Round the Wonderful World

by G. E. Mitton

All the time, I must tell you, he had been making a funny little noise, a bit between a grunt and squeak, quite ridiculous for a huge black hairy beast like him; if I had had any breath to waste it would have made me laugh.

Now we heard that funny little noise—Uweekuweekuweek—just like that, coming over the road; we hadn't time to look. Never did any road I ever crossed seem so long; it was like a bad dream. We slipped and stumbled and didn't seem to make any headway, and every moment I expected to feel that great head in the flat of my back sending me sprawling ready to be spiked. At last we reached the line of bushes, and I gave Joyce a great pull with all my strength to pitch her to one side, for he was close on us then, and she went headlong and fell full length into the bushes, and I dropped on the top of her just as his majesty thundered past.

We lay there quiet as mice, though it was awfully uncomfortable; I was squashing Joyce to bits, and great thorns seemed running into me all over. Then a dreadful thought occurred to me—there were probably snakes there! Which was worst, snakes or the buffalo? And I asked cautiously—

"Have you been stung, Joyce?" and she answered so gravely, "Not yet," that I exploded, and, would you believe it, that old animal that had been rootling about in the bushes to find us, heard it and came at us again. We scrambled up and ran, tripping and tearing and crashing on into that wood, and I think he found some difficulty in following us, for after a while we couldn't hear him any more.

We stopped and listened with all our ears, but it seemed as if we were safe, for he wasn't a crafty animal and didn't know enough to come along quietly and surprise us. It was very dark there in that jungle, and for the first time I thought of you and how anxious you and Joyce's mother would be. So I said, "Come along home now," and pulled hold of Joyce. But she resisted and said, "It's not that way, silly; it's just the opposite."

I was positive and so was she.

I tried to think of all the things one tells by: the stars, but there weren't any, and I couldn't have done much with them if there had been; the moss on the north side of the trees, but there didn't seem to be any. I guess it's different in Burma. However, there was just a yellowish glow still, and I knew that must be in the west, and as the river runs north and south, and we were on the left bank, I guessed the way I wanted to go was about right. When I had proved it to Joyce she gave in and said she had said it all the time, just as women always do!

So we walked and walked, but we never came to that old road again. Once I thought I'd found it, but it was only some open, flat, thorny ground. It was very dark then, the dark comes on so fast here. Suddenly we both began to run as hard as we could, hand in hand; I don't know why, something set us off and I felt just as if I must, and I suppose Joyce did too, and then—crash!—before we knew where we were—smash!—we were flying, slipping, tobogganing down through some bushes, with our feet shooting out under us, and at last we reached the bottom. It was a steep gully, a kind of nullah. When we did get down we arrived separately, for we had had to let go to save ourselves. I was awfully sore, I know, and I wondered what had happened to her, being a girl and so much softer. But she didn't seem to mind much, for when I sang out, she answered quite cheerfully, "I'm sitting in the middle of a bramble bush like a bumble-bee. Do they sit in bushes, though? I think I'm getting a little mixed!"

A girl like that is a jolly good pal, I can tell you!

It was a snaky place and that is what I was afraid of. We trod carefully along the bottom and made noises to scare them off. Then I had a happy thought; I had a box of matches with me, and I kept on striking them till we found a handful of dry twigs which burnt up finely. It was so still there that they blazed straight and steady, and I used them as a torch and flourished them about low down as we walked.