“What has become of Lion?” Nick managed to ask of Wilmore, who was niched near him, in a hollow formed by the junction of three boughs in one of the largest limbs of the yellow-wood. “I haven’t seen him since we got on the tree.”
“Poor old boy,” returned Frank, “he was swept down the stream, when the fir was carried away. I tried to catch him by the collar, but couldn’t. The last thing I saw of him was his black head in the midst of the boiling waters. I think I would sooner have been drowned myself!”
Chapter Sixteen.
Strange Company—Captured again—The Kaffir Village—Chuma Obdurate—Lavie’s Mission—The Wizard—A Bond of Fellowship.
It was a long and terrible night. The heaven was covered with vast masses of inky clouds, which the gale drove rapidly before it; and occasionally there were sharp bursts of rain, from which even the dense foliage of the tree in which they were lodged but imperfectly screened them. The howling of the wind round them, and the roaring of the torrent below, rendered all attempts to converse with one another impossible. They could only cling to their place of refuge, and count the weary minutes as they passed, gazing anxiously on the eastern sky in the hope of seeing there the first faint streaks of dawn.
A little after midnight the fury of the elements seemed to have reached its height, and now a new danger threatened them. The huge tree rocked to and fro under the gusts of wind, as though it had been a bulrush, and every now and then a loud crack from below, intimated that one of the strong roots had yielded to its violence. At length, after one blast, more fierce than any which had preceded it, the last fibre gave way. De Walden felt the great trunk bend slowly forward, and settle down in the water; and almost immediately afterwards it was carried down the current, whirling and crashing against other trees as it went, with a force which nearly shook its occupants from their hold. Fortunately they had taken their stations on a branch which still remained above the water when the tree was uprooted; but it was nevertheless only by the most desperate exertion of the little strength which still remained to them, that they could save themselves from dropping, exhausted and benumbed, into the watery abyss beneath.
At length the dawn began to glimmer, and showed that the tree, which had become entangled with a number of others, had reached a point in the river where it could proceed no further. The vast floating débris had lodged against lofty rocks, which projected some distance into the stream, and thus an insuperable obstacle was offered to its farther progress. As the light grew stronger, it revealed a spectacle so extraordinary, and at the same time so frightful, that De Walden, with all his long and varied experience, could not recall the like of it. Numberless animals had taken refuge, as he and his party had done, in the boughs of trees, or had been carried against them by the torrent. The confused mass of trunks and branches was now crowded with the most strangely assorted occupants that had ever been brought together since the day of the great deluge; their natural instincts being, for the time, completely overpowered by terror. The lion and the eland crouched close beside one another; the steinbok and the ocelot clung to the same limb; the hyena and the sheep, the tiger and zebra, jostled each other, all alike apparently unaware of the presence of their neighbours. More deadly enemies still were close at hand unheeded. Huge pythons, puff adders, cobras, ondaras, black snakes, were twisted round every projecting bough, darting their heads to and fro, and protruding their tongues in the extremity of alarm. Even the huge bulk of the rhinoceros might be discerned here and there, lodged on the bole of some giant acacia or baobab; while above, the smaller boughs were tenanted by multitudes of monkeys, for once omitting their customary scream and chatter in the presence of mortal peril.