Bevis Part 9

"Yes; can't you see Pan does not hunt about?"

"What is it?" asked Mark in an undertone, grasping his spear tightly.

"There are no mummies here?"

"No," said Bevis. "It's the serpent, you know; he's a hundred feet long; he's come over from the Unknown Island, and he's waiting in these sedges somewhere to catch something; the birds are afraid to sing."

"Could he swallow a man?" said Mark.

"Swallow a man," with curling lip. "Swallow a buffalo easily."

"Hus.h.!.+ what's that?" A puff of wind rustled the gra.s.ses.

"It's the snake," said Mark, and off he tore. Bevis close behind him, Pan at his heels. In this wild panic they dashed quickly through the gra.s.ses, which just before had been so wearisome an obstacle. But the heat pulled them up in ten minutes, panting.

"Did you see him?" said Bevis.

"Just a little bit of him--I think," said Mark.

"We've left him behind."

"He'll find us by our track."

"Let's tie Pan up, and let him swallow Pan."

"Where's a rope? Have you any string? Give me your handkerchief."

They were hastily tying their handkerchiefs together, when Mark, looking round to see if the monstrous serpent was approaching, shouted,--

"There's a tree!"

There was a large hollow willow or pollard in the hedge. They rushed to it, they clasped it as s.h.i.+pwrecked men a beam. Mark was first, he got inside on the "touchwood," and scrambled up a little way, then he worked up, his back against one side, and his knees the other. Bevis got underneath, and "bunted" him up. Bunting is shoving with shoulder or hands. There were brambles on the top; Mark crushed through, and in a minute was firmly planted on the top.

"Give me my spear, and your bow, and your hand," he said breathlessly.

The spear and the bow were pa.s.sed up: Bevis followed, taking Mark's hand just at the last. Mark put the point of his spear downwards to stab the monster. Bevis fitted an arrow to his bow. Pan looked up, but could not climb. They watched the long gra.s.ses narrowly, expecting to see them wave from side to side every instant, as the python wound his sinuous way. There was a rustling beneath, but on the other side of the hedge. Bevis looked and saw Pan, who had crept through.

"What are you going to do?" said Mark, as Bevis slung his bow on his shoulder as if it was a rifle, and began to move out on the hollow top of the tree, which as it became hollow had split, and partly arched over. Bevis did not answer: he crept cautiously out on the top which vibrated under him; then suddenly seizing a lissom bough, he slipped off and let himself down. He was inside the hedge that had so long baffled them. Mark saw in an instant, darted his spear down and followed. So soon as he touched ground, off they set running. There were no sedges here, nothing but short gra.s.ses and such herbage as grows under the perpetual shade of ash-poles, and they could run easily. The ease of motion was, in itself, a relief, after the struggle in the reed-gra.s.s.

When they had raced some distance, and felt safe, they stopped.

"Why, this is a wood!" said Mark, looking round. Ash-stoles and poles surrounded them on every side.

"So it is," said Bevis. "No, it's a jungle."

They walked forward and came to an open s.p.a.ce, round about a broad spreading oak.

"I shall sit down here," said Bevis.

But as they were about to sit down, Pan, who had woke up when he scented rabbits, suddenly disappeared in a hollow.

"What's that," said Mark. He went to see, and heard a sound of lapping.

"Water!" shouted Mark, and Bevis came to him. Deep down in a narrow channel there was the merest trickle of shallow water, but running, and clear as crystal. It came from chalk, and it was limpid. Pan could drink, but they could not. His hollow tongue lapped it up like a spoon; but it was too shallow to scoop up in the palm of the hand, and they had no tube of "gix," or reed, or oat straw, or b.u.t.tercup stalk to suck through. They sprang into the channel itself, alighting on a place the water did not cover, but with the stream under their feet they could not drink. Nothing but a sparrow could have done so.

Presently Bevis stooped, and with his hands scratched away the silt which formed the bottom, a fine silt of powdered chalk, almost like quicksand, till he had made a bowl-like cavity. The stream soon filled it, but then the water was thick, being disturbed, and they had to wait till it had settled. Then they lapped too, very carefully, with the hollow palm, taking care that the water which ran through their fingers should fall below, and not above the bowl, or the weight of the drops would disturb it again. With perseverance they satisfied their thirst; then they returned to the oak, and took out their provisions; they could eat now.

"This is a jolly jungle," said Mark, with his mouth full.

"That's a banyan," said Bevis, pointing with the knuckle-end of the drum-stick he was gnawing at the oak over them. "It's about eleven thousand years old."

Then Mark took the drum-stick, and had his turn at it. When it was polished, Pan had it: he cracked it across with his teeth, just as the hyenas did in the cave days, for the animals never learnt to split bones, as the earliest men did. Pan cracked it very disconsolately: his heart was with the fleshpots.

Boom!

They starred. It was the same peculiar sound they had heard before, and seemed to come from an immense distance. A pheasant crowed as he heard it in the jungle close by them, and a second farther away.

"What can it be?" whispered Mark. "Is there anything here?"--glancing around.

"There may be some genii," said Bevis quietly. "Very likely there are some genii: they are everywhere. But I do not know what that was.

Listen!"

They listened: the wood was still; so still, they could hear a moth or a chafer entangled in the leaves of the oak overhead, and trying to get out. Looking up there, the sky was blue and clear, and the sunlight fell brightly on the open s.p.a.ce by the streamlet. There was nothing but the hum. The long, long summer days seem gradually to dispose the mind to expect something unusual. Out of such an expanse of light, when the earth is tangibly in the midst of a vast illumined s.p.a.ce, what may not come?--perhaps something more than is common to the senses. The mind opens with the enlarging day.

It is said the sandhills of the desert under the noonday sun emit strange sounds; that the rocky valleys are vocal; the primeval forest speaks in its depths; hollow ocean sends a muttering to the becalmed vessel; and up in the mountains the bound words are set loose. Of old times the huntsmen in our own woods met the noonday spirit under the leafy canopy.

Bevis and Mark listened, but heard nothing, except the entangled chafer, the midsummer hum, and, presently, Pan snuffling, as he buried his nostrils in his hair to bite a flea. They laughed at him, for his eyes were staring, and his flexible nostrils turned up as if his face was not alive but stuffed. The boom did not come again, so they finished their dinner.

"I feel jolly lazy," said Mark. "You ought to put the things down on the map."

"So I did," said Bevis, and he got out his brown paper, and Mark held it while he worked. He drew Fir-Tree Gulf and the Nile.

"Write that there is a deep hole there," said Mark, "and awful crocodiles: that's it. Now Africa--you want a very long stroke there; write reeds and bamboos."

"No, not bamboos, papyrus," said Bevis. "Bamboos grow in India, where we are now. There's some," pointing to a tall wild parsnip, or "gix,"

on the verge of the streamlet.

"I'm so lazy," said Mark. "I shall go to sleep."

"No you won't," said Bevis. "I ought to go to sleep, and you ought to watch. Get your spear, and now take my bow."

Mark took the bow sullenly.

"You ought to stand up, and walk up and down."

"I can't," said Mark very short.

"Very well; then go farther away, where you can see more round you.

There, sit down there."

Mark sat down at the edge of the shadow of the oak. "Don't you see you can look into the channel; if there are any savages they are sure to creep up that channel. Do you see?"