The Fugitives by Robert Michael Ballantyne (hardest books to read TXT) 📖

of them, while the youth who had become their leader knew very little more than the fact that it was the island of Madagascar, that it lay about 300 miles off the eastern shores of Africa, and that the tribes by whom they were surrounded were little if at all better than savages.

That day they wandered far into the depths of a dark and tangled forest, intentionally seeking its gloomiest recesses in order to avoid the natives, and at night went supperless to rest among the branches of an umbrageous tree, not knowing what danger from man or beast might assail them if they should venture to sleep on the ground.

Although possessed of flint and steel, as well as tinder, they did not use them for fear of attracting attention. As they had nothing to cook, the deprivation was not great. Fortunately the weather at the time was pleasantly warm, so that beyond the discomfort of not being able to stretch out at full length, the occasional poking of awkward knots and branches into their ribs, and the constant necessity of holding on lest they should fall off, their circumstances were not insufferable, and might have been worse.

While they are enjoying their repose, we will tell in a few sentences who they were and how they got there.

When Mark Breezy, in the closing years of his medical-student career, got leave to go on a voyage to China in one of his father's ships, the _Eastern Star_, for the benefit of his health and the enlargement of his understanding, he had no more idea that that voyage would culminate in a bed up a tree in the forests of Madagascar than you, reader, have that you will ultimately become an inhabitant of the moon! The same remark may with equal truth be made of John Hockins when he joined the _Eastern Star_ as an able seaman, and of James Ginger--alias Ebony--when he shipped as cook. If the captain of the _Eastern Star_ had introduced those three,--who had never seen each other before--and told them that they would spend many months together among savages in the midst of terrestrial beauty, surrounded by mingled human depravity and goodness, self-denial and cruelty, fun and tragedy such as few men are fated to experience, they would have smiled at each other with good-natured scepticism and regarded their captain as a facetious lunatic.

Yet so it turned out, though the captain prophesied it not--and this was the way of it.

Becalmed off the coast of Madagascar, and having, through leakage in one of the tanks, run short of water, the captain ordered a boat with casks to be got ready to go ashore for water. The young doctor got leave to land and take his gun for the purpose of procuring specimens--for he was something of a naturalist--and having a ramble.

"Don't get out of hail, Doctor," said the captain, as the boat shoved off.

"All right, sir, I won't."

"An' take a couple o' the men into the bush with you in case of accidents."

"Ay ay, sir," responded Mark, waving his hand in acknowledgment.

And that was the last that Mark Breezy and the captain of the _Eastern Star_ saw of each other for many a day.

"Who will go with me?" asked Mark, when the boat touched the shore.

"Me, massa," eagerly answered the negro cook, who had gone ashore in the hope of being able to get some fresh vegetables from the natives if any were to be found living there. "Seems to me dere's no black mans here, so may's well try de woods for wild wegibles."

"No no, Ebony," said the first mate, who had charge of the boat, "you'll be sure to desert if we let you go--unless we send Hockins to look after you. He's the only man that can keep you in order."

"Well, I'll take Hockins also," said Mark, "you heard the captain say I was to have two men. Will you go, Hockins?"

"Ay, ay, sir," answered the seaman, sedately, but with a wrinkle or two on his visage which proved that the proposal was quite to his taste.

All the men of the boat's crew were armed either with cutlass or carbine--in some cases with both; for although the natives were understood to be friendly at that part of the coast it was deemed prudent to be prepared for the reverse. Thus John Hockins carried a cutlass in his belt, but no fire-arm, and the young doctor had his double-barrelled gun, with powder-flask and shot-belt, but Ebony--being a free-and-easy, jovial sort of nigger--went unarmed, saying he "didn't want to carry no harms, seein' he would need all harms he had to carry back de fresh wegibles wid."

Thus those three went into the bush, promising to keep well within ear-shot, and to return instantly at the first summons.

That summons came--not as a shout, as had been expected, but as a shot-- about an hour after the landing. Our explorers ran to the top of a neighbouring mound in some surprise, not unmixed with anxiety. Before they reached the summit a volley from the direction of the sea, followed by fierce yells, told that some sort of evil was going on. Another moment, and they reached the eminence just in time to behold their boat's crew pulling off shore while a band of at least a hundred savages attacked them--some rushing into the water chest-deep in order to seize the boat. Cutlass and carbine, however, proved more than a match for stone and spear.

The fight had scarce lasted a minute, and our trio were on the point of rushing down to the rescue, when a white cloud burst from the side of the _Eastern Star_, the woods and cliffs echoed with the roar of a big gun, and a shot, plunging into the crowd of natives, cut down many of them and went crashing into the bushes.

It was enough. The natives turned and fled while the boat pulled to the ship.

Uncertainty as to what should be done kept Mark Breezy and his companions rooted for a few seconds to the spot. Indecision was banished, however, when they suddenly perceived a band of thirty or forty natives moving stealthily towards them by a circuitous route, evidently with the intention of taking them in rear and preventing them from finding shelter in the woods.

It was the first time that the young student's manhood had been put severely to the test. There was a rush of hot blood to his forehead, and his heart beat powerfully as he saw and realised the hopelessness of their case with such tremendous odds against them.

"We can die but once," he said with forced calmness, as he cocked his gun and prepared to defend himself.

"I's not a-goin' to die at all," said the negro, hastily tightening his belt, "I's a-goin' to squatilate."

"And you?" said Mark, turning to the seaman.

"Run, says I, of coorse," replied Hockins, with something between a grin and a scowl; "ye know the old song--him wot fights an' runs away, may live to fight another day!"

"Come along, then!" cried Mark, who felt that whether they fought or ran he was bound to retain the leadership of his little party.

As we have seen, they ran to some purpose. No doubt if they had started on equal terms, the lithe, hardy, and almost naked savages would have soon overtaken them, but fortunately a deep gully lay between them and the party of natives who had first observed them. Before this was crossed the fugitives were over the second ridge of rolling land that lay between the thick woods and the sea, and when the savages at last got upon their track and began steadily to overhaul them, the white men had got fairly into the forest.

Still there would have been no chance of ultimate escape if they had not come upon the footpath down the precipice which we have described as having been partly carried away by falling rocks, thus enabling Hockins and his companions to make a scramble for life which no one but a sailor, a monkey, or a hero, would have dared, and the impossibility of even attempting which never occurred to the pursuers, who concluded, as we have seen, that the white men had been dashed to pieces on the rocks far below.

Whether they afterwards found out their mistake or not we cannot tell.

The reason--long afterwards ascertained--of this unprovoked attack on the boat's crew, was the old story. A party of godless white men had previously visited that part of the coast and treated the poor natives with great barbarity, thus stirring up feelings of hatred and revenge against _all_ white men--at least for the time being. In this way the innocent are too often made to suffer for the guilty.

We will now return to our friends in the tree.


CHAPTER THREE.


DESCRIBES THE DEED OF AN AMATEUR MATADOR AND THE WORK OF A ROUGH-AND-READY SHOEMAKER.

When the day began to break Hockins awoke, and his first impulse was to shout "hold on!" Ebony's first action was to let go, thereby bringing himself to the ground with an awful thud, which would have told severely on any one less akin to india-rubber.

For a few minutes Mark Breezy, holding tight to his particular branch, looked down at his companions, yawned heavily, and smiled a little. Then a sudden impulse of memory caused him to look grave.

"Come," he said, dropping lightly from his perch, "these natives may have been searching for us all night, and are perhaps nearer than we suppose. I vote that we push on at once."

"Agreed," said Hockins, stretching himself.

"No fear, Massa," remarked the negro. "If it wur moonlight dey might 'ave search, but whar de nights am dark dey knows better. De niggahs in dis yer island hab got skins an' eyes an' noses. If dey was to go troo such woods in de dark, dey hab no skins or eyes or noses in de mornin'-- leas'wise nuffin' wuth mentionin'. Cause why? Dey'd all git knocked into a sorter mush. Plenty ob time for breakfast 'fore we start."

"That's true, boy," said Hockins, "but where's the breakfast to come from?"

"What! you no bringed nuffin' in your pockits?" asked the negro with a look of visible anxiety on his expressive face.

Hockins turned his various pockets inside out by way of reply.

"I am equally destitute," said Mark.

The negro groaned as he slowly drew from his breeches pockets two sea-biscuits and a cold sausage.

"I meant dat," he said, "as a light lunch for _one_ yisterday."

"It'll have to do dooty, then, as a heavy breakfast for three this morning, Ebony. Come, divide, and let's have fair play."

"Here, massa," said Ebony, handing the food to Mark, "you divide, I ain't got de moral courage to do it fair. Number one is too strong in me when I's hungry!"

With a laugh at this candid admission the youth did his best at a fair division. In a few minutes the scanty meal was finished, and the fugitives proceeded straight into the interior of the country at the utmost speed which was compatible with sustained exertion.

They could see the faint outlines of a mountain range in the far distance, and towards that they directed their steps, knowing