Bevis Part 71

Mark's head almost touched the water: his hair (for his hat was off, as usual) was reflected in it, and a great brown water-beetle pa.s.sed through the reflection. A dove--his parrakeet--came over and entered the wood; it was the same Bevis afterwards heard cooing. Mark half opened his eyes, and thought the wagtail's tiny legs were no thicker than one of Frances's hair-pins.

The moorhens and coots had now recovered from the fright Pan had given them. As he gazed through the c.h.i.n.ks of his eyelids along the surface of the water, he could see them one by one returning towards Serendib, pausing on the way among the weeds, swimming again, with nodding heads, turning this side and that to pick up anything they saw; but still, gradually approaching the island opposite. They all came from one direction, and he remembered that when Pan hunted them out, they all scuttled the same way. So did the wild duck; so did the kingfisher. "I believe they all go to the river," Mark thought; "the river that flows out through the weeds. Just wait till we have got our raft."

Something swam out presently from the sh.o.r.e of New Formosa; something nearly flush with the water, and which left a wake of widening ripples behind it, by which Mark knew it was a rat: for water-fowl, though they can move rapidly, do not cause much undulation. The rat swam out a good way, then turned and came in again. This coasting voyage he repeated down the sh.o.r.e several times.

To look along the surface, as Mark did, was like kneeling and glancing over a very broad and well polished table, your eyes level with it. The slightest movement was visible a great way--a little black speck that crossed was seen at once. The little black speck was raised a very small degree above the surface, and there was something in the water not visible following it.

The water undulated, but less than behind the rat; now the moorhens nod their heads to and fro, as you or I nod: but this black speck waved itself the other way, from side to side, as it kept steadily onwards.

Mark recognised a snake, swimming swiftly, its head (black only from distance and contrast with the gleam of the crystal top of the polished table) just above the surface, and sinuous length trailing beneath the water. He did not see whence the snake started, but he saw it go across to the weeds at the extreme end of Serendib, and there lost it.

He thought of the huge boa-constrictors hidden in the interior of New Formosa, they would be basking quite still in such heat, but he ought to have brought his spear with him. You never ought to venture from the stockade in these unknown places without a spear. By now the shadows had moved, and his foot was in the suns.h.i.+ne: he could feel the heat through the leather. Two bubbles came up to the surface close to the sh.o.r.e: he saw the second one start from the sand and rise up quickly with a slight wobble, but the sand did not move, and he could not see anything in it.

His eyes closed, not that he slept, but the gleam of the water inclined them to retire into the shadow of the lids. After some time there was a shrill pipe. Mark started, and lifted his head, and saw the kingfisher, which had come back towards his perch on the willow trunk. He came within three yards before he saw Mark; then he shot aside, with a shrill whistle of alarm, rose up and went over the island.

In starting up, Mark moved his foot, and a b.u.t.terfly floated away from it: the b.u.t.terfly had settled in the suns.h.i.+ne on the heated leather.

With three flutters, the b.u.t.terfly floated with broad wings stretched out over the thin gra.s.s by the sh.o.r.e. It was no more effort to him to fly than it is to thistledown.

The same start woke Pan. Pan yawned, licked his paw, got up and wagged his tail, looked one way and then the other, and then went off back to Bevis. The blue float was still perfectly motionless. Mark sat up, took his rod and wound up the winch, and began to wander homewards too, idly along the sh.o.r.e. He had gone some way when he saw a jack basking by a willow bush aslant from him, so that the markings on his back were more visible than when seen sideways, for in this position the foreshortening crowded them together. They are like the water-mark on paper, seen best at a low angle, or the mark on silk, and somewhat remind you of the mackerel.

Volume Two, Chapter XVIII.

NEW FORMOSA--KANGAROOS.

So soon as he was sure the jack had not noticed him, Mark drew softly back, and with some difficulty forced a way between the bramble thickets towards the stockade. He thus entered a part they had not before visited, for as the trees and bushes were not so thick by the water, their usual path followed the windings of the sh.o.r.e. Trampling over some and going round others, Mark managed to penetrate between the thickets, having taken his rod to pieces, as it constantly caught in the branches.

Next he came to a place where scarcely anything grew, everything having been strangled by those Thugs of the wood, the wild hops, except a few scattered ash-poles, up which they wound, indenting the bark in spirals.

The ground was covered with them, for, having slain their supports, they were forced to creep, so that he walked on hops; and from under a bower of them, where they were smothering a bramble bush, a nightingale "kurred" at him angrily.

He came near the nightingale's young brood, safely reared. "Sweet kur-r-r!" The bird did not like it. These wild hops are a favourite cover with nightingales. A damp furrow or natural ditch, now dry, but evidently a watercourse in rain, seemed to have stopped the march of this creeping, twining plant, for over it he entered among hazel-bushes; and then seeing daylight, fancied he was close to the stockade; but to his surprise, stepped out into an open glade with a green knoll on one side.

The knoll did not rise quite so high as the trees, and there was a quant.i.ty of fern about the lower part, then an open lawn of gra.s.s, a little meadow in the midst of the wood. He saw a white tail disappear among the fern--there were then rabbits here.

"Bevis!" said Mark aloud. In his surprise he called to Bevis, as he would have done had Bevis been present. He ran to the knoll, and as he ran, more white tails--little ones--raced into the fern, where he saw burries and sand-heaps thrown out.

On the top of the knoll there were numerous signs of rabbits--places worn bare, and "runs," or footpaths, leading down across the gra.s.s. He looked round, but could see nothing but trees, which hid the New Sea and the cliff at home.

Eager to tell Bevis of the discovery, and especially of the rabbits, which would furnish them with food, and were, above all, something fresh to shoot at, he ran down the hill so fast that he could not stop himself, though he saw something white in the gra.s.s. He returned, and found it was mushrooms, and he gathered between twenty and thirty in a few minutes--"b.u.t.tons," full grown mushrooms, and overgrown ketchup ones. How to carry them he did not know, having used his handkerchief already, and left his coat at home, till he thought of his waistcoat, and took it off and made a rough bundle of them in it. Then he heard Bevis's whistle, the well-known notes they always used to call each other, and shouted in reply, but the shout did not penetrate so far as the shrill sound had done.

The whistle came from a different direction to that in which he supposed the cave to be, for in winding in and out the brambles he had lost the true course and had forgotten to look at the sun. He found he could not go straight home, for the brambles were succeeded by blackthorn, through which nothing human can move, and hardly a spaniel, when thick as it was here. He had to go all round by the opposite sh.o.r.e of the island, the weed-grown side, and so to the fire under the teak-tree.

"Where's the gun?" said Bevis, coming to meet him.

"I left it at home."

"No, you had it."

"I put it back as you were not coming."

"I never saw it."

"It's in the hut."

"Didn't you really take it?"

"No--really. We'll both go with the gun--"

"So we will." Bevis regretted now that he had made any difficulty.

"No, it's your turn; you shall have it."

"I shan't," said Mark. "Look here,"--showing the mushrooms--"splendid for supper, and I've found some rabbits!"

"Rabbits!"

"And a little green hill, and a kingfisher, and a jack. Come and get the gun, and let's shoot him. Quick."

Mark began to run for the matchlock, and they left the duck to itself.

Bevis ran with him, and Mark told him all about it as they went.

They talked so much by sign and mere monosyllables in this short run to the hut that I cannot transcribe it in words, though they understood each other better than had they used set speech. For two people always together know the exact meaning of a nod, the indication of a glance, and a motion of the lip means a page of conversation.

Having got the gun as they came back, Mark said perhaps Pan would eat the duck. Bevis called him, but he did not need the call. Gluttonous epicure as he was, Pan, at a whistle from Bevis, would have left the most marrowy bone in the world; but Bevis with a gun! why, Polly with a broom-stick could not have stopped him.

Before they got to the willow bush it had been settled that Mark should shoot at the jack, as the matchlock was loaded with shot, and Bevis wanted to shoot with ball, and reserved his turn for the time when he had made the new sight. Bevis held Pan while Mark went forward. The jack was there, but Mark could not get the rest in a position to take a steady aim, because the willow boughs interfered so.

So Bevis knelt down, still holding Pan, and Mark rested the long heavy barrel on his shoulder. The shot plunged into the water, and the jack floated, blown a yard away, dead on his back; his head shattered, but the long body untouched. Pan fetched him out, and they laughed at the spaniel, he looked so odd with the fish in his mouth. Bevis wanted to see the glade and the rabbit's burries, but Mark said, if the duck was done, it would burn to a cinder, so they went home to their dinner. By the time they reached the teak-tree, the duck was indeed burned one side.

It was dry and hard for lack of basting, when they cut it up, but not unsavoury; and what made it nicer was, that every now and then they found shots--which their teeth had flattened--shots from their own gun.

These they saved, and Mark put them in his purse; there were six altogether. Mark gloried in the number, as it was a long shot at the duck, and they showed that he had aimed straight. The ale in the wooden bottle was now stale, so they drank water, with a little sherry in it; and then started to see the discovery Mark had made. Pan went with them. The old spaniel had been there long before, for he found out the rabbits the first stroll he took after landing from the Pinta, but could not convey his knowledge to them.

Bevis marked out a tree, behind which they could wait in ambush to shoot at the rabbits, as it was within easy range of their burries; and then, as they felt it was now afternoon, they returned to the stockade, got the telescope and went up on the cliff to watch for Charlie's signal.

The shadow of the gnomon on the dial had moved a good way since Bevis set it up. They had not the least idea of the hour, but somehow they felt that it was afternoon.

Long habit makes us clocks, if we pause, or are forced to consult ourselves. Slow changes in the frame proceed till they are recognised by the mind, or rather by the subtle connexion between the mind and the body; for there seems a nexus, or medium, which conveys this kind of eighth sense from the flesh to the mental consciousness. Birds and animals know the time without a clock or dial, and the months or seasons almost to a day; and so, too, the human animal, if driven from the conveniences of civilisation, which save him the trouble of thinking soon reverts to these original and indefinable indications.

For instance (though in a different way), you can set the clock of your senses to awake exactly at any hour you choose in the morning. If you put your watch aside, reversing the process, and listen to the senses, they will tell you when it is afternoon.

The sandy summit of the cliff was very warm, and the bramble bushes were not high enough to give them any shade; so that, to escape the sun, they reclined on the ground in front of the young oak-tree, and between it and the edge. Bevis looked through the telescope, and could see the sand-martins going in and out of their holes in the distant quarry.

Charlie was not on the hill, or, if so, he was behind a sycamore and out of sight; but they knew he had not yet made the signal, because the herd of cows was down by the hollow oak, some standing in the water. They had not yet been called by the milkers. Sweeping the sh.o.r.e of Fir-Tree Gulf, and down the Mozambique to the projecting bluff which prevented farther view, he saw a crow on the sand, and another perched on a rail; another sign that there was no one about.

"Any savages?" said Mark.

"Not one."

"Proas hauled up somewhere out of sight."

Mark carefully felt his way to the very verge, and there sat with his legs dangling over. He said the cliff was quite safe; and Bevis joined him. Underneath they could see deep into the water; but though so still, they could not distinguish the bottom. Clear at the surface, the water seemed to thicken to a dense shadow, which could not be seen through. It was deep there; they thought they should like a dive, only it was too far for them to plunge. There was a ball of thistledown on the surface, floating on the tips of its delicate threads; the spokes with which it flies as a wheel rolls.