Hair-Breadth Escapes Part 29

"Your appearance is that of a missionary," rejoined the Queen. "May I ask if that is the case, and if so, what is your name, and where have you of late been residing?"

"I am a preacher of the Gospel," said De Walden, "and my name is Theodore De Walden. I have been for many years in different parts of South Africa, both to the north and west of this land."

"I have heard of you," said the Queen, "and have long been desirous of meeting with you, or some other of your calling. I myself am by birth a member of the English Church, and still account myself one, though so long cut off from its ministrations."

"The English Church--indeed!" exclaimed Warley. "May we presume to ask how--how--"

"How it comes that an English Churchwoman should be living in this wild country, so far from her native land, and the ruler of a barbarian tribe--that is what you would ask," said the Queen, smiling. "Well, of course I knew you would wish to learn the particulars of my strange history, and it is perhaps as agreeable to me to relate, as it is to you to hear it. Seat yourselves"--she beckoned to the attendants to bring forward chairs, as she spoke--"and I will tell you the whole tale."

"I was born in one of the midland counties of England, and am the daughter of a man of good family, though at the time of my birth reduced in means. He was a surgeon in a small country town, skilful and unwearied in his profession, but unable to realise any considerable income. My mother died when I was about twelve years old, and as my father could not afford to keep any a.s.sistant, he was obliged to rely a good deal on my help, as I grew up, in making up his medicines, and occasionally attending cases of slight illness under his directions.

When I was about seventeen, my father unexpectedly obtained a valuable appointment in India, in the Company's service, and thither we accordingly proceeded in the spring of the year 1778.

"But the climate never agreed with him; and after persisting for two or three years in the vain hope of becoming habituated to it, his health altogether broke down, and he died, leaving me with a very slender provision. I resolved at once to return to England, and solicit the help of my relatives there. Some of them may still be living, and doubtless believe that I have long been dead. It would only distress them if they were to learn the real facts, and I therefore shall not disclose my true name, or those indeed of any of the party.

"I took my pa.s.sage homeward by the _Grosvenor_, a fine vessel belonging to the East India Company's service. It carried a great many pa.s.sengers, mostly officers returning home, and a few civilians. There were also several ladies, though none about my own age. I remember, particularly, Colonel Harrison--so I will name him--an old friend of my father's, Major Piers, Captains Gilby and Andrewes, Mr Hickson, Mr Morgan, and Mr Gregg, as well as his sister, Mrs Gilby, Mrs Wilkinson, and Miss Hordern. It is strange how well I can recall all their faces and persons at this interval of time.

"The voyage was unusually quick and agreeable until we arrived off the coast of South Africa. But there we encountered a gale so violent, that the s.h.i.+p soon became wholly unmanageable. Everybody concurred in saying, that it was through no fault either of the captain or of the crew that the vessel was lost. The wind drove her directly ash.o.r.e, the anchors that were thrown out parted during the height of the storm, and there are no harbours anywhere along that coast for which vessels can run. The end was that she was thrown upon a reef at no great distance from sh.o.r.e, and entirely broken up.

"By the good management of the officers in command, the whole of the pa.s.sengers, and nearly all the crew, were got into the boats and safely landed on the sh.o.r.e. We were at first very thankful for our escape; but if we had known the fate that awaited nearly all of us, I think we should have preferred being swallowed up by the raging sea to undergoing it. The sea-coast at that point consists of long stretches of sandy beach, overgrown at a short distance from the sea by thick scrub and underwood, while further inland are dense and almost impa.s.sable forests.

Our first step was to provide ourselves with some shelter against the wind and rain which continued unabated for several days. By the help of the carpenter's chest, and the various articles which were thrown ash.o.r.e from the wreck, we soon established ourselves comfortably enough. Huts were run up in which the whole of the party were lodged, hunting parties organised, and then a general meeting was summoned to determine what steps were to be taken to deliver ourselves from the embarra.s.sing position in which we were placed.

"I remember there was great difference of opinion. Some proposed to build a barque out of the remains of the _Grosvenor_, sufficiently large to convey the whole party round to Table Bay. The distance, it was reckoned, was six or seven hundred miles. We might easily row or sail on an average forty or fifty miles a day. And even if Cape Town should be too far to be so reached, we should be safe to come to some of the villages scattered here and there along the coast, which kept up some kind of communication with the interior. Others urged our continuing in our present quarters until we succeeded in attracting the attention of some pa.s.sing vessel. Others, again, proposed a plan compounded of these. One of the small boats was to be repaired sufficiently to allow two or three of the most experienced sailors to go in search of help for the whole party.

"On the whole, I believe the last-named suggestion would have had the best chance of success. Any one of the three would certainly have been preferable to the one adopted, and which had in the first instance been proposed by the Captain himself, viz., that the whole of the party should make their way overland to the nearest inhabited district. This was strongly opposed by Colonel Harrison and old Mr Hickson; the former of whom warned us, that the attempt would probably result in the destruction of all. But there were among the pa.s.sengers, as well as among the junior officers of the s.h.i.+p, a number of hot-headed adventurous spirits, to whom such a journey, as that designed, had an irresistible charm. We all set out; but after a few days of suffering, all the women and most of the men returned to the coast, while the others went on.

"I have been told that some at least of this party succeeded after a long and hazardous journey in reaching the Dutch settlements at Cape Town. I suppose that must be so, because I learned, some years afterwards, that all the particulars of the loss of the _Grosvenor_ were known to the Dutch authorities, and I do not know how they could have learned anything on the subject except from my fellow-pa.s.sengers. I have also been told that a party was sent out to search for any survivors of the ill-fated s.h.i.+p. If that was so, they never came near the spot where I was living.

"We saw our companions depart with very mingled feelings. The confidence of their leaders had inspired some of us with hope, while others were very despondent. This despondency was increased when, a few days after their departure, Captain Gilby and Mr Gregg, returning from a shooting expedition, reported that they had seen armed savages in the neighbourhood of the huts, prowling about, evidently with no friendly intentions towards us. It was immediately resolved to protect the building with a palisade; beyond which the ladies were never to venture without an armed escort, and to keep two of the men always on guard inside the stockade with loaded muskets. But these precautions were of little avail. Several of our small party were, from time to time, captured or wounded by the natives; and all who were thus injured expired soon afterwards in great agonies from the poison, in which the weapons of the savages had been steeped. Two or three of the women also died, partly of insufficient food, and partly of anxiety and alarm. At last the whole party was reduced to four men and five women; and we then held a consultation to decide what was to be done.

"It was impossible to defend the stockade, with our reduced numbers. It was idle to hope for rescue. It would be still more useless to surrender to the savages, who would observe no terms, even should they be induced to agree to any. The only possible hope lay in flight. If we stole out of the palisades by night, and took ourselves off in different directions through the depths of the forest, it was just possible that some of us might escape the notice of our enemies. We divided into three parties, Captain Gilby, his wife, and Mrs Wilkinson chose the path by the seash.o.r.e; Captain Piers, Mr and Miss Gregg, endeavoured to follow the route taken by the party several weeks before; while Colonel Harrison took Miss Hordern and myself under his charge.

The Colonel had some knowledge of the colony, and knew that the best hope of escape lay towards the north, where there were but few tribes located, and an almost endless screen of forest.

"We took leave of one another only an hour after we had come to this resolution, as the danger was growing every moment more imminent. I never heard with any certainty what became of the rest of the party; but a report once reached me that Miss Gregg (so I call her, though, as I have said before, I give none of the real names), after the murder of her brother and Captain Piers, had to submit to something of the same fate as myself. But this was only a rumour. Of the fate of Captain Gilby and his wife, I never heard anything.

"As regards ourselves, we were fortunate enough entirely to escape pursuit, and after three days of intense anxiety and fatigue, had reached a part of the forest which lay beyond the haunts of the tribes, by which we had been attacked. We were now compelled to rest awhile, and recover our strength. But though Miss Hordern and myself, who were both of us of a hardy const.i.tution, soon rallied from the fatigues we had undergone, the old Colonel could not. He grew daily weaker in spite of all our care of him, and at last died, to our inexpressible grief.

We laid his remains in an empty pit which we had found, and filled it in as well as we could, with clods and stones. We then set off--two poor desolate women--to find our way as well as we could to some place of shelter.

"The toil we underwent, and the perils, which by a miracle we contrived to avoid, would fill a volume, if I were to relate them. But it will be enough to say that, after endless wanderings, we found ourselves at last somewhere about fifty or sixty miles from the banks of the Gariep--at no very great distance, in fact, from this present spot. We had subsisted chiefly on the fruits that grow in abundance throughout the whole of the country, and were beginning to hope that, after all, we might reach the outlying Dutch farms of which Colonel Harrison had spoken, when another calamity befell us. Miss Hordern and myself were one day suddenly surprised by a party of Basutos, who had gone out on a shooting expedition to the valley of the Vaal. We instantly took to flight, but before we had gone fifty yards, Miss Hordern was struck by an arrow, and the wound proved almost instantly fatal. I stopped as soon as I saw her fall, and took her in my arms, too much distressed by this last misfortune to heed my own danger.

"What the pursuers would have done to me, I do not know. But when I recovered from the swoon of grief into which I had fallen over the body of my dead friend, I saw a tall and n.o.ble-looking warrior bending over me, his fine eyes and manly features expressing a sympathy for my affliction, which I should have supposed a savage to be incapable of feeling. He gave some orders to his men, in a language which I did not comprehend, and I was immediately carried into a hut, and carefully waited on by several women. I was ill a long time, but every day my warrior came to visit me, and gradually I picked up enough of the Basuto language to exchange a few sentences with him. I soon perceived the light in which he viewed me, and it was not unwelcome--strange as such an idea would have appeared to me a few weeks before. But I was worn out by harsh usage, he alone having shown me kindness; and my utter helplessness made me inclined to lean on any friendly arm. He was, too, one of the n.o.blest and most generous characters I have ever met with, and his instinctive delicacy of feeling rendered him all the more attractive in my eyes. I consented to be his wife, conditionally on his taking no others, and to this he readily agreed, for, I believe, no woman but myself ever had any charm for him.

"We were married according to the Basuto forms; but at my desire we also recited the vow of husband and wife, according to the marriage service of the English Church, and for ten years lived happily together. I should mention that I found the medical knowledge I had acquired in my girlhood of the greatest benefit to my newly adopted countrymen.

Several times, when epidemic fevers, common to this country, broke out, I was successful in treating them, and my husband's authority enabled me to enforce regulations, which otherwise I could not have induced the people to observe. When my husband was killed, some fifteen years ago, by the sudden fall of a tree, the tribe insisted on making me their Queen; and nothing has ever seriously disturbed the prosperity of my reign. Ella, who was born a few years after our marriage, is our only surviving child.

"Such is my history--a strange one, no doubt. Probably most persons would regard me as an object of pity, to say the least. But I do not share the opinion. I have had, in my way, much happiness; and, if I have been deprived of privileges and blessings, which fall ordinarily to the lot of Englishwomen, have also escaped many sorrows and trials, to which in my own country I should have been exposed.

"But there are two points on which I should like to say something before I conclude. I dare say you have thought it strange that I did not communicate with my countrymen at Cape Town, when the colony fell into their hands. But news travels so slowly in these wild and distant regions, that I did not know with any certainty what had taken place till long after the occurrence. Then, my husband's death for the time drove all other thoughts from my mind; and when I had regained my composure enough to attend once more to the affairs of my kingdom, and I sent an emba.s.sy to the English Governor, I found that the colony had been given back to the Dutch.

"The other matter is a more important one. I should be sorry for you, Mr De Walden, to think that I made no effort to induce my husband to adopt Christianity as his creed. It was a subject on which we often talked, and though he was slow to accept ideas so wholly new, yet they gradually grew upon him, and before his death he was a convert to Christ.

"No Christian minister ever came into our neighbourhood during the whole of our married life, or he would doubtless have gladly welcomed him, and received baptism at his hands. As it was, I myself administered the rite to him, when I saw that he was dying.

"I have done my best to bring up Ella in our faith, and to teach what I could to others round me; but I hail your coming--the first preacher of the Gospel I have encountered in this land--with the utmost thankfulness, and trust you will remain among us as our teacher and guide, a.s.sured that all the help and countenance that I can give shall be most willingly and gladly bestowed."

She ceased, and De Walden, who had listened to her story with profound interest, hastened to make answer.

"Be a.s.sured, gracious lady, that I will most cheerfully obey your wishes. The hand of G.o.d is too plainly seen in what has occurred for me to venture to refuse, even were I so inclined; but earnestly as I have, for years past, been seeking for an opening like this, and always. .h.i.therto having failed to obtain it, I cannot be thankful enough to the merciful Providence, which has at last been pleased to hearken to my prayers."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

LIFE IN THE BASUTO KRAAL--A GIRAFFE HUNT--AN UNEXPECTED INTERFERENCE-- ERNEST AND ELLA--ERNEST'S EMBARRa.s.sMENT.

De Walden soon discovered that Queen Laura had not overstated her friendly feelings towards him and his companions. Not only was every provision made for their comfort, but a large building was set apart for the special purposes of a missionary school and chapel. Here such of the Basuto children as were allowed by their parents to receive instruction from the English teachers were instructed for two or three hours every day; while morning and evening prayers were regularly offered up by the missionary, which all were invited to attend. The Queen did not directly order the people to send their children to the school thus opened, but it was known that she approved of it, and her popularity with the tribe was so great that very few held back.

The afternoons were usually given up to the more especial education of Ella; who, though she had been taught by her mother to read and write, and had studied the few English books which had been saved from the wreck of the _Grosvenor_, was of course greatly behind English girls of her age in respect of knowledge. De Walden undertook her religious instruction, and gave her besides some general lessons in history and grammar, but was obliged, by lack of time, to hand over arithmetic and geography to Warley, who, fresh from a good English school, was well acquainted with both. Such an arrangement would have been a somewhat questionable one in an English family; but here, in the heart of the African wilderness, its awkwardness was not felt, and Ella's extreme simplicity of mind prevented any embarra.s.sments which might otherwise have arisen.

So pa.s.sed several weeks, with scarcely anything to distinguish one day from another. In the morning De Walden and Warley, a.s.sisted generally by Ella, taught the village children to read, write, and cipher; then came the mid-day meal, when the whole party dined at the Queen's table; after that there were Ella's lessons, lasting two or three hours; then some excursion on horseback (for the Queen owned a large stud of horses), or on the river, when the lads took their rifles with them, and seldom returned without a goodly supply of game of one kind or another.

During these expeditions, Ella would continually ply her companions with questions respecting English life, and especially the habits of English ladies, in which she took a deep and ever-increasing interest; and Warley, at least, was never tired of satisfying her curiosity. In the evenings there was the second meal, and after that De Walden or Warley read aloud; or the Queen and the missionary would talk over the Europe, and especially the England, of their young days, of which both entertained so vivid a remembrance. It was strange to think that a life so nearly resembling that of an English home, could be carried out at a distance of more than seven thousand miles from it, and amid the depths of an uncultivated wilderness!

Meanwhile nothing could be learned respecting Kobo's movements. A messenger had been despatched to the village, in which Queen Laura usually resided, it being supposed that Kobo had repaired thither in search of her. But the Basuto had returned in four or five days, with the information that nothing had been seen or heard of the missing man.

A party of white men, it was however reported, had been seen travelling somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Vaal, and it was thought that Kobo might have joined them. Further inquiries were set on foot, as soon as this information was received, as to who these white men were, and whence they had come; but it was found impossible to obtain any trustworthy tidings respecting them. If there ever had been any such persons in the vicinity of the Gariep, at all events they had long since departed, and no one knew whither.

It was now again the season of early summer, and the shrubs and flowers were in their full freshness and beauty. It was resolved to gratify Nick and Frank (who were beginning to find life in the Basuto kraal exceedingly dull and wearisome) with some sport, which they had not yet witnessed. In particular, they were anxious to see the giraffe hunted; and it having been reported that a large herd of these animals had been seen browsing in a kloof at no great distance, a party was formed for going in chase of them on the ensuing day. The Queen had desisted from the sports of the field for two or three years past, and De Walden could not afford, at the present juncture, to lose even a day with his scholars. But all the others joined the expedition, accompanied by the Princess Ella, who in the use of the bow and arrow was as skilful as any warrior of the tribe. They were all mounted on fleet steeds, especially trained to the pursuit of the giraffe; for to horses not so broken in, the scent of the camelopard is so offensive that they cannot be induced to approach it.

It was a fine fresh morning. The hors.e.m.e.n, eight in number, were attended by a much larger company of Basutos on foot, whose business it was to spread themselves in all directions over the woodland, and drive the gigantic animals towards the spot where the hors.e.m.e.n were lying in ambush. These accordingly dispersed, north, east, and west; while the riders, in groups of two or three, repaired to their appointed station.

"Were you fond of riding when in your own country, Ernest?" asked the princess, as they cantered lightly side by side over the mossy turf.

"I seldom had the opportunity," answered Warley. "Horses are costly, both to buy and to keep, in England, and I was not rich, you know."

"Not rich! How strange it seems to me, to hear you say that! It seems to me that the very poorest in England must be far richer than my mother or myself. All the things that appear to me to be really valuable are within the reach of every one there, so at least I gather from what you have told me; while we can obtain none of them, even though we gave all we had for their possession."

"Viewing things in that light, what you say is true, Ella. But you have advantages which few in England possess. You have influence and power over others--"

"Ah, I understand, and you will teach us how to use these rightly. I rejoice every day more and more that you have come among us."

"And I am not less glad, Ella, believe me."

"You!--you glad to be here, Ernest? What! far away from your home and friends, in a wild and strange land like this? You are jesting, surely."

"Indeed I am not, Ella. I would not be back in England, if a wish could place me there."

Ella would have replied, but they had now reached the spot where they had agreed to a.s.semble, and the rest of the party joined them. It was an open glade, of perhaps an acre in extent, in the heart of a thickly wooded country. For the most part, the trees were not more than ten or twelve feet high, though here and there oomahaamas and baobabs were to be seen, the former towering to a great height against the sky--the latter of enormous girth, sixty or eighty feet at the least--their trunks resembling large columns of granite, in the grey colour and rough surface they presented. It was in the midst of a group of these that the party now a.s.sembled; the ma.s.sy stems and dense foliage effectually screening them from view, though they could themselves see the whole country round them. Presently a distant sound was heard, like that of trampling hoofs, which grew louder and louder, until the elegant tapering necks of a dozen giraffes came into sight, as they raced along with the gallop which appears so graceful until the legs come into sight, and then so clumsy and confused. On they sped, balancing their lengthy bodies anew, as it appeared, every time they laid leg to the ground, and whisking their tufted tails from side to side, as though to stimulate themselves to fresh exertions.

As soon as the herd had entered the open glade, the hors.e.m.e.n broke cover, and galloped after them, hoping to approach them sufficiently near to be able to strike them with their spears or arrows. But the animals caught the flash of the first a.s.segai that issued from under the baobabs, and wheeling instantly round, continued their career at more headlong speed than before. The only chance now lay in riding them down; and this might be accomplished with the trained horses ridden by the party, though only after a furious gallop of many miles. As if aware of this possibility, and anxious to avoid it as much as possible, the giraffes now no longer kept together in a single herd, but fled in different directions, only two or three remaining in company, and several galloping singly off through the forest paths. As the natural consequence of this, the pursuers also broke up in smaller bands; and by and by, Warley and Ella found themselves separated from the rest, and riding at full speed in pursuit of one of the largest giraffes, which was making for a long stretch of open down, lying beyond the woodland.

They were both mounted on strong and spirited horses, and being light weights, were enabled to keep the animal in sight for the first mile, in which it usually succeeds in distancing its pursuers.