Like the bats and the night-birds Benee now crept into concealment.
He sought once more the shelter of a tall pine-tree of the spruce
species. Here he could be safe and here he could sleep.
But after a hearty meal he took the precaution to lash himself to the
stem, high, high up.
His descent from the last tree had been accomplished with safety
certainly, but it was of rather a peculiar nature, and Benee had no
desire to risk his neck again.
The wind softly sighed in the branches.
A bird of the thrush species alighted about a yard above him, and burst
into shrill sweet melody to welcome the rising sun.
With half-closed eyes Benee could see from under the branches a
deep-orange horizon, fading into pure sea-green zenithwards, then to
deepest purple and blue where rested the crimson clouds.
And now there was a glare of brighter and more silvery light, and the
red streaks were turned into wreaths of snow.
The sun was up, and Benee slept. But he carried that sweet bird's song
into dreamland.
----
About three days after this Benee was rejoiced to find himself in a new
land, but it was a land he knew well--too well.
Though very high above the sea-level it was in reality a
"Land of the mountain and the flood".
Hills on hills rose on all sides of him. There were straths or valleys
of such exceeding beauty that they gladdened the eye to behold. The
grass grew green here by the banks of many a brown roaring stream, and
here, too, cattle roamed wild and free, knee-deep in flowery verdure,
and many a beautiful guanaco and herds of llamas everywhere. The
streams that meandered through these highland straths were sometimes
very tortuous, but perhaps a mile distant they would seem to lose all
control of themselves and go madly rushing over their pebbly beds, till
they dashed over high cliffs at last, forming splendid cascades that
fell into deep, dark, agitated pools, the mist that rose above forming
rainbows which were never absent when the sun shone.
And the hillsides that bounded these valleys were clad in Alpine
verdure, with Alpine trees and flowers, strangely intermingled with
beautiful heaths, and in the open glades with gorgeous geraniums, and
many a lovely flower never seen even in greenhouses in our "tame
domestic England".
These were valleys, but there were glens and narrow gorges also, where
dark beetling rocks frowned over the brown waters of streams that rushed
fiercely onwards round rocks and boulders, against which they lashed
themselves into foam.
On these rocks strange fantastic trees clung, sometimes attached but by
the rootlets, sometimes with their heads hanging almost sheer downwards;
trees that the next storm of wind would hurl, with crash and roar, into
the water far beneath.
Yet such rivers or big burns were the home _par excellence_ of fish of
the salmon tribe, and gazing below you might see here and there some
huge otter, warily watching to spring on his finny prey.
Nor were the otters alone on the _qui vive_, for, strange as it may
seem, even pumas and tiger-cats often made a sullen dive into dark-brown
pools, and emerged bearing on high some lordly red-bellied fish. With
this they would "speel" the flowery, ferny rocks, and dart silently away
into the depths of the forest.
And this wild and beautiful country, at present inhabited by as wild a
race of Indians as ever twanged the bow, but bound at no very distant
date to come under the influence of Christianity and civilization, was
Benee's real home. 'Twas here he roamed when a boy, for he had been a
wanderer all his life, a nomad, and an inhabitant of the woods and
wilds.
Not a scene was unfamiliar to him. He could name every mountain and
hill he gazed upon in his own strangely musical Indian tongue. Every
bird, every creature that crept, or glided, or walked, all were his old
friends; yes, and every tree and every flower, from the splendid
parasitic plants that wound around the trees wherever the sun shone the
brightest, and draped them in such a wealth of beauty as would have made
all the richness and gaudiness of white kings and queens seem but a
caricature.
There was something of romance even in Benee. As he stood with folded
arms on the brink of a cliff, and gazed downward into a charming glen,
something very like tears stood in his eyes.
He loved his country. It was his own, his native land. But the savages
therein he had ceased to love. Because when but a boy--ah, how well he
remembered that day,--he was sent one day by his father and mother to
gather the berries of a deadly kind of thorn-bush, with the juice of
which the flints in the points of the arrows were poisoned. Coming back
to his parents' hut in the evening, as happy as boys only can be, he
found the place in flames, and saw his father, mother, and a sister whom
he loved, being hurried away by the savages, because the queen had need
of them. The lot of death had fallen on them. Their flesh was wanted to
make part of a great feast her majesty was about to give to a
neighbouring potentate. Benee, who had ever been used to hunt for his
food as a boy, or fish in the lakes and the brown roaring streams, that
he and his parents might live, had always abhorred human sacrifice and
human flesh. The latter he had seldom been prevailed upon even to
taste.
So from that terrible day he resolved to be a wanderer, and he
registered a vow--if I may speak so concerning the thoughts of a poor
boy-Indian--to take revenge when he became a man on this very tribe that
had brought such grief and woe on him and his.
Benee was still a young man, but little over two-and-twenty, and as he
stood there thoughts came into his mind about a little sweetheart he had
when a boy.
Wee Weenah was she called; only a child of six when he was good sixteen.
But in all his adventures, in forest or by the streams, Weenah used to
accompany him. They used to be away together all day long, and lived on
the nuts and the wild fruit that grew everywhere so plentifully about
them, on trees, on bushes, or on the flowery banks.
Where was Weenah now? Dead, perhaps, or taken away to the queen's
blood-stained court. As a child Weenah was very beautiful, for many of
these Indians are very far indeed from being repulsive.
And Benee used to delight to dress his tiny lady-love in feathers of the
wild birds, crimson and green and blue, and weave her rude garlands of
the gaudiest flowers, to hang around her neck, or entwine in her long
dark hair.
He had gone to see Weenah--though he was then in grief and tears--after
he had left his father's burnt shealing. He had told her that he was
going away far to the north, that he was to become a hunter of the
wilds, that he might even visit the homes of the white men, but that
some day he would return and Weenah should be his wife.
So they had parted thus, in childish grief and tears, and he had never
seen her since.
He might see her nevermore.
While musing thus to himself, he stretched his weary limbs and body on
the sweet-scented mossy cliff-top.
It was day certainly, but was he not now at home, in his own, his native
land?
He seemed to be afraid of nothing, therefore, and so--he fell asleep.
The bank on which he slept adjoined a darkling forest.
A forest of strange dark pines, with red-brown stems, which, owing to
the absence of all undergrowth save heather and moss and fern, looked
like the pillars of some vast cavern.
But there was bird music in this forest, and Benee had gone to sleep
with the flute-like and mellow notes of the soo-soo falling on his ear.
The soo-soo's song had accompanied him to the land of forgetfulness, and
was mingling even now with his dreams--happy dreams of long ago.
But list! Was that really the song of the bronze-necked soo-soo?
He was half-awake now, but apparently dreaming still.
He thought he was dreaming at all events, and would not have opened his
eyes and so dispelled the dream for all the world.
It was a sweet girlish voice that seemed to be singing--singing about
him, about Benee the wanderer in sylvan wilds; the man who for long
years had been alone because he loved being alone, whose hand--until he
reached the white man's home--had been against everyone, and against
every beast as well.
And the song was a kind of sweet little ballad, which I should try in
vain to translate.
But Benee opened his eyes at last, and his astonishment knew no bounds
as he saw, kneeling by his mossy couch, the self-same Weenah that he had
been thinking and dreaming about.
Though still a girl in years, being but thirteen, she seemed a woman in
all her sympathies.
Beautiful? Yes; scarcely changed as to face from the child of six he
used to roam in the woods with in the long, long ago. Her dark hair
hung to her waist and farther in two broad plaits. Her black eyes
brimmed over with joy, and there was a flush of excitement on her
sun-kissed cheeks.
"Weenah! Oh, Weenah! Can it be you?" he exclaimed in the Indian
tongue.
"It is your own little child-love, your Weenah; and ah! how I have
longed for you, and searched for you far and near. See, I am clad in
the skins of the puma and the otter; I have killed the jaguar, too, and
I have been far north and fought with terrible men. They fell before the
poison of my arrows. They tried to catch me; but fleet of foot is
Weenah, and they never can see me when I fly. In trees I have slept, on
the open heather, in caves of rocks, and in jungle. But never, never
could I find my Benee. Ah! life of mine, you will never go and leave us
again.
"Yes," she added, "Mother and Father live, and are well. Our home have
we enlarged. 'Tis big now, and there is room in it for Benee.
"Come; come--shall we go? But what strange, strange war-weapons you
carry. Ah! they are the fire-spears of the white man."
"Yes, Weenah mine! and deadly are they as the lightning's bolt that
flashes downward from the storm-sky and lays dead the llama and the ox.
"See yonder eagle, Weenah? Benee's aim is unerring; his hand is the
hand of the rock, his eye the eye of the kron-dah" (a kind of hawk),
"yet his touch on the trigger light as the moss-flax. Behold!"
He raised the rifle as he spoke, and without even appearing to take aim
he fired.
Next moment the bird of Jove turned a somersault. It was a death-spasm.
Down, down he fell earthwards, his breast-feathers following more
slowly, like a shower of snow sparkling in the sunshine.
Weenah was almost paralysed with terror, but Benee took her gently in
his arms, and, kissing her brow and bonnie raven hair, soothed her and
stilled her alarms.
Hand in hand now through the forest, as in the days of yore! Both
almost too happy to speak, Benee and his little Indian maiden! Hand in
hand over the plain, through the crimson heath and the heather, heeding
nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing save their own great happiness!
Hand in hand until they stood beside Weenah's mother's cottage; and her
parents soon ran out to welcome and to bless them!
Theirs was no ordinary hut, for the father had been far to the east and
had dwelt among white men on the banks of the rapid-rolling Madeira.
When he had returned, slaves had come with him--young men whom he had
bought, for the aborigines barter their children for cloth or schnapps.
And these slaves brought with them tools of the white men--axes, saws,
adzes, hammers, spades, and shovels.
Then Shooks-gee (swift of foot) had cut himself timber from the forest,
and, aided by his slaves, had set to work; and lo! in three moons this
cottage by the wood arose, and the queen of the cannibals herself had
none better.
But Benee was welcomed and food set before him, milk of the llama,
corn-cakes, and eggs of the heron and treel-ba (a kind of plover).
Then warm drinks of coca (not cocoa) were given him, and the child
Weenah's eyes were never turned away while he ate and drank.
He smoked then, the girl sitting close by him on the bench and watching
the strange, curling rings of reek rolling upwards towards the black and
glittering rafters.
"But," said Weenah's mother, "poor Benee has walked far and is much
tired. Would not Benee like to cover his feet?"
"Yes, our mother, Benee would sleep."
"And I will watch and sing," said Weenah.
"Sing the song of the forest," murmured Benee.
Then Weenah sang low beside him while Benee slept.