The Castaways
Page 24
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.
A RED SATYR.
They slept until a late hour of the morning; when, rousing themselveswith difficulty, they kindled a fire and cooked a breakfast of theboar's ham cured by them before leaving the coast. It was the second,and of course the last, already becoming rapidly reduced to a "knuckle;"for their journey was now entering upon the second week.
They bethought them of making a halt on the bank of the lake; partly torecruit their strength after the long-continued fatigue, and partly, ifpossible, to replenish their larder.
Saloo got ready his blow-gun and poisoned arrows; Captain Redwood lookedto his rifle; while the ship-carpenter, whose speciality was fishing,and who for this purpose had brought his hooks and lines along with him,determined on trying what species of the finny tribe frequented theinland lake, in hopes they might prove less shy at biting than theirbrethren of the sea-coast stream.
Again the three men started off, Murtagh traversing in solitude the edgeof the lake, while Captain Redwood, with his rifle--accompanied bySaloo, carrying his sumpitan and quiver of poisoned arrows--struckdirect into the woods.
Henry and Helen remained where they had passed the night, under theshadow of a spreading tree; which, although of a species unknown to thetravellers, had been cautiously scrutinised by them, and seemed to beneither a durion nor a upas. They were cautioned not to stir a stepfrom the spot till the others should return.
Though in other respects a good, obedient boy, Henry Redwood was notabundantly gifted with prudence. He was a native-born New Yorker, andas such, of course, precocious, courageous, daring, even to a fault--inshort, having the heart of a man beating within the breast of a boy. Soinspired, when a huge bird, standing even taller than himself on itsgreat stilt-like legs--it was the adjutant stork of India (_ciconiaargalia_)--dropped down upon the point of a little peninsula whichprojected into the lake, he could not resist the temptation of getting ashot at it.
Grasping the great ship's musket--part of the paraphernalia they hadbrought along with them, and which was almost as much as he couldstagger under--he started to stalk the great crane, leaving little Helenunder the tree.
Some reeds growing along the edge of the lake offered a chance by whichthe game might be approached, and under cover of them he had creptalmost within shot of it, when a cry fell upon his ear, thrilling himwith a sudden dread.
It was the voice of his sister Helen, uttered in tones of alarm?
Turning suddenly, he wondered not that her cries were continued in thewildest terror, mingled with convulsive ejaculations. A man had drawnnear her, and oh! such a man! Never in all his experience, nor in hisdarkest and most distorted dreams, had he seen, or dreamt of, a humanbeing so hideous, as that he now saw, half-standing, half-crouching,only a short distance from his sister's resting-place.
It was a man who, if he had only been in an erect attitude, would havestood at least eight feet in height, and this would have been in anunder-proportion to the size of his head, the massive breadth of hisbody across the breast and shoulders, and the length of his arms. Butit was not his gigantic size which made him so terrible, or whichelectrified the heart of the boy, at a safe distance, as it had donethat of the girl, nearer and in more danger. It was the _tout ensemble_of this strange creature in human shape--a man apparently covered allover with red hair, thick and shaggy, as upon the skin of a wolf orbear; bright red over the body and limbs, and blacker upon the face,where it was thinnest--a creature, in short, such as neither boy norgirl had ever before seen, and such as was long believed to exist onlyin the imagination of the ancients, under the appellation of "satyr."