He felt, indeed, tolerably secure; rightly judging that the Europeans on the western bank would have enough to do on their own ground, and that the few whom he knew to be scattered to the north-eastward would be as unlikely as the natives to hear of the wreck while the heavy rains filled the rivers to overflowing and rendered the ground dangerous and toilsome alike to riders and pedestrians. If Kafirs did venture out on foot, he knew enough of them to satisfy himself that their journeys would be undertaken to some better purpose than loitering on the coast without sure prospects of plunder.
He again lay down, and enjoyed that species of repose which gives ease to the body without completely deadening the powers of the mind; and it must be owned that his conscience was by no means so harassed by trouble or remorse, as from his outward position one would think it must be. In his own estimation Lee was an ill-used, unfortunate man; and, as to the latter, truth to tell, his reasons for thinking so were not altogether fallacious.
He is a felon; but the circumstances which have brought him to his present condition have met with extenuation from some: of this, by-and-by.
Hush! the earth is loosened without; Lee hears it faffing about the entrance. Some small stones come clattering down, and then there is silence.
The strong man’s heart beats, and he clutches the clasp-knife hanging round his neck, and tries to open it, but his hand trembles; a strong current of air rushes in, the fire flickers up, and the shadow of a man’s face is for an instant traced on the rocky side of the cave.
It is suddenly withdrawn.
Lee revolved the circumstances of his case in a few seconds. He felt sure it was a white man’s shadow, even at that momentary glance; the outline of the loose cap and prominent nose was unmistakeable. It might be a mend—a fellow-convict—a sailor; if the latter, Jack would die rather than betray the fugitive. But if it were any who might, after all, turn informer, he would doubtless report that the cave was tenanted, and bring down a file of soldiers upon him, unless the clasp-knife settled the question, which it was not likely to do in its rusty condition. Lee’s powers of body were a little impaired by the perils he had undergone, and the exertions he had been obliged to make in screening his hiding-place, as he hoped, from all observers.
But he was discovered, that was certain.
“Who comes there?” he cried, in a voice that shook more than he wished to confess to himself. “Enter, I am armed.”
“Lee,” hoarsely whispered a voice, issuing from lips within which the teeth chattered audibly,—“It is I, Martin Gray.”
“And where the devil did you cast up from?” asked Lee, in no very gracious voice, and sitting up with ears and eyes now wide open.
“I am starved, and miserable, and hungry,” was Gray’s reply, as he scrambled through all impediments in his path, and crawling into the cave, began unceremoniously to draw together the embers of the fire.
“Are there any more of you?” inquired Lee, hastily.
“Not one. I have been skewered up in a hole ever since I was flung ashore. I got hitched on to the rudder of the boat when it broke away, and except a few bumps, I was all right when I got driven in between the rocks, and there I have been wedged for hours, for I dared not stir, except in the dark, when I could find nothing. I had no mind to be caught by the soldiers up there on the hill, so I have been creeping along under the rocks looking for luck in some shape or another, and what should I see, but a glimpse of light from this quarter? Friend or foe, it was all the same to me; I resolved to take my chance, and here I am.”
Martin Gray was the young man I have alluded to as lying passively on the deck of the staggering ship—he had, like others, sprung into the sea, to take his chance, and clinging to a spar, had been providentially washed ashore.
Lee had had much opportunity of judging of Gray’s character, which, though not without good, wanted strength and resolution; he was less wicked than unfortunate. There was this difference between the two: Lee would most probably, under any circumstances, have been ambitious, selfish, and unsound in principle, while Gray, with better fortunes, would have made a respectable member of society: warm of temperament, he was docile of disposition; he was, in fact, the very person to be influenced by a strong and determined mind, under circumstances like those in which he was now cast.
In Lee’s forlorn condition, he felt there was comfort in fellowship, with so “safe a fellow as poor Gray,” and he therefore set about proffering hospitality to his guest with a good grace, especially considering the limited extent of his larder. The meat again hissed upon the coals, the batch of damp biscuits was re-toasted, and Gray brewed another cup of cocoa—what a treat it was!
If you have been shipwrecked, reader, as I have been, you will understand this.
Gray having dried his torn clothes, and satisfied the inward cravings of nature, not without warnings from Lee on the dangers of indigestion from too hurried a meal after a long fast, which warnings were entirely self-interested, recommended that the fire should be extinguished, lest its smoke should betray their hiding-place at sunrise; “though, to tell the truth,” the young man added, “I am much more inclined to surrender myself than to take my chance; for what is to become of us?”
“Surrender!” cried Lee; “what, with such a country before us as I know this to be? No, no, my lad, you’ll not surrender; trust to me, there is nothing to lose by taking our freedom, and what prospects are there before us, if we give ourselves up? You, for one, would be packed off to New South Wales by the first opportunity. As for me—I have said it before—I had rather fall into the hands of God than those of man: here is space enough for even my free spirit, and with a little caution, and patience, and perseverance, I will take you into safe quarters for life!”
Gray was too weary to enter upon further discussion, and the two convicts stretching themselves side by side, the former was soon dead asleep, while Lee lay meditating an infinite variety of plans.
“This youth is safe,” soliloquised the host of the the cave; “he must be taught to keep my counsel and his own, for although hereafter he may be rather an incumbrance to me than of use, it will not do to let him go,—he would betray me, to a certainty. He has roughed it and seen service; though he is not clever, he has lots of pluck; on the whole, perhaps, I may make him useful, and it would be deuced lonely work to find my way across the country without any help. We must look about for arms; I saw large pieces of the wreck drifting this way after the crazy old craft went to pieces.
“I wish I had not seen that girl, though. I cannot forget her; how the blood bubbled up with the foam!
“The wind has changed, I suspect, but the river will be impassable to those red-jackets for days to come; we must collect our traps together without loss of time, and make ready for a start; I must do the amiable to this lad; he is a soft-hearted youth, I know.
“That fellow Tanner, I wonder if he is still trafficking up there in the kloof; he is an infernal rogue; I hope he won’t turn informer—I think not, though, for I could betray him, and he knows it.”
He rapidly chalked out in his mind’s eye a map of his plans, and as he heard the wind again veering about to all points of the compass, and at last return to its deadly quarter, from which it had breathed its fury on the hapless ship, he rubbed his hands cheerfully together. “Blow, gentle gales,” said he, and as Gray answered the apostrophe with a loud snore, Lee laughed and lay down, taking care to appropriate to himself a goodly portion of the green baize coverlet. Ere long he, too, was in a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Four.
The Deserter
It is time to give our reader some further insight into the circumstances which had brought these two sleepers to their present condition, for they will occupy a prominent and peculiar part in the narrative.
Although Gray is the last adventurer on the scene, I will give him the precedence, since all that is necessary to relate concerning his previous history may be comprised in the following sketch.
He was the foremost boy of