“I tell you what it is, Brandy,” Tom said one day, “I thank my stars I had such a clever uncle when a boy. Our hermitage in the woods was built something in this fashion, and Uncle Robert taught me how to use not only the woodman’s axe and the carpenter’s saw, but the plasterer’s trowel as well.”
“Yes, sah,” replied Brandy; “and you mus’ tellee me mo’ ’bout dat same uncle after dinner, sah.”
That after-dinner hour or two by the camp fire was the most delightful of the whole twenty-four. Tom was the story-teller, and his powers of invention were so great that he never once found himself short of material for a good spicy tale of sea and land. All his adventures here and there, in many lands and round the world, were related to his companion with a hundred different verbal embellishments; and Brandy made a most excellent listener.
But Brandy himself had an accomplishment: he could sing. His voice was a sweet contralto; and, strange as it may seem, he always sung in good English, though we know he could not talk the language well. Tom taught him a great many songs he had never known before. So, what with story-telling and singing, the long dark evenings passed quickly enough away, and once they laid their heads down on their grass pillows they knew no more about the world until the sun rose once again.
Brandy was always first up, and Tom’s breakfast was waiting for him by the time he had come back from the lake, where he used to have his morning swim, much to the consternation of the half-wild ducks that floated there, and built their nests among the sedges.
When the hut was built it was plastered inside and out with a blackish clay, which finally grew as hard as cement. Then some rude seats were made, and a rough table, while all around the house a garden was trenched and inclosed with a plantation fence. All kinds of vegetables were planted or sown in this garden, and flowers from the woods and the valley planted in beds and borders, with climbing ones along the fence; but not along the walls. Tom knew better than that, for during their work in the woods he had come across some very awful-looking spiders, and other ugly crawling things that he wished to keep at as safe a distance as possible.
If Brandy was enamoured of his wild and lonely life, so was Black Tom, the cat. He was seldom at home from sunrise till sunset; but invariably put in an appearance at dinner-time, and kept up the old sea custom of sleeping in his master’s arms every night. Tom had come to love this honest cat so much, that he even doubted whether he would not as soon have lost Brandy himself as puss. If he happened to be half an hour late of an evening his master would even put dinner back till he came.
Black Tom one day proved himself a friend in need in a very remarkable manner.
All unconscious of danger Tom Talisker was coming singing to himself, gun on shoulder, across the plain, when out from the woods rushed that fiery-eyed bull. He was close on Tom before he knew what was about to happen. His rifle was unloaded. Instinct caused him to run, and he did his best while doing so to get a cartridge in.
On rushes the maddened brute, with tail erect and awful horned head at the charge. It seems as if nothing can save Tom. The cartridge will neither go in nor come out from where it has stuck. But at that moment something rushes past Tom which at first he can hardly see. It is his feline friend, and he springs at once on the bull’s head with a yell of anger and claws at his eyes. This is more than the bull has bargained for. He pauses and tosses his head wildly in the air, but the cat keeps firm hold.