Off to the Wilds: Being the Adventures of Two Brothers

by George Manville Fenn

  CHAPTER FORTY.

  ONWARD TO WONDERLAND.

  "Bedad, an' his mother must have wathered him well whin he was a babby,to make him grow like that," cried Dinny, as he saw the tall captivehaltered to a tree by the waggon, and contentedly beginning to browseupon the tender shoots within its reach. "Is thim legs rale, MastherDick?"

  "Real? Of course, Dinny," said Dick, laughing.

  "Shure, an' I didn't know there was any av coorse in the matther," saidDinny sententiously. "I thought the injanious baste might have beenbrought up in a wet place, and made himshelf shtilts."

  "What nonsense, Dinny!" cried Jack.

  "Ah, an' I dunno about nonsense, Masther Jack; for I've seen somewondherful things since I've been in these parts. An' so we're going topack up and go home to-morrow, ain't we?"

  "We're going to pack up and go farther into the wilds," said Dick.

  "Oh, murther!"

  "There's the great fall to see yet, and we've got elephants to shoot."

  "Shure an' I don't want any great falls, or for anny one to see it."

  "Nonsense, Dinny. I mean to see the cataract," said Dick.

  "Shure, an' it's you as is talking the nonsense now, Masther Dick; forhow could ye see if ye'd got a catharact?"

  "What do you mean, Dinny?"

  "What do I mane? Shure it was my own cousin by me mother's side thathad a couple o' bad catharacts in his eyes, and couldn't see a bit tillthey took him to the hoshpittle and had 'em out. Ah, they're mortialbad things, Masther Dick."

  "No, no; I mean a cataract or fall of the river, where it tumbles overrocks."

  "An' what would a river go tumbling off rocks for, Masther Dick? Whydon't it go along quietly?"

  "Ah, you'll see when we get there," said Dick. "It's a fall like thatwhere you nearly got drowned, only hundreds of times as big."

  "An d'ye expect me to get in a boat at a place like that, Masther Dick?Now, by this and by that, ye don't if I know it."

  "Never mind then, Dinny. You shall take your gun and shoot elephants.You know what they're like?"

  "Shure, I sin a picture o' one wance," said Dinny. "It was a littlething wid two tails, one at aych ind; and the boy as showed me telled meas they're made of ingy-rubber."

  "Ah, yes, they're very little things," said Dick, laughing; and thenthey went to their dinner under the tree.

  That evening the new pet was well attended to; and the leopard, nowgrowing a fine sleek beast that loved to roll and gambol with the dogs,given his evening meat; and the remains of the daylight were spent inpacking.

  Next morning early, with the skin secure on the waggon-tilt, the sleekoxen were once more in-spanned, and the waggon rolled merrily on towardsthe falls of the Zambesi.

  Four days trekking through a beautiful country brought them to where acontinuous vibrating roar was always in the air, and in the distancewhat seemed to be one continuously changing cloud, which was lit up bythe sun in a wondrous succession of hues.

  The boys grew excited with expectation; and Dinny's face became veryblank as he whispered to Dick,--

  "Shure, the river don't always go on tumbling like that, Masther Jack,do it?"

  "Always, Dinny," said Jack, as he too listened, with a feeling of awe,to the falling water.

  "Thin it must be giving itself a moighty hard whack upon the shtones itfalls on, to make it roar like that," said Dinny in a serio-comicfashion, and he went off to attend to the fire as, the General havingpointed out a capital place for a halt, Mr Rogers gave the word, andthe camp was rapidly formed.

  They had come through plenty of beautiful scenery, but the rich verdureand beauty of the palms, ferns, and other foliage-growths, watered asthey were by the soft hazy spray that came from the mighty falls, wasbeyond anything they had yet seen, and fully justified Mr Rogers'remark, half made aloud,--

  "What a glorious place this world is after all!"

  A strong thorn kraal was formed, and after a good feed the horses andoxen were secured, and resisting the temptation to go that night toinspect the falls--a very dangerous experiment in the dark--the fireblazed up, watch was set, and the sight deferred to the following day.

  All that night Dick and Jack, when they they were not on watch, dreamedof roaring lions, and falls of water, and then of thunderstorms; buttowards morning the heavy dull hum lulled them to sleep, a sleep sosound that Coffee and Chicory amused themselves for ten minutes ticklingtheir noses with strands of grass, before they could get them awake.

  Then they both jumped up in an ill-temper, each seizing adark-complexioned tormentor to punch and bang; but the sight of the Zuluboys' merry laughing faces, lit up by their bright eyes and white teeth,disarmed all anger, and Dick and Jack rubbed the last relic of thenight's sleep out of their eyes, and went to breakfast.

  The General had been at the falls before, and as soon as the camp wasconsidered straight, Dinny, Peter, and Dirk were left behind, and thethree bosses, as Chicory called them, went off, with the father toguide, the Zulu boys carrying a basket of food.

  The brilliancy of the greens of the various trees around gave anadditional charm to what was always a very beautiful landscape, for hereit was never dry, and the consequence was that every tree, plant, andtender herb was in the highest state of luxuriance.

  They kept a sharp look out for enemies in the shape of large animals,but nothing was seen; and following the General in single file, theywent on and on, with the awful thunder in the air growing deeper andlouder at every step.

  No water was in sight as they went carefully through the trees and hugefronded ferns; nothing but verdure of the richest hues, the sun shiningthrough it, and making the dewy leaves glisten with a sheen like that ofmany precious stones.

  So loud though was the roar of the water that they knew that they mustnow be near, when all at once they reached an opening in the forest, andMr Rogers and his sons involuntarily paused, to gaze at a rainbow ofsuch beauty, and apparently so near that it was hard to believe that bystretching out the hand it could not be touched.

  Even as they gazed it disappeared, but only to appear again a littlefarther off, and in a slightly different position. Then it was goneagain, and so on and on, a dozen times or so; but always beautifulbeyond the power of description.

  When they were weary of gazing the General smiled, and went on againtowards a soft pearly-looking mist, almost like the thinnest smoke; andfor this the boys took it, till Mr Rogers whispered that it was thefine spray rising in clouds from the falls.

  On they went, slowly, down amongst fern-hung rocks, and narrow ravinesfull of rich foliage, while tall palms stood up every here and therelike columns; and then all at once the General stood aside, and theparty, with the earth trembling beneath their feet, passed through ascreen of trees, and stood gazing at one of the wonders of the world.

  Right and left, as far as they could see for the trees, andcomparatively close to them, the waters of the great river were passingover and between a vast barrier of rocks, forming numberless cataracts,some small, some of large volume. In places these fell in a smoothglassy body of water towards them, in a glistening curve, down far belowand out of their sight, while others fell from rocky shelf to shelf, tobe broken up into foam and spray as, glistening and white, they hurrieddown to join more broken water, as far down as they could see.

  Where they stood was thirty or forty feet below the level of the riverbefore it made its spring; but how far down it fell into the awful gulfat their feet they could not tell, but the depth seemed to be immense.Mr Rogers afterwards said it was 400 feet.

  The first instinct of the boys was to go nearer, but, with a look ofalarm, the General grasped Jack by the arm, and showed him that theground sloped so and was so slippery, that to get near enough to see thebottom of the fall would have been to run the greatest risk of fallingheadlong into the awful abyss.

  In mute amazement then they stood, watching the long line of cataracts,endless as it were in the beauty and variety of their forms.

/>   Wonder upon wonder seemed to greet the eye in the colour of the watersas they flashed in the sun, some descending in huge solid glassy massesof water, others in tiny spirts that seemed to make a leap on their ownaccount into the vast chasm, falling at last like a shower of fine rain.

  "I could stand and look at it for ever, father," said Dick, in a low,awe-inspired voice. "Look at the foam there! look at that spray! Thewater is quite white there! And that great fall there, see how itglistens! Oh, how I should like to be below, and see where the waterstrikes, and churns up together. Could a boat get there?"

  Mr Rogers smiled, and shook his head.

  "Then I should like to be a bird," said Dick quietly, "and fly softlythrough that great gulf."

  "Till the water made your wings wet, and you fell in and were drowned,"said matter-of-fact Jack. "I shouldn't; but I should like to get closeto the edge, and see the falls from the bottom to the top."

  But the General shook his head, and said that it could not be done.

  As they grew more used to the scene, they made out that the range ofcataracts was much farther away than they had at first thought, beingquite a couple of hundred yards; but the awful thunderous roar, thetrembling of the earth beneath their feet, and the strange vibration inthe air, seemed to confuse them, so that everything seemed unreal andstrange, and the whole vision like some dream.

  They gazed on, never weary of the beauty of the great falls; and then,following their guide, he led them from place to place, so that theycould see the huge serpentine gorge in which the river ran after itsfall, rushing wildly between two grand walls of rock, its rage becomingthe more furious from its being a mighty broad river above the falls,and then having to compress itself into a gorge not a thirteenth part ofits original width.

  The speed of the river as it foamed along in this terrible ravine,seemed absolutely frightful, and in places where the rocks had to bearthe brunt of the current as it made some sudden turn, the din wasterrific.

  Hours were spent in gazing at the verdure-carpeted rocks, the brilliantrapids, the wondrous twining creepers, and, above all, at the beautiesof this wonder of the world; and then at last they tore themselvesunwillingly away, to attend to such ladly matter-of-fact affairs aseating and drinking. After this, as sunset was growing near, theystopped to see the gorgeous tints upon the clouds of vapour, and thefresh rainbows that kept coming and going as if by magic.

  At last they tore themselves away, silent and awe-inspired at thewonders upon which they had gazed, the deep thunder of the fallingwaters rolling in their ears as they journeyed on, and keeping up itssolemn boom night and day.

  Now as the wind wafted it towards them it came in a deep roar, but onlyto soften and become distant, swelling, and rising, and falling, fillingtheir dreams again, as they lay beneath the shelter of the canvas tilts,and seeming to wake them at the break of day.