Camp Fire Yarns of the Lost Legion Part 18

Well, things went on like this till one day, when I came in from a long patrol, I found Quin on the sick list and that Mike O'Leary had installed himself in his place as servant. Now if I had wanted him to come and look after me, nothing on earth would have made him come, but as he knew he was the last man on the station whose presence I desired in my rooms, of course there he was and there he evidently intended to stick. In vain I told him he would be overworked looking after both myself and the horses.

"Sure, and don't I know that?" he snarled. "It's little thanks I'll get from the likes of you, who spends your money on debauchery and blaggardism, and pays your servants, who works their fingers to the bone, as little as ye can; but I knows my duty to your honourable father, G.o.d rest his sowle, and while that useless baste Quin is skulking, I'll be here to see you to bed when you come home drunk every night."

What was to be done? I though matters over, and at last determined to attack Mike on his only weak spot. Mike I knew to be a rigid R.C., but he was also saturated with superst.i.tions. He had all those of the usual Irish peasant, and a good many more of his own.

He firmly believed in witches, ghosts and fairies, good and bad, and was convinced that the devil himself was frequently knocking around looking for someone to transport to tropical regions.

As to his religion, Mike was very devout, with one exception--he would eat meat on Fridays. "Fast, is it?" he would say. "A soldier may ate his rations."

"But you are not a soldier now, Mike."

"Well, and whose fault is that now? Did not I put my pride in my pocket and offer to join your blackguards, and did not that T.S.M.

tell me I was too small? Bad luck to the lout! Was I not fighting in the Crimee with your honourable father before he was breeched? It's little the likes of him is fit to be T.S.M., but what can you expect when the captain ought to be at skule learning manners! It's little of an officer you'll ever make." Exit Mike, with a well-directed boot after him.

It was an uphill job, but I worked and worked away at him. I even persuaded the good Father de Rohan to go for him and preach abstinence to him, and even threaten him with pains and penalties if he did not put the muzzle on. But no good. Then I began to pretend that the rooms were haunted, and that rather fetched him, but yet, though he was uncomfortable, it did not quite hit the right spot.

At last Fortune played into my hands. A lieutenant who had been away on long leave rejoined and was sent up to my station. He was a very tall, thin man, very dark, with straight features, large eyebrows and moustache, and Mike had never seen him before. The first night he joined we were talking over our pipes, after dinner, when he mentioned a very swell fancy-dress ball he had been to. At once I asked him in what character he had gone. Of course he replied: "Mephistopheles."

Had he brought his dress out with him? Yes, he had it in his kit.

Would he do me a very great favour? Why, certainly. Then I told him about my incubus, Mike, and I earnestly requested him to put his dress on the next night and play the devil for Mike's benefit. Of course he was only too delighted to a.s.sist, and the plot was duly laid.

That night I went to my quarters. There was Mike, with his usual pleasant remarks and sneer.

I stopped short and said sternly: "You have been smoking."

"Begorra I've not," said he.

"Then you have been lighting those beastly sulphur matches."

"I've not," said he.

I walked over to the dressing-table, looked in the gla.s.s, then started back, and let out at him.

"Have done with your fooling tricks. How dare you grin over my shoulder like that?"

"I did not," he replied.

"If it was not you it must have been the devil then," I said sternly.

"And I don't wonder at it, when such a cross-grained ugly beggar as you sits in my quarters alone at this time of night. Take care, Mike,"

I said impressively; "take care. Remember what Father de Rohan told you. If you will eat meat on Friday, and will quarrel and insult everyone, the devil will be after you in earnest.

"What's that?" I cried, looking hard past him. "Get out of this, Mike; the company you keep here when I'm out is not safe for a Christian man."

He turned very white, was evidently very uncomfortable, crossed himself over and over again, and bolted.

Next morning he brought two sticks, when he came to my room, which he crossed on the fire hearth, and when he turned up at night-time he had evidently been to the canteen, for he was pot-valiant and I could see he had a bottle with him.

"I suppose you will be afraid to stay in the rooms alone," I said, as I left for dinner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DIVIL, BEDAD!]

"I will not," said he; but I saw the blue funk rising in him. It was a Friday.

"Did you eat meat to-day?" I asked.

"I did that," he replied, "and I will."

"Well, G.o.d help you," I said. "It's great danger you are in this night."

It was midnight when the lieutenant, fully got up in a most perfect fancy dress, and looking his part to perfection, appeared in the mess hut. In his hand he carried a few inches of time fuse, and also a huge fork, known in the service as the tormentor. The cook uses it to take the men's meat out of the boilers. We all crept up to my quarters, which consisted of a hut with two rooms in it, in the front one of which was the victim. To light the fuse and pa.s.s it under the door was the work of a moment, then to open the latter and step in took no longer. Mike, who had been absorbing courage from the bottle, had fallen asleep, but was waked up by a prod from the tormentor. He woke with a growl of rage, that changed into a yell of consternation, when he saw the terrific figure regarding him through the sulphury smoke of the fuse.

"Mike O'Leary," said a deep voice, "I've come for you."

Poor Mike, who had fallen back open-mouthed, with the sweat of fear trickling off him, whimpered: "Oh no, good Mr Devil; wait for the master."

"No," thundered the voice; "it's you I want, not your good, kind master, who's been a friend to you, and who you sneer at, insult and deride, and who, Protestant as he is, tries to stop your greedy sin of eating meat on fast days. Come on!"

And he made a pa.s.s at Mike with the tormentor, which Mike dodged by going over backwards, chair and all.

"I'll never cheek him again, by this, and by that, I won't!" yelled Mike, as he got another prod in a fleshy part, "and I'll never touch meat again, I won't." But at that he fainted. He soon came round, and was on his knees telling his beads when we entered the room, as if we were going to have a parting smoke before turning in.

"What the deuce have you been up to, Mike?" I said. "Who has been here? What is the cause of this awful smell, and what have you been making such a row about?"

"O holy Mary! sor," whined Mike; "he's been here."

"Who the devil has been here, you drunken blackguard?" I shouted.

"Oh, dear sor, oh, kind sor, don't spake disrespectfully of the Ould Gentleman; shure he's been here, and has just left. Oh, sor; I'll repent, I will. For G.o.d's sake send for the holy father. What will I do? What will I do?"

We got him to his quarters at last, and next morning Mike was a changed man. Although still by nature cross-grained, yet a more respectful servant or a better comrade could not be found on a month's trek, and he stayed with me till he died, two years afterwards, regretted by everyone who knew him. _R.I.P._

CHAPTER VI

BUSHED

In very many parts of the world, which on the map are painted red and collectively called the British Empire, there are huge tracts of country covered with forests of all sorts, which are known to the inhabitants of the different colonies by various names, and these have exacted a heavy toll of human life from the venturesome traveller, prospector, hunter, or others, who have entered their recesses on their own business or pleasure. If the scrub of Australia, the bush of New Zealand, the forests of Canada, and the wilds of Africa could only be examined with a microscope, the remains of thousands of men would be discovered who, having been bushed (_i.e._ lost in the forest), have died of hunger, thirst or exhaustion, and whose remains, unfound, have wasted away until only a few mouldering bones, some tattered rags, and a few fragments of rusty metal remain to tell the tale and act as a warning to others. I have on two occasions been the finder of the remains of men who have been lost. One on the Taupo plains, who disappeared and who, although he was missed and looked for, was not found until three years after his disappearance, when I, quite by chance, stumbled on the poor chap's bones, which were identified by a gla.s.s eye. The other case was the bones of a white man I found while shooting in South Africa. Who or what he had been never transpired.

That he had been a white man was evident, but when or how he had been lost I never found out. I remember well that after I had searched the vicinity for anything that could have been used as a clue to his ident.i.ty, I stood over the poor bones and moralised. This poor chap must have belonged to someone in the world who cared for him. Yet here he lay nameless, and unknown, his bones to be buried, as soon as my hunting boys with knife and tomahawk could scoop out a hole, by a man who was a perfect stranger to him, or, for all I knew to the contrary, we might have been comrades in two or three wars, or have hobn.o.bbed together scores of times. However, there, under a tree, his bones lie, and I have no doubt that all marks of his grave, even the cross I cut out on the tree, to mark the spot, have long ago disappeared, and yet it is quite possible to this day there are people hoping and wondering if he will turn up. In the colonies men disappear very rapidly, and they are not readily missed. So they do in this great wilderness, London, whose hidden mysteries far and away outnumber all the frontier mysteries of the British Empire put together, but yet somehow the picture of a man lost in the bush, dying, alone, of starvation, thirst and exhaustion seems, if not so pathetic, at least more romantic than the scores of hungry, ragged and homeless creatures who wander about the Embankment, or the slums of the mighty city. Very many times during my life on the frontiers of the various colonies in which I have served I have been called on to a.s.sist in the search for a missing man; sometimes we have been successful, and have found our man alive, sometimes we have found him dead, and often we have searched in vain, the poor chap having disappeared, as if taken from earth in a chariot of fire. I could fill a book with yarns of cases of people being lost and found, and of being lost and not found, but the most wonderful case I know of is that of a young colonial, who was lost for forty days, yet was found alive, and who I believe to be still living.

In 1891 I had taken command of the De Beer's Company Expedition to Mashonaland, consisting of sixty white men, forty colonial boys (natives), and eighteen waggons. The above I was to conduct from Kimberley to Salisbury, a trek of about 1300 miles. It was no joke.

Very many of my men were quite raw hands, and just after we had left Kimberley the heaviest rains ever known in South Africa came on, so that the rivers became flooded, the swamps impa.s.sable, and the roads, such as they were, so rotten that the heavily laden waggons sank to their bed plates every few minutes.

However, I at last pa.s.sed Tuli, and proceeded some eighteen miles on the Umzinguani River, where I determined to halt for a fortnight, so as to rest and recuperate my worn-out oxen. In Tuli the O.C. of the B.S.A. Police had told me that some days before I reached that place a man had been lost from some waggons that had been outspanned at the Umzinguani River. Up to date he had not been heard of, so he requested me to make a careful search and try to discover any trace of the missing man. I promised to do so, and asked for all the particulars.

The man was a Colonial of Dutch descent, who was acting as orderly to some Dominican Nursing Sisters _en route_ to Salisbury. They had outspanned across the river, in the early morning. After breakfast the man had taken his rifle, had entered the bush on the down-river side of the road, to try and shoot a buck for fresh meat, but had never returned. The waggons had waited three days for him, and then trekked on. I also ascertained that some twelve miles farther on the road was crossed by a big creek, that ran into the river some miles below the drift. This being the case, I failed to see how a colonial man, _provided he kept his head_, could be lost, as the area in which the occurrence happened was surrounded on all sides by good landmarks. It was in fact an irregular triangle, bounded on one side by the river, on another by the creek, and on the third by the road. Provided he struck the road, he had only to turn to his left to reach the outspan.

If he struck the river he would only have to follow it up and find his waggons, and if he came across the creek he would only have to follow it to the road or river. This seems easy enough; but, as an old and experienced scout, I knew there were fifty sorts of trouble that might have happened to him, or he might have been guilty of a score of follies, all inexcusable but all committed frequently, even by old hands. He had gone away without his coat, that we knew; he might also have gone without matches--this was quite likely--and probably with only two or three rounds of ammunition. It was a very bad lion country: he might have tackled one and got the worst of the encounter; he might have been hurt by a wounded buck, sprained his ankle, broken his leg or otherwise hurt himself. It is folly, a man going shooting alone in a South African bush. Anything may happen in a moment, and then a man by himself is helpless and unable to send for a.s.sistance.

We reached the Umzinguani River at daylight, crossed the drift and outspanned. After breakfast I collected the men, explained my plans to them and drew them a rough map of the area over which our search was to be made. I selected seventy men, black and white, for the job, and my plan was to extend these men some ten or twelve yards apart and, keeping our right on the river's bank, to move down in line till we came to the spot where the creek ran into the river. Then, if we found no trace or spoor of him, to swing round and return to the road, taking, of course, a new line parallel to, and touching, the first one; and to enable us to do this correctly I ordered the man on the left flank to blaze the trees on his line, so that we should know we were not going over the same ground twice, nor leave a gap between the lines of search.