Volume Two--Chapter Seven.
Rescued at Last.
“The savages,” continued Ben, “in their rapid onslaught on us, fortunately, missed their aim, only one of us getting a spear-wound through the body, the rest of their weapons expending their force harmlessly in the bush, and by the time they were ready for a second go at us we were better prepared to receive them, although sadly wanting in the means of defence, only Jem Magellan having a knife. This he at once drew, however, while the rest of us, using the sticks we had previously cut in the forest, as I had forgotten to tell you previously, made an effort to save our lives with the determination of fighting to the last.
“But, Jem was our guardian angel now, as he had been before. Darting at one of the natives before he was apparently aware of his intention, he stabbed him through the heart, and then catching him up without a second’s deliberation by his legs, and using his body as a club, he floored three others in rapid succession. We, too, were not behindhand with our sticks; and the savages—struck more with consternation at Magellan’s tremendous strength, for he was built like a giant, and stood over six feet high, than by our prowess—ran away back into the jungle as fast as they had come upon us; leaving some four of their number struck lifeless on the ground, besides the one Jem had first settled, and whom the club exercise to which his body had been subjected had knocked out of any semblance it had originally possessed to the human form.
“We breathed hard when the scrimmage was over, for it was warm work while it lasted; and then, our sadly-lessened little party thinking discretion the better part of valour, and that our foes might get reinforced and return to attack us in numbers, only ten altogether having belonged to the body assailing us, we too took to our heels in the opposite direction. This was the very one, indeed, in which our proper course lay; and we ran on without giving a thought as to whether any of those we had knocked on the head would come to life again or not, or that we had to answer for their deaths.
“It would weary you to hear all the further trials we had to go through. We had three other rivers to ford before reaching the base of the next mountain; and, on essaying to climb this latter, we found it so steep and matted with rank vegetation that it was impossible to ascend it. Besides, the mosquitoes stung us almost to pieces on our going into the forest here; and, seeing that our route southwards was impracticable any longer, we bent our steps due west, following the track of the last river we had crossed so as to gain the beach again, which latter course seemed to offer now the best chance of escape.
“Arrived here, we sat down facing the sea, without a single sail passing by within hail, as we had hoped would soon have been the case, for two long weary days and nights—one of us always keeping watch that we should not miss a vessel, in the first place, and, secondly, for fear of another attack from the natives. During all this time, recollect, we had nothing to eat since we swallowed the last fragment of the solitary parrot that poor Denis Brown had knocked down, although plenty of brackish water was at our disposal from the river.
“On the third morning, however, just when we were pretty nigh done up with the heat and hunger, thinking each moment would be our last, an Arab dhow passed by close inshore to where we were stretched almost lifeless on the sand, watching the monotonous sea that broke with a heavy wash on the beach.
“We hailed the people on board, but they took no notice of us, and we abandoned ourselves to despair. However, another trading dhow came by soon afterwards, luckily for us, and the skipper of this showed more sympathy to shipwrecked seamen in distress, for, responding to our appeals for help, he said he would lie to for us, but as he had no boat we would have to swim off to the vessel.
“This we did, braving our fear of the sharks, though we had seen plenty of them about during the two days we had been staring at the sea; and, plunging into the waves, were soon hauled aboard in safety, the revulsion of feeling at being thus saved from a lingering death almost making us helpless at the last!