Born to Wander: A Boy's Book of Nomadic Adventures

“It would be a good idea,” said Douglas one day, “to build a boat and sail away somewhere.”

“Yes, but whither?”

“Yes, whither?” repeated Douglas sadly.

One day, while roaming together on the other side of the island, suddenly there sprang up in front of Leonard and Douglas, as if from the very earth, a naked savage. He stood but for a moment, then waving a club aloft with a wild shout of fear and wonder, he fled far away into the woods.

They returned to the cave, and reported what they had seen, and all agreed that though danger might accrue from the visit of natives to the island, still it might end in their being set free.

It was determined, however, to be now doubly vigilant. The sentry was no longer placed on the beach but inside the rampart, and never less than four men went to the woods together.

Days and days went past, a sad time of doubt and uncertainty, and still no signs of savages. They came at last, however.

And one morning, looking down over the ramparts, they could see a group of tall, armed, and painted natives, standing on the sand spit examining the broken keel of the boat.

Then they disappeared in the bush.

Arms were got out now; the one little gate that led through the rampart was doubly barricaded; the little garrison waited and watched.

The forenoon wore on, birds sang in the trees, the low wind sighed through the woods, and the lovely flowers opened their petals to bask in the sweet sunshine. There were joy and gladness everywhere except in the hearts of those anxious mariners.

The day wore on, and the sun began to decline in the west. Our heroes had just finished dinner when the sentry lifted his finger, and beckoned to them. Through an opening in the rampart they could perceive fully a score of club- and spear-armed savages creeping stealthily up the hill.

As soon, however, as they were boldly hailed from the fort – for fort it might now be considered – they cast all attempts at concealment aside, and with a yell that was re-echoed back from every rock around they dashed onwards to the attack.

“Steady, men. Take good aim, and don’t throw away a shot.”

A volley completely staggered the enemy. They fell back quicker than they had come, going helter-skelter down the hill, and leaving several dead and wounded behind them.

Not for long though. Savages may be beaten, but if there is the slightest chance to overcome by numbers they invariably return.

The day passed, however, and eke the long, dreary night, during which no one closed an eye till the sun once more rose over the sea in the morning. Most of the men slept all the forenoon. Luckily they did, for in the afternoon the savages returned in redoubled numbers, and this time many of them actually swarmed over the ramparts, but only to be felled inside.

It was a terrible mêlée, but ended once more in victory for our side.

A whole week now wore away without further molestation, but the worst was to come, for the garrison was reduced to five defenders, two having been wounded in the last fight, one of whom had succumbed to his wounds.

It was early in the morning, and the stars were still shining bright and clearly over the sea, when one of the sentries reported the woods on fire to windward. The flames spread with alarming rapidity, and by daybreak were close at hand; the fort was enveloped in smoke, while sparks as thick as falling snowflakes in a winter’s storm were showered around them.

In the midst of smoke and fire the savages intended making their final attempt to carry the fort, and our heroes determined to sell their lives dearly, and fight to the end.

Already they could hear the yells of the approaching spearmen, though they were invisible.

But why come they not on? Why does the yelling continue and go farther and farther back and away? Hark! it is the ring of firearms.

Oh, joy! the Gloaming Star must have returned. But was this really so? No, for the white men now engaged in a hand-to-hand combat with those daring savages are men of a different class from the honest crew of the Gloaming Star.

The sound of the battle grows fainter and fainter, till it ceases entirely.

Leonard and Douglas wait and watch, trying to peer through the smoke, and unravel, if possible, some of the mystery that has been taking place below.

Dimly through the haze at last they can notice figures dressed in white clambering up the hill.

“Come out at once, you white fellows,” cries a bold English voice. “Come forth, if you don’t want to be roasted alive. The fire is close on you.”

The rampart gates were opened, and the besieged bade speedy farewell for ever to their cave and fort. Sturdy, bare, brown-armed sailors, armed with cutlasses and pistols, were their rescuers, but presently they found themselves on the beach, and standing in front of the ringleader or captain of the band. A tall handsome man he was, dressed in white, with a turban of silk around his head, and a sword by his side. He was smoking a cheroot.

“Happy to see you, anyhow,” he said. “Squat yourselves down on the sand there; I guess you’re tired.”

“And I, Captain Bland, am glad to see you once again.”

“What! you know me then?”

“Yes, though you can hardly be expected to remember the lad you kidnapped.”

Bland jumped up and seized Leonard by the hand, while tears filled his eyes.

“Oh!” he said, “this is a greater joy then ever I could have dreamt of, greater than ever I deserved. I care little now how soon my wanderings are ended, or how soon I leave the world itself.”

“Do not speak in this sad tone, Captain Bland; believe me, it is a pleasure to me to meet you. I never believed you the hardened criminal that some would have you.”

“Criminal!” cried Bland, flushing excitedly, “who dare call me criminal? And yet,” he added, in a tone of great sadness, and even pathos, “perhaps I have been a criminal, a smuggler, yea, even to some extent a pirate. I have never yet, however, done one cruel action; but had I my life to begin over again, how different it would all be!”

“And that barque lying out there is yours?”

“Yes; and my trade you would ask? I deal in slaves and gold. I have found gold. But what good is it all? I live a life of constant excitement; were this to fail me I should die. But you saved my worthless life, lad.”

“And now you have saved ours.”

“Yes, and I’ll do more. I’ll restore you to your ship and your captain. He it was who sent me here in search of you, but he mentioned no name, and little did he know the pleasure he was giving me.”

“And the Gloaming Star?”

“Is in the hands of my merry men. Do not be alarmed. It was a bloodless victory. And now she shall be restored to you safe and sound.

“Come, my boats are here to take you off, and your ship lies safe at anchor not sixty miles away. Come.”

Book Three – Chapter Five
The Old Folks at Home

 
“Gloomy winter’s noo awa,
Soft the westlin’ breezes blow,
Amang the birks o’ Stanley Shaw
The mavis sings hoo cheery O?”
 

Burns.

 
“I asked a glad mother, just come from the post,
With a letter she kissed, from a far-away coast,
What heart-thrilling news had rejoiced her the most,
And – gladness for mourning! Her boy was returning
To love her – at home.”
 

Tupper.

Scene: The wildery round Grayling House in early spring. Everything in gardens and on lawns looks fresh and joyful. Spring flowers peeping through the brown earth, merle and mavis making music in the spruce and fir thickets, and louder than all the clear-throated chaffinch. Effie walking alone with book in hand, a great deerhound, the son of faithful Ossian, following step by step behind.

Effie is not reading, though she holds that book in her hand, and albeit her eyes seem glued to the page. For Effie is thinking, only thinking the same thoughts she thinks so very often, only making the same calculations she makes every day of her somewhat lonely life, and which often cause her pillow at night to be bedewed with tears.

Thinking, wondering, calculating.

Thinking of the past, thinking what a long, long time has elapsed since Leonard and Douglas – her brother’s friend – went last away to sea; wondering where they might be at that very moment, and calculating the weeks and days that had yet to elapse before the time they had promised to return should arrive. She finished by breathing a little prayer for them. What a joyful thing it is for us poor mortals, that He, Who sticketh closer than a brother, is ever and always by our side, and ever and always ready to lend a willing ear to our silent supplications!

Effie ended with a sigh that was half a sob, a sigh that made great Orla the deerhound thrust his muzzle right under her elbow, and so throw her arm around his neck.

What would Effie have thought or done, I wonder, had she known that at this very moment Leonard’s ship lay safe at Leith, and that not only he, but Douglas and Captain Blunt, were making all the haste that could be made in a chaise and pair towards Glen Lyle?

On the arrival of the Gloaming Star, our heroes first and foremost did something which may not accord with my readers’ idea of romance. A most useful and most needful something it was. They paid a visit to a West End tailor. Before doing so, however, they went to Captain Lyle’s lawyer.

The old man – he was very old – did not at first know Leonard, but as soon as he did, he shook hands with him over and over again. He was almost childlike in his joy to see him again.

“What will your father say?” he cried, “and all of them, all of them?”

Of course Leonard had a dozen questions to ask, and what a big sigh of relief he got rid of, when told that not only were all of them well, including Peter and Peter’s pike, which by some means or another – considered supernatural by Peter – was once more all alive and plunging, but that the estate of Glen Lyle was free again, and that Captain Fitzroy had rented one of the farms, thus figuratively, if not literally, turning his sword into a ploughshare.

Leonard had stood all the time he was getting this news, but now that the hysterical ball of doubt and anxiety had left his throat, he flung his hat to the other end of the room, and took a chair. Douglas and Blunt did the same, and the whole four glided right away into a right jolly, right merry whole hour’s conversation, what the Scotch folks would call “a foursome crack.” The old lawyer’s clerk – and he was old, too – came on tiptoe to the door and listened, for he had not heard such laughing and joking and merriment for many and many a long year.

The wanderers rose at last to say good-bye for the present.

“Now don’t write and tell them we’ve come,” said Leonard. “We want to go and surprise them.”

“But, my dear young squire – ”

“Bother the squire!” cried Leonard, laughing.

“Well, my dear Leonard, then – ”

“Yes, that’s better.”

“Aren’t you going right away down at once? Do you mean to say you’ll let the grass grow beneath your shoes for an hour?”

And now Douglas put in his oar.

“Why, Mr Fraser,” he said, “look at us. Run your eagle eye over us from stem to stern. Rough and unkempt. Covered with salt. Barnacles growing on us. Could you, Mr Fraser, suggest our putting in an appearance before ladies in such a plight? No, sir, the tailor must first and foremost come upon the scene.”

Mr Fraser laughed heartily.

“Well, well,” he said, “young men will be young men, but I’ll warrant you, gentlemen, the ladies would be right glad to see you, barnacles and all.”

And the old gentleman laughed and rubbed his hands, as if he had said something very clever indeed.

Once upon a time, as the fairy stories begin, my good ship M — had arrived at Portsmouth after a long commission of cruising along the shores of Eastern Africa and round India.

At luncheon the day after we came in, our chief engineer said, in his quiet, stoical manner, —

“My wife is coming to-day by the three train.”

“What!” cried somebody. “And you are not going to meet her at the station, after so long an absence?”

“No, I’m not,” was the answer. “The fact is, I’ve a very great horror of anything approaching what people call a scene. Now if I had gone to meet my wife, the poor thing, overcome by her feelings, would be sure to faint in my arms or something. So I’ve sent my assistant to meet her. She isn’t likely to faint in little Jones’s arms.”

On the same principle, the reader must excuse me if I omit describing the scene of the meeting and reunion at Grayling House. I will not even tell of the tears that were shed, tears of joy and anxiety long pent up, of the hearty handshakes, of the whispered words and half-spoken sentences of welcome, for all this can be better imagined than told.

It was three days, at least, before the old house settled down again to anything like solid order, and conversation became less spasmodic in character.

Old Peter, who, of course, was quite one of the family, was probably the last to settle down, owing perhaps to the fact that he listened with wonder and astonishment to the conversation at table, and to the tales the wanderers had to tell, about the wonders they had seen, and the adventures they had come through. More than once, indeed, he had let fall a plate, and he had actually filled up Effie’s cup on the second morning from the water-bottle instead of the teapot. That same day, when he found Leonard and Douglas in the garden by themselves, he treated them to the following morsel of edification.

“Oh, laddies!” he said, “it’s a wondrous warld we live in, whether we dwall upo’ the dry lan’ or gang doon to the sea in ships. But few, unco few, hae come through what ye’ve come through. And what brocht ye back, think ye? What else but prayer, prayer, prayer? Your father prayed, and your lady mither prayed, and Miss Effie prayed, and poor auld Peter prayed, and – and thare ye are. And yonder is Grayling Ha’, and all aroond us is the bonnie estate o’ Glen Lyle, its hills and dells, and moors and fields, and woods and waters, a’ oor ain again. And the muckle pike ploupin’ aboot (ploupin’, Scottice– plunging) as if naething had ever ailed him. Verily, verily, we’ve a lot to be thankfu’ for!”

“Well, bless you, Peter, dear old friend, for your prayers, and long may you live to pray. But tell me, Peter, for I forgot to ask mother, what has become of Zella the gipsy girl?”

“Oh! hae they no tauld you? It’s a year ago come Whitsunday since they cam’ for her.”

“Who?”

“Who? who but the Faas of her ain tribe, and bonnily they decked her, in a muslin gown o’ gowden-spangled white, and they put roses and ferns in her dark hair, and a croon upon her head, and it’s wondrous beautiful she looked. Ay, ye may stare, but Zella is queen o’ the gipsies, and no doubt ye’ll see her ere lang.”

He turned sharp round towards Douglas as he spoke.

“I dinna doubt, sir,” he said, “but that the gipsy queen will come to your weddin’.”

Now Douglas’s face was, from exposure to sun and weather, of a sort of dignified brick-dust hue. One would have thought it impossible for such a face to blush, but deeper in colour it really got as he laughingly replied to the garrulous old Peter.

“My wedding, Peter! Why, my dear old friend, you’ve been dreaming.”

“Och, mon!” said Peter, with a sly wink. “I can see as far through a millstone as the miller himself. But I’m off, there’s the bell. It’s that auld limmer of a cook, she keeps ring, ring, ringing for me a’ day lang, with ‘Peter, do this’ and ‘Peter, do that.’ Sorrow tak’ her! Ring, ring, ring; there it goes again. Comin’, comin,’ comin’.”

“Strange old man!” said Douglas.

“That he is,” said Leonard, “but yet how leal and true he has been to our family.”

A day or two after this the old family carriage was had out – and a stately and ancient-looking affair it was, hung on monster leather straps, which permitted it to swing about like a hammock, while inside it was as snug and soft as a feather bed – the carriage was got out, and accompanied by a phaeton, in which rode the younger folks, a visit was made to the gipsy camp in a far-off forest.

A horseman had been sent the day before with a note to her gracious majesty Queen Zella to apprise her of their coming, so that after a delightful drive on this lovely spring day they arrived at the encampment, safe and merry, and were received in state.

The gipsies were arrayed in their very best, and the queen was a sight to see, and indeed she really did look charming.

“Oh!” she said to Mr Lyle, “I was pleased to be with you in your cottage by the sea, and pleased to be at bonnie Glen Lyle, but the brown blood is strong within me. I was born to wander, and here I am wild and free as the birds that sing so sweetly on the trees to-day.

“Oh!” she continued, turning to our heroes, “it is not altogether because the sun is shining so brightly that their notes are so joyous. They sing thus madly because you have returned.”

Verily the queen knew how to pay a pretty compliment.

“And,” she added, “you have been happy. Oh! you must have been happy. Every one must be happy at sea. I dreamt you had met Captain Bland.”

“Your majesty has dreamt a strange dream, and a true one, for we did. He saved our lives. But, alas! he is no more. For just two days after he left us we saw a fire at sea. We bore down towards the burning ship. It was Bland’s barque. There was no sign of life on board. All was silent except for the rush of the flames and the crackling of the burning wood. And I fear no one was saved.”

The conversation was somewhat saddened for a time by Leonard’s recital, but what hearts could long remain sad in the fair, fresh scene, amid the greenery of trees, the wild melody of birds, and the soft spring sunshine?

“Man was made to mourn.” No, great poet, no; I will not have it. Man was made to be glad and to rejoice with everything that is glad and rejoiceth around him on this fair earth of ours.

 
“Tell me not in mournful numbers
    Life is but an empty dream,
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
    And things are not what they seem.
 
 
“Life is real; life is earnest,
    And the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.”
 

If there be anything in this world more lovely than a ship under full sail on a summer’s sea, I have yet to learn what it is. Look at the Gloaming Star yonder as she goes proudly bowing and curtseying westward over the Atlantic waves. A thing of beauty, a thing of life almost. Let us glance on board for a moment. How white the decks! almost as white as the beard of her commander Captain Blunt. Her woodworks are polished, her brass shines like yellow gold, the men are neat and tidy, and every rope is coiled and in its place on deck. Yonder on the quarter-deck sits Effie beside her brother’s friend. Her brother’s friend? Yes, but Effie’s husband now!

And Leonard himself is at the wheel.

Let us quietly drop the curtain then, while —

 
“The western sea is all aglow,
    And the day is well-nigh done,
And almost on the western wave
    Now rests the broad bright sun.”