Two Gallant Sons of Devon: A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess

by Harry Collingwood

They were perfectly happy now, these two; and it is difficult to say which was the happier. The life which they were living was, as nearly as possible, ideal; it was passed in the open air, in the midst of glorious scenery which was constantly revealing new beauties and wonders; they had not a care in the world, for the river and the forest provided them with an ample supply of food, while they had no anxiety with regard to clothing in a climate which rendered clothes a superfluity. In short, their every physical need was abundantly satisfied; they enjoyed perfect health, and if their adventures thus far were of a somewhat tame and commonplace description, well, what mattered it? They had not a doubt that excitement in plenty lay before them, and meanwhile their daily life was insensibly training and preparing them to cope with it. Each of them was happy in his own way; Dick, because all was new and splendid, and Phil, because he was possessed of a wonderful overmastering feeling that after a long period of exile he once more found himself amid scenes that were familiar, and, although he could not say precisely in what way, suggestive of glorious associations.

Late on the second day of their resumed voyage they arrived at a point where the river forked, the stream on their right hand being almost as important as the other; but they decided that the stream on their left was the main stream, and therefore followed it. Although they knew it not at the moment, this decision of theirs to follow the left instead of the right stream was of the utmost import to them; for had they decided differently they would have missed the extraordinary adventure that awaited them among the mountains which lay so far ahead that many a weary mile of river, forest, and plain must be traversed before their peaks should swing into sight.

They camped that night on the point of land where the two rivers united their waters, and had scarcely landed when, without a sound to tell of his coming, a graceful antelope emerged from the brake a few hundred yards away, evidently going to the river to drink. The adventurers were at the moment partly concealed by the reeds among which they had moored their boat, moreover the wind was in their favour, and for nearly half a minute the creature failed to see them. By the time that he did, Stukely had seized his bow, fitted an arrow to the string, and risen cautiously to his feet. Then the antelope appeared to become aware of some unusual feature in the scene, and halted to investigate, whereupon Phil cautiously drew his bowstring, released it with a loud twang, and the arrow, flying straight and true, pierced the creature’s heart, so that it fell dead in its tracks, and they had their first deer. And now again Stukely gave fresh evidence of his uncanny knowledge, for although he had never before killed a deer, and might be supposed to know nothing of the verderer’s art, he at once set to work to skin and “break up” the animal with all the skill of an adept. So that night they feasted sumptuously upon venison steaks, grilled upon the embers of a fire which, with a further display of his strange knowledge, Phil kindled by the apparently simple but really exceedingly difficult process of rubbing two sticks together! And that night, too, they heard for the first time the roar of the jaguar in the adjacent forest.

For several days—so many, indeed, that they lost count of them—they voyaged steadily up the great river, sailing when the wind permitted, paddling when it did not, passing, at tolerably frequent intervals, points where lesser streams discharged themselves into the main body of water, while by imperceptible degrees the waterway narrowed, and the forest—dense, green, flower-decked, alive and gay with bird and insect life—pressed its foliaged walls in upon them ever closer and closer, except where an occasional break caused by fire or windfall afforded them a momentary glimpse of giant mountain ranges to right and left, at first a delicate purple-grey in the distance, but ever, like the forest, creeping closer in upon them. And now at increasingly frequent intervals, they began to see Indians, at first a solitary “buck” spearing fish from his canoe, but later on in parties of from half a dozen to fifty or more, crossing the river, or, like themselves, using it as a highway. But thus far, much as Stukely desired it, they had never succeeded in getting into touch with the natives, for the latter invariably fled at the mere sight of them.

One of the most surprising circumstances, perhaps, in connection with this voyage up the river, was the rapidity with which the two Englishmen—or Dick, rather—lost the capacity to be astonished. Stukely, indeed, had never manifested the least surprise at any of the wonders that were continually coming under their observation, for, steadfastly adhering to that strange fancy of his that he must have lived in these regions during some former state of existence, he persistently asserted that everything he saw was perfectly familiar to him. But with Dick it was very different; he was as matter-of-fact as Phil was fanciful; and the sight of giant trees between two and three hundred feet in height towering up into the cloudless blue a solid mass of purple, scarlet, or yellow bloom; of graceful clumps of feathery bamboo a hundred feet long; of the lofty forest walls on either hand draped with festoons of orchids of the most extraordinary and undreamed-of shapes and the most gorgeous colours; of birds, insects, ay, and even fish, that flashed and glittered with all the hues of the rainbow; of monkeys who followed their course up the river in troops of a hundred or more; of the lithe and graceful jaguar lying stretched upon some trunk or branch that closely overhung the water, watching with ready paw to seize any unwary fish that might chance to swim past within reach; of alligators that basked log-like on the mud banks—all these things were to Chichester at first a source of utmost wonder and admiration; yet within a month they had become the veriest commonplaces to him, and had entirely ceased to attract his attention. He was far more interested in the sight of a fair breeze stealing up the river after them than he was in the sight of the most beautiful flower, the most gorgeous butterfly, or the most dainty and brilliant colibri, for he knew that all these things he would see again a thousand times or more; but a wind that would relieve them of the labour of paddling in that scorching climate—ah! that was indeed a sight worth seeing.

At length, when they had been journeying up the river in leisurely fashion for about three weeks, meeting with no adventure worthy of record, on a certain hot and steamy afternoon, when the boat, under sail, was doing little more than barely stem the current, they gradually became aware of a low, faint roar, at first scarcely distinguishable above the rustle of the wind in the trees aloft and the buzzing hum of the innumerable insects which swarmed in the forest and hovered in clouds over the surface of the water. But as the boat continued to creep upstream the roar gradually increased in intensity, until at length, as they rounded a bend and entered another reach of the river which extended practically straight for nearly three miles ahead of them, they saw, at a distance of about a mile, a long stretch of foaming, tumbling water, rushing headlong down through a rocky gorge, about three hundred yards wide, over what was evidently a rocky bed, for the brown heads of several rocks were seen protruding above the leaping water in the channel. Rapids! with a fall of nearly thirty feet in about half a mile. This was a formidable obstacle indeed, for it did not seem possible that they could get the boat through them; and if they should be obliged to abandon her, what would then happen? Obviously they would be obliged to walk the rest of the distance—or to build another boat, or canoe, above the rapids; and it was difficult to say which was the more distasteful alternative of the two. Walking, probably, for although their belongings were few and by no means cumbersome to carry, the forest was so dense that, as they had already proved by experience, it was scarcely possible to travel a hundred feet without being faced by the necessity to cut their way.

“Well,” said practical Dick, after they had sat staring at the beautiful but tantalising scene for full five minutes, “it’s no use meeting trouble halfway, or wondering how we are going to get across the bridge until we come to it; let’s push on and get as close up as we can; then we’ll get ashore, walk up along, and have a look at the place. Perhaps when we come to it, it will not look so bad as it does from here.”

The bank on either hand was so densely overgrown with shrubs that landing seemed out of the question; but, seizing their paddles, the two adventurers drove the boat up against the rapidly strengthening current. Presently a tiny strip of beach, a yard wide by ten or twelve yards long, came into view; and here they beached the boat, making her well fast in order that the current might not sweep her away. The rapids were now less than a hundred feet distant, and the rush of the water brought down with it a cool, spray-laden breeze that was infinitely refreshing after the baking breathlessness of the stream below; but the roar of the chafing waters was so loud that it was almost impossible to make one’s voice heard; Phil therefore scrambled up the steep bank, and signed to Dick to follow. Fighting their way through the dense undergrowth, through which they were obliged to cut much of their way with their hangers, they at length came out upon a jutting spur of bare rock which overhung the rapids at a height of some fifty feet, and from this point they were able to obtain a tolerably distinct view of the whole gorge. And, as Dick had suggested, when they came to look at the place from close at hand, it did not appear to be nearly so impracticable as they had at first imagined.

The bed of the channel was badly encumbered with rocks, it is true, but only for about two hundred feet at the lower end; the rest of it, while showing a partially submerged rock here and there, was on the whole remarkably clear, the water rushing over its bed in a swift, glass-smooth stream. Even where the rocks were thickest, it was apparent that there was a very well-defined channel between them, up which a carefully navigated boat might easily pass—if propulsive power enough were applied to her to overcome the downward rush of the stream. But how was that power to be obtained? Certainly not by paddling; the stream was too swift for that. But it was just possible that it might be done by warping if a warp long enough and strong enough could be obtained. Moreover the warp need not be so prodigiously long, for now that they came to look at the rapids at close quarters they saw that their original estimate of their length had been a long way over the mark; it was much nearer a quarter than half a mile long. They glanced about them and saw that the trees were here, as everywhere along the river bank, thickly draped with long, thin, tough lianas, and the same idea flashed into both their minds at the same moment: why should they not twist or plait a warp of lianas? There were plenty of them, and, after all, it merely resolved itself into a question of time, while time, just then, was of less importance to them than labour. There was an alternative, of course, they might abandon the boat and construct a canoe above the rapids; and it was worth considering whether the construction of a canoe or the making of a warp would involve the more labour. To settle the point they decided to go on through the woods until they reached the head of the rapids, and there inspect the trees with the view of ascertaining whether there were any suitable for the construction of a canoe; and having come to this decision, they left the rock and re-entered the forest.

For more than half an hour they were so busily engaged in forcing and hewing their way through the dense, parasitical undergrowth that they had no attention to spare for anything else; but at length they became conscious of certain discordant sounds, reaching their ears above the roar of the rapids, which presently became distinguishable as the beating of drums, mingled with a sort of braying bellow, comparable to nothing that they had ever heard before. As the pair pressed on, the unearthly sounds gradually grew louder, not only because they were approaching the source of them but also because it was evident that the producers of the sounds were becoming more excited, for the tapping of the drums increased in rapidity while the braying as steadily grew in stridency and discord. Another five minutes of strenuous labour then the two Englishmen burst through the last of the undergrowth and emerged upon a cleared space of about a hundred acres on the bank of the river just above the rapids. At this point the river widened out again to about the space of half a mile from bank to bank, the gorge being about a hundred yards below, and the current was again gentle enough to render paddling against it an easy matter. A small strip of shingly beach was dotted with some forty or fifty canoes, each hewn out of a single log; and adjoining the beach, scattered over a space of about five acres of ground, was a native village consisting of about fifty palm-leaf huts, dotted about without the slightest attempt at symmetrical arrangement, except that they were built round an open space. The remainder of the clearing consisted of cultivated ground divided into patches devoted in about equal proportions to cassava and maize, with a little indigo here and there. A whole forest of slender poles, connected with each other by lianas, from which large quantities of fish were suspended, drying in the sun, and which, by the way, gave off a most intolerable odour, indicated that the inhabitants depended as much upon the river as upon the soil for their subsistence.