A heavy storm came on soon after they
had retired to rest; the lightning was so vivid that
its flashes penetrated through the chinks of the door
and windows, and the thunder burst upon them with a
noise which prevented them obtaining any sleep.
The children cried and trembled as they lay in the
arms of Mrs Seagrave and Juno, who were almost as much
alarmed themselves.
“This is very awful,”
said Mr Seagrave to Ready, for they had both risen
from their beds.
“It is indeed, sir; I never
knew a more terrible storm than this.”
“Merciful Heaven!” exclaimed Mr Seagrave.
As he spoke, they were both thrown
back half-stunned; a crash of thunder burst over the
house, which shook everything in it; a sulphurous smell
pervaded the building, and soon afterwards, when they
recovered their feet, they perceived that the house
was full of smoke, and they heard the wailing of the
women and the shrieks of the children in the bed-places
on the other side.
“God have mercy on us!”
exclaimed Ready, who was the first to recover himself,
and who now attempted to ascertain the injury which
had been done: “the lightning has struck
us, and I fear that the house is on fire somewhere.”
“My wife my children!”
exclaimed Mr Seagrave; “are they all safe?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Mrs
Seagrave, “all safe; Tommy has come to me; but
where is Juno? Juno!”
Juno answered not. William darted
to the other side of the house, and found Juno lying
on her side, motionless.
“She is dead, father,” cried William.
“Help me to carry her out of
the house, Mr Seagrave,” said Ready, who had
lifted up the poor girl; “she may be only stunned.”
They carried Juno out of the house,
and laid her on the ground; the rain poured down in
torrents.
Ready left them for a minute, to ascertain
if the house was on fire; he found that it had been
in flames at the further corner, but the rain had
extinguished it. He then went back to Mr Seagrave
and William, who were with Juno.
“I will attend to the girl,
sir,” said Ready; “go you and Master William
into the house; Mrs Seagrave will be too much frightened
if she is left alone at such an awful time.
See, sir! Juno is not dead her chest
heaves she will come to very soon; thank
God for it!”
William and Mr Seagrave returned to
the house; they found Mrs Seagrave fainting with anxiety
and fear. The information they brought, that
Juno was not killed by the lightning, did much to
restore her. William soothed little Albert,
and Tommy in a few minutes was fast asleep again in
his father’s arms. The storm now abated,
and as the day began to break, Ready appeared with
Juno, who was sufficiently recovered to be able to
walk in with his support; she was put into her bed,
and then Ready and Mr Seagrave went to examine if
further mischief had been done. The lightning
had come in at the further end of the house, at the
part where the fireplace was intended to have been
made.
“We have been most mercifully
preserved,” said Mr Seagrave.
“Yes, sir, thanks be to God
for all his goodness,” replied Ready.
“I think we have a large roll
of copper wire, Ready; have we not?” said Mr
Seagrave.
“Yes, sir, I was just thinking
of it myself; we will have a lightning-conductor up
the first thing.”
It was now broad daylight. Mrs
Seagrave dressed herself and the children, and as
soon as she was ready, Mr Seagrave read such portions
of the Psalms as were appropriate, and they earnestly
joined in a prayer of thankfulness and humility.
William went out to prepare the breakfast, and Ready
procured the coil of copper wire from those stores
which were stowed under the bed-places. This
he unrolled, and stretched it out straight, and then
went for the ladder, which was at the outhouse they
had commenced building. As soon as breakfast
was over, Ready and Mr Seagrave went out again to
fix up the lightning-conductor, leaving William to
do the work of Juno, who still remained fast asleep
in her bed.
“I think,” said Ready,
“that one of those two trees which are close
together will suit the best; they are not too near
the house, and yet quite near enough for the wire
to attract the lightning.”
“I agree with you, Ready; but
we must not leave both standing.”
“No, sir, but we shall require
them both to get up and fix the wire; after that we
will cut down the other.”
Ready put his ladder against one of
the trees, and, taking with him the hammer and a bag
of large spike-nails, drove one of the nails into the
trunk of the tree till it was deep enough in to bear
his weight; he then drove in another above it, and
so he continued to do, standing upon one of them while
he drove in another above, till he had reached the
top of the tree, close to the boughs; he then descended,
and, leaving the hammer behind him, took up a saw
and small axe, and in about ten minutes he had cut
off the head of the cocoa-nut tree, which remained
a tall, bare pole.
“Take care, Ready, how you come
down,” said Mr Seagrave anxiously.
“Never fear, sir,” replied
Ready; “I’m not so young as I was, but
I have been too often at the mast-head, much higher
than this.”
Ready came down again, and then cut
down a small pole, to fix with a thick piece of pointed
wire at the top of it, on the head of the cocoa-nut
tree. He then went up, lashed the small pole
to the head of the tree, made the end of the copper
wire fast to the pointed wire, and then he descended.
The other tree near to it was then cut down, and the
lower end of the wire buried in the ground at the bottom
of the tree on which the lightning-conductor had been
fixed.
“That’s a good job done,
sir,” said Ready, wiping his face, for he was
warm with the work.
“Yes,” replied Mr Seagrave;
“and we must put up another near the outhouse,
or we may lose our stores.”
“Very true, sir.”
“You understand this, William, don’t you?”
said his father.
“O yes, papa; lightning is attracted
by metal, and will now strike the point instead of
the house, run down the wire, and only tear up the
ground below.”
“It’s coming on again,
sir, as thick as ever,” observed the old man;
“we shall do no work to-day, I’m afraid.
I’ll just go and see where the stock are.”
Juno was now up again, and said that
she was quite well, with the exception of a headache.
As Ready had predicted, the rain now came on again
with great violence, and it was impossible to do any
work out of doors. At the request of William
he continued his narrative.
NARRATIVE OF OLD READY.
“Well, William, as soon as they
had let go their anchor in Table Bay, we were all
ordered on shore, and sent up to a prison close to
the Government Gardens. We were not very carefully
watched, as it appeared impossible for us to get away,
and I must say we were well treated in every respect;
but we were told that we should be sent to Holland
in the first man-of-war which came into the bay, and
we did not much like the idea.
“There were, as I told you,
some other boys as well as myself, who belonged to
the Indiaman, and we kept very much together, not only
because we were more of an age, but because we had
been shipmates so long. Two of these boys, one
of whom I have mentioned as Jack Romer, and the other
Will Hastings, were my particular friends; and one
day, as we were sitting under the wall warming ourselves,
for it was winter time, Romer said, `How very easy
it would be for us to get away, if we only knew where
to go to!’
“`Yes,’ replied Hastings;
`but where are we to go to, if it is not to the Hottentots
and wild savages; and when we get there, what can we
do? we can’t get any further.’
`Well,’ said I, `I would rather be living free
among savages, than be shut up in a prison.’
That was our first talk on the subject, but we had
many others afterwards; and as the one or two Dutch
soldiers who stood sentry spoke English, and we could
talk a little Dutch, we obtained a good deal of information
from them; for they had very often been sent to the
frontiers of the colony. We continued to ask
questions, and to talk among ourselves for about two
months, and at last we resolved that we would make
our escape. We should have done much better
if we had remained where we were; but there is no
putting old heads upon young shoulders. We saved
up our provisions, bought some long Dutch knives,
tied our few clothes up in bundles, and one dark night
we contrived to remain in the yard without being perceived,
when the prisoners were locked up; and raising a long
pole, which lay in the yard, to the top of the wall,
with a good deal of scrambling we contrived to get
over it, and made off as fast as we could for the
Table Mountain.”
“What was your reason for going there, Ready?”
“Why, Hastings, who was the
oldest, and, I will say, the sharpest of the three,
said that we had better stay up there for a few days,
till we had made up our minds what to do, and try
if we could not procure a musket or two, and ammunition;
for, you see, we had money, as, when the Indiaman
was first taken, the captain divided a keg of rupees,
which was on board, among the officers and men, in
proportion to the wages due to them, thinking it was
better for the crew to have the money than to leave
it for the Frenchmen; and we had spent very little
while in prison. There was also another reason
why he persuaded us to go to the Table Mountain, which
was, that as soon as our escape was found out, they
would send parties to look for us; thinking, of course,
that we had made for the interior; and we should have
less chance of being retaken if we travelled after
the first search was over. The soldiers had told
us of the lions, and other wild animals, and how dangerous
it was to travel, and Hastings said, that not finding
us, they would suppose we had been destroyed by the
wild beasts, and would not look for us any more.”
“Foolish indeed,” observed
Mrs Seagrave, “to set off you knew not where,
in a country full of wild beasts and savages.”
“True enough, madam,”
replied Ready. “We ran at first until we
were out of breath, and then we walked on as fast
as we could not going right up the mountain,
but keeping a slanting direction to the south-west,
so as to get away from the town, and more towards
False Bay.
“We had walked about four hours,
and began to feel very tired, when the day dawned,
and then we looked out for a place to conceal ourselves
in. We soon found a cave with a narrow entrance,
large enough inside to hold half-a-dozen of such lads
as we were, and we crawled in. It was quite
dry, and, as we were very tired, we lay down with our
heads on our bundles, intending to take a nap; but
we had hardly made ourselves comfortable and shut
our eyes, when we heard such a screaming and barking
that we were frightened out of our lives almost.
We could not think what it could be. At last
Hastings peeped out, and began to laugh; so Romer
and I looked out also, and there we saw about one
hundred and fifty large baboons leaping and tumbling
about in such a way as I never saw; they were bigger
than we were indeed, when they stood on
their hind legs they were much taller, and they had
very large white tusks. Some of them were females,
with young ones on their backs, and they were just
as active as the males. At last they played such
antics, that we all burst out into a loud laugh, and
we had not ceased when we found the grinning face
of one of the largest of those brutes close to our
own. He had dropped from the rock above us, like
magic. We all three backed into the cave, very
much frightened, for the teeth of the animal were
enormous, and he looked very savage. He gave
a shrill cry, and we perceived all the rest of the
herd coming to him as fast as they could. I
said that the cave was large enough to hold six of
us; but there was a sort of inner cave which we had
not gone into, as the entrance was much smaller.
Romer cried out, `Let us go into the inside cave we
can get in one by one;’ and he backed in; Hastings
followed with his bundle, and I hurried in after him
just in time; for the baboons, who had been chattering
to each other for half a minute, came into the outer
cave just as I crawled into the inner. Five or
six of them came in, all males, and very large.
The first thing they did was to lay hold of Romer’s
bundle, which they soon opened at once they
seized his provisions and rammed them into their pouches,
and then they pulled out the other things and tore
them all to pieces. As soon as they had done
with the bundle, two of them came towards the inner
cave and saw us. One put his long paw in to
seize us; but Hastings gave him a slash with his knife,
and the animal took his paw out again fast enough.
It was laughable to see him hold out his hand to the
others, and then taste the blood with the tip of his
tongue, and such a chattering I never heard they
were evidently very angry, and more came into the
cave and joined them; then another put in his hand,
and received a cut just as before. At last,
two or three at once tried to pull us out, but we
beat them all off with our knives, wounding them all
very severely. For about an hour they continued
their attempts, and then they went away out of the
cave, but remained at the mouth shrieking and howling.
We began to be very tired of this work, and Romer
said that he wished he was back in prison again; and
so did I, I can assure you; but there was no getting
out, for had we gone out the animals would have torn
us to pieces. We agreed that we had no chance
but the animals becoming tired and going away; and
most anxious we were, for the excitement had made
us very thirsty, and we wanted water. We remained
for two hours in this way imprisoned by baboons, when
all of a sudden a shrill cry was given by one of the
animals, and the whole herd went galloping off as
fast as they could, screaming louder than ever.
We waited for a short time to see if they would return,
and then Hastings crawled out first, and looking out
of the cave very cautiously, said that they were all
gone, and that he could see nothing but a Hottentot
sitting down watching some cattle; we therefore all
came out, very happy at our release. That was
our first adventure; we had plenty afterwards; but
I think it is now time we should go to bed. It
is my opinion we shall have a fine day to-morrow,
sir; but there’s no saying.”
“I do so want to hear what happened
to you afterwards, Ready,” said William.
“Well, so you shall; but there’s
a time for everything, and this is bed-time, unless
you like to go with me; the weather has cleared up,
and I want to catch a fish or two for to-morrow.”