"Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - George Lewis Becke (best novels to read .txt) 📗

as they watched me taking off my boots and putting on a pair of cinnet (coir fibre) sandals. Just beneath us was a deep canyon, at the bottom of which, so Nalik said, was a tiny rivulet which ran through banks covered with wild yams and _ti_ plants.

"There be nothing so sweet to the mouth of the mountain pig as the thick roots of the _ti_," said Nalik to me in a low voice. "They come here to root them up at this time of the year, before the wild yams are well grown, and the _ti_ both fattens and sweetens. Let us start."

At a sign from Sru, Nalilc and the boy Toka, followed by the dogs, went off towards the head of the canyon, so as to drive down to the old man and myself any pigs which might be feeding above, whilst we slipped quietly down the side of the spur to the bank of the rivulet. Sru carried my gun (which I had loaded with ball) as well as his spear. I had my Snider.

We had not long to wait, for presently we heard the dogs give cry, and the silence of the forest was broken by the demoniac yells of Nalik and the "devil," who had started a party of two boars and half a dozen sows with their half-grown progeny, which were lying down around the buttressed sides of a great tika-tree. They (the pigs) came down the side of the rivulet with a tremendous rush, right on top of us in fact. I fired at the leader--a great yellow, razorbacked boar with enormous tusks--missed him, but hit a young sow who was running on his port side. Sru, with truer aim, fired both barrels of his gun in quick succession, and the second boar dropped with a bullet through both shoulders, and a dear little black and yellow striped four-months'-old porker went under to the other barrel with a broken spine. Then in another three or four minutes we were kicking and "belting" about half of the dogs, who, maddened by the smell of blood from the wounded animals, sprang upon them and tried to tear them to pieces; the rest of the pack (Heaven save the term!) had followed the flying swine down the canyon; they turned up at the camp some three or four hours later with bloodied jaws and gorged to distension.

The boar which Sru had shot was lean enough in all conscience, but the young sow and the four-months'-old porker were as round-bodied as barrels, and as fat as only pigs can be fat. After disembowelling them, we hoisted the carcasses up under the branch of a tree out of the reach of the dogs, and sent Toka back to the camp to tell the women to come and carry them away.

Then, as we had still another hour or two of daylight, and I longed to see the deep, deep pool at the head of the river, even if it were but for a few moments, the old chief Nalik and I started off.

It lay before us with many, many bars of golden sunlight striking down through the trees and trying to penetrate its calm, placid bosom with their warm, loving rays. Far below the sound of the waterfall sung to the dying day, and, as we listened, there came to us the dulled, distant murmur of the combing breakers upon the reef five miles away.

"'Tis a fair, good place this, is it not?" whispered Nalik, as he sat beside me--"a fair, good place, though it be haunted by the spirits."

"Aye, a fair, sweet place indeed," I answered, "and this pool aid the river below shall for ever be in my dreams when I am far away from here."
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Publication Date: 08-11-2010

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