The tents!' echoed the joyous 'Thalassa!
Thalassa!' of the weary Greeks.
CHAPTER XXIX
'WHERE is the tent of the commanding officer?' I asked of the
first soldier I came across.
He pointed to one on the hillside. 'Ags for Major Dooker,'
was the Dutch-accented answer.
Bidding Samson stay where he was, I made my way as directed.
A middle-aged officer in undress uniform was sitting on an
empty packing-case in front of his tent, whittling a piece of
its wood.
'Pray sir,' said I in my best Louis Quatorze manner, 'have I
the pleasure of speaking to Major Dooker?'
'Tucker, sir. And who the devil are you?'
Let me describe what the Major saw: A man wasted by
starvation to skin and bone, blackened, almost, by months of
exposure to scorching suns; clad in the shreds of what had
once been a shirt, torn by every kind of convict labour,
stained by mud and the sweat and sores of mules; the rags of
a shooting coat to match; no head covering; hands festering
with sores, and which for weeks had not touched water - if
they could avoid it. Such an object, in short, as the genius
of a Phil May could alone have depicted as the most repulsive
object he could imagine.
'Who the devil are you?'
'An English gentleman, sir, travelling for pleasure.'
He smiled. 'You look more like a wild beast.'
'I am quite tame, sir, I assure you - could even eat out of
your hand if I had a chance.'
'Is your name Coke?'
'Yes,' was my amazed reply.
'Then come with me - I will show you something that may
surprise you.'
I followed him to a neighbouring tent. He drew aside the
flap of it, and there on his blanket lay Fred Calthorpe,
snoring in perfect bliss.
Our greetings were less restrained than our parting had been.
We were truly glad to meet again. He had arrived just two
days before me, although he had been at Salt Lake City. But
he had been able there to refit, had obtained ample supplies
and fresh animals. Curiously enough, his Nelson - the
French-Canadian - had also been drowned in crossing the Snake
River. His place, however, had been filled by another man,
and Jacob had turned out a treasure. The good fellow greeted
me warmly. And it was no slight compensation for bygone
troubles to be assured by him that our separation had led to
the final triumphal success.
Fred and I now shared the same tent. To show what habit will
do, it was many days before I could accustom myself to sleep
under cover of a tent even, and in preference slept, as I had
done for five months, under the stars. The officers
liberally furnished us with clothing. But their excessive
hospitality more nearly proved fatal to me than any peril I
had met with. One's stomach had quite lost its discretion.
And forgetting that
Famished people must be slowly nursed,
And fed by spoonfuls, else they always burst,
one never knew when to leave off eating. For a few days I
was seriously ill.
An absurd incident occurred to me here which might have had
an unpleasant ending. Every evening, after dinner in the
mess tent, we played whist. One night, quite by accident,
Fred and I happened to be partners. The Major and another
officer made up the four. The stakes were rather high. We
two had had an extraordinary run of luck. The Major's temper
had been smouldering for some time. Presently the deal fell
to me; and as bad luck would have it, I dealt myself a
handful of trumps, and - all four honours. As the last of
these was played, the now blazing Major dashed his cards on
the table, and there and then called me out. The cooler
heads of two or three of the others, with whom Fred had had
time to make friends, to say nothing of the usual roar of
laughter with which he himself heard the challenge, brought
the matter to a peaceful issue. The following day one of the
officers brought me a graceful apology.
As may readily be supposed, we had no hankering for further
travels such as we had gone through. San Francisco was our
destination; but though as unknown to us as Charles Lamb's
'Stranger,' we 'damned' the overland route 'at a venture';
and settled, as there was no alternative, to go in a trading
ship to the Sandwich Islands thence, by the same means, to
California.
On October 20 we procured a canoe large enough for seven or
eight persons; and embarking with our light baggage, Fred,
Samson, and I, took leave of the Dalles. For some miles the
great river, the Columbia, runs through the Cascade
Mountains, and is confined, as heretofore, in a channel of
basaltic rock. Further down it widens, and is ornamented by
groups of small wooded islands. On one of these we landed to
rest our Indians and feed. Towards evening we again put
ashore, at an Indian village, where we camped for the night.
The scenery here is magnificent. It reminded me a little of
the Danube below Linz, or of the finest parts of the Elbe in
Saxon Switzerland. But this is to compare the full-length
portrait with the miniature. It is the grandeur of the scale
of the best of the American scenery that so strikes the
European. Variety, however, has its charms; and before one
has travelled fifteen hundred miles on the same river - as
one may easily do in America - one begins to sigh for the
Rhine, or even for a trip from London to Greenwich, with a
white-bait dinner at the end of it.
The day after, we descended the Cascades. They are the
beginning of an immense fall in the level, and form a
succession of rapids nearly two miles long.
