MONCRIEFF RELATES HIS EXPERIENCES.
Our life at sea had been like one long happy dream. That, at all events,
is how it had felt to me. 'A dream I could have wished to last for aye.' I
was enamoured of the ocean, and more than once I caught myself yearning to
be a sailor. There are people who are born with strange longings, strange
desires, which only a life on the ever-changing, ever-restless waves
appears to suit and soothe. To such natures the sea seems like a mother--a
wild, hard, harsh mother at times, perhaps, but a mother who, if she
smiles but an hour, makes them forget her stormy anger of days or weeks.
But the dream was past and gone. And here we had settled down for a spell
at Buenos Ayres. We had parted with the kindly captain and surgeon of the
Canton, with many a heartily expressed hope of meeting again another day,
with prayers on their side for our success in the new land, with kindliest
wishes on ours for a pleasant voyage and every joy for them.
Dear me! What a very long time it felt to look back to, since we had
bidden them 'good-bye' at home! How very old I was beginning to feel! I
asked my brothers if their feelings were the same, and found them
identical. Time had been apparently playing tricks on us.
And yet we did not look any older in each other's eyes, only just a little
more serious. Yes, that was it--_serious_. Even Dugald, who was usually
the most light-hearted and merry of the three of us, looked as if he fully
appreciated the magnitude of what we had undertaken.
Here we were, three--well, young men say, though some would have called us
boys--landed on a foreign shore, without an iota of experience, without
much knowledge of the country apart from that we had gleaned from books or
gathered from the conversations of Bombazo and Moncrieff. And yet we had
landed with the intention, nay, even the determination, to make our way in
the new land--not only to seek our fortunes, but to find them.
Oh, we were not afraid! We had the glorious inheritance of courage,
perseverance, and self-reliance. Here is how Donald, my brother, argued
one night:
'Look, here, Murdo,' he said. 'This _is_ a land of milk and honey, isn't
it? Well, we're going to be the busy bees to gather it. It _is_ a silver
land, isn't it? Well, we're the boys to tap it. Fortunes _are_ made here,
and _have_ been made. What is done once can be done five hundred times.
Whatever men dare they can do. _Quod erat demonstrandum._'
'_Et nil desperandum_,' added Dugald.
'I'm not joking, I can tell you, Dugald, I'm serious now, and I mean to
remain so, and stick to work--aren't you, Murdo?'
'I am, Donald.'
Then we three brothers, standing there, one might say, on the confines of
an unknown country, with all the world before us, shook hands, and our
looks, as we gazed into each other's eyes, said--if they said
anything--'We'll do the right thing one by the other, come weal, come
woe.'
Aunt entered soon after.
'What are you boys so serious about?' she said, laughing merrily, as she
seated herself on the couch. 'You look like three conspirators.'
'So we are, aunt. We're conspiring together to make our fortunes.'
'What! building castles in the air?'
'Oh, no, no, _no_,' cried Donald, 'not in the air, but on the earth. And
our idols are not going to have feet of clay, I assure you, auntie, but of
solid silver.'
'Well, we shall hope for the best. I have just parted with Mr. Moncrieff,
whom I met down town. We have had a long walk together and quite a nice
chat. He has made me his confidant--think of that!'
'What! you, auntie?'
'Yes, me. Who else? And that sober, honest, decent, Scot is going to take
a wife. It was so good of him to tell _me_. We are all going to the
wedding next week, and I'm sure I wish the dear man every happiness and
joy.'
'So do we, aunt.'
'And oh, by the way, he is coming to dine here to-night, and I feel sure
he wants to give you good advice, and that means me too, of course.'
'Of course, auntie, you're one of us.'
Moncrieff arrived in good time, and brought his mother with him.
'Ye didn't include my mither in the invitation, Miss M'Crimman,' said the
Scot; 'but I knew you meant her to come. I've been so long without the
poor old creature, that I hardly care to move about without her now.'
'Poor old creature, indeed!' Mrs. Moncrieff was heard to mumble. 'Where,'
she said to a nattily dressed waiter, 'will you put my umbrella?'
'I'll take the greatest care of it, madam,' the man replied.
'Do, then,' said the little old dame, 'and I may gi'e ye a penny, though I
dinna mak' ony promises, mind.'
A nicer little dinner was never served, nor could a snugger room for such
a _tete-a-tete_ meal be easily imagined. It was on the ground floor, the
great casement windows opening on to a verandah in a shady garden, where
grass was kept green and smooth as velvet, where rare ferns grew in
luxurious freedom with dwarf palms and drooping bananas, and where
stephanotis and the charming lilac bougainvillea were still in bloom.
When the dessert was finished, and old Jenny was quite tired talking, it
seemed so natural that she should curl up in an easy-chair and go off to
sleep.
'I hope my umbrella's safe, laddie,' were her last words as her son
wrapped her in his plaid.
'As safe as the Union Bank,' he replied.
So we left her there, for the waiter had taken coffee into the verandah.
Aunt, somewhat to our astonishment, ordered cigars, and explained to
Moncrieff that she did not object to smoking, but _did_ like to see men
happy.
Moncrieff smiled.
'You're a marvel as well as my mither,' he said.
He smoked on in silence for fully five minutes, but he often took the
cigar from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully; then he would allow
his eyes to follow the curling smoke, watching it with a smile on his face
as it faded into invisibility, as they say ghosts do.
'Mr. Moncrieff,' said aunt, archly, 'I know what you are thinking about.'
Moncrieff waved his hand through a wreath of smoke as if to clear his
sight.
'If you were a man,' he answered, 'I'd offer to bet you couldn't guess my
thoughts. I was not thinking about my Dulcinea, nor even about my mither;
I was thinking about you and your britheries--I mean your nephews.'
'You are very kind, Mr. Moncrieff.'
'I'm a man of the wo_rrr_ld, though I wasn't aye a man of the wo_rrr_ld. I
had to pay deep and dear for my experience, Miss M'Crimman.'
'I can easily believe that; but you have benefited by it.'
'Doubtless, doubtless; only it was concerning yourselves I was about to
make an observation or two.'
'Oh, thanks, do. You are so kind.'
'Never a bit. This is a weary wo_rrr_ld at best. Where would any of us
land if the one didn't help the other? Well then, there you sit, and woman
of the wo_rrr_ld though you be, you're in a strange corner of it. You're
in a foreign land now if ever you were. You have few friends. Bah! what
are all your letters of introduction worth? What do they bring you in? A
few invitations to dinner, or to spend a week up country by a wealthy
_estanciero_, advice from this friend and the next friend, and from a
dozen friends maybe, but all different. You are already getting puzzled.
You don't know what to do for the best. You're stopping here to look about
you, as the saying is. You might well ask me what right have I to advise
you. The right of brotherhood, I may answer. By birth and station you may
be far above me, but--you are friends--you are from dear auld Scotland.
Boys, you are my brothers!'
'And I your sister!' Aunt extended her hand as she spoke, and the worthy
fellow 'coralled' it, so to speak, in his big brown fist, and tears sprang
to his eyes.
He pulled himself up sharp, however, and surrounded himself with smoke, as
the cuttle-fish does with black water, and probably for the same
reason--to escape observation.
'Now,' he said, 'this is no time for sentiment; it is no land for
sentiment, but for hard work. Well, what are you going to do? Simply to
say you're going to make your fortune is all fiddlesticks and folly. How
are you going to begin?'
'We were thinking--' I began, but paused.
'_I_ was thinking--' said my aunt; then she paused also.
Moncrieff laughed, but not unmannerly.
'I was thinking,' he said. '_You_ were thinking; _he_, _she_, or _it_ was
thinking. Well, my good people, you may stop all your life in Buenos Ayres
and conjugate the verb "to think"; but if you'll take my advice you will
put a shoulder to the wheel of life, and try to conjugate the verb "to
do".'
'We all want to _do_ and act,' said Donald, energetically.
'Right. Well, you see, you have one thing already in your favour. You have
a wee bit o' siller in your pouch. It is a nest egg, though; it is not to
be spent--it is there to bring more beside it. Now, will I tell you how I
got on in the world? I'm not rich, but I am in a fair way to be
independent. I am very fond of work, for work's sake, and I'm thirty years
of age. Been in this country now for over fourteen years. Had I had a nest
egg when I started, I'd have been half a millionaire by now. But, wae's
me! I left the old country with nothing belonging to me but my crook and
my plaid.'
'You were a shepherd before you came out, then?' said aunt.
'Yes; and that was the beauty of it. You've maybe heard o' Foudland, in
Aberdeenshire? Well, I came fra far ayant the braes o' Foudland. That's,
maybe, the way my mither's sae auldfarrent. There, ye see, I'm talkin'
Scotch, for the very thought of Foudland brings back my Scotch tongue. Ay,
dear lady, dear lady, my father was an honest crofter there. He owned a
bit farm and everything, and things went pretty well with us till death
tirled at the door-sneck and took poor father away to the mools. I was
only a callan o' some thirteen summers then, and when we had to leave the
wee croft and sell the cows we were fain to live in a lonely shieling on
the bare brae side, just a butt and a ben with a wee kailyard, and barely
enough land to grow potatoes and keep a little Shetland cowie. But, young
though I was, I could herd sheep--under a shepherd at first, but finally
all by myself. I'm not saying that wasn't a happy time. Oh, it was, lady!
it was! And many a night since then have I lain awake thinking about it,
till every scene of my boyhood's days rose up before me. I could see the
hills, green with the tints of spring, or crimson with the glorious
heather of autumn; see the braes yellow-tasselled with the golden broom
and fragrant with the blooming whins; see the glens and dells, the silver,
drooping birch-trees, the grand old waving pines, the wimpling burns, the
roaring linns and lochs asleep in the evening sunset. And see my mither's
shieling, too; and many a night have I lain awake to pray I might have her
near me once again.'
'And a kind God has answered that prayer!'
'Ay, Miss M'Crimman, and I'll have the sad satisfaction of one day closing
her een. Never mind, we do our duty here, and we'll all meet again in the
great "Up-bye." But, dear boys, to continue my story--if story I dare call
it. Not far from the hills where I used to follow Laird Glennie's sheep,
and down beside a bonnie wood and stream, was a house, of not much
pretension, but tenanted every year by a gentleman who used to paint the
hills and glens and country all round. They say he got great praise for
his pictures, and big prices as well. I used often to arrange my sheep and
dogs for him into what he would call picturesque groups and attitudes.
Then he painted them and me and dogs and all. He used to delight to listen
to my boyish story of adventure, and in return would tell me tales of
far-off lands he had been in, and about the Silver Land in particular.
Such stories actually fired my blood. He had sown the seeds of ambition in
my soul, and I began to long for a chance of getting away out into the
wide, wide world, and seeing all its wonders, and, maybe, becoming a great
man myself. But how could a penniless laddie work his way abroad?
Impossible.
'Well, one autumn a terrible storm swept over the country. It began with a
perfect hurricane of wind, then it settled down to rain, till it became a
perfect "spate." I had never seen such rain, nor such tearing floods as
came down from the hills.
'Our shieling was a good mile lower down the stream than the artist's
summer hut. It was set well up the brae, and was safe. But on looking out
next day a sight met my eyes that quite appalled me. All the lowlands and
haughs were covered with a sea of water, down the centre of which a mighty
river was chafing and roaring, carrying on its bosom trees up-torn from
their roots, pieces of green bank, "stooks" of corn and "coles" of hay,
and, saddest of all, the swollen bodies of sheep and oxen. My first
thought was for the artist. I ran along the bank till opposite his house.
Yes, there it was flooded to the roof, to which poor Mr. Power was
clinging in desperation, expecting, doubtless, that every moment would be
his last, for great trees were surging round the house and dashing against
the tiles.
'Hardly knowing what I did, I waved my plaid and shouted. He saw me, and
waved his arm in response. Then I remembered that far down stream a man
kept a boat, and I rushed away, my feet hardly seeming to touch the
ground, till I reached--not the dwelling, that was covered, but the bank
opposite; and here, to my delight, I found old M'Kenzie seated in his
coble. He laughed at me when I proposed going to the rescue of Mr. Power.
'"Impossible!" he said. "Look at the force of the stream."
'"But we have not to cross. We can paddle up the edge," I insisted.
'He ventured at last, much to my joy. It was hard, dangerous work, and
often we found it safest to land and haul up the boat along the side.
'We were opposite the artist's hut at length, hardly even the chimney of
which was now visible. But Power was safe as yet.
'At the very moment our boat reached him the chimney disappeared, and with
it the artist. The turmoil was terrible, for the whole house had
collapsed. For a time I saw nothing, then only a head and arm raised above
the foaming torrent, far down stream. I dashed in, in spite of M'Kenzie's
remonstrances, and in a minute more I had caught the drowning man. I must
have been struck on the head by the advancing boat. That mattered
little--the sturdy old ferryman saved us both; and for a few days the
artist had the best room in mither's shieling.
'And this, dear lady, turned out to be--as I dare say you have guessed--my
fairy godfather. He went back to Buenos Ayres, taking me as servant. He is
here now. I saw him but yesterday, and we are still the fastest friends.
'But, boys, do not let me deceive you. Mr. Power was not rich; all he
could do for me was to pay my passage out, and let me trust to Providence
for the rest.
'I worked at anything I could get to do for a time, principally holding
horses in the street, for you know everybody rides here. But I felt sure
enough that one day, or some day, a settler would come who could value the
services of an honest, earnest Scottish boy.
'And come the settler did. He took me away, far away to the west, to a
wild country, but one that was far too flat and level to please me, who
had been bred and born among the grand old hills of Scotland.
'Never mind, I worked hard, and this settler--a Welshman he
was--appreciated my value, and paid me fairly well. The best of it was
that I could save every penny of my earnings.
'Yes, boys, I roughed it more than ever you'll have to do, though remember
you'll have to rough it too for a time. You don't mind that, you say.
Bravely spoken, boys. Success in the Silver Land rarely fails to fall to
him who deserves it.
'Well, in course of time I knew far more about sheep and cattle-raising
than my master, so he took me as a partner, and since then I have done
well. We changed our quarters, my partner and I. We have now an excellent
steading of houses, and a grand place for the beasts.'
'And to what qualities do you chiefly attribute your success?' said my
aunt.
'Chiefly,' replied Moncrieff, 'to good common-sense, to honest work and
perseverance. I'm going back home in a week or two, as soon as I get
married and my mither gets the "swimming" out of her head. She says she
still feels the earth moving up and down with her; and I don't wonder, an
auld body like her doesn't stand much codging about.
'Well, you see, boys, that I, like yourselves, had one advantage to begin
with. You have a bit o' siller--I got a fairy godfather. But if I had a
year to spare I'd go back to Scotland and lecture. I'd tell them all my
own ups and downs, and I'd end by saying that lads or young men, with
plenty of go in them and willingness to work, will get on up country here
if they can once manage to get landed. Ay, even if they have hardly one
penny to rattle against another.
'Now, boys, do you care to go home with me? Mind it is a wild border-land
I live on. There are wild beasts in the hill jungles yet, and there are
wilder men--the Indians. Yes, I've fought them before, and hope to live to
fight them once again.'
'I don't think _we'll_ fear the Indians _very_ much,' said my bold brother
Donald.
'And,' I added, 'we are so glad you have helped us to solve the problem
that we stood face to face with--namely, how to begin to do something.'
'Well, if that is all, I'll give you plenty to do. I've taken out with me
waggon-loads of wire fencing as well as a wife. Next week, too, I expect a
ship from Glasgow to bring me seven sturdy Scotch servant men that I
picked myself. Every one of them has legs like pillar post-offices, hands
as broad as spades, and a heart like a lion's. And, more than all this, we
are trying to form a little colony out yonder, then we'll be able to hold
our own against all the reeving Indians that ever strode a horse. Ah!
boys, this Silver Land has a mighty future before it! We have just to
settle down a bit and work with a will and a steady purpose, then we'll
fear competition neither with Australia nor the United States of America
either.
'But you'll come. That's right. And now I have you face to face with fate
and fortune.
"Now's the day and now's the hour,
See the front of battle lower."
Yes, boys, the battle of life, and I would not give a fig for any lad who
feared to face it.
'Coming, mither, coming. That's the auld lady waking up, and she'll want a
cup o' tea.'