Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: The next moment the full moon fell on a large black
poisonous snake, rapidly gilding away over the sand.]
THE
WANDERER IN AFRICA.
A TALE ILLUSTRATIVE OF
THE THIRTY-SECOND PSALM
BY
A. L. O. E.
AUTHORESS OF "THE CLAREMONT TALES;" "NED FRANKS;"
"SHEER OFF;" ETC.
[Illustration]
London:
GALL AND INGLIS, 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE;
AND EDINBURGH.
CONTENTS.
————
CHAP.
I. NIGHT ON THE WASTE
II. WANDERINGS
III. WANDERINGS—_continued_
IV. FORSAKEN
V. NOT FORSAKEN
VI PERIL AT HAND
VII. RESOLUTIONS
VIII. GUIDANCE
IX. THE STUBBORN SINNER
X. HOME
THE
WANDERER IN AFRICA,
Illustrating the Thirty-second Psalm.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
NIGHT ON THE WASTE.
_"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in
whose spirit there is no guile."_—Psalm xxxii. 1, 2.
"No use, it won't do. Rhinoceros hide won't get another yard out of
them beasts! We must outspan * for the night!" exclaimed Hans Kuhe,
the Dutch Boer, † after Pollux, his Hottentot driver, had been for an
hour belabouring, with the huge whip, eight unfortunate oxen that were
vainly trying to drag his waggon through a sandy African waste.
* Unyoke. † Dutch farmer at the Cape Colony.
"If we could but have reached water—the poor beasts are dying of
thirst," observed David, an English lad who was servant to the Boer.
"Eight oxen are not enough to draw that heavy waggon."
And he looked with pity at the panting creatures, whose sides were
seamed with weals, and bleeding from the whip which Pollux had plied
with such merciless force.
Hans muttered a curse on the four oxen that had died on the road, and
a fiercer one upon the Bushmen who had carried off two others during
the night. He was a large, bulky man, with coarse features bloated by
intemperance, his brandy-bottle and his pipe being his two constant
companions.
"Help Pollux to outspan. Don't stand there like a lazy cur, as you
are!" exclaimed the Boer to the English lad, who had done nine-tenths
of all the work since the expedition had started. "No sulky looks for
me,—and why do you go limping like that?" The question was asked in a
tone of anger, by no means that of pity.
"That fore ox kicked me on the ankle," said David.
"You're an awkward cub!" growled the Boer. "No time to be lame
now—you've a thirty miles' walk afore ye to-morrow, ere we got to the
Quagga Fountain. Now make haste, will ye, and take the yoke off that
beast."
"Who will take the yoke off 'me?'" thought the poor lad, as, biting his
lip to repress either anger or pain, he proceeded to help to outspan
the oxen for the night.
But a year before, David Aspinall had been a fine specimen of an
English youth, with strength in his well-knit limbs, and careless
mirth in his eyes, and a light heart in his bosom, which knew little
of sorrow or care. "Now," the sun-burnt cheek had grown hollow, and
the eye had lost all its brightness, and the clothes hung loosely on
the wasted limbs, and the expression of his face told of hardship and
grief, borne silently, but felt none the less.
"It has been my own choice, this path of misery; it has been my own
putting on, this intolerable yoke of bondage!" so thought David, as he
went on with his occupation. "'The wages of sin'—the wages of sin—ay, I
know what they come to! I have none to blame but myself! I might have
been—" but as that "might have been" was too bitter a reflection to
dwell on, David tried to drive it away.
The evening's work was done. Hans, after a heavy meal of beltong *
taken with a large amount of brandy, sat on the waggon shaft, smoking
his pipe in lazy enjoyment, and his weary, almost worn-out servant was
suffered to take his food. There was nothing that would have refreshed
David so much as to have plunged his aching head into cold water, and
so have quenched his feverish thirst, but the small supply left in the
water-jar was precious, and he scarcely received enough to relieve his
most pressing need.
* Dried flesh.
"Now I'm going to turn in," said Hans Kuhe, who, after the fashion of
African travellers, made a house of his waggon; "you must keep watch,
Davy, to-night, for Pollux is not to be trusted; there he lies snoring
already! We may have some of the Bushmen thieves down on us again, or
the hyenas may come slinking to see what they can carry off, or a lion
may scent the cattle. I fancy I heard a roar in the distance. You keep
the double-barrelled gun beside you, and mind, no sleeping on watch, or
I'll give you a taste of the rhinoceros hide!"
The bulky form of the Boer soon disappeared under the tilt of the
waggon. David Aspinall was left to watch through the long weary
hours in the dreary African waste. Night was there, but without its
stillness. The painful lowing of the thirsty oxen, the occasional loud
barking of the dogs whom a sense of danger seemed to keep wakeful, the
howling of jackals, and the wild laugh of the hyenas in the distance,
made together a horrible concert, which combined with the pain in his
ankle to keep the weary lad from sleeping.
Would you wish to know the thoughts that passed through his mind, as
resting on the sands, with his back against one of the huge wheels of
the heavy waggon, and the double-barrelled gun close to his hand, David
sat with his eyes fixed on the large round moon which seemed to hang so
near to earth, and which threw such black shadows of every object on
the waste?
"A blessing and a curse were set before me; I left the blessing, and
chose the curse! I was taught the right way, I was told my duty, I had
parents who tried to lead me heavenwards, both by their words and their
example. I had a conscience, but I would not listen to it; a Bible,
but I cared not to read it. What would I not give for that Bible now!
I have not set eyes on one for months! I wonder if I could remember
anything of what I learnt by heart when I was a child at Greenside
Farm!" and David began half aloud:
"'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down
in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.'
"I can't go on with that," murmured the poor lad with a choking
sensation at his throat, as his memory recalled soft green meadows,
spangled with buttercups and daisies, in which he had sported when a
child, and the little gurgling stream sparkling in the sunshine, as it
flowed from under the shadow of the one-arched bridge. "That Psalm is
not for me, not for a wandering sheep; it is for God's own flock, who
hear His voice, and follow Him. I'm afraid I can remember no other:
yes, there's the thirty-second Psalm, my mother's favourite, perhaps I
could get through that.
"'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in
whose spirit there is no guile!'"
David stopped short, and pressed his feverish brow. "'That' Psalm may
be for me, for it is for the wanderer; it speaks of transgression and
sin,—and oh! It speaks of forgiveness and blessing! Can it be that I,
wretched, desolate as I am, can be 'blessed?'"
David looked earnestly up at the bright clear moon, as if to read an
answer to his question there. She could smile in the desert, even as
she had smiled on the meadows, and the trees, and the flowing stream by
his English home; nay, she looked larger and lovelier here, as the air
was clearer.
"Blessed—blessed," repeated David to himself, as if he had difficulty
in taking in the meaning of the words. "But 'how' can transgression be
forgiven, and 'how' can sin be covered?"
Then in that wild solitude there came back on the memory of the poor
lad lessons learned on the knee of his mother, lessons which had seemed
till that moment forgotten; sermons heard in the quiet little church
on the hill, whither he had often gone so unwillingly, where he had
listened so carelessly to the message of "good tidings" from the lips
of his pastor. David was not ignorant of the truths of the Gospel, but
it had seemed as if, with him, the good seed had fallen by the wayside,
and that pride, selfishness, and folly, like the birds of the air, had
carried it all away. But it was not really so; some had rested on his
memory, and now in the dreary African land were to spring up and bear
good fruit.
Very familiar to the ear of David Aspinall had been the verse,—
"'The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.'"
But he had never cared in his days of selfish mirth to apply its
meaning to himself. David then had taken his sins too little to heart
to reflect whether his could ever be cleansed away. He had welcomed
Christmas year after year, but merely as a time of mirth and feasting;
it had seemed little to him that a Saviour had deigned to be born into
the world which He had made,—for David had felt no need of a Saviour.
It was different now: all the lad's earthly hopes had been crushed, all
his earthly happiness had vanished away. David had offended against the
laws of his country; he had found no mercy from man, and he feared the
just anger of God. David had nothing left to cling to but the hope of
forgiveness, and he knew, he had been taught from his childhood, that
forgiveness, though freely offered to "all," could only be procured by
"any" through faith in a crucified Saviour, who "died, the Just for the
unjust"!
It was long since David had prayed. Perhaps it might more truly be
said that he had never prayed in his life, for what are words without
thoughts, the service of the lips without the love of the heart?
David's first real prayer for forgiveness arose as he sat by the wheel
of that great waggon, with the yells of wild beasts sounding in his
ears. In his spirit there was at least "no guile." He did not deceive
himself as to his state before God; he made no excuses for his errors;
he felt from the bottom of his heart that he was a sinner, and deserved
all the misery that he endured. He knew that it would be a mockery of
God to ask pardon for the "past," without also asking for grace for
the "future," to lead a new and better life. David was honest in his
repentance, sincere in his sorrow for sin. Alas! There are too many
who mistake the mere cry of distress, under sharp affliction, for the
penitent grief of a broken and contrite heart!
David had unconsciously clasped his hands in prayer; when he had
unclasped them, he accidentally put his left hand down towards the
ground, and he started as it touched something clammy, which moved
under his touch as if alive. The next moment the full moonlight fell
on a large black poisonous snake, rapidly gliding away over the sand!
It had been coiled up quite close to the lad, so close as to have
been concealed by his own shadow! There had David rested in perfect
unconsciousness of the deadly enemy so near, that an incautious
movement on his part, by hurting and irritating the reptile, might
have cost him his life! David made no attempt to pursue the serpent;
his foot had by this time swelled so much that he could hardly have
put it to the ground, and to have broken the heavy sleep of Hans for
so commonplace an event (in Africa) as the appearance of a poisonous
snake, would only have drawn upon himself the savage anger of the Boer.
But the visit of the reptile had not been without its effect on the
mind of David, occurring as it had done at an hour of penitence and
prayer. He felt that a pitying Providence had been watching over him,
and a hope arose that he had been saved for future good, that his
painful life had not been lengthened but for some purpose of mercy and
love. As David silently returned thanks to God for having saved him
from the fangs of the serpent, he almost felt as if this deliverance
were a pledge that his prayer had been heard, and that his sins were
forgiven. Oh! If he could but be at peace with God, then indeed might
he face all his miseries with a firm and undaunted soul!
Then followed other thoughts, suggested by the wild howls of the
jackals and hyenas, snuffing the scent of food, yet not daring to
attack the travelling party. "Those sounds used to frighten me when
I was new to them," thought David, "and even now they sent a thrill
through me which was something like fear. I listened to them, and
looked to my musket, and kept watchful and ready. But I was utterly
careless of the far greater danger close by, the venomous serpent
coiling so near! It is like what happens to us in life. We are watchful
against outer dangers, we try to guard against poverty, sickness and
pain, and we let the venomed serpent of sin lie in our bosom, though we
know that its bite is death!"
David remained wakeful at his post, till the approach of the morn made
the wild creatures of the desert retire. Then indeed his thoughts
became very dim and confused; a sound as of church bells was in his
ears, like the invitation to come and worship which he had so often
heard in the country of his birth, and so often of late months refused
to accept. Then he was no longer in the dry and thirsty waste, the
heavy waggon with its great canvas tilt, the broad wheels—the tired
oxen resting around,—all had disappeared from his view. David dreamed
that he was in the little church on the hill, sitting by the side
of his mother in the well-remembered seat close to the pillar. He
had often sat there when he was a boy, impatient for the end of the
service, with thoughts intent on the thrush's nest that he had seen in
the thicket, or the jackdaw's brood that he hoped to bring down from
the old ruined tower. David had grudged the time spent in church, and
now that church in his dream appeared to him almost like heaven!
There was the well-known hymn—"Rock of Ages, cleft for me!"—swelling
in the slumberer's ear, and David could distinguish the tones of his
mother's voice, but sweeter than they ever had sounded before! And
then he seemed to be listening to the aged white-headed pastor, whose
sermons he once had thought so long,—and the silver hair above his
brow looked to the dreaming youth like a glory! He was preaching about
the Prodigal Son, and the joy in the father's home—and the father's
heart—when the lost one again was found! David fancied that he caught
the sound of his mother's sob, and that the old clergyman's eyes were
fixed on him, and that he knew that he "himself" was the prodigal
welcomed back,—never to wander again! The last words that rang in
David's ear before his sweet dream was rudely broken, were the words
of the Psalm that his mother loved,—the words that had brought to him
comfort and hope,—
"'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is
covered.'"