In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

R’ooma was not slow in returning the compliment whenever he thought there was a chance.

“You are one poet, sah. I declare to goodness, sah, you are one poet.”

This would be R’ooma’s remark when I said anything he thought clever. Or if I did anything he thought clever, it was just the same. For example, in Lamoo one forenoon a half-caste Arab insulted me. I’m afraid I hit him. At all events he fell, and his turban came off, and he looked ridiculous without it, as he had a shaven skull.

R’ooma laughed till he was obliged to double himself up like a jack-knife to save his sides from cracking.

“O, yah!” he roared, “I declare to goodness, sah, you are one poet.”

Yea, there really are worse places to go gipsying to than the Indian Ocean, and, if time and space permitted, I am sure I could tell you stories of my wanderings on the shores of Africa, in its woods and wilds – stories of its strange birds and beasts and beetles, of its wild beasts and wilder men – that would quite interest.

Some other day, perhaps – who knows?

Well, leaves have a time to fall, and so also have curtains.

Down drops ours, then; our little play is ended, and our tales are told.

But as regards the gipsying part of our story, if one further proof that such a mode of life is enjoyable in the extreme to all who love Nature and an outdoor life, it surely rests in the fact that in this first month of spring I now throw down my pen to go and prepare our great caravan for another thousand miles’ tour through the length and breadth of Merry England.

notes

1

A complete description of this caravan is to be found in my book, “The Cruise of the Land Yacht Wanderer,” published by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, Paternoster Row. The book is at all libraries.