The Red Eric

This debate caused Ailie infinite amusement, for she experienced considerable difficulty herself in pronouncing that name, and had a very truthful picture of the hippopotamus hanging at that moment in her room at home.

“Isn’t Tim Rokens very funny, papa?” she remarked in a whisper, looking up in her father’s face.

“Hush! my pet, and look yonder. There is something funnier, if I mistake not.”

He pointed, as he spoke, to a ripple in the water on the opposite side of the river, close under a bank which was clothed with rank, broad-leaved, and sedgy vegetation. In a few seconds a large crocodile put up its head, not farther off than twenty yards from the canoe, which apparently it did not see, and opening its tremendous jaws, afforded the travellers a splendid view of its teeth and throat. Briant afterwards asserted that he could see down its throat, and could almost tell what it had had for dinner!

“Plaze, sir, may I shoot him?” cried Briant, seizing his loaded musket, and looking towards the captain for permission.

“It’s of no use while in that position,” remarked the trader, who regarded the hideous-looking monster with the calm unconcern of a man accustomed to such sights.

“You may try;” said the captain with a grin. Almost before the words had left his lips, Phil took a rapid aim and fired. At the same identical moment the crocodile shut his jaws with a snap, as if he had an intuitive perception that something uneatable was coming. The bullet consequently hit his forehead, off which it glanced as if it had struck a plate of cast-iron. The reptile gave a wabble, expressive of lazy surprise, and sank slowly back into the slimy water.

The shot startled more than one huge creature, for immediately afterwards they heard several flops in the water near them, but the tall sedges prevented their seeing what animals they were. A whole troop of monkeys, too, went shrieking away into the woods, showing that those nimble creatures had been watching all their movements, although, until that moment, they had taken good care to keep themselves out of sight.

“Never fire at a crocodile’s head,” said the trader, as the party resumed their paddles, and continued their ascent of the stream; “you might as well fire at a stone wall. It’s as hard as iron. The only place that’s sure to kill it just behind the foreleg. The niggers always spear them there.”

“What do they spear them for?” asked Dr Hopley.

“They eat ’em,” replied the trader; “and the meat’s not so bad after you get used to it.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Glynn Proctor; “I should fancy the great difficulty is to get used to it.”

“If you ever chance to go for a week without tasting fresh meat,” replied the trader quietly, “you’ll not find it so difficult as you think.”

That night the travellers encamped in the woods, and a wild charmingly romantic scene their night bivouac was—so thought Ailie, and so, too, would you have thought, reader, had you been there. King Bumble managed to kindle three enormous fires, for the triple purpose of keeping the party warm—for it was cold at night—of scaring away wild beasts, and of cooking their supper. These fires he fed at intervals during the whole night with huge logs, and the way in which he made the sparks fly up in among the strange big leaves of the tropical trees and parasitical plants overhead, was quite equal, if not superior, to a display of regular fireworks.

Then Bumble and Glynn built a little platform of logs, on which they strewed leaves and grass, and over which they spread a curtain or canopy of broad leaves and boughs. This was Ailie’s couch. It stood in the full blaze of the centre fire, and commanded a view of all that was going on in every part of the little camp; and when Ailie lay down on it after a good supper, and was covered up with a blanket, and further covered over with a sort of gauze netting to protect her from the mosquitoes, which were very numerous—when all this was done, we say, and when, in addition to this, she lay and witnessed the jovial laughter and enjoyment of His Majesty King Bumble, as he sat at the big fire smoking his pipe, and the supreme happiness of Phil Briant, and the placid joy of Tim Rokens, and the exuberant delight of Glynn, and the semi-scientific enjoyment of Dr Hopley as he examined a collection of rare plants; and the quiet comfort of the trader, and the awkward, shambling, loose-jointed pleasure of long Jim Scroggles; and the beaming felicity of her own dear father; who sat not far from her, and turned occasionally in the midst of the conversation to give her a nod—she felt in her heart that then and there she had fairly reached the very happiest moment in all her life.

Ailie gazed in dreamy delight until she suddenly and unaccountably saw at least six fires, and fully half-a-dozen Bumbles, and eight or nine Glynns, and no end of fathers, and thousands of trees, and millions of sparks, all jumbled together in one vast complicated and magnificent pyrotechnic display; and then she fell asleep.

It is a curious fact, and one for which it is not easy to account, that however happy you may be when you go to sleep out in the wild woods, you invariably awake in the morning in possession of a very small amount of happiness indeed. Probably it is because one in such circumstances is usually called upon to turn out before he has had enough sleep; perhaps it may be that the fires have burnt low or gone out altogether, and the gloom of a forest before sunrise is not calculated to elevate the spirits. Be this as it may, it is a fact that when Ailie was awakened on the following morning about daybreak, and told to get up, she felt sulky—positively and unmistakably sulky.

We do not say that she looked sulky or acted sulkily—far from it; but she felt sulky, and that was a very uncomfortable state of things. We dwell a little on this point because we do not wish to mislead our young readers into the belief that life in the wild woods is all delightful together. There are shadows as well as lights there—some of them, alas! so deep that we would not like even to refer to them while writing in a sportive vein.

But it is also a fact, that when Ailie was fairly up and once more in the canoe, and when the sun began to flood the landscape with his golden light and turn the water into liquid fire, her temporary feelings of discomfort passed away, and her sensation of intense enjoyment returned.

The scenery through which they passed on the second day was somewhat varied. They emerged early in the day upon the bosom of a large lake which looked almost like the ocean. Here there were immense flocks of water-fowl, and among them that strange, ungainly bird, the pelican. Here, too, there were actually hundreds of crocodiles. The lake was full of little mud islands, and on all of them these hideous and gigantic reptiles were seen basking lazily in the sun.

Several shots were fired at them, but although the balls hit, they did not penetrate their thick hides, until at last one took effect in the soft part close behind the foreleg. The shot was fired by the trader, and it killed the animal instantly. It could not have been less than twenty feet long, but before they could secure it the carcass sank in deep water.

“What a pity!” remarked Glynn, as the eddies circled round the spot where it had gone down.

“Ah, so it is!” replied the doctor; “but he would have been rather large to preserve and carry home as a specimen.”

“I ax yer parding, sir,” said Tim Rokens, addressing Dr Hopley; “but I’m curious to know if crocodiles has got phrenoligy?”

“No doubt of it,” replied the doctor, laughing. “Crocodiles have brains, and brains when exercised must be enlarged and developed, especially in the organs that are most used, hence corresponding development must take place in the skull.”

“I should think, doctor,” remarked the captain, who was somewhat sceptical, “that their bumps of combativeness must be very large.”

“Probably they are,” continued the doctor; “something like my friend Phil Briant here. I would venture to guess, now, that his organ of combativeness is well-developed—let me see.”

The doctor, who sat close beside the Irishman, caused him to pull in his paddle and submit his head for inspection.

“Ah! then, don’t operate on me, doctor dear! I’ve a mortial fear o’ operations iver since me owld grandmother’s pig got its foreleg took off at the hip-jint.”

“Hold your tongue, Paddy. Now the bump lies here—just under—eh! why, you haven’t got so much as—what!”

“Plaize, I think it’s lost in fat, sur,” remarked Briant, in a plaintive tone, as if he expected to be reprimanded for not having brought his bump of combativeness along with him.

“Well,” resumed the doctor, passing his fingers through Briant’s matted locks, “I suppose you’re not so combative as we had fancied—”

“Thrue for you,” interrupted Phil.

“But, strange enough, I find your organ of veneration is very large, very large indeed; singularly so for a man of your character; but I cannot feel it easily, you have such a quantity of hair.”

“Which is it, doctor dear?” inquired Phil.

“This one I am pressing now.”

“Arrah! don’t press so hard, plaze, it’s hurtin’ me ye are. Shure that’s the place where I run me head slap up agin the spanker-boom four days ago. Av that’s me bump o’ vineration, it wos three times as big an’ twice as hard yisterday—it wos, indade.”

Interruptions in this world of uncertainty are not uncommon, and in the African wilds they are peculiarly frequent. The interruption which occurred on the present occasion to Dr Hopley’s reply was, we need scarcely remark, exceedingly opportune. It came in the form of a hippopotamus, which rose so close to the boat that Ailie got a severe start, and Tim Rokens made a blow at its head with his paddle. It did not seem to notice the boat, but after blowing a quantity of water from its nostrils, and opening its horrible mouth as if it were yawning, it slowly sank again into the flood.

“Wot an ’orrible crittur!” exclaimed Jim Scroggles, in amazement at the sight.

“The howdacious willain!” remarked Rokens.

“Is that another on ahead?” said Glynn, pointing to an object floating on the water about a hundred yards up the river: for they had passed the lake, and were now ascending another stream. “D’ye see it, Ailie? Look!”

The object sank as he spoke, and Ailie looked round just in time to see the tail of a crocodile flop the water and follow its owner to the depths below.

“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Ailie, with one of those peculiar intonations that told Glynn she saw something very beautiful, and that induced the remainder of the crew to rest on their paddles, and turn their eyes in the direction indicated.

They did not require to ask what she saw, for the child’s finger directed their eyes to a spot on the bank of the river, where, under the shadow of a spreading bush with gigantic leaves, stood a lovely little gazelle. The graceful creature had trotted down to the stream to drink, and did not observe the canoe, which had been on the point of rounding a bank that jutted out into the river where its progress was checked. The gazelle paused a moment, looked round to satisfy itself that no enemy was near, and then put its lips to the water.

Alas! for the timid little thing! There were enemies near it and round it in all directions. There were leopards and serpents of the largest size in the woods, and man upon the river—although on this occasion it chanced that most of the men who gazed in admiration at its pretty form were friends. But its worst enemy, a crocodile, was lurking close under the mud-bank at its feet.

Scarcely had its parched lips reached the stream when a black snout darted from the water, and the next instant the gazelle was struggling in the crocodile’s jaws. A cry of horror burst from the men in the boat, and every man seized a musket; but before an aim could be taken the struggle was over; the monster had dived with its prey, and nothing but a few streaks of red foam floated on the troubled water.

Ailie did not move. She stood with her hands tightly clasped and her eyes starting almost out of their sockets. At last her feelings found vent. She threw her arms round her father’s neck, and burying her face in his bosom, burst into a passionate flood of tears.

Chapter Eleven.

Native Doings, and a Cruel Murder—Jim Scroggles Sees Wonders, and has a Terrible Adventure

It took two whole days and nights to restore Ailie to her wonted cheerful state of mind, after she had witnessed the death of the gazelle. But although she sang and laughed, and enjoyed herself as much as ever, she experienced the presence of a new and strange feeling, that ever after that day, tinged her thoughts and influenced her words and actions.

The child had for the first time in her life experienced one of those rude shocks—one of those rough contacts with the stern realities of life which tend to deepen and intensify our feelings. The mind does not always grow by slow, imperceptible degrees, although it usually does so. There are periods in the career of every one when the mind takes, as it were, a sharp run and makes a sudden and stupendous jump out of one region of thought into another in which there are things new as well as old.

The present was such an occasion to little Ailie Dunning. She had indeed seen bloody work before, in the cutting-up of a whale. But although she had been told it often enough, she did not realise that whales have feelings and affections like other creatures. Besides, she had not witnessed the actual killing of the whale; and if she had, it would probably have made little impression on her beyond that of temporary excitement—not even that, perhaps, had her father been by her side. But she sympathised with the gazelle. It was small, and beautiful, and lovable. Her heart had swelled the moment she saw it, and she had felt a longing desire to run up to it and throw her arms round its soft neck, so that, when she saw it suddenly struggling and crushed in the tremendous jaws of the horrible crocodile, every tender feeling in her breast was lacerated; every fibre of her heart trembled with a conflicting gush of the tenderest pity and the fiercest rage. From that day forward new thoughts began to occupy her mind, and old ideas presented themselves in different aspects.

We would not have the reader suppose, for a moment, that Ailie became an utterly changed creature. To an unobservant eye—such as that of Jim Scroggles, for instance—she was the same in all respects a few days after as she had been a few hours before the event. But new elements had been implanted in her breast, or rather, seeds which had hitherto lain dormant were now caused to burst forth into plants by the All-wise Author of her being. She now felt for the first time—she could not tell why—that enjoyment was not the chief good in life.

Of course she did not argue or think out all this clearly and methodically to herself. Her mind, on most things, material as well as immaterial, was very much what may be termed a jumble; but undoubtedly the above processes of reasoning and feeling, or something like them, were the result to Ailie of the violent death of that little gazelle.

The very next day after this sad event the travellers came to a native village, at which they stayed a night, in order to rest and procure fresh provisions. The trader was well-known at this village, but the natives, all of whom were black, of course, and nearly naked, had never seen a little white girl before, so that their interest in and wonder at Ailie were quite amusing to witness. They crowded round her, laughing and exclaiming and gesticulating in a most remarkable manner, and taking special notice of her light-brown glossy hair, which seemed to fill them with unbounded astonishment and admiration; as well it might, for they had never before seen any other hair except the coarse curly wool on their own pates, and the long lank hair of the trader, which happened to be coarse and black.

The child was at first annoyed by the attentions paid her, but at last she became interested in the sooty little naked children that thronged round her, and allowed them to handle her as much as they pleased, until her father led her to the residence of the chief or king of the tribe. Here she was well treated, and she began quite to like the people who were so kind to her and her friends. But she chanced to overhear a conversation between the doctor and Tim Rokens, which caused her afterwards to shrink from the negroes with horror.

She was sitting on a bank picking wild-flowers some hours after the arrival of her party, and teaching several black children how to make necklaces of them, when the doctor and Rokens happened to sit down together at the other side of a bush which concealed her from their view. Tim was evidently excited, for the tones of his voice were loud and emphatic.

“Yes,” he said, in reply to some questions put to him by the doctor; “yes, I seed ’em do it, not ten minutes agone, with my own two eyes. Oh! but I would like to have ’em up in a row—every black villain in the place—an’ a cutlass in my hand, an’—an’ wouldn’t I whip off their heads? No, I wouldn’t; oh, no, by no means wotiver.”

There was something unusually fierce in Rokens’ voice that alarmed Ailie.

“I was jist takin’ a turn,” continued the sailor, “down by the creek yonder, when I heerd a great yellin’ goin’ on, and saw the trader in the middle of a crowd o’ black fellows, a-shakin’ his fists; so I made sail, of course, to lend a hand if he’d got into trouble. He was scoldin’ away in the native lingo, as if he’d bin a born nigger.

“‘Wot’s all to do?’ says I.

“‘They’re goin’ to kill a little boy,’ says he, quite fierce like, ‘’cause they took it into their heads he’s bewitched.’

“An’ sayin’ that, he sot to agin in the other lingo, but the king came up an’ told him that the boy had to be killed ’cause he had a devil in him, and had gone and betwitched a number o’ other people; an’ before he had done speakin’, up comes two fellers, draggin’ the poor little boy between them. The king axed him if he wos betwitched, and the little chap—from sheer fright, I do believe—said he wos. Of coorse I couldn’t understand ’em, but the trader explained it all arter. Well, no sooner had he said that, than they all gave a yell, and rushed upon the poor boy with their knives, and cut him to pieces. It’s as sure as I’m sittin’ here,” cried Rokens, savagely, as his wrath rose again at the bare recital of the terrible deed he had witnessed. “I would ha’ knocked out the king’s brains there and then, but the trader caught my hand, and said, in a great fright, that if I did, it would not only cost me my life, but likely the whole party; so that cooled me, and I come away; an’ I’m goin’ to ax the captin wot we shud do.”

“We can do nothing,” said the doctor sadly. “Even suppose we were strong enough to punish them, what good would it do? We can’t change their natures. They are superstitious, and are firmly persuaded they did right in killing that poor boy.”

The doctor pondered for a few seconds, and then added, in a low voice, as if he were weighing the meaning of what he said: “Clergymen would tell us that nothing can deliver them from this bondage save a knowledge of the true God and of His Son Jesus Christ; that the Bible might be the means of curing them, if Bibles were only sent, and ministers to preach the gospel.”

“Then why ain’t Bibles sent to ’em at once?” asked Rokens, in a tone of great indignation, supposing that the doctor was expressing his own opinion on the subject. “Is there nobody to look arter these matters in Christian lands?”

“Oh, yes, there are many Bible Societies, and both Bibles and missionaries have been sent to this country; but it’s a large one, and the societies tell us their funds are limited.”

“Then why don’t they git more funds?” continued Rokens, in the same indignant tone, as his mind still dwelt upon the miseries and wickedness that he had seen, and that might be prevented; “why don’t they git more funds, and send out heaps o’ Bibles, an’ no end o’ missionaries?”

“Tim Rokens,” said the doctor, looking earnestly into his companion’s face, “if I were one of the missionaries, I might ask you how much money you ever gave to enable societies to send Bibles and missionaries to foreign lands?”

Tim Rokens was for once in his life completely taken aback. He was by nature a stolid man, and not easily put out. He was a shrewd man, too, and did not often commit himself. When he did, he was wont to laugh at himself, and so neutralise the laugh raised against him. But here was a question that was too serious for laughter, and yet one which he could not answer without being self-condemned. He looked gravely in the doctor’s face for two minutes without speaking; then he heaved a deep sigh, and said slowly, and with a pause between each word—

“Doctor Hopley—I—never—gave—a—rap—in—all—my—life.”

“So then, my man,” said the doctor, smiling, “you’re scarcely entitled to be indignant with others.”

“Wot you remark, doctor, is true; I—am—not.”

Having thus fully and emphatically condemned himself, and along with himself all mankind who are in a similar category, Tim Rokens relapsed into silence, deliberately drew forth his pipe, filled it, lit it, and began to smoke.

None of the party of travellers slept well that night, except perhaps the trader, who was accustomed to the ways of the negroes, and King Bumble, who had been born and bred in the midst of cruelties. Most of them dreamed of savage orgies, and massacres of innocent children, so that when daybreak summoned them to resume their journey, they arose and embarked with alacrity, glad to get away from the spot.

During that day and the next they saw a great number of crocodiles and hippopotami, besides strange birds and plants innumerable. The doctor filled his botanical-box to bursting. Ailie filled her flower-basket to overflowing. Glynn hit a crocodile on the back with a bullet, and received a lazy stare from the ugly creature in return, as it waddled slowly down the bank on which it had been lying, and plumped into the river. The captain assisted Ailie to pluck flowers when they landed, which they did from time to time, and helped to arrange and pack them when they returned to the canoe. Tim Rokens did nothing particularly worthy of record; but he gave utterance to an immense number of sententious and wise remarks, which were listened to by Bumble with deep respect, for that sable gentleman had taken a great fancy for the bold harpooner, and treasured up all his sayings in his heart.

Phil Briant distinguished himself by shooting an immense serpent, which the doctor, who cut off and retained its head, pronounced to be an anaconda. It was full twenty feet long; and part of the body was cut up, roasted, and eaten by Bumble and the trader, though the others turned from it with loathing.

“It be more cleaner dan one pig, anyhow,” remarked Bumble, on observing the disgust of his white friends; “an’ you no objic’ to eat dat.”

“Clainer than a pig, ye spalpeen!” cried Phil Briant; “that only shows yer benighted haithen ignerance. Sure I lived in the same cabin wid a pig for many a year—not not to mintion a large family o’ cocks and hens—an’ a clainer baste than that pig didn’t stop in that cabin.”

“That doesn’t say much for your own cleanliness, or that of your family,” remarked Glynn.

“Och! ye’ve bin to school, no doubt, haven’t ye?” retorted Phil.

“I have,” replied Glynn.

“Shure I thought so. It’s there ye must have larned to be so oncommon cliver. Don’t you iver be persuaded for to go to school, Bumble, if ye iver git the chance. It’s a mighty lot o’ taichin’ they’d give ye, but niver a taste o’ edication. Tin to wan, they’d cram ye till ye turned white i’ the face, an’ that wouldn’t suit yer complexion, ye know, King Bumble, be no manes.”

As for the trader, he acted interpreter when the party fell in with negroes, and explained everything that puzzled them, and told them anecdotes without end about the natives and the wild creatures, and the traffic of the regions through which they passed. In short, he made himself generally useful and agreeable.

But the man who distinguished himself most on that trip was Jim Scroggles. That lanky individual one day took it into his wise head to go off on a short ramble into the woods alone. He had been warned by the trader, along with the rest of the party, not to venture on such a dangerous thing; but being an absent man the warning had not reached his intellect although it had fallen on his ear. The party were on shore cooking dinner when he went off, without arms of any kind, and without telling whither he was bound. Indeed, he had no defined intentions in his own mind. He merely felt inclined for a ramble, and so went away, intending to be back in half-an-hour or less.