CHAPTER V--A DAY IN THE FOREST WILDS

Burly Bill laid down his banjo. Then he pushed his great extinguisher of a thumb into the bowl of his big meerschaum, and arose.

"De good Lawd ha' mussy on our souls, chillun!" cried Beeboo, twisting her ap.r.o.n into a calico rope. "We soon be all at de bottom ob de deep, and de 'gators a-pickin' de bones ob us!"

"Keep quiet, Beeb, there's a dear soul! Never a 'gator'll get near you.

W'y, look 'ow calm Miss Peggy is. It be'ant much as'll frighten she."

Burly Bill could speak good English when he took time, but invariably reverted to Berkshire when in the least degree excited.

He was soon on board the little steamer.

"What cheer, Jake?" he said.

"Not much o' that. A deuced unlucky business. May lose the whole voyage if it comes on to blow!"

"W'y, Jake, lad, let's 'ope for the best. No use givin' up; be there?

I wouldn't let the men go to prayers yet awhile, Jake. Not to make a bizness on't like, I means."

Well, the night wore away, but the raft never budged, unless it was to get a firmer hold of the mud and sand.

A low wind had sprung up too, and if it increased to a gale she would soon begin to break up.

It was a dreary night and a long one, and few on board the steamer slept a wink.

But day broke at last, and the sun's crimson light changed the ripples on the river from leaden gray to dazzling ruby.

Then the wind fell.

"There are plenty of river-boats, Bill," said Jake. "What say you to intercept one and ask a.s.sistance?"

"Bust my b.u.t.tons if I would cringe to ne'er a one on 'em! They'd charge salvage, and sponge enormous. I knows the beggars as sails these puffin'

Jimmies well."

"Guess you're about right, Bill, and you know the river better'n I."

"Listen, Jake. The bloomin' river got low all at once, like, after the storm, and so you got kind o' befoozled, and struck. I'd a-kept further out. But Burly Bill ain't the man to bully his mate. On'y listen again. The river'll rise in a day or two, and if the wind keeps in its sack, w'y we'll float like a thousand o' bricks on an old Thames lumper!

Bust my b.u.t.tons, Jake, if we don't!"

"Well, Bill, I don't know anything about the bursting of your b.u.t.tons, but you give me hope. So I'll go to breakfast. Tell the engineer to keep the fires banked."

Two days went past, and never a move made the raft.

It was a wearisome time for all. The "chillun", as Beeboo called them, tried to beguile it in the best way they could with reading, talking, and deck games.

d.i.c.k and Roland were "dons" at leap-frog, and it mattered not which of them was giving the back, but as soon as the other leapt over Brawn followed suit, greatly to the delight of Peggy. He jumped in such a business-like way that everybody was forced to laugh, especially when the n.o.ble dog took a leap that would have cleared a five-barred gate.

But things were getting slow on the third morning, when up sprang Burly Bill with his cartridge-belt on and his rifle under his arm.

"Cap'n Jake," he said, touching his cap in Royal Navy fashion, "presents his compliments to the crew of this durned old stack o' timber, and begs to say that Master Rolly and Master d.i.c.k can come on sh.o.r.e with me for a run among the 'gators, but that Miss Peggy had better stop on board with Beeboo. Her life is too precious to risk!"

"Precious or not precious," pouted the girl, "Miss Peggy's going, and Brawn too; so you may tell Captain Jake that."

"Bravo, Miss Peggy! you're a real St. Clair. Well, Beeboo, hurry up, and get the nicest bit of cold luncheon ready for us ever you made in your life."

"Beeboo do dat foh true. Plenty quick, too; but oh, Ma.s.sa Bill, 'spose you let any ebil ting befall de poh chillun, I hopes de 'gators'll eat you up!"

"More likely, Beeb, that we'll eat them; and really, come to think of it, a slice off a young 'gator's tail aint 'arf bad tackle, Beeboo."

An hour after this the boat was dancing over the rippling river. It was not the dinghy, but a gig. Burly Bill himself was stroke, and three Indians handled the other bits of timber, while Roland took the tiller.

The redskins sang a curious but happy boat-lilt as they rowed, and Bill joined in with his 'cello voice:

"Ober de watter and ober de sea--ee--ee, De big black boat am rowing so free, Eee--Eee--O--ay--O!

De big black boat, is it nuffin' to me--ee--ee, We're rowing so free?

"Oh yes, de black boat am some-dings to me As she rolls o'er de watter and swings o'er de sea, Foh de light ob my life, she sits in de stern, An' sweet am de glance o' Peggy's dark e'e, Ee--ee--O--ay--O--O!"

"Well steered!" said Burly Bill, as Roland ran the gig on the sandy beach of a sweet little backwater.

Very soon all were landed. Bill went first as guide, and the Indians brought up the rear, carrying the basket and a spare gun or two.

Great caution and care were required in venturing far into this wild, tropical forest, not so much on account of the beasts that infested it as the fear of getting lost.

It was very still and quiet here, however, and Bill had taken the precaution to leave a man in the boat, with orders to keep his weather ear "lifting", and if he heard four shots fired in rapid succession late in the afternoon to fire in reply at once.

It was now the heat of the day, however, and the hairy inhabitants of this sylvan wilderness were all sound asleep, jaguars and pumas among the trees, and the tapirs in small herds wherever the jungle was densest.

There was no chance, therefore, of getting a shot at anything.

Nevertheless, the boys and Peggy were not idle. They had brought b.u.t.terfly-nets with them, and the specimens they caught when about five miles inland, where the forest opened out into a shrub-clad moorland, were large and glorious in the extreme.

Indeed, some of them would fetch gold galore in the London markets.

But though these b.u.t.terflies had an immense spread of quaintly-shaped and exquisitely-coloured wings, the smaller ones were even more brilliant.

Strange it is that Nature paints these creatures in colours which no sunshine can fade. All the tints that man ever invented grow pale in the sun; these never do, and the same may be said concerning the tropical birds that they saw so many of to-day.

But no one had the heart to shoot any of these. Why should they soil such beautiful plumage with blood, and so bring grief and woe into this love-lit wilderness?

This is not a book on natural history, else gladly would I describe the beauties in shape and colour of the birds, and their strange manners, the wary ways adopted in nest-building, and their songs and queer ways of love-making.

Suffice it to say here that the boys were delighted with all the tropical wonders and all the picturesque gorgeousness they saw everywhere around them.

But their journey was not without a spice of real danger and at times of discomfort. The discomfort we may dismiss at once. It was borne, as Beeboo would say, with Christian "forty-tood", and was due partly to the clouds of mosquitoes they encountered wherever the soil was damp and marshy, and partly to the attacks of tiny, almost invisible, insects of the jigger species that came from the gra.s.s and ferns and heaths to attack their legs.

Burly Bill was an old forester, and carried with him an infallible remedy for mosquito and jigger bites, which acted like a charm.