Jasper Lyle. Ward
that the animals had length of reim (thong of leather) to give them room to roll at full length upon the moist grass, he determined to climb higher up in search of the little colony, whose condition he had long deplored.
Trail was a man of about three-and-thirty; the features were homely, but the expression of the whole was highly benevolent; the frame was thin, and could not be called graceful, but it was neither ungainly nor vulgarly awkward; the eyes were large, and when lifted up, shone with a pleasant, not a sparkling, light; the hair was thinning on the temples, and the brow alone showed that by nature he was a man of a clear and fair complexion. The rest was bronzed by climate.
There he stood alone, alone in that magnificent solitude; the purpose for which he had come faded for a time from his memory, a gust of wind swept the mist away from the side of the hill to which he turned, and a part of the valley “lay smiling before him;” a stream of sunlight shot athwart it, and he saw the wild tenants of the wilderness, disporting and luxuriating as I have described; another gust opened the landscape wide, and as Trail’s eye swept the scene, his heart was lifted up in admiration. He turned the angle of the hill again, but the plain was hidden from his sight on that side, he could see nothing of his people and the bivouac below. He paused under a tall yellow-wood tree, and sat down again, his heart melting at the thought of what? his loneliness! His head rested on his hands, and he went back, back to his wedding-day at home in England, in the old church. There he stood, hand in hand with Mary (his old playmate) at the altar: by her side his sister cried bitterly, behind him her mother sobbed aloud, and the father’s silence was most eloquent, for the lips were firmly closed, and the eyes blinded with tears. Younger children gazed sorrowfully on—and then—there came the last parting. A ship in full sail, James and Mary Trail leaning over the side of the vessel while she is lying-to at Spithead; a boat below, from which many last gifts are handed up. A little sister weeping heavily, the mother with her face buried in her handkerchief, a young brother hastily wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, an elder sister trying to sooth the father, who “would not be comforted.”
They are all again before him: the boat pushes off; the old man stretches forth his hands, blessing the voyagers; the sister waves her handkerchief, the brother his hat, the mother tries to rise, but cannot, as the boat is swayed between the white-crested waves, which soon part the little vessel from the gallant ship; the yards are swung round, the boat has faded to a speck, the bows dash through the sparkling waters, churches, forts, and towers of the old town Mary Trail has never left before, glide away from her aching sight, and she lies down like a child to cry in her bridegroom’s sheltering arms.
And lo! there is a grave, the first grave hollowed in the mound on which a little chapel stands between two hills in Africa. There are others near it now, and a deep-toned bell sends out its hallowed call across the river, and up the kloof and on Sabbath days there is a gathering from many homesteads; but Trail has left this peopled spot for another. He visits it sometimes, and sits by Mary’s grave, but he can no longer bear it as a dwelling: nevertheless, he would have stayed there had there not been one at hand to take charge of the district.
He had not long left this spot when I introduced him to the reader at the early part of this chapter. He rises, but not without effort: his steeds are quietly enjoying the crisp herbage, and above, the baboons are looking out from their hiding-places, and shouting aloud. Trail began to fancy his “little people” had caught sight of him, and were calling to him from the rocks overhanging the platform on which he stood.
He determined on seeking at once for some sheltered corner, where he could kindle a fire, picquet his horses near him, and eat such provision as he had brought, deferring his further search till dawn. The non-appearance of a single living being puzzled him, the more when he discovered the remains of a fire, over which the wind had passed, scattering the ashes. It was evident that a meal of locusts had been here cooked and eaten, probably some three or four days before. Some had been rejected, and some were mingled with corn lying amid the ashes. A stray arrow or two was also to be found, and a bow, unstrung, rested against a stone. Whilst examining these evidences of human existence, something rose heavily from a stunted bush: a huge asphogel, scared at last from its lethargy, flapped its wings, rose slowly over Trail’s head, and floated down the mountain-side; another and another followed, and our missionary felt assured that, dead or dying, some members of the barbarian community were not far off. He discovered a fearful group at last. It would be a sad task to describe the scene as it was depicted by him to one who related the circumstances to me. It was probable that some part of the community had been absent on a hunting expedition when the fatality occurred, which had destroyed three aged bushmen, four or five women, old and young, all inconceivably hideous in death, and several children. One poor baby lay across its miserable mother’s bosom, apparently the victim of a snake, for the creature lay coiled up beside the dead body, and a wretched little object had been mangled by vultures at the entrance to the grot or cave into which the party had apparently crawled to suffer and die together.
Trail had heard of whole families of bushmen dying from a surfeit of a hearty meal of locusts,—from poisonous roots being mingled in their cookery with the larvae of ants,—and of their sometimes falling victims to the deadly enmity of some adverse tribes; but he saw it would be dangerous as well as useless to penetrate the charnel-house further; indeed he had taken as sharp a survey of the interior as the light falling through a chasm would allow, and he shrunk from ascertaining whether an inner cave existed.
Struck with horror, he had made up his mind to move some distance down the mountain in spite of the coming darkness, when a feeble moan drew his attention to a cleft in the rock, just at the entrance or mouth of the cavern.
He knew it was the moan of a living being, and began to examine the corner whence it proceeded, but all was in darkness; stretching out his arm, he groped among the stones, and at length touched a clammy hand, the fingers of which closed round his with a cold convulsive grasp. He drew the creature forth, and found it to be a little bushboy, probably five or six years old.
It was our friend May. He derived his name from the month in which he had been brought into the Christian world, as Trail said. Truly the good man’s laying his hand upon the little creature was a wondrous and providential circumstance. Poor, degraded, barbarous imp, thou wert a frightful object; but the good minister looked on thee with the deep anxiety and affection that those only feel who love their neighbour in the true spirit of a Christian, and helpless and hideous as thou wert, doubtless there were angels singing triumphantly through the golden aisles of heaven as a herald on bright wings came among them with glad tidings of a soul rescued from darkness. It was thine, poor May, lying lonely and desolate, and apparently forgotten, in that fearful darkness; the day-star from on high was ready to shed its light upon thee, and there was great rejoicing among the ministering spirits of the upper world!
We cannot trace the melancholy facts of the deaths alluded to to their sources; nine or ten unredeemed souls had passed the outer threshold of this world, to that mysterious region whence none return with a record; but whether the cause arose from accidental poison, or by the agency of vicious neighbours, Trail never ascertained. How the imp May had escaped appeared a miracle; mayhap he had been absent gathering honey or digging for roots; the goats had disappeared, if there had ever been any; there was sheep wool on the bushes, but there were no sheep, and the missionary concluded that the hunters had probably returned after the calamity had befallen their fellows, and, in superstitious dread of the locality, had hurried to change their quarters without any closer examination of the spot than they had been induced to make from curiosity or rapacity.
Speculation was fruitless, useless; May was rescued, and Trail, carrying him to the bushes where the horses were picqueted, gave him such nourishment as he could. It revived him, and as soon as he could manage it, our traveller descended with his steed and the child to a convenient spot, where he lit a fire at the opening of a natural alcove. Here he again fastened his horse to a tree, happy in having found a spot watered by a rill, which trickled down a channel among the rocks, and spreading his veldt combass, a large rug made of dressed sheepskins, upon the sward, he laid his saddle beneath his head, and not far from him he did not disdain to place the weary and frightened being, whose sleep was soon as peaceful as a Christian child’s within “a fair ancestral hall.”
The night passed without further adventure, for Trail’s