The Rajah of Dah | Page 3

while they glided on and on through what seemed to be
one interminable winding grove of dull-green trees; for he made the
calm, grave, dark-skinned boatmen start and look round for danger, as
he cried out excitedly:
"Hurrah! Off at last!"
CHAPTER TWO.
UNCLE MURRAY'S LECTURE.
"Every man to his taste, Ned, my boy," said Johnstone Murray,
gentleman, to his nephew, who was home for a visit to his uncle--he
called it home, for he had never known any other, and visited this but
rarely, his life having been spent during the past four years at a Devon
rectory, where a well-known clergyman received four pupils.
As the above words were said about six months before the start up the
Salan River, Ned Murray's guardian raised a large magnifying-glass
and carefully examined a glittering fragment of stone, while the boy
leaned over the table upon which his elbows rested, and eagerly
watched his uncle's actions.
"Is that gold, uncle?"
"Eh? gold? nonsense. Pyrites--mingling of iron and sulphur, Ned.
Beautiful radiated lines, those. But, as I was saying, every man to his
taste. Some people who have plenty of money like to go for a ride in
the park, and then dress for dinner, and eat and drink more than is good
for them. I don't. Such a life as that would drive me mad."
"But you didn't answer my question, uncle."

"Yes, I did, Ned. I said it was pyrites."
"No, no. I mean the other one, uncle. Will you take me?"
"Get away with you! Go back to the rectory and read up, and by-and-by
we'll send you to Oxford, and you shall be a parson, or a barrister, or--"
"Oh, uncle, it's too bad of you! I want to do as you do. I say: do take
me!"
"What for?"
"Because I want to go. I won't be any trouble to you, and I'll work hard
and rough it, as you call it; and I know so much about what you do that
I'm sure I can be very useful; and then you know what you've often said
to me about its being so dull out in the wilds by yourself, and you
would have me to talk to of a night."
"Silence! Be quiet, you young tempter. Take you, you soft green
sapling! Why, you have no more muscle and endurance than a twig."
"Twigs grow into stout branches, uncle."
"Look here, sir: did your tutor teach you to argue your uncle to death
when you wanted to get your own way?"
"No, uncle."
"Do you think I should be doing my duty as your guardian if I took you
right away into a savage country, to catch fevers and sunstrokes, and
run risks of being crushed by elephants, bitten by poisonous reptiles,
swallowed by crocodiles, or to form a lunch for a fastidious tiger tired
of blacks?"
"Now you are laughing at me again," said the boy.
"No, sir. There are risks to be encountered."
"They wouldn't hurt me any more than they would you, uncle."

"There you are again, arguing in that abominable way! No, sir; I shall
not take you. At your ago education is the thing to study, and nothing
else. Now, be quiet!" and Johnstone Murray's eyes looked pleasant,
though his freckled brown face looked hard, and his eyes seemed to say
that there was a smile hidden under the grizzled curly red beard which
covered the lower part of his face.
"There, uncle, now I have got you. You've said to me scores of times
that there was no grander education for a man than the study of the
endless beauties of nature."
"Be quiet, Ned. There never was such a fellow as you for disputing."
"But you did say so, uncle."
"Well, sir, and it's quite right. It is grand! But you are not a man."
"Not yet, but I suppose I shall be, some day."
"Not if I take you out with me to catch jungle fever."
"Oh, bother the old jungle fever!"
"So say I, Ned, and success to quinine."
"To be sure. Hurrah for quinine! You said you took it often in swampy
places to keep off the fever."
"That's quite right, Ned."
"Very well then, uncle; I'll take it too, as much as ever you like. Now,
will you let me go?"
"And what would the rector say?"
"I don't know, uncle. I don't want to be a barrister. I want to be what
you are."
"A rough, roaming, dreamy, restless being, who is always wandering

about all over the world."
"And what would England have been, uncle, if some of us had not been
restless and wandered all over the world."
Johnstone Murray, gentleman and naturalist, sat back in his chair and
laughed.
"Oh, you may laugh, uncle!"