Mass' George: A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah

by George Manville Fenn

In another ten minutes I was out of the glowing sunshine beneath the oaks with their flowing drapery of moss, now peering up to see if anything alive was moving among the branches, now noticing how far up the flood had risen, as shown by the mark of dried mud and the patches of withered reed, which still clung here and there.

But there was no sign of living thing, and I walked on for a time in and out among the great trunks in the deep shade towards where there was a broad patch of sunshine, and all therein looked to be of green and gold. It was the clearing where the trees had been cut down for building and fencing when we first came.

I was not long in placing myself upon a stump out here in the broad sunshine, to watch what was going on, for this was a favourite old place of mine, where I generally found something to interest me.

So it was on this day, for a great crane flew up and went off with a great deal of wing-flapping before it was clear of the trees; and as I was eagerly watching the spot where it had disappeared, there was one bright flash, and one only, as a humming-bird darted across the sunny clearing, to poise itself first here and then there, before the open flowers of the great creepers, its wings vibrating so rapidly that they were invisible, and the lovely little creature looked more like some great moth than a bird.

I knew him and his kind well enough, and that if I had had it in my hand, I should have seen his head and crest all of a bright ruby tint, and the scale-like feathers of its throat glowing almost like fire; but as it flew rapidly here and there, it seemed all of a dull, warm brown, surrounded by a transparency formed by its rapidly-beating wings.

I sat watching the humming-bird till another and another came to disturb the first, and begin chasing it, darting here and there like dragon-flies, now up, and now down; round and round, and sometimes coming so close that I could have beaten one to the ground with a bough. Then, all at once, they soared up and up, passed over the trees, and were gone, leaving me swinging my legs and whistling softly, as my eyes now wandered about in search of something else.

Oaks draped with moss, a great cypress at the edge of the clearing, which had grown up and up till it was higher than some of the trees, and spread its boughs over them like an umbrella to keep off the rain, and keeping off the sunshine as well, so that they had grown up so many tall, thin trunks, with tops quite hidden by the dark green cypress, and looking like upright props to keep its great top spread.

I knew that in all probability there was more than one ’possum in the great trees surrounding the opening, but Pomp was not there to find them, and I had no dog. I felt, too, that in all probability more than one bright pair of eyes were watching me from some bough, and their owners’ bushy tails twitching and whisking about; but I could see nothing, and after a time, as a sudden thought struck me, I got down softly, and looked round for a stick. This was soon found, for whenever I cut one I generally left it thrust in somewhere among the dense growth.

Thus armed, I went cautiously across the clearing toward the farther side, where the gravelly bank was crowned by a tuft of pines, beneath which, in the full sunshine, the ground was almost bare, and dotted with stones, ashy, and dark, and dull, and grey.

I had committed more than one murder there, but they were murders in which I exulted, for they meant death to the horrible rattlesnake or deadly moccasin, as they lay sunning their cold blood in the hot rays, ready to deal death to the passer-by, whose inadvertent foot should disturb their sleep.