“Tim Rokens,” said the doctor, looking earnestly into his companion’s face, “if I were one of the missionaries, I might ask you how much money you ever gave to enable societies to send Bibles and missionaries to foreign lands?”
Tim Rokens was for once in his life completely taken aback. He was by nature a stolid man, and not easily put out. He was a shrewd man, too, and did not often commit himself. When he did, he was wont to laugh at himself, and so neutralise the laugh raised against him. But here was a question that was too serious for laughter, and yet one which he could not answer without being self-condemned. He looked gravely in the doctor’s face for two minutes without speaking; then he heaved a deep sigh, and said slowly, and with a pause between each word—
“Doctor Hopley—I—never—gave—a—rap—in—all—my—life.”
“So then, my man,” said the doctor, smiling, “you’re scarcely entitled to be indignant with others.”
“Wot you remark, doctor, is true; I—am—not.”
Having thus fully and emphatically condemned himself, and along with himself all mankind who are in a similar category, Tim Rokens relapsed into silence, deliberately drew forth his pipe, filled it, lit it, and began to smoke.
None of the party of travellers slept well that night, except perhaps the trader, who was accustomed to the ways of the negroes, and King Bumble, who had been born and bred in the midst of cruelties. Most of them dreamed of savage orgies, and massacres of innocent children, so that when daybreak summoned them to resume their journey, they arose and embarked with alacrity, glad to get away from the spot.
During that day and the next they saw a great number of crocodiles and hippopotami, besides strange birds and plants innumerable. The doctor filled his botanical-box to bursting. Ailie filled her flower-basket to overflowing. Glynn hit a crocodile on the back with a bullet, and received a lazy stare from the ugly creature in return, as it waddled slowly down the bank on which it had been lying, and plumped into the river. The captain assisted Ailie to pluck flowers when they landed, which they did from time to time, and helped to arrange and pack them when they returned to the canoe. Tim Rokens did nothing particularly worthy of record; but he gave utterance to an immense number of sententious and wise remarks, which were listened to by Bumble with deep respect, for that sable gentleman had taken a great fancy for the bold harpooner, and treasured up all his sayings in his heart.
Phil Briant distinguished himself by shooting an immense serpent, which the doctor, who cut off and retained its head, pronounced to be an anaconda. It was full twenty feet long; and part of the body was cut up, roasted, and eaten by Bumble and the trader, though the others turned from it with loathing.
“It be more cleaner dan one pig, anyhow,” remarked Bumble, on observing the disgust of his white friends; “an’ you no objic’ to eat dat.”
“Clainer than a pig, ye spalpeen!” cried Phil Briant; “that only shows yer benighted haithen ignerance. Sure I lived in the same cabin wid a pig for many a year—not not to mintion a large family o’ cocks and hens—an’ a clainer baste than that pig didn’t stop in that cabin.”
“That doesn’t say much for your own cleanliness, or that of your family,” remarked Glynn.
“Och! ye’ve bin to school, no doubt, haven’t ye?” retorted Phil.
“I have,” replied Glynn.
“Shure I thought so. It’s there ye must have larned to be so oncommon cliver. Don’t you iver be persuaded for to go to school, Bumble, if ye iver git the chance. It’s a mighty lot o’ taichin’ they’d give ye, but niver a taste o’ edication. Tin to wan, they’d cram ye till ye turned white i’ the face, an’ that wouldn’t suit yer complexion, ye know, King Bumble, be no manes.”
As for the trader, he acted interpreter when the party fell in with negroes, and explained everything that puzzled them, and told them anecdotes without end about the natives and the wild creatures, and the traffic of the regions through which they passed. In short, he made himself generally useful and agreeable.
But the man who distinguished himself most on that trip was Jim Scroggles. That lanky individual one day took it into his wise head to go off on a short ramble into the woods alone. He had been warned by the trader, along with the rest of the party, not to venture on such a dangerous thing; but being an absent man the warning had not reached his intellect although it had fallen on his ear. The party were on shore cooking dinner when he went off, without arms of any kind, and without telling whither he was bound. Indeed, he had no defined intentions in his own mind. He merely felt inclined for a ramble, and so went away, intending to be back in half-an-hour or less.
But Jim Scroggles had long legs and loved locomotion. Moreover, the woods were exceedingly beautiful and fragrant, and comparatively cool: for it happened to be the coolest season of the year in that sultry region, else the party of Europeans could not have ventured to travel there at all.
Wandering along beneath the shade of palm-trees and large-leaved shrubs and other tropical productions, with his hands in his breeches pockets, and whistling a variety of popular airs, which must have not a little astonished the monkeys and birds and other creatures—such of them, at least, as had any taste for or knowledge of music—Jim Scroggles penetrated much farther into the wilds than he had any intention of doing. There is no saying how far, in his absence of mind, he might have wandered, had he not been caught and very uncomfortably entangled in a mesh-work of wild vines and thorny plants that barred his further progress.
Jim had encountered several such before in his walk, but had forced his way through without more serious damage than a rent or two in his shirt and pantaloons, and several severe scratches to his hands and face; but Scroggles had lived a hard life from infancy, and did not mind scratches. Now, however, he could not advance a step, and it was only by much patient labour and by the free use of his clasp-knife, that he succeeded at length in releasing himself. He left a large portion of one of the legs of his trousers and several bits of skin on the bushes, as a memorial of his visit to that spot.
Jim’s mind was awoken to the perception of three facts—namely, that he had made himself late for dinner; that he would be the means of detaining his party; and that he had lost himself.
Here was a pretty business! Being a man of slow thought and much deliberation, he sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and looking up, as men usually do when soliloquising, exclaimed—
“My eye, here’s a go! Wot is to be done?”
A very small monkey, with an uncommonly wrinkled and melancholy cast of visage, which chanced to be seated on a branch hard by, peering down at the lost mariner, replied—
“O! o-o-o, O! o-o!” as much as to say, “Ah, my boy, that’s just the question.”
Jim Scroggles shook his head, partly as a rebuke to the impertinent little monkey and partly as an indication of the hopelessness of his being able to return a satisfactory answer to his own question.
At last he started up, exclaiming, “Wotever comes on it, there’s no use o’ sitting here,” and walked straight forward at a brisk pace. Then he suddenly stopped, shook his head again, and said, “If I goes on like this, an’ it shud turn out to be the wrong course arter all—wot’ll come on’t?”
Being as unable to answer this question as the former, he thrust both hands into his pockets, looked at the ground and began to whistle. When he looked up again he ceased whistling very abruptly, and turned deadly pale—perhaps we should say yellow. And no wonder, for there, straight before him, not more than twenty yards off, stood a creature which, to his ignorant eyes, appeared to be a fiend incarnate, but which was in reality a large-sized and very ancient sheego monkey.
It stood in an upright position like a man, and was above four feet high. It had a bald head, grey whiskers, and an intensely black wrinkled face, and, at the moment Jim Scroggles’ eyes encountered