The Fugitives | Page 6

they had nothing to cook, the
deprivation was not great. Fortunately the weather at the time was
pleasantly warm, so that beyond the discomfort of not being able to
stretch out at full length, the occasional poking of awkward knots and
branches into their ribs, and the constant necessity of holding on lest
they should fall off, their circumstances were not insufferable, and
might have been worse.
While they are enjoying their repose, we will tell in a few sentences
who they were and how they got there.
When Mark Breezy, in the closing years of his medical-student career,
got leave to go on a voyage to China in one of his father's ships, the
Eastern Star, for the benefit of his health and the enlargement of his
understanding, he had no more idea that that voyage would culminate
in a bed up a tree in the forests of Madagascar than you, reader, have
that you will ultimately become an inhabitant of the moon! The same
remark may with equal truth be made of John Hockins when he joined
the Eastern Star as an able seaman, and of James Ginger--alias
Ebony--when he shipped as cook. If the captain of the Eastern Star had
introduced those three,--who had never seen each other before--and
told them that they would spend many months together among savages
in the midst of terrestrial beauty, surrounded by mingled human
depravity and goodness, self-denial and cruelty, fun and tragedy such
as few men are fated to experience, they would have smiled at each
other with good-natured scepticism and regarded their captain as a
facetious lunatic.
Yet so it turned out, though the captain prophesied it not--and this was
the way of it.
Becalmed off the coast of Madagascar, and having, through leakage in

one of the tanks, run short of water, the captain ordered a boat with
casks to be got ready to go ashore for water. The young doctor got
leave to land and take his gun for the purpose of procuring
specimens--for he was something of a naturalist--and having a ramble.
"Don't get out of hail, Doctor," said the captain, as the boat shoved off.
"All right, sir, I won't."
"An' take a couple o' the men into the bush with you in case of
accidents."
"Ay ay, sir," responded Mark, waving his hand in acknowledgment.
And that was the last that Mark Breezy and the captain of the Eastern
Star saw of each other for many a day.
"Who will go with me?" asked Mark, when the boat touched the shore.
"Me, massa," eagerly answered the negro cook, who had gone ashore in
the hope of being able to get some fresh vegetables from the natives if
any were to be found living there. "Seems to me dere's no black mans
here, so may's well try de woods for wild wegibles."
"No no, Ebony," said the first mate, who had charge of the boat, "you'll
be sure to desert if we let you go--unless we send Hockins to look after
you. He's the only man that can keep you in order."
"Well, I'll take Hockins also," said Mark, "you heard the captain say I
was to have two men. Will you go, Hockins?"
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the seaman, sedately, but with a wrinkle or two
on his visage which proved that the proposal was quite to his taste.
All the men of the boat's crew were armed either with cutlass or
carbine--in some cases with both; for although the natives were
understood to be friendly at that part of the coast it was deemed prudent
to be prepared for the reverse. Thus John Hockins carried a cutlass in
his belt, but no fire-arm, and the young doctor had his double-barrelled

gun, with powder-flask and shot-belt, but Ebony--being a free-and-easy,
jovial sort of nigger--went unarmed, saying he "didn't want to carry no
harms, seein' he would need all harms he had to carry back de fresh
wegibles wid."
Thus those three went into the bush, promising to keep well within
ear-shot, and to return instantly at the first summons.
That summons came--not as a shout, as had been expected, but as a
shot-- about an hour after the landing. Our explorers ran to the top of a
neighbouring mound in some surprise, not unmixed with anxiety.
Before they reached the summit a volley from the direction of the sea,
followed by fierce yells, told that some sort of evil was going on.
Another moment, and they reached the eminence just in time to behold
their boat's crew pulling off shore while a band of at least a hundred
savages attacked them--some rushing into the water chest-deep in order
to seize the boat. Cutlass and carbine, however, proved more than a
match for stone and spear.
The