The Fugitives | Page 6

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 fight had scarce lasted a minute, and our trio were on the point of rushing down to the rescue, when a white cloud burst from the side of the Eastern Star, the woods and cliffs echoed with the roar of a big gun, and a shot, plunging into the crowd of natives, cut down many of them and went crashing into the bushes.
It was enough. The natives turned and fled while the boat pulled to the ship.
Uncertainty as to what should be done kept Mark Breezy and his companions rooted for a few seconds to the spot. Indecision was banished, however, when they suddenly perceived a band of thirty or forty natives moving stealthily towards them by a circuitous route, evidently with