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Fire Island, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 32. Nature's Warnings |
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_ CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. NATURE'S WARNINGS That hot sunny day passed with Oliver Lane and Panton seated in wicker chairs, under a sail stretched out as an awning, for they both declared that they could get better out in the air sooner than in the stuffy cabin. A regular watch was kept on deck, and, in addition, a man was stationed in the main-top, where a doubly folded sail had been rigged so as to form sides, and to act as a protection in case he were seen by the enemy and made a mark for their arrows; but nothing particular occurred. All around looked very beautiful, for nature was beginning to rapidly obliterate the devastation caused by the eruption and the earthquake wave. There was heat and there was moisture, with plenty of rich soil washed up in places, and these being three of her principal servants in beautifying a tropic land, they had been hard at work. Trees, whose roots had been buried in mud and sand, were putting forth green buds, the water was pretty well dried away, and in places the bare earth was showing faintly, bright patches of a tender green, while bird and insect, wonderful to see, were darting about like brilliant gems. As the two young men sat there weak and faint, but with the happy sensation of feeling that they were, if only at the beginning, still on the road back to health and strength, it seemed to them as if the events of the night when they returned from the expedition to the volcano might have been a dream. For the blacks had scared them on that day when they were fishing, and again during the absence of part of the crew. Then they had disappeared as suddenly as they appeared, and possibly they might never come again. Oliver thought and said so to Mr Rimmer, who, with a double gun resting in the hollow of his left arm, had joined them, for he spent nearly the whole of his time on deck. "Perhaps you are right," he said. "I hope it is so. We did give them a terrible peppering. I don't think anyone was killed, but they took away enough shot to make them remember us by." "Poor wretches," said Oliver. "They don't understand the powers of civilisation." "Poor wretches, indeed!" said Panton, giving a writhe. "I don't feel much pity for them. Murderous thieves." "They are," said the mate, "some of them, and it's wonderful what conceit the black beggars have. But we must not be too hopeful, for there's no trusting savages. They jump into their canoes and they are here, there, and everywhere in a few hours. Let's hear what report Mr Drew gives us when he comes back." "Hang the savages!" said Panton, pettishly. "Must catch 'em first, sir," said the mate, laughing. "They seem to have put a stop to everything," said Oliver, joining in with a smile. "But we'll forgive them if they'll only keep away and let us go on with our work, and," he added with a sigh, "it is such a lovely place, and there is so much to do." "Yes, it's glorious," said Panton, as his eyes slowly took in their surroundings. "Now, too, that the volcano's calming down, everything promises that we shall have had a glorious expedition." "Lovely, sir," said the mate, drily. "What about my poor ship?" "Yes, that is bad, but I wouldn't mind losing a brig for the sake of reaching so wonderful a country." "Ah, that's where I don't agree with you, sir," said the mate. "The place is very glorious, and it's grand to get to a new country--where--" "Look! look!" cried Oliver. "Mr Rimmer, your gun! Those birds with the long loose tails!" "Eh? Well, I didn't pull their tails and make 'em loose, sir. More likely the monkeys." "You've lost the chance," cried Oliver, pettishly. "Didn't you see? They were a kind of bird of paradise that I don't think I have seen before." "Those were, sir?" said the mate, looking after the birds. "Well, I should have said they were a kind of crow." "Well, so they are, but very beautiful, all the same. You might shoot a few birds for me, and I could sit and skin and preserve them, then I should not feel that I was losing so much time." "Wait till Mr Drew comes back, sir, and begin in earnest to-morrow. I'll shoot all I can then, and the men will be very glad of the birds without their skins, for they're longing for fresh meat, and if we can, we must have another turn at the fish." "And we can't go," sighed Oliver. "I am so longing to study up those wonderfully-marked fish." "You'll never get through all you want to do if we stay here for years," said the mate, smiling. "But look there, I must have that." He pointed over the side to where a handsome little roe-deer had come trotting forward away from some half-dozen companions which had halted and were gazing wonderingly at the brig, while the one which had advanced, evidently more daring or more carried away by curiosity, came on and on till it was about fifty yards from the vessel. Here it stood at gaze, so beautiful a specimen of an animal, that Oliver felt, naturalist though he was, and eager to collect, it would be a pity to destroy so lovely a creature's life. There it stood in full view, profoundly ignorant of the fact that its life was in danger, while the mate hurriedly exchanged the shot cartridge in one of the chambers of the gun for a bullet. Then, laying the barrel of his gun upon the bulwark in an opening between two pieces of the sailcloth rigged up for defence, he said, softly,-- "This skin will do for a specimen, too, won't it?" "Yes, of course," said Oliver, eagerly. "That's right, sir, and it has a beautiful head." He took careful aim as he spoke. "That's dead on the shoulder," he said, softly, and then he fired, the young men having the satisfaction of seeing the little buck go bounding away like the wind after its companions, who went off at the flash of the gun. "Missed him," said Panton, rather contemptuously. "Couldn't have missed," said the mate, sharply. "I took such careful aim. Wait a moment or two, and you'll see it drop. It was a dead shot." "Then you didn't kill its legs, too," said Oliver; "they're lively enough. How the little thing can run." "I tell you it's a dead roe-buck," said the mate, sharply. "Then why does it keep on running?" said Panton. "That's the vitality left in it," said the mate. "It will soon drop. I'll go after it at once. It can't run far." As he was speaking he hurriedly threw open the breech of his piece and drew out the discharged cartridge. "Hullo!" he cried. "What's the matter?" said Oliver. "Well, hang it all!" "Why don't you speak?" "It's enough to make any man speak," cried the mate, angrily. "Don't you see this is only a blue cartridge and number six shot? I pulled the wrong trigger. Here's the bullet cartridge in the other barrel." "Then you only tickled the buck," said Panton, laughing. "Why, at fifty yards that shot wouldn't go through the skin." "Humph!" said the mate, "so much the better for the buck. What a pity, though; there goes a delicious dinner of good fresh venison." "Never mind, you may get another chance." "I don't know. If this is an island, there are not likely to be a great many, and once they are shot at they will become shy. See anything, my lad?" he cried to the man in the sheltered top. "No, sir, not a sign o' nothing," replied the sailor. "Keep a sharp look-out." "Ay, ay, sir." The mate turned to the wounded passengers. "These fellows generally have an idea that their officer is as blind as a mole, and that they are as cunning as the cleverest man who was ever born. Now that fellow thinks I don't know he was asleep at his post." "Was he?" said Oliver, rather anxiously. "To be sure he was. If he had been awake he would have seen those deer and given warning, seeing how all the men are longing for a bit of fresh meat." "Well, it seems probable," said Panton. "No seem about it, Mr Panton. He was fast asleep, sir, till I fired. Then he woke up and was all eagerness. Now if I was not a good-tempered, easy-going sort of man, do you know what I should do?" "Haul that bit of sail down and let him take his chance of getting an arrow in him for his neglect." The mate walked away, and ordered another man aloft to take the culprit's place, the offender receiving a very severe bullying, and being sent below. The day wore slowly by, and as it grew towards sundown, Mr Rimmer began to walk faster about the deck with a growing anxiety which was shared by Drew's two companions. "I don't know who'd be in command!" he said. "Here have I just got through one worry because you didn't return, had a sharp attack from savages, and had you two badly wounded; and now off goes Mr Drew and gets himself lost. Here has he been away all these hours, and he might have been back in six. There, I know how it is. The niggers are out in force, and have got between them and the brig as sure as can be, that is if they haven't been killed before now. It will be dark directly, and as sure as fate we shall have another attack to-night. Wish I hadn't let him go." "He'll be too cautious to get into a trap," said Oliver, whose face looked drawn and old with anxiety. "He'll mean to be, sir, but the blacks have a cleverness of their own, and it's hard to get the better of them, civilised as we are. Tut, tut, tut! It would be madness to start in search of them without knowing which way to go." "Yet, they would be as likely to come from the west as the east." "Of course, and from the north as from the south. There, I've got blue lights ready, and the men's arms are lying to hand. If they don't come soon, and the blacks make their appearance instead, I'm afraid they will find me vicious." "Let's try to be patient," said Oliver. "Patience, sir! I've none of that left. Now then, I think it's time you gentlemen went below." "Not yet," said Oliver. "It is so much cooler here, and if we went below we should be fidgety, and fretting horribly. There goes the sun." For as he spoke the great glowing disk of orange light dipped below the horizon, great broad rays shot up nearly to the firmament, which for a few minutes was of a transparent amber; then all rapidly turned grey, dark grey, pale purple, purple, and almost directly black, covered with brilliant stars. "No moon for three hours," said the mate, as he looked round at the black darkness, when the silence was suddenly broken by a chorus of croaking, roaring and chirruping from reptile and insect. Then came the strange trumpetings of birds; the splashings of crocodiles, accompanied by roaring barks and the flogging of the water with their tails. Once there was the unmistakable wailing cry of one of the great panther cats answered at a distance, while from the north there came every now and then a flickering flash of lightning evidently from the clouds hanging heavily over the huge crater. Then for a few moments silence, and a soft moist coolness floated by the watchers, followed by a heated puff, suggestive of a breath from the volcano, and they were conscious of a dull quivering of the deck. "Wasn't thunder," said the mate. "That was a grumble down below." Almost as he finished speaking there was a dull muttering, soon followed, not preceded, by flash after flash. "Like a storm upside down," said Panton. "Not likely to have rain, are we, with the sky clear?" "Likely to have anything," said the mate, "round the foot of a great volcano." _Ha ha ha, haw haw haw_! "Bah those birds again," said Panton, as the peculiar laughing hoot of a great owl was heard, raising up quite a chorus from the nearest patch of forest, but silenced by another muttering from below. "We're going to have some terrible trouble, I'm afraid," said the mate. "The volcano's waking up again, and the birds and things know it. What's that?" "Rushing of wings overhead," replied Oliver. "Yes, the birds know, and are getting out of the way. Hark at those tiger things, too, how uneasy they are! I'd give all I've got, gentlemen, if Mr Drew and those two fellows were safe back on deck, for we shall have a storm to-night." "But we are not at sea," said Oliver. "More we are!" replied the mate. "'Pon my word, I was going on just as if I expected we were going to fight the waves. But I wish we were. I'd rather have solid water under me than boiling rock." "Quick! look out," cried Oliver excitedly as there was a rushing trampling sound in the distance, evidently coming nearer. "It's the savages we shall have to fight, and they're coming on again." They listened in the midst of an appalling stillness, while the whole deck seemed to be quivering, and the vessel gave two or three ominous cracks. There was another flash, then a boom, and a momentary blinding glare of light, while the coming trampling for a moment ceased, but only to be resumed again, as every man grasped his weapon, and felt for his supply of ammunition, feeling that in another minute he might be face to face with death. _ |
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