CHAPTER TWO.
HARKS BACK A LITTLE.
The spot where our adventurers found themselves on issuing from themysterious cave was a peculiarly rugged one. It formed a sort of hollowor depression in the forest-land, in which we introduced the three menas fugitives. From this hollow there descended a narrow track orpathway to the extensive valley which had been seen from the summit ofthe precipice that barred their flight, and had so nearly proved fatal.
So confused was the nature of the ground here, and so intricate were thetracks--originally formed no doubt by wild animals, though made use ofby wandering men--that it became impossible for Mark Breezy to know inwhat direction he was leading his comrades as he wound in and out amonglarge rocks and fallen trees. In fact it was more by chance thanguidance that they ultimately hit upon the path which finally led themto the lower region or plateau of forest-land; and it is certain thatthey would have found it impossible to find their way back to the cave,even had they desired to do so.
Their chief object, however, was to put as much space as possiblebetween themselves and their late pursuers, and to this end they pushedforward at their best speed, until they reached a small river whichappeared to be a tributary to, or a branch of, that which they had seenfrom the heights earlier in the day.
"`Come to a ribber--couldn't git across, Gib a couple o' dollars for an' old blind hoss,'"
murmured Ebony, quoting an ancient ditty.
"We shall have to swim it, I fear," remarked Breezy, "for there is nohorse here, blind or otherwise. Perhaps that fallen tree may provestrong enough to serve as a bridge."
He pointed to a slender tree which had evidently been placed there, withseveral others, for the purpose of forming a rough and ready bridge; butits companions had been removed by floods, for they lay tossed on thebank further down among other wreckage.
"It'll be somethin' like tight-rope dancin'," said the sailor. "We'llhave to repair the bridge."
"Nuffin' ob de sort! Look here."
Ebony ran to the tree referred to, and skipped over with admirableagility, though it bent under him not unlike a tight-rope.
"But _I_ can't do that," said Hockins, "not bein' a black monkey, d'eesee?"
With a sudden expression of intense pity the negro exclaimed--
"Oh! I beg pardin'. Didn't I forgot; you's on'y a white man. Butstop; I come ober agin an' took you on my back."
He pretended to be on the point of recrossing, but the sailor hadalready got upon the bridge, and, with much balancing and waving of hislong arms, passed over in safety. Mark was about to follow, whenHockins called out, "Better pitch over the powder-flask in case you fallin."
"That's true, for I mayn't be as good as you or Ebony on the tight-rope.Look out!"
He pulled the powder-flask out of his pocket and threw it towards hiscomrades. Unfortunately the branch of an overhanging bush had touchedhis hand. The touch was slight, but it sufficed to divert the flaskfrom its proper course, and sent it into the middle of the stream.
Ebony followed it head first like an otter, but soon reappeared, gaspingand unsuccessful. Again and again he dived, but failed to find theflask, without which, of course, their gun was useless, and at last theywere obliged to continue their flight without it.
This was a very serious loss, for they had not an ounce of provisionswith them, and were in a land the character and resources of which wereutterly unknown at least to two of them, while the youth who had becometheir leader knew very little more than the fact that it was the islandof Madagascar, that it lay about 300 miles off the eastern shores ofAfrica, and that the tribes by whom they were surrounded were little ifat all better than savages.
That day they wandered far into the depths of a dark and tangled forest,intentionally seeking its gloomiest recesses in order to avoid thenatives, and at night went supperless to rest among the branches of anumbrageous tree, not knowing what danger from man or beast might assailthem if they should venture to sleep on the ground.
Although possessed of flint and steel, as well as tinder, they did notuse them for fear of attracting attention. As they had nothing to cook,the deprivation was not great. Fortunately the weather at the time waspleasantly warm, so that beyond the discomfort of not being able tostretch out at full length, the occasional poking of awkward knots andbranches into their ribs, and the constant necessity of holding on lestthey should fall off, their circumstances were not insufferable, andmight have been worse.
While they are enjoying their repose, we will tell in a few sentenceswho they were and how they got there.
When Mark Breezy, in the closing years of his medical-student career,got leave to go on a voyage to China in one of his father's ships, the_Eastern Star_, for the benefit of his health and the enlargement of hisunderstanding, he had no more idea that that voyage would culminate in abed up a tree in the forests of Madagascar than you, reader, have thatyou will ultimately become an inhabitant of the moon! The same remarkmay with equal truth be made of John Hockins when he joined the _EasternStar_ as an able seaman, and of James Ginger--alias Ebony--when heshipped as cook. If the captain of the _Eastern Star_ had introducedthose three,--who had never seen each other before--and told them thatthey would spend many months together among savages in the midst ofterrestrial beauty, surrounded by mingled human depravity and goodness,self-denial and cruelty, fun and tragedy such as few men are fated toexperience, they would have smiled at each other with good-naturedscepticism and regarded their captain as a facetious lunatic.
Yet so it turned out, though the captain prophesied it not--and this wasthe way of it.
Becalmed off the coast of Madagascar, and having, through leakage in oneof the tanks, run short of water, the captain ordered a boat with casksto be got ready to go ashore for water. The young doctor got leave toland and take his gun for the purpose of procuring specimens--for he wassomething of a naturalist--and having a ramble.
"Don't get out of hail, Doctor," said the captain, as the boat shovedoff.
"All right, sir, I won't."
"An' take a couple o' the men into the bush with you in case ofaccidents."
"Ay ay, sir," responded Mark, waving his hand in acknowledgment.
And that was the last that Mark Breezy and the captain of the _EasternStar_ saw of each other for many a day.
"Who will go with me?" asked Mark, when the boat touched the shore.
"Me, massa," eagerly answered the negro cook, who had gone ashore in thehope of being able to get some fresh vegetables from the natives if anywere to be found living there. "Seems to me dere's no black mans here,so may's well try de woods for wild wegibles."
"No no, Ebony," said the first mate, who had charge of the boat, "you'llbe sure to desert if we let you go--unless we send Hockins to look afteryou. He's the only man that can keep you in order."
"Well, I'll take Hockins also," said Mark, "you heard the captain say Iwas to have two men. Will you go, Hockins?"
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the seaman, sedately, but with a wrinkle or twoon his visage which proved that the proposal was quite to his taste.
All the men of the boat's crew were armed either with cutlass orcarbine--in some cases with both; for although the natives wereunderstood to be friendly at that part of the coast it was deemedprudent to be prepared for the reverse. Thus John Hockins carried acutlass in his belt, but no fire-arm, and the young doctor had hisdouble-barrelled gun, with powder-flask and shot-belt, but Ebony--beinga free-and-easy, jovial sort of nigger--went unarmed, saying he "didn'twant to carry no harms, seein' he would need all harms he had to carryback de fresh wegibles wid."
Thus those three went into the bush, promising to keep well withinear-shot, and to return instantly at the first summons.
That summons came--not as a shout, as had been expected, but as a shot--about an hour after the landing. Our explorers ran to the top of aneighbouring mound in some surprise, not unmixed with anxiety. Beforethey reached the summit a volley from the direction
of the sea, followedby fierce yells, told that some sort of evil was going on. Anothermoment, and they reached the eminence just in time to behold theirboat's crew pulling off shore while a band of at least a hundred savagesattacked them--some rushing into the water chest-deep in order to seizethe boat. Cutlass and carbine, however, proved more than a match forstone and spear.
The fight had scarce lasted a minute, and our trio were on the point ofrushing down to the rescue, when a white cloud burst from the side ofthe _Eastern Star_, the woods and cliffs echoed with the roar of a biggun, and a shot, plunging into the crowd of natives, cut down many ofthem and went crashing into the bushes.
It was enough. The natives turned and fled while the boat pulled to theship.
Uncertainty as to what should be done kept Mark Breezy and hiscompanions rooted for a few seconds to the spot. Indecision wasbanished, however, when they suddenly perceived a band of thirty orforty natives moving stealthily towards them by a circuitous route,evidently with the intention of taking them in rear and preventing themfrom finding shelter in the woods.
It was the first time that the young student's manhood had been putseverely to the test. There was a rush of hot blood to his forehead,and his heart beat powerfully as he saw and realised the hopelessness oftheir case with such tremendous odds against them.
"We can die but once," he said with forced calmness, as he cocked hisgun and prepared to defend himself.
"I's not a-goin' to die at all," said the negro, hastily tightening hisbelt, "I's a-goin' to squatilate."
"And you?" said Mark, turning to the seaman.
"Run, says I, of coorse," replied Hockins, with something between a grinand a scowl; "ye know the old song--him wot fights an' runs away, maylive to fight another day!"
"Come along, then!" cried Mark, who felt that whether they fought or ranhe was bound to retain the leadership of his little party.
As we have seen, they ran to some purpose. No doubt if they had startedon equal terms, the lithe, hardy, and almost naked savages would havesoon overtaken them, but fortunately a deep gully lay between them andthe party of natives who had first observed them. Before this wascrossed the fugitives were over the second ridge of rolling land thatlay between the thick woods and the sea, and when the savages at lastgot upon their track and began steadily to overhaul them, the white menhad got fairly into the forest.
Still there would have been no chance of ultimate escape if they had notcome upon the footpath down the precipice which we have described ashaving been partly carried away by falling rocks, thus enabling Hockinsand his companions to make a scramble for life which no one but asailor, a monkey, or a hero, would have dared, and the impossibility ofeven attempting which never occurred to the pursuers, who concluded, aswe have seen, that the white men had been dashed to pieces on the rocksfar below.
Whether they afterwards found out their mistake or not we cannot tell.
The reason--long afterwards ascertained--of this unprovoked attack onthe boat's crew, was the old story. A party of godless white men hadpreviously visited that part of the coast and treated the poor nativeswith great barbarity, thus stirring up feelings of hatred and revengeagainst _all_ white men--at least for the time being. In this way theinnocent are too often made to suffer for the guilty.
We will now return to our friends in the tree.