Joshua Marvel

"I have a message for my brothers and hers," replied Joshua. "They live southward. Is that the direction Opara will take?"

"Opara will do as he has promised," said the old chief with dignity, "and will accompany you to the south."

"My sister will be glad if her message is delivered soon;" and Joshua's heart beat quickly at the prospect of deliverance.

Opara gravely bent his head; and that night it was decided that twenty young men and doctors of the tribe, including Opara, should start in a couple of days, with Joshua, for the south. When Joshua was informed of this, he went to Minnie's grave, and shed tears of joy, and gathered a little of the earth, and placed it in the bag round his neck which contained his most precious possessions. On the appointed morning they started early, accompanied by the entire tribe; but by noon all the stragglers had departed. In a few days their road lay through very rough country, where, although fruits and birds were plentiful (it being summer), Opara said they would not be able to live in the winter. Their great difficulty was to obtain water, for the creeks and watercourses were drying up; and Joshua was filled with admiration at the resources of the natives, who found water in places-digging it out of trees, indeed, very often-were a stranger would never have dreamed of searching for it. When Joshua saw them strike their stone weapons into a tree whence cold bright water flowed, he could not help thinking of Moses striking the rock. A favorite food with them was a species of shrubby plant which they called Karkalla, and which yielded a rich luscious fruit; and they ate, with intense relish, many species of grubs which they cut out of the bark of trees.

Among the party was one famous wizard and doctor, who was not disposed to look upon Joshua with the same friendly eye as the others did. When Minnie was ill, he had been especially desirous of exercising his arts upon her, and of restoring her to health, by which means his reputation with the tribe would have been enormously increased; and when Minnie died, he entertained the belief that he could have saved her if he had been allowed. This doctor's name was Nullaboin, and he had joined Joshua's escort because he thought that he might, by watching Joshua's movements, obtain some kind of knowledge that might be useful to him.

During the latter days of Minnie's illness Joshua had not played his accordion, which, it must be borne in mind, the natives had never seen. Joshua had kept it jealously concealed in its covering of fur, and had never played it in sight of the natives. It was at the end of the second week of their journey, when Joshua was looking out anxiously for traces of white settlers, that a circumstance occurred which boded him great danger. He had wandered, as he had been in the habit of doing every night, a long distance from where the natives pitched their camp. From time to time Opara and his party had met natives of different tribes, with whom they had conversed (though sometimes with difficulty, for their dialects differed) concerning the white men; and on this morning a strange native had given them such information as led Opara to tell Joshua that he believed he would soon be able to deliver Minnie's message to her brothers. Interpreting by this that the stranger they had met had seen something of Englishmen, Joshua, in the night, wandered farther from the camp than usual, in the vague hope that he might come upon traces of his countrymen. He saw none, and yet thought they might be near. An idea struck him. "Why should I not play my accordion?" he thought. "I might be within a short distance of my deliverers, and not know it. The sound of civilized music might reach their ears, and they would come to me." He acted upon the thought without delay. For the first time for many weeks, he took his accordion from its covering (it was slung round his shoulders by a strap of dried skin), and walked through the woods, playing, and swinging the instrument in the air, so that the sound should travel far. He little dreamed of the effect he produced. Nullaboin was tracking him-had tracked him every night in his wanderings. Hitherto Nullaboin had learned nothing; but now directly the music struck upon his ears, he was so amazed as almost to betray himself. The idea that flashed through that cunning savage mind was as singular as it was original. It was neither more nor less than that Joshua held Minnie's spirit imprisoned in the strange instrument from which the melodious sounds proceeded. They were the same as used to proceed from Minnie's hut, when it was imagined she was speaking with invisible shapes. What wonders might he not perform, could he obtain possession of that power! The mysterious spirits of air and heaven would speak to him, and would tell him strange things. But how could he obtain it-how? Joshua was strong-too strong for him. He was an old man-ay, he was an old man, and these spirits, if he could speak to them in their language, might teach him how to become young again. The courses of his blood quickened through the old wizard's veins at the wild hope, and he picked up a stone and cut at his breast in his excitement. He could not hope to wrest the magic power from Joshua singly. He must enlist his companions on his side. His influence was great, but Opara's was greater. He dreaded that aged chief. "If Opara knows," was his cunning thought, "Opara will claim it for himself. No, no; it is mine Nullaboin's. Here me, Pulyalanna! Strike Opara with your thunder to-night! Strike him dead! He has lived long enough." But as he thought, he started away in terror. Among the trees some twenty yards away, he saw a crouching figure, which he took to be one of the fabulous Purkabidnies, that roam through the woods at night to slay black men. It was but the charred stump of a tree, but it was sufficient to cause Nullaboin, the wizard, to fly from the spot in direst terror, towards the camp. He lay awake until Joshua returned, and noted with his lynx eyes that Joshua wore the magic instrument strapped round his shoulders. The following day he took occasion to speak to Joshua in a subtle manner, as thus: "Nullaboin dreamt last night of his daughter the Star."

Joshua nodded.

"She spoke to me. Her voice was like the voice of the birds. I shall see her soon."

Joshua gave him a startled look.

"Has her brother seen her?"

"No."

"Has she not spoken to him?"

"No."

"Nullaboin is a great mintapa, and his daughter knows his power."

All this was Greek to Joshua, and he did not encourage the old wizard to continue his revelations. But during that day and the next, Nullaboin was busy working upon the credulous minds of the younger natives, and found but little difficulty in inflaming their curiosity. Joshua's eagerness had become almost painful by this time; and when they were travelling over plains, every speck on the horizon became a horseman in his anxious eyes. Occasionally they had to make their way through dense scrub, where there were but few trees; but for the most part their road lay through the woods, where tall timber was abundant. Under any other circumstances, Joshua would have found the life he was leading wonderfully interesting, fatiguing as it was. Now they were wending their way through a gully, the heights on each side of which were so thickly wooded as almost to shut out the light of heaven; now they were on a plain somewhat thinly dotted with trees when suddenly a young savage would dart off in pursuit of a bee which his wonderful sight had detected fifty feet high in the air. Away buzzed the bee through the clear air, and, with his eyes fixed upon the tiny insect, after it flew the savage joined by other young men of the party, the older men following more leisurely. With unerring sight the hunters ran until the bee settled upon a tree; and with wondrous speed the bee-hunter, seeing the sugar-bags in the topmost branches, climbed the trunk, cutting notches in the bark for his toes with his stone hatchet, until he reached the sweet store, with which he loaded himself, and then rejoined his companions. Now they caught an enormous guana, more than five feet in length, upon which the natives feasted; and saw strange specimens of the mantis, which looked like rotten pieces of dead twigs until they were touched, when they crawled away by the aid of their abundant misshapen limbs. Now they came to a place where, surrounded by almost impenetrable scrub, in which patches of wild bananas grew, were a number of fresh-water lagoons, filled with reeds and weeds of every description, and abounding in screeching cockatoos and beautifully-colored ducks. While Nullaboin was busy with his scheme for obtaining the magic box in which he imagined Minnie's spirit was imprisoned, some members of a strange tribe came to the party, one of whom, to Joshua's amazement, was singing in imperfect English a verse of the ballad, "He promised to buy me a bunch of blue ribbons."1 The singer knew no other words of English: but he contrived to make Joshua understand that he had been among white men, which, indeed, was sufficiently evident from his singing.

"Opara," said Joshua, with sparkling eyes, "my brothers are near."

"It is well," was Opara's simple reply. "Opara will have performed his promise. When his daughter returns to her tribe, she will thank Opara."

But by this time Nullaboin's plans were matured; and that night, when Joshua wandered into the woods, his heart filled with grateful feelings towards the faithful savages, he was followed stealthily by Nullaboin, and a half-a-dozen braves who had joined in his plot.

"At last!" thought Joshua, visions of happiness to come floating before his eyes-"at last! Perhaps to-morrow I shall see the faces of my countrymen, and then, and then" – But he could not think clearly; for as the images of those dearest to him came before him, the false face of Solomon Fewster seemed to cast a shadow upon his happiness. He leaned against a silver-leaved gum-tree, and tried to calm himself, and in a little while succeeded. Ellen was true to him, he was sure. And Dan? "Is he training his birds still?" he thought "How has he borne his great grief?" He saw before him the dear old kitchen in Stepney, exactly as he had seen it last; every chair and every piece of crockery was in its exact place. Every detail of those last few minutes at home presented itself clearly to him: his yearning look at the old familiar room; his walking up the stairs to the street-door with his face hidden in his mother's neck, and she caressing him, as she had done when he was a little child. Almost unconsciously he had taken out his accordion, and his fingers were wandering over the keys, playing softly those airs most in consonance with his thoughts. He even murmured the words of "Tom Bowling:"

"Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,The darling of our crew."

"Dear Old Sailor! How glad I shall be to see his honest face!" And he saw the Old Sailor take a wedding-ring out of a piece of silver-paper, with a triumphant expression upon his face, as he had done in that memorable interview in Gravesend, when-whiz! Good God! what was this? The sky seemed to come down upon the earth, and he sank through it-down! down! -

Nullaboin, snatching the accordion from the falling man, hugged it to his naked breast, and glided swiftly away, followed by his confederates. They must have traversed full four miles before they paused, and then they looked cautiously around, to assure themselves that they were alone. The old wizard had kept the instrument tightly pressed to his bosom during the flight, so that no sound had proceeded from it; but now, when they paused, his grasp relaxed. His hand was on the keys: and and as the accordion gradually distended itself, a slow wail issued from it, which so terrified him that he let it fall to the ground, so that the weak and plaintive sound was followed by a harsh and sudden jangle of all the notes. Appalled at this angry cry, which was to them full of fearful meaning, the younger savages, with palpitating hearts and dismayed faces, flew from the spot, and left Nullaboin alone with the terrible prize. He stood like a statue for many minutes, although the thick beads of perspiration were rolling down his face and beard, and then cautiously approached the prostrate mystery. Encouraged by its silence, he stooped over it, and, after his savage fashion, entreated it to speak to him. No answer came. What should he do? A sudden light came into his eyes. Minnie's spirit was imprisoned there, and she was angry. He would release her. He lifted the accordion gently from the ground, and timidly pressed his finger upon one of the higher keys. The response was gentle, almost piteous; it was an appeal to him.

"O Star of the tribe!" he whispered, "Nullaboin will set you free. Make him great!"

He took a small green-stone mogo (hatchet) from his girdle, and carefully cut a long hole in the cloth. He held his hand over it to grasp the spirit; but he saw nothing, heard nothing. He waited; nothing came. He took it in his hand, and waved it up and down; no sound issued from it. The spirit had fled, and the old wizard was left despairing.

Joshua felt no pain. A delicious sense of rest was upon him. Of all the memories that came to him in his dreams, the happy holiday he had spent with Dan and Ellen on the Old Sailor's barge was the most vivid. He lived once more through the whole of that happy day-stood in Dan's room in his holiday clothes, with food for the birds which were to be presented to the Old Sailor-went down to breakfast, and saw Ellen's yearning look as they talked of the coming pleasures of the day-saw her run out of the room and run in again, almost mad with delight because Susan had obtained permission for her to accompany the lads-rode in the creaking cart through dingy Whitechapel-saw Dan swinging in the hammock and gazing at him affectionately while he was rowing-heard every word of the Old Sailor's sea-stories over again-sat on the deck in the twilight in a state of delicious happiness by Ellen's side, and went down into the saloon, and heard the Old Sailor sing, and then Ellen, her favorite song of "Bread-and-cheese and Kisses." After that a darkness came upon him, and he opened his eyes, and saw the stars shining in the heavens; but they were shut out immediately afterwards, and he was standing on the deck of the "Merry Andrew" the night the ship struck on the rocks; holding Minnie in his arms; the dead faces of his shipmates crowded upon him, rising from the cruel sea with the exact expression upon their features that they wore when he last saw them; then came his encounter with the Lascar in the woods; and that memory brought to him the face of Solomon Fewster, which lingered long; but it faded in its turn, and gave way to other fancies, the most enduring of which was the river near which Minnie was buried, and the refrain of her words, "So restless there, so quiet here!" dwelt in his mind through the long night.

When he awoke it was daylight. He struggled to his feet, but could scarcely stand for weakness. He had been struck by a boomerang on the temple, and had lost a great deal of blood. He was so weak and bewildered that, even now that he was awake the past incidents of his life were strangely mingled in his mind. It was not until after long mental pondering and sifting of incidents that the true knowledge of his position and of what had occurred to him dawned upon his senses. He looked round for his accordion; it was gone. Then he thought, "Opara has betrayed me at the last moment. They have stolen my accordion, and they have left me here for dead. But they may return at any moment to strip me of what I have about me." Weak and faint as he was he crawled cautiously towards the most thickly-wooded part of the forest, and there concealed himself. "What now?" he thought. "Must I wait for death?" For indeed he was too weak to walk. His heart almost fainted within him.

"Now, when I was so near to deliverance," he groaned aloud, shedding bitter tears, "to be thus dashed back to misery!" But even as he uttered the words, he heard the crack of a stockman's whip. Crack! It rang through the woods and through his heart. Not the mockery of a whip-bird this time! No, no; it was too near; and it was followed by the sound of horses' hoofs and by the sound of English voices. Thank God! thank God!

CHAPTER XLII

FAITHFUL HEARTS

On a pleasant summer evening Dan and Ellen and George Marvel were sitting in the shade of the veranda which surrounded three sides of their house. The house was built of wood, and was all on one floor, and there was a garden in the front and in the rear. George Marvel was smoking his pipe as usual, and having by this time got used to the short clays, which were the only ones he could now obtain, had just declared that he enjoyed a short pipe as well as a long one; "though I couldn't stomach them at first, Dan, as you know." Dan nodded in acquiescence; he had no time to reply; for at that moment a great shouting was heard, and the mail-cart was seen driving round the corner towards them. The arrival of the mail-cart in the village was an event of the utmost importance, and was always greeted with cheers by the excited population. There was a mail-service once a fortnight, and sometimes it would be a day or two behind, which was most serviceable to the inhabitants of the village, as giving them something to be anxious about and to talk about. The driver (who was contractor for the mail, owner of the mail-cart, and driver of it, all in one) had one invariable excuse when he was late; he had been waiting for the birds. Now, when Dan first heard this, he, without knowing its meaning, felt instantly attracted to the driver of the mail, whose name was Ramsay; and when he had an explanation from the lips of a neighbor to whom Ramsay had given a lift (he was always giving kindly "lifts" to one and another), Dan was disposed to be affectionately familiar with him. This feeling being reciprocated by Ramsay, an intimacy sprung up between them, the consequence of which was, that Ramsay, after delivering his mails to the postmaster (a rheumatic old woman, deaf, and almost blind), came as regularly as a clock to have a smoke and a chat with Dan and the Marvels. A curious character was Ramsay; a man who had seen better days-who had, indeed, once been very wealthy-who had been plundered and deceived from his youth upwards-and who yet retained a kindliness to every living thing with which he came in contact. Thus, his waiting for the birds: it was whimsical, pretty childish, some said; consisting in stopping whichever of his two steady old mares he was driving, immediately he saw a bird on the bush track before him. "Get out of my way, little bird," he would say in a singularly gentle voice, and he would give his whip a flick at the back of his cart, which had not the slightest effect in disturbing the little creature that blocked the road. But Ramsay could no more drive past it than he could drive through a wire fence; and he often found it necessary to descend from his cart, and walk softly towards the bird, which, having probably by that time finished its pecking, would jerk up its cunning head towards the intruder, and leisurely take flight to the nearest tree, where it would watch the lazy old mare trotting along and would receive perhaps a comical "Good-morning, little bird!" from the gentle-hearted mail-contractor.

When Ramsay had delivered his mail to the rheumatic old female postmaster, he would look over the letters and newspapers (five minutes was long enough to sort the lot of them) to see whether there was any thing for Dan and Mr. Marvel. On this evening there was a newspaper; and Ramsay, taking possession of it, walked leisurely to the house of his friends. Ellen's child, Maggie, saw him, and ran to him for a jump in the air, and he stopped to indulge her until he was out of breath, when he was glad to deliver her into her mother's charge, shaking his head laughingly in answer to her cries for "more!"

"Hi, Mrs. Wattles!" he shouted to a woman who was passing. "There's a letter for you at the post-office." Which sent Mrs. Wattles off, in eager haste, to receive her missive.

"You're a day late," said Dan, as Ramsay opened the gate.

"Waiting for the birds, Dan; couldn't get along for the creatures. Here's a newspaper for you."

The newspaper had an English postage-stamp upon it, and there was something marked inside.

"It's from the Old Sailor!" cried Dan, and pressed it to his lips and so did Ellen, and all those simple foolish people, in turns, one after another. The paragraph that was marked related how a ship, with all hands, was reported lost ten years ago, and there was nothing more heard of her until a week before the newspaper was printed, when into the London Docks came a vessel from China, which had been driven out of her course, luckily, and had in consequence picked up six men off an island, who had been living there for many years; and how that these men belonged to the crew who were supposed to have gone to the bottom ten years before. You may imagine that they read this paragraph half a dozen times at the least, having Joshua in their minds all the time, and that Ellen and Mrs. Marvel disappeared for a few minutes to have a cry together. While they were away, the men sat silent and grave, Dan reading the newspaper, and George Marvel and Ramsay smoking their pipes.

Now, once in every month-that is, by every other mail-Ramsay had to deliver a mail-bag at a cattle-station known as Bull's Run. The station was between forty and fifty miles distant from the village, and Ramsay took two days for the journey, out of a merciful regard for his old mare. As he had to start for Bull's Run early in the morning, he did not stay late with his friends, but bade them goodnight at about nine o'clock. When he was gone, the Old Sailor became the subject of conversation, and every circumstance of their intimacy was recalled and dwelt upon with loving affection. Every night they sat together-Susan as well, although she never joined in the conversation-talking of one thing and another. Time had softened their grief, but it had not made them less constant; their hearts beat as fondly and devotedly for Joshua as ever they had done.

Susan and Mr. and Mrs. Marvel had gone to bed; Ellen and Dan were alone. Between these two an undefinable sympathy existed; they could almost read each other's thoughts; and this night Ellen lingered when the others had retired to rest, because she had read in Dan's face the signs of something more than usually important in his mind. For a long time they were silent; the stillness of every thing around impressed them deeply. The nature of their thoughts and the stillness of the night, in which there was something solemn, brought to both of them the memory of another night, years ago, when they had sat alone as they were sitting now, with Basil Kindred's unopened diary before them.

"Ellen," said Dan, playing with her fingers thoughtfully, "I have dreamed of Jo lately more often than usual, and to-night my thoughts dwell upon him so strongly that I shall not go to bed for a while."

"I will sit up with you, my dear."

The windows in the room were folding windows, and reached to the ground. Ellen opened them; and she and Dan were presently sitting beneath the veranda, he upon a chair, she upon the ground, with her head resting in his lap.

"Do you remember that Christmas night, Ellen, when Jo came home?"

"Yes, Dan."

"And the strange impression I had upon me that Jo was near us, although I had no actual knowledge of it?"

"Yes."

"I can see the street as we saw it then, Ellen, with its covering of snow, and that cruel black gash in it which the only man who passed tore with his feet. It was like an ill-omen. You see nothing to disturb the beauty of the scene, Ellen?"

"No; but why do you ask, my dear?"

"Because I have upon me to-night the same feeling that I had then; because notwithstanding that it is almost madness to say it and believe it, I believe that Jo is near us."

"Dan!"

"To no one else but you would I say this, my dear. Long dwelling upon one subject fills the mind with singular thought concerning it, and it may be that this feeling that is upon me now is but the creation of the wildest fancy. Yet there are strange influences within us and around us for which we cannot account, and which affect us in mysterious ways. When I first knew that it was Jo's wish to be a sailor, and that we should be parted, I tried with all my mind and soul-it may be that it was a foolish, childish fancy, Ellen, but I had it-to create such a heart sympathy between us that we could never be parted in spirit. I had some wild ideas then of being able to dream of what he was doing and seeing when he was thousands of miles away from our little room in Stepney. Of course they came to nothing; but it would be strange indeed, if this earnest striving of mine had not produced some feeling within me which time only can test. You remember what poor Minnie's father used to say: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than is dreamed of in our philosophy.'"