The Best Adventure and Exploration Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  Letter to Pocoke’s father.

  Kagehyi, on the Victoria Nyanza,

  March 4th, 1875.

  Dear Sir:—A most unpleasant, because sad, task devolves upon me, for I have the misfortune to have to report to you the death of your son Edward, of typhoid fever. His service with me was brief, but it was long enough for me to know the greatness of your loss, for I doubt that few fathers can boast of such sons as yours. Both Frank and Ted proved themselves sterling men, noble and brave hearts and faithful servants. Ted had endeared himself to the members of the expedition by his amiable nature, his cheerfulness and by various qualifications which brought him into high favor with the native soldiers of this force. Before daybreak we were accustomed to hear the cheery notes of his bugle, which woke us to a fresh day’s labor; at night, around the camp-fires, we were charmed with his sweet, simple songs, of which he had an inexhaustible répertoire. When tired also with marching it was his task to announce to the tired people the arrival of the vanguard at camp, so that he had become quite a treasure to us all; and I must say, I have never know men who could bear what your sons have borne on this expedition so patiently and uncomplainingly. I never heard one grumble either from Frank or Ted; have never heard them utter an illiberal remark, or express any wish that the expedition had never set foot in Africa, as many men would have done in their situation, so that you may well imagine, that if the loss of one of your sons causes grief to your paternal heart, it has been no less a grief to us, as we were all, as it were, one family, surrounded as we are by so much that is dark and forbidding.

  On arriving at Suna, in Urina, Ted came to me, after a very long march, complaining of pain in his limbs and loins. I did not think it was serious at all, not anything uncommon after walking twenty miles, but told him to go and lie down, that he would be better on the morrow, as it was very likely fatigue. The next morning I visited him, and he again complained of pains in the knees and back, at which I ascribed it to rheumatism, and treated him accordingly. The third day he complained of pain in the chest, difficulty of breathing and sleeplessness, from which I perceived he was suffering from some other malady than rheumatism, but what it could be I could not divine. He was a little feverish, so I gave him a mustard-plaster and some aperient medicine. Toward night he began to wander in his head, and on examining his tongue I found it was almost black and coated with dark-gray fur. At these symptoms I thought he had a severe attack of remittent fever, from which I suffered in Ujiji, in1871, and therefore I watched for an opportunity to administer quinine—that is, when the fever should abate a little. But, on the fourth day, the patient still wandering in his mind, I suggested to Frank that he should sponge him with cold water and change his clothing, during which operation I noticed that the chest of the patient was covered with spots like pimples or small-pox pustules, which perplexed me greatly. He could not have caught the smallpox, and what the disease was I could not imagine; but, turning to my medical books, I saw that your son was suffering from typhoid, the description of which was too clear to be longer mistaken, and both Frank and I devoted our attention to him. He was nourished with arrow-root and brandy, and everything that was in our power to do was done; but it was very evident that the case was serious, though I hoped that his constitution would brave it out.

  On the fifth day we were compelled to resume our journey, after a rest of four days. Ted was put in a hammock and carried on the shoulders of four men. At ten o’ clock on the 17th of January we halted at Chiwyn, and the minute that he was laid down in the camp he breathed his last. Our companion was dead.

  We buried him that night under a tree, on which his brother Frank had cut a deep cross, and read the beautiful service of the Church of England over him as we laid the poor worn-out body in its restingplace.

  Peace be to his ashes. Poor Ted deserved a better fate than dying in Africa, but it was impossible that he could have died easier. I wish that my end may be as peaceful and painless as his. He was spared the stormy scenes we went through afterwards in our war with the Waturn; and who knows how much he has been saved from? But I know that he would have rejoiced to be with us at this hour of our triumph, gazing on the laughing waters of the vast fountain of old Nile. None of us would have been more elated at the prospect before us than he, for he was a true sailor, and loved the sight of water, yet again I say peace be to his ashes; be consoled, for Frank still lives, and, from present appearances, is likely to come home to you with honor and glory, such as he and you may well be proud of. Believe me, dear sir, with true sincerity, your well-wisher,

  Henry M. Stanley.

  Stanley still traveled in a north-west direction, and the farther he advanced the more he was convinced that the rivulets he encountered flowed into the Nile, and he became elated with the hope that he should soon stand on the shores of the great lake that served as the reservoir of the mighty river.

  Two days’ march now brought them to Mongafa, where one of his men who had accompanied him on his former expedition was murdered. He was suffering from the asthma, and Stanley permitted him to follow the party slowly. Straggling thus behind alone, he was waylaid by the natives and murdered. It was impossible to ascertain who committed the deed, and so Stanley could not avenge the crime.

  Keeping on they at length entered Itwru, a district of Northern Urimi. The village where they camped was called Vinyata, and was situated in a broad and populous valley, containing some two thousand to three thousand souls, through which flowed a stream twenty wide. The people here received him in a surly manner, but Stanley was very anxious to avoid trouble and used every exertion to conciliate them. He seemed at last to succeed, for at evening they brought him milk, eggs and chickens, taking cloth in exchange. This reached the ears of the great man of the valley, a magic doctor, who, there being no king over the people, is treated with the highest respect and honor by them. The next day he brought Stanley a fat ox, for which the latter paid him twice what it was worth in cloth and beads, besides making a rich present to his brother and son. To all his requests he cheerfully consented in his anxiety to conciliate him and the natives.

  That day, taking advantage of the bright sun to dry the bales and goods, he exposed his rich stores, an imprudence which he very quickly deeply regretted, for he saw that the display awoke all the greedy feelings of the natives, as was evinced by their eager looks. But the day passed quietly, and on the third morning the great man made his appearance again and begged for more beads, which were given him and he departed apparently very much pleased, and Stanley congratulated himself that he would be allowed to depart in peace.

  THE FEUD OF THE WILD-HAYMEN

  HJALMAR HJORTH BOYESEN

  PEER LANGELEIK was the son of a wild-hayman who was also named Peer Langeleik, and as they had already names in common it seemed but natural that they should have the same trade too. And thus it happened that old peer began early to train young Peer for his perilous occupation.

  The first thing Peer Langeleik thought when a son was born to him was that he would now soon be able to dispense with his partner, who for the very unimportant help in pulling him up devoured half his profits. And, truth to tell, the very first thing his partner, Ulf Fannivold, thought when, about the same time, he found himself father to a sturdy boy was that now he would soon be able to dispense with Peer. They frequently quarreled, and had never got on very well together. I fancy that more than once it had occurred to each of them to stumble or slip, quite accidentally of course, when he held the other suspended over the dizzy abysses. But somehow neither had acted on any such impulse, and on the day when their two sons were carried to church to be christened, they shook hands and congratulated each other like the best of friends.

  Peer Langeleik was in such a hurry to have his son grow up that he used playfully to grab him by the legs and stretch him every morning before he started out and every evening on returning. It may have been due to this operation that Little Peer regularly added a couple of inches to his height every year
; and when he was ten years old his father concluded that he was old enough to help him in his business. About the same time Ulf Fannivold, too, began to train his son for the trade of a wild-hayman, and as there were frequent collisions between the boys, the ill feeling between their fathers grew apace.

  For three or four years the parish was full of rumours about the feud of the wild-haymen. Little Ulf, it was said, was bound, sooner or later, to beat Little Peer, for he could climb like a goat, and there was not a mountain wall in the valley too steep for him to scale. He was small, had a pert nose, oldish little face—not at all handsome, but with a pair of wonderfully lively and alert eyes. He needed no rope, like his rival, for he could wedge his tiny toes into a crevice scarcely big enough for a beetle to enter, and he could squirm and wriggle and wind himself through and around the most incredible obstacles, and nab a tuft of grass which you would have said no creature without wings could ever have reached. No wonder Peer Langeleik was alarmed; there would soon be no wild hay left for him and his son to gather. Wherever they went, that red-capped little imp had always been there before them. Every slope and every ravine was stripped of its herbage before it was full grown, and the following summer little patches of oats and barley and timothy and cover were found to have been sown in all sorts of inaccessible places, where the attempt to harvest would seem to be sure death. But harvested they still were, and remarkably rich was the crop, and very good prices it brought. People who would have screamed with horror the first time they saw it, became very familiar with the sight of an impish little figure with a red peaked cap crawling like a fly or skipping like a weasel up and down the beetling cliffs that held a scrap of earth large enough to feed a few scores of barley stalks or a bagful of clover.

  It went down hill with Peer Langeleik during these years; and if he had not been able to earn a little with his fiddle during the winter, both he and his family would have starved or gone to the poor-house.

  When Little Peer was in his fifteenth year it was high time to have him prepared for confirmation, and it so happened that little Ulf Fannivold went to the parson during the same year. The two lads looked askance at each other from the first, and sought to avoid each other as much as possible. But the other boys, knowing of the hostility between their fathers, could not allow such an opportunity for sport to pass unnoticed. And so they teased the two wild-haymen, as they were called, early and late, and would give them no peace until they had shown their mettle. It would indeed, at first blush, seem a most unequal match; for Little Peer, though he was yet named “Little,” in order to distinguish him from his father, who was “Big Peer,” was really quite a large boy for his age, while Little Ulf was, as to size, exactly what his named indicated. While Peer was blond, blue-eyed, and fair-complexioned, Ulf was dark, black-eyed, and of swarthy complexion. There was a yellowish pallor in his cheeks, and in his glance something hidden, evasive, and crafty. He never looked you straight in the face, as his rival did; but his eager and wide-awake weasel eyes seemed to be lying in ambush, trying to catch you unawares. But for all that, Ulf, though he was perhaps distrusted, was not exactly disliked by his comrades. Among boys admiration for pluck and daring is apt to outweigh all minor considerations; and it was not to be denied that there was something about this agile and self-contained little imp which inspired respect. Peer, on the other hand, was what most boys are at his age and seemed to none of them particularly remarkable. He quarreled, fought, and made up again; dealt and received honest blows, and bore no man any grudge if he had thrashed him or been thrashed by him. But somehow it seemed a pretty risky undertaking to thrash Little Ulf, though on general principles he might need it, and every lad preferred, on the whole, to have somebody else make the first experiment. And the boy for this mission was Little Peer.

  But when the long-expected fight at last took place, Little Peer, though he was much the stronger, got the worst of it. Ulf writhed, dodged, and wriggled, so that it was impossible to get a square blow at him. Through some means which nobody ever knew he managed to persuade the parson that Peer was not a fit boy to have first place at the confirmation, although that position had already been assigned him.

  It was a very bitter disappointment both to Peer and his parents that he was at the last moment deprived of this much coveted honour; and still bitterer did it seem when they saw the black-eyed little “gypsy” march in at the head of the procession.

  Confirmed he was, however; and he would have borne his grief bravely enough if the ancient feud between his father and Big Ulf Fannivold had not blazed forth anew, and prepared him no end of trouble. He was on the lookout early and late for patches of “wild grass” which had no owner; but regularly, as it grew tall enough to cut, Little Ulf Fannivold anticipated him, and bagged the coveted prize. Fees for fiddling were also few and far between now, and dire want raged in the little cottage up under the mountain. It was while in the midst of these tribulations that Peer one day in June discovered a beautiful patch of grass which grew with long nodding tufts on a ledge of rock in a ravine about four miles from his home. He hastened to apprise his father, and early the next morning the two started out together with sickles and ropes, and reached the ravine while the dew was yet wet and the morning mist hung over the meadows. Little Peer cheerfully fastened the stout rope to the broad leather belt which was buckled around his waist, and was about to let himself down, when suddenly he heard a chorus of wild, hoarse screams from under the brow of the cliff.

  “It is eagles,” said his father. “You had better not go down.”

  “But there is a human voice, too, father. Don’t you hear? They have stolen a child”

  In the same instant there came a heart-rending shriek as of one in mortal distress.

  “Let me down quick, father. Grab the rope—here!”

  “No, no, my son! It isn’t human. It is some sort of witchcraft or devilry. Don’t go down, I beg of you, or you may never come up again.”

  “Very well; if you won’t help me, I shall go alone!”

  And with a resolute motion he fastened the rope around the stump of a tree, and leaning out over the precipice lowered himself down into the chasm.

  “Peer, Little Peer,” cried his father after him, “come back, come back!’’

  But Little Peer was already far down the rocky wall. What he saw there was enough to curdle his blood! Two enormous eagles, who had their nest on the shelf of the cliff, were attacking with beaks and claws some crouching figure which lay on the narrow ledge, clinging with a desperate clutch to a tiny birch-tree which was growing out of a crevice in the ravine. Swinging his sickle about his head, Peer yelled with all his might in order to frighten the birds of prey. But when he saw a big, ugly, crop-heavy fledgeling in the nest, and one blindly sprawling on the outside, he instantly took in the situation. This foolish intruder, whoever he was, had, in the absence of the old birds, tried to rob the nest, and they had unexpectedly returned to interfere with his purpose.

  Little Peer was a brave lad, but his heart quailed for an instant when he saw the bloody beaks and talons of the huge winged creatures, and heard their savage screams of wrath and alarm, as they made onset after onset against the cowering figure under the birch-tree.

  It was plain that he could not hold on much longer; he was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and his clothes were torn in tatters.

  “Hold on tight! Don’t give up!” Peer yelled, frantically.

  “I’ll help you!” And swinging right in between the two eagles he gave the nearest one a tremendous cut across the wing-bone with his sickle. The royal bird, having expected no attack from that quarter, wheeled round, flapped its other wing, made two somersaults in the air, and with a terrible hoarse screech tumbled down into the abyss. Then the figure on the rock cautiously turned his head to look up, and Little Peer gazed into the face of—Ulf Fannivold.

  The surprise was awful—paralysing. He had not once thought of his enemy; and now his first impulse was to signal to his father to pull him
up. The anger, the hatred, the sense of outrage which the mere mention of Ulf’s name aroused had been smouldering long in the heart, and now blazed up with uncontrollable fury.