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Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn

<h3>Chapter Sixteen.</h3> <h4>Svorenssen relates an Interesting Story.</h4> “It was while we were seeking fruit that the thing happened. We had crossed the valley, and plunged into the forest on the other side, Dirk and I being together while Pete was a few yards away, when suddenly, as we were passing under the boughs of a big tree, I heard a kind of plop, and at the same instant Dirk gave a yell that very nearly scared me stiff. Glancing round to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, I was horrified to see Dirk enveloped in the coils of an enormous snake, whose ugly head was poised within a few inches of my shipmate’s face, the creature’s forked tongue flickering in and out of its widely opened jaws. I suppose I shall never be able to explain or account for the impulse that actuated me at this horrid sight, but the fact remains that, without pausing an instant to reflect, I thrust forward my left hand and gripped the snake just behind the head, while with my right I drew my sheath knife across the reptile’s throat, pretty nearly severing the head from the body at one stroke. Instantly it became a case of ‘stand clear!’ The snake uncoiled itself from about Dirk’s body, and proceeded to fling itself about on the ground with such terrific violence that the air round about us was presently full of bits of grass, broken twigs, and flying leaves, while Dirk, yelling like a madman, flung himself upon the writhing body of the reptile, stabbing furiously here and there with his knife—but never touching the snake so far as I could see, while Pete came running up to ascertain what was the matter. “We got Dirk away from the snake eventually, and helped him back to the cave; and when we got him there we stripped him, to learn the extent of his injuries. To our great relief, we found that there was very little the matter with him; he was much bruised about the body, from his waist to his shoulders, but that was all. It was, however, enough. We agreed that ‘Robinson Crusoeing’ was not quite all that in our boyhood’s days we had believed it to be, and we resolved to return to the beach on the following morning and endeavour to swim off to the wreck. “When we started to work our way back to the beach we discovered, to our annoyance, that the path which we had cut for ourselves through the scrub had become completely overgrown again, consequently we had all our former work to do over again, with the ants and mosquitoes even more pertinacious in their attentions than before; thus the afternoon was well advanced when at length we once more caught a glimpse of blue water. By that time we were so utterly fagged that we felt it would be folly to attempt a long swim under such conditions; we therefore postponed our attempt until the next day. We saw that the wreck was still on the reef, apparently in no worse condition than when we had last viewed her; and, with our experiences of life ashore still fresh in our memories, we told each other what fools we had been in making no attempt to get off to her again as soon as the weather had settled after our first landing. “Pete Fleming was far and away the keenest of our little party to get aboard again. He directed us to observe how high she was standing out of the water, and expressed the opinion that for that reason it might be possible for us to penetrate to her lazarette, where we should doubtless find a quantity of tinned stuff that would be infinitely more palatable than the fruit diet upon which we had so long been subsisting, and of which we were all now thoroughly tired; and he was particularly eloquent upon the subject of drink, of which he seemed confident that we should find a considerable quantity. So keen, indeed, was he, that he was stripped and in the water four or five minutes before Dirk or myself, and was already swimming when we two started to wade in. And then a dreadful thing happened. We were little more than ankle-deep when <ANTIMG src="images/eburn262.jpg" alt=""> we heard him utter an awful shriek, and saw him throw up his hands and disappear in the midst of a violent swirl of water. In an instant the terrible truth burst upon us that the poor chap had been seized by sharks—the existence of which in the lagoon we had never suspected—and on the instant Dirk and I, moved by the same impulse, turned and fled back to the beach. The incident effectually cured us of any further desire to reach the wreck; and we never again ventured to attempt any swimming until a few days ago. “Dirk and I camped on the beach again that night, building a fire round our camping-place as a protection against wild beasts. But some time during the night I happened to awake, to discover that our fire had burned perilously low, and that some seven or eight great brutes were hungrily prowling round us, their eyes gleaming like green lamps, and themselves apparently waiting only until the fire had burned a little lower, or their courage had grown sufficiently to enable them to leap in and seize us. I sprang up, awaking Dirk, and together we heaped fresh brushwood upon the smouldering ashes until the flames leaped up again, and then our visitors left us. But our narrow escape brought home to us realisation of the extreme danger of sleeping in exposed situations; and after breakfast on the following morning we set out to return to our cave in the valley. “How long we remained there on this occasion I cannot tell you, for we soon lost count of time; but it must have been several months, certainly. For some time we lived exclusively upon fruit; but later on we contrived to secure a morsel of meat now and then. Upon one occasion—I am afraid you will not believe me, but I assure you it is true—we found a young deer tangled up in the biggest and toughest spider’s web you ever saw; and of course we killed and ate the little creature. That spider’s web suggested to us the idea of setting traps, which we made of monkey-rope, and in which we sometimes caught small game of one sort or another. “We should probably have been living in that cave to this day but for another bad scare—and in that case we should never have known that you and Billy had survived the wreck, and should have made no attempt to join you; so perhaps it is just as well for all of us that we had that scare.” I was by no means certain that I fully agreed with Svorenssen’s view of this matter; but I said nothing, and the man continued his story. “There was something very curious and uncanny about that scare, though just exactly what was the nature of it I cannot tell you, for we never found the explanation of the mystery. It was a long time before we observed anything in the least degree strange connected with our surroundings. At first, not only when Pete was with us, but later, when Dirk and I returned alone, we slept soundly all night and every night, but eventually there arrived a time when—when— Now, how am I to say it so that you will understand me?” “Ve had disturbin’ dreams,” prompted Van Ryn. “Yes,” agreed Svorenssen, “that was it; we had disturbing dreams—at least sometimes we thought they were dreams, while at other times we were convinced that they were real. A curious circumstance in connection with it was that the experiences began for both of us on the same night. It was our practice to build a big fire in front of the cave every night, to prevent the entrance of wild beasts while we slept, and on the night about which I am now going to speak we did it as usual. “We were never long in dropping off to sleep after we had composed ourselves to rest for the night, and this particular night was no exception to the rule. I don’t know how long I had been asleep—but it could not have been long, for our fire outside was still burning brightly and the interior of the cave was brilliantly illuminated by it—when I suddenly started up, broad awake, with my hair on end and the sweat of terror literally streaming from my every pore, for I was feeling more thoroughly scared than I had ever before been, and I was trembling like a leaf, and my teeth were chattering; although at the moment I had not the slightest notion what it was that had frightened me. “Then I heard Dirk muttering to himself, and looking round I saw that he too was sitting up, looking as terrified as I felt. “‘Wha—what is it, mate?’ he stammered. ‘What’s happened?’ “‘That is exactly what I want to know,’ said I. ‘How come you to be awake?’ “‘Hush!’ whispered Dirk, in a trembling voice. ‘Listen!’ and he held up his hand for silence. “I listened; and—believe me or not as you please, it is the solemn truth I’m telling you—that cave was full of queer little mysterious noises, like people whispering, and the soft tread of feet all about us. I looked, and Dirk looked, but we could see nothing; yet the sounds continued, now seeming to come from the back of the cave, and then all about us. I believe I should have been far less terrified if I could have seen anything to account for the sounds; but there was nothing. Panic seized me; I sprang to my feet and rushed, shrieking, out of the cave, dashing headlong right through our fire, and coming a terrible cropper on the rough, sloping ground in front of the cave. In falling I must have stunned myself, for I remember nothing more of what happened that night, but—and this I consider the most extraordinary part of the whole adventure—when I awoke next morning I found myself back in the cave again, lying upon my grass bed, with Dirk close alongside.” “Ah!” I commented, “quite a queer dream. What had Van Ryn to say about it? I suppose you mentioned it to him?” “I said dot it vas no dream; for shoost vot happened to Svorenssen, the same thing happened to me,” answered Van Ryn, speaking for himself. “Well, of course, that was very remarkable,” I agreed. “Still, it could have been only a dream, since you found yourselves, I understand, in the cave and on your own beds in the morning.” “Yah, dot vas so,” assented Van Ryn. “But vhen ve comes to overhaul ourselfs ve found dot our hands and faces vas badly skinned by our fall outside dot cave, und our hair and beards, as vell as our clothes, vas singed vhere ve had shoomped through the fire.” “Indeed!” said I. “That was certainly remarkable—if you are both quite sure you did not imagine those very peculiar happenings.” “If you mean about our skinned hands and faces, and our singed hair and clothes, there was no imagination about that,” asserted Svorenssen. “But about the other—well, when we came to talk about it in broad daylight we were unable to decide whether we had actually heard the sounds, or whether we had dreamed them. You see, it was not as though the thing happened once only; it happened several nights running, and at length it got upon our nerves to such an extent that we could endure it no longer; so we agreed to return to the beach and work our way along-shore, on the look-out for a break in the reef, abreast of which we proposed to camp in the hope that sooner or later a ship might come along, enter the lagoon, and take us off.” “A most sensible plan,” said I, “and the only thing I am surprised at is that, to a couple of sailor-men like yourselves, the idea did not come much earlier.” “Ay,” agreed Svorenssen, “it is a pity that it did not. Had it done so we should no doubt have discovered that you were still alive much earlier than we did, and found means to signal to you.” “No doubt,” said I. “Well, what happened to you after you left the cave the second time?” “The first thing,” replied Svorenssen, “was that we had the misfortune to lose Pete’s burning-glass, which left us without the means to light a fire. That was a terrible loss, for it left us defenceless against the attacks of wild beasts at night, so that we dared not camp anywhere in the open. Dirk remembered having heard that the natives of certain countries made fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and we tried the same plan over and over again. Indeed we spent the better part of several days trying to get fire in that way, but without success; we could not even raise a whiff of smoke. That was about the worst misfortune that happened to us, for without fire to protect us at night, or to cook food during the day, we were continually in difficulties. But it was not long before we discovered a method of cooking after a fashion without fire. Of course you will understand that the only cooking we had to do was when we were able to obtain a morsel of meat, which was by no means every day. When we succeeded, we used to look about for a rock that had been exposed to the sun’s rays for several hours, and when we had succeeded in our search we cut our meat into thin slices and laid it upon the rock, which was hot enough to so far broil our meat as to render it quite eatable. “We dared not camp out at night, even on the open beach. The beasts were certain to discover us, somehow, and came prowling round, giving us not a minute’s peace; and many a narrow escape we had from them. Thus we were compelled to get what sleep we could during the day-time, keeping watch and watch, while at night we did such travelling as was possible. But that was not much, for more often than not we were driven to take refuge in trees, or to retreat into the water, sitting in it up to our necks, with sharks cruising round within a few fathoms of us and occasionally making dashes into the shallow water and running themselves aground in their efforts to reach us. Ah! those were lively times and no mistake; and often enough we used to tell each other that life was not worth living; yet we spared no pains to preserve it. “Then, as though we had not already enough trouble, Dirk must needs fall sick of a fever of some sort, and became violently delirious. For three nights and four days I could do nothing with him; he was simply stark, staring mad; he would not permit me to approach him, but threatened me with his knife whenever he saw me. The only thing I could do was to keep him just in sight, and a pretty dance he led me, following him into the woods and all over the place—excepting into the water. Luckily for us both he had sense enough to keep clear of that, or the sharks would assuredly have had him. But of course that sort of thing could not long continue, and toward the evening of the fourth day the poor chap collapsed, and, as luck would have it, I found a comparatively safe refuge for him among some rocks, where I looked after and attended to him until he was well enough to be up and about again. But the fatigue, anxiety, and loss of rest told upon me so severely that no sooner was Dirk able to look after himself than I fell ill; and then it was his turn to look after me for about a fortnight. “Then one day, when I was beginning to pull round a bit, Dirk—who had been out foraging for food—returned to our refuge in a great state of excitement, with the intelligence that he had just seen a sailing boat alongside the wreck. The statement greatly alarmed me, for of course I did not believe a word of it, and my fear was that my chum was suffering a relapse, and was again experiencing delusions. But when I suggested this idea to him he indignantly scouted the idea, repeating his statement and bidding me crawl to the opening of the shelter and see for myself, if I did not believe him. “I took his advice—it was of course the obvious thing to do—and there, to my amazement, was the boat, unmistakably enough, with her mast stepped, rigging set up, and sails stowed. What was more, after looking intently for several minutes I had the impression that I caught glimpses of one or two people moving about aboard the wreck. We watched all that day, and the next, and the next, every moment expecting to see the boat leave the wreck; and all that time we were trying desperately hard to make a fire and thus create a smoke, so that whoever was aboard the wreck would see it, and come across to ascertain what it meant; but, try as we would, we were unable to manage it. Then one day Dirk went out to look at a trap which he had set in the woods, and upon his return he reported that the boat had left the wreck and was heading along the lagoon in a northerly direction, and that there were two people in her—a man and a boy; so we naturally concluded that it must be you and Billy, and that you had somehow escaped drowning after all.” “Then,” said I to Van Ryn, “if you saw us as distinctly as that, why did you not show yourself on the beach, and wave to attract our attention?” “I did,” replied the Dutchman. “D’ye think I’m such a fool as to miss a chance? But you vas not look my vay, not neither of you. Und though I shout and yell und run along the beach you take no notice, but sail on until at last you sails out of sight.” “That is very strange,” said I, “for whenever I was cruising in the lagoon I always kept an eye on the shore.” “Then you moost ’ave been lookin’ out abeam, or ahead, not astarn, vhere I ’appened to be,” declared Van Ryn. “Possibly,” I agreed, for I saw that the man was in an aggressively disputatious humour, and I wanted to have no words with him. “Well, what happened after that? Go on with your yarn, Svorenssen.” “We saw you three or four times after that,” resumed Svorenssen, “and once you passed so close that we easily recognised both of you. Unfortunately, we were both up a tree at the time, and were unable to descend, for the reason that there was a savage brute of a wild pig that had driven us up aloft and was waiting below for us to come down again. Of course we shouted our loudest, and as long as there seemed any possibility that you might hear; but it was no good. I suspect it was the roar of the surf on the reef that drowned our voices. But every time we saw you, if you were not going alongside the wreck you were steering north. So at length we came to the conclusion that you had probably rigged up some sort of a shelter in that direction; and we accordingly agreed to work along-shore in a northerly direction, and try to find out where you had bestowed yourselves. “To you, sailing along easily and comfortably in your boat, I dare say it would seem no very arduous job to work your way along a few miles of open beach; but to us two, circumstanced as we were, in a place swarming with savage brutes that seemed to be for ever lurking on the watch for us; without the means of kindling a fire as a protection; and with only our sheath-knives as weapons; obliged to enter the woods at the peril of our lives to obtain food—and as often as not driven out again without the food; able to sleep only during the day-time—and very often not even then; compelled to seek shelter in trees for hours at a time—ay, and often enough for a whole day—to save our lives, it was simply—well, there are no words strong enough to describe it. Why, there were days—plenty of them—when we did not make so much as a mile of progress; when, from one cause or another, we did not make a fathom, much less a mile. No wonder that we were so long a time working our way round to you. Indeed, now that I look back upon the innumerable difficulties that we had to contend with, my only surprise is that we ever managed to get here at all. “Then, as an appropriate climax of all our difficulties, the forest one day caught fire—perhaps you saw the blaze?—and almost the whole of the island was swept clean of every green thing. Phew! that was an experience, with a vengeance! If I had not beheld the scene with my own eyes I could never have believed there were so many wild creatures in all the world as we then saw; great, fierce monkeys, bigger than a man; little monkeys in thousands; leopards; wild pigs as savage as lions; deer of all sorts and sizes; and creatures the like of which we had never seen or heard of before—they all came swarming down to the beach to escape the flames. And—a very curious circumstance I thought it—they were all so thoroughly terrified that none of them interfered with the others, or with us, but all stood huddled together by the water’s edge, bleating, squealing, roaring, howling—no, I cannot attempt to describe it; it is the kind of thing that has to be seen to be understood. “Naturally, we all edged away as far as we could from the flames and the flying sparks, and eventually it began to dawn upon us all—beasts as well as men—that the extreme north end of the island might possibly be spared, and we all with one accord set off in that direction. And for a little while—twenty-four hours, or thereabout—we men did very well; the creatures all stood huddled together, trembling and making queer moaning, noises, too terrified to take notice of anybody or anything, and when we needed food all that was necessary was to lay hold of a deer, haul him out of the crowd, and cut his throat—and there was all the food we required. “But that condition of affairs was of course quite temporary. No sooner had the fire burned itself out than the creatures recovered their courage and turned upon each other like—well, like wild beasts. Dirk and I quickly recognised that the north end of the island was too perilous a place for us. There was therefore nothing for us but to escape from our dangerous neighbours while we could, and this could only be done by bearing away south again, which we did. “There was no cause for further fear of wild beasts as we pursued our journey southward; there was not a living thing to be seen anywhere ashore; even the birds had all vanished. That condition of affairs was of course all in our favour, so far as it went; but the unfortunate part of it was that the fruit was also destroyed; so that, while we could now rest undisturbed at night, our only food consisted of such raw shell-fish as we could find at the margin of the beach; and we could find no fresh water wherewith to quench our thirst. “For two days and nights we were in that predicament, our thirst being terrible, and the only relief we could obtain—and it was very partial—was to enter the sea and lie down in it for about ten minutes, allowing the ripples to wash over us, and taking care not to go far enough in to give the sharks a chance to get at us. Then, when we felt sufficiently relieved, we staggered along for a few yards, repeating the process about thirty or forty times a day. “At length, however, we found a stream of fresh water and camped beside it. But so terrible had been our suffering from thirst that, having at length found fresh water, we could not summon the courage to leave it again. “One day, however, as we were seeking shell-fish on the beach near the mouth of the stream, Dirk suddenly remarked:— “‘Olaf, my son, just run your eye along the ridge of that hill yonder, and tell me what you see.’ “I did so; and presently saw what had attracted his attention. There was a little patch of green that looked as though it might be trees, while all below it was black, where the fire had been. “‘It certainly looks very like a clump of trees,’ said I; ‘and where there are trees there will also probably be fruit. Let us take a walk up there and investigate.’ “‘And what about leaving this fresh water?’ asked Dirk. “‘No need to do that,’ said I. ‘The stream comes down from that direction, and we can probably follow it for a good part of the way. Surely it is worth while to risk it.’ “So we started, following the course of the stream until we had arrived very near to our destination. And when that was reached we found it to be a nice little patch of forest, rising to the top of the hill and dipping down on the other side of it for a distance of about two miles. And the reason why it had not been burnt with the rest was because it stood on the lee side of a lake big enough to cut off the flames from that little patch. “There were plenty of birds there; and when we proceeded to investigate we soon found that there were animals also—small monkeys, creatures very like hares but with short ears, a few deer; but nothing dangerous so far as we could discover. And there was an abundance of fruit of several kinds also; we therefore quickly determined to settle down there and rest a bit before going any farther. There was a great patch of reeds along the western end of the lake, and here thousands of wild duck used to settle every night; and we soon found that it was an easy matter to get a few by simply waiting for them among the reeds and catching them as they swam past. “We built ourselves a hut of wattles, thatched with palm leaves, that kept us dry and comfortable when it rained. So happy and easy in our minds were we that we almost forgot your existence; and when we happened to remember, we used to say to each other: ‘Never mind; we are every bit as comfortable as they are; we will stop on here a bit longer.’ And so we did, deferring our departure day after day and week after week, until finally the ducks grew shy of us, and the other creatures seemed to recognise our traps and avoid them; so that at length a time came when we were pretty hard put to it to make a living. Then, too, we began to feel lonesome, and to get snappy and short-tempered with each other; to dream and think and talk about home and its comforts, until we grew thoroughly dissatisfied with the life we were living; and one day, after we had had one of our now frequent quarrels, I said to Dirk:— “‘Look here, mate, we appear to have quite forgotten those other two. Do you think that a man of brains like Mr Blackburn is going to settle down and be satisfied to pass the remainder of his life among a group of desert islands like these? Because, if you do, I don’t. Just consider the facts. There is he and the boy; and you may safely bet that, whatever else they may have done, or left undone, they will have taken care to save the treasure that we found aboard that old galleon; and what good will it do them so long as they remain here? No good at all. Therefore I think we may take it for granted that he will set his wits to work to get away from here by hook or by crook, taking the treasure with them; and then where do we come in, and what becomes of our share of it? Let us cut adrift from this spot—which, anyhow, is of no further use to us—and join them; and when they go, we will go with them, and take our share of the treasure.’ “Dirk quite saw the force of my reasoning and eagerly agreed to my proposal; so we made a start there and then, and—and here we are.” <hr> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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