Читать книгу With Drake on the Spanish Main - George Herbert Ely - Страница 7

Besides the birds, and the ground animals which he heard at times scurrying through the undergrowth, the sole inhabitant of the island that Dennis had yet discovered was a monkey. Though he was beginning to suspect that his fears of encountering hostile human folk had been needless, he still felt a timid reluctance to leave the coast-line for the interior; and having given up for the present his idea of climbing a tree to obtain a wider view, he contented himself with walking to the top of the cliff, to continue his observations from that point. His native courage was returning; yet, as he mounted the cliff, he moved for the most part under cover of the trees; the dread of possible enemies still made him wary, though every now and then he forgot his precautions, only remembering them again when the sense of his loneliness forced itself upon him, or when he was momentarily startled by a sudden sound.

Panting a little from his exertions when he gained the summit, conscious of his bodily weakness, of bruised limbs and strained sinews, he looked eagerly around. Eastward stretched an illimitable expanse of sea; he scanned it longingly, yet doubtfully, for while it was from that quarter, or from the channel between the island and the mainland, that he might hope for rescue from a friendly ship, it was thence also that he might be descried perchance by an enemy. He sat down on the grass, once more yielding to the heavy sense of forlornness, and thinking sadly of his lost companions. How long he remained there he knew not; his mind wandered a little: he thought afterwards that he had probably slept, for he suddenly awoke to the consciousness of a gnawing hunger. He had walked far, and the few shell-fish he had picked up on the shore gave but meagre sustenance. Stiff and cramped, he rose to search again for food.

There was nothing edible in his immediate neighbourhood. The trees sprang to a lofty height, and bore no fruit. Plucking up his courage, he made his way slowly down the slope towards the middle of the island. The vegetation grew thicker as he proceeded; there was no path or road; all was a wild tangle. At first he saw nothing wherewith to ease his pangs; never in his life had he taken a thought for his next meal; it was a new experience. Often enough at home he had plucked fruits as they grew; he remembered with a strange homesick feeling many a boyish depredation upon neighbouring orchards, out of sheer mischief, not from a longing for food. But there were no apple-trees or plum-trees here. And when at last he came upon a broad-leaved tree upon which grew huge clusters of a yellowish fruit, in shape like monstrous pea-pods, he hesitated, wondering whether this might not be one of those evil trees of which he had heard, one taste of which would turn his skin black, and fire him with a raging thirst, and afflict him with a madness whose end was death. But his natural appetite would not be gainsaid. With hope and misgiving mingled he at last stretched up his hand and plucked one of the tempting pods, and stripped off the skin, and nibbled a morsel of the soft fruit within. It was delicious; but so was the devil's fruit of mariners' tales—the more delicious the more poisonous. Somewhat anxiously he waited; there was no change in the colour of his skin; he watched it through the rents of his tattered garments; and indeed it seemed to him that any change would be for the better, for he perceived for the first time that he was already black and blue with bruises. He bit off another and a larger piece; then, with the ravenous haste of one long fasting, he let prudence fly, and ate the whole fruit, and another, and another, until he saw with surprise and qualms that his feet were encircled by a ring of empty skins. But he felt astonishingly refreshed and invigorated; he must eat one more; and thus, timorously and recklessly, he made acquaintance with the banana.

Of water for drink there was abundance. He drank gladly at a stream, and wandered on. It was strange that he no longer felt alone. He saw no man, nor any trace of one; he had become accustomed now to the rustle of birds and the swish of four-footed creatures moving amid the greenwood; what then caused him to look apprehensively around? What was this odd feeling of expectation that possessed him? There was nothing to account for it, and by and by the nervousness which had left him during his search for food returned in greater force. It was not lessened when he suddenly became aware that the sun was setting. Darkness, he knew, would soon envelop him, and there came with a rush upon his mind the memory of his early childhood, when night, with its silence, its blackness, had filled him with terror. He felt that a night in the solitude of these unfamiliar trees would be unbearable, and, guiding himself by the sunset glow, he hurriedly plunged through the jungle towards the shore. There, under the open sky, he could feel more at ease.

His course brought him to the beach on the southern side, where, in the morning, he remembered having seen, though in his despondency he had not heeded, a number of half-rotten staves of casks. These might, he thought, serve him for making a rude shelter. He soon found the spot, and then noticed, what had escaped his dazed observation before, that close by the staves there lay a medley of stripped branches. Had some one, at some time, built himself of these materials a shelter in that very place? He gathered the stuff together and rigged up a crazy hut, such as he had seen erected by shepherds on the moors of Devon. The day had been hot, but he knew from his experience on shipboard that the nights were cold; already he felt a sharpness in the air, and shivered in his tatters. The hut would defend him somewhat from the chill of night.

Another fear seized upon him with the approach of dark. His mind had been so occupied with thoughts of human enemies that the possibility of the island harbouring wild beasts had not, in the daylight, occurred to him. The darkness, he knew, brought forth small and great beasts; and he remembered with a shudder the tales told him by one of the hardy adventurers on board the Maid Marian—of packs of wild dogs that scoured these tropic woods, devouring sleeping men; of the hideous cayman, that lurked upon the shore, and, having swallowed hundredweights of stones to increase its heaviness, seized upon some unwary creature, and dragged it down into the watery depths, to feast upon it at leisure. All wild beasts, he had heard, were afraid of fire; he had his flint and steel, secure in a leather pouch upon his girdle; but he had no dry timber; the sodden wood of the staves and branches of which he had built his hut would be useless, and he shrank from issuing forth into the now darkening woods to find material that would serve. He comforted himself with the recollection that not once during his tramp around the island had he seen any animal larger than a hare, save the monkey; and he resigned himself to make the best of what he feared would be a cheerless night.

The dark fell rapidly, again he had that strange feeling that he was not alone. He went to the entrance of the hut, where he had drawn some of the worm-eaten branches, strung together with a few creepers, across as a door. Peering out, he saw nothing but the darkened cliffs and the sea, heard nothing but the wash of the surf, the rustle of the breeze, and the soft tones of wood-pigeons. He returned to the rear of the cabin, where he had strewed leaves for his couch. As he lay back upon it and looked up to the roof he started, and instinctively seized a branch for protection: above him shone two greenish eyes peeping through one of the many gaps. His hasty movement disturbed the watcher, and Dennis heaved a sigh of relief as he heard a shrill chattering above, and knew it for the gibber of a monkey. Springing up he dashed out of the cabin to drive the intruder away. He was just in time to see the monkey springing up the nearest tree.

It was long before he fell asleep. Then his rest was fitful and disturbed, not only through his over-wrought nerves, but by the nocturnal cries of creatures in the forest, and the attentions of insects, which nipped and stung with importunate malice. In spite even of them, however, he slept; and when with the rising of the sun they betook their satiated bodies elsewhere, he lay till the morning was drawing towards noon in the sound sleep of exhausted nature.

Opening his eyes upon bright day, he was tempted by the smoothness of the sea to bathe. When he flung off his clothes he laughed to see the parti-coloured patches on his skin. Blue, and yellow, and black, the bruises reminded him of his battering in the storm, and his laughter turned to sighing as he thought once more of his comrades and their hapless fate. But in the physical joy of swimming he again plucked up heart, and he left the stinging water with a most healthy hunger. The recollection of his feast of fruit drew him into the woodland. He wandered long before he lighted upon the banana grove, and though, in the course of roaming, he saw other fruit-bearing trees, he resisted for the present the temptation to climb and taste; when once his hunger was appeased by the fruit he knew, he could more safely make an experiment on the unknown.

He saw, too, many animals which had escaped his notice previously. There were hedgehogs, and tortoises, and giant spiders, and scorpions to which he gave a wide berth; but he caught no glimpse of any four-footed beast to cause him dread, and having by this time made up his mind that there were no human beings on the island, he went more fearlessly, with a readier eye to note the features of his new abode.

Happening once to halt and glance back he saw, perched in the branches of a tree not many yards away, a monkey. Was it the same, he wondered, as that which had peered at him out of the tree he had thought of climbing, and pried upon him in his humble cabin? It seemed to be of the same size; it had spindly limbs and a long slender tail; but probably there was a colony of the strange creatures on the island.

"Good morrow, Sir Monkey," he said, again finding a pleasure in the sound of his voice. "Are you lonely too? You were not, surely, cast like me upon this island, far away from kith and kin. You have a wise and solemn look: what secrets do you harbour in that shallow skull of yours? And what do you think of me, I wonder, when you look at me with those cunning little eyes? I wish you could speak, for here am I prating to myself like an old gossip of eighty."

As he moved on it was very soon clear that the monkey was dogging him. He amused himself by putting the matter to the test. When he sat down, the monkey stopped, and remained almost perfectly still, partially concealing itself among the leaves. When Dennis rose and went on his way the monkey followed, springing from branch to branch with amazing dexterity, always keeping at a distance. Dennis became interested, fascinated, as he watched the movements of the agile creature.

"Truly, Sir Monkey," he said, "I begin to wish I had a tail."

And as the day wore on, and the monkey kept pace with him wherever he went, he began to find in its presence something of the comfort of human companionship. Once, as he sat resting under a tree, the broken skin of a fruit he had eyed longingly fell within a couple of yards of him, and looking up he saw the monkey sucking with relish at another of the same kind.

"Aha! my fine fellow," said Dennis, "you have something of a man about you, and mayhap what is good for you is good for me too."

And he climbed a tree on which the pale yellow fruit was hanging, and plucked one, and made a wry mouth at his first taste of the tartish lime.

Thus the day passed in aimless yet not unprofitable wandering. Warned by his experience of the previous night, he resolved to prepare his shelter somewhat earlier. Where should it be? He was determined not to go back to the cabin, for the insects had plagued him there unmercifully, and he could only ward them off by means of a fire. But flame by night and smoke by day rising from the shore would assuredly provoke curiosity among the crew of any passing ship; and since, of the vessels likely to pass in these latitudes, the most would undoubtedly be Spaniards, he was loath to attract visitors who might prove so eminently undesirable. Yet, as he knew from his experience in woods at home, the insects would be even more numerous inland than at the shore. A fire he must have, and it struck him that if he could find, somewhere in the middle of the island, a sheltered hollow, he might safely kindle there a few sticks, trusting that the over-arching foliage would prevent a glow in the sky, and that the smoke, in the night-time, would pass unobserved.

About a mile from the edge of the eastern cliff was a spring whence a little stream flowed westward. At its source but an inch or two wide, it gathered volume on its winding course, and Dennis, tracking it, wondering by what circuit it would finally reach the sea, discovered that it ran at length into a somewhat extensive marsh. He knew nothing about rainfall and land drainage, but being a lad of some powers of observation and reasoning, he was not long in coming to the conclusion that the marsh collected as in a cup the water that fell on the surrounding high ground during such torrential rains as had fallen on the night of the storm. It was clear that there must be an outlet, or the marsh would be a lake, and this outlet he found amid thick undergrowth towards the western cliff near which he had been thrown by the sea.

Penetrating the dense jungle, he discovered that the outflow poured through a channel some three feet deep. Only a small stream now trickled down its centre; the banks were sandy and dry, and the interlaced foliage so arched it over, that Dennis decided he might rest in it secure from observation, and even run the risk of kindling a fire at night. It seemed scarcely necessary to bring the staves of his cabin over several miles of difficult country to this spot; the trees themselves formed a sufficient shelter; but with his clasp-knife he cleared away some of the undergrowth, and lopped off a few low-growing branches to make a little enclosure; and by the time the natural shade deepened at the approach of night, he had fenced in a few square yards and scooped out a hollow in the middle for his fire.

All the time he was working the monkey watched every movement from a branch overhead. Dennis was not at first aware of the animal's presence, so closely hidden was it by the foliage. Only when he struck a spark from his flint, and after some ineffectual attempts succeeded in blowing up a flame, did the monkey reveal its hiding-place by a little gibber of amazement.

"So ho! my friend," cried Dennis, looking up vainly. "You haunt me like a familiar. Have you never seen a fire? Do not let your curiosity tempt you too far, for, much as I value your company, I had rather you remained at your present comfortable distance until I know you a little better. Play the sentinel, Sir Monkey, if you will."

Dennis felt very well satisfied with his contrivance as he sat by the fire, eating a supper of bananas before laying himself down on a bed of leaves. The smoke defended him somewhat from the insect pests; the warmth was comforting; and the cheerful glow gave him a sense of homeness and well-being. He fed the fire more than once during the night, waking, it seemed, when the diminished heat warned him that the fuel needed replenishing, And when he awoke from his longest spell of sleep the dawn was stealing through the trees, birds were cooing, whistling, chattering overhead, and the monkey, on a low branch, was watching him with unalterable gravity.