I am sitting alone in my wigwam. This pretty and romantic snuggery
stands not anywhere near the forests of the Far West, nor by the banks
of the broad Susquehana, nor on alkali plain, or rolling prairie, nor,
despite its name, anywhere in the Red man's country at all. It is built
on a green knoll in my orchard, down in bonnie Berks. An old
well-thumbed log lies before me.
It is the month of February, and the cold winds moan carelessly through
the black and gloomy Scotch pines out yonder, and through the lordly
poplars, tall and bare, with a sound that carries one's thoughts
seaward.
I read but a line or two of the dear old log, and lo! the scene is
changed, the inky pine-trees, the weird and leafless poplars, the solemn
cypresses and drooping yews, grow indistinct and fade away--the very
wind itself is hushed. I am back once more in the Indian Ocean, and my
Arab boat is quietly gliding over a calm unruffled sea of bright
translucent blue.
It is a day that would make a man of ninety years of age feel life in
every limb. Was ever sky so bright before I wonder, was ever sea so
warm, so soft, so smooth--was ever air so fresh and balmy? The very
sea-birds seem to have gone to sleep, and to be dreaming happy dreams,
as they float, rising and falling on the gently heaving water.
Revooma, my boy or boatman--everybody has a boy as a kind of body
servant who goes gipsying all alone on this lovely seaboard--Revooma, I
say, holds the sculls, and I am dreamily steering.
"Gently, R'ooma, gently," I murmur. "Nay, never row so fast; the day is
all before us, to do with as we will. Let the oars touch the water in
silence. I would hear nothing harsher than the dripping of the water
from their blades, or musical rhythm of rowlock. Now, R'ooma, pause--
nay, draw in your oars; we are a good way off yon coral island shore,
yet see, we are in water that is almost shoal. Now, look overboard,
R'ooma, down through the glassy water to the ocean's bed. Can't _you_,
R'ooma, even you, admire that? You do. Is there anything so lovely on
shore, R'ooma--anything else so lovely in Nature? I'm a poet, am I?
Thank you; but look again, do not talk, but look; have your fill of the
gorgeous beauty of that submarine garden, _I_ will, R'ooma. And years
and years after this, perhaps, when lying on a sick-bed, I will have but
to close my eyes, and that sight will return to cheer me. Have ever you
seen flowers that grow on earth like these? Why! every moving--for move
they do, as if a gentle wind were for ever stirring them--every moving
leaflet, twiglet, twig, or stem, is a flower in itself--alive with light
and colour combined. Are they really weeds, or are they living things?
Then, look at those anemones. What splendid tints! What gorgeous
colouring!
"What a bright, white, clear patch of sand this is down here, R'ooma!
How distinctly everything can be seen. See, I drop this pin, and it
wriggles, wriggles, wriggles all the way to the bottom, and yonder it
lies; somewhat distorted, I admit, but still it is the pin all the same.
Look at that black, wrinkled claw, R'ooma, appearing from under the
edge of yonder coral rock. And now the body slowly follows, and a
strange-shaped, spider-legged, warty old crab stalks forth. How
hideously ugly he is, R'ooma; and this very hideousness, I verily
believe, is his defence against his foes. But watch him, boy; what is
he going to do? He paws the sand. He stamps on it. Is it possible,
R'ooma, he is about to dance a kind of a submarine Ghillie Callum? O,
but look about a yard ahead now. See the white silvery sand gently, so
gently, moved. And the white, warty crab stops dancing and listens, and
rolls his stalky eyes around, Handy to have eyes on stalks, you say?
You're right, R'ooma. But, behold, our warty friend has beaten a hasty
retreat to his cave, and up from the sand appears another, a _facsimile_
of the first--only more ugly, more warty, and more hideous still. They
have been playing at hide-and-seek, R'ooma. That is all just a little
game to pass the summer's day away.
"But, while we have been looking at the antics of these crabs, we have
not been noticing the hundred and one other beautiful things that are
floating about. Plenty of fishes down there, R'ooma; but we haven't
seen a very large one yet. Lovely in colours all they are, especially
those strange, wee, flat fish that sail on an even keel, and are more
gaudy in colour than a goldfinch; but most of them are ridiculously
grotesque in shape. I am quite certain of one thing, R'ooma, none of
them can have very much sense of fun or humour, else they would laugh at
each other till they split their sides, and floated dead on the top of
the water. Yonder, look, goes a whole flotilla of jelly-fishes, as big
as parasols; and watch how the bright blue or crimson light scintillates
from their limbs as they kick and float. And here comes a fleet of
quite another shape, so far as their tentacles are concerned. Most
independent gentlemen these are at sea, R'ooma, and I wouldn't catch one
for the Queen; but when stranded on a lee-shore, they are about the most
helpless creatures in the universe. The little nigger boys kick them
about, and they soon look more like a dish-cloth rolled in sand than
anything alive. I've got them out to sea again, after such rough
experience of shore-going life as I couldn't have believed even a
jelly-fish capable of surviving, and have seen them revive, and float,
and put away to sea once more, with the trifling loss, of perhaps one or
more limbs or tentacles.
"They tell me, R'ooma, that those medusae, or jelly-fishes, have hardly
any nervous system, but they have very large heads, if they haven't
brains. They always put me in mind of dishonest lawyers, these
medusae--they kick and sting for a livelihood. They live on little
fishes. They throw out so many feelers all around them, that they are
sure to inveigle some small, unwary innocents; and when they do--well,
then, I'm sorry for the fishes. But when the medusae, or the lawyer,
gets shoaled himself, he is a very pitiless object indeed; all the
little fishes gather round, wag their heads or their tails, as the case
may be, but no one is a bit sorry for him.
"What for I called de funny fish Metoosah? Is that what you ask, my
innocent and unsophisticated body-slave. I will tell you. Once upon a
time, R'ooma, far away in the Lybian wilds, and by the banks of a magic
lake, there was a beautiful garden, more enchanting by far, boy, than
that down under the sea beneath our boat. This garden grew all kinds of
luscious fruit, and all kinds of lovely flowers; but there were also
trees therein, laden with apples of purest gold. Yes, you may well open
your eyes in wonder, R'ooma. But these apples of gold were guarded
night and day by a dreadful dragon--a creature bigger than a crocodile,
uglier than the iguana, with bat-like wings, as large as the jib-sails
of a boat, that enabled it to fly wherever it had a mind to, and its
teeth and eyes were frightful to behold. And in the garden, R'ooma,
there dwelt three fearful ladies--and one was called Medusa. Her hands
and claws were of brass, she had wings that shone like burnished gold.
Her body was covered with scales, like the crocodile's, and her teeth
were more formidable than those of the lion of the jungle. And she
braided her hair with deadly snakes, that were for ever wriggling in and
out, like the tentacles of yonder medusae just floating past us. And so
awful were her eyes that, if she looked upon any one, he was turned into
stone. She was slain at last, R'ooma; and they say that every drop of
her blood changed into a thousand venomous snakes.
"Is dat where all de dreadful snakes come from? you ask me. Nay, boy,
nay; never look so frightened, R'ooma. There, pull on shore into that
little sandy bay, beneath that ridge of black rocks so beautifully
fringed with green. In that cool spot, R'ooma, I would drink my coffee
and rest; and there, too, I will tell you a simple story, that I tell
all my boys, about Him who made and cares for us all, who gives motion
to the air, flight to the birds, leaves to the trees, and life and joy
to every creature we see around us. Row, R'ooma, row."
The above, reader, you may if you choose consider a kind of a reverie,
nevertheless it is true in every touch. Poor R'ooma, I wonder where he
is now! A good and a childishly innocent lad he was, and loved me so
dearly he would have died to please me. That very day, I remember,
which I allude to in the above reverie, after a good, long rest, and
after telling the story to R'ooma, which I had promised, I went into the
warm sea to bathe. R'ooma came too. I had an idea that there might be
sharks, and these ground-sharks will not touch a black man. Well, if
one had appeared R'ooma might have covered my retreat. I have seen a
black man jump into the sea after a sailor's cap where sharks were in
swarms.
We had a long way to walk through shallow water, before getting into a
place deep enough to swim with comfort. On our way out, seawards, I
came upon an immense univalve shell in about three or four feet of
water. I could see that it was alive, and was a volute of some kind.
It was by far and away the largest I have ever seen--quite an armful of
a volute. I called to R'ooma to stand by and watch it while I bathed.
After my swim, I hurried back shorewards to secure my prize, when, much
to my chagrin, I found my boy floating about, enjoying himself.
"O, but, sah," he said to me, "I have marked de place where dat plenty
mooch big cowrie sleep. We soon findee he for true."
My boy had marked the place by putting a piece of seaweed to float over
it. So we didn't "findee he for true." The "plenty mooch big cowrie"
was not to be caught napping, and, doubtless, moved away into deep water
as soon as we had left. But I have even dreamed of that shell more than
once since then.
In the sides of the cliffs that surrounded the bay where R'ooma and I
had coffee that morning, and deeply imbedded in the rocks, were fossil
shells, bivalves of some kind, in shape like the _Patella_, or cockle of
our coast, only in size about two feet across. Fancy a cockle two feet
across. As big as a turtle! It would make a dinner, I should say, for
twenty hungry marines. In the shoal water were immense quantities of
the common _Holothuria_, or sea cucumbers. They were of gigantic size.
But the shores of these little uninhabited islands north of Zanzibar
abound everywhere with shells of the most beautiful and curious kinds.
Many of the islands are covered with wood, and snakes live there, if
little else does. How did the snakes get there? Did they swim across
from the mainland? Snakes can swim well; but I doubt if they could
cross twelve or twenty miles of salt water.
On one of these islands I once had an encounter with a snake that cost
me a pair of good shoes, and I had to go barefooted for a week. More
about this in my next log-leaf.
R'ooma was a boy of an inquiring turn of mind, so I took a delight in
teaching him many things which, perhaps, he remembers to this day. He
used to make the oddest remarks about the creatures and things around
him, which caused me often to say to him:
"You're a poet, R'ooma! I declare, R'ooma, that you are a poet!"
R'ooma was not slow in returning the compliment whenever he thought
there was a chance.
"You are one poet, sah. I declare to goodness, sah, you are one poet."
This would be R'ooma's remark when I said anything he thought clever.
Or if I did anything he thought clever, it was just the same. For
example, in Lamoo one forenoon a half-caste Arab insulted me. I'm
afraid I hit him. At all events he fell, and his turban came off, and
he looked ridiculous without it, as he had a shaven skull.
R'ooma laughed till he was obliged to double himself up like a
jack-knife to save his sides from cracking.
"O, yah!" he roared, "I declare to goodness, sah, you are one poet."
Yea, there really are worse places to go gipsying to than the Indian
Ocean, and, if time and space permitted, I am sure I could tell you
stories of my wanderings on the shores of Africa, in its woods and
wilds--stories of its strange birds and beasts and beetles, of its wild
beasts and wilder men--that would quite interest.
Some other day, perhaps--who knows?
Well, leaves have a time to fall, and so also have curtains.
Down drops ours, then; our little play is ended, and our tales are told.
But as regards the gipsying part of our story, if one further proof that
such a mode of life is enjoyable in the extreme to all who love Nature
and an outdoor life, it surely rests in the fact that in this first
month of spring I now throw down my pen to go and prepare our great
caravan for another thousand miles' tour through the length and breadth
of Merry England.