fellow!"
"Strange how he's going to pilot a boat-load of men up the river
without the use of the English language," suggested the young naval
officer, with a slightly sarcastic drawl.
"Aw, ye don't know him," cried Mr. Murphy in a tone expressive of fear,
"he'll find a way to make them mind or he'll bash all their heads in.
Sure, he's the Divil himself, sir. Jist look at the wicked eye o' him
now, will ye?"
This was going too far for safety, and Big Scalper turned upon his
loquacious showman. He was too much an artist to spoil the play by
proclaiming it a sham, so he spoke a few rapid words in Gaelic. The
Murphy's knowledge of that language was naturally limited, but there
was never a boy in Glenoro school, be his nationality what it might,
who did not pick up much of the war-vocabulary of the Fighting
MacDonalds, and Dan had no difficulty in gathering from Scotty's remark
that he was being strongly advised to immediately shut his mouth.
"What's he sayin'?" inquired the subaltern interestedly.
Dan's face was a study in pained and polite anxiety.
"I'm askin' yer pardon, sir," he said nervously, "but I think it would
be safer if ye wouldn't be lookin' at him anny longer. He's askin' me
which o' yer scalps I think would look best danglin' from his belt!"
There was a shout of long-suppressed laughter from the on-looking
Canadians, and the young officer's face flamed up angrily.
"I shall report you for this insolence!" he cried, suddenly awakening
to his ignominious position.
But his friend caught his arm and drew him away.
"Come out of this, Bob!" he cried in a choking voice. "You'll report
nothing! You'd better not monkey with those fellows. That young Irish
ruffian was improvising as he went along. And I'm awfully sorry, Bobby
dear, but I'm afraid I've won my bet," he added, allowing his laughter
to overcome him, "because--because--oh, Holy Maria, hold me up, I'm
going to die!--because Big Scalper speaks a language that's amazingly
like the stuff the pipers of the Black Watch jabber to one another!"
As Scotty moved down to the landing he gave his tormentor a
good-humoured shaking. "It's lots of fun, I know, Dan; but you'd
better keep that long, Irish tongue of yours still before the officers,
or you'll get into trouble. I don't know what that fellow's going to
do."
"Be jabers, it would be worth pickin' oakum for a year jist to take
down his blamed consate. Did ye iver see such a banty rooster as the
young wasp was? The little sailor chap wasn't half bad. And, say,
Scot, did ye hear him say he was a Canadian or from Canady, or
somethin' like that? It accounts for his good manners."
"Who, the bluejacket?" Scotty looked with interest after the young
man's retreating form. There was something in his trim, straight
figure that somehow seemed familiar.
"What's his name, I wonder?" he began, when a peremptory order
interrupted. "Stanwell, into number 150!" cried the sharp voice of the
overseer, and Scotty sprang into the stern of the boat and was off for
his first battle with the cataracts of the Nile.
XV
THE SECRET OF THE NILE
O mystic Nile! Thy secret yields
Before us; thy most ancient dreams
Are mixed with far Canadian fields
And murmur of Canadian streams.
--C. D. G. ROBERTS.
The awe-inspiring designation which Dan had bestowed upon his friend
was not readily dropped. The Canadians seized and used it joyfully.
Others who heard the name and were not aware of the joke in which it
originated supposed that the bearer of it was really an Indian chief,
about whose bloody prowess they were ready to believe any tales which
the ingenious Mr. Murphy might invent. And so, for the remainder of
the voyage, Scotty was known throughout the column as Big Scalper, the
fiercest Indian from the Canadian wilds.
But in the days that followed Dan found few opportunities for indulging
his reckless humour, for soon the army was moving forward rapidly and
the boatmen were in the midst of stupendous toil. The River Column had
been bidden to make haste. Gordon was shut up in Khartoum waiting his
rescuers, and no one must rest. On they went, day after day, past
dreary stretches of sand, broken only by an occasional and equally
dreary dom palm; past barren ledges of rock, deserted mud villages and
ruined temples; battling madly with a rapid, only to find when it was
overcome that another lay ahead; toiling strenuously to catch up with
the enemy, only to see at nightfall their spearheads disappearing over
the last brown ridge of sand hills. Scotty felt himself becoming a
machine, something that did the day's work mechanically. To toil all
day in the bow or stern of a boat in the scorching heat of the pitiless
sun, or walk over blistering rock and dazzling sand; to sleep at night
inside a square of good British bayonets, chilled by the numbing wind
from the north; to rise at the bugle-call and go at it again--that was
the unvarying programme. Cataract and sand plain succeeded cataract
and sand plain with such deadly monotony, that all sense of time,
place, and progress was blotted out. They seemed stationary in an
endless desert, toiling against an endless river, always moving but
never advancing.
He often wondered, as he watched the brown, turbid water racing down to
meet him, what secret the mysterious Nile held for him. What would be
its bearing upon his life? But he always ended his questionings with
the assurance that whatever the outcome might be, even though he should
never see it, it was controlled by a higher Power, and he was content.
And through all the hardships and stress of the work, the struggle with
the rapids, the hunger and privations, the new life which had been
implanted in Scotty's heart was his greatest stay. Many a time in the
face of temptation he blessed the saintly old woman far away in the
Canadian backwoods for the godly training he had received beneath the
Silver Maple. He found he needed all his strength in this new, wild
life; for a more gaily-gallant, reckless, devil-may-care crew than the
Canadian voyageurs, who fought and overcame the ancient Nile, surely
never wielded paddles. His chief trial was his own faithful follower,
for Dan Murphy strove to out-Canadian the wildest river-driver of the
Ottawa valley. And had Scotty's strong hand not been often placed upon
the unsteady tiller of his friend's life, there might have been a
sadder wreck among the Nile voyageurs than has been set down in
history. His vigilant oversight of Dan's conduct did not prevent him
distinguishing himself in quite a unique way.
Ever since he had left Cairo that young man's one hope in life had been
to participate in a battle. There came a day, later, when he and
Scotty worked side by side on the blood-stained rocks of the desert,
helping to remove the dead and wounded; when they saw their General's
body lowered into its lonely grave, and witnessed the hundred harrowing
sights of a battlefield; and then and there, much of the boyish glamour
of battle faded before the horrible reality. But that time had not yet
come; and, like Napoleon, Dan was convinced that war was a grand game.
So when the reluctant enemy at last massed itself upon the rocky ledges
of Kirbekan to delay the column, and the joyful news spread through the
impatient army that at last they were to meet the foe, none was so
eager for the fray as Dan. In spite of Scotty's admonitions, he went
to one of his officers to beg permission to join the advance the next
morning. The request was promptly refused, and the volunteer bidden
with scant ceremony to go back to his boat and mind his own business.
But Mr. Murphy was convinced that his business lay with the front rank
of the advancing column. He had not been trained to army discipline
and was not minded to lose the glorious chance of participating in a
real battle for such a trifling consideration as one man's opinion.
So in the grey dawn of the morning, when the troops marched out over
sand and barren rock, there went with them a man who had neither the
uniform nor the dogged stride of the rank and file. But he made up in
enthusiasm what he lacked in military precision; for, having
appropriated the arms and accoutrements of the first man who fell, he
rushed to the front, and was right in the van of the victorious charge
that swept the enemy from their rocky stronghold.
Dan Murphy was the hero of the Canadian voyageurs for the remainder of
the journey. When the six months' term for which they had signed had
expired, and he and Scotty resolved to go on to the end, there were
many who remained with the column because the former chose to act as an
independent recruiting officer. If he was going to Khartoum, then they
would follow, for where Murphy was there must surely be some fun.
But the end of the journey came sooner than was expected. A little
above Kirbekan General Brackenbury received the tragic news of the fall
of Khartoum and the martyred Gordon's death. Just a few days earlier,
just a little more haste, and the gallant heart that had looked bravely
into the face of despair for so many weary weeks, still patient, still
hoping, might have seen the answer to his prayers! But the succors
were too late by less than a week. Gordon was murdered, Khartoum was
fallen, and at Huella the baffled column received orders to return.
If the toil of descending the Nile was not equal to that experienced in
the ascent, the skill and vigilance required of the pilots was even
greater. Only a few days' journey had been completed when the column
halted at the head of a long series of cataracts. Here the Dongolese
boatmen had been put to their utmost strength to haul up the boats
through the boiling, writhing channel, and the question was, could any
boat go down it and live? General Brackenbury gave orders that none
but the Canadians should be entrusted with the descent; so, early in
the morning, the voyageurs walked down the stream to survey it. They
pronounced the channel bad, but not impossible, while one old St.
Lawrence pilot sniffed contemptuously and declared that the Lachine
would make this puddle look "seek."
But the Nile cataract was bad enough, as Scotty realised, when he found
himself among the first called to go down. Dan was his bowman and the
stroke oar was a hardy old Scotch sergeant. Upon both of these he
could rely with certainty. Nevertheless, as he steered out into the
middle of the river, he realised that they had good need of all their
courage and resource. On an overhanging rock above him stood the
commander with some of his staff, anxiously watching the experiment.
The shore was lined with soldiers, as though they had come to witness a
boat-race. Scotty had a fleeting glimpse of them as he raced past, and
then his boat was caught in the swift current and shot forward with
lightning speed. The men bent to their oars with all the might of
their brawny arms, to give their helmsman more power, Dan stood in the
bow, alert and tense, his paddle ready, and Scotty held the tiller in
an iron grip. The channel curved sharply to right and left; at the
quickest turns great rocks stood in mid-stream over which the angry
waters boiled and roared. At many points an instant's hesitation on
his own part, Scotty well knew, or a second's relaxation of Dan's
vigilance, would hurl boat and crew to destruction. They were in it
now, dashing through a blinding rain of spray, leaping, turning,
dodging, twisting, as though the boat were a living creature pursued.
Down they shot through the boiling zig-zag current, now avoiding great,
jagged rocks by a hair's-breadth, now bounding like a deer over a
smooth incline, now plunging into a seething white billow; and, when at
last they swept round into the quiet bay at the foot of the cataract,
Dan leaped up, and waving his paddle on high uttered a wild war-whoop
learned long ago in the swamps of the Oro. There was an answering
cheer from the group of men waiting at the landing. "Well done, Big
Scalper!" cried the foreman.
A young naval officer who had just ridden down from the head of the
rapid turned quickly at the words.
"What, Big Scalper, is that you?" he cried as the pilots stepped from
the boat. "How is it you're not hanged yet?"
Scotty glanced up and encountered a laughing glance from the speaker's
merry eyes. He recognised the young man whom Dan had vainly tried to
befool, away back at the beginning of the voyage. He was prevented
from replying by a word from the officer in command. As the voyageurs
were few and the boats many they had to walk back to the head of the
cataract as soon as one descent was accomplished and prepare for
another. Their commander was bidding them make haste, and, when Scotty
turned to leave the landing, the young man had disappeared. He was
vaguely disappointed. There was something very attractive in his
good-humoured familiarity, so different from the manner of the ordinary
under officers.
When the long day's labour was over and the darkness prevented the
descent of any more boats, the Canadians received orders to return to
the upper camp to be in readiness for the morning's work. Dan had been
required for steering early in the day, and had been separated from his
friend, so Scotty found himself upon the rocky path leading to the head
of the cataract quite alone.
Dan had promised to join him, but when Dan was in the company of the
voyageurs there was generally sufficient cause for delay. Scotty
walked on slowly, glad to be alone for a few moments after the
tremendous toil of the day; the desert was quiet, and acted upon his
spirits as did the deep, fragrant swamps at home.
The sun had set and the desert, which had glowed golden in the
blistering sun all day, now lay grey and ghostly in the moonlight.
Away ahead stood the ruins of an ancient temple overgrown with dusty
mimosa bushes. The whispering Nile, brown and gleaming in the daytime,
ran swiftly past, touched to silver by the moon that hung in the great
empty space overhead. The breeze from the north was cool; the night
was quiet and restful. He strolled along easily, looking back
occasionally for signs of his comrades; a solitary figure in the barren
desert.
The toil over rocks and rapids of the last few months, though it had
hardened his physique and left him in superb health, had played havoc
with his clothes; and he was so disreputable and tattered a figure,
that he smiled to himself, as he pictured Granny's distress could she
have seen him.
He reached a turn in the rocky path and stopped to listen for sounds of
those who were to follow. The breeze from the north brought faintly
the music of the old French Canadian song that had so often enlivened
alike the toil of the shantymen on the Ottawa and the pilots on the
Nile.
"En roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant, ma boule."
The boys were coming, then; he seated himself upon a rock to await
them. The sound died away for a moment, only the dry rustle of the
mimosa bushes disturbed the silence.
He seemed absolutely alone in the world, until from a break in the
rocks to his right a camel emerged with its stately, undulating stride.
It bore an officer presumably riding down to the foot of the cataract.
The long, fantastic shadow moved across the grey sand. Scotty could
hear the rider's voice urging the animal forward. As they came out
into the open, the two figures were silhouetted against the pale sky; a
splendid mark for a prowling Dervish, he reflected.
As if in answer to his thought there came the sudden crack of a rifle
from the direction of the ruined temple. The figure of the rider
lurched over, and, with a leap, the animal had thrown him and was off
desertward. There was a fiendish yell from the mimosa bushes. Three
or four dark forms rose like magic from their shadows, their spears
glinting in the moonlight as they leaped forward. The wounded man lay
between his assailants and Scotty, somewhat nearer the latter. As it
was Scotty reached him first. The man was lying on the sand. He had
his revolver in his hand and was striving desperately to raise himself
into a position to shoot. Scotty dragged him into a sheltering nook
between two ledges of rock, snatched the weapon from his hand, and
crouching down sent a bullet spinning out to meet the advancing rush.
The Dervishes halted; the revolver spoke again; there was a howl as a
man fell. Scotty felt a moment's inner exultation in that steady aim
he had never lost since the days he and Dan shot chipmunks behind the
schoolhouse. But the yell had been answered by another farther from
the river; three more glinting spearheads suddenly appeared from the
dark expanse beyond, and came hurtling towards him. He poured the
remaining chambers of his revolver into the mad charge; but, when the
last was gone, the enemy were still leaping forward. He threw down the
weapon and looked about swiftly. The wounded man had a sword at his
side. Scotty grasped it and the same instant the yelling savages were
upon him. There was no use trying to take cover now. He stood erect
and struck out madly. He was dimly surprised when the first man went
down before him. He swung his weapon fiercely, with no thought of aim;
but he was as agile as even these wild sons of the desert and his arm
had the strength of ten. It could not last long, he knew, and he
fought with the energy of despair. There was a strange roaring in his
cars, as though he were in the midst of the cataract again, something
warm was streaming down his face and obscuring his vision; he struck
out blindly, desperately.
But now another sound arose, even above the roaring in Scotty's head,
the sound of a familiar voice; a shout from down the river. Scotty's
heart leaped; he uttered a strange, weird yell--"Oro, Oro, woo-hoo!"
It was the long, fierce battle-cry of Glenoro school. If Dan were in
Egypt that would bring him, he knew!
"Oro! Oro!" came the answer; and like a sandstorm across the desert
came the company of voyageurs, Dan at their head, uttering the
blood-curdling war-whoop with which he had so often awakened the echoes
of the Canadian swamps.
The fierce-eyed Soudanese who had raised his spear to hurl at his
opponent hesitated. He must have thought that all General
Brackenbury's army was upon him. He leaped back with a sharp word of
command; one more yell from the advancing column, followed by the crack
of a random shot decided him; the dark figures took to their heels, and
in the magic way known only to the desert-born, had melted in a moment
over the low hills.
Scotty's head was spinning wildly, and when Dan flung himself upon him
he sank unsteadily upon the ground.
"Hello, Danny," he tried to say, with his usual calmness, "just on
time."
Dan clutched him by the shoulders and shook him violently; his voice
was unsteady. "Be jabers, didn't I hear ye bleatin' like a stray lamb,
half-a-mile back. How did ye happen to have such luck, ye beggar? Aw,
the black-hearted brutes has give ye a bang, Scotty, boy. Hold on to
me now, old man, here, an' we'll fix ye up in no time."
"The other fellow needs it worse," said Scotty, making a motion towards
the man at his feet. Someone struck a light; the voyageurs raised the
wounded man gently. His eyes opened.
"Are you much hurt?" asked one of the rescuers, bending over him.
Scotty looked down at him and was conscious of a feeling of glad
surprise. It was the young naval officer who had spoken to him that
morning.
"Not much," he gasped pluckily. "It's under my arm here. You were
just in the nick of time, Canadian."
Another match was lit to enable the men to see the rough bandages they
were trying to adjust. The light flashed up into Scotty's face, and
the wounded man's eyes brightened.
"Why, was it you, Big Scalper?" he asked, with a faint attempt at a
smile. "The Devil's not so bad as he's painted----" He made an effort
to hold out his hand, but before Scotty could take it the young man's
head fell back and he had fainted in Dan's arms.
The buzzing in Scotty's head grew louder, other sounds became dim and
far away. He was vaguely conscious that the boys were binding up his
head, hurting him most unnecessarily in the process, and that they were
leading him away, away, through the revolving darkness, over an
interminable desert.
But the next morning saw him in the stern of his boat ready to take the
cataract once more. His head was still bandaged and felt rather light,
but he did his day's work as usual. And before the next evening he was
at the head of the column, far down the Nile, without knowing even the
name of the man whose life he had saved.
And that same day a young naval officer, lying in a hospital boat asked
anxiously if he might not see the Canadian pilot, known as Big Scalper,
and was informed that the Indian of that name had gone on at the front
of the column, but that he would see him when they disbanded at Korti.
But when the voyageurs drew up before the flagstaff to receive the
General's farewell, the young officer lay tossing in delirium; and when
next he saw his preserver it was not in Egyptian bondage, but in the
new land of promise.
XVI
RE-VOYAGE
"For dere's no place lak our own place, don't care de far you're goin',
Dat's what the whole worl's sayin', w'enever dey come here,
'Cos we got de fines' contree, an' de beeges' reever flowin',
An' le bon Dieu sen' de sunshine nearly twelve mont' ev'ry year."
--WILLIAM HENRY DRUMMOND.
And surely the Israelites, on the borders of Canaan, felt no more joy
than did the two voyageurs when they first sighted the green shores of
Canada. As they steamed up the St. Lawrence Dan's delight reached the
dangerous stage. He was dying for a fight, and a fight he must have,
he declared. And for this purpose he danced about the deck,
brandishing his fists, and beseeching everyone within hearing to speak
up and say that Canady wasn't jist the flower garden of creation,
barrin' ould Ireland. Before he succeeded in getting himself into
serious trouble, Scotty wisely put the wild Irishman down upon the deck
and sat on him until the first spasms of the home-coming ecstasy were
over.
But when the boys reached the little railway station a few miles from
Glenoro, and saw Hamish's kind, brown eyes and old Pat Murphy's red
face beaming a double welcome, there were no noisy demonstrations. For
as they drove up through the ever-changing panorama of hill and valley,
with the flash of the river and the blue gleam of lakes peeping through
the green, Scotty had a choking lump in his throat--and even Dan was
silent. For they were home again, and Oro was vocal with the joy of
returning spring.
The pink-tinted buds were everywhere bursting into green, the marsh
marigolds lit the dark borders of the swamp with their little golden
lamps, the hepaticas and trilliums spangled the dun-coloured carpet of
the woods; just the same, Scotty thought, as in the happy days when he
and Isabel scampered among them. The air was deliciously laden with
the exhilarating scents of the young green earth, the bluebirds flashed
from bough to bough of the elm trees, and the robins, how they sang!
Dan declared the little spalpeens knew he was home, for what else would
make them bust their foolish little throats wid shoutin'?
His quiet mood did not last long. The Canadian air was getting into
his blood again. A sudden whirr and flash, where a host of red-winged
blackbirds arose in a cloud from the road, proved too much for him. He
leaped from the buggy, yelling like a madman, and for the rest of the
journey was quite beyond the limits of reason. He sat in the vehicle
only on rare occasions, and spent his time scrambling over fences,
tearing into the woods and back again, chasing squirrels and whooping
like an Indian, until his father privately questioned Scotty as to the
effect of the Egyptian sun on the brain.
Scotty sat beside Hamish, laughing helplessly at poor old Dan's
madness, and in his quieter way revelling just as much in all the dear
familiar sights. He was feeling how good it was to be a son of the
north land, to live in this garden of lake and river, forest and
meadow, and see it come to life afresh each year, and as they climbed a
hill, and he stood up in the old buggy to catch his first glimpse of
Lake Oro he realised solemnly that, though he might be called English,
Irish, Scotch, Indian, Egyptian, what not, he was altogether and
entirely and overwhelmingly Canadian.