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Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific—the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam.
And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
For the rest there was a wide-rolling, sandy plain of great extent, surrounded on three sides by rocky hills and ridges, and patched with coarse, starveling grass or occasional bushes. By the banks of the river which framed the picture on the left stood a straggling mud village, and this, though we did not know it, was to be the field of Omdurman. It was deserted.
And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
Even as the new couriers came speeding through the veil of falling flakes, riding jubilantly over the wide-rolling prairie with their news of victory and battle, the post commander at Fort Frayne was puzzling over a missive that had come to him, he knew not how, mysterious as the anarchists' warnings said to find their way to the very bedside of the guarded Romanoffs.
To-day acres upon acres of tea are grown in Cachar; and the inland steamers, which ply all through the rainy season up and down the wide-rolling stream of the river Barak, bring down for export millions of pounds of tea for the "cheering cup". Cachar is rich in forests, and tigers and other wild animals are there in plenty.
At length the two leaders of the expedition, industriously scouting daily toward the direction in which they wished to travel, found that they had reached a point where it would be safe for them to leave the river and strike away toward the west and north-west, and they immediately did so, the country in that direction being free from fly, and consisting of wide-rolling plateaux, rising one beyond another, somewhat like broad, shallow steps, with a solitary, lofty hill rising in the extreme distance.
I had made up my mind from the first to be guided by his judgment. One thing was very certain, that we could not stop where we were. Our only chance of safety depended on our pushing on. `Where to? I thought. I saw nothing but the wide-rolling, blackened prairie before me. The sight alone was depressing, independent of the anticipation of coming evil. Hour after hour passed.
The Delaware was an excellent travelling companion, and I believe that without him the Indians would speedily have found me out, and would have left me without a top to my head. We had quitted the banks of the river, and were progressing across a wide-rolling prairie. Although the wind when it blew was keen, the sun had still at midday great power.
Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam.
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