Willis the Pilot

CHAPTER X.

THE PI­ONEERS--EX­CUR­SION TO CORO­MAN­DEL--HIN­DOO FAN­CIES--A CAGED HUNTER--LOUIS XI. AND CAR­DI­NAL BALUE--A FUR­LONG OF NEWS--CAR­NAGE--THE BARONET AND HIS SEV­EN­TEEN TIGERS--FIFTY-​FOUR FEET OF CELEBRI­TY--STERNE'S WIN­DOW--PROM­ENADE OF THE CON­SCIENCES--EM­ULA­TION AND VAN­ITY.

When a coun­try is re­leased from the pres­ence of an en­emy that an­noyed and ha­rassed them, the peo­ple feel as if a weight had been tak­en off their shoul­ders; so the in­hab­itants of New Switzer­land had breathed more freely since the cap­ture of the chim­panzee.

The works at Fal­con's Nest were com­plet­ed, and the two fam­ilies had tak­en pos­ses­sion of their aeri­al dwellings, where they were perched like a pair of rook­eries with­in call of each oth­er.

The con­fined air of towns has a ten­den­cy to plunge men in­to lethar­gy and in­do­lence, and to pre­cip­itate the deca­dence of a con­sti­tu­tion in which the seeds of dis­ease have been sown; whilst, on the oth­er hand, the pure air of the coun­try braces the nerves, ex­cites a healthy ac­tion in the sys­tem, and in­vig­orates a shat­tered frame; so it was with Mr. Wol­ston--un­der the be­nign in­flu­ences of the ge­nial cli­mate and the re­fresh­ing sea breeze, he grad­ual­ly, but steadi­ly, re­cov­ered health and strength.

A larg­er breadth of land had been cleared and fit­ted for re­ceiv­ing grain, which it was sus­cep­ti­ble of re­pro­duc­ing a hun­dred-​fold. Such is the sub­lime con­tract God has made with man, that, in ex­change for his la­bor and skill, a sin­gle grain of wheat will pro­duce sev­en or eight stalks, each bear­ing an ear con­tain­ing fifty grains; a sin­gle grain has been known to yield twen­ty-​eight ears, and Pliny states that Nero re­ceived a grain bear­ing the enor­mous num­ber of three hun­dred and six­ty ears. Strange that such a sin­gu­lar in­stance of fe­cun­di­ty should present it­self dur­ing the dom­ina­tion of a man, or rather mon­ster, who dared to wish that the Ro­man peo­ple had on­ly one head, so that he might cut it off at a sin­gle blow!

Willis and the Wol­stons were as yet ig­no­rant of the ex­tent and lim­its of the colony; there were two in­closed and cul­ti­vat­ed sec­tions, named re­spec­tive­ly Waldeck and Prospect Hill, which they had not yet in­spect­ed. With a view to en­able them to form a more ac­cu­rate con­cep­tion of the bound­aries of the ter­ri­to­ry they in­hab­it­ed, a grand ex­cur­sion was de­cid­ed up­on that would en­able them leisure­ly to in­ves­ti­gate ev­ery nook and cran­ny of the set­tle­ment.

The store­house was ac­cord­ing­ly over­hauled, and the ladies called in to pre­pare viands for the jour­ney; they were like­wise in­vit­ed to fur­nish a sup­ply of cer­tain en­chant­ed trav­el­ling bags, in which the gen­tle­men were of­ten as­ton­ished to find, dur­ing their dis­tant ex­pe­di­tions, a thou­sand and one use­ful things that they would nev­er have dreamt of bring­ing with them of their own ac­cord.

Beck­er, Wol­ston, Ernest, and Frank set about the con­struc­tion of a ve­hi­cle on four wheels for the lug­gage and the ladies; they did not con­tem­plate erect­ing a ma­chine with elas­tic springs and gild­ed pan­els, like the Lord May­or's state coach--their ob­ject was to pro­duce a ma­chine that would ease, with­out dis­lo­cat­ing, the limbs of the trav­ellers, and that would move at least more gen­tly than a gar­den­er's cart, load­ed with ham­pers of greens for Covent Gar­den Mar­ket. It may read­ily be sup­posed that Ernest's Latin was not of much ser­vice in these op­er­ations, for even Wol­ston's me­chan­ical skill was sore­ly tried in elab­orat­ing the de­sign.

Fritz, Willis, and Jack had al­ready start­ed as pi­oneers of the ex­pe­di­tion to ex­am­ine the build­ings, and to see that no more apes or oth­er pi­rat­ical ma­raud­ers had es­tab­lished them­selves on their premis­es; and, in com­pli­ance with a re­quest made by Willis, who strong­ly ob­ject­ed to be­com­ing a bushranger, they had gone by wa­ter. It was fur­ther ar­ranged that, on their re­turn, all should start to­geth­er--the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty in one cav­al­cade, like an army on the march.

The young ladies were as much pleased in an­tic­ipa­tion with this jour­ney as if the des­ti­na­tion of the trav­ellers had been Brighton or Rams­gate. To chil­dren of their age, change is al­ways pleas­ing. Of­ten, in con­se­quence of a death, the col­lapse of a bank, the loss of a law-​suit, or some dire dis­as­ter of that sort, par­ents have seen them­selves com­pelled to aban­don the home of their fa­thers, en­deared to them by many gen­tle rec­ol­lec­tions, per­haps to em­bark for some far dis­tant land; they sti­fle their sighs, and bid a mute farewell to each stone and each tree, fa­mil­iar to them as house­hold words; they de­part with re­luc­tance, and of­ten turn to cast a lin­ger­ing look be­hind at ob­jects so dear to their mem­ory. Not so the chil­dren; they is­sue from the door like a flock of caged pi­geons just let loose; they sing and leap and laugh with glee; the old house has no charms for them, they are as glad to de­part as their el­ders are wish­ful to stay; the trunk de­sires to mul­ti­ply its roots on the soil, but the buds pre­fer to blow else­where--for the lat­ter life re­solves it­self in­to the word FU­TURE, and for the for­mer in­to the word PAST.

Leav­ing Wol­ston, Beck­er, and his two sons hard at work on the car­riage, let us turn to the pin­nace which was now mak­ing its way along the shore un­der the guid­ance of the Pi­lot.

“I should like much,” said Fritz, “to present Mr. and Mrs. Wol­ston with a cou­ple of bear, leop­ard, or tiger skins.”

“So should I,” said Jack.

“I wish you could think of some oth­er sort of gift,” sug­gest­ed Willis; “what do you say to a cou­ple of seal or shark skins?”

“Won't do,” replied both Fritz and Jack in one voice. “What ob­jec­tions have you to the oth­ers?”

“Well, you are in some sort con­signed to my care; I should like you to re­turn to your par­ents with your own skins en­tire.”

“Then you think it is a ter­rif­ic af­fair to kill a tiger or two? You have been ac­cus­tomed to the sea, and fan­cy lands­men are good for noth­ing but shoot­ing crows and wild-​cats; that is a mis­take, how­ev­er; we are fa­mil­iar with larg­er game.”

“Shiv­er my tim­bers! do you call bears and tigers game?”

“I am afraid, Willis, you are a bit of a milk­sop.”

“Avast heav­ing there, Mas­ter Fritz! as it is, I am a half-​hanged man al­ready, so death has now no ter­rors Dov me; it is the first pang that is most felt.”

“Yes; but in the case of tigers, they nev­er give you time to feel a sec­ond pang; miss your aim, and it is all over with you.”

“True; and there­fore I wish you would give up the project. As for my­self, I would face any­thing with a four-​pounder, but ri­fle prac­tice on board ship is most­ly con­fined to the marines; it is not that, how­ev­er, I am trou­bled about; I am cer­tain your wor­thy fa­ther would nev­er for­give me if I coun­te­nance this project.”

“You need not tell him any­thing about it.”

“Where, then, are the skins to come from? Can you say you bought them at the fur­ri­er's? You must re­al­ly hit up­on some oth­er fan­cy.”

“But it is not a fan­cy, Willis, it is a ne­ces­si­ty; it is not our own amuse­ment we are con­sult­ing. Just imag­ine your­self what will hap­pen dur­ing the ex­cur­sion now be­ing ar­ranged. Our par­ents will, of course, of­fer their bear skins to Mr. and Mrs. Wol­ston; there will be re­fusals on the one side and en­treaties on the oth­er.”

“And, as is usu­al in these sort of dis­cus­sions,” added Jack, “Mrs. Wol­ston will call her car­riage.”

“Yes,” con­tin­ued Fritz, “and my moth­er will most cer­tain­ly de­prive her­self of a cov­er­ing that is ab­so­lute­ly in­dis­pens­able dur­ing the cold nights of this cli­mate.”

“There is rea­son in what you say,” ob­served Willis, scratch­ing his ear.

“You see, Willis, the thing ought and must be done.”

“As you put it, yes; but it will take time to pre­pare the skins.”

“They will not be ready in time for this ex­pe­di­tion cer­tain­ly, and my moth­er must do with­out her skin this jour­ney; but it is our du­ty to pre­vent any­thing of the sort hap­pen­ing in fu­ture.”

“Were I to con­sent to this project,” said Willis, “there is still some­thing more re­quired.”

“What, Willis?”

“Why, the tigers and what's-​a-​names; it is nec­es­sary to find the brute be­fore you can get its skin.”

“Grant­ed; there would be a dif­fi­cul­ty in the case had we not here quite handy a mag­nif­icent cov­er­ing of wild an­imals, all ready to kill or to be killed. Just steer a point to the east, Willis; there, that will do. Just be­yond that bluff you see yon­der, there is a low flat plain cov­ered with brush­wood and tuft­ed with trees; on the left, this prairie is bound­ed by a chain of low hills, and on the right a broad riv­er, which last we have named the St. John, be­cause it bears some re­sem­blance to a stream of that name in Flori­da; be­yond this plain there is a swamp.”

“And,” added Jack, “be­hind this swamp there is a mag­nif­icent for­est of cedars, peo­pled with the finest furs imag­in­able, but gar­nished, how­ev­er, with formidable claws and rows of teeth.”

“I was not aware,” said Willis, “that we were with­in reach of such ami­able neigh­bors.”

“Oh, they can­not reach us; thanks to the con­for­ma­tion of that chain of hills you see yon­der, there is on­ly one pass that opens in­to our set­tle­ment, and that we have tak­en care to shut up and for­ti­fy.”

“It ap­pears then,” said Willis, “that there will be no dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing the an­imals, but--”

“Come, Willis, no more buts; you hunt in your own way from morn­ing till night, let us for once hunt in ours.”

“I go a-​hunt­ing?”

“Yes, there you are, charg­ing your piece just now.”

“Oh, my pipe you mean; but look at the dif­fer­ence; mosquitoes bite hu­man be­ings, they don't eat them!”

“And, you may add, their skins don't make bed-​clothes. Be­sides, if my moth­er takes rheuma­tism or the ague, it will be you that is to blame.”

“I would rather face all the tigers in Ben­gal and all the li­ons in Africa than in­cur such a re­spon­si­bil­ity. I will, there­fore, take a part in your cruise, and if any ac­ci­dent hap­pens to ei­ther of you, I shall stay in the for­est till noth­ing is left of me but my cap and my bones. In this way I will es­cape all re­proach in this world, and I may as well, af­ter all, re­join my old com­man­der, Cap­tain Lit­tle­stone, by this road as by any oth­er.”

In the mean­time, they had reached the coast of Waldeck, and hav­ing land­ed, they found the out­hous­es and sheds that had been erect­ed there in sat­is­fac­to­ry or­der; the apes had not for­got­ten a battue that had once been got up for their spe­cial be­hoof, as not an in­di­vid­ual was to be seen in the neigh­bor­hood. A morass of the dis­trict that had been con­vert­ed in­to a rice plan­ta­tion, promised an abun­dant crop; and the cot­ton plants, that Frank had once mis­tak­en for flakes of snow, reared their wool­ly blos­soms, look­ing for all the world like the pow­dered heads of our an­ces­tors. Af­ter a slight repast, the pin­nace was once more in mo­tion, and the par­ty steer­ing for Prospect Hill.

“Ah,” sighed Willis, “I wish we had on­ly Sir Mar­maduke Travers' cage here.”

“Cage!” cried Fritz, laugh­ing, “what, to shut up the game first and shoot it af­ter­wards?” “No, quite the re­verse: to shut up the hunters.”

“Ah, you would serve us in the same way as Louis XI. served Car­di­nal Balue.”

“I know noth­ing of ei­ther Louis XI. or Car­di­nal Balue; but the cage I speak of was an ex­cel­lent in­ven­tion, for all that.”

“Which you would like to prove to us by caging our­selves, eh?”

“Sir Mar­maduke Travers,” con­tin­ued Willis, “was an En­glish gen­tle­man, and he was trav­el­ling in Coro­man­del, no one knew why or for what pur­pose.”

“For the fun of the thing, prob­ably,” sug­gest­ed Jack; the En­glish are said to be great odd­ities."

“At that time there hap­pened to be a Hin­doo wid­ow some­where in those parts. This la­dy was very rich, very young, very beau­ti­ful, and very fond of tor­ment­ing her ad­mir­ers. And, as fate would have it, the trav­el­ling En­glish­man was com­plete­ly tak­en cap­tive by this dark beau­ty; and tak­ing ad­van­tage of the hold she had ob­tained up­on his heart, she amused her­self by mak­ing him do all sorts of out of the way things. Some­times she would bid him let his mous­tache grow, then she would or­der him to cut it off; he had to wor­ship Brah­ma, adopt the fash­ion of the Hin­doos, and had even to un­der­go the in­dig­ni­ty of hav­ing his head tied up in a dirty pock­et-​hand­ker­chief.”

“That is to say,” re­marked Jack, “that the la­dy, not hav­ing a pug or a mon­key, made Sir Mar­maduke a sub­sti­tute for both.”

“Very like­ly, but still Sir Mar­maduke was no fool; he was, on the con­trary, a gen­tle­man and a philoso­pher.”

“I doubt that,” said Jack.

“You are wrong, then. You have been brought up in an out of the way part of the world, and are not fa­mil­iar with the us­ages of civ­ilized so­ci­ety. When once a man has al­lowed the ten­der pas­sion to take root in his breast, it can­not af­ter­wards be ex­tin­guished at will; it grows and grows like an oil spot, so that what might eas­ily have been mas­tered at first, makes us in time its de­vot­ed slave.”

“I can­not ad­mit,” said Fritz, “that any sen­si­ble man would al­low him­self to be treat­ed in the way you state.”

“The wis­est and bravest have of­ten, for all that, been obliged to bend their heads to such cir­cum­stances; in fact, those on­ly es­cape whose hearts have been steeled by time or ad­ver­si­ty. Well, noth­ing would please the la­dy in one of her caprices short of Sir Mar­maduke's go­ing alone to the jun­gle and killing a tiger or two for her. This caused him some lit­tle un­easi­ness.”

“I should think so,” re­marked Jack, “un­less he had been ac­cus­tomed to face the an­imals.”

“How­ev­er, the wid­ow's hand was to be the re­ward of the achieve­ment, and the thing must con­se­quent­ly be done. Be­ing, how­ev­er, as I have said, a bit of a philoso­pher, he con­sid­ered with him­self that if, by chance, he should per­ish in the at­tempt he would lose the wid­ow all the same, and that he could not think of with any thing like equa­nim­ity. To ex­tri­cate him­self from this dilem­ma he sent a despatch to an en­ter­pris­ing friend of his, then sta­tioned with his reg­iment at Cal­cut­ta, re­quest­ing his ad­vice.”

“And this friend, no doubt, sent him a cou­ple of tigers all ready trussed?”

“No, bet­ter than that; he sent him a strong iron cage fif­teen feet square, very sol­id. This was shipped on board a cut­ter com­mand­ed by Cap­tain Lit­tle­stone, and I was en­trust­ed with the task of erect­ing it on shore, whilst an ex­press was sent off to Sir Mar­maduke.”

“Ah!” said Jack, “I be­gin to un­der­stand now.”

“Well, he rigged him­self in tiger-​hunt­ing cos­tume, went and bade the la­dy good-​bye, who cool­ly wished him good sport, mount­ed a horse, and rode off to con­quer a la­dy who, as a proof of her af­fec­tion, had so cav­alier­ly con­signed him to the ten­der mer­cies of the wild beasts.”

“Why, it was doom­ing him to cer­tain de­struc­tion,” said Fritz.

“In the mean­time the cage had been con­veyed to a val­ley sur­round­ed with moun­tains, the caves of which were known to shel­ter en­tire colonies of tigers. Here al­so came Sir Mar­maduke. The cage was firm­ly em­bed­ded in the soil, the ex­te­ri­or was thick­ly stud­ded over with sharp spikes screwed in­to the bars; in­side were placed a ta­ble and a so­fa, with crim­son vel­vet cush­ions.”

“A la­dy's boudoir in the wilder­ness,” said Jack.

“In one cor­ner there was a case con­tain­ing a dozen bot­tles of pale ale, and as many of cham­pagne; in an­oth­er was a sec­ond case con­tain­ing cur­ry pies and a va­ri­ety of pre­served meats; in a third case were five and twen­ty load­ed ri­fles, to­geth­er with a com­plete mag­azine in minia­ture of pow­der and shot. On the ta­ble were sundry cas­es of ha­van­nahs, a box of _al­lumettes_, the last num­ber of the _Ed­in­burgh Re­view_, and a copy of the _Times_.”

“What is the _Times_?” in­quired Jack.

“It is a fur­long of pa­per, fold­ed up and cov­ered with news, ad­ver­tise­ments, and let­ters from the old­est in­hab­itant of ev­ery­where. Leav­ing, then, Sir Mar­maduke seat­ed in the cen­tre of his cage, we to­wards night re­turned to the cut­ter, first scat­ter­ing two or three quar­ters of fresh beef in the vicin­ity of the cage.”

“That should have as­sem­bled all the tigers in Coro­man­del,” said Fritz.

“Any­how, it brought enough. To­wards mid­night Sir Mar­maduke could count thir­ty no­ble brutes ca­per­ing in the moon­light and feast­ing up­on the beef that had been pro­vid­ed for them.”

“What did the En­glish­man do then?”

“He took aim at the most mag­nif­icent spec­imen of the herd and fired. No soon­er had he done this than the whole pack came scam­per­ing to­wards the cage, think­ing, doubt­less, they had noth­ing to do but scrunch the bones of the soli­tary hunter. This was the sig­nal for a reg­ular slaugh­ter. Sir Mar­maduke dis­charged his ri­fles point blank in the noses of the an­imals that en­vi­roned him on all sides; those who were not wound­ed by the balls were severe­ly in­jured by the spikes of the cage in their fu­ri­ous ef­forts to seize their en­emy. The howl­ing, yelling, and fury was quite a new sen­sa­tion for Sir Mar­maduke; he rather en­joyed the thing whilst the ex­cite­ment last­ed. How­ev­er, all things must have an end; when the sun ap­peared on the hori­zon the wound­ed re­tired, leav­ing the dead mas­ters of the sit­ua­tion.”

“I sup­pose, in the mean­time,” re­marked Fritz, “that the ami­able Hin­doo was con­sid­er­ing whether or not, un­der the cir­cum­stances, she should wear mourn­ing for her de­funct cav­alier.”

"Be that as it may, the de­funct made his ap­pear­ance, safe and sound, that same day, whilst the cut­ter stood out to sea with ev­ery ves­tige of the cage ex­cept the dead tigers. Short­ly af­ter, the wid­ow was as­ton­ished to see an army of coolies march­ing in pro­ces­sion to­wards her door, all, like the slaves of Al­addin, heav­ily laden; and she was not awak­ened from her sur­prise till the mas­ter of the cer­emonies had placed the fol­low­ing let­ter in her hands:

"Madam,--With this you will re­ceive sev­en­teen fall-​grown tigers, which I have had the hon­our of shoot­ing for you.

“Mar­maduke Travers.”

“That was a choice bi­jou for a la­dy,” said Jack.

[Il­lus­tra­tion]

“Yes,” added Fritz; “and if the ladies of Coro­man­del have stands in their draw­ing-​rooms, to dis­play the trib­utes to their charms, Sir Mar­maduke's present af­ford­ed abun­dant ma­te­ri­al for adorn­ing those of the wid­ow.”

“Well, the con­se­quence was, that Sir Mar­maduke's name rung from one end of In­dia to the oth­er. The feat of killing, sin­gle-​hand­ed, sev­en­teen tigers, con­vert­ed him in­to a hero of the first mag­ni­tude. No fes­ti­val was com­plete with­out him, he was court­ed by the fash­ion­ables and wor­shipped by the mob; some en­thu­si­asts even pro­posed to erect a tomb for him, that be­ing the way they hon­or their great men in east­ern na­tions.”

“Ev­ery coun­try,” re­marked Fritz, “has its own pe­cu­liar­ities in this re­spect. The mem­ory of the il­lus­tri­ous men of Greece and Rome was per­pet­uat­ed in the in­trin­sic mer­it of the works of art erect­ed in their names. In Eng­land quan­ti­ty takes the place of qual­ity; there is said to be in Lon­don a stat­ue of a hero dis­guised as Achilles, six yards in height, and perched up­on a pedestal twelve yards high.”

“Mak­ing in all,” re­marked Jack, “ex­act­ly eigh­teen yards of fame.”

“The hand­some Hin­doo,” con­tin­ued Willis, “was proud of the feat her charms had in­spired. She glo­ried in show­ing off the re­doubtable tiger-​slay­er at her _réu­nions_, and end­ed in be­ing com­plete­ly fas­ci­nat­ed her­self with her for­mer slave. The match that she had for­mer­ly sneezed at she now earnest­ly de­sired, and, as Sir Mar­maduke did not de­clare him­self so speed­ily as she de­sired, she de­ter­mined to give him a lit­tle en­cour­age­ment by send­ing one of the most invit­ing and most odor­if­er­ous of notes.”

“Sir Mar­maduke must then have con­sid­ered him­self one of the hap­pi­est of men,” said Fritz.

“Well,” con­tin­ued Willis, “nei­ther man nor wom­an can, in af­fairs of this kind, de­pend up­on them­selves for two con­sec­utive hours. The as­pi­ra­tions of a whole life-​time may be dis­pelled in five min­utes, and the wish­es of to-​day may be­come the de­tes­ta­tions of to-​mor­row. The new sen­sa­tions awak­ened in Sir Mar­maduke by the af­fair of the cage--his rec­ol­lec­tion of the fe­ro­cious brutes as they clung with ex­pir­ing en­er­gy to the bars of the cage, their streaked skins stream­ing with blood, the fear­ful howl­ing and ter­rif­ic death yells, the formidable claws that were of­ten with­in an inch of his face--had, some­how or oth­er, chased the pas­sion he had felt for the wid­ow com­plete­ly out of his breast.”

“Oh, the scamp of a Travers!” said Jack, en­er­get­ical­ly.

"He be­gan to ask him­self cool­ly what a la­dy, who had made such ex­traor­di­nary de­mands up­on him be­fore mar­riage, might not re­quire him to do af­ter; and the re­sult of his cog­ita­tions is ex­pressed in the fol­low­ing re­ply that he sent to the now smil­ing wid­ow:--

“'Sir Mar­maduke Travers is high­ly flat­tered by the charm­ing note of the adorable daugh­ter of Brah­ma; he shall glad­ly con­tin­ue to bask in the sun­shine of her smiles, out his am­bi­tion de­sires and will ac­cept noth­ing more.'”

“Flow­ery and la­con­ic,” said Fritz.

“Well,” in­quired Willis, “was I not right in wish­ing to have the cage of Sir Mar­maduke here?”

“Yes, but we can­not get it. We have no in­ge­nious trend at Cal­cut­ta to send us such a ma­chine, and fur­nish it with crim­son-​cush­ioned so­fas and pale ale, so we shall have to rest sat­is­fied with our own in­ge­nu­ity, tact, and agili­ty.”

Fritz and Jack were jus­ti­fied in re­ly­ing up­on their own re­sources. They had been of­ten sore­ly tried, and nev­er had been found want­ing in cas­es of emer­gen­cy. Since the ar­rival of the Wol­stons their courage had be­come al­most temer­ity; pre­vi­ous to that event, they had been con­tent to meet dan­ger brave­ly when it was in­evitable, and nev­er went de­lib­er­ate­ly in search of it. Now, how­ev­er, if we ap­ply the glass of which Sterne speaks to their breasts and spy what is pass­ing there­in, we shall fad that an im­pe­ri­ous de­sire to be­come heroes had tak­en pos­ses­sion of their in­ward souls--a de­ter­mi­na­tion to make them­selves con­spic­uous at all haz­ards was burn­ing with­in them; that, in fact, they were court­ing the ad­mi­ra­tion of the new au­di­ence that Prov­idence had sent to the colony, the praise of which found more fa­vor in their hearts than the pa­ter­nal ad­mo­ni­tions.

This was far from be­ing com­mend­able; but, al­though em­ula­tion and van­ity have some fea­tures in com­mon, still they must not be con­found­ed: the for­mer con­sists in gen­er­ous ef­forts to equal or sur­pass some one in some­thing praise­wor­thy; the sec­ond is a kind of self-​love, that seeks to pur­chase re­spect or flat­tery at no mat­ter what cost;--the one is a vice, the oth­er a virtue.

Fritz and Jack were not ac­tu­at­ed by van­ity; they were urged on by their im­puls­es, with­out weigh­ing the cir­cum­stances that gave them rise; and in­deed they were not even con­scious of be­ing more de­sirous of renown now than they had been hith­er­to.

The tem­per­ament of Ernest and Frank was of an­oth­er kind. Their na­tures were much less ex­citable, and it did not ap­pear that the re­cent ar­rivals had al­tered their out­ward de­meanor in the slight­est de­gree; they con­tin­ued calm, staid, and re­flec­tive, as they had ev­er been.

All four were a sin­gu­lar mix­ture of the child and the man--know­ing many things that young peo­ple are ig­no­rant of, they were yet al­most to­tal­ly un­ac­quaint­ed with the or­di­nary at­tributes of so­cial life--un­so­phis­ti­cat­ed and naive to an ex­treme de­gree, they would have ap­peared in a fash­ion­able draw­ing-​room down­right fools. On the oth­er hand, they pos­sessed great clear­ness of per­cep­tion, pres­ence of mind in dan­ger, promp­ti­tude in ac­tion, and the ut­most cool­ness in the face of ap­par­ent­ly in­sur­mount­able ob­sta­cles--qual­ities that would have ut­ter­ly con­found­ed the young men who shine in the sa­loons of Eu­rope, whose chief mer­it of­ten con­sists in their be­ing fa­mil­iar with the un­mean­ing con­ven­tion­alisms of fash­ion­able life.

At Prospect Hill they found the out­hous­es and plan­ta­tions in much the same po­si­tion as at Waldeck. Here the crim­son flow­ers of the ca­per plant, the white flow­ers of the tea plant, and the rich blos­soms of the clove tree, per­fumed the air and promised a fra­grant har­vest. This was a charm­ing car­avansary, all ready with its smiles to wel­come the il­lus­tri­ous colonists as soon as they pre­sent­ed them­selves.

These points be­ing set­tled to the sat­is­fac­tion of the three pi­oneers, a sheep was tak­en on board the pin­nace at the re­quest of Willis--who seemed to have tak­en a vi­olent fan­cy for mut­ton chops--and they set sail to­wards the east.

In the first in­stance they made for a pro­ject­ing head-​land that seemed to bar their progress in that di­rec­tion, and, much to the as­ton­ish­ment of the Pi­lot, they en­tered a cav­ern that formed the en­trance to a nat­ural tun­nel. This, be­sides be­ing an in­ter­est­ing fea­ture in the coast scenery, was one of the trea­sures of the colony, for it con­tained vast quan­ti­ties of ed­ible birds' nests, so much prized by the Chi­nese. The voy­agers did not, how­ev­er, tar­ry here; these were not the ob­jects they were now in search of. Nau­tilus Bay and the Bay of Pearls were like­wise tra­versed un­heed­ed, nor could the at­trac­tive banks of the St. John, fringed with ver­dant fo­liage, di­vert them from the project they had in con­tem­pla­tion.

Wise men, when they in­dulge in fol­ly, are of­ten more fool­ish than re­al fools; so it was with Willis: now that he had joined in the scheme, he evinced more ar­dor in its ex­ecu­tion than the young men them­selves. He said that it would not be enough to cap­ture skins for Mr. and Mrs. Wol­ston, they must al­so cap­ture one a-​piece for Mary and Sophia like­wise, and talked as if the ad­ven­ture of Sir Mar­maduke and his sev­en­teen tigers had been a bagatelle.

Some hours be­fore dark they land­ed at a spot well known to both Fritz and Jack; it was a place where Beck­er and his sons had some time be­fore been en­gaged in dead­ly con­flict with a herd of li­ons, and where one of their dogs had fall­en a vic­tim to the en­raged monar­chs of the for­est.

“My plan,” said Willis, “is to kill the sheep and place the quar­ters on the shore, just as bait is thrown in­to the wa­ter to bring the fish with­in the net.”

“A rem­inis­cence of Sir Mar­maduke,” said Jack.

“Then,” con­tin­ued Willis, “we shall light a fire to take the place of the sun, who is about to re­tire for the night. This done, I pro­pose that we should re­turn to the pin­nace, keep the mut­ton with­in ri­fle range, and rid­dle the skins that come to feast up­on it.”

Af­ter some op­po­si­tion on the part of Fritz and Jack, who pre­ferred to en­counter their an­tag­onists on more equal terms, the pro­pos­al of Willis was ul­ti­mate­ly agreed to.