The Castaways by Mayne Reid (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📗
- Author: Mayne Reid
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As time passed, however, and the sufferers, instead of feeling relieved, only seemed to be growing worse—the vertigo and nausea continuing, while the vomiting was renewed in frequent and violent attacks—they at length became seriously alarmed, believing themselves poisoned to death.
They knew not what to do. They had no medicine to act as an antidote; and if they had been in possession of all the drugs in the pharmacopoeia, they would not have known which to make use of. Had it been the bite of a venomous snake or other reptile, the Malay, acquainted with the usual native remedies, might have found some herbaceous balsam in the forest; though in the darkness there would have been a difficulty about this, since it was now midnight, and there was no moon in the sky—no light to look for anything. They could scarcely see one another, and each knew where his neighbours lay only by hearing their moans and other exclamations of distress.
As the hours dragged on wearily, they became still more and more alarmed. They seriously believed that death was approaching. A terrible contemplation it was, after all they had passed through; the perils of shipwreck, famine, thirst; the danger of being drowned; one of them escaping from a hideous reptile; another from the coils of a serpent; a third from having his skull cracked in by a fallen fruit, and afterwards split open by the beak of an angry bird. Now, after all these hairbreadth perils and escapes, to be poisoned by eating the flesh of this very bird—to die in such simple and apparently causeless fashion; though it may seem almost ridiculous, it was to them not a whit the less appalling. And appalled they were, as time passed, and they felt themselves growing worse instead of better. They were surely poisoned—surely going to die.
Long with the agonising pain—for the sensations they experienced were exceedingly painful—there was confusion in their thoughts, and wandering in their speech. The feeling was somewhat to that of sea-sickness in its worst form; and they felt that reckless indifference to death so characteristic of the sufferer from this very common, but not the less painful, complaint. Had the sea, seething and surging against the beach so near them, broken beyond its boundaries, and swept over the spot where they lay, not one of them, in all probability, would have stirred hand or foot to remove themselves out of its reach. Drowning—death in any form—would at that moment have seemed preferable to the tortures they were enduring.
They did not lie still. At times one or another would get up and stray from under the tree. But the nausea continued, accompanied by the horrid retching; their heads swam, their steps tottered, and staggering back, they would fling themselves down despairingly, hoping, almost praying, for death to put an end to their agonies. It was likely soon to do so.
During all, Captain Redwood showed that he was thinking less of himself than his children. Willingly would he have lain down and died, could that have secured their surviving him. But it was a fate that threatened all alike. On this account, he was wishing that either he or one of his comrades, Murtagh or Saloo, might outlive the young people long enough to give them the rites of sepulture. He could not bear the thought that the bodies of his two beautiful children were to be left above ground, on the desolate shore, their flesh to be torn from them by the teeth of ravenous beasts or the beaks of predatory birds—their bones to whiten and moulder under the sun and storms of the tropics.
Despite the pain he was himself enduring, he secretly communicated his wishes to Murtagh and the Malay, imploring them to obey what might be almost deemed a dying request.
Parting speeches were from time to time exchanged in the muttered tones of despair. Prayers were said aloud, unitedly, and by all of them silently in their own hearts.
After this, Captain Redwood lay resignedly, his children, one on each side of him, nestling within his arms, their heads pillowed upon his breast close together. They also held one another by the hand, joined in affectionate embrace across the breast of their father. Not many words were spoken between them; only, now and then, some low murmurs, which betokened the terrible pain they felt, and the fortitude both showed in enduring it.
Now and then, too, their father spoke to them. At first he had essayed to cheer them with words of encouragement; but as time passed, these seemed to sound hollow in their ears as well as his own, and he changed them to speeches enjoining resignation, and words that told of the “Better Land”. He reminded them that their mother was there, and they should all soon join her. They would go to her together; and how happy this would be after their toils and sufferings; after so many perils and fatigues, it would be but pleasure to find rest in heaven.
In this way he tried to win their thoughts from dwelling on the terrors of death, every moment growing darker and seeming nearer.
The fire burned down, smouldered, and went out. No one had thought of replenishing it with fuel. Though there were faggots enough collected not far off, the toil of bringing them forward seemed too much for their wasted strength and deadened energies. Fire could be of no service to them now. It had done them no good while ablaze; and since it had gone out, they cared not to renew it. If they were to die, their last moments could scarcely be more bitter in darkness than in light.
Still Captain Redwood wished for light. He wished for it, so that he might once more look upon the faces of his two sweet suffering pets, before the pallor of death should overspread them. He would perhaps have made an effort to rekindle the fire, or requested one of the others to do it; but just then, on turning his eyes to the east, he saw a greyish streak glimmering above the line of the sea-horizon. He knew it was the herald of coming day; and he knew, moreover, that, in the latitude they were in, the day itself would not linger long behind.
“Thank God!” was the exclamation that came from his lips, low muttered, but in fervent emphasis. “Thank God, I shall see them once more! Better their lives should not go out in the darkness.”
As he spoke the words, and as if to gratify him, the streak on the eastern sky seemed rapidly to grow broader and brighter, its colour of pale grey changing to golden yellow; and soon after, the upper limb of the glorious tropical sun showed itself over the smooth surface of the Celebes Sea.
As his cheering rays touched the trees of the forest, then eyes were first turned upon one another, and then in different directions. Those of Captain Redwood rested upon the faces of his children, now truly overspread with the wan pallor of what seemed to be rapidly approaching death.
Murtagh gazed wistfully out upon the ocean, as if wishing himself once more upon it, and no doubt thinking of that green isle far away beyond it; while Saloo’s glance was turned upward—not toward the heavens, but as if he was contemplating some object among the leaves of the tree overhead.
All at once the expression upon his countenance took a change—remarkable as it was sudden. From the look of sullen despair, which but the moment before might have been seen gleaming out of the sunken orbits of his eyes, his glance seemed to change to one of joy, almost with the quickness of the lightning’s flash.
Simultaneous with the change, he sprang up from his reclining position, uttering as he did so an exclamation in the Malayan tongue, which his companions guessed to be some formula of address to the Deity, from its ending with the word “Allah.”
“De gleat God be thank!” he continued, returning to his “pigeon English,” so that the others might understand. “We all be save. Buld no poison. We no die yet. Come away, cappen,” he continued, bending down, and seizing the children by the hands. Then raising both on their feet, he quickly added, “Come all away. Unda de tlee death. Out yonda we findee life. Come away—way.”
Without waiting for the consent either of them or their father, he led—indeed, almost dragged—Helen and Henry from under the shadow of the tree and out toward the open sea-beach.
Though Captain Redwood did not clearly comprehend the object of Saloo’s sudden action, nor Murtagh comprehend it at all, both rose to their feet, and followed with tottering steps.
Not until they had got out upon the open ground, and sat down upon the sand, with the fresh sea-breeze fanning their fevered brows, did Saloo give an explanation of his apparently eccentric behaviour.
He did so by pointing to the tree under which they had passed the night, and pronouncing only the one word—“Upas.”
“Upas!”
A word sufficient to explain all that had passed. Both Captain Redwood and his ship-carpenter understood its signification; for what man is there who has ever sailed through the islands of the India Archipelago without having heard of the upas? Indeed, who in any part of the world has not either heard or read of this poisonous tree, supposed to carry death to every living thing for a wide distance around it, not even sparing shrubs or plants—things of its own kind—but inflicting blight and destruction wherever its envenomed breath may be wafted on the breeze?
Captain Redwood was a man of too much intelligence, and too well-informed, to have belief in this fabulous tale of the olden time. Still he knew there was enough truth in it to account for all that had occurred—for the vertigo and vomiting, the horrible nausea and utter prostration of strength that had come upon them unconsciously. They had made their camp under one of these baneful trees—the true upas (antiaris toxicaria); they had kindled a fire beneath it, building it close to the trunk—in fact, against it; the smoke had ascended among its leaves; the heat had caused a sudden exudation of the sap; and the envenomed vapour floating about upon the air had freely found its way both into their mouths and nostrils. For hours had this empoisoned atmosphere been their only breath, nearly depriving them of that upon which their lives depended.
If still suffering severely from the effects of having inhaled the noxious vapour, they were now no longer wretched. Their spirits were even restored to a degree of cheerfulness, as is always the case with those who have just escaped from some calamity or danger. They now knew that in due time they would recover their health and strength. The glorious tropical sun that had arisen was shining benignantly in their faces, and brightening everything around, while the breeze, blowing fresh upon them from a serene sapphire-coloured sea, cooled their fevered blood. They felt already reviving. The sensations they experienced were those of one who, late suffering from sea-sickness, pent up in the state-room of a storm-tossed ship, with all its vile odours around him, has been suddenly transferred to terra firma, and laid upon some solid bank, grassy or moss-grown, with tall trees waving above, and the perfume of flowers floating upon the balmy air.
For a long while they sat upon the sands in this pleasant dreamy state, gazing upon the white surf that curled over the coral reefs, gazing upon the blue water beyond, following the flight of large white-winged birds that now and then went plunging down into the sea, to rise up with a fish glistening in their beaks, half unconscious of the scene under their eyes and the strife continuing
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