قراءة كتاب The Claw
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distinctly heard something moving:—on swift, padded feet something was stealing round the cart and breathing! Sinking down noiselessly to my former position, I peered between the mail-bags into the darkness, and once more dew stood on my forehead in little beads. Suddenly, I saw two small pale green fires that moved together, then two more exactly the same, and I knew they were the eyes of savage beasts. Paralysed with fright, I was afraid to stir, afraid almost to breathe. But my mind, still working vividly, considered the best thing to do—to sit perfectly still in the hope that they would not venture into the cart after me, or to fire my revolver into them one barrel after the other. The noise of breathing and moving was plainly made by more than one beast, and there were growlings now and horrible purring noises. I came to the conclusion that there was not one lion but probably half-a-dozen after me. To my increased horror the cart suddenly began to shake. Were they preparing to spring upon me? I grasped my revolver firmly, and with the other hand swiftly crossed myself and whispered a prayer, for indeed I believed that my last moment was come. But nothing happened. Only the coach went on shaking softly, and the snarlings and growlings in several keys continued; there was a faint jingle, too, of the harness that had been left lying on the ground. What could be happening?
I began to feel strangely sick and faint. Since morning I had eaten nothing but a very stale sandwich, and the long fast, together with the series of emotions I had gone through, began to tell upon me. My mental vision grew a little dim and unattached. I found myself thinking vaguely about things that were not at all apropos to the situation. I reflected, as drowning people are said to do, on all the things I had done and seen since first I could remember, and on all the persons I had known, including and especially Elizabet von Stohl who had so emphatically opposed this journey. I suddenly detested her exceedingly! How pleased though shocked she would be if she could know how faithfully her prognostications of evil were coming true! Would she pretend to be shocked? But she should never know. Even in my extremity I gave a desolate smile to think that if the lions did get me they would carry me off into the deep bush and leave nothing behind to tell the tale. My fate would be wrapped for ever in romantic if terrible mystery, and no one would know what naked depths of terror my soul had sounded amidst the fearsome darkness of the veldt. But I resolved that if ever I got out of this alive the eloquent reserve which marks the truly great should distinguish me also as far as my African adventures were concerned. One thing was certain: my taste for prowling lions was appeased. I also felt a diminished interest in Lobengula’s fifty wives. As for the illimitable veldt it was the limit!
And all the time the breathings and purrings and snarlings went on; and as if that were not enough they began to chew. Heaven knows what they were chewing, but I felt sure that it would very shortly be me. Suddenly I became aware that something had approached the step of the cart and was close to me. I could hear its breathing and plainly I saw the gleam of two little pale green fires. An enterprising lion had smelt me out at last and meant to do unto me as had been done unto Mr O’Flynn. The thought was too much; with the last desperate courage of the doomed I took Fate into my hands, and leaning forward fired barrel after barrel from my revolver in the direction of the little pale fires. The noise of the detonations echoing and repeating through the silent place was enormous and terrifying, but in the tingling stillness that followed, my straining ears caught the sound of fleeing padded feet and the crackling of small branches and undergrowth at gradual distances. Then my senses swam, and I sank back behind my barricade of mail-bags.
Chapter Two.
The River Calls.
“And there’s no end of voyaging
When once the voice is heard,
For the river calls, and the road calls,
And oh! the call of the bird.”
I suppose I fainted, and later perhaps I slept. At any rate it seemed, and must have been, a long while afterwards that I waked up to a sound so pleasant and comforting that I believed at first I must still be in the land of strange dreams in which my mind had been wandering. But I presently realised that though I was still lying curled up in the cart, it really was the sound of wood crackling and burning in a fire, and that the aromatic flavour in the air was the smoke of wood mingled with the curiously sweet scent of burning leaves and branches, still hissing with sap. Very softly I raised myself upon a cramped elbow and looked out of the cart. The place was transformed. The circular clearing, no longer gaunt and terrifying but a scene of tall enchanted trees and frondy ferns, was lit up with leaping rose-and-amber lights from four large fires built at the corners of a square. The post-cart, well within the radius, had a munching horse tethered to it, while stretched at full length on a rug in the firelight was a man.
He was lying carelessly at his ease, and by the flickering light of the fires looking through a number of letters and papers. One hand supported a determined-looking jaw; the rest of his face was hidden under a hat with so evil a slouch to it that it might easily have belonged to a burglar. He wore no coat; only a grey flannel shirt open at the neck, with a dark blue and crimson striped handkerchief (the kind of thing college men put on after boating or football) knotted loosely round his bare throat. His khaki riding-breeches were “hitched” round him on a leather belt from which also depended a heavy Service revolver and a knife-case. By the side of him on the rug lay a gun. He was evidently taking no risks as far as lions were concerned.
I began to have an extraordinary curiosity to see his face. Moreover I longed with a fervent longing not only to get out and sit in the warmth of those homely and attractive fires, but to speak with another human being. If he would only look up, I thought, and let me see whether or not he had an honest face! I could not trust that hat. With such a hat he might be a horse thief, an escaped convict, an I.D.B., or a pirate on a holiday, and though any of those might possibly be interesting persons to meet I felt that the time and place were hardly suitable for such a rencontre. The only thing to do was to lie perdue until I was able to come to some conclusion as to what manner of man he was. Even while I so decided he moved.
Sitting straight up he rolled the letter he had been reading into a ball and aimed it with violence and precision at the nearest fire, uttering at the same time some bad and bitter words that came quite clearly to my ears. However, I was by that time inured to bad language. Every one in South Africa uses it when they think you are not listening. Also, it is apparently the only language that mules and oxen understand for drivers never speak any other. I had become so accustomed to wicked words that I no longer took the slightest notice of them.
To my amazement I discovered that he was muttering verse to himself—bits of Stevenson:
“Sing me a song of a lad that is gone.
Say, can that lad be I?
Merry of heart he sailed on a day,
Over the sea to Skye.
* * * * *
Glory of youth glowed in his veins
Where is that glory now?”
He whipped the muffler from his neck at this and flung it down, then drove his