Kitabı oku: «The Boy Slaves», sayfa 4
CHAPTER XI.
'WARE THE SAND!
As the gully in which they had gone to rest was too narrow to permit of them lying side by side, they were disposed in a sort of lengthened chain, with their heads all turned in the same direction. The bottom of the ravine, as already stated, had a slight inclination; and they had, of course, placed themselves so that their heads should be higher than their feet.
The old sailor was at the lower end of this singular series, with the feet of Harry Blount just above the crown of his head. Above the head of Harry were the heels of Terence O'Connor; and, at the top of all, reclined Colin, – in the place where he had first stretched himself.
On account of the slope of the ground, the four were thus disposed in a sort of échelon formation, of which Old Bill was the base. They had dropped into their respective positions, one after the other, as they lay.
The sailor had been the last to commit himself to this curious couch; he was also the last to surrender to sleep. For some time after the others had become unconscious of outward impressions, he lay listening to the "sough" of the sea, and the sighing of the breeze, as it blew along the smooth sides of the sand-hills.
He did not remain awake for any great length of time. He was wearied, as well as his young comrades; and soon also yielded his spirit to the embrace of the god Somnus.
Before doing so, however, he had made an observation, – one of a character not likely to escape the notice of an old mariner such as he. He had become conscious that a storm was brewing in the sky. The sudden shadowing of the heavens; – the complete disappearance of the moon, leaving even the white landscape in darkness; – her red color as she went out of sight; – the increased noise caused by the roaring of the breakers; and the louder "swishing" of the wind itself, which began to blow in quick gusty puffs; all these sights and sounds admonished him that a gale was coming on.
He instinctively noted these signs; and on board ship would have heeded them, – so far as to have alarmed the sleeping watch, and counselled precaution.
But stretched upon terra firma – not so very firm had he but known it – between two huge hills, where he and his companions were tolerably well sheltered from the wind, it never occurred to the old salt, that they could be in any danger; and simply muttering to himself, "the storm be blowed!" he laid his weather-beaten face upon the pillow of soft sand, and delivered himself up to deep slumber.
The silent prediction of the sailor turned out a true forecast. Sure enough there came a storm; which, before the castaways had been half an hour asleep, increased to a tempest. It was one of those sudden uprisings of the elements common in all tropical countries, but especially so in the desert tracts of Arabia and Africa, – where the atmosphere, rarefied by heat, and becoming highly volatile, suddenly loses its equilibrium, and rushes like a destroying angel over the surface of the earth.
The phenomenon that had broken over the arenaceous couch, – upon which slept the four castaways, – was neither more nor less than a "sand-storm;" or, to give it its Arab title, a simoom.
The misty vapor that late hung suspended in the atmosphere had been swept away by the first puff of the wind; and its place was now occupied by a cloud equally dense, though perhaps not so constant, – a cloud of white sand lifted from the surface of the earth, and whirled high up towards heaven, – even far out over the waters of the ocean.
Had it been daylight, huge volumes, of what might have appeared dust, might have been seen rolling over the ridges of sand, – here swirling into rounded pillar-like shapes, that could easily have been mistaken for solid columns, standing for a time in one place, then stalking over the summits of the hills, or suddenly breaking into confused and cumbering masses; while the heavier particles, no longer kept in suspension by the rotatory whirl, might be seen spilling back towards the earth, like a sand-shower projected downward through some gigantic "screen."
In the midst of this turbulent tempest of wind and sand – with not a single drop of rain, – the castaways continued to sleep.
One might suppose – as did the old man-o'-war's-man before going to sleep – that they were not in any danger; not even as much as if their couch had been under the roof of a house, or strewn amid the leaves of the forest. There were no trees to be blown down upon them, no bricks nor large chimney-pots to come crashing through the ceiling, and crush them as they lay upon their beds.
What danger could there be among the "dunes?"
Not much to a man awake, and with open eyes. In such a situation, there might be discomfort, but no danger.
Different however, was it with the slumbering castaways. Over them a peril was suspended – a real peril – of which perhaps, on that night not one of them was dreaming – and in which, perhaps, not one of them would have put belief, – but for the experience of it they were destined to be taught before the morning.
Could an eye have looked upon them as they lay, it would have beheld a picture sufficiently suggestive of danger. It would have seen four human figures stretched along the bottom of a narrow ravine, longitudinally aligned with one another – their heads all turned one way, and in point of elevation slightly en échelon– it would have noted that these forms were asleep, that they were already half buried in sand, which, apparently descending from the clouds was still settling around them; and that, unless one or other of them awoke, all four should certainly become "smoored."
What does this mean? Merely a slight inconvenience arising from having the mouth, ears, and nostrils obstructed by sand, which a little choking, and sneezing, and coughing would soon remove.
Ask the Highland shepherd who has imprudently gone to sleep under the "blowin' sna'"; question the Scandinavian, whose calling compels him to encamp on the open "fjeld"; interrogate Swede or Norwegian, Finn or Lapp, and you may discover the danger of being "smoored."
That would be in the snow, – the light, vascular, porous, permeable snow, – under which a human being may move, and through which he may breathe, – though tons of it may be superpoised above his body, – the snow that, while imprisoning its victim, also gives him warmth, and affords him shelter, – perilous as that shelter may be.
Ask the Arab what it is to be "smoored" by sand; question the wild Bedouin of the Bled-el-jereed, – the Tuarick and Tiboo of the Eastern Desert, – they will tell you it is danger often death!
Little dreamt the four sleepers as they lay unconscious under that swirl of sand, – little even would they have suspected, if awake, – that there was danger in the situation.
There was, for all that, a danger, great as it was imminent, – the danger, not only of their being "smoored," but stifled, suffocated, buried fathoms deep under the sands of the Saära, for fathoms deep will often be the drift of a single night.
The Arabs say that, once "submerged" beneath the arenaceous "flood," a man loses the power to extricate himself. His energies are suspended, his senses become numbed and torpid – in short, he feels as one who goes to sleep in a snow-storm.
It may be true; but, whether or no, it seemed as if the four English castaways had been stricken with this inexplicable paralysis. Despite the hoarse roaring of the breakers, despite the shrieking and whistling of the wind, despite the dust constantly being deposited on their bodies, and entering ears, mouth, and nostrils, – despite the stifling sensation one would suppose they must have felt, and which should have awakened them, – despite all, they continued to sleep. It seemed as if that sleep was to be eternal!
If they heard not the storm that raged savagely above them, if they felt not the sand that pressed heavily upon them, what was there to warn, what to arouse them from that ill-starred slumber?
CHAPTER XII.
A MYSTERIOUS NIGHTMARE
The four castaways had been asleep for a couple of hours, – that is, from the time that, following the example of the young Scotchman, they had stretched themselves along the bottom of the ravine. It was not quite an hour, however, since the commencement of the sand-storm; and yet in this short time the arenaceous dust had accumulated to the thickness of several inches upon their bodies; and a person passing the spot, or even stepping right over them, could not have told that four human beings were buried beneath, – that is, upon the supposition that they would have lain still, and not got startled from their slumbers by the foot thus treading upon them.
Perhaps it was a fortunate circumstance for them, that by such a contingency they might be awakened, and that by such they were awakened.
Otherwise their sleep might have been protracted into the still deeper sleep – from which there is no awaking.
All four had begun to feel – if any sensation while asleep can be so called – a sense of suffocation, accompanied by a heaviness of the limbs and torpidity in the joints, – as if some immense weight was pressing upon their bodies, that rendered it impossible for them to stir either toe or finger. It was a sensation similar to that so well known, and so much dreaded, under the name of nightmare. It may have been the very same; and was, perhaps, brought on as much by the extreme weariness they all felt, as by the superincumbent weight of the sand.
Their heads, lying higher than their bodies, were not so deeply buried under the drift; which, blown lightly over their faces, still permitted the atmosphere to pass through it. Otherwise their breathing would have been stopped altogether; and death must have been the necessary consequence.
Whether it was a genuine nightmare or no, it was accompanied by all the horrors of this phenomenon. As they afterwards declared, all four felt its influence, each in his own way dreaming of some fearful fascination from which he could make no effort to escape. Strange enough, their dreams were different. Harry Blount thought he was falling over a precipice; Colin that a gigantic ogre had got hold of and was going to eat him up; while the young Hibernian fancied himself in the midst of a conflagration, a dwelling house on fire, from which he could not get out!
Old Bill's delusion was more in keeping with their situation, – or at least with that out of which they had lately escaped. He simply supposed that he was submerged in the sea, and as he knew he could not swim, it was but natural for him to fancy that he was drowning.
Still, he could make no struggle; and, as he would have done this, whether able to swim or not, his dream did not exactly resemble the real thing.
The sailor was the first to escape from the uncomfortable incubus; though there was but an instant between the awakening of all. They were startled out of their sleep, one after another, in the order in which they lay, and inversely to that in which they had lain down.
Their awakening was as mysterious as the nightmare itself, and scarce relieved them from the horror which the latter had been occasioning.
All felt in turn, and in quick succession, a heavy crushing pressure, either on the limbs or body, which had the effect, not only to startle them from their sleep, but caused them considerable pain.
Twice was this pressure applied, almost exactly on the same spot, and with scarce a second's interval between the applications. It could not well have been repeated a third time with like exactness, even had such been the design of whatever creature was causing it; for, after the second squeeze, each had recovered sufficient consciousness to know he was in danger of being crushed, and make a desperate effort to withdraw himself.
The exclamations, proceeding from four sets of lips, told that all were still in the land of the living; but the confused questioning that followed did nothing towards elucidating the cause of that sudden and almost simultaneous uprising.
There was too much sneezing and coughing to permit of anything like clear or coherent speech. The shumu was still blowing. There was sand in the mouths and nostrils of all four, and dust in their eyes. Their talk more resembled the jibbering of apes, who had unwisely intruded into a snuff shop, than the conversation of four rational beings.
It was some time before any one of them could shape his speech, so as to be understood by the others; and, after all had at length succeeded in making themselves intelligible, it was found that each had the same story to tell. Each had felt two pressures on some part of his person; and had seen, though very indistinctly, some huge creature passing over him, – apparently a quadruped, though what sort of quadruped none of them could tell. All they knew was, that it was a gigantic, uncouth creature, with a narrow body and neck, and very long legs; and that it had feet there could be no doubt: since it was these that had pressed so heavily upon them.
But for the swirl of the sand-storm, and the dust already in their eyes, they might have been able to give a better description of the creature that had so unceremoniously stepped over them. These impediments, however, had hindered them from obtaining a fair view of it; and some animal, – grotesquely shaped, with a long neck, body, and legs, – was the image which remained in the excited minds of the awakened sleepers.
Whatever it was, they were all sufficiently frightened to stand for some time trembling. Just awaking from such dreams, it was but natural they should surrender themselves to strange imaginings; and instead of endeavoring to identify the odd-looking animal, if animal it was, they were rather inclined to set it down as some creature of a supernatural kind.
The three midshipmen were but boys, not so long from the nursery as to have altogether escaped from the weird influence which many a nursery tale had wrapped around them; and as for old Bill, fifty years spent in "ploughing the ocean" had only confirmed him in the belief, that the "black art" is not so mythical as philosophers would have us think.
So frightened were all four, that, after the first ebullition of their surprise had subsided, they no longer gave utterance to speech, but stood listening, and trembling as they listened. Perhaps, had they known the service which the intruder had done for them, they might have felt gratitude towards it, instead of the suspicion and dread that for some moments kept them, as if spell-bound, in their places. It did not occur to any of the party, that that strange summons from sleep – more effective than the half-whispered invitation of a valet-de-chambre, or the ringing of a breakfast-bell – had in all probability rescued them from a silent, but certain death.
They stood, as I have said, listening. There were several distinct sounds that saluted their ears. There was the "sough" of the sea, as it came swelling up the gorge; the "whish" of the wind, as it impinged upon the crests of the ridges; and the "swish" of the sand as it settled around them.
All these were the voices of inanimate objects, – phenomena of nature, easily understood. But, rising above them, were heard sounds of a different character, which, though they might be equally natural, were not equally familiar to those who listened to them.
There was a sort of dull battering, – as if some gigantic creature was performing a Terpsichorean feat upon the sand-bank above them; but sharper sounds were heard at intervals, – screams commingled with short snortings, both proclaiming something of the nature of a struggle.
Neither in the screams nor the snortings was there anything that the listeners could identify as sounds they had ever heard before. They were alike perplexing to the ears of English, Irish, and Scotch. Even old Bill, who had heard, sometime or other, nearly every sound known to creation, could not classify them.
"Divil take thim!" whispered he to his companions, "I dinna know what to make av it. It be hawful to 'ear 'em!"
"Hark!" ejaculated Harry Blount.
"Hish!" exclaimed Terence.
"Wheesh!" muttered Colin. "It's coming nearer, whatever it may be. Wheesh!"
There could be no doubt about the truth of this conjecture; for as the caution passed from the lips of the young Scotchman, the dull hammering, the snorts, and the unearthly screams were evidently drawing nearer, – though the creature that was causing them was unseen through the thick sand-mist still surrounding the listeners. These, however, heard enough to know that some heavy body was making a rapid descent down the sloping gorge, and with an impetuosity that rendered it prudent for them to get out of its way.
More by an instinct, than from any correct appreciation of the danger, all four fell back from the narrow trench in which they had been standing, – each, as he best could, retreating up the declivity of the sand-hill.
Scarce were they able to obtain footing in their new position, when the sounds they had heard not only became louder and nearer, but the creature that had been causing them paused close to their feet, – so close that most of them could have touched it with their toes.
For all that, not one of the party could tell what it was; and after it had passed, – on its way down the ravine, – and was once more lost to their view amid the swirling sand, they were not a bit further advanced in their knowledge of the strange creature that had come so near crushing out their existence with its ponderous weight!
All that they had been able to see was a conglomeration of dark objects, – resembling the head, neck, body, and limbs of some uncouth animal, – while the sounds that proceeded from it were like utterances that might have come from some other world; for certainly they had but slight resemblance to anything the castaways had ever heard in this – either upon sea, or land!
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MAHERRY
For some length of time they stood conjecturing, – the boys with clasped hands, – Old Bill near, but apart.
During this time, at intervals, they continued to hear the sounds that had so astonished them – the stamping, the snorts, and the screaming, though they no longer saw the creature that caused them.
The sand gully opened towards the sea, in a diagonal direction. It could not be many yards to the spot, where it debouched upon the level of the beach; and the creature that had caused them such a surprise – and was still continuing to occupy their thoughts – must have reached this level surface: though not to suspend its exertions. Every now and then could be heard the same repetition of dull noises, – as if some animal was kicking itself to death, – varied by trumpet-like snorts and agonizing screams, which could be likened to the cry of no animal upon earth.
But that the castaways knew they were on the coast of Africa, – that continent renowned for strange existences, – they might have been even more disposed to a supernatural belief in what was near them; but as the minutes passed, and their senses began to return to them, they became more inclined to think that what they had seen, heard, and felt, might be only some animal – a heavy quadruped – that had trampled over them in their sleep.
The chief difficulty in reconciling this belief with the actual occurrence was the odd behavior of the animal. Why had it gone up the gorge, apparently parenti passu, to come tumbling down again in such a confused fashion? Why was it still kicking and stumbling about at the bottom of the ravine, – for such did the sounds proclaim it to be doing?
No answer could be given to either of these questions; and none was given, until day dawned over the sand-hills. This was soon after; and along with the morning light had come the cessation of the simoom.
Then saw the castaways that creature that had so abruptly awakened them from their slumbers, – and, by so doing, perhaps, saved their lives. They saw it recumbent at the bottom of the gorge, where they had so uneasily passed the night.
It proved to be – what from the slight glimpse they had got of it, they were inclined to believe – an animal, and a quadruped; and if it had presented an uncouth appearance, as it stepped over them in the darkness, not less so did it appear as they now beheld it, under the light of day.
It was an animal of very large size, – in height far exceeding a horse, – but of such a grotesque shape as to be easily recognizable by any one who had ever glanced into a picture-book of quadrupeds. The long craning neck, with an almost earless head and gibbous profile; the great straggling limbs, callous at the knees, and ending in broad, wide splitting hooves; the slender hind-quarters, and tiny, tufted tail, – both ludicrously disproportioned, – the tumid, misshapen trunk; but, above all, the huge hunch rising above the shoulders, at once proclaimed the creature to be a dromedary.
"Och! it's only a kaymal!" cried Old Bill, as soon as the daylight enabled him to get a fair view of the animal. "What on hearth is it doin' 'ere?"
"Sure enough," suggested Terence, "it was this beast that stepped over us while we were asleep! It almost squeezed the breath out of me, for it set its hoof right upon the pit of my stomach."
"The same with me," said Colin. "It sunk me down nearly a foot into the sand. Ah, we have reason to be thankful there was that drift-sand over our bodies at the time. If not, the great brute might have crushed us to death!"
There was some truth in Colin's observation. But for the covering of sand, – which acted as a cushion, – and also from that which formed their couch yielding beneath them, the hoof of the great quadruped might have caused them a serious injury. As it was, none of them had received any hurt beyond the fright which the strange intruder had occasioned them.
The singular incident was yet only half explained. They saw it was a camel that had disturbed their slumbers; that the animal had been on its way up the ravine, – perhaps seeking shelter from the sand-storm; but what had caused it to return so suddenly back down the slope? Above all, why had it made the downward journey in such a singular manner? Obscure as had been their view of it, they could see that it did not go on all-fours, but apparently tumbling and struggling, – its long limbs kicking about in the air, as if it was performing the descent by a series of somersaults.
All this had been mysterious enough; but it was soon explained to the satisfaction of the four castaways, who, as soon as they saw the camel by the bottom of the gorge, had rushed down and surrounded it.
The animal was in a recumbent position, – not as if it had lain down to rest, but in a constrained attitude, with its long neck drawn in towards its forelegs, and its head lying low and half-buried in the sand!
As it was motionless when they first perceived it, they fancied it was dead, – that something had wounded it above. This would have explained the fantastic fashion in which it had returned down the slope, – as the somersaults observed might have been only a series of death struggles.
On getting around it, however, they perceived that it was not only still alive, but in perfect health; and its late mysterious movements were accounted for at a single glance. A strong hair halter, firmly noosed around its head, had got caught in the bifurcation of one of its fore-hoofs, where a knot upon the rope had hindered it from slipping through the deep split. This had first caused it to trip up, and tumble head over heels, – inaugurating that series of struggles which had ended in transporting it back to the bottom of the ravine, – where it now lay with the trailing end of the long halter knotted inextricably around its legs.
