[Our old friend Tom Cringle (of Blackwood,) occasionally spins or splits
his _Log_ too small. The incidents are weakened in the drawing out,
or exaggerated in the telling; but they are sometimes relieved by
brilliant descriptive touches, such as the following, introduced to set
off the fate of one of Tom's heroes at Santiago.]
_The Butterfly, Chameleon, and Serpent._
Glancing bright in the sunshine, a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in
the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it
was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were
blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on
the wing, and at last poised itself unusually steadily for an insect of
its class. Below it, on the window sill, near the wall, with head erect,
and its little basilisk eyes upturned towards the lovely fly, crouched
a chameleon lizard, its beautiful body, when I first looked at it, was
a bright sea-green. It moved into the sunshine, a little away from the
shade of the laurel bush, which grew on the side it first appeared on,
and suddenly the back became transparent amber, the legs and belly
continuing green. From its breast under the chin, it every now and then
shot out a semicircular film of a bright scarlet colour, like a leaf of
a tulip, stretched vertically, or the pectoral fin of a fish.
This was evidently a decoy, and the poor fly was gradually drawn down
towards it, either under the impression of its being in reality a
flower, or impelled by some impulse which it could not resist. It
gradually fluttered nearer and more near, the reptile remaining all the
while steady as a stone, until it made a sudden spring, and in the next
moment the small meally wings were quivering on each side of the
chameleon's tiny jaws. While in the act of gorging its prey, a little
fork, like a wire, was projected from the opposite corner of the window;
presently a small round black snout, with a pair of little, fiery,
blasting eyes, appeared, and a thin, black neck, glancing in the sun.
The lizard saw it. I could fancy it trembled. Its body became of a dark
blue, then ashy pale; the imitation of the flower, the gaudy fin was
withdrawn, it appeared to shrink back as far as it could, but it was
nailed or fascinated to the window sill, for its feet did not move.
The head of the snake approached, with its long, forked tongue shooting
out, and shortening, and with a low hissing noise. By this time about
two feet of its body was visible, lying with its white belly on the
wooden beam, moving forward with a small horizontal wavy motion, the
head and six inches of the neck being a little raised. I shrunk back
from the serpent, but no one else seemed to have any dread of it;
indeed, I afterwards learned, that this kind being good mousers, and
otherwise quite harmless, were, if any thing, encouraged about houses in
the country. I looked again; its open mouth was now within an inch of
the lizard, which by this time seemed utterly paralyzed and motionless;
the next instant its head was drawn into the snake's mouth, and
gradually the whole body disappeared, as the reptile gorged it, and
I could perceive from the lump which gradually moved down the snake's
neck, that it had been sucked into its stomach. Involuntary I raised
my hand, when the whole suddenly disappeared.
[One of Tom's _land-storms_ is still more graphic.]
A heavy cloud that had been overhanging the small valley the whole
morning, had by this time spread out and covered the entire face of
nature like a sable pall; the birds of the air flew low, and seemed to
be perfectly gorged with the superabundance of flies, which were thickly
betaking themselves for shelter under the evergreen leaves of the
bushes. All the winged creation, great and small, were fast betaking
themselves to the shelter of the leaves and branches of the trees. The
cattle were speeding to the hollows under the impending rocks; negroes,
men, women, and children, were hurrying with their hoes on their
shoulders past the windows to their huts. Several large bloodhounds had
ventured into the hall, and were crouching with a low whine at our feet.
The large carrion crows were the only living things which seemed to
brave the approaching _chu-basco_, and were soaring high up in the
heavens, appearing to touch the black, agitated fringe of the lowering
thunder clouds. All other kinds of winged creatures, parrots, and
pigeons, and cranes, had vanished by this time under the thickest trees,
and into the deepest coverts, and the wild ducks were shooting past in
long lines, piercing the thick air with outstretched neck and clanging
wing.
Suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the waterfall increased, and
grew rough and loud, and the undefinable rushing noise that precedes a
heavy fall of rain in the tropics, the voice of the wilderness, moaned
through the high woods, until at length the clouds sank upon the valley
in boiling mists, rolling halfway down the surrounding hills; and the
water of the stream, whose scanty rill but an instant before hissed over
the precipice in a small, transparent ribbon of clear grass-green,
sprinkled with white foam, and then threaded its way round the large
rocks in its capacious channel, like a silver eel twisting through a
desert, now changed in a moment to a dark turgid chocolate colour; and
even as we stood and looked, lo! a column of water from the mountains,
pitched in thunder over the face of the precipice, making the earth
tremble, and driving up from the rugged face of the everlasting rocks in
smoke, and forcing the air into eddies and sudden blasts which tossed
the branches of the trees that overhung it, as they were dimly seen
through clouds of drizzle, as if they had been shaken by a tempest,
although there was not a breath stirring elsewhere out of heaven; while
little, wavering, spiral wreaths of mist rose up thick from the surface
of the boiling pool at the bottom of the cataract, like miniature
water-spouts, until they were dispersed by the agitation of the air
above.
At length the swollen torrent rolled roaring down the narrow valley,
filling the whole water-course, about fifty yards wide, and advancing
with a solid front a fathom _high_--a fathom _deep_ does not
convey the idea--like a stream of lava, or as one may conceive of the
Red Sea, when, at the stretching forth of the hand of the prophet of the
Lord, its mighty waters rolled back and stood heaped up as a wall to the
host of Israel.
The channel of the stream, which but a minute before I could have leaped
across, was the next instant filled and utterly impassable.
And the rain now began pattering in large drops, like scattering shots
preceding an engagement, on the wooden shingles with which the house was
roofed, gradually increasing to a loud rushing noise, which, as the
rooms were not ceiled, prevented a word being heard.
At length the weather cleared, and the shutters having been opened, and
with a suddenness which no one can comprehend who has not lived in these
climates, the sun now shone brightly on the flowers and garden plants
which grew in a range of pots on the balcony.
* * * * *