Rory carried his rifle, Allan his gun; they were armed for anything, and felt big enough to tackle a bear for that matter. They pulled straight in-shore and up the creek, and to their joy they found at the head of it a nice stream; not a river by any means, but still navigable enough for more than a mile for their little craft. They soon came to a rapid, almost a waterfall, indeed, and not thinking it expedient to carry their boat, or to proceed farther on water, they landed, made her fast to the stump of an old tree, and trudged on in quest of adventure, with their guns over their shoulders.
“Now,” said Rory, pausing to gaze around him, after they had walked on in silence over a wild and scraggy heath for more than an hour, “if we had merely come in quest of the beautiful and the picturesque, and if I had brought my sketch-book with me, it strikes me we would have been rewarded, but as for shooting, why, we would have done well to have stopped on the seashore and kept potting away at the gulls.”
The scenery about them was indeed lovely, with a loveliness peculiarly its own. It was summer in this wild northern land; everywhere the moorlands and plains were carpeted with the greenest of grass, or bedecked with mosses and lichens of every hue imaginable, from the sombrest brown to the brightest scarlet. Of wild flowers there were but few, but heaths, still green, there were in abundance, and many curious wild shrubs they had never seen before; but they knew the juniper-plant and the sweet-scented wild myrtle. Why, it was the same that adorned the braes of Arrandoon! Then there were fruit-trees of various kinds, and trees that bore large pink and white flowers. It seemed odd to our heroes to see big flowers growing on tree-tops, but this, and indeed everything else around them, only served to remind them that they were in a foreign land. What they missed the most were the wild flowers and the song of birds. Birds there were, but they were silent: they would rush out from a bush, or flutter down from a tree, to gaze curiously at them, then be off again. The horizon was bounded by rugged hills, surrounded by a forest of pine-trees.
“I think,” said Rory, “we should climb that sugar-loaf hill. What a grand view we would get. Let us walk towards the wood; we are sure to find game there.”
“Do you know in what direction our ship lies?” said Allan.
“That I don’t,” said Rory; “but if we follow the stream we are sure to find the boat.”
“But we have left the stream. Do you think you know in what direction that lies?”
“Pooh! no!” cried Rory. “Oh, look, Allan! look at that lovely blue and crimson bird! Fire, boy, fire!”
Allan fired and Rory bagged the beauty.
Then on they went, firing now at some strange bird and now at a weasel or polecat, taking little heed of where they were going, just as heedless as youth so often is.