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I hailed back, expressing my thanks for the offer, and at once sent away a boat for the medico, not caring that Christie should run the risk of sending away a boat's crew out of his own scanty company. In about ten minutes the boat returned, bringing in her a little, swarthy, burnt-up specimen of a Spaniard, and a most portentous-looking case of surgical instruments.
"Oh, the soft tops of the hedges on the way to the Hill of Horns sweet in the mouth of a goat they should be," said the Hag of the Ashes. "But my own poor goat wants to stay here and eat the tops of the burnt-up thistles." "Why didn't you tell me of the hedges on the way to the Hill of Horns before?" said the goat, rising to his feet. "To the Hill of Horns I'll go."
What added most of all, however, to this quaint new sense of vastness and freedom was the occasional appearance of naked blacks, roaming at large through the burnt-up fields of which till lately they had been undisputed possessors.
The church and chapel were a heap of burnt-up and smouldering ruins, our mess-house the same, and numerous bungalows former residences of the officers were still on fire. The heat from the burning embers was intense, and as we passed slowly by we viewed, with anger in our hearts, the lamentable results of the timidity and vacillation, the irresolution and culpable neglect, of one man.
But it was soon evident that, with the exception of Thaouka, the wearied animals could not go quicker than a walking pace. At noon they were obliged to let them rest for an hour. They could not go on at all, and refused to eat the ALFAFARES, a poor, burnt-up sort of lucerne that grew there. Glenarvan began to be uneasy.
We are all charmed with the luxuriance of a semi-tropical landscape, so violently charmed that we become in time tired of its overpowering bloom and color. But what is the charm of the wide, treeless desert, the leagues of sand and burnt-up chaparral, the distant savage, fantastic mountains, the dry desolation as of a world burnt out? It is not contrast altogether.
I cannot say I was much charmed with the place, it had such a burnt-up, barren appearance. Close to the village is a mangrove swamp, and the whole bay is enclosed with high hills. At the back of the mission premises, and close to them, is a large swampy place, which in wet weather is full of water. There can be no doubt about Port Moresby being a very unhealthy place.
"Then you knew I would come?" I began, as she seated herself on the burnt-up herbage, while my hand stole into hers, to nestle there naturally. She pressed it in return. "Oh, yes; I knew you would come," she answered, with that strange ring of confidence in her voice. "Of course you got my letter at Cape Town?" "I did, Hilda and I wondered at you more than ever as I read it.
On the slopes and in the plains, endless rows of scrubby, ugly trees, powdered with the universal dust, and looking exactly like mop-sticks. Sprawling and straggling over the soil beneath them, jungles of burnt-up, leafless bushes, tangled, and apparently neglected.
We go abroad and revel in real sunshine, and come home with glowing memories to abuse our own cloudy skies; but they come from burnt-up landscapes to refresh their eyes with our perpetual green. Even a little grassplot well repays pains and care. If you have to make it, never use cheap seed.
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