LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 137, 7 November 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ADVENTURES ON THE MOSQUITO. [ From Temple Bar. \ Con dueled. ‘ I proposed to rest at the foot of a tiny volcano, round and smooth as a hemisphere. ‘ There is water on the other side,’ suggested my Indian mozo, and we went thither. Not only was water found in the dell, but also tress, of dimensions rare throughout that district. My guide looked round with the air of a man who has memories stirring in his brain, and observed, ‘lt was here we fought the filibusters, senor. ’ ‘ How was that ?’ I asked, knowing little better than other Europeans the details of Walker’s war. Then he told me, in the epic manner, how one Turley organised a band of rowdies in California for wholesale robbery in this land under cover of the war, and how he passed them off on Walker’s agents as experienced soldiers, which perhaps they were; how they refused to separate, and were enrolled as an entire company in the ‘ Rangers ’ how they deserted in a body at the first oppor trinity, and marched through the ‘ Oriental ’ murdering and plundering the scanty population, and how the French diggers of Libertad gathered a force of _ natives and murdered the rowdies man on this very spot But he omitted to tell me another detail—how the false filibusters had been tricked of their arms under a promise of amnesty. Nevertheless, this story was interesting to me, as a curious suggestion of the possibilities still extant in our nineteenth century—not yet twelve years ago ! and it passed the time agreeably. ‘But on setting-out again'l perceived a change in the atmosphere at our first ste: from the shadow of the dell. ‘ What is this ?’ I asked the Indian, shivering with cold and a general depression. ‘An ouragan, I fear, senor !’ he answered, in manifest uneasiness. I paused, knowing well enough by hearsay the terror of these storms to be aware our further journey was impossible. ‘ What is to be done V’ I asked. ‘ ILw long have we still before it breaks?’ ‘Half an hour at the outside,’ he answered, looking up at the darkening sky. ‘ I feared it this morning, but the Indians laughed at me.’ ‘ By the way,’ the Caballero interrupted himself, ‘it is curious that the aborigines of Central America always speak of one another as Indians, using the word, apparently, almost as a title to be proud of. ‘ After a hurried consultation it was decided to stay in our present position until the storm should pass, seeing we were safe from the wind under our little volcano, and that we could not possibly cross the Lagarto stream before it broke. And so we sat down, tied the mules with double ropes, and waited the event, wrapped in our thick horse-rugs. And all their warmth was needed. More and more piercing the cold became, more and more dark the sky. Birds, whose presence w r e had not suspected, began to twitter nervously in the tress below ; but the stillness of the heavens was terrible. The frozen air seemed to pour down on us in waves, but no vibration could be noted in the atmosphere. Darker it grew and darker, till all the land was swiftly shrouded over. An indiscribable terror possessjd us both ; the mules cowered closely down upon the ground, with their legs gathered under them, like rabbits squatting, and their noses pressed to earth. The Indian’s face was pinched with cold and anxiety ; he shivered under his chamarra. ‘ Suddenly a frozen gust came shrieking over the mountains, then another, and the ouragan burst forth. Following the example of mules and man, I threw myself fiat on the slope of the volcano, and clung tightly. The roar of the tempest as it passed was as the voice of a nation shouting; not with gradual violence it broke out, as°in our calm lands, but all in a moment, resistless, merciless. Clods of earth, branches, even small stones, as the Indian declared, whizzed in mid-air over our heads, the hurtle of their furious flight riding shrilly on the thunderous music of the wind. Every leaf and every smaller bough was stripped from the cotton trees beneath us, and whirled over hill and valley to the far Atlantic. Our prostrate bodies were plucked and struck as with giant hands. And then, in the very thickest of the storm, as if the horror of it were not yet sufficient, as if Nature desired to show us all her dread power in these lands, in the very thickest of the storm, while we lay pressed close to earth, stifling, breathless, deafened with its din and violence, I felt the sharp sick shudder of an earthquake. The big trunks in the dell, protected hitherto by cover of the land, then crashed swiftly down; when the first gave way, they fell, as we could note afterwards, like ninepins in a row, each overthrowing its neighbour. Not a stem survived; but so horrid was the roaring that scarce a sound of their downfall reached our ears.

‘ How long that scene lasted, I cannot tell ; perhaps not more than fifteen minutes, perhaps half an hour. Compared with Eastern typhoons, or even with the hurricanes of the Atlantic coast, it was but a little storm maybe, yet I will admit I was nearly frightened from my wits. The rugs were t irn to tatters on our backs ; we could not breathe except with mouths resting on the turf. I would not disparage the grander storms of other lands, but that little ouragan on the Gold Mountains was quite startling enough for my ambition. And when the wind had passed by in its mad career towards Blewfields, the rain began. It poured on us in a cataract that threatened to wash the hills bodily away. But we could get no shelter, of course ; there was no rcsoiuee but patience. Miserably we sat under the volcano’s lee, and let the torrent fall upon our heads. About a quarter of an hour we had rested there, and already each dell ami burn was a raging cataract. For you I need not plunce into poetical extravagence to describe the violence of that rain ; in either tropic it comes down with equal foicc wnen the flood-gates of heaven arc thus opened. Suddenly we heard a sound of shouting, which rose above the swish a id thudding of the water. ‘There’s a man in the dell below !’ shouted the Indian in my ear, but with no sign of interest in his stolid face. ‘ That man will lie drowned !’ he argued, calmly.

‘Alone, I dashed down the sudden slope, and stood upon its crumbling edge, looking eagerly into the hollow. Not an hour since we had admiral the verdure of its foliage, and gazed with delight upon the stately trunks that sprang along its peaceful brook; now, the dell was tilled full with a tumult of

muddy waves, tugging this way and that, struggling, foaming, roaring. The trees were all uprooted and broken, the little brook was a furious river. And right beneath me, among the tangle of boughs, a man struggled madly against the gathering waters. It was not- in my power to render hi n aid; I could but shout encouragement, and watch his efforts with sickening sympathy. Again and again he fell, and with each instant the torrent swelled. The houghs were twisted round his feet, but he dung to them desperately. And all the while he shouted hoarsely, and struggled on. I ran to the cowering mules, and, hastily tying their halters togethers, threw the rope towards the drowning man. Not till the fourth or fifth cast did he seem to see the means of safety, or to understand my intention, though I called my loudest, and the rope fell close beside him. But at length he grasped it, and we dragged him out. Again and again the undermined bank gave way, and ones he lost his hold; but we threw the noose again, just as the water swept him off, and dragged him safe to land. ‘ But his behaviour, when thus extricated from deadly peril, was not encouraging to the philanthropic spirit. With a wild oath he dashed off our hands, and tore away over the hill-side, heedless of our calls. Recovering his feet, the Indian gave vent to an angry ‘ carajo ! and sullenly retired. Alone I pursued the madman, chasing him with many a slide and fall over the slippery turf, until at length he came down headlong and lay still. It has often struck me since how very comic our race must have seemed to a bystander able to appreciate the humorous ; but that-divine gift an all-wise Providence has denied the Indian character. Tic fell, as I have said, and I approached him cautiously, re'membering the tale just tdd, and the dangeious fury of my filibuster friend in a case somewhat similar. He did not move, but lay helpless on the ground, glarin'* at me with the wild eyes of a maniac. I called the Indian, .and, most unwillingly, he aided me to carry the rescued man towards our mules. < It was not for some hours after that he recovered strength and sense to tell his story. We got him to Juigalpa, and, in a horrid little inn there, the best house that town (!) can boast, he narrated to me the concatenation of circumstances which had thus turned his brain. It would appear that, knowing the country well, it was the habit of this man, to break his journey in the dell of which I have told you, and to sleep away the hottest hours of the day in a certain grotto which existed there. In that cavern he was, no doubt, when we descended to lunch, and there remained, having partaken freely of a<*aurdiente, or schnaps, or some such pleasant liquor, until the ouragan broke out. That roused him, as indeed its fury might almost have roused those dead chieftains in the cairns around. He fought his way to the entrance —to be dashed back instantly, bruised and terror-stricken, by the unchained winds. Bewildered by the fall, deafened with that unearthly shrieking and thunder, he lay awhile upon the cavern floor, until the heaving of the ‘ trembler, the crash of falling stones and tossing of the earth, recalled his consciousness. Instinct caused him once again to dash at the cavern s mouth ; but again he was driven back. The situation indeed was horrible : exposed to a fearful death inside, to be buried alive under the heaving roof but unable to escape. After the second effort, he lay still awhile, helpless and half-unconscious with fear. But a dreadful sound roused the hunted man to life again. Louder than the roar without, more horrible, more full of deadly terror than any sound of an inanimate the voice of the jaguar stunned his ears. Close beside him it burst out, echoing from rock to rock, from floor to roof, from every quarter of the vault at once. Peal after peal, beaten back and rebounding, that awful threat thundered round. For a moment he strove to trace the sound, to spy two flaming eyes in the darkness; but no sign was to°be noted, no clue discovered. Again and again that roar broke forth, above, below,° and on every side. Then he went mad ; and I, for one, say, No shame to him ! A ‘tiger s’ voice is fearful to hear, you men, whether in the Eastern jungle or on a lonely mountain of America; but in a black cavern, where no man can tell whence it comes nor where the beast may be, that menace is a trial few nerves could bear. Try'for yourselves ! Only go with a savage dog into a vaulted cellar, and hear the bewildering echo of his bark ! The whole space will ring, and no man, however experienced, could guess what danger is to be expected. That mystery made the horror of the scene. My friend— I call him friend, for he wandered many a day with me—was very brave; but his nerves, already greatly tried, could not bear that strain, He dashed headlong from the cavern, where death in three dreadful shapes was threatening, wind and earthquake and the tiger’s claws. And on the threshold, as though fate had leagued all elements against his life, he fell into the raging cataract from which I had rescued him. ‘ The Lord made a dead set at me that time,’ James used to say, in quaint yet not consciously irreverent phrase ; but there was work found for me somewhere on a sudden, an’ you was appinted for to lug me out of that there circumstance where the Lord had fixed me. Bound to be work soraewh re for me, for He don't make no sport of man, nor yet He han’t such an idle time as He should do miracles in fun. An’ I’m ready for that work, sir, ready an’ gay, when the name an’ natur’ of it is revealed to me. ’ Once, after this usual declaration, he added with dry humour, ‘There’s a many as shows kindness to me in giving their notion of the w >rk, what it may be. Some thinks it would lie in just loafing round with a revolver ; others reckon it up as a matter of strolling on the Oamino Reale every dark night, with an empty belt, a sharp machete, and a chance of diggers from Libertad. Then there was one fat man, down to Lem, t’other day, as seemed to notion I’d kinder do Lord’s work in the Chicago pig-trade ; and at Matagalpa there was a good man as hinted strong that the hand of Providence, in his opinion, had marked me for horse-lifting as plain as earthquakes. I don’t see as it’s any of them things. But there’s some work, sir, some big work, as I were saved for, an’, please God, that work I’ll do !’ ‘ Bravo, Caballero !’ cried the sailor. ‘ Your last story reminds me of something —But it’s nearly two o’clock, gentlemen, and I try to be virtuous ! Do any of our roads lie together? Good night!’ And we go homewards, with a consciousness of having spent the evening more profitably and more pleasantly than nine hundred and ninety-nine men of every thousand in this dreary London.