Here Even This Track Seemed, To Our Eyes, To Die
Out; But Lizzie Led The Way Confidently, And Evidently With A Thorough
Knowledge Of What She Was About.
We had now been walking for more than
three hours, and had apparently only got half way up a
Kind of gorge in the
mountains, which seemed to become gradually narrower and narrower, and from
all appearances afforded every prospect of terminating in a 'cul-de-sac'.
A watercourse must at some period have run down this ravine, for the
boulders were rounded; but it was now quite dry. As the sides of the
mountains drew nearer, our path led along this watercourse, and the walking
became dreadfully fatiguing. The boulders were sometimes so close as to
render walking between impossible, and then it became necessary to clamber
over them, which, loaded as we were, was very painful. If, on the other
hand, we attempted to journey on the 'top' of the boulders, they were not
only of unequal heights, but sometimes so wide apart, that a good spring
was requisite to get from one to the other. Lizzie was the only one of the
party who appeared thoroughly at home; her light figure bounded from rock
to rock with the greatest ease and rapidity. Even Cato and Ferdinand,
barefooted as they were, seemed to be a long way from enjoying themselves,
and for us wretched Europeans, with our thick boots, that obtained scarcely
any foothold, we slipped about from the rounded shoulders of the rocks, in
a way that was anything but pleasant.
Thus we scrambled along for another hour, at the expiration of which we
could only see a blank wall of mountain before us, up which it would have
been both impossible and useless to climb. Wondering where the deuce
Lizzie was leading us, we blundered along until we arrived at the base of
the perpendicular cliff, and saw that by some convulsion of nature the
ravine now branched off at a right angle to the left, and gradually widened
out into a beautiful and gently declining stretch of country, perfectly
shut in by hills, and into which a pretty little bay extended, with several
canoes on its placid surface. We were distant from the beach about three
miles, and could see clearly the smoke of several fires; while with
binocular glasses we could make out the figures of the blacks fishing, and
of the piccaninnies and gins romping in the sand.
Lizzie was a sight to see, as she pointed triumphantly to the unconscious
savages, and, trembling with eagerness, tapped the butt of Dunmore's
carbine, as she whispered -
"Those fellow sit down there, brother belonging to me, plenty you shoot
'em, Marmy."
"You take us close up along of those fellow, Lizzie?" said Dunmore.
"Your Marmy, plenty close, you been shoot 'em all mine think," replied our
amiable little guide, who, enjoining the strictest silence, at once put
herself in motion, bidding us, by a sign, to follow her.
For more than an hour and a half we crept cautiously along, sometimes
crawling on all fours where the country was open, and frequently stopping,
while Lizzie went noiselessly forward and reconnoitred, before beckoning to
us to advance again. The direction in which she led us lay at the base of
the hills, which on one side bounded the little plain and its bay, and
though we could form but a crude idea of where we were going, owing to the
thickness of the undergrowth, yet it was sufficiently evident that the
young lady was one of nature's tacticians, and meditated a flank blow at
her unfortunate relatives. Proceeding, we came at last within a stone's
throw of the beach, and could hear the mimic waves rolling on the sand, at
no great distance, on our right hand. Lizzie now pointed to a small belt
of vine shrub that lay in front of us, and indicated that immediately
outside it were the 'gunyahs', or huts; and, "plenty you shoot," she added
showing her white teeth as she grinned with glee at the thoughts of the
cheerful surprise she had prepared for her old companions. We were not
thoroughly on the 'qui vive', for we thought this unknown bay would be the
very spot in which the blacks were likely to seclude any prisoners from the
'Eva', and accordingly willingly followed the lithe figure of our little
guide, as she wound her way through the tangled brake, like a black snake,
and with a facility that we in vain attempted to imitate. The troopers -
who had reduced their clothing to a minimum, for their sole vestment
consisted of a forage-cap and cartridge-belt - wound along as noiselessly
as Lizzie; but we poor whites - with our flannel shirts and other
complicated paraphernalia that custom would not permit us to dispense with
in the matter-of-fact way they were laid aside by our sable allies - were
getting into continual trouble; now hitched up helplessly by a lawyer vine,
whose sharp prickles, like inverted fish-hooks, rent the skin; now crawling
unsuspiciously against a tree-ants' nest, an indiscretion that the fierce
little insects visited with immediate and most painful punishment; or else,
becoming aware, by unmistakable symptoms, that we were trying to force a
passage through a stinging tree-shrub. Whenever we thus came to grief,
Lizzie would stop, turn round, and wave her arms about like a semaphore,
indicative of impatience, contempt mingled with pity and warning.
Luckily for us, the belt of scrub was not of great extent; Lizzie had
already reached its edge, and was peering cautiously through, and we were
struggling along, each after his own fashion, when bang went a carbine, the
bullet of which we distinctly heard whistle over our heads, and turning
round we got a glimpse of Jack, the roughrider, hung up in a vine, one of
whose tendrils had fired off his weapon; and had just time to hear him
exclaim, "If I'd only been mounted, this wouldn't have happened," before we
broke cover, and all further concealment being now unnecessary, rushed
recklessly on to the encampment.
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