That garden and that bungalow was a continual source of delight to young
Harry. All the improvements which he was constantly carrying out inside
the room itself, he planned and executed without assistance, but Andrew
the joiner used to come up of an evening pretty frequently, and give him
advice about the garden. So it flourished, and was very beautiful.
Andrew was often out and about the country doing odd jobs at the
residences of the gentry, and whenever he could beg a root of some rare
plant or flower he did so, and brought it straight home to the young
laird, as he called Harry.
And Harry would give him snuff.
Not, mind you, that it was for sake of the snuff that Andrew did these
little kindnesses to Harry. Truth is he dearly loved the boy.
A harum-scarum sort of a young man was Andrew, and there were people in
the parish who said he was only half-witted, but this was all nonsense.
Andrew came out with droll sayings at times--he was an original, and
that is next door to a genius; but the truth is he had more wit and a
deal more brains than many, or most of his detractors.
Andrew was tall and lank, and not an over-graceful walker, but he had a
kind face of his own and black beads of eyes, round which smiles were
nearly always dancing, and it did not take much to make Andrew laugh
right out. A right merry guffaw it was too. Sometimes it made the dogs
bark, and the cocks all crow, and the peacock scream like a thousand
cats all knocked into one. That is the kind of young man Andrew was.
He came from the low country, and spoke a trifle broad. But that did
not matter, his heart was as good as any Highlander's.
Harry and his friend frequently went to the forest together, but never
again near Towsie's gate, because the boy had promised not to tease the
bull any more. A promise is a sacred thing, and Harry knew this. The
boy had a hundred friends in the forest. Yes, and far more.
For he loved nature.
And there was not a bush or tree he did not know all about: when they
budded, when they broke into leaf, and even when those leaves would fade
and fall and die.
There was not a flower he did not know, nor a bird he could not
recognise by name, by note or song, by its nest or by its eggs.
He was no wanton nest-robber, though; a boy who is so has no manliness
or fairness or gentlemanly feeling about him. Harry never robbed a
nest, but more than once he pitched into other boys for doing so, and
fought sturdy battles in the forest in defence of his friends the birds.
Did you ever notice, dear reader, what a sweet sweet song that of the
house-martin is? With its coat of dusky black, the little crimson blush
on its breast, and its graceful form, the martin is a charming bird
altogether. But its song is to my ears ineffably sweet.
It is not a loud song, and the bird always sits down to sing. It is not
loud for this reason: away in the wilds of Africa, where this birdie
frequently goes, there are so many enemies about that to sing very
loudly would lead to the discovery of its whereabouts, and it would
probably be killed and devoured.
For this very reason many of the birds in Africa sing not at all. Gay
and lovely are they even as the flowers, the glorious flowers that adorn
the hillside and forest and plain, but silently they flit from bough to
bough.
One evening Harry was seated on his sofa, or rather he was half
reclining thereon, reading a volume of his favourite poet--Campbell, I
think. It was very still and quiet. His little window, round which the
roses and the clematis clung, was open, and the sweet breath of flowers
floated in with the gentle breeze.
It was so still and silent that Harry could hear the soft foot-fall of
Eily the collie, as she came along the gravelled path towards the
bungalow door.
"Come, in Eily," he said, "and lie down, I'm reading."
"Oh?" he added, as he looked up, "what have you in your mouth? A bone?"
Eily advanced, and put her chin ever so gently on, her young master's
knee.
No, it was not a bone, but a bird, a lovely martin.
Not a tooth had Eily put in it, not a feather had she ruffled, and
hardly had she wetted its plumage.
Harry took it tenderly in his hand.
"Where did you get it, Eily? In the loft?"
Eily wagged her tail.
Swift as lightning though they may fly out of doors, no bird is more
easily captured inside than the house-martin. If found in a loft they
appear to lose presence of mind at once, and after flying about for a
short time usually alight against the glass. When one is taken its
little heart may be felt beating against the hand, as if it verily would
break.
And no wonder.
Fancy, reader, how you should feel were you captured by some great ogre,
taller than a steeple, and carried away, expecting death every minute.
"Give it to me, Eily. Give it quick. I hope you haven't draggled its
plumage very much. Now shut the door."
Eily went and did as she was told. [It is very seldom a dog is taught
this trick, but it is a very handy one.--G.S.]
Harry admired it for a little while. Then he gently kissed its brow.
Its wee beak was half upturned, and its black beads of eyes appeared to
look appealingly at him.
"What are you going to do with me?" it seemed to ask. "Are you going to
kill me, or swallow me alive as we martins do the flies?"
"_I'm_ not going to harm you a bit," said Harry.
"I'm only going to hold you in my hand for a short time to admire you.
How soft and warm you feel, and what a pretty dusky red patch you have
on your breast! I've often listened to your song as you sat on the
apple tree. But why do you sing so soft and low?"
"Because," replied the bird, talking with its eyes--at least Harry
thought he could read the answer there--"because in our country if we
sang too loudly our enemies would hear us and come and kill us."
"And who are your enemies?"
"Big birds with terrible claws and beaks, that want to fly at us and
devour us. And terrible snakes that glide silently up the branches on
which we are perched, and sometimes strike us dead, as quick as a
lightning's flash."
"And I suppose you _must_ sing?"
"Oh yes, we must sing, because we are so very happy, and we love each
other so."
"And why are your wings and back so dusky and dark?"
"That our enemies may not see us."
"But I've read," said Harry, "that many tropical birds were all bright
and gay with colours of every hue."
"Oh yes, so they are, but then these live all their lives among flowers
as gorgeous in colour as they themselves are, and so their enemies
mistake them for the flowers among which they dwell."
"Do you come from a very far-off land?"
"_Yes_, a very very far-off land."
"And is it very beautiful there?"
"Very _very_ beautiful."
"I _would_ like to go to that far-off beautiful land. How do you get
there?"
"We fly."
"Yes, I know, but I can't, though I once tried I made a pair of wings
out of an old umbrella; they were so awkward, though, and would not
work.
"But I meant," continued Harry, "which way do you go?"
"Southward and southward and southward, and westward and westward and
southward again."
"What a funny road! I should get dead tired before I was halfway."
"So do we: then we look about for a ship or a rock, if at sea, and
alight to rest."
"And aren't you afraid the sailors may shoot you?"
"Oh no; for sailors do so love to see us on the yards. [How true!
G.S.] They dearly love us. We remind them of England and their cottage
homes and their wives and little ones, and of apple orchards and flowery
meadows and crimson poppies in the fields of green waving corn, and all
kinds of beautiful things."
"No wonder they love you!"
"Yes; they do so love us; I've seen the tears start to the eyes of
little sailor lads as they gazed at us. And I know the men tread more
lightly on the deck for fear of scaring us away."
"And when rested you just go on again?"
"Yes, on and on and on."
"I should lose my head."
"We don't--something seems to guide us onward."
"I suppose you see some terrible sights? Have you seen a shipwreck?
_I_ should like to."
"Oh no, no, you would not. If you once saw a shipwreck, or a ship
foundering at sea, you would never never forget it."
"Tell me."
"I cannot. No one could. But somehow it is usually at night we witness
these awful scenes. I have seen a ship sailing silently over the
moonlit water, the yellow light streaming from her ports, and I have
heard the sounds of music and laughter, and the voices of glad children
at play. And I have seen the same vessel, but a short hour after,
drifting on in the darkness to the pitiless rocks before a white squall.
Ah! white was the squall, white were the waves, but not more white than
the scared, dazed faces of those poor shrinking, moaning beings who
rushed on deck when she struck."
"What did you do?"
"Flew away. Just flew away."
"Tell me more."
"What shall I tell you of?"
"About your own bright home in the far-off land."
"Shall I speak to you of the coralline sea that laves the tree-fringed
shores of Africa?"
"Yes, yes, tell me of that."
"Rippling up through the snakey roots of the mangrove trees, bathing the
green branches that stoop down to kiss them--oh! 'tis a lovely sea, when
the great sun shines, and the cyclone and squall are far away, calm and
soft and blue. Yet not all blue, for on the coral flats it is a tender
green, and grey where the cloud shadows fall on it. But all placid, all
warm and dreamy as if fairies dwelt in caves beneath. Then the little
green islands seem to float above the sea as if only just let down from
heaven.
"Sometimes great sharks float upwards from the dark depths beneath, and
bask on the surface with their fins above the water, and white sea-gulls
come and perch upon them just as starlings do on sheep at home."
"How strange! Don't the sharks try to kill the birds?"
"No, they like it, and I think the birds sing to them and lull them to
sleep, or that they tell them tales of far-off lands as I am speaking
now to you.
"But on the coral reefs, where the sea, at a distance, looks so sweetly
green, if you were there in a boat and looked away down to the bottom,
oh! what a sight would be spread out before you! A garden of shrubs and
waving flowers more lovely than anything ever seen on land."
"How I should like to go there! But the interior of Africa is very
gorgeous too, is it not?"
"Yes, to us who can fly quickly from place to place, through flowery
groves, where birds and blossoms vie with each other in the beauty of
their colours, where the butterflies are like fans, of crimson and green
where the very lizards and every creeping thing, are adorned with
rainbow tints and ever-changing bright metallic sheen."
"There are dark corners, though, in this strange land of yours, are
there not?"
"Yes, dark, dark corners; but I must not tell you of these, of the deep
gloomy forest, where the gorilla howls, and wretched dwarfs have their
abode, or of the great swamp lands in which the dreadful crocodile and a
thousand other slimy creatures dwell, and where, in patches of forest,
the mighty anacondas sleep. Nor of the wondrous deserts of sand, nor of
the storms that rise sometimes and bury caravans of camels and men
alive. No, we swallows think only of the beauty of our African home, of
its roaring cataracts, its wooded hills, its peaceful lakes and broad
shining rivers, and of the glorious sunshine that gladdens all.
"But now I must go. Pray let me free. I have much to do before the
summer is over, and that kind something beckons me back again--back to
the land of the sun."
"Go, birdie, go, and some day I too will take my flight to the Land of
the Sun."
Book 1--CHAPTER SIX.