and beasts, for I was making up abag for the doctor, who was a great man for stuffing and setting up. Wehad just sat down to rest, when suddenly the most awful cries that everI heard began to echo through the woods.
"They came from a thicket not very far away, and at one moment wereplaintive, at the next, discordant, harsh, dreadful.
"`Friday,' I cried, starting up and seizing my gun, `there is murder,and nothing less, being done in that thicket. Let's run down and see.'
"`It seems so, massa,' said Friday; `it's truly t'rific.'
"We ran on as we spoke, and soon came to the place, and peeredcautiously in.
"It was only a howler monkey after all."
"And was nothing the matter with him?" I asked.
"Nothing at all. It was merely this monkey's way of amusing itself."
"Did you shoot him?"
"I never shot a monkey in my life, and never will, Nie; it appears to mealmost as bad as shooting a human being.
"`We'll go back to the lake-side now, Friday,' I said, `and havedinner.'
"Alas! I had no dinner that day, Nie, nor for many a long day to come.
"There is no fiercer wild beast in all the forests or jungles than thecougar or puma, and none more treacherous. I have an idea myself thatthe darker in colour the more courageous and bloodthirsty they are;however that may be, I would any day as soon fight hand-to-hand with aman-eating tiger as I would with some of the monstrous pumas I have seenin South America. And yet I have heard sportsmen despise them, probablybecause they have never met one face to face as I have done, and as Idid on the day in question.
"We were quietly returning, Friday and I, to the place where we had leftour provisions and bags, when he suddenly cried, `Look, massa! lookdere!' We had disturbed one of the largest boa-constrictors I had everseen, and it was moving off, strange to say, instead of boldly attackingus, but hissing and blowing with rage as it did so. It looked to melike the trunk of some mighty palm-tree in motion along the ground.
"`Fire!' I cried; `fire! Friday.'
"The crack of both of our rifles followed in a second, but thoughwounded, the terrible creature made good its escape.
"I hurried after him, loading as I went, and thus got parted for a shorttime from my faithful servant and body-guard.
"I soon discovered, to my sorrow, the reason why the boa had notattacked us.
"In these dense forest lands, the wildest animals prey upon each other.Thus the boa often seizes and throttles the life out of even the puma,agile and fierce though it be. This particular boa had been watching apuma, evidently, when we came up. The brute gave me not a moment toconsider, nor to finish my loading.
"I yelled in terror as I found myself seized by the shoulder. Iremember no more then.
"Friday had boldly rushed to my rescue. He struck the puma over thehead with his useless rifle. The beast sprang backwards fully fifteenfeet, and prepared to give Friday battle, but the brave fellow was onhim, knife in hand, in a moment. Friday told me afterwards that heliterally flung himself on the puma. Had he missed his aim, he wouldnever have had another chance, but deep into the monster's very heartwent the dagger, and he never moved a muscle more. Friday wasunwounded."
"And you, Ben?"
"Fearfully cut in the shoulder with the puma's teeth, cut in the backwith the talons of his fore feet, and lacerated in the stomach with hishind. They have an ugly way of cutting downwards with those talons oftheirs, few who have felt it are likely to forget."
CHAPTER TWELVE.
"Wide-rent, the clouds Pour a whole flood; and yet, its flame unquenched Th' unconquerable lightning straggles through Ragged and fierce, or in red whirling balls, And fires the mountains with redoubled rage."
Thomson.
My old friend Captain Roberts is quite a remarkable man in his way--yes,I might go farther and say, in many of his ways. As a pedestrian, forexample, there are few young men can beat him. When he and I make upour minds to have a walk, the elements do not prevent us. We start andgo through with it.
But in summer or spring weather, when the roads are not quite ankle-deepin mud, we dearly love to mount our tricycles and go for a good longspin. We like to return feeling delightfully hungry and delightfullytired; then we dine together, and after dinner, when good old Ben getshis pipe in full blast, it would indeed do your heart good to listen tohim. Everything or anything suggests a yarn to Ben, or brings back tohis mind some sunny memory or gloomy recollection.
One day last summer we started for a ride, for the morning looked verypromising, and the roads were in splendid form. We followed the courseof the Thames upwards, and about noon found ourselves enjoying ourfrugal luncheon near a pretty little reach of the river, one of thethousand beautiful spots by the banks of this famous old stream.
As the clouds, however, began to bank up rather suddenly in the west,and as they soon met and quite hid the sun, and as the day was still andsultry, we expected, what we soon got, a thunderstorm. Neither myfriend nor I am very shy, when it comes to the push, so we ran forshelter, and just as the thunder began to roll and the raindrops tofall, we got our 'cycles comfortably housed in a farmer's shed.
The farmer was not content, however, until he had us both indoors in hiscomfortable parlour. He threw the window wide open, because, he said,the glass drew the lightning; so there we sat with the thunder rattlingoverhead, the rain pattering on the grass and sending up deliciousodours of red and white clover, while the lightning seemed to run alongthe ground, and mix itself up with the sparkling rain-rush in quite awonderful way.
"Terrible thunder!" said Captain Roberts. "Terrible! puts me in mind ofSouth America."
The farmer looked eagerly towards him.
The farmer's wife entered with tea, and this completed our feeling ofcomfort.
"You've got something to tell us, Ben," I said. "There is somethingwhich that storm reminds you of. Better out with it, without muchfurther parley."
"Ah, well," he said, "I suppose I must. Not that it is very much of astory; only, gentlemen, it is true. I haven't lived long enough yet tohave to invent yarns. I haven't told half what I've seen and comethrough. But not to weary you--what delicious tea, ma'am!"
"So glad it pleases you, sir."
"I've sailed around a good many coasts in my time; but I think you willfind scenery more charming on the seaboard of some parts of SouthAmerica than in any other country in the world. Round about Patagonia,now, what can beat the coast line for grandeur and stern beauty?Nothing that I know of.
"But farther north--on the shores of Bolivia, for instance--the sceneryis just a trifle disappointing; the coast is low and sandy, and veryrough in places.
"They call the ocean that laves it the Pacific. Bless my soul! friends,had you but seen it one day in the month of April, 18--, you wouldn'thave said there was much `pacific' about it. The bit of a barque I wascoasting in was on a lee-shore, too, and there was nothing short of amiracle could save her. We all saw that from the first. That miraclenever took place. We were carried on shore--carried in on top of amountain wave, struck with fearful force, and broke in two in less thanan hour.
"It was a wonder anybody was saved. As it was, seven of us got on shoreone way or another, and there we lay battered and bruised. The sundried one half of our clothes; then we rolled round, and he dried theother. We had tasted no food for four-and-twenty hours, for we had beenbattened down, and all hands had to be on deck. So when a case rolledright up to our very feet we weren't long looking inside it, and gladenough to find some provisions in the shape of tinned soup.
"Stores floated on shore next day, and spars, and one thing and another,so we rigged a tent, and made ourselves as much at home as it waspossible for shipwrecked mariners to do.
"We had been shipwrecked apparently on a most inhospitable shore. Tosay there wasn't a green thing in sigh
t would hardly be correct. Bitsof scrubby bushes grew here and there in the sand, and a kind of strongrough grass also in patches; but that was all. Inland, the horizon wasbounded by a chain of mountains; to the west was the ocean, calm enoughnow, very wide and dark and blue, with not even an island to break itsmonotony.
"It was a poor look-out for us, only we all agreed that it would bebetter to stay where we were until our wounds and bruises were somewhathealed, and until we had gathered sufficient strength to explore thecountry.
"We had plenty to eat and drink where we were; we could not tell how wemight fare elsewhere. Only we were quite out of the way of ships, andour provisions would not last for ever.
"For the first three or four days, I may say we did nothing else butbury