Sons of fire, Vol. III.

by M. E. Braddon

Sons of Fire! Were they not worthy of the name, these white men, when far out in midstream, while the boatmen bent and cowered over their paddles, these Englishmen looked in the face of the lightning and sat calm and unmoved while day darkened to the pitchy blackness of a starless midnight, and the thunder reverberated from hill to hill, with roar upon roar and peal upon peal, like the booming of heavy batteries, and anon crashed and rattled with a sharper, nearer sound. Blinding lightning, torrential rain, war of thunder and tempestuous waters, were all as nothing to these sons of fire. Their spirits rose amidst hurricane or thunderstorm; they were full of life and gaiety while the cockleshell canoes were being tossed upon the short, choppy sea, like forest leaves upon a forest brook, and when every sudden gust threatened destruction. They laughed at peril, and insisted upon having the canoes out when their native followers saw danger riding on the wind and death brooding over the waters. They met the spirit of murder, and were not afraid. They lay down to sleep in the midst of an unknown wilderness, with savage beasts lurking in the darkness that surrounded their tents. They forded rivers that swarmed with crocodiles—horrible stealthy creatures, swimming deep down below the surface of the water, the placid, beautiful water, with lotus flowers sleeping in the sunlight, and scaly monsters waiting underneath in the shadow.

Panther, crocodile, tempest, fever, or sunstroke, poisoned arrows from murderous foes, were only so many varieties in the story of adventure. Through every vicissitude the ready wit and calm courage of the Englishmen rose superior to accident, discomfort, or danger; and to the native temper these wanderers from a far country, an island which they had heard of as a speck in a narrow sea, seemed men of iron with souls of fire.

Geoffrey would admit no malingering, would accept no idle pretexts for inaction or delay. His little band, picked out from the ruck of their porters, were always on the move, save in those rainy interludes which made movement impossible; and even then Geoffrey fretted and fumed, and was inclined to question the impracticability of a hunting expedition through those torrential rains.

"Did you ever hear of a fox-hunter stopping at home because of a wet day?" he asked Cecil Patrington, impatiently.

"Did you ever see such rain as this in a fox-hunting country?" retorted Patrington, pointing through an opening in the door of the hut to the sheet of falling water, which blotted out all beyond, and splashed with a thud into the pool that filled the enclosure.

The deep eaves kept the rain out of the huts, but not without occasional accident—spoilt provisions, damp gunpowder. It was a rude awakening from dreams of home to find one's bed afloat on a pond of rising waters.

Geoffrey had taken upon himself the task of providing meat for the party, Patrington's lazy, happy-go-lucky temper readily ceding that post of distinction to the new-comer. A man who had shot every species of beast that inhabits the great continent could easily surrender the privilege of finding meat-dinners along the route; so he only used his gun when the quarry was worthy and his humour prompted; and for the most part smoked the pipe of peace and read Dickens in the repose of a day's halt, while Geoffrey roamed off with his Winchester rifle and his little band of obsequious dark-skins.

And now in this period of waiting there was the great inland sea to explore; those romantic shores with their wealth of animal life; those waters teeming with fish, hemmed round and guarded by the majesty of mountains whose lofty peaks and hollows no foot of man had ever trodden. There was plenty of scope for movement and adventure here, so long as the rains held off; and the three men made good use of their time, and the canoes were rarely idle, or the rowers allowed to shirk upon the favourite pretence of bad weather.

So long as there was something to be done, Geoffrey and Allan were happy; but with every interval of repose there came the familiar heartache, the longing for home-faces, the sense of disappointment and loss.

Sometimes alone by the lake, while the lamp was shining on the faces of his two friends yonder in the verandah, where they sat playing chess, alone in the awful stillness of that vast mountain gorge, the waters rippling with placid movement, only faintly flecked with whiteness here and there in the blue distance, Geoffrey's longing for that vanished face grew to an almost unendurable agony. He felt as if he could bear this anguish of severance no more. He began to calculate the length of the homeward journey. Oh, the weariness of it! for him for whose impatience the fastest express train would be too slow. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of the distance that he had put between himself and the woman he loved, the intolerable distance—thousands and thousands of miles—and the difficulties and vicissitudes of the journey; all the forces of tropical nature to contend with, dependent upon savages, subject to fevers that hinder and stop the eager feet, and lay the weary body low, a helpless log—to waste days and nights in burning agony—to awaken and find a caravan dwindled by desertion, luggage plundered, new impediments to progress.