My Earthquake.
I said very little to my uncle about my alarm, feeling sure that he would laugh very heartily at my mistake, but I lay awake for some little while thinking that it was time I grew to be more manly and brave, and not so ready to be frightened at everything I could not directly understand. It seemed so shocking, too, for I might in my cowardly fear have shot poor Ebo, who was one of the best and truest of fellows, and seemed never so happy as when able to do something for me.
My last thoughts before I went to sleep were that I hoped I might grow into a brave and true man, and I determined to try hard not to be such a weak coward.
I have often thought since, though, that if any ordinary man had been placed in the same situation he would have been as nervous as I; for to awake out of a deep sleep in a dark forest in a wild land, where dangerous beasts might be lurking, to hear a peculiar rustling noise, and through the faint light to make out the figure of the black, looking big and indistinct as he crept on all-fours, was, to put it as you may, very startling.
I was ready enough to laugh at all the dread when I awoke in the morning to find the sun just up, and sending his rays through the long vistas of trees, where the birds were whistling, twittering, and screaming loudly, while every now and then from a distance came the hoarse cry of the birds of paradise.
“It is terribly tempting, Nat,” said my uncle, “but I think we had better make straight for camp and get a good breakfast before we do anything else. Hallo! what is Ebo doing?”
“Making up the fire,” I said; and directly the black had thrown on a great armful of dead wood he came to us laughing and rubbing the front of his person, squeezing himself in to show how empty he was, after which he picked up a stick, took aim at a bird, said “Bop!” and ran to pick it up; coming back laughing for us to applaud his performance.
“Well, Nat, that’s a piece of dumb-show that says very plainly we are to shoot some birds for breakfast before we do anything else, and it would perhaps be wise, so come along; there are some of our old friends in that great palm-tree.”
I followed my uncle closely, and we had no difficulty in shooting three of the great pigeons, which Ebo pounced upon and carried off in triumph, and in a few minutes they were roasting upon sticks, while our black cook busied himself in climbing a cocoa-tree, from which he detached half a dozen nuts, each of which came down with a tremendous thud.
I was terribly hungry, but Uncle Dick said we should be worse if we stopped there smelling the roasting pigeons. So we took our guns and went across an opening to where there was tree after tree, rising some thirty or forty feet high, all covered with beautiful white sweet-scented starry flowers, each with a tube running up from it like that of a jasmine.