Chapter Ten.
Part IV—The Wilds of Africa.
Off to the Cape—Among the Rock Rabbits—A Wild Ride—Lost on the plains.
“Isn’t it a glorious morning,” said Chisholm, coming on deck and joining his friends Frank and Fred, who were reclining in their lounge chairs, books in hand, under the awning reading, or pretending to read. And Chisholm himself looked glorious, glorious in the strength and beauty of his young manhood. He was dressed in white from top to toe, with sun hat and low cut collar, which showed his brown and shapely neck to perfection. His face was weather-beaten, that was the least that could be said of it, and loosely dressed as he was, you seemed to see the play of every muscle in his manly form, as he moved; and, when he waved his arms almost rejoicingly in the balmy but bracing breeze, that fanned the sunny sea, he looked as lithe and graceful as a young tiger.
“A glorious morning,” he said again.
“Beautiful,” said Fred, gazing languidly around him.
“You seem in fine form,” said Frank, smiling.
“Just had a salt water bath. The other fellows in my cabin had soda and brandy. I feel fresher now than they do.”
The ship was a steamer, Druid, but she was staggering along under a power of canvas and, bar accident, two more days would see them safe in Cape Town.
Fred Freeman had been very loth and sorry to leave his friends in Russia, for reasons well known to the reader. Frank, for reasons of a similar nature, had been just as anxious to get back to dear old Wales, to enjoy, so he said, six weeks’ hunting. But Chisholm had looked at him with a right merry twinkle in his blue eyes as he replied,—
“Nay, boy, nay, the next hunting you’ll do will be at the Cape. I promised your father to take you right round the world, and I told some one else that some one else wouldn’t see you again for three years at the very least. So there!”
Here is an extract from Chisholm’s diary, written three months after:—
“The Cape hills in sight at last. But I shouldn’t say at last, because our passage has been everything one could wish. Fred and Frank are both a bit low, leastways they don’t talk enough, perhaps they think. Wonder if it is their late lotus-eating life that is telling upon their constitutions, or is it merely that they’re in love. A little bit of both, perhaps. But they’ll wake up ere long without a doubt.”
Chisholm was perfectly correct in his surmises, both Fred and Frank did wake up, and as soon as the roaring of the steam from the funnel, and the rattling of the anchor chains, convinced them that the voyage was indeed at an end, they threw aside their hooks, pulled themselves together, and entered heart and soul into the excitement of shore going.
A whole week was to be spent at Cape Town, and it was the best and sweetest time of all the year they could have chosen to visit the place. In the town itself and the suburbs the gardens were gorgeous in their floral beauty, and all the wild romantic hills around were crimson and white with geraniums, and the rarest and loveliest of heaths and wild flowers. Roaming among the mountains was pleasant even by day, for the sub-tropical heat of the sun was tempered by the pleasant breeze that blew inland from the ocean. Although they never went abroad for a ramble without taking their guns along with them, of sport, properly so-called, there was but little. They managed to make several good bags of rock rabbits, nevertheless. These funny little creatures are as much like rats as rabbits, but they are delicious eating. It was quite half a day’s journey to reach their haunts, over the hills and through the stunted bush, and across broad uplands where little else save a kind of hard, tough grass grew, and walking among which was dangerous, owing to the number of deadly snakes that slept or crept among it. Beyond this there would be more bush, in which bright-winged but songless birds flitted noiselessly about, then the rocks or cliffs where dwelt the coneys.
There is one trait in the character of a rock rabbit which breeds it a deal of harm, and that is curiosity. They like to know all they can learn about any one who honours them with a domiciliary visit. No sooner had our heroes appeared at the foot of the chaos of boulders which formed the cliff, than one rock rabbit mounted a stone to see what they looked like. I suppose he meant to go back and report to his comrades, but Frank’s gun spoiled his good intention, and he came tumbling down to meet them. The crack of the fowling-piece brought a dozen at least of his relations out, to see what on earth the matter was, and many of them, not content with the advantage of the good view which a bit of boulder gave them, must needs stand on their hind-legs to add to their elevation; then it was bang, bang, right and left, and bang, bang, left and right ad libitum, or as fast at least as the rabbits appeared. Did they kill all they fired at? Oh! no, not by a very great deal. Many downed to the flash, and many that were knocked over succeeded in reaching the friendly shelter of their holes, and it is to be hoped, for their sakes, that their hospital arrangements were as complete as possible, else many of these poor curious creatures must have suffered a good deal more than our heroes meant them to.
On their way to and from these little shooting excursions snakes were shot wherever seen, whip snakes and sand snakes, black snakes and cobras.
“It’s no sin to slay a snake,” Fred would say, “and it expends the ammunition, you know.”
Well, this sort of life was certainly less slow than lotus-eating, but a week of it was enough. They felt “crowded,” as the Yankees call it, even at Cape Town. They wanted to be off and away into the wilds; the only question was how to get into the interior. The subject was broached one day at the table d’hôte, at which they were dining, and Chisholm thought the best plan would be to hire a dhow to take them on to Zanzibar.
“For it strikes me,” he said, “that it is quite the orthodox plan to start for the interior of Africa by way of Zanzibar, just as it is to go to New York from Liverpool.”
“It is,” said a gentleman present, “but you’ll find it slow work getting to Zanzibar in a dhow, and precious rough work too. I’m Commander Lyell of the Dodo; my gunboat sails to-morrow for Zanzibar. I’ve heard you mention my uncle’s name, General Lyell, and if you like to rough it with me, I’ll take you.”
A nephew of General Lyell! This was news indeed, to Frank at least; and it is needless to say the offer was gladly accepted.
Three spare cots were rigged in the Commander’s cabin, and in every way they were made as comfortable as could be.
Half a gale of wind was what they had to start with, up the Mozambique; next day it had increased to nearly hurricane force. They saw many ships lying-to, but the Dodo did nothing of that sort; wet enough though, she was in all conscience, in fact she seemed to spend most of her time under instead of over the waves; very wet she was, and likewise very lively, but she made a good passage, and in little over a week, she had cast anchor in a beautiful wooded hay on the African coast, where white-roofed houses, close by the shore, peeped out through the greenery of trees.
“There is a bit of fun to be got not far from here,” said Captain Lyell, “for a day’s journey beyond the little Portuguese village there, the antelope swarm, and horses, too, are procurable, by paying for them.”
Frank was a splendid horseman, and his delight at the prospect of a hunt was unbounded.
Horses they could and did procure, and wild and unmanageable brutes they proved at first, but after the third day they became quiet enough. Their way led through a most beautiful well-timbered undulating country, and travelling was far from difficult, but as they journeyed more inland, and bore more to the north, not only their difficulties, but their dangers too, increased; the land got more rugged and mountainous, the jungles more dense and impenetrable, and the forests grew darker and deeper. They found themselves, too, bordering on a country, the inhabitants of which were far from friendly, and it was then they found their Portuguese guides of the greatest of use; they could speak the language of these savages, and their relations with them were the relations of trade. Portuguese the natives could bear with. Englishmen they both feared and hated. But little cared our heroes; in fact they treated the blacks with the coolest indifference, and probably that was the best way they could have treated them.
Many a lordly antelope fell to their guns, they had days on days of good sport, and the very dangers that surrounded them, seemed only to make their life in the bush all the more enjoyable. A glorious hunt Frank had one day all to himself. It was a ride he is never likely to forget, either, for it came nigh costing him dear life itself. Out on the open plain one morning, though but a little way from the camp, he started a fine buck. It seemed positively to invite him to the chase; well, his horse was fresh, he was fresh himself, a ten miles’ run he thought would do them both good, and yonder was the deer, so off he went. Off went man and horse, and buck, but the latter seemed never to tire, and the plain over which he rode seemed interminable. Hours flew by; then Frank’s horse began to flag, for he must have ridden thirty miles in a bee line; so the buck won the day, he took to cover in a small bit of scrub, and from that he would not be moved. If he had, Frank thought, but one good hound, he could rest his horse, then start the chase, and probably turn him again towards the camp, and thus finish a day that would make the roaster of Her Majesty’s Staghounds envy him even to read of it. But no, he must mount his horse again and ride back. Back? Yes, it seemed about the easiest thing in the world to find his way back; but when, after journeying on and on all the day, without seeing a sign or token of the camp he had left, when, faint and weary, he saw the sun dipping slowly downwards to the western horizon, then his heart sank within him, and for the first time he realised the terribleness of his situation—he was lost! Lost! and it mattered little to him now which way he rode; he allowed the bridle to hang loose on the neck of his jaded horse, his own chin to fall on his breast; a sense of weariness crept over him that almost induced sleep, and more than once he nearly slipped from the saddle. Presently it was night, and big bright stars shone over him, which he did not care even to glance at. He only felt tired, cold, sleepy.
“Coo—oo—ee!” Hark! does he dream? No, for list! once again that long unearthly yell. The horse pricks up his ears and neighs. Frank seizes the bridle, and once more listens himself, for well he knows what he hears is the night-shout of the outpost African sentinels. In ten minutes more he is beside the camp-fire. Thanks to the sagacity of that good horse.