The Fugitives

A group of people from a British ship have gone ashore to stretch their
legs, when enemies approach, the ship's boat retreats to the ship and
they are left stranded ashore. The book deals with their efforts to
find what they hope will be civilisation in the capital of the Island of
Madagascar, which is something like the size of France. Unfortunately
the reigning Queen has a hatred of Christianity which had been brought
to the Island by missionaries some forty years before. Our heroes find
themselves assisted by a Christian net-work, but when they get to the
capital they are appalled by the carnage and torture they find when the
Queen has one of her rages against Christianity.

Based on fact, the story told here of the repression of Christianity in
an emerging nation was all too true. The Queen died in 1867, and was
succeeded by her son, an altogether different person, at which point our
heroes take ship for England, and the story ends.

The story is full of action, the only quibble being the long and rather
similar names the Malagasy people who appear in the story have. This
makes it sometimes rather hard to make out what is happening.



CHAPTER ONE.

INTRODUCES THE CHIEF ACTORS AND A FEW MYSTERIES.

Intense action is at all times an interesting object of contemplation to
mankind. We therefore make no apology to the reader for dragging him
unceremoniously into the middle of a grand primeval forest, and
presenting to his view the curious and stirring spectacle of two white
men and a negro running at their utmost possible speed, with flashing
eyes and labouring chests--evidently running for their lives.

Though very different in aspect and condition, those men were pretty
equally matched as runners, for there was no apparent difference in the
vigour with which they maintained the pace.

The track or footpath along which they ran was so narrow as to compel
them to advance in single file. He who led was a tall agile youth of
nineteen or thereabouts, in knickerbocker shooting-garb, with short
curly black hair, pleasantly expressive features, and sinewy frame. The
second was obviously a true-blue tar--a regular sea-dog--about thirty
years of age, of Samsonian mould, and, albeit running for very life,
with grand indignation gleaming in his eyes. He wore a blue shirt on
his broad back, white ducks on his active legs, and a straw hat on his
head, besides a mass of shaggy hair, which, apparently, not finding
enough of room on his cranium, overflowed in two brown cataracts down
his cheeks, and terminated in a voluminous beard.