CHAPTER II.OFFICIAL PRESENTATIONS.[edit]
For the next three days, the 28th, 29th, and 30th of
January, Mokoum and William Emery never left the place
of rendezvous. While the bushman, carried away by his
hunting instincts, pursued the game and deer in the wooded
district lying near the cataract, the young astronomer
watched the river. The sight of this grand, wild nature
enchanted him, and filled his soul with new emotions.
Accustomed as he was to bend over his figures and catalogues
day and night, hardly ever leaving the eye-piece
of his telescope, watching the passage of stars across the
meridian and their occupations, he delighted in the open-air
life in the almost impenetrable woods which covered the
slope of the hills, and on the lonely peaks that were sprinkled
by the spray from the Morgheda as with a damp dust.
It was joy to him to take in the poetry of these vast solitudes,
and to refresh his mind, so wearied with his mathematical
speculations; and so he beguiled the tediousness
of his waiting, and became a new man, both in mind and
body. Thus did the novelty of his situation explain his
unvarying patience, which the bushman could not share in
the least; so there were continually on the part of Mokoum
the same recriminations, and on the part of Emery the
same quiet answers, which, however, did not quiet the
nervous hunter in the smallest degree.
And now the 31st of January had come, the last day
fixed in Airy's letter. If the expected party did not then
arrive, Emery would be in a very embarrassing position;
the delay might be indefinitely prolonged. How long,
then, ought he to wait?
“Mr. William,” said the hunter, “why shouldn't we go
to meet these strangers? We cannot miss them; there is
only one road, that by the river, and if they are coming up,
as your bit of paper says they are, we are sure to meet
them.”
“That is a capital idea of yours, Mokoum,” replied the
astronomer: “we will go on and look out below the falls.
We can get back to the encampment by the side valleys
in the south. But tell me, my good bushman, you know
nearly the whole course of the river, do you not?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the hunter, “I have ascended it
twice from Cape Voltas to its juncture with the Hart on
the frontier of the Transvaal Republic.”
“And it is navigable all the way, except at the Falls of
Morgheda?”
“Just so, sir,” replied the bushman. “But I should add
that at the end of the dry season the Orange has not much
water till within five or six miles of its mouth; there is then
a bar, where the swell from the west breaks very violently.”
“That doesn't matter,” answered the astronomer, “because
at the time that our friends want to land it will be
all right. There is nothing then to keep them back, so
they will come.”
The bushman said nothing, but shouldering his gun, and
whistling to Top, he led the way down the narrow path
which met the river again 400 feet lower.
It was then nine o'clock in the morning, and the two
explorers (for such they might truly be called) followed the
river by its left bank. Their way did not offer the smooth
and easy surface of an embankment or towing-path, for
the river-banks were covered with brushwood, and quite
hidden in a bower of every variety of plants; and the festoons
of the “cynauchum filiform,” mentioned by Burchell,
hanging from tree to tree, formed quite a network of verdure
in their path; the bushman's knife, however, did not
long remain inactive, and he cut down the obstructive
branches without mercy. William Emery drank in the
fragrant air, here especially impregnated with the camphor-like
odour of the countless blooms of the diosma. Happily
there were sometimes more open places along the bank
devoid of vegetation, where the river flowed quietly, and
abounded in fish, and these enabled the hunter and his
companion to make better progress westward, so that by
eleven o'clock they had gone about four miles.
The wind
being in the west, the roar of the cataract could not be
heard at that distance, but on the other hand, all sounds
below the falls were very distinct.
William Emery and the
hunter, as they stood, could see straight down the river for
three or four miles. Chalk cliffs, 200 feet high, overhung
and shut in its bed on either side.
“Let us stop and rest here,” said the astronomer; “I
haven't your hunter's legs, Mokoum, and am more used to
the starry paths of the heavens than to those on terra firma;
so let us have a rest; we can see three or four miles down
the river from here, and if the steamer should turn that last
bend we are sure to see it.”
The young astronomer seated himself against a giant
euphorbia, forty feet high, and in that position looked down
the river, while the hunter, little used to sitting, continued
to walk along the bank, and Top roused up clouds of wild
birds, to which, however, his master gave no heed.
They
had been here about half an hour, when William Emery
noticed that Mokoum, who was standing about 100 feet
below him, gave signs of a closer attention. Was it likely
that he had seen the long-expected boat?
The astronomer,
leaving his mossy couch, started for the spot where the
hunter stood, and came up to him in a very few moments.
“Do you see any thing, Mokoum?” he asked.
“I ”see” nothing, Mr. William,” answered the bushman,
“but it seems to me that there is an unusual murmur down
the river, different to the natural sounds that are so familiar
to my ears.”
And then, telling his companion to be quiet,
he lay down with his ear on the ground, and listened attentively.
In a few minutes he got up, and shaking his head,
said,—
“I was mistaken; the noise I thought I heard was
nothing but the breeze among the leaves or the murmur
of the water over the stones at the edge; and yet—”
The hunter listened again, but again heard nothing.
“Mokoum,” then said Mr. William Emery, “if the noise
you thought you heard is caused by the machinery of a
steamboat, you would hear better by stooping to the level
of the river; water always conducts sound more clearly
and quickly than air.”
“You are right, Mr. William,” answered Mokoum, “for
more than once I have found out the passage of a hippopotamus
across the river in that way.”
The bushman went nimbly down the bank, clinging to
the creepers and tufts of grass on his way. When he got
to the level of the river, he went in to his knees, and stooping
down, laid his ear close to the water.
“Yes!” he exclaimed, in a few minutes, “I was not mistaken;
there is a sound, some miles down, as if the waters
were being violently beaten; it is a continual monotonous
splashing which is introduced into the current.”
“Is it like a screw?” asked the astronomer.
“Perhaps it is, Mr. Emery; they are not far off.”
William Emery did not hesitate to believe his companion's
assertion, for he knew that the hunter was endowed
with great delicacy of sense, whether he used his
eyes, nose, or ears. Mokoum climbed up the bank again,
and they determined to wait in that place, as they could
easily see down the river from there.
Half an hour passed,
which to Emery, in spite of his calmness, appeared interminable.
Ever so many times he fancied he saw the dim
outline of a boat gliding along the water, but he was always
mistaken. At last an exclamation from the bushman made
his heart leap.
“Smoke!” cried Mokoum.
Looking in the direction indicated by the bushman,
Emery could just see a light streak rolling round the bend
of the river: there was no longer any doubt.
The vessel
advanced rapidly, and he could soon make out the funnel
pouring forth a torrent of black smoke mingling with white
steam. They had evidently made up their fires to increase
their speed, so as to reach the appointed place on the exact
day. The vessel was still about seven miles from the Falls
of Morgheda.
It was then twelve o'clock, and as it was not
a good place for landing, the astronomer determined to
return to the foot of the cataract: he told his plan to the
hunter, who only answered by turning back along the path
he had just cleared along the left bank of the stream.
Emery followed, and, turning round for the last time at a
bend in the river, saw the British flag floating from the
stern of the vessel.
The return to the falls was soon effected,
and in an hour's time the bushman and the astronomer
halted a quarter of a mile below the cataract; for
there the shore, hollowed into a semicircle, formed a little
creek, and as the water was deep right up to the bank, the
steamboat could easily land its passengers.
The vessel
could not be far off now, and it had certainly gained on the
two pedestrians, although they had walked so fast; it was
not yet in sight, for the lofty trees which hung quite
over the river-banks into the water, and the slope of the
banks themselves, did not allow of an extensive view. But
although they could not hear the sound made by the steam,
the shrill whistle of the machinery broke in distinctly on
the monotonous roar of the cataract; and as this whistling
continued, it was evident that it was a signal from the boat
to announce its arrival near the falls.
The hunter replied
by letting off his gun, the report being repeated with a
crash by the echoes of the shore.
At last the vessel was in
sight, and William Emery and his companion were seen by
those on board.
At a sign from the astronomer the vessel
turned, and glided quietly alongside the bank; a rope was
thrown ashore, which the bushman seized and twisted round
the broken stump of a tree, and immediately a tall man
sprang lightly on to the bank, and went towards the astronomer,
whilst his companions landed in their turn.
William
Emery also advanced to meet the stranger, saying inquiringly,
“Colonel Everest?”
“Mr. William Emery?” answered the Colonel.
The astronomer bowed and shook hands.
“Gentlemen,” then said Colonel Everest, “let me introduce
you to Mr. William Emery, of the Cape Town Observatory,
who has kindly come as far as the Morgheda Falls
to meet us.”
Four of the passengers who stood near Colonel Everest
bowed to the young astronomer, who did the same; and
then the Colonel, with his British self-possession, introduced
them officially, saying,—
“Mr. Emery, Sir John Murray, of the county of Devon,
your fellow-countryman; Mr. Matthew Strux, of the Poulkowa
Observatory; Mr. Nicholas Palander, of the Helsingfors
Observatory; and Mr. Michael Zorn, of the Kiew
Observatory, three scientific gentlemen who represent the
Russian government in our international commission.”
