Our Home in the Silver West: A Story of Struggle and Adventure

'I've just disposed of my mither,' he said, as if she had been a piece of goods and he had sold her. 'I've just disposed of the poor dear creature, and maybe she won't appear again till we're across the bay.'

'You did not take the lady below?'

'There's no' much of the lady about my mither, though I'm doing all I can to make her one. No; I didn't take her below. Fact is, we have state apartments, as you might say, for I've rented the second lieutenant's and purser's cabins. There they are, cheek-by-jowl, as cosy as wrens'-nests, just abaft the cook's galley amidships yonder.'

'Well,' I said, 'I hope your mother will be happy and enjoy the voyage.'

'Hurrah!' shouted the Scot; 'we're off at last! Now for a fair wind and a clear sea to the shores of the Silver West. I'll run and tell my mither we're off.'

That evening the sun sank on the western waves with a crimson glory that spoke of fine weather to follow. We were steaming down channel with just enough sail set to give us some degree of steadiness.

Though my brothers and I had never been to sea before, we had been used to roughing it in storms around the coast and on Loch Coila, and probably this may account for our immunity from that terror of the ocean, mal-de-mer. As for aunt, she was an excellent sailor. The saloon, when we went below to dinner, was most gay, beautifully lighted, and very home-like. The officers present were the captain, the surgeon, and one lieutenant. The captain was president, while the doctor occupied the chair of vice. Both looked thorough sailors, and both appeared as happy as kings. There seemed also to exist a perfect understanding between the pair, and their remarks and anecdotes kept the passengers in excellent good humour during dinner.

The doctor had been the first to enter, and he came sailing in with aunt, whom he seated on his right hand. Now aunt was the only young lady among the passengers, and she certainly had dressed most becomingly. I could not help admiring her – so did the doctor, but so also did the captain.

When he entered he gave his surgeon a comical kind of a look and shook his head.

'Walked to windward of me, I see!' he said. 'Miss M'Crimman,' he added, 'we don't, as a rule, keep particular seats at table in this ship.'

'Don't believe a word he says, Miss M'Crimman!' cried the doctor. 'Look, he's laughing! He never is serious when he smiles like that. Steward, what is the number of this chair?'

'Fifteen, sir.'

'Fifteen, Miss M'Crimman, and you won't forget it; and this table-napkin ring, observe, is Gordon tartan, green and black and orange.'

'Miss M'Crimman,' the captain put in, as if the doctor had not said a word, 'to-morrow evening, for example, you will have the honour to sit on my right.'

'Honour, indeed!' laughed the doctor.

'The honour to sit on my right. You will find I can tell much better stories than old Conserve-of-roses there; and I feel certain you will not sit anywhere else all the voyage!'

'Ah, stay one moments!' cried a merry-looking little Spaniard, who had just entered and seated himself quietly at the table; 'the young lady weel not always sit dere, or dere, for sometime she weel have de honour to sit at my right hand, for example, eh, capitan?'

There was a hearty laugh at these words, and after this, every one seemed on the most friendly terms with every one else, and willing to serve every one else first and himself last. This is one good result that accrues from travelling, and I have hardly ever yet known a citizen of the world who could be called selfish.

There were three other ladies at table to-night, each of whom sat by her husband's side. Though they were all in what Dr. Spinks afterwards termed the sere and yellow leaf, both he and the good captain really vied with each other in paying kindly attention to their wants.

So pleasantly did this our first dinner on board pass over that by the time we had risen from our seats we felt, one and all, as if we had known each other for a very long time indeed.

Next came our evening concert. One of the married ladies played exceedingly well, and the little Spanish gentleman sang like a minor Sims Reeves.

'Your sister sings, I feel sure,' he said to me.

'My aunt plays the harp and sings,' I answered.

'And the harp – you have him?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, bring him – bring him! I do love de harp!'

While my aunt played and sang, it would have been difficult to say which of her audience listened with the most delighted attention. The doctor's face was a study; the captain looked tenderly serious; Captain Bombazo, the black-moustachioed Spaniard, was animation personified; his dark eyes sparkled like diamonds, his very eyelids appeared to snap with pleasure. Even the stewards and stewardess lingered in the passage to listen with respectful attention, so that it is no wonder we boys were proud of our clever aunt.

When she ceased at last there was that deep silence which is far more eloquent than applause. The first to break it was Moncrieff.

'Well,' he said, with a deep sigh, 'I never heard the like o' that afore!'

The friendly relations thus established in the saloon lasted all the voyage long – so did the captain's, the doctor's, and little Spanish officer's attentions to my aunt. She had made a triple conquest; three hearts, to speak figuratively, lay at her feet.

Our voyage was by no means a very eventful one, and but little different from thousands of others that take place every month.

Some degree of merriment was caused among the men, when, on the fourth day, big Moncrieff led his mother out to walk the quarter-deck leaning on his arm. She was indeed a marvel. It would have been impossible even to guess at her age; for though her face was as yellow as a withered lemon, and as wrinkled as a Malaga rasin, she walked erect and firm, and was altogether as straight as a rush. She was dressed with an eye to comfort, for, warm though the weather was getting, her cloak was trimmed with fur. On her head she wore a neat old-fashioned cap, and in her hand carried a huge green umbrella, which evening and morning she never laid down except at meals.

This umbrella was a weapon of offence as well as defence. We had proof of that on the very first day, for as he passed along the deck the second steward had the bad manners to titter. Next moment the umbrella had descended with crushing force on his head, and he lay sprawling in the lee scuppers.

'I'll teach ye,' she said, 'to laugh at an auld wife, you gang-the-gate swinger.'

'Mither! mither!' pleaded Moncrieff, 'will you never be able to behave like a lady?'

The steward crawled forward crestfallen, and the men did not let him forget his adventure in a hurry.

'Mither's a marrvel,' Moncrieff whispered to me more than once that evening, for at table no 'laird's lady' could have behaved so well, albeit her droll remarks and repartee kept us all laughing. After dinner it was just the same – there were no bounds to her good-nature, her excellent spirits and comicality. Even when asked to sing she was by no means taken aback, but treated us to a ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus to each; but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege, of villainy for a time in the ascendant, and virtue triumphant at the end, it really was not a bit wearisome; and when Moncrieff told us that she could sing a hundred more as good, we all agreed that his mother was indeed a marvel.

I have said the voyage was uneventful, but this is talking as one who has been across the wide ocean many times and oft. No long voyage can be uneventful; but nothing very dreadful happened to mar our passage to Rio de Janeiro. We were not caught in a tornado; we were not chased by a pirate; we saw no suspicious sail; no ghostly voice hailed us from aloft at the midnight hour; no shadowy form beckoned us from a fog. We did not even spring a leak, nor did the mainyard come tumbling down. But we did have foul weather off Finisterre; a man did fall overboard, and was duly picked up again; a shark did follow the ship for a week, but got no corpse to devour, only the contents of the cook's pail, sundry bullets from sundry revolvers, and, finally, a red-hot brick rolled in a bit of blanket. Well, of course, a man fell from aloft and knocked his shoulder out – a man always does – and Mother Carey's chickens flew around our stern, boding bad weather, which never came, and shoals of porpoises danced around us at sunset, and we saw huge whales pursuing their solitary path through the bosom of the great deep, and we breakfasted off flying fish, and caught Cape pigeons, and wondered at the majestic flight of the albatross; and we often saw lightning without hearing thunder, and heard thunder without seeing lightning; and in due course we heard the thrilling shout from aloft of 'Land ho!' and heard the officer of the watch sing out, 'Where away?'

And lo and behold! three or four hours afterwards we were all on deck marvelling at the rugged grandeur of the shores of Rio, and the wondrous steeple-shaped mountain that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at the entrance to the marvellous haven.

When this was in sight, Moncrieff rushed off into the cabin and bore his mother out.

He held the old lady aloft, on one arm, shouting, as he pointed landwards —

'Look, mither, look! the Promised Land! Our new home in the Silver West!'

CHAPTER VII.
ON SHORE AT RIO

It was well on in the afternoon when land was sighted, but so accurately had the ship been navigated for all the long, pleasant weeks of our voyage that both the captain and his first officer might easily have been excused for showing a little pride in their seamanship. Your British sailor, however, is always a modest man, and there was not the slightest approach to bombast. The ship was now slowed, for we could not cross the bar that night.

At the dinner-table we were all as merry as schoolboys on the eve of a holiday. Old Jenny, as Moncrieff's mother had come to be called, was in excellent spirits, and her droll remarks not only made us laugh, but rendered it very difficult indeed for the stewards to wait with anything approaching to sang-froid. Moncrieff was quietly happy. He seemed pleased his mother was so great a favourite. Aunt, in her tropical toilet, looked angelic. The adjective was applied by our mutual friend Captain Roderigo de Bombazo, and my brothers and I agreed that he had spoken the truth for once in a way. Did he not always speak the truth? it may be asked. I am not prepared to accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate falsehood, but if everything he told us was true, then he must indeed have come through more wild and terrible adventures, and done more travelling and more fighting, than any lion-hunter that ever lived and breathed.

He was highly amusing nevertheless, and as no one, with the exception of Jenny, ever gave any evidence of doubting what he said and related concerning his strange career, he was encouraged to carry on; and even the exploits of Baron Munchausen could not have been compared to some of his. I think it used to hurt his feelings somewhat that old Jenny listened so stolidly to his relations, for he used to cater for her opinion at times.

'Ah!' Jenny would say, 'you're a wonderful mannie wi' your way o't! And what a lot you've come through! I wonder you have a hair in your heed!'

'But the señora believes vot I say?'

'Believe ye? If a' stories be true, yours are no lees, and I'm not goin' ahint your back to tell ye, sir.'

Once, on deck, he was drawing the long-bow, as the Yankees call it, at a prodigious rate. He was telling how, once upon a time, he had caught a young alligator; how he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster twenty feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride through the streets of Tulcora on its back – men, women, and children screaming and flying in all directions; how, armed only with his good sabre, he rode it into a lake which was infested with these dread saurians; how he was attacked in force by the awful reptiles, and how he had killed and wounded so many that they lay dead in dozens next day along the banks.

'Humph!' grunted old Jenny when he had finished.

The little captain put the questions,

'Ah! de aged señora not believe! De aged señora not have seen much of de world?'

Jenny had grasped her umbrella.

'Look here, my mannie,' she said, 'I'll gie ye a caution; dinna you refer to my age again, or I'll "aged-snorer" you. If ye get the weight o' my gingham on your shou'ders, ye'll think a coo has kick't ye – so mind.'

And the Spanish captain had slunk away very unlike a lion-hunter, but he never called Jenny old again.

To-night, however, even before we had gone below, Jenny had given proofs that she was in an extra good temper, for being a little way behind Bombazo – as if impelled by some sudden and joyous impulse – she lifted that everlasting umbrella and hit him a friendly thwack that could be heard from bowsprit to binnacle.

'Tell as mony lees the nicht as ye like, my mannie,' she cried, 'and I'll never contradict ye, for I've seen the promised land!'

'And so, captain, you must stay at Rio a whole week?' said my aunt at dessert.

'Yes, Miss M'Crimman,' replied the captain. 'Are you pleased?'

'I'm delighted. And I propose that we get up a grand picnic in "the promised land," as good old Jenny calls it.'

And so it was arranged. Bombazo and Dr. Spinks, having been at Rio de Janeiro before, were entrusted with the organization of the 'pig-neeg,' as Bombazo called it, and held their first consultation on ways and means that very evening. Neither I nor my brothers were admitted to this meeting, though aunt was. Nevertheless, we felt confident the picnic would be a grand success, for, to a late hour, men were hurrying fore and aft, and the stewards were up to their eyes packing baskets and making preparations, while from the cook's gally gleams of rosy light shot out every time the door was opened, to say nothing of odours so appetising that they would have awakened Van Winkle himself.

Before we turned in, we went on deck to have a look at the night. It was certainly full of promise. We were not far from the shore – near enough to see a long line of white which we knew was breakers, and to hear their deep sullen boom as they spent their fury on the rocks. The sky was studded with brilliant stars – far more bright, we thought them, than any we ever see in our own cold climate. Looking aloft, the tall masts seemed to mix and mingle with the stars at every roll of the ship. The moon, too, was as bright as silver in the east, its beams making strange quivering lines and crescents in each approaching wave. And somewhere – yonder among those wondrous cone-shaped hills, now bathed in this purple moonlight – lay the promised land, the romantic town of Rio, which to-morrow we should visit.

We went below, and, as if by one accord, my brothers and I knelt down together to thank the Great Power on high who had guided us safely over the wide illimitable ocean, and to implore His blessing on those at home, and His guidance on all our future wanderings.

Early next morning we were awakened by a great noise on deck, and the dash and turmoil of breaking water. The rudder-chains, too, were constantly rattling as the men at the wheel obeyed the shouts of the officer of the watch.

'Starboard a little!'

'Starboard it is, sir!'

'Easy as you go! Steady!'

'Steady it is, sir!'

'Port a little! Steady!'

Then came a crash that almost flung us out of our beds. Before we gained the deck of our cabin there was another, and still another. Had we run on shore? We dreaded to ask each other.

But just then the steward, with kindly thought, drew back our curtain and reassured us.

'We're only bumping over the bar, young gentlemen – we'll be in smooth water in a jiffey.'

We were soon all dressed and on deck. We were passing the giant hill called Sugar Loaf, and the mountains seemed to grow taller and taller, and to frown over us as we got nearer.

Once through the entrance, the splendid bay itself lay spread out before us in all its silver beauty. Full twenty miles across it is, and everywhere surrounded by the grandest hills imaginable. Not even in our dreams could we have conceived of such a noble harbour, for here not only could all the fleets in the world lie snug, but even cruise and manœuvre. Away to the west lay the picturesque town itself, its houses and public buildings shining clear in the morning sun, those nearest nestling in a beauty of tropical foliage I have never seen surpassed.

My brothers and I felt burning to land at once, but regulations must be carried out, and before we had cleared the customs, and got a clean bill of health, the day was far spent. Our picnic must be deferred till to-morrow.

However, we could land.

As they took their seats in the boat and she was rowed shoreward, I noticed that Donald and Dugald seemed both speechless with delight and admiration; as for me, I felt as if suddenly transported to a new world. And such a world – beauty and loveliness everywhere around us! How should I ever be able to describe it, I kept wondering – how give dear old mother and Flora any notion, even the most remote, of the delight instilled into our souls by all we saw and felt in this strange, strange land! Without doubt, the beauty of our surroundings constitutes one great factor in our happiness, wherever we are.

When we landed – indeed, before we landed – while the boat was still skimming over the purple waters, the green mountains appearing to mingle and change places every moment as we were borne along, I felt conquered, if I may so express it, by the enchantment of my situation. I gave in my allegiance to the spirit of the scene, I abandoned all thoughts of being able to describe anything, I abandoned myself to enjoyment. Laisser faire, I said to my soul, is to live. Every creature, every being here seems happy. To partake of the dolce far niente appears the whole aim and object of their lives.

And so I stepped on shore, regretting somewhat that Flora was not here, feeling how utterly impossible it would be to write that 'good letter' home descriptive of this wondrous medley of tropical life and loveliness, but somewhat reckless withal, and filled with a determination to give full rein to my sense of pleasure. I could not help wondering, however, if everything I saw was real. Was I in a dream, from which I should presently be rudely awakened by the rattle and clatter of the men hauling up ashes, and find myself in bed on board the Canton? Never mind, I would enjoy it were it even a dream.

What a motley crowd of people of every colour! How jolly those negroes look! How gaily the black ladies are dressed! How the black men laugh! What piles of fruit and green stuff! What a rich, delicious, warm aroma hovers everywhere!

An interpreter? You needn't ask me. I'm not in charge. Ask my aunt here; but she herself can talk many languages. Or ask that tall brawny Scot, who is hustling the darkies about as if South America all belonged to him.

'A carriage, Moncrieff? Oh, this is delightful! Auntie, dear, let me help you on board. Hop in, Dugald. Jump, Donald. No, no, Moncrieff, I mean to have the privilege of sitting beside the driver. Off we go. Hurrah! Do you like it, Donald? But aren't the streets rough! I won't talk any more; I want to watch things.'

I wonder, though, if Paradise itself was a bit more lovely than the gardens we catch glimpses of as we drive along?

How cool they look, though the sun is shining in a blue and cloudless sky! What dark shadows those gently waving palm-trees throw! Look at those cottage verandahs! Look, oh, look at the wealth of gorgeous flowers – the climbing, creeping, wreathing flowers! What colours! What fantastic shapes! What a merry mood Nature must have been in when she framed them so! And the perfume from those fairy gardens hangs heavy on the air; the delicious balmy breeze that blows through the green, green palm-leaves is not sufficient to waft away the odour of that orange blossom. Behold those beautiful children in groups, on terraces and lawns, at windows, or in verandahs – so gaily are they dressed that they themselves might be mistaken for bouquets of lovely flowers!

I wonder what the names of all those strange blossom-bearing shrubs are. But, bah! who would bother about names of flowers on a day like this? The butterflies do not, and the bees do not. Are those really butterflies, though – really and truly? Are they not gorgeously painted fans, waved and wafted by fairies, themselves unseen?

The people we meet chatter gaily as we pass, but they do not appear to possess a deal of curiosity; they are too contented for anything. All life here must be one delicious round of enjoyment. And nobody surely ever dies here; I do not see how they could.

'Is this a cave we are coming to, Moncrieff? What is that long row of columns and that high, green, vaulted roof, through which hardly a ray of sunshine can struggle? Palm-trees! Oh, Moncrieff, what glorious palms! And there is life upon life there, for the gorgeous trees, not apparently satisfied with their own magnificence of shape and foliage, must array themselves in wreaths of dazzling orchids and festoons of trailing flowers. The fairies must have hung those flowers there? Do not deny it, Moncrieff!'

And here, in the Botanical Gardens, imagination must itself be dumb – such a wild wealth of all that is charming in the vegetable and animal creation.

'Donald, go your own road. Dugald, go yours; let us wander alone. We may meet again some day. It hardly matters whether we do or not. I'm in a dream, and I don't think I want to awaken for many a long year.'

I go wandering away from my brothers, away from every one.

A fountain is sending its spray aloft till the green drooping branches of the bananas and those feathery tree-ferns are everywhere spangled with diamonds. I will rest here. I wish I could catch a few of those wondrous butterflies, or even one of those fairylike humming-birds – mere sparks of light and colour that flit and buzz from flower to flower. I wish I could – that I – I mean – I – wish – '

'Hullo! Murdoch. Where are you? Why, here he is at last, sound asleep under an orange-tree!'

It is my wild Highland brothers. They have both been shaking me by the shoulders. I sit up and rub my eyes.

'Do you know we've been looking for you for over an hour?'

'Ah, Dugald!' I reply, 'what is an hour, one wee hour, in a place like this?'

We must now go to visit the market-place, and then we are going to the hotel to dine and sleep.

The market is a wondrously mixed one, and as wondrously foreign and strange as it is possible to conceive. The gay dresses of the women – some of whom are as black as an ebony ball; their gaudy head-gear; their glittering but tinselled ornaments; their round laughing faces, in which shine rows of teeth as white perhaps as alabaster; the jaunty men folks; the world of birds and beasts, all on the best of terms with themselves, especially the former, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow; the world of fruit, tempting in shape, in beauty, and in odour; the world of fish, some of them beautiful enough to have dwelt in the coral caves of fairyland beneath the glittering sea – some ugly, even hideous enough to be the creatures of a demon's dream, and some, again, so odd-looking or so grotesque as to make one smile or laugh outright; – the whole made up a picture that even now I have but to close my eyes to see again!

When night falls the streets get for a time more crowded; side-paths hardly exist – at all events, the inhabitants show their independence by crowding along the centre of the streets. Not much light to guide them, though, except where from open doors or windows the rays from lamps shoot out into the darkness.

Away to the hotel. A dinner in a delightfully cool, large room, a punkah waving overhead, brilliant lights, joy on all our faces, a dessert fit to set before a king. Now we shall know how those strange fruits taste, whose perfume hung around the market to-day. To bed at last in a room scented with orange-blossoms, and around the windows of which the sweet stephanotis clusters in beauty – to bed, to sleep, and dream of all we have done and seen.

We awaken – at least, I do – in the morning with a glad sensation of anticipated pleasure. What is it? Oh yes, the picnic!

But it is no ordinary picnic. It lasts for three long days and nights, during which we drive by day through scenes of enchantment apparently, and sleep by night under canvas, wooed to slumber by the wind whispering in the waving trees.

'Moncrieff,' I say on the second day, 'I should like to live here for ever and ever and ever.'

'Man!' replies Moncrieff, 'I'm glad ye enjoy it, and so does my mither here. But dinna forget, lads, that hard work is all before us when we reach Buenos Ayres.'

'But I will, and I shall forget, Moncrieff,' I cry. 'This country is full of forgetfulness. Away with all thoughts of work; let us revel in the sunshine like the bees, and the birds, and the butterflies.'

'Revel away, then,' says Moncrieff; and dear aunt smiles languidly.

On the last day of 'the show,' as Dugald called it, and while our mule team is yet five good miles from town, clouds dark and threatening bank rapidly up in the west. The driver lashes the beasts and encourages them with shout and cry to do their speedy utmost; but the storm breaks over us in all its fury, the thunder seems to rend the very mountains, the rain pours down in white sheets, the lightning runs along the ground and looks as if it would set the world on fire; the wind goes tearing through the trees, bending the palms like reeds, rending the broad banana-leaves to ribbons; branches crack and fall down, and the whole air is filled with whirling fronds and foliage.

Moncrieff hastily envelopes his mother in that Highland plaid till nought is visible of the old lady save the nose and one twinkling eye. We laugh in spite of the storm. Louder and louder roars the thunder, faster and faster fly the mules, and at last we are tearing along the deserted streets, and hastily draw up our steaming steeds at the hotel door. And that is almost all I remember of Rio; and to-morrow we are off to sea once more.