The Hot Swamp. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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face. I foresee that you are about to give me a lecture, and I don’t want the tone of remonstrance to be the last that I shall hear. I know that I’m a wild, good-for-nothing fellow, and can guess all you would say to me. Let us rather talk of your speedy return to Hellas, for, to tell you the truth, I feel as if the loss of you would leave me like a poor man who has been crippled in the wars. I shall be a mere shadow till you return.”
There was a slight tremor in the voice, which showed that much of the gaiety of the young man was forced.
“Nay, I have no mind to give you a lecture,” returned Bladud, “I only ask you to grant me two requests.”
“Granted, before mentioned, for you have ever been a reasonable creature, Bladud, and I trust you to retain your character on the present occasion.”
“Well, then, my first request is that you will often remember the many talks that you and I have had about the gods, and the future life, and the perplexing conditions in which we now live.”
“Remember them,” exclaimed Dromas with animation, “my difficulty would be to forget them! The questions which you have propounded and attempted to answer—for I do not admit that you have been quite successful in the attempt—have started up and rung in my ears at all kinds of unseasonable times. They haunt me often in my dreams—though, to say truth, I dream but little, save when good fellowship has led me to run supper into breakfast—they worry me during my studies, which, you know, are frequent though not prolonged; they come between me and the worthy rhapsodist when he is in the middle of the most interesting—or least wearisome—passage of the poem, and they even intrude on me at the games. The very last race I ran was lost, only by a few inches, because our recent talk on the future of cats caused a touch of internal laughter which checked my pace at the most critical moment. You may rest assured that I cannot avoid granting your first request. What is your second?”
“That you promise to visit me in my home in Albion. You know that it will be impossible for me ever again to re-visit these shores, where I have been so happy. My father, if he forgives my running away from him, will expect me to help him in the management of his affairs. But you have nothing particular to detain you here—”
“You forget—the old woman,” interrupted Dromas gravely.
“What old woman?” asked Bladud in surprise.
“My mother!” returned his friend.
The prince looked a little confused and hastened to apologise. Dromas’ mother was one of those unfortunate people who existed in the olden time as well as in modern days, though perhaps not so numerously. She was a confirmed invalid, who rarely quitted her house, and was seldom seen by any one save her most intimate friends, so that she was apt to be forgotten—out of sight out of mind, then as now.
“Forgive me, Dromas—,” began Bladud, but his friend interrupted him.
“I cannot forgive when I have nothing to forgive! Say no more about that. But, now I come to consider of it, I grant your second request conditionally. If my mother agrees to accompany me to Albion, you may expect to see me some day or other—perhaps a year or two hence. You see, since my father and brother were slain in the last fight with our neighbours, I am the only one left to comfort her, so I cannot forsake her.”
“Then this will be our final parting,” returned Bladud, sadly, “for your mother will never consent to leave home.”
“I don’t know that,” returned Dromas with a laugh. “The dear old soul is intensely adventurous, like myself, and I do believe would venture on a voyage to the Cassiterides, if the fancy were strong upon her. You have no idea how powerfully I can work upon her feelings. I won’t say that I can make much impression on her intellect. Indeed, I have reason to know that she does not believe in intellect except as an unavoidable doorway leading into the feelings. The fact is, I tried her the other day with the future of cats, and do you know, instead of treating that subject with the gravity it merits, she laughed in my face and called me names—not exactly bad names, such as the gods might object to—but names that were not creditable to the intelligence of her first-born. Now,” continued Dromas with increasing gravity, “when I paint to her the beauty of your native land; the splendour of your father’s court; the kindliness of your mother, and the exceeding beauty of your sister—fair like yourself, blue-eyed, tall—you said she was tall, I think?”
“Yes—rather tall.”
“Of course not quite so tall as yourself, say six feet or so, with a slight, feminine beard—no? you shake your head; well, smooth-faced and rosy, immense breadth of shoulders—ah! I have often pictured to myself that sister of yours—”
“Hilloa!” shouted Captain Arkal in a nautical tone that might almost have been styled modern British in its character.
It was an opportune interruption, for Dromas had been running on with his jesting remarks for the sole purpose of crushing down the feelings that almost unmanned him.
With few but fervently uttered words the final farewells were at last spoken. The oars were dipped; the vessel shot from the land, swept out upon the blue waves of the Aegean, the sail was hoisted, and thus began the long voyage to the almost unknown islands of the far North-West.
Chapter Two
Temporary Delay through Elements and Pirates
But it is not our purpose to inflict the entire log of that voyage on our reader, adventurous though the voyage was. Matter of much greater importance claims our regard. Still it would be unjust to our voyagers to pass it over in absolute silence.
At the very commencement of it, there occurred one of those incidents to which all voyagers are more or less subject. A gale arose the very evening of the day on which they left port, which all but swamped the little vessel, and the violence of the wind was so great that their huge sail was split from top to bottom. In spite of the darkness and the confusion that ensued, Captain Arkal, by his prompt action and skilful management, saved the vessel from immediate destruction. Fortunately the gale did not last long, and, during the calm that followed, the rent was repaired and the sail re-set.
Then occurred another incident that threatened to cut short the voyage even more disastrously than by swamping.
The sea over which they steered swarmed with pirates at the time we write of, as it continued to swarm during many centuries after. Merchantmen, fully aware of the fact, were in those days also men of war. They went forth on their voyages fully armed with sword, javelin, and shield, as well as with the simple artillery of the period—bows and arrows, slings and stones.
On the afternoon of the day that followed the gale, the vessel—which her captain and owner had named the Penelope in honour of his wife—was running before a light breeze, along the coast of one of the islands with which that sea is studded.
Bladud and some of the crew were listening at the time to an account given by a small seaman named Maikar, of a recent adventure on the sea, when a galley about as large as their own was seen to shoot suddenly from the mouth of a cavern in the cliffs in which it had lain concealed. It was double-banked and full of armed men, and was rowed in such a way as to cut in advance of the Penelope. The vigour with which the oars were plied, and the rapidity with which the sail was run up, left no doubt as to the nature of the craft or the intentions of those who manned it.
“The rascals!” growled Arkal with a dark frown, “I more than half expected to find them here.”
“Pirates, I suppose?” said Bladud.
“Ay—and not much chance of escaping them. Give another haul on the sail-rope, mate, and pull, men, pull, if you would save your liberty—for these brutes have no mercy.”
The sail was tightened up a few inches, and the vessel was put more directly before the wind. The way in which the slaves bent to the oars showed that the poor fellows fully understood the situation.
For a few minutes Captain Arkal watched the result in stern silence. Then, with an unwonted look and tone of bitterness, he said in a low voice—
“No—I thought as much. She sails