Читать книгу The African Cycle: Action & Adventure Novels - R. M. Ballantyne - Страница 25

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The day following that on which we set out from King Jambai’s village, as narrated in the last chapter, Jack, Peterkin, Makarooroo, Njamie’s little boy, and I embarked in a small canoe, and bidding adieu to our hospitable friends, set out on our return journey to the coast.

We determined to proceed thither by another branch of the river which would take us through a totally new, and in some respects different, country from that in which we had already travelled, and which, in the course of a few weeks, would carry us again into the neighbourhood of the gorilla country.

One beautiful afternoon, about a week after parting from our friends, we met with an adventure in which the serious and the comic were strangely mingled. Feeling somewhat fatigued after a long spell at our paddles, and being anxious to procure a monkey or a deer, as we had run short of food, we put ashore, and made our encampment on the banks of the river. This done, we each sallied out in different directions, leaving Makarooroo in charge of the camp.

For some time I wandered about the woods in quest of game, but although I fired at many animals that were good for food, I missed them all, and was unwillingly compelled to return empty-handed. On my way back, and while yet several miles distant from the camp, I met Jack, who had several fat birds of the grouse species hanging at his girdle.

“I am glad to see that you have been more successful than I, Jack,” said I, as we met.

“Yet I have not much to boast of,” he replied. “It is to be hoped that Peterkin has had better luck. Have you seen him?”

“No; I have not even heard him fire a shot.”

“Well, let us go on. Doubtless he will make his appearance in good time. What say you to following the course of this brook? I have no doubt it will guide us to the vicinity of our camp, and the ground immediately to the left of it seems pretty clear of jungle.”

“Agreed,” said I; and for the next ten minutes or so we walked beside each other in silence. Suddenly our footsteps were arrested by a low peculiar noise.

“Hark! is that a human voice?” whispered Jack, as he cocked his rifle.

“It sounds like it,” said I.

At the same moment we heard some branches in an opposite direction crack, as if they had been broken by a heavy tread. Immediately after, the first sound became louder and more distinct. Jack looked at me in surprise, and gradually a peculiar smile overspread his face.

“It’s Peterkin,” said I, in a low whisper.

My companion nodded, and half-cocking our pieces, we advanced with slow and cautious steps towards the spot whence the sound had come. The gurgling noise of the brook prevented us from hearing as well as usual, so it was not until we were close upon the bushes that fringed the banks of the streamlet that we clearly discerned the tones of Peterkin’s voice in conversation with some one, who, however, seemed to make no reply to his remarks. At first I thought he must be talking to himself, but in this I was mistaken.

“Let’s listen for a minute or two,” whispered my companion, with a broad grin.

I nodded assent, and advancing cautiously, we peeped over the bushes. The sight that met our eyes was so irresistibly comic that we could scarcely restrain our laughter.

On a soft grassy spot, close to the warbling stream, lay our friend Peterkin, on his breast, resting on his elbows, and the forefinger of his right hand raised. Before him, not more than six inches from his nose, sat the most gigantic frog I ever beheld, looking inordinately fat and intensely stupid. My memory instantly flew back to the scene on the coral island where Jack and I had caught our friend holding a quiet conversation with the old cat, and I laughed internally as I thought on the proverb, “The boy is the father of the man.”

“Frog,” said Peterkin, in a low, earnest voice, at the same time shaking his finger slowly and fixing his eyes on the plethoric creature before him—“frog, you may believe it or not as you please, but I do solemnly assure you that I never did behold such a great, big, fat monster as you are in all—my—life! What do you mean by it?”

As the frog made no reply to this question, but merely kept up an incessant puffing motion in its throat, Peterkin continued—

“Now, frog, answer me this one question—and mind that you don’t tell lies—you may not be aware of it, but you can’t plead ignorance, for I now tell you that it is exceedingly wicked to tell lies, whether you be a frog or only a boy. Now, tell me, did you ever read ‘Aesop’s Fables?’”

The frog continued to puff, but otherwise took no notice of its questioner. I could not help fancying that it was beginning to look sulky at being thus catechised.

“What, you won’t speak! Well, I’ll answer for you: you have not read ‘Aesop’s Fables;’ if you had you would not go on blowing yourself up in that way. I’m only a little man, it’s true—more’s the pity—but if you imagine that by blowing and puffing like that you can ever come to blow up as big as me, you’ll find yourself mistaken. You can’t do it, so you needn’t try. You’ll only give yourself rheumatism. Now, will you stop? If you won’t stop you’ll burst—there.”

Peterkin paused here, and for some time continued to gaze intently in the face of his new friend. Presently he began again—

“Frog, what are you thinking of? Do you ever think? I don’t believe you do. Tightened up as you seem to be with wind or fat or conceit, if you were to attempt to think the effort would crack your skin, so you’d better not try. But, after all, you’ve some good points about you. If it were not that you would become vain I would tell you that you’ve got a very good pair of bright eyes, and a pretty mottled skin, and that you’re at least the size of a big chicken—not a plucked but a full-fledged chicken. But, O frog, you’ve got a horribly ugly big mouth, and you’re too fat—a great deal too fat for elegance; though I have no doubt it’s comfortable. Most fat people are comfortable. Oh! you would, would you?”

This last exclamation was caused by the frog making a lazy leap to one side, tumbling heavily over on its back, and rolling clumsily on to its legs again, as if it wished to escape from its tormentor, but had scarcely vigour enough to make the effort. Peterkin quietly lifted it up and placed it deliberately before him again in the same attitude as before.

“Don’t try that again, old boy,” said he, shaking his finger threateningly and frowning severely, “else I’ll be obliged to give you a poke in the nose. I wonder, now, Frog, if you ever had a mother, or if you only grew out of the earth like a plant. Tell me, were you ever dandled in a mother’s arms? Do you know anything of maternal affection, eh? Humph! I suspect not. You would not look so besottedly stupid if you did. I tell you what it is, old fellow: you’re uncommonly bad company, and I’ve a good mind to ram my knife through you, and carry you into camp to my friend Ralph Rover, who’ll skin and stuff you to such an extent that your own mother wouldn’t know you, and carry you to England, and place you in a museum under a glass case, to be gazed at by nurses, and stared at by children, and philosophised about by learned professors. Hollo! none o’ that now. Come, poor beast; I didn’t mean to frighten you. There, sit still, and don’t oblige me to stick you up again, and I’ll not take you to Ralph.”

The poor frog, which had made another attempt to escape, gazed vacantly at Peterkin again without moving, except in regard to the puffing before referred to.

“Now, frog, I’ll have to bid you good afternoon. I’m sorry that time and circumstance necessitate our separation, but I’m glad that I have had the pleasure of meeting with you. Glad and sorry, frog, in the same breath! Did you ever philosophise on that point, eh? Is it possible, think you, to be glad and sorry at one and the same moment? No doubt a creature like you, with such a very small intellect, if indeed you have any at all, will say that it is not possible. But I know better. Why, what do you call hysterics? Ain’t that laughing and crying at once—sorrow and joy mixed? I don’t believe you understand a word that I say. You great puffing blockhead, what are you staring at?”

The frog, as before, refused to make any reply; so our friend lay for some time chuckling and making faces at it. While thus engaged he happened to look up, and to our surprise as well as alarm we observed that he suddenly turned as pale as death.

To cock our rifles, and take a step forward so as to obtain a view in the direction in which he was gazing with a fixed and horrified stare, was our immediate impulse. The object that met our eyes on clearing the bushes was indeed well calculated to strike terror into the stoutest heart; for there, not three yards distant from the spot on which our friend lay, and partially concealed by foliage, stood a large black rhinoceros. It seemed to have just approached at that moment, and had been suddenly arrested, if not surprised, by the vision of Peterkin and the frog. There was something inexpressibly horrible in the sight of the great block of a head, with its mischievous-looking eyes, ungainly snout, and ponderous horn, in such close proximity to our friend. How it had got so near without its heavy tread being heard I cannot tell, unless it were that the noise of the turbulent brook had drowned the sound.

But we had no time either for speculation or contemplation. Both Jack and I instantly took aim—he at the shoulder, as he afterwards told me; I at the monster’s eye, into which, with, I am bound to confess, my usual precipitancy, I discharged both barrels.

The report seemed to have the effect of arousing Peterkin out of his state of fascination, for he sprang up and darted towards us. At the same instant the wounded rhinoceros crossed the spot which he had left with a terrific rush, and bursting through the bushes as if it had been a great rock falling from a mountain cliff, went headlong into the rivulet.

Without moving from the spot on which we stood, we recharged our pieces with a degree of celerity that, I am persuaded, we never before equalled. Peterkin at the same time caught up his rifle, which leaned against a tree hard by, and only a few seconds elapsed after the fall of the monster into the river ere we were upon its banks ready for another shot.

The portion of the bank of the stream at this spot happened to be rather steep, so that the rhinoceros, on regaining his feet, experienced considerable difficulty in the attempts to clamber out, which he made repeatedly and violently on seeing us emerge from among the bushes.

“Let us separate,” said Jack; “it will distract his attention.”

“Stay; you have blown out his eye, Ralph, I do believe,” said Peterkin.

On drawing near to the struggling monster we observed that this was really the case. Blood streamed from the eye into which I had fired, and poured down his hideous jaws, dyeing the water in which he floundered.

“Look out!” cried Jack, springing to the right, in order to get on the animal’s blind side as it succeeded in effecting a landing.

Peterkin instantly sprang in the same direction, while I bounded to the opposite side. I have never been able satisfactorily to decide in my own mind whether this act on my part was performed in consequence of a sudden, almost involuntary, idea that by so doing I should help to distract the creature’s attention, or was the result merely of an accidental impulse. But whatever the cause, the effect was most fortunate; for the rhinoceros at once turned towards me, and thus, being blind in the other eye, lost sight of Jack and Peterkin, who with the rapidity almost of thought leaped close up to its side, and took close aim at the most vulnerable parts of its body. As they were directly opposite to me, I felt that I ran some risk of receiving their fire. But before I had time either to reflect that they could not possibly miss so large an object at so short a distance, or to get out of the way, the report of both their heavy rifles rang through the forest, and the rhinoceros fell dead almost at my feet.

“Hurrah!” shouted Peterkin, throwing his cap into the air at this happy consummation, and sitting down on the haunch of our victim.

“Shame on you, Peterkin,” said I, as I reloaded his rifle for him—“shame on you to crow thus over a fallen foe!”

“Ha, boy! it’s all very well for you to say that now, but you know well enough that you would rather have lost your ears than have missed such a chance as this. But, I say, it’ll puzzle you to stuff that fellow, won’t it?”

“No doubt of it,” answered Jack, as he drew a percussion cap from his pouch, and placed it carefully on the nipple of his rifle. “Ralph will not find it easy; and it’s a pity, too, not to take it home with us, for under a glass case it would make such a pretty and appropriate pendant, in his museum, to that interesting frog with which you—”

“Oh, you sneaking eavesdropper!” cried Peterkin, laughing. “It is really too bad that a fellow can’t have a little tête-à-tête with a friend but you and Ralph must be thrusting your impertinent noses in the way.”

“Not to mention the rhinoceros,” observed Jack.

“Ah! to be sure—the rhinoceros; yes, I might have expected to find you in such low company, for ‘birds of a feather,’ you know, are said to ‘flock together.’”

“If there be any truth in that,” said I, “you are bound, on the same ground, to identify yourself with the frog.”

“By the way,” cried Peterkin, starting up and looking around the spot on which his interesting tête-à-tête had taken place, “where is the frog? It was just here that—Ah!—oh!—oh! poor, poor frog!

“‘Your course is run, your days are o’er;

We’ll never have a chat no more,’

“As Shakespeare has it. Well, well, who would have thought that so conversable and intelligent a creature should have come to such a melancholy end?”

The poor frog had indeed come to a sad and sudden end, and I felt quite sorry for it, although I could not help smiling at my companion’s quaint manner of announcing the fact.

Not being gifted with the activity of Peterkin, it had stood its ground when the rhinoceros charged, and had received an accidental kick from the great foot of that animal which had broken its back and killed it outright.

“There’s one comfort, however,” observed Jack, as we stood over the frog’s body: “you have been saved the disagreeable necessity of killing it yourself, Ralph.”

This was true, and I was not sorry that the rhinoceros had done me this service; for, to say truth, I have ever felt the necessity of killing animals in cold blood to be one of the few disagreeable points in the otherwise delightful life of a naturalist. To shoot animals in the heat and excitement of the chase I have never felt to be particularly repulsive or difficult; but the spearing of an insect, or the deliberate killing of an unresisting frog, are duties which I have ever performed with a feeling of deep self-abhorrence.

Carefully packing my frog in leaves, and placing it in my pouch, I turned with my companions to quit the scene of our late encounter and return to our camp, on arriving at which we purposed sending back Makarooroo to cut off the horn of the rhinoceros; for we agreed that, as it was impossible to carry away the entire carcass, we ought at least to secure the horn as a memorial of our adventure.