BY DR. GORDON STABLES, R.N.
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LONDON: BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED.
The Hermit Hunter
of the Wilds
BY
GORDON STABLES, C.M. M.D. R.N.
Author of “‘Twixt School and College” “To Greenland and the Pole”
“The Naval Cadet” “Westward with Columbus” &c.
_WITH FOUR PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS_
BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED
LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
CONTENTS.
CHAP. Page
I. By the Firelight, 9
II. “It was on just such a night as this, sister,” 17
III. “The fearfulness of our situation can hardly be
realized,” 28
IV. Among the Woods of Craigielea, 42
V. “The whole world is full of changes,” 53
VI. “Run, run!” cried Tom; “the man must not die
yet!” 65
VII. “Here hangs his brother’s scalp,” 78
VIII. “Never before had Tom experienced such a feeling
of awful danger,” 89
IX. “The whole sea of mist turned to clouds of
mingled gold and crimson,” 101
X. “In the forests strange shrieks and sounds were
heard,” 111
XI. “The trees went down before it like hay before
the mower’s scythe,” 121
XII. “A shower of poisoned darts fell pattering on
the stockade,” 132
XIII. The dying Ayah tells of Bernard, 142
XIV. “Filled with gold doubloons-- Sirr, are ye listening?” 153
XV. “Next instant the ship was struck and staved,” 163
XVI. “A vast green and flowery valley surrounded by
romantic hills,” 174
XVII. Strange Life on the beautiful Island, 185
XVIII. “He was convinced now he had seen a spectre
and nothing else,” 197
XIX. “Under the grave you dug are gold and precious
stones,” 205
XX. “O, Bernard, it is your father’s ship!” 214
ILLUSTRATIONS
“TOM CROUCHED LOWER AND LOWER” _Frontis._ 100
TOM INTRODUCES HIS CAT 84
“BEHOLD YOUR CHIEF!” SHE CRIED 145
GIANT TORTOISE RIDING 216
THE HERMIT HUNTER OF THE WILDS.
CHAPTER I.
BY THE FIRELIGHT.
Tommy Talisker was probably one of the most unassuming boys that ever
lived. At all events everybody said so. And this is equivalent to
stating that the boy’s general behaviour gave him a character for
modesty.
He was the youngest of a family of five; the eldest being his only
sister, and she, like her mother, made a good deal of Tommy, and thought
a good deal about him too in certain ways.
“I don’t think,” said Tommy’s father to Tommy’s mother one evening as
they all sat round the parlour hearth; “I don’t think we’ll ever be able
to make much of Tommy.”
Perhaps Tommy’s father was at present merely speaking for speaking’s
sake; for there had been general silence for a short time previously,
broken only by the sound of mother’s knitting-wires, the crackle of
uncle’s newspaper as he turned it, and the howthering of the wind round
the old farmhouse.
Tommy’s mother looked at Tommy, and heaved a little bit of a sigh, for
she was very much given to taking everything for granted that her
husband said.
But Tommy’s sister, who always sat in the left-hand corner of the
fireside, with Tommy squatting on a footstool right in front of her,
drew the lad’s head closer to her knee, and smoothed his white brow and
his yellow hair.
Tommy took no notice of anything or anybody, but continued to gaze into
the fire. That fire was well worth looking at, though I am not at all
sure that Tommy saw it. It was a fire that made one drowsily contented
and happy to sit by,--a comfort-giving, companionable sort of a fire.
Built on the low hearth, with huge logs of wood sawn from the trunk of a
poplar-tree that had succumbed to a summer squall, logs sawn from the
roots of a sturdy old pine-tree that had weathered many and many a gale,
and logs sawn from the withered limbs of a singularly gnarled and
ancient pippin-tree that had grown and flourished in the orchard ever
since this farmer’s father was a boy. There were huge lumps of coals
there also, and a wall round the whole of dark-brown peats, hard enough
to have cut and chiselled the hull of a toy yacht from.
It is not to be wondered at that Tommy took no notice of the somewhat
commonplace talk that went on around him; he was listening to a
conversation that was being carried on in the fire between the blazing
wood and the coals and the peat.
“You have no idea, my friends,” said the poplar log, after emitting a
hissing jet of steam by way of drawing attention and commanding
silence--“you have no idea what a stately and beautiful tree I was when
in my prime. I and my fellows, who were all alive and well when I heard
from them last, were the tallest and most gracefully-waving trees in the
country-side. Poets and artists, and clever people generally, used to
say we gave quite a character to the landscape. We knew we were very
beautiful, because the broad winding river went through the meadow where
we stood, and all day long we could see our faces therein. O, we were
very beautiful! I do assure you. The seasons thought so, and every one
of them did something for us. Spring came first, as soon as she had
fastened the downy buds on the waving willows; placed wee crimson-topped
anemones on the hazel boughs--five to each nodding catkin; scattered the
burgeons over the hawthorn hedges; tasselled the larches with vermilion
and green; adorned the rocks with lichen and moss; brought early daisies
to the meadow-lands, the gold of the celandine to the banks of the
streamlets, and the silver of a thousand white starry buttercups to
float on the ponds; breathed through the woods and awakened the birds to
light, love, and song; led the bee to the crocus, the butterfly to the
primrose; awakened even the drowsy dormouse and the shivering hedgehog
from their long winter’s slumber, to peep hungrily from their holes and
wearily wonder where food could be found. Then Spring came to us. Spring
came and kissed us, and we responded with green-yellow leaves to her
balmy caress. Ah, the sun’s rays looked not half so golden anywhere
else, as seen through our glancing quivering foliage. We raised our
heads so high in air, that the larks seemed to sing to us alone, and the
very clouds told us their secrets.
“But Summer came next and changed our leaves to a darker, sturdier
green. And she brought us birds. The rooks themselves used to rest and
sway on our topmost branches, lower down the black-bibbed sparrows
built; in our hollows the starlings laid their eggs of pearl, while even
the blackbird had her nest among the ivy that draped our shapely stems.
“We were things of beauty even when winds of Autumn blew; and Winter
himself must clothe our leafless limbs with its silvery hoar-frost, till
every branch and twiglet looked like radiant coral against the deep blue
of the cloudless sky.”
“Hush! hush!” cried the pine-tree root. “Dost thou well, O poplar-tree
log, to boast thus of thy beauty and stateliness? _I_ lived on the
mountain brow not far off. _I_ marked your rise and fall. Out upon your
beauty! Where was your strength? To me thou wert but as a sapling, or a
willow withe bending in the summer air. But my strength was as the
strength of nations. On the hill yonder I flourished for hundreds of
years; my foot was on the rocks, my dark head swept the clouds, my brown
stem was a landmark for sailors far at sea. In the plains below I saw
the seasons come and go. Houses were built, and in time became ruins;
children were born, grew up, grew old and died, but I changed not. The
wild birds of the air, of the rock, and the eyrie were my friends--the
eagle, the osprey, the hawk, and curlew. The deer and the roe bounded
swiftly past me, the timid coney and the hare found shelter near me. I
have battled with a thousand gales; thunders rolled and lightnings
flashed around me, and left me unscathed. I stood there as heroes stand
when the battle rages fiercest, and my weird black fingers seemed to
direct the hurricane wind. I was the spirit of the storm.
“And I too had beauty, an arboreal beauty that few trees can lay claim
to; whether in autumn with the crimson heather all around me, in summer
with the last red rays of sunset lingering in my foliage, or in winter
itself--my branches silhouetted against the green of a frosty sky. But
I fell at last. We all must fall, and age had weakened my roots. But I
fell as giants fall, amidst the roar of the elements and chaos of
strife. The skies wept over my bier, rain clouds were my pall, and the
wild winds shrieked my dirge.”
There was silence in the fire for some little time after the pine log
had finished speaking, and Tommy thought the conversation had ceased;
but presently a voice, soft and musical as summer winds in the
linden-tree, came from the gnarled pippin log:
“O men of pride and war!” said the voice, “I envy neither of you. Mine
was a life of peace and true beauty; and had I my days to live over
again, I would not have them otherwise. My home was in the orchard, and
the seasons were good to me too, and all things loved me. In spring-time
no bride was ever arrayed as I was; the very rustics that passed along
the roads used to stop their horses to gaze at me in open-mouthed
admiration. Then all the bees loved me, and all the birds sang to me,
and the westling winds made dreamy music in my foliage. Lovers sat on
the seat beneath my spreading branches, when the gloaming star was in
the east, and told their tales of love heedless that I heard them. In
summer merry children played near me and swung from my boughs, and in
autumn and even winter many a family showered blessings on the good old
pippin-tree. ‘Peace, my friends, hath its victories not less renowned
than war.’”
“O dear me!” sighed a smouldering peat, “how humble I should feel in
such company. I really have nothing to say and nothing to tell, for my
life, if life it could be called, was spent on a lonesome moor; true,
the heath bloomed beautiful there in autumn, but the wintry winds that
swept across the shelterless plain had a dreary song to sing. The will
o’ the wisp was a friend of mine, and an aged white-haired witch, that
at the dead hours of moonlight nights used to come groaning past me,
culling strange herbs, and using incantations that I shudder to hear.
There were many strange creatures besides the witch that came to the
moor where I dwelt; and even fairies danced there at times. But for the
most part the strange creatures I saw took the form of creeping or
flying things; fairies changed themselves into beautiful moths and wild
bees, but brownies and spunkies to crawling toads and tritons. But
heigho! I fear a poor peat has few opportunities of doing good in the
world.”
“Say not so!” exclaimed a blazing lump of coal; “even a humble peat is
not to be despised. How often have you not brought joy and gladness to
the poor man’s fireside, caused the porridge-pot to boil and the bairns
to laugh with glee, banished the cold of winter, and infused comfort
and warmth into the limbs of the aged. But you are modest, and modesty
is ever the companion of genuine merit.”
“And you, sir,” said the peat to the coal, “you are very, _very_ great
and very, _very_ old--are you not?”
“I am very, very old, and I am no doubt very, very powerful. Yet my
powers are gifts of the great Creator, and it is mine to distribute them
to toiling and deserving man. Ages and ages ago before this ancient pine
log was thought of or dreamt of, before mankind even dwelt on these
islands, when its woods were the home of the wildest of beasts, when
gigantic woolly elephants with curling tusks roamed free in its forests,
and its marshes and lakes swarmed with loathsome saurians, I dwelt on
earth’s surface. But changes came with time, and for thousands of years
I was dead and buried in the earth’s black depths. The ingenuity of man
has resuscitated me, and now I have gladly become his servant and slave.
I warm the castle, the palace, and the humble cot. I give light as well
as heat; I am swifter than the eagle in my flight. I am more powerful
than the wind; I drag man’s chariots across the land, I waft his ships
to every clime and every sea. I move the mightiest machinery; I am
gentle in peace and dreadful in war.
“Nay more, the great wizard Science has but to lift his wand, and lo! I
yield up products more wonderful than any yet on earth. Gorgeous were
the colours that adorned the flowers of the land in ages long gone by,
delicate and delightful were their perfumes; but these perfumes and
these colours I have carefully stored, and give them now to man.”
What more Tommy would have overheard, as he sat there at his sister’s
knee, it is impossible to say, for the boy had fallen asleep.