Part 15 (1/2)

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

”Hus.h.!.+ 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 a.s.serted 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 b.u.mble 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 b.u.mble and Glynn built a little platform of logs, on which they strewed leaves and gra.s.s, 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 b.u.mble, 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 b.u.mbles, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed away, and her sensation of intense enjoyment returned.

The scenery through which they pa.s.sed 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 b.a.l.l.s. .h.i.t, 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 carca.s.s 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.”