style="font-size:15px;"> “Well,” said I, apologetically, “I won’t press you to go hunting again; I’ll be content to follow.”
“Press me, my dear Ralph!” exclaimed Peterkin hastily, fearing that he had hurt my feelings; “why, man, I do but jest with you—you are so horridly literal. I’m overjoyed to be pressed to go on the maddest wild-goose chase that ever was invented. My greatest delight would be to go gorilla-hunting down Fleet Street, if you were so disposed.—But to be serious, Jack, do you think we shall be in time for the elephant-hunt to-morrow?”
“Ay, in capital time, if you don’t knock up.”
“What! I knock up! I’ve a good mind to knock you down for suggesting such an egregious impossibility.”
“That’s an impossibility anyhow, Peterkin, because I’m down already,” said Jack, yawning lazily and stretching out his limbs in a more comfortable and dégagé manner.
Peterkin seemed to ponder as he smoked his pipe for some time in silence.
“Ralph,” said he, looking up suddenly, “I don’t feel a bit sleepy, and yet I’m tired enough.”
“You are smoking too much, perhaps,” I suggested.
“It’s not that,” cried Jack; “he has eaten too much supper.”
“Base insinuation!” retorted Peterkin.
“Then it must be the monkey. That’s it. Roast monkey does not agree with you.”
“Do you know, I shouldn’t wonder if you were right; and it’s a pity, too, for we shall have to live a good deal on such fare, I believe. However, I suppose we shall get used to it.—But I say, boys, isn’t it jolly to be out here living like savages? I declare it seems to me like a dream or a romance.—Just look, Ralph, at the strange wild creepers that are festooned overhead, and the great tropical leaves behind us, and the clear sky above, with the moon—ah! the moon; yes, that’s one comfort—the moon is unchanged. The same moon that smiles down upon us through a tangled mesh-work of palm-leaves and wild vines and monkeys’ tails, is peeping down the chimney-pots of London and Edinburgh and Dublin!”
“Why, Peterkin, you must have studied hard in early life to be so good a geographer.”
“Rather,” observed Peterkin.
“Yes; and look at the strange character of the tree-stems,” said I, unwilling to allow the subject to drop. “See those huge palmettoes like—like—”
“Overgrown cabbages,” suggested Peterkin; and he continued, “Observe the quaint originality of form in the body and limbs of that bloated old spider that is crawling up your leg, Ralph!”
I started involuntarily, for there is no creature of which I have a greater abhorrence than a spider.
“Where is it? oh! I see,” and the next moment I secured my prize and placed it with loathing, but interest, in my entomological box.
At that moment a hideous roar rang through the woods, seemingly close behind us. We all started to our feet, and seizing our rifles, which lay beside us ready loaded, cocked them and drew close together round the fire.
“This won’t do, lads,” said Jack, after a few minutes’ breathless suspense, during which the only sound we could hear was the beating of our own hearts; “we have allowed the fire to get too low, and we’ve forgotten to adopt our friend the trader’s advice, and make two fires.”
So saying, Jack laid down his rifle, and kicking the logs with his heavy boot, sent up such a cloud of bright sparks as must certainly have scared the wild animal, whatever it was, away; for we heard no more of it that night.
“You’re right, Jack,” remarked Peterkin; “so let us get up a blaze as fast as we can, and I’ll take the first watch, not being sleepy. Come along.”
In a few minutes we cut down with our axes a sufficient quantity of dry wood to keep two large fires going all night; we then kindled our second fire at a few yards distant from the first, and made our camp between them. This precaution we took in order to scare away the wild animals whose cries we heard occasionally during the night. Peterkin, having proposed to take the first watch—for we had to watch by turns all the night through—lighted his pipe and sat down before the cheerful fire with his back against the stem of a palm-tree, and his rifle lying close to his hand, to be ready in case of a surprise. There were many natives wandering about in that neighbourhood, some of whom might be ignorant of our having arrived at their village on a peaceful errand. If these should have chanced to come upon us suddenly, there was no saying what they might do in their surprise and alarm, so it behoved us to be on our guard.
Jack and I unrolled the light blankets that we carried strapped to our shoulders through the day, and laying ourselves down side by side with our feet to the fire and our heads pillowed on a soft pile of sweet-scented grass, we addressed ourselves to sleep. But sleep did not come so soon as we expected. I have often noted with some surprise and much interest the curious phases of the phenomenon of sleep. When I have gone to bed excessively fatigued and expecting to fall asleep almost at once, I have been surprised and annoyed to find that the longer I wooed the drowsy god the longer he refused to come to me; and at last, when I have given up the attempt in despair, he has suddenly laid his gentle hand upon my eyes and carried me into the land of Nod. Again, when I have been exceedingly anxious to keep awake, I have been attacked by sleep with such irresistible energy that I have been utterly unable to keep my eyelids open or my head erect, and have sat with my eyes blinking like those of an owl in the sunshine, and my head nodding like that of a Chinese mandarin.
On this our first night in the African bush, at least our first night on a hunting expedition—we had been many nights in the woods on our journey to that spot—on this night, I say, Jack and I could by no means get to sleep for a very long time after we lay down, but continued to gaze up through the leafy screen overhead at the stars, which seemed to wink at us, I almost fancied, jocosely. We did not speak to each other, but purposely kept silence. After a time, however, Jack groaned, and said softly—
“Ralph, are you asleep?”
“No,” said I, yawning.
“I’m quite sure that Peterkin is,” added Jack, raising his head and looking across the fire at the half-recumbent form of our companion.
“Is he?” said Peterkin in a low tone. “Just about as sound as a weasel!”
“Jack,” said I.
“Well?”
“I can’t sleep a wink. Ye-a-ow! isn’t it odd?”
“No more can I. Do you know, Ralph, I’ve been counting the red berries in that tree above me for half an hour, in the hope that the monotony of the thing would send me off; but I was interrupted by a small monkey who has been sitting up among the branches and making faces at me for full twenty minutes. There it is yet, I believe. Do you see it?”
“No; where?”
“Almost above your head.”
I gazed upward intently for a few minutes, until I thought I saw the monkey, but it was very indistinct. Gradually, however, it became more defined; then to my surprise it turned out to be the head of an elephant! I was not only amazed but startled at this.
“Get your rifle, Jack!” said I, in a low whisper.
