In Far Bolivia Part 19

"Explain, then."

"My duties are ended with Mr. Roland St. Clair. He owes me one month's wages. I have forfeited that and given warning, and am going. That is all."

"You are going, are you? Well, we shall see about that."

"Yes, you may, and now let me pa.s.s on my peaceful way."

"He! he! he! But tell us, Mr. Peter, why this speedy departure? Hast aught upon thy conscience, or hast got a conscience?"

Peter had risen to his feet.

"Merely this. I claim the privilege of every working man, that of giving leave. I am not strong, and I dread the long journey Mr. St.

Clair and his little band are to take."

"But," said the other, "you came in such a questionable shape, and we were here to watch for stragglers, not of course thinking for a moment, Mr. Peter, that your French window would be opened, and that you yourself would attempt to take French leave.

"Now you really must get back to your bedroom, guv'nor, and see Mr. St.

Clair in the morning. My mates will do sentry-go at your window, and I shall be by your door in case you need anything. It is a mere matter of form, Mr. Peter, but of course we have to obey orders. Got ere a drop of brandy in your flask?"

Peter quickly produced quite a large bottle. He drank heavily himself first, and then pa.s.sed it round.

But the men took but little, and Mr. Peter, half-intoxicated, allowed himself to be conducted to bed.

When these sentries gave in their report next morning to Roland, Mr.

Peter did not rise a deal in the young fellow's estimation.

"It only proves one thing," he said to d.i.c.k. "If Peter is so anxious to give us the slip, we must watch him well until we are far on the road towards the cannibals' land."

"That's so," returned d.i.c.k Temple.

Not a word was said to Peter regarding his attempted flight when he sat down to breakfast with the boys, and naturally enough he believed it had not been reported. Indeed he had some hazy remembrance of having offered the sentries a bribe to keep dark.

Mr. Peter ate very sparingly, and looked sadly fishy about the eyes.

But he made no more attempts to escape just then.

CHAPTER XI--ALL ALONE IN THE WILDERNESS

That Benee was a good man and true we have little reason to doubt, up to the present time at all events.

Yet d.i.c.k Temple was, curiously enough, loth to believe that Mr. Peter was other than a friend. And nothing yet had been proved against him.

"Is it not natural enough," said he to Roland, "that he should funk--to put it in fine English--the terrible expedition you and I are about to embark upon? And knowing that you have commanded him to accompany us would, in my opinion, be sufficient to account for his attempt to escape and drop down the river to Para, and so home to his own country.

Roland, I repeat, we must give the man a show."

"True," said Roland, "and poor Benee is having his show. Time alone can prove who the traitor is. If it be Benee he will not return. On the contrary, he will join the savage captors of poor Peggy, and do all in his power to frustrate our schemes."

No more was said.

But the preparations were soon almost completed, and in a day or two after this, farewells being said, the brave little army began by forced marches to find its way across country and through dense forests and damp marshes, and over rocks and plains, to the Madeira river, high above its junction with the great Amazon.

Meanwhile let us follow the lonely Indian in his terrible journey to the distant and unexplored lands of Bolivia.

Like all true savages, he despised the ordinary routes of traffic or trade; his track must be a bee-line, guiding himself by the sun by day, but more particularly by the stars by night.

Benee knew the difference betwixt stars and planets. The latter were always s.h.i.+fting, but certain stars--most to him were like lighthouses to mariners who are approaching land--shone over the country of the cannibals, and he could tell from their very alt.i.tude how much progress he was making night after night.

So lonesome, so long, was his thrice dreary journey, that had it been undertaken by a white man, in all probability he would soon have been a raving maniac.

But Benee had all the cunning, all the daring, and all the wisdom of a true savage, and for weeks he felt a proud exhilaration, a glorious sense of freedom and happiness, at being once more his own master, no work to do, and hope ever pointing him onwards to his goal.

What was that goal? it may well be asked. Was Benee disinterested? Did he really feel love for the white man and the white man's children? Can aught save selfishness dwell in the breast of a savage? In brief, was it he who had been the spy, he who was the guilty man; or was it Peter who was the villain? Look at it in any light we please, one thing is certain, this strange Indian was making his way back to his own country and to his own friends, and Indians are surely not less fond of each other than are the wild beasts who herd together in the forest, on the mountain-side, or on the ice in the far-off land of the frozen north.

And well we know that these creatures will die for each other.

If there was a mystery about Peter, there was something approaching to one about Benee also.

But then it must be remembered that since his residence on the St. Clair plantation, Benee had been taught the truths of that glorious religion of ours, the religion of love that smoothes the rugged paths of life for us, that gives a silver lining to every cloud of grief and sorrow, and gilds even the dark portals of death itself.

Benee believed even as little children do. And little Peggy in her quiet moods used to tell him the story of life by redemption in her almost infantile way.

For all that, it is hard and difficult to vanquish old superst.i.tions, and this man was only a savage at heart after all, though, nevertheless, there seemed to be much good in his rough, rude nature, and you may ofttimes see the sweetest and most lovely little flowers growing on the blackest and ruggedest of rocks.

Well, this journey of Benee's was certainly no sinecure. Apart even from all the dangers attached to it, from wild beasts and wilder men, it was one that would have tried the hardest const.i.tution, if only for the simple reason that it was all a series of forced marches.

There was something in him that was hurrying him on and encouraging him to greater and greater exertions every hour. His daily record depended to a great extent on the kind of country he had to negotiate. He began with forty miles, but after a time, when he grew harder, he increased this to fifty and often to sixty. It was at times difficult for him to force his way through deep, dark forest and jungle, along the winding wild-beast tracks, past the beasts themselves, who hid in trees ready to spring had he paused but a second; through marshes and bogs, with here and there a reedy lake, on which aquatic birds of brightest colours slept as they floated in the suns.h.i.+ne, but among the long reeds of which lay the ever-watchful and awful cayman.

In such places as these, I think Benee owed his safety to his utter fearlessness and sang-froid, and to the speed at which he travelled.

It was not a walk by any means, but a strange kind of swinging trot.

Such a gait may still be seen in far-off outlying districts of the Scottish Highlands, where it is adopted by postal "runners", who consider it not only faster but less tiresome than walking.

For the first hundred miles, or more, the lonely traveller found himself in a comparatively civilized country. This was not very much to his liking, and as a rule he endeavoured to give towns and villages, and even rubber forests, where Indians worked under white men overseers, a wide berth.

Yet sometimes, hidden in a tree, he would watch the work going on; watch the men walking hither and thither with their pannikins, or deftly whirling the shovels they had dipped in the sap-tub and holding them in the dark smoke of the palm-tree nuts, or he would listen to their songs.

But it was with no feeling of envy; it was quite the reverse.

For Benee was free! Oh what a halo of happiness and glory surrounds that one little word "Free"!

Then this lonely wanderer would hug himself, as it were, and, dropping down from his perch, start off once more at his swinging trot.

Even as the crow flies, or the bee wings its flight, the length of Benee's journey would be over six hundred miles. But it was impossible for anyone to keep a bee-line, owing to the roughness of the country and the difficulties of every kind to be overcome, so that it is indeed impossible to estimate the magnitude of this lone Indian's exploit.

His way, roughly speaking, lay between the Madeira River and the Great Snake River called Puras (_vide_ map); latterly it would lead him to the lofty regions and plateaux of the head-waters of Maya-tata, called by the Peruvians the Madre de Dios, or Holy Virgin River.