Blown to Bits; or, The Lonely Man of Rakata by R. M. Ballantyne (suggested reading txt) 📖

to make a short stay at the next village. Failing to reach it that night, however, they were compelled to encamp in the woods. Fortunately they came upon a hill which, although not very high, was sufficiently so, with the aid of watch-fires, to protect them from tigers. From the summit, which rose just above the tree-tops, they had a magnificent view of the forest. Many of the trees were crowned with flowers among which the setting sun shone for a brief space with glorious effulgence.

Van der Kemp and Nigel stood together apart from the others, contemplating the wonderful scene.

"What must be the dwelling-place of the Creator Himself when his footstool is so grand?" said the hermit in a low voice.

"That is beyond mortal ken," said Nigel.

"True—true. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor mind conceived it. Yet, methinks, the glory of the terrestrial was meant to raise our souls to the contemplation of the celestial."

"And yet how signally it has failed in the case of Baderoon," returned Nigel, with a furtive glance at the hermit, whose countenance had quite recovered its look of quiet simple dignity. "Would it be presumptuous if I were to ask why it is that this pirate had such bitter enmity against you?"

"It is no secret," answered the hermit, in a sad tone. "The truth is, I had discovered some of his nefarious plans, and more than once have been the means of preventing his intended deeds of violence—as in the case of the Dyaks whom we have so lately visited. Besides, the man had done me irreparable injury, and it is one of the curious facts of human experience that sometimes those who injure us hate us because they have done so."

"May I venture to ask for a fuller account of the injury he did you?" said Nigel with some hesitancy.

For some moments the hermit did not answer. He was evidently struggling with some suppressed feeling. Turning a look full upon his young friend, he at length spoke in a low sad voice—

"I have never mentioned my grief to mortal man since that day when it pleased God to draw a cloud of thickest darkness over my life. But, Nigel, there is that in you which encourages confidence. I confess that more than once I have been tempted to tell you of my grief—for human hearts crave intelligent sympathy. My faithful servant and friend Moses is, no doubt, intensely sympathetic, but—but—well, I cannot understand, still less can I explain, why I shrink from making a confidant of him. Certainly it is not because of his colour, for I hold that the souls of men are colourless!

"I need not trouble you with the story of my early life," continued the hermit. "I lost my dear wife a year after our marriage, and was left with a little girl whose lovely face became more and more like that of her mother every day she lived. My soul was wrapped up in the child. After three years I went with her as a passenger to Batavia. On the way we were attacked by a couple of pirate junks. Baderoon was the pirate captain. He killed many of our men, took some of us prisoners, sank the vessel, seized my child, and was about to separate us, putting my child into one junk while I was retained, bound, in the other."

He paused, and gazed over the glowing tree-tops into the golden horizon, with a longing, wistful look. At the same time something like an electric shock passed through Nigel's frame, for was not this narrative strangely similar in its main features to that which his own father had told him on the Keeling Islands about beautiful little Kathleen Holbein and her father? He was on the point of seizing the hermit by the hand and telling him what he knew, when the thought occurred that attacks by pirates were common enough in those seas, that other fathers might have lost daughters in this way, and that, perhaps, his suspicion might be wrong. It would be a terrible thing, he thought, to raise hope in his poor friend's breast unless he were pretty sure of the hope being well founded. He would wait and hear more. He had just come to this conclusion, and managed to subdue the feelings which had been aroused, when Van der Kemp turned to him again, and continued his narrative—

"I know not how it was, unless the Lord gave me strength for a purpose as he gave it to Samson of old, but when I recovered from the stinging blow I had received, and saw the junk hoist her sails and heard my child scream, I felt the strength of a lion come over me; I burst the bonds that held me and leaped into the sea, intending to swim to her. But it was otherwise ordained. A breeze which had sprung up freshened, and the junk soon left me far behind. As for the other junk, I never saw it again, for I never looked back or thought of it—only, as I left it, I heard a mocking laugh from the one-eyed villain, who, I afterwards found out, owned and commanded both junks."

Nigel had no doubt now, but the agitation of his feelings still kept him silent.

"Need I say," continued the hermit, "that revenge burned fiercely in my breast from that day forward? If I had met the man soon after that, I should certainly have slain him. But God mercifully forbade it. Since then He has opened my eyes to see the Crucified One who prayed for His enemies. And up till now I have prayed most earnestly that Baderoon and I might not meet. My prayer has not been answered in the way I wished, but a better answer has been granted, for the sin of revenge was overcome within me before we met."

Van der Kemp paused again.

"Go on," said Nigel, eagerly. "How did you escape?"

"Escape! Where was I—Oh! I remember," said the hermit, awaking as if out of a dream "Well, I swam after the junk until it was out of sight, and then I swam on in silent despair until so completely exhausted that I felt consciousness leaving me. Then I knew that the end must be near and I felt almost glad; but when I began to sink, the natural desire to prolong life revived, and I struggled on. Just as my strength began a second time to fail, I struck against something. It was a dead cocoa-nut tree. I laid hold of it and clung to it all that night. Next morning I was picked up by some fishermen who were going to Telok Betong by the outer passage round Sebesi Island, and were willing to land me there. But as my business connections had been chiefly with the town of Anjer, I begged of them to land me on the island of Krakatoa. This they did, and it has been my home ever since. I have been there many years."

"Have you never seen or heard of your daughter since?" asked Nigel eagerly, and with deep sympathy.

"Never—I have travelled far and near, all over the archipelago; into the interior of the islands, great and small, but have failed to find her. I have long since felt that she must be dead—for—for she could not live with the monsters who stole her away."

A certain contraction of the mouth, as he said this, and a gleam of the eyes, suggested to Nigel that revenge was not yet dead within the hermit's breast, although it had been overcome.

"What was her name?" asked Nigel, willing to gain time to think how he ought to act, and being afraid of the effect that the sudden communication of the news might have on his friend.

"Winnie—darling Winnie—after her mother," said the hermit with deep pathos in his tone.

A feeling of disappointment came over our hero. Winnie bore not the most distant resemblance to Kathleen!

"Did you ever, during your search," asked Nigel slowly, "visit the Cocos-Keeling Islands?"

"Never. They are too far from where the attack on us was made."

"And you never heard of a gun-boat having captured a pirate junk and——"

"Why do you ask, and why pause?" said the hermit, looking at his friend in some surprise.

Nigel felt that he had almost gone too far.

"Well, you know—" he replied in some confusion, "you—you are right when you expect me to sympathise with your great sorrow, which I do most profoundly, and—and—in short, I would give anything to be able to suggest hope to you, my friend. Men should never give way to despair."

"Thank you. It is kindly meant," returned the hermit, looking at the youth with his sad smile. "But it is vain. Hope is dead now."

They were interrupted at this point by the announcement that supper was ready. At the same time the sun sank, like the hermit's hope, and disappeared beyond the dark forest.

CHAPTER XX. NIGEL MAKES A CONFIDANT OF MOSES—UNDERTAKES A LONELY WATCH AND SEES SOMETHING WONDERFUL.

It was not much supper that Nigel Roy ate that night. The excitement resulting from his supposed discovery reduced his appetite seriously, and the intense desire to open a safety-valve in the way of confidential talk with some one induced a nervously absent disposition which at last attracted attention.

"You vant a goot dose of kvinine," remarked Verkimier, when, having satiated himself, he found time to think of others—not that the professor was selfish by any means, only he was addicted to concentration of mind on all work in hand, inclusive of feeding.

The hermit paid no attention to anything that was said. His recent conversation had given vent to a flood of memories and feelings that had been pent up for many years.

After supper Nigel resolved to make a confidant of Moses. The negro's fidelity to and love for his master would ensure his sympathy at least, if not wise counsel.

"Moses," he said, when the professor had raised himself to the seventh heaven by means of tobacco fumes, "come with me. I want to have a talk."

"Das what I's allers wantin', Massa Nadgel; talkin's my strong point if I hab a strong point at all."

They went together to the edge of a cliff on the hill-top, whence they could see an almost illimitable stretch of tropical wilderness bathed in a glorious flood of moonlight, and sat down.

On a neighbouring cliff, which was crowned with a mass of grasses and shrubs, a small monkey also sat down, on a fallen branch, and watched them with pathetic interest, tempered, it would seem, by cutaneous irritation.

"Moses, I am sorely in need of advice," said Nigel, turning suddenly to his companion with ill-suppressed excitement.

"Well, Massa Nadgel, you does look like it, but I'm sorry I ain't a doctor. Pra'ps de purfesser would help you better nor me."

"You misunderstand me. Can you keep a secret, Moses?"

"I kin try—if—if he's not too diffikilt to keep."

"Well, then; listen."

The negro opened his eyes and his mouth as if these were the chief orifices for the entrance of sound, and advanced an ear. The distant monkey, observing, apparently, that some unusual communication was about to be made, also stretched out its little head, cocked an ear, and suspended its other operations.

Then, in low earnest tones, Nigel told Moses of his belief that Van der Kemp's daughter might yet be alive and well, and detailed the recent conversation he had had with his master.

"Now, Moses; what d' ye think of all that?"

Profundity unfathomable sat on the negro's sable brow as he replied, "Massa Nadgel, I don't bery well know what to t'ink."

"But remember, Moses, before we go further, that I tell you all this in strict confidence; not a word of it must pass your lips."

The awful solemnity with which Nigel sought to impress this on his companion was absolutely trifling compared with the expression of that companion's countenance, as, with a long-drawn argumentative and remonstrative Oh! he replied:—"Massa—Nadgel. Does you really t'ink I would say or do any mortal t'ing w'atsumiver as would injure my massa?"

"I'm sure, you would not," returned Nigel, quickly. "Forgive me, Moses, I merely meant that you would have to be very cautious—very careful—that you do not let a word slip—by accident, you know. I believe you'd sooner die than do an intentional injury to Van der Kemp. If I thought you capable of that, I think I would relieve my feelings by giving you a good thrashing."

The listening monkey cocked its ear a little higher at this, and Moses, who had at first raised his flat nose indignantly in the air, gradually lowered it, while a benignant smile supplanted indignation.

"You're right dere, Massa Nadgel. I'd die a t'ousand times sooner dan injure massa. As to your last obserwation, it rouses two idees in my mind. First, I wonder how you'd manidge