"Bedad, an' his mother must have wathered him well whin he was a babby,
to make him grow like that," cried Dinny, as he saw the tall captive
haltered to a tree by the waggon, and contentedly beginning to browse
upon the tender shoots within its reach. "Is thim legs rale, Masther
Dick?"
"Real? Of course, Dinny," said Dick, laughing.
"Shure, an' I didn't know there was any av coorse in the matther," said
Dinny sententiously. "I thought the injanious baste might have been
brought up in a wet place, and made himshelf shtilts."
"What nonsense, Dinny!" cried Jack.
"Ah, an' I dunno about nonsense, Masther Jack; for I've seen some
wondherful things since I've been in these parts. An' so we're going to
pack up and go home to-morrow, ain't we?"
"We're going to pack up and go farther into the wilds," said Dick.
"Oh, murther!"
"There's the great fall to see yet, and we've got elephants to shoot."
"Shure an' I don't want any great falls, or for anny one to see it."
"Nonsense, Dinny. I mean to see the cataract," said Dick.
"Shure, an' it's you as is talking the nonsense now, Masther Dick; for
how could ye see if ye'd got a catharact?"
"What do you mean, Dinny?"
"What do I mane? Shure it was my own cousin by me mother's side that
had a couple o' bad catharacts in his eyes, and couldn't see a bit till
they took him to the hoshpittle and had 'em out. Ah, they're mortial
bad things, Masther Dick."
"No, no; I mean a cataract or fall of the river, where it tumbles over
rocks."
"An' what would a river go tumbling off rocks for, Masther Dick? Why
don't it go along quietly?"
"Ah, you'll see when we get there," said Dick. "It's a fall like that
where you nearly got drowned, only hundreds of times as big."
"An d'ye expect me to get in a boat at a place like that, Masther Dick?
Now, by this and by that, ye don't if I know it."
"Never mind then, Dinny. You shall take your gun and shoot elephants.
You know what they're like?"
"Shure, I sin a picture o' one wance," said Dinny. "It was a little
thing wid two tails, one at aych ind; and the boy as showed me telled me
as they're made of ingy-rubber."
"Ah, yes, they're very little things," said Dick, laughing; and then
they went to their dinner under the tree.
That evening the new pet was well attended to; and the leopard, now
growing a fine sleek beast that loved to roll and gambol with the dogs,
given his evening meat; and the remains of the daylight were spent in
packing.
Next morning early, with the skin secure on the waggon-tilt, the sleek
oxen were once more in-spanned, and the waggon rolled merrily on towards
the falls of the Zambesi.
Four days trekking through a beautiful country brought them to where a
continuous vibrating roar was always in the air, and in the distance
what seemed to be one continuously changing cloud, which was lit up by
the sun in a wondrous succession of hues.
The boys grew excited with expectation; and Dinny's face became very
blank as he whispered to Dick,--
"Shure, the river don't always go on tumbling like that, Masther Jack,
do it?"
"Always, Dinny," said Jack, as he too listened, with a feeling of awe,
to the falling water.
"Thin it must be giving itself a moighty hard whack upon the shtones it
falls on, to make it roar like that," said Dinny in a serio-comic
fashion, and he went off to attend to the fire as, the General having
pointed out a capital place for a halt, Mr Rogers gave the word, and
the camp was rapidly formed.
They had come through plenty of beautiful scenery, but the rich verdure
and beauty of the palms, ferns, and other foliage-growths, watered as
they were by the soft hazy spray that came from the mighty falls, was
beyond anything they had yet seen, and fully justified Mr Rogers'
remark, half made aloud,--
"What a glorious place this world is after all!"
A strong thorn kraal was formed, and after a good feed the horses and
oxen were secured, and resisting the temptation to go that night to
inspect the falls--a very dangerous experiment in the dark--the fire
blazed up, watch was set, and the sight deferred to the following day.
All that night Dick and Jack, when they they were not on watch, dreamed
of roaring lions, and falls of water, and then of thunderstorms; but
towards morning the heavy dull hum lulled them to sleep, a sleep so
sound that Coffee and Chicory amused themselves for ten minutes tickling
their noses with strands of grass, before they could get them awake.
Then they both jumped up in an ill-temper, each seizing a
dark-complexioned tormentor to punch and bang; but the sight of the Zulu
boys' merry laughing faces, lit up by their bright eyes and white teeth,
disarmed all anger, and Dick and Jack rubbed the last relic of the
night's sleep out of their eyes, and went to breakfast.
The General had been at the falls before, and as soon as the camp was
considered straight, Dinny, Peter, and Dirk were left behind, and the
three bosses, as Chicory called them, went off, with the father to
guide, the Zulu boys carrying a basket of food.
The brilliancy of the greens of the various trees around gave an
additional charm to what was always a very beautiful landscape, for here
it was never dry, and the consequence was that every tree, plant, and
tender herb was in the highest state of luxuriance.
They kept a sharp look out for enemies in the shape of large animals,
but nothing was seen; and following the General in single file, they
went on and on, with the awful thunder in the air growing deeper and
louder at every step.
No water was in sight as they went carefully through the trees and huge
fronded ferns; nothing but verdure of the richest hues, the sun shining
through it, and making the dewy leaves glisten with a sheen like that of
many precious stones.
So loud though was the roar of the water that they knew that they must
now be near, when all at once they reached an opening in the forest, and
Mr Rogers and his sons involuntarily paused, to gaze at a rainbow of
such beauty, and apparently so near that it was hard to believe that by
stretching out the hand it could not be touched.
Even as they gazed it disappeared, but only to appear again a little
farther off, and in a slightly different position. Then it was gone
again, and so on and on, a dozen times or so; but always beautiful
beyond the power of description.
When they were weary of gazing the General smiled, and went on again
towards a soft pearly-looking mist, almost like the thinnest smoke; and
for this the boys took it, till Mr Rogers whispered that it was the
fine spray rising in clouds from the falls.
On they went, slowly, down amongst fern-hung rocks, and narrow ravines
full of rich foliage, while tall palms stood up every here and there
like columns; and then all at once the General stood aside, and the
party, with the earth trembling beneath their feet, passed through a
screen of trees, and stood gazing at one of the wonders of the world.
Right and left, as far as they could see for the trees, and
comparatively close to them, the waters of the great river were passing
over and between a vast barrier of rocks, forming numberless cataracts,
some small, some of large volume. In places these fell in a smooth
glassy body of water towards them, in a glistening curve, down far below
and out of their sight, while others fell from rocky shelf to shelf, to
be broken up into foam and spray as, glistening and white, they hurried
down to join more broken water, as far down as they could see.
Where they stood was thirty or forty feet below the level of the river
before it made its spring; but how far down it fell into the awful gulf
at their feet they could not tell, but the depth seemed to be immense.
Mr Rogers afterwards said it was 400 feet.
The first instinct of the boys was to go nearer, but, with a look of
alarm, the General grasped Jack by the arm, and showed him that the
ground sloped so and was so slippery, that to get near enough to see the
bottom of the fall would have been to run the greatest risk of falling
headlong into the awful abyss.
In mute amazement then they stood, watching the long line of cataracts,
endless as it were in the beauty and variety of their forms.
Wonder upon wonder seemed to greet the eye in the colour of the waters
as they flashed in the sun, some descending in huge solid glassy masses
of water, others in tiny spirts that seemed to make a leap on their own
account into the vast chasm, falling at last like a shower of fine rain.
"I could stand and look at it for ever, father," said Dick, in a low,
awe-inspired voice. "Look at the foam there! look at that spray! The
water is quite white there! And that great fall there, see how it
glistens! Oh, how I should like to be below, and see where the water
strikes, and churns up together. Could a boat get there?"
Mr Rogers smiled, and shook his head.
"Then I should like to be a bird," said Dick quietly, "and fly softly
through that great gulf."
"Till the water made your wings wet, and you fell in and were drowned,"
said matter-of-fact Jack. "I shouldn't; but I should like to get close
to the edge, and see the falls from the bottom to the top."
But the General shook his head, and said that it could not be done.
As they grew more used to the scene, they made out that the range of
cataracts was much farther away than they had at first thought, being
quite a couple of hundred yards; but the awful thunderous roar, the
trembling of the earth beneath their feet, and the strange vibration in
the air, seemed to confuse them, so that everything seemed unreal and
strange, and the whole vision like some dream.
They gazed on, never weary of the beauty of the great falls; and then,
following their guide, he led them from place to place, so that they
could see the huge serpentine gorge in which the river ran after its
fall, rushing wildly between two grand walls of rock, its rage becoming
the more furious from its being a mighty broad river above the falls,
and then having to compress itself into a gorge not a thirteenth part of
its original width.
The speed of the river as it foamed along in this terrible ravine,
seemed absolutely frightful, and in places where the rocks had to bear
the brunt of the current as it made some sudden turn, the din was
terrific.
Hours were spent in gazing at the verdure-carpeted rocks, the brilliant
rapids, the wondrous twining creepers, and, above all, at the beauties
of this wonder of the world; and then at last they tore themselves
unwillingly away, to attend to such ladly matter-of-fact affairs as
eating and drinking. After this, as sunset was growing near, they
stopped to see the gorgeous tints upon the clouds of vapour, and the
fresh rainbows that kept coming and going as if by magic.
At last they tore themselves away, silent and awe-inspired at the
wonders upon which they had gazed, the deep thunder of the falling
waters rolling in their ears as they journeyed on, and keeping up its
solemn boom night and day.
Now as the wind wafted it towards them it came in a deep roar, but only
to soften and become distant, swelling, and rising, and falling, filling
their dreams again, as they lay beneath the shelter of the canvas tilts,
and seeming to wake them at the break of day.