CHAPTER XXXII.

A WILD BOAR.

We felt very much the want of firearms. The air seemed alive with birds--the woods with game of several kinds; and now an old musket with a few charges of powder would have proved more useful to us than the treasure of the Bank of England.

Hislop recovered strength rapidly, and his convalescence inspired our little band of castaways with new confidence and vigor, as they had implicit reliance in his superior knowledge and intelligence.

We were never idle; for, unarmed as we were, the task of procuring food for our general store was by no means a sinecure to those who undertook it.

Tom Lambourne and John Burnet, the cook, first brought us a valuable contribution in the shape of a great sea-lion, which was furnished with a rough and shaggy mane, that added greatly to its terrible aspect, for it was an unwieldy brute, as large as a small-sized cow.

They had fallen in with it when it lay basking on the beach. Burnet courageously attacked it with one of the stretchers of the long-boat,* and dealt it a severe stroke on the head.

* Stretchers are pieces of wood placed across the bottom of a boat, whereon the oarsmen place their feet that they may have additional purchase in rowing.

The animal uttered a hoarse grunt and turned upon him open-mouthed, when he thrust the staff down its throat, and held it there till Lambourne hewed off the head with his hatchet.

One or two others were afterwards despatched in the same way; but we had to lie long in wait, and could catch them only by cutting off their retreat to the water.

Their hearts and tongues were considered the best food by the sailors, who broiled them over a fire which we kindled by striking two stones together, and letting the sparks fall upon a heap of dry leaves; and to the discovery of these _impromptu_ flints we were indebted to Ned Carlton.

As for salt, I found plenty of it, baked in the crevices of the rocks upon the beach, where the spray had dried it in the hot sunshine.

The wild boars that lurked in the woods, baffled our efforts for a long time. By the edge of the hatchet we possessed, I fashioned for my own use a kind of spear, about six feet long, hewn out of a piece of fine teak wood, which I found upon the beach.

This weapon I made and pointed with great care, and armed with it frequently lay in watch for the sea-lions, but without success.

On the shore, at this season, when the sunshine was reflected from the sloping faces of the volcanic rocks and from the surface of the sea, the heat was beyond all description--intense, breathless, and suffocating, so that the lungs would collapse painfully, in the difficulty of respiration.

To breathe was like attempting it at the mouth of a newly opened furnace, and so I usually retired inland and sought the cool solitude of the deep thickets, or wandered through groves of solemn, impressive, and majestic old trees; for some were there so old, that they must have cast the shadows of their foliage on Alphonso de Albuquerque, or Tristan de Cunha, and their bearded followers.

How many ocean storms had swept their leaves into the waste of waters since then!

We had now been five days on the island without a sail being seen, though more than half our time was spent in watching the horizon; and so Tom Lambourne's old shirt still waved in vain from the boom-end on the mountain-top.

On the fifth day, however, to our surprise, the signal was no longer visible, so we supposed that a gust of wind had overthrown it in the night.

Lambourne, Carlton, and Probart started for the mountain-top to restore it, while Hislop and I rambled into the woods, where we had a view of the shining sea to the westward. The waves came in long rollers, as there was a fresh breeze blowing from the west, and the foam rose white and high on the tremendous bluffs of the Inaccessible Isles, as we named them.

All the water between them was a sheet of sparkling and snowy froth, amid which, had we been nearer, we should doubtless have seen the black heads of the sea lions, as they sported in the spray and sunshine.

On asking Hislop how far he thought we were from the continents of Africa and South America, he replied without hesitation,--

"We are about fifteen hundred miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata on the westward, and twelve hundred odd from the Cape of Good Hope on the east; but there is land nearer to us----"

"Land nearer!" I reiterated.

"There are the three isles of Tristan da Cunha, and about five hundred miles south-west of us a desolate rock called the Isle of Diego Alvarez; and fortunate it is indeed for us that we were not cast away _there_, as it yields only mossy grass, and now and then a few seals or sea-elephants may be seen upon the reefs about it. But, Dick Rodney, does it not make one long to be afloat again, with a good ship underfoot, both tacks and the breeze too, aft?--a cloud of canvas, carrying the three masts into one when seen astern--the lower studding-sail booms rigged out and dipping in the flying spray as she rolls from side to side--does it not, I say, bring all this to mind, when from here we can watch the waves that rose, perhaps, upon the shores of Mexico rolling in foam between these rocky isles? Do you remember Homer's description of the curling wave?" And without waiting my reply he began to recite from the _Iliad_, with wonderful facility:

"As on the hoarse resounding shore, when blows the stormy west, The billowy tide comes surging wide, from ocean's dark blue breast; First in mid-sea 'tis born, then swells and rages more and more, And rolling on with snowy back, comes thundering near the shore; Then rears its crest, firm and sublime, and with tumultuous bray Smites the grim front of the rugged rock, and _spits_ the briny spray."

How far Hislop in his classical enthusiasm might have pursued his free translation, till we had all the deeds of Agamemnon and others on that tremendous day before the walls of Troy, I cannot say, had not a crashing sound in the adjacent thicket roused and alarmed us.

We started up, and had just time to conceal ourselves behind the trunk of a tree, when a herd of seven wild boars came plunging out of the thicket to drink at a runnel which flowed toward the sea.

They were unlike any of the swinish race we had ever seen before; and but for our vague sensations of alarm we could have watched them with pleasure, as they inserted their long fierce snouts in the water that sparkled under the forest leaves.

They were all broad-shouldered animals, with high crests and thick bristly manes; and all were black in color or darkly brindled.

Unlike those of the sty-fed hogs to which we had been accustomed at home, their erected bristles shone like silver or polished steel in the rays of sunshine that fell through the waving branches; their eyes were flashing and clear, and their skins were all clean as if washed for a show of prize pigs.

Thin flanked, active, and strong, they began to grunt and gambol, and to splash up the glittering water, till suddenly they caught sight of us, and all fled save one, a fierce old boar, which, after tearing up the grass with his hind feet, came resolutely forward, showing a pair of tusks that made me tremble for the calves of my legs if I ventured to run off, and still more for those of poor Hislop, who was alike unable to escape or confront him.

Fortunately I had my teak-wood spear.

While keeping a tree between me and the boar, he prepared for the offensive by whetting his terrible tusks against a stone and grunting hoarsely.

Excited and bewildered, as he came on at a quick run, I charged my weapon full at him, and by the mercy of Providence, the point entered one of his fierce glittering eyes, which made him rear and recoil, while in his rage and pain the bristles on his ridgy back rose up like little blades of steel.

"Into his throat with your spear!" cried Hislop; but I anticipated the suggestion, for ere the words had left his lips, I had buried--thrusting deep with all the force that excitement and terror gave me--the pointed teak-wood shaft down his red and gaping throat.

Choking in blood, in foam and fury, the great boar writhed upon his back, and in doing so twitched from my hands the weapon, which still remained wedged in his throat and tongue, and rendered him almost powerless. I knew not what to do now, for if he snapped it through, and thus released himself, we, or I at least, would be lost.

But as he lay there on his back and sides alternately, snorting, roaring, and covering the grass with bloody froth, and tearing it by his bristles, Hislop sprang forward, and though weak with many half-healed wounds, drove a clasp-knife repeatedly into the throat and stomach of the monster, which soon lay still enough.

When it was quite dead, I drew out my teakwood spear, and found the point almost uninjured, for I had hardened it in fire.

We thrust two crooked branches through the tendons of the boar's hind-legs, and by these drew it to our hut, which was about half a mile distant; there our prize caused great congratulation among our crew, and I obtained no little praise for performing so hardy a feat.

Our return diverted for a time some excitement and surprise which had been caused by the return of Tom Lambourne, Probart, and Carlton from the mountain-top, with tidings that the studding-sail boom had vanished, and that not a trace of it was to be found anywhere!