The hermit hunter of the wilds

Title: The hermit hunter of the wilds

Author: Gordon Stables

Illustrator: W. G. Easton

Release date: September 7, 2023 [eBook #71590] Most recently updated: December 17, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: London: Blackie and Son ltd., 1889

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71590

Credits: Chuck Greif, Al Haines and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS FOOTNOTES TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

{2}

By Dr. GORDON STABLES, R.N.

Crown 8vo. Cloth elegant. Illustrated.

In the Great White Land

A Tale of the Antarctic. 3s. 6d.

“Full of life and go, and just the kind that is beloved of boys.”—Court Circular.

In Quest of the Giant Sloth. 3s. 6d.

“The heroes are brave, their doings are bold, and the story is anything but dull.”—Athenæum.

Kidnapped by Cannibals

A Story of the Southern Seas. 3s. 6d.

“Full of exciting adventure, and told with spirit.”—Globe.

The Naval Cadet

A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea. 3s. 6d.

“An interesting traveller’s tale with plenty of fun and incident in it.”—Spectator.

To Greenland and the Pole. 3s.

“His Arctic explorers have the verisimilitude of life.”—Truth.

Westward with Columbus. 3s.

“We must place Westward with Columbus among those books that all boys ought to read.”—Spectator.

’Twixt School and College. 3s.

“One of the best of a prolific writer’s books for boys, being full of practical instructions as to keeping pets, and inculcates, in a way which a little recalls Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Frank’, the virtue of self-reliance.”—Athenæum.

The Hermit Hunter of the Wilds. 2s. 6d.

“Pirates and pumas, mutiny and merriment, a castaway and a cat, furnish the materials for a tale that will gladden the heart of many a bright boy.”—Methodist Recorder.

In Far Bolivia

A Story of a Strange Wild Land. 2s.

“An exciting and altogether admirable story.”—Sheffield Telegraph.

————

London: BLACKIE & SON, Limited.

{3}

The Hermit Hunter of the Wilds

BY GORDON STABLES, C.M. M.D. R.N. Author of “’Twixt School and College” “To Greenland and the Pole” “The Naval Cadet” “Westward with Columbus” &c. WITH FOUR PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY

{4}

{5}

CONTENTS.

{7}

ILLUSTRATIONS

{8}

{9}

THE HERMIT HUNTER OF THE WILDS.

CHAPTER I. BY THE FIRELIGHT.

OMMY TALISKER was probably one of the most unassuming boys that ever lived. At all events everybody said so. And this is equivalent to stating that the boy’s general behaviour gave him a character for modesty.

He was the youngest of a family of five; the eldest being his only sister, and she, like her mother, made a good deal of Tommy, and thought a good deal about him too in certain ways.

“I don’t think,” said Tommy’s father to Tommy’s mother one evening as they all sat round the parlour hearth; “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to make much of Tommy.”

Perhaps Tommy’s father was at present merely speaking for speaking’s sake; for there had been general silence for a short time previously, broken only by the sound of mother’s knitting-wires, the{10} crackle of uncle’s newspaper as he turned it, and the howthering of the wind round the old farmhouse.

Tommy’s mother looked at Tommy, and heaved a little bit of a sigh, for she was very much given to taking everything for granted that her husband said.

But Tommy’s sister, who always sat in the left-hand corner of the fireside, with Tommy squatting on a footstool right in front of her, drew the lad’s head closer to her knee, and smoothed his white brow and his yellow hair.

Tommy took no notice of anything or anybody, but continued to gaze into the fire. That fire was well worth looking at, though I am not at all sure that Tommy saw it. It was a fire that made one drowsily contented and happy to sit by,—a comfort-giving, companionable sort of a fire. Built on the low hearth, with huge logs of wood sawn from the trunk of a poplar-tree that had succumbed to a summer squall, logs sawn from the roots of a sturdy old pine-tree that had weathered many and many a gale, and logs sawn from the withered limbs of a singularly gnarled and ancient pippin-tree that had grown and flourished in the orchard ever since this farmer’s father was a boy. There were huge lumps of coals there also, and a wall round the whole of dark-brown peats, hard enough to have cut and chiselled the hull of a toy yacht from.{11}

It is not to be wondered at that Tommy took no notice of the somewhat commonplace talk that went on around him; he was listening to a conversation that was being carried on in the fire between the blazing wood and the coals and the peat.

“You have no idea, my friends,” said the poplar log, after emitting a hissing jet of steam by way of drawing attention and commanding silence—“you have no idea what a stately and beautiful tree I was when in my prime. I and my fellows, who were all alive and well when I heard from them last, were the tallest and most gracefully-waving trees in the country-side. Poets and artists, and clever people generally, used to say we gave quite a character to the landscape. We knew we were very beautiful, because the broad winding river went through the meadow where we stood, and all day long we could see our faces therein. O, we were very beautiful! I do assure you. The seasons thought so, and every one of them did something for us. Spring came first, as soon as she had fastened the downy buds on the waving willows; placed wee crimson-topped anemones on the hazel boughs—five to each nodding catkin; scattered the burgeons over the hawthorn hedges; tasselled the larches with vermilion and green; adorned the rocks with lichen and moss; brought early daisies

to the meadow-lands, the gold of the celandine to the{12} banks of the streamlets, and the silver of a thousand white starry buttercups to float on the ponds; breathed through the woods and awakened the birds to light, love, and song; led the bee to the crocus, the butterfly to the primrose; awakened even the drowsy dormouse and the shivering hedgehog from their long winter’s slumber, to peep hungrily from their holes and wearily wonder where food could be found. Then Spring came to us. Spring came and kissed us, and we responded with green-yellow leaves to her balmy caress. Ah, the sun’s rays looked not half so golden anywhere else, as seen through our glancing quivering foliage. We raised our heads so high in air, that the larks seemed to sing to us alone, and the very clouds told us their secrets.

“But Summer came next and changed our leaves to a darker, sturdier green. And she brought us birds. The rooks themselves used to rest and sway on our topmost branches, lower down the black-bibbed sparrows built; in our hollows the starlings laid their eggs of pearl, while even the blackbird had her nest among the ivy that draped our shapely stems.

“We were things of beauty even when winds of Autumn blew; and Winter himself must clothe our leafless limbs with its silvery hoar-frost, till every branch and twiglet looked like radiant coral against the deep blue of the cloudless sky.{13}”

“Hush! hush!” cried the pine-tree root. “Dost thou well, O poplar-tree log, to boast thus of thy beauty and stateliness? I lived on the mountain brow not far off. I marked your rise and fall. Out upon your beauty! Where was your strength? To me thou wert but as a sapling, or a willow withe bending in the summer air. But my strength was as the strength of nations. On the hill yonder I flourished for hundreds of years; my foot was on the rocks, my dark head swept the clouds, my brown stem was a landmark for sailors far at sea. In the plains below I saw the seasons come and go. Houses were built, and in time became ruins; children were born, grew up, grew old and died, but I changed not. The wild birds of the air, of the rock, and the eyrie were my friends—the eagle, the osprey, the hawk, and curlew. The deer and the roe bounded swiftly past me, the timid coney and the hare found shelter near me. I have battled with a thousand gales; thunders rolled and lightnings flashed around me, and left me unscathed. I stood there as heroes stand

when the battle rages fiercest, and my weird black fingers seemed to direct the hurricane wind. I was the spirit of the storm.

“And I too had beauty, an arboreal beauty that few trees can lay claim to; whether in autumn with the crimson heather all around me, in summer with the last red rays of sunset lingering in my foliage, or in winter itself—my branches sil{14}houetted against the green of a frosty sky. But I fell at last. We all must fall, and age had weakened my roots. But I fell as giants fall, amidst the roar of the elements and chaos of strife. The skies wept over my bier, rain clouds were my pall, and the wild winds shrieked my dirge.”

There was silence in the fire for some little time after the pine log had finished speaking, and Tommy thought the conversation had ceased; but presently a voice, soft and musical as summer winds in the linden-tree, came from the gnarled pippin log:

“O men of pride and war!” said the voice, “I envy neither of you. Mine was a life of peace and true beauty; and had I my days to live over again, I would not have them otherwise. My home was in the orchard, and the seasons were good to me too, and all things loved me. In spring-time no bride was ever arrayed as I was; the very rustics that passed along the roads used to stop their horses to gaze at me in open-mouthed admiration. Then all the bees loved me, and all the birds sang to me, and the westling winds made dreamy music in my foliage. Lovers sat on the seat beneath my spreading branches, when the gloaming star was in the east, and told their tales of love heedless that I heard them. In summer merry children played near me and swung from my boughs, and in autumn and even winter{15} many a family showered blessings on the good old pippin-tree. ‘Peace, my friends, hath its victories not less renowned than war.’”

“O dear me!” sighed a smouldering peat, “how humble I should feel in such company. I really have nothing to say and nothing to tell, for my life, if life it could be called, was spent on a lonesome moor; true, the heath bloomed beautiful there in autumn, but the wintry winds that swept across the shelterless plain had a dreary song to sing. The will o’ the wisp was a friend of mine, and an aged white-haired witch, that at the dead hours of moonlight nights used to come groaning past me, culling strange herbs, and using incantations that I shudder to hear. There were many strange creatures besides the witch that came to the moor where I dwelt; and even fairies danced there at times. But for the most part the strange creatures I saw took the form of creeping or flying things; fairies changed themselves into beautiful moths and wild bees, but brownies and spunkies to crawling toads and tritons. But heigho! I fear a poor peat has few opportunities of doing good in the world.”

“Say not so!” exclaimed a blazing lump of coal; “even a humble peat is not to be despised. How often have you not brought joy and gladness to the poor man’s fireside, caused the porridge-pot to boil and the bairns to laugh with glee, banished the cold of winter, and infused comfort{16} and warmth into the limbs of the aged. But you are modest, and modesty is ever the companion of genuine merit.”

“And you, sir,” said the peat to the coal, “you are very, very great and very, very old—are you not?”

“I am very, very old, and I am no doubt very, very powerful. Yet my powers are gifts of the great Creator, and it is mine to distribute them to toiling and deserving man. Ages and ages ago before this ancient pine log was thought of or dreamt of, before mankind even dwelt on these islands, when its woods were the home of the wildest of beasts, when gigantic woolly elephants with curling tusks roamed free in its forests, and its marshes and lakes swarmed with loathsome saurians, I dwelt on earth’s surface. But changes came with time, and for thousands of years I was dead and buried in the earth’s black depths. The ingenuity of man has resuscitated me, and now I have gladly become his servant and slave. I warm the castle, the palace, and the humble cot. I give light as well as heat; I am swifter than the eagle in my flight. I am more powerful than the wind; I drag man’s chariots across the land, I waft his ships to every clime and every sea. I move the mightiest machinery; I am gentle in peace and dreadful in war.

“Nay more, the great wizard Science has but to lift his wand, and lo! I yield up products more{17} wonderful than any yet on earth. Gorgeous were the colours that adorned the flowers of the land in ages long gone by, delicate and delightful were their perfumes; but these perfumes and these colours I have carefully stored, and give them now to man.”

What more Tommy would have overheard, as he sat there at his sister’s knee, it is impossible to say, for the boy had fallen asleep.

CHAPTER II. “IT WAS ON JUST SUCH A NIGHT AS THIS, SISTER.”

“NO,” repeated Tommy’s father as he proceeded to refill his pipe; “we mustn’t expect to make much of Tommy.”

“Tommy may be president of America yet,” said Uncle Robert, looking quietly up from his paper. “Stranger things have happened, brother; much stranger.”

“Pigs might fly,” said Tommy’s father, somewhat unfeelingly. “Stranger things have happened, brother; much stranger.”

Tommy’s brothers laughed aloud.

Tommy’s mother smiled faintly.

But the boy slept on, all unconscious that he was being made the butt of a joke.{18}

Tommy was not an over-strong lad to look at. About eleven or twelve years old, perhaps. He had fair silky hair, regular features, and great wondering blue eyes that appeared to look very far away sometimes. For Tommy was a dreamy, thinking boy. To tell the truth, he lived as much in a world of his own as if he were in the moon, and the man of the moon away on a long holiday. He seemed to possess very little in common with his brothers. Their tastes, at all events, were infinitely different from his; in fact they were lads of the usual style or “run” which you find reared on such farms as those of Laird Talisker’s—called laird because he owned all the land he tilled. Dugald, Dick, and John were quite en rapport with all their surroundings. They loved horses and dogs and riding and shooting, and they had to take to farming whether they liked it or not. Dugald was the eldest; he was verging on seventeen, and had long left school. Indeed he was his father’s right hand, both in the office and in the fields. His father and he were

seldom seen apart, at church or market, mill or smithy; and as time rolled on and age should compel Mr. Talisker to take things easy, Dugald would naturally step into his father’s shoes.

Dick was sixteen, and Jack or John about fourteen; and neither had as yet left the parish school, which was situated about a mile and a half beyond the hill. All boys in Scotland receive{19} tolerably advanced education if their parents can possibly manage to keep them at their studies, and these two lads were already deeply read in the classics and higher branches of mathematics.

What were they going to be? Well, Dick said he should be a clergyman and nothing else, and Jack had made up his mind to be a cow-boy. He had read somewhere all about cow-boys in the south-western states of America, and the life, he thought, would suit him entirely. How glorious it must feel to go galloping over a ranche, armed with a powerful whip; to bestride a noble horse, with a broad hat on one’s head and revolvers at one’s hip! Then, of course, every other week, if not oftener, there would be wild adventures with Comanche red-skins, or Indians of some other equally warlike tribe; while now and then this jolly life would be enlivened by hunting horse-stealers across the boundless prairie, and perhaps even lynching them if they happened to catch the thieves, and there was a tree handy.

Jack’s classical education might not be of much service to him in the wild West, either in fighting bears or scalping Indians; though it would be easily carried. He determined, however, not to neglect the practical part of the business; and so whenever opportunity favoured him he used to mount the biggest horse in the stable and go swinging across the fields and the moors, leaping{20} fences and ditches, and in every way behaving precisely as he imagined a cow-boy would.

Several times Jack had narrowly escaped having his neck broken in teaching Glancer—that was the big horse’s name—to buck-jump. Glancer was by no means a bad-tempered beast; but when it came to slipping a rough pebble under the saddle, then he buck-jumped to some purpose, and Jack had the worst of it.

Mrs. Talisker herself was a somewhat delicate, gentle English lady, whom the laird had wooed and won among the woodlands of “bonnie Berkshire.” Her daughter Alicia, who was but a year older than Dugald, took very much after the mother, and was in consequence, perhaps, the worthy laird’s darling and favourite.

One thing must be said in favour of this honest farmer-laird: his whole life and soul were bound up in his family, and his constant care was to do well by them and bring them up to the best advantage. But he did not think it right to thwart his boys’ intentions with regard to the choice of a profession. There was admittedly a deal of difference between a clergyman of the good old Scottish Church and a cow-boy. However, as Jack had elected to be a cow-boy, a cow-boy he should be—if he did not break his neck before his father managed to ship him off to the wild West.

But as to Tommy, why the laird hardly cared{21} to trouble. Tommy was Uncle Robert’s boy. Uncle Robert, an old bachelor, who had spent his younger days at sea, had constituted himself Tommy’s tutor, and had taught the boy all he knew as yet. Uncle Robert ruled the lad by love alone, or love and common sense combined. He did not attempt to put a new disposition into him, but he did try to make the very best of that which he possessed. In this he showed his great wisdom. In fact, in training Tommy he followed the same tactics precisely as those that successful bird and beast-trainers make such good use of. And what I am going to say is well worth remembering by all boys who wish to teach tricks to pets, and make them appear to be supernaturally wise. Do not try to inculcate anything, in the shape of either motion or sound, which the creature does not evince an inclination or aptitude to learn. Take a white rat for example, and after it is thoroughly tame and used to running about anywhere, loving you, and having therefore no fear, begin

your lessons by placing the cage on the table with the door open. It will run out and presently show its one wondrous peculiarity of appropriation. In very wantonness it will pick up article after article and run into its house with it—coins, thimbles, apples, cards, &c. Now, I hinge its education in a great measure on this, and in a few months I can teach it to tell fortunes with cards, and spell words even. A rat{22} has two other strange motions; one is standing like a bear, another is climbing poles. By educating it from each of these stand-points you can make the creature either a soldier or a sailor, or even both, and teach it tricks and actions the glory of which will be reflected on you, the teacher.

Tommy was exceedingly fond of Uncle Robert, to begin with, and never tired listening of an evening to his wonderful stories of travel and adventure.