Chapter Ten.
Drift.
She made no answer, at first. They were in shade now, and she had flung off her sun-bonnet, and her glance was turned forth upon the wide veldt lying beneath, while the light breeze stirred the little escaped rings of her dark hair. No wonder he had found it difficult to get his charge away from Haakdoornfontein, thought the only spectator. The thought was quickly followed by another. Was he so unaffectedly anxious to get away from it himself? Well, why should he be? This bright, beautiful child had brought such sunshine into their daily life, why should he not enjoy his share of it simply because he was no longer young? Harley Greenoak had a strong sense of the ridiculous. Now he saw himself, rough, middle-aged, rapidly turning grey, and secretly he laughed; but it was a laugh not altogether free from wistfulness.
“What an experience yours must have been!” she went on. “I suppose you can’t even count the number of people whose lives you have saved?”
“I never tried—er—and excuse me, Miss Brandon, but—you didn’t bring me up here to make me brag, did you?”
“To make you brag?” she repeated. “That would be a feat—one that I don’t believe any one ever accomplished yet.”
“I hope not. I’m only a plain man, Miss Brandon. I don’t know that I ever had much education, but I’ve always held a theory of my own that every one is put into the world to be of some use, and I’ve always tried to act up to it.”
“Haven’t you just, and succeeded too? I suppose all South Africa knows that.”
The soft-voiced flattery, the glance that accompanied it, were calculated to stir the pulses of even so strong a man as Harley Greenoak, and this he himself realised while striving to neutralise their effect.
“When I was young,” he went on, “people used to look on me as a sort of ne’er-do-well, something not far short of a scamp, because I elected for a wandering life instead of what they called ‘settling down to something.’ Perhaps they were right, perhaps not.”
“They were idiots,” broke forth Hazel, impulsively.
“I don’t know,” went on the other, with a smile at the interruption. “Anyhow, I believe in a man taking to what he’s most fitted for, and I’ve lived to know that this is the life I’m the most fitted for. Some might call it an idle life, but if I may say so without bragging, I believe it has been of more service to other people than if I had launched out in the ‘settling down’ line of business.”
“I should think so indeed,” said the girl, her beautiful eyes aglow with sympathy and admiration. Secretly she was delighted. She had made Harley Greenoak talk—and not merely talk, but talk about himself—a thing which, if popular report spoke truly, no one had ever succeeded in doing yet.
“Once I tried farming, but it was no manner of use. The wandering instinct was in my blood, I suppose. Even transport riding—and I was pretty lucky at that while it lasted—was too slow for me. Too much sticking to the road, you see. I’ve been a little of everything, but,”—with a whimsical laugh—“I certainly never expected to turn bear-leader in my old age.”
“Uncommonly lucky for the ‘bear,’” pronounced Hazel.
“Well, the said ‘bear’ is apt to get into hot water rather easily. Otherwise he hasn’t got any vice.”
“And you are apt to get him out of hot water rather easily. Oh, I’ve heard all about it.”
“That was part of my charge. It was all in the day’s work. Over and about that, I’ve grown quite fond of the boy. He’s as taking a lad as I’ve ever known.”
Hazel agreed, and promptly turned the subject from the belauded Dick Selmes to other matters. The while, she was thinking; and if her companion could have read her thoughts—and even his penetration couldn’t do that—why, it is possible that he would have run up against the biggest surprise he had ever experienced in his life.
Even so Harley Greenoak was conscious of some modicum of surprise; and that was evoked by the way in which his companion was making him talk—drawing him, so to say—and, somehow, the experience was a pleasant one. Not until afterwards did it occur to him that he had come near being thrown a trifle off his balance by the soft insidious flatteries of this beautiful girl, reclining there in an attitude of easy grace. The warm, sunlit air, the height of space, looking down, as it were, upon two worlds, the free openness of it all was Greenoak’s natural heritage, and under no other surroundings could he be so thoroughly at his best. So she led him on to talk, and he had a dry, quaint, philosophical way of handling things which amused and appealed to her immensely. Suddenly the report of a gun, just beneath, together with the cry of dogs hot-foot on a quarry.
“That’s Dick. He’s worked round to this side of the farm,” said Greenoak. “Shall we go down and see what he’s been doing, for it strikes me we’ve been sitting here rather a long time?”
“Oh, you have found it long, then?” with mock offended air, then colouring slightly as she realised what an utter banality she had fired off for the benefit of a man of Harley Greenoak’s calibre.
“No, I haven’t,” he answered quite evenly. “I’ve enjoyed the lounge and the talk very much.” And then Hazel felt more disgusted with herself still.
“Let’s go back to the house,” she said. “I believe it’s getting rather hot.”
She chatted as they wound their way downwards along the bush-path, but not so brightly as when they had come up it. Somewhat wonderingly, Greenoak noted that she displayed no interest in the absent Dick. The latter arrived not long after themselves.
“There you are, Miss Brandon, I’ve redeemed my pledge,” he cried. “Got a whacking big bush-buck ram. Do come and look at it.”
“Got him just under Bromvogel Nek—eh, Dick?” said Greenoak.
“Yes. But—how did you know?”
“Heard your shot, and the dogs on to something wounded. We took a walk up there, Miss Brandon and I.”
“Oh—” And Dick Selmes stopped short, and then thought what an ass he was making of himself. So that was why Hazel had been so anxious for him to go out and hunt! Old Greenoak was coming out of his shell—coming out with a vengeance.
As they went outside Kleinbooi, the Fingo, was in the act of offloading the quarry. It certainly was a fine ram, but Dick noticed with inward disgust and heart-searching that Hazel seemed to show but little interest in it, or in his own doings. And by this time it had become of very great importance to him that she should feel interest in his own doings.
“What would you say to moving on, Dick?” said Greenoak that afternoon. “We’ve been here a good while, you know.”
The other’s face fell.
“Yes, I’m afraid we have,” he said. “But where shall we go next?”
Greenoak gave him some inkling of the bearing of the Commandant’s letter, and the idea caught on, but with half the alacrity wherewith it would have been received had a certain entrancing young person not been a fellow-guest at Haakdoornfontein.
“When shall we start?” asked Dick, somewhat ruefully.
“How about to-morrow?”
“Couldn’t we make it the day after? Come now, Greenoak. A day more or less can’t make any difference.”
“Well, no more it can—at this stage,” was the enigmatical answer. As a matter of fact, in the speaker’s inner mind it was an ambiguous one, “We’ll break away the day after.”
“Going on, are you?” said old Hesketh, when the announcement was made to him. “Well, I’m sorry. But I suppose our young buffalo hunter’s spoiling to get on to bigger game. Where are you trekking for now, Greenoak?”
“The Transkei.”
“Ho-ho-ho! You may get on to bigger game there,” chuckled the old man, significantly. “Yes, bigger game than ever Slaang Kloof can find you. Think there’s anything in these reports, Greenoak?”
“Never can tell. I happen to know there is a simmer stirring all the border tribes. It’ll depend on how the thing’s handled.”
“If Mr Greenoak has the handling of it, things won’t go very wrong, Uncle Eph,” interrupted Hazel.
“Now, Miss Brandon, you are either chaffing me or giving me credit for powers of magic which I don’t possess,” protested the object of this exordium.
“I’m doing neither,” replied the girl, confidently.
Dick Selmes restrained an impulse to look quickly up—they were at table. Of late Hazel seemed never tired of booming Greenoak, he told himself, and now all her talks with himself came up. These, somehow, always led round to Greenoak.
He looked with renewed interest at his guide and mentor. The latter was a splendid fellow, as the girl had more than once declared, but—elderly; easily old enough to be her father. Now he, Dick Selmes, had been coming to the conclusion that life apart from Hazel Brandon was going to be a very poor affair.
The propinquity had done it—that, and the bright, sweet charms of the girl herself. He had been realising that the time must come when they would have to part, and now that it had come, why, he would put his fortune to the test. Surely it could have but one issue. They had been so much together, long rides, long rambles, or wandering about among the bush solitudes, and they had always agreed so well. She had always shown such pleasure in his company, surely she would accept it for life. And then came the discomforting thought that just of late they had not been so much together. That morning, for instance, she had insisted on him going away from her for half the day, while she rambled off with Greenoak. What did it mean? Poor Dick began to feel very sore, and partly so with Greenoak. Well, he would put matters to the test, and that at once.
But this was not so easy, for the simple reason that he found no opportunity, and did not know how to make one. Hazel was as bright and cordial as ever, but affected to be busy, and there was no means of getting her alone to himself. All the good understanding between them seemed to have evaporated. She was avoiding him—deliberately avoiding him—there could be no doubt about that.
In his soreness and disgust he seized his gun, and started off on foot. He had not gone far when he heard Greenoak’s voice behind him.
“Going alone, Dick? Better not. You seem hipped; man, and I don’t think your own company’s good for you.”
Dick’s first impulse was to make an ungracious reply, but he conquered it.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “Every one’s tired of me now, so I didn’t want to bore anybody.”
“Well, we’ll go and lay up at the draai for anything that’s moving. But it’s early yet.”
It was afternoon, and their departure was fixed for the following morning. Dick felt desperate.
“Hang it, Greenoak,” he burst forth at last. “You don’t know how I hate leaving this place. Had such jolly times here.”
“How you hate leaving somebody on this place, was what you should have said. Eh, Dick?”
“Well, yes, if you put it quite so plainly. The worst of it is, I can’t get an opportunity of speaking to her alone. Couldn’t you manage to make one for me, Greenoak? You can do about everything,”—eagerly.
“Not that. Even if I could I wouldn’t. My dear Dick, I’m responsible to your father; and I won’t help in that sort of thing. You’ve fallen a victim to propinquity, as many another has done before you, and the best thing for you is to go away—as we are going—and see how this—er—fancy stands the test of time and different surroundings. It is evident that the other party to the difficulty is not in a hurry to clench matters, which shows her sterling sense. No. Try my prescription.”
This and other wise doctrines did Greenoak preach, and at last his charge became in some measure reconciled to the plan. Anyway, he was not going to make an ass of himself, he declared.
Chapter Eleven.
Farewell.
A man who is “good all round,” as the saying goes, in weighty matters, is rarely a fool in dealing with those of minor importance, although he is sometimes. In which connection the advice we just heard Greenoak administer to his charge showed sound judgment and a knowledge of human nature.
“The other party to the difficulty is in no hurry to clinch matters,” he had said, and it was no more than the truth. Hazel Brandon was gifted with rather more common-sense than most girls of her age. She and her young companion had been drawn very much together during their sojourn at this isolated farm, and she had grown very fond of him; but what she doubted was whether she had grown fond of him enough. She knew, of course, how matters were trending, and that she had only to hold up a finger. Yet she kept that finger persistently down.
She was in no hurry to engage herself to anybody. There was plenty of time. She was quite young and perfectly happy at home, as incidentally and periodically she would remind a remote cousin who pestered her. But she owned to herself that he was not in the same street with Dick Selmes. Yet about the latter there was something wanting, something which, much as she liked him, somewhat failed to satisfy her. Light-heartedness is a valuable gift, but he was too light-hearted; too boyish. He would be the better for some trying experience, she decided, something that would mould his character. Even were she to fall in with the wishes he was seeking opportunity to utter, how could she feel entirely assured that he knew his own mind? She could not so feel, therefore she cut the knot of the difficulty by taking care to give him no such opportunity.
Then again, what about his belongings—his father, for instance? She knew that his position and prospects were unimpeachable; and would it not be said that she had laid herself out to entrap him? There was a decided hardening of the proud little mouth at the thought. She would have no secret or provisional understanding. If he knew his own mind, he knew where to find her when his travels should be over; in her own home to wit. This would cut both ways, for while suspecting him of not quite knowing his own mind in the matter, Hazel candidly admitted to herself that at this stage she did not know hers. She owned she would miss him dreadfully when he left; but—the point was, would she miss him when she got home again?
That last evening could hardly be pronounced a successful experiment in cheerfulness. Not to put too fine a point on it it was unequivocally dismal. Harley Greenoak was, if anything, more sparing of speech than usual, and old Hesketh was tired. Hazel’s heroic attempts at brightening up the situation fell flat. Dick Selmes was gloomy, and inclined to import a note of sentiment into his remarks; and then—his last cable was cut away. He had clung to a hope that he might get Hazel to himself, if only for a few minutes, after the others had retired; but no—she forestalled them, bidding good-night quite unnecessarily early, and before any one else had shown signs of moving.
“Got everything ready, Dick?” said Greenoak, coming into his room. “We start just after sun-up, you know.”
“I wish we started now,” was the answer, and the speaker savagely kicked his boots across the floor, to the grave peril of a big tarantula prowling along in the shadow against the dilapidated wainscotting. “I hope there’ll be a thundering big war when we get up there. I could take on a good deal of excitement just now.”
The other laughed pleasantly. “I know you could, Dick, but let’s hope we’ll get some excitement without the war. Well now, pull yourself together. There are plenty of good times sticking out in front of you. Good-night.”
Dick, left alone, thought what an easy thing it was to give advice. How could an old chap like Greenoak realise what he was going through? he said to himself—losing sight of the possibility of his friend having at one time gone through an exactly similar experience. Ah, well—there was a prospect of excitement ahead—that was one comfort.
Going to the window, he threw up the sash, and the night air, still and cool, penetrated the room. The sky was clear and the stars shone in myriad frosty twinkle, and up from the shaggy forest strips which lined the deep kloofs abutting on the great hollow, came the multifold voices of the creatures of the night, winged or four-footed. Under a cold moon the great crags were visible, and as he gazed forth upon the still vastness of Nature, it seemed to Dick Selmes that every spot on the place carried with it some association. The night reminded him of that similar one down in the Addo, when he had gone forth single-handed to seek adventure—and had found it too, with a vengeance. Since then what an experience had come his way, changing his life completely. Then, chilled by the night air, he closed down the window and turned in.
It seemed hardly five minutes before the entrance of Greenoak told him that it was time to turn out. There was a sharp, raw nip in the air, although the sky was without a cloud, for the sun was not yet up, and Dick proceeded to dress, hurriedly and shiveringly. He felt altogether depressed. He wished he had never heard of South Africa, and then, even upon his youthful understanding, was borne in the certainty that what had overtaken him here would have overtaken him somewhere else.
As he entered the living-room Hazel was there dispensing early coffee. If only he had the opportunity of being alone with her even now, he thought, but he had not. Already the cart stood inspanned in front of the stoep.
“Well, young buffalo hunter,” said old Hesketh, “I shall be sorry to lose you, and if ever you’re round this way don’t forget to look in and help to liven an old man up. You’re always welcome for as long as you like to stay. But it’s slow work for a young ’un, to be sure.”
“That it isn’t, Mr Hesketh,” rejoined Dick, heartily, not a little touched by the kindness and real warmth of his host’s words. “I’ve had a rattling good time here, and enjoyed it as well as I’ve ever enjoyed anything”—with a meaning glance in the direction of Hazel, to which she, however, utterly failed to respond. But perhaps she made up for it in the frank warmth of her farewell.
“Do come and see us at our place, Mr Selmes, when you have done your travels,” she said. “My father will be delighted, I can answer for that, though we can’t give you quite such good sport as you’ve been having here. Still, you will have a hearty welcome.”
Dick mumbled something as he pressed the little hand, longer perhaps than he need have done—and then he had a confused consciousness of climbing to his seat, and in less than no time the homestead at Haakdoornfontein was out of sight.
“Jolly old place,” he said regretfully, as he looked back. “Tell you what, Greenoak. I quite hate leaving it.”
“I dare say,” remarked Greenoak, drily. He was thinking at that moment that his charge was becoming something of a burden. The said charge was thinking of something else, and that “something” evidently something all-engrossing—so much so, that for upwards of an hour he did not utter a word—a very unusual thing indeed for Dick Selmes.
But he was young, and his spirits soon reasserted themselves. Bowling along in the glorious air and sunshine, as each fresh stage passed took them over—to him—new and varying scenes, his temporary gloom was soon dispelled. Harley Greenoak, too, was the ideal kind and tactful companion, and by the time they sighted the beautiful mountain range, the forest-clad rampart beyond which lay Kafirland—Kafirland with its delightful potentialities of stirring adventure—Dick had quite recovered his old light-heartedness. Yet this was in a measure sobered, tempered, by the recollections of one whom he had left behind him.
“Well, girlie,” said old Hesketh to his niece, after the departure of the guests. “We shall miss the young ’un—eh? You’ll be dull now with only an old fogey to put up with.”
“Have I been dull before, Uncle Eph?” answered the girl, slipping her arm through his. “And I think this isn’t the first time I’ve had ‘only an old fogey to put up with.’”
“No, it isn’t. Well, young to young—that’s the rôle of Nature, and he is a fine young fellow that. I never saw a young ’un I took to so much.”
And old Ephraim Hesketh suddenly found himself being very much kissed.
Chapter Twelve.
Of a Fight.
“Rather different sort of country this—eh, Dick?”
“Yes. But the worst of it is there’s nothing to shoot.”
“There never is where there are Kafir locations,” rejoined Harley Greenoak.
On either side of the road lay spread the green, undulating plains of British Kaffraria, open, or dotted here and there with mimosa. The sky, dazzling in its vivid blue, was without a cloud, and the air of the winter midday warm and yet exhilarating. The Cape cart had just left behind the steep slope of the Gonubi Hill, and was bowling along the Kei Road, facing eastward.
“Think the Kafirs really do mean to kick up a row, Greenoak,” said Dick, as three ochre-smeared samples of that race strode by, favouring those of the dominant one with a defiant stare.
“I’m dead sure of it. You see, they haven’t had a fight for nearly a quarter of a century, and now they’re spoiling for one. I didn’t care to say so while we were down in the Colony though, for fear of setting up a scare. It’s simply the Donnybrook spirit. This squabble about the Fingoes is a mere pretext.”
“Well, I’m jolly glad,” rejoined Dick Selmes. “It would have been a proper sell to have come all this way and there to be no war after all.”
“Sell? I’m hoping that same sell may be ours.”
“What? You’re hoping there’ll be no war?”
“Certainly. Think what a row I should get into with your dad for countenancing your taking part in it, Dick.”
“Oh, don’t you bother about that, old chap,” was the breezy rejoinder. “Didn’t the dad leave me here to see all there was to be seen, and if there was a jolly war and I didn’t see something of it, why, I shouldn’t be seeing all there was to be seen? Besides, I’ve seen nothing of the Kafirs yet.”
“You’ll see enough and to spare of them directly. Meanwhile you’re about to begin, for here we are at Draaibosch.”
Our friend Dick had about recovered his normal spirits, the enjoyment of travel, the ever-changing novelty of it at every turn, and the prospect of excitement ahead had done that for him. But he could not banish the recollection of that bright, sweet personality from his mind, nor had he any wish to. When he had done with his experiences he would find out Hazel Brandon in her own home, and would speak out boldly and in no uncertain manner. Meanwhile, advised by common-sense and Harley Greenoak, he decided to make the best of things at present, and to let the future take care of itself.
As they topped a rise the wayside inn and canteen came into view just beneath. Before the latter squatted or lounged in groups quite a number of red-blanketed figures, and the deep bass hum of their voices, and an occasional laugh, rose not unmelodiously upon the still air.
“Well, MacFennel, and how’s trade?” said Greenoak, shaking hands with the innkeeper, who had come out to meet them.
“Oh, so so. What’s the latest thing in scares?”
“You ought to know that better than me. You’re nearest the spot.”
“All the more reason why I shouldn’t. More than half these scares are cooked up down in the Colony. We don’t hear much of ’em up here.”
“That won’t be good news for my young friend there”—with a nod in the direction of Dick Selmes, who had strolled away to inspect nearer the groups of Kafirs by the canteen. “He’s just spoiling for war.”
“Haw—haw!” guffawed the other. “But who is he?”
Greenoak told him, and just then Dick returned.
“Faugh!” he exclaimed. “Those chaps are a bit ‘strong’ when you get too near them.”
“Yes, stale grease and red clay don’t make a fragrant combination,” laughed Harley Greenoak. “I hope you can get us some dinner directly, MacFennel; for I can tell you we both feel like it.”
“Yes, it’s ready now. Come on in. Bring the shooters inside. It isn’t safe to leave them in the cart with all these loafers about.”
The while they had been outspanning, and now, handing over the horses to a native stable-boy, they entered.
“I say, what about the war?” said Dick to the hotel-keeper, as the latter came in to see how they were getting on. “Think there’ll be one?”
“Well, Mr Selmes, I don’t know what to say. But one can only hope not.”
Dick dropped his knife and fork, and stared.
“Hope not?” he echoed. “But think what a lot of fun we shall be done out of.”
The hotel-keeper laughed good-naturedly.
“Fun?” he said. “Well, it may be fun to you, but it’ll be death to some of us, as some fable-mongering feller said about something else—I forget what. It may be all very well for young gentlemen with plenty of money, wandering about the world on the look-out for excitement; but for us ordinary chaps who’ve got to make a living—and not an easy one at that—it spells anything but fun I can tell you. What price my place being sacked and burnt to the ground some fine night? I’ve got a wife and kiddies too—what if we didn’t get long enough warning to clear them off to Komgha quick enough? Well, that’s what war spells to us.”
“By George! I never thought of it in that light,” cried Dick Selmes, to whom the other’s quiet but good-natured reproof appealed thoroughly. “But—surely you’d get warning in time, wouldn’t you?”
“Warning. Look at those chaps out there”—designating the groups of Kafirs, now momentarily increasing, in front of the canteen, some of them visible from the window. “Some fine day they come along just as you see them now, only with businesslike assegais hidden under their blankets. Then, a sudden signal and a rush, and—where do we come in? Kafirs don’t give warning, they take you on the hop; ain’t I right, Greenoak?”
Greenoak nodded. Dick Selmes was conscious of feeling rather small. Just then, as though to emphasise the hotel-keeper’s remarks, a considerable hubbub arose outside, voices were raised—many of them, and all talking at once, and through them running a note of anger; and a lot of angry and excited Kafirs all talking at once are capable of raising a very considerable hubbub indeed.
“Why, they’re going to have a row, I do believe,” cried Dick, springing to the door, and looking out. But MacFennel never turned a hair.
“Oh, it’s only some feller got too drunk in the canteen,” he said. “Been chucked out by my assistant. It often happens, but they blow off steam in no time.”
In this case, however, no such safety-valve seemed to be in working order. A rush of excited Kafirs surged round the further end of the building. Blankets were thrown off, and with a tough kerrie in each hand, they fell to. Shouts and vociferations, the clash and splintering of hard-wood, and the more sickening crunch, as the latter fell in upon skull or shoulder—the moving mass swayed and leaped. At the same time, as though magically evolved, lines of Kafirs, some mounted on rough ponies, some afoot, came pouring along the hillside, shrilling war whistles or uttering loud whoops, and, arriving on the scene of action, flung themselves into the fray with a whole-heartedness that left nothing to be desired. The fight became one roaring general melée.
“It’s only a faction rumpus,” said the hotel-keeper, who had dived into an inner room to arm himself with a revolver, which, however, he didn’t show. “Sandili’s and Ndimba’s chaps are always getting ’em up. Rotten for me too, for it gives my place a bad name.”
The stoep, railed off, stood about four feet above the ground. In front the said ground, perfectly open, sloped away gently to a sluit, constituting a first-rate arena for a rough-and-tumble. Round on to this now, the warring savages swirled, mad with fury and blood lust, some with drink. The three white men—four now—for they had been joined by MacFennel’s assistant, who had prudently locked the canteen door—stood on the stoep watching the tumult.
“How about the rifles, Greenoak?” said Dick Selmes, in hardly to be repressed excitement.
“No. We mustn’t show sign of scare,” was the quiet answer. “We’ve got our pistols, but we needn’t show them unless absolutely necessary.”
The struggling crowd now had broken up into groups. No attempt at forming sides had been made, twos and threes they fought, and as soon as one individual went down the victors proceeded to batter the life out of him as he lay, unless others sprang to the rescue, which was often the case. Then there would be a renewed scrimmage, with slashings and parryings, and soon the ground was scattered with writhing, struggling bodies, and others, indeed, deadly still; the while the strident war whistles rent the air. Black, striving demons, eyes blazing and white teeth bared, seemed to have taken the place of the careless laughing groups of a few minutes ago.
On the left, some thirty yards away from the stoep, where stood the white spectators, was a small orchard, bounded by a low sod wall. For this, one Kafir, hardly pressed, was seen to make, with three others hot on his heels. He gained it, but his foot caught, tumbling him headlong into the ditch on the other side. With a yell his pursuers were on him, and although the spectators could not see him, the nasty crunch of the knob-kerries battering out his brains and his life, told its own tale. Dick Selmes, who had never seen any real bloodshed before, began to feel rather sick.
“Can’t we stop this, Greenoak?” he said, rather quaveringly, as a big savage, hotly pursued by four or five others, came staggering up to the stoep itself, to fall, almost at their very feet, the blood pouring from a wound in his skull.
“It’s their own quarrel,” answered Greenoak, decisively. But paying no heed to the words, the impetuous Dick had sprung down the steps and was standing over the prostrate Kafir, his revolver pointed.
“Stand back, you cowardly dogs!” he roared. “Hit a man when he’s down, would you? I’ll let daylight into you.”
Of this they understood, of course, not one word. But there was no sort of misunderstanding the pointed pistol, the flashing eyes, and the pale, determined face of the young Englishman. Growling, ferocious, like the disappointment of hungry beasts, they halted—calling to those behind them. Many of those swarmed up, kerries raised. This was no white man’s business, they roared. Let the white men interfere and they would kill the lot. All of which, of course, Dick Selmes, for his part, did not understand one word. But Harley Greenoak did.
Quickly he called out to them in their own tongue, urging that it was not worth while their losing many lives for the sake of one, which in all probability was already gone; that they themselves were well armed, and that Dick Selmes would certainly never be frightened into giving way; and further, that the sound of firing would be sure to bring the Mounted Police down upon them.
For a moment his words seemed to produce the desired effect, then a roar of defiance went up from those further back. The savages were in an ugly and dangerous mood, and their fighting blood was roused. They were armed only with sticks it was true, but they had already demonstrated what a formidable weapon an ordinary hard-wood kerrie can be in the hand of one who knows how to use it; and there were upwards of a hundred of them on the ground already, while more and more were still pressing up along the veldt paths. They seemed to have laid aside their mutual feud, and now with a scowl of hate and defiance upon each grim countenance they crowded up before the white men. And these were but four.
Harley Greenoak had his finger upon the pulse of the crowd. His keen glance in particular took in the expression of those nearest to Dick. His hand was closed round the butt of his revolver, but not yet had he drawn it. The while Dick, still pointing his, stood over the fallen man, his eyes upon the savage threatening faces which fronted him, but shining from them the steeliness of a deadly determination.
Chapter Thirteen.
Tyala.
There followed a moment of tense silence. Then a fresh hubbub arose on the outskirts of the crowd, quite a number of which broke away, and made for the lower end of the building. Harley Greenoak and MacFennel’s assistant looked at each other. Both had caught the proposed new move.
“I’ll take care of this, Mr Greenoak,” said the latter, a rough and ready, powerful young fellow who understood the Kafirs and their language as one of themselves. “Burn the house, will they? We shall see.”
He dived inside. Hardly had he done so than a change seemed to come over the fierce and threatening crowd. Anxiously the savages looked this way and that, then broke into groups, conversing more quietly. The electricity of the storm seemed to have spent itself. Harley Greenoak still stood leaning on the railing of the stoep in easy attitude—he had, as yet, shown no weapon. Probably a patrol of Mounted Police had appeared in sight, was the thought in the minds of the others.
There was a thud of horse-hoofs approaching from behind the house, and then— No squad of mounted troopers appeared, only a single Kafir, an old man, riding a sorry-looking and under-sized pony. At sight of him the mass of hitherto turbulent savages murmured respectful greeting, and a rush was made to hold his stirrup while he dismounted.
“You can put away your pistol now, Dick,” said Harley Greenoak’s quiet voice.
“Why? Have the Police turned up?” answered Dick, as he obeyed. It was significant of the absolute reliance he placed on Greenoak’s lightest word in such matters that Dick Selmes never dreamed of disputing any one of his pronouncements.
“No. Better even than that. Tyala has.”
“Who’s Tyala? Is he a chief?”
“Yes, and one of Sandili’s principal councillors. It’s a thousand pities he isn’t in Sandili’s place.”
The old man had dismounted now, and was haranguing the assembled Kafirs, such of them as were left, for quite half of the original rioters had melted away. Here was a thing to have happened, he told them. Children of the Great Chief to fall to rending each other like quarrelsome dogs, and that under the eyes of white men; just now, too, when it behoved them to stand well in the eyes of the white man.
This deliverance, however, was not exactly popular. Even the rank and venerable age of the speaker could not repress a ripple of resentful muttering. White men? Mere dogs, dogs whom they would soon send howling back to their own kraals—was the gist of it. But the old chief continued his rebuke. Let them go home, he concluded, if they could not behave otherwise than as half-grown boys.
“I see before me, my friend, Kulondeka,” he added. “Now I am going to talk with a man.”
“Eulondeka”—meaning “safe”—was the name by which Harley Greenoak was known to all the Bantu tribes south of the Zambesi. The latter greeted the old chief with great cordiality, and in a moment they were deep in conversation.
“I say, I rather like the look of that old chap,” said Dick Selmes, who had skipped up on to the stoep again—he had clean forgotten his late protégé now. “Hanged if I won’t stand him a drink. Give him a good big one, MacFennel.”
“He wouldn’t touch it, Mr Selmes; no, not if you gave him twenty cows,” answered the innkeeper, with a laugh. “He’s got such an awful example before him in the shape of his big chief, old Sandili. That old soaker would think nothing of mopping up a whole bucketful of grog, and as much more as you liked to stack under his nose.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Dick. “We’ll give him a yard of ’bacco instead—no—give him a whole roll, I’ll stand the racket.”
“Ah, that’ll fetch him,” said the other, going inside to find the required article.
“I say, Greenoak. Introduce me,” sang out Dick. “First time I’ve seen a chief, and I must have a jaw with him—through you, of course.”
The old man, who wore about him no insignia of chieftainship, unless it were a very old and well-worn suit of European clothes, smiled kindly at the young one; and remarked that he must be the son of a very great man in his own country, for he looked it. Then, as Dick handed him the big roll of Boer tobacco which MacFennel just then brought, he fairly beamed.
“Oh, MacFennel, I wish you’d give him a lot of beads and things out of your store,” went on Dick, “also on my own account, they’ll do fine for his wives. I expect he’s got about twenty.”
“All right, Mr Selmes. He may have more though.”
“Well, give him a good lot for each one. How many has he got, Greenoak?”
This was put, Greenoak explaining that it was the desire of the son of the great English chief to make a present to each, and in the result it transpired that the old Gaika had less than twenty, but certainly more than one.
So they chatted on, Harley Greenoak not omitting to tell the chief how Dick Selmes had interfered to protect the fallen man at the risk of his own life. The frontier was in a very disturbed state, and there was no telling what might happen. There was no telling, either, of what service the act might not prove to one or both of them in the fortunes of war, and none knew this better than the old campaigner and up-country man.
The ground was like a regular battlefield. Injured men lay around, unconscious some, and breathing heavily.
Others would never breathe again; others, too, recovering from their temporary stunning, were raising themselves labouringly, staring stupidly around, as though anything but sure as to what had happened. Broken kerries lay about, and, here and there, a great smear of blood. Tyala, having filled his pipe from the new and bountiful supply he had just received, lit it and stalked around the scene of the late disorder.
“Au! This is not good, Kulondeka,” he said. “Some will be punished for this. But the fewest lying here are Ndimba’s people. That would seem to tell that ours did not begin the fight.”
“That may or may not be, Councillor of the House of Gaika,” answered Harley Greenoak, drily. “It may only mean that the Amandhlambe are the better fighters.”
“Whau!” cried Tyala, bringing his hand to his mouth with a quizzical laugh. “Now, Kulondeka, I would ask where are better fighters than the men of the House of Gaika? Where?”
“Time will show,” was the sententious reply. And on both faces was the same dry pucker, in both pairs of eyes the same comical glance. They understood each other.
Then the two talked “dark.” Greenoak was anxious to get at the temper and drift of thought of the Gaika clans under the chieftainship of the historic Sandili, all located along the border of the Cape Colony and within the same. Tyala, shrewd and wily, as all native politicians are, was trying to say as much as he could, and yet give away as little. It was a battle of wits. Yet, in actual fact, this chief threw all his influence into the scale for peace.
“Whau, Kulondeka, you know the Great Chief, as who, indeed, among all the peoples do you not know?” he said at last. “Well, then, why does not Ihuvumenté (Government) act accordingly? You know, and Ihuvumenté knows, that the man who has the Great Chief’s ear last has the Great Chief. Sandili does not wish for war, but his young men are hot of blood. Yet his ‘word’ is all-powerful, and the way he will send it forth—for great things are maturing—rests with who has his ear. We are talking, you and I, but what is for four ears is not for more.”
“Oh, it will go no further for me,” answered Greenoak. And then as the innkeeper appeared, with a great steaming kettle of black coffee, to which, when well sweetened, all natives are exceedingly partial, their conference ended.
The old chief’s eyes brightened, as now Dick Selmes began to display before him all the things he intended he should take home with him. There was a new blanket for himself—and for his wives, why, Dick seemed to have cleaned MacFennel’s store out of its whole stock of beads. Mouth accordions too, for the delectation of his younger children, shining things in gorgeous red cases—why, the delight in Tyala’s household promised to be as widespread as it was unexpected. These were made over for porterage to some of Tyala’s tribesmen who were hanging respectfully around, and then the old man got up to go.
“He is young and the son of a great man,” he said, smiling kindly at Dick. “Therefore he is generous.”
“Well, Dick, you’ve met your first Kafir chief,” said Harley Greenoak, as they watched old Tyala jogging away on his under-sized pony, a group of the late rioters in respectful attendance, some mounted, some on foot.
“Jolly old boy,” pronounced Dick, heartily. “Are they all like that?”
For answer there was a laugh. The inquirer had met his first chief; he was destined soon to meet others—men of a very different stamp, and under very different circumstances. Then his question would answer itself.
“Here’s a pretty mess,” declared the innkeeper, glancing discontentedly around. “Talk about a battlefield; why, we’ve got both killed and wounded here.”
“Hallo!” sang out Dick. “Why, my chap has mizzled.”
It was even so. The man, to protect whom Dick had so impulsively interfered, at the risk of his life—at the risk of all their lives—was no longer to be seen. He must have been only temporarily stunned, and, recovering consciousness, for reasons of his own had taken himself off while their attention had been centred on the old chief.
“Ungrateful beggar,” went on Dick. “He might have had the decency to say good-bye to us.”
“Probably he didn’t know anything of what had happened,” said Greenoak. “You must remember he was already unconscious when you put in your oar.”
“Oh—ah, I forgot that,” rejoined Dick. And then he thought no more about it.
“I think we’ll inspan and get on,” said Greenoak. “I’ll report the affair at Komgha, and they’ll send out some police, and the doctor, if he isn’t away over the Kei, that is. Well, Dick, we’ve started you with the sight of a first-class row,” he added.
“It just was a first-class one,” answered Dick. “But the after effects are a little beastly, eh? Some of these poor devils must be abominably hurt.”
“That, of course. But John Kafir, like other people, if he wants his fun, has got to pay for it. Such of these fellows as the Police scoop up as soon as they get right again will be put in the tronk for their share in to-day’s racket.”
“The mischief they will! Why? It was a fair fight.”
“That’s all right, Dick. But faction fights, however fair, are not exactly allowed on British territory, which this is. Beyond the Kei it’s a different matter.”
“We’ll go on there, won’t we?”
“Oh yes. The best way will be to join some Police patrol. Chambers, the Inspector in command of A. Troop, is in camp at Komgha now, and he’ll work it for us if any one can. Mind you, although I’m no scaremonger, it would be rather risky going far into the Gcaleka country just now, just the two of us, and I’m responsible to your dad for your safe return, you know, Dick.”
“I say, old chap, suppose we stow that responsibility question for a bit,” laughed Dick. “Makes a fellow feel too much in leading-strings, don’t you know.”
Harley Greenoak said nothing, and the cart being inspanned, they reckoned with the hotel-keeper and took the road again.
Chapter Fourteen.
The Big Gun Practice.
“Bang! Boom!”
Rock and frowning krantz rolled back the reverberations in swooping echo as the first seven-pounder spoke, launching its whistling shrapnel across the deep, thickly-bushed valley of the Tsolo River. Hardly had the echoes died away than the second gun spoke.
Simultaneously with its roar, branches and stones were seen to split and fly, on the opposite hillside, some six hundred yards away. Simultaneously, too, a deep-chested ejaculation of wonderment broke from the throats of more than double that number of human beings. But the mere handful of brown-clad, helmeted men stood calm and alert, feeling perhaps a little grim, as they marked the effect of the gun practice upon the ochre-smeared groups which dotted the hillside hard by. More and more Kafirs came hurrying up from near and far, eager to witness the fun of what was to them an entirely new experience. For this was no battle, only a “demonstration” on the part of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police, whose recently formed battery of artillery was delighted to have a chance of showing the turbulent inhabitants of the Transkei what they might hope to expect in case of—accidents.
With each successful shot—and the new artillerymen were making wonderfully good practice—a gasp of admiring amazement ran through the entranced spectators like the breaking of a wave on the shore. These had increased till there could not have been less than a couple of thousand, reddening the slopes like a swarm of ants. They were not armed, except with sticks; and without his kerrie a Kafir rarely moves. The Police Commandant had sent word to all the principal chiefs, inviting them to witness the gun drill, and some had accepted. Besides the artillery, there were three full troops of mounted men.
Tall and bearded, his stature and smart uniform and shining sword impressing the savages no less than his calm imperturbability of demeanour, the Commandant stood, among three or four Inspectors. Two others made up the group, and these, old friends of ours—Harley Greenoak and his charge, Dick Selmes. A little way from these squatted a knot of chiefs and councillors, eagerly discussing, in a low hum, the effect of every shot. They were all old or elderly men, differing outwardly in no way from the commonest of their people. They wore the same red blanket, and some the massive ivory armlet. But the faces of all were remarkably shrewd and intelligent.
“Well, Greenoak, so you couldn’t induce old Kreli to show up?” said the Commandant, naming the great and paramount chief of all the Transkeian, and also of the Kafir tribes within the Colonial border. “Even you couldn’t manage that, eh?”
“Not even me,” was the laconic reply.
“Well, I never supposed you would. He’s got a long memory, and that warns him that it may be no safer for his father’s son within a white man’s camp than it was for his father before him.”
“Why? What happened to his father, Commandant?” eagerly struck in Dick Selmes, scenting a yarn.
“Shot—‘while trying to escape.’”
“But wasn’t he trying to escape?” said Dick, upon whom a certain significant cynicism of tone underlying this remark was not lost.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t, and history agrees that he was,” answered the Commandant, drily. “But then, you see, Kreli can’t read history, and wouldn’t believe it if he could. So he’d rather be excused coming to see the new Police artillery make very fair gun practice, and I for one don’t blame him. Why, there’s my old friend, Botmane,” he broke off, as his glance rested on the group of potentates above mentioned. Then to an orderly, “Bring him here, Harris, I must have a talk with him.”
“Who’s he?” asked Dick.
“One of Kreli’s big amapakati, or councillors,” answered Greenoak. “In fact the biggest.”
“Oh!” and he looked with vivid interest as the Kafir, an old man with a pleasant face, rose from his place in the group and strode forward, which interest deepened as he listened to the subsequent conversation. This he was able to do, as the Commandant, though perfectly at home in the vernacular, chose, for reasons of his own, to use an interpreter. But the said conversation was of no political importance, being a mere exchange of compliments, with here and there a reminiscence. The old Kafir expressed unbounded wonder at the gun practice. The white people could do anything—he declared, as he was shown the working of the guns—could kill men as far distant as anybody could see. “What was it done with?”
“Show him the powder,” said the Commandant.
This was done, and the old councillor dipped his fingers, not without awe, into the black, large-grained stuff. No wonder the guns could shoot so far with stuff like that, he remarked.
“Give him a big handful to take borne and show his chief. He can tell him what he has seen to-day,” said the Commandant.
Most savages are more or less like children over the acquisition of a novelty, and now as old Botmane rejoined his brother magnates the whole group of these craned eagerly forward to look at this mysterious and wonderful stuff which he held in the corner of his blanket, and many a deep-toned exclamation of suppressed excitement rose above the hum of animated discussion. The Police looked on in semi-contemptuous amusement.
The practice was over now, and the swarms of red-ochred savages began to melt away; though a goodly proportion remained on the ground to discuss what they had seen. Meanwhile, the Police were mounting for their return march.
With them went Harley Greenoak and Dick Selmes. The bulk of the patrol would return across the Kei to the Colonial side, but A. Troop would remain behind in camp to keep an eye on a particularly unreliable and turbulent chief named Vunisa. The officer in command of this, Inspector Chambers, and Greenoak were old friends, and it was arranged that the latter and his charge should camp with them for awhile.
At that time the Transkei was in a state of simmer, and the same might be said of the tribes inhabiting British Kaffraria. Chiefs were known to be calling in their followers; and this was done by a system that worked with marvellous rapidity. At night mysterious beacons flashed answering messages to each other from this or that lofty hill-top, and it was known that war-dancing on a real scale was going on in this or that disaffected chief’s location; and notably in that of Vunisa, situated in the Gudhluka Reserve. This Vunisa was the chief over an important section of the Gcaleka tribe.
In front of the officers’ mess hut in the A. Troop camp, a group of four sat chatting.
“Pity we can’t find out something more definite, Greenoak,” Inspector Chambers was saying. “I believe I’d be justified in arresting Vunisa on my own responsibility.”
Harley Greenoak laughed drily.
“Don’t you do it, Chambers. You’d stoke up the whole country then and there. Even if you didn’t—what price the Government? Too much zeal isn’t encouraged in the Police any more than in other departments, I take it.”
The Inspector and his sub. laughed ironically.
“Not much,” said the latter. “And these devils are war-dancing every night right bang under our noses. It’s genuine too, for I’ve seen it before, as you know.”
“By Jove! I would like to see a real war-dance,” struck in Dick Selmes. “I say, Inspector, couldn’t some of us go over some night and have a look in? Why not to-night?”
“Tired of life yet, Selmes?” answered Chambers, good-naturedly. “Because if a few of us went to have a look in at it none of us would come back—in their present state of mind. If a lot—why, there’d be no war-dance.”
“Bother!” said Dick.
The conversation rolled on; then came dusk—then dinner. Life in the open makes men drowsy. It was not long before the camp of A. Troop—bar the sentries—was fast asleep.
The night was moonless, but the blue black of the unclouded sky was beautiful with its myriad golden stars, shining as they only can shine in Southern skies. The loom of the hills was perceptibly defined, notably in one direction, where a faint glow brought into relief the V-shaped scarp of converging slopes, constituting, as it were, a portal to the country lying beyond. Hence sounds were borne, distant but indescribably weird. But the Police were accustomed to such by this time. There was war-dancing going on in the Gudhluka Reserve.
We said that the camp was fast asleep. Dick Selmes constituted an exception. Lying on his blanket outside one of the huts—he preferred to sleep in the open for the sake of freshness—he was planning out an extraordinarily mad scheme. Why should he not steal out, make his way over to Vunisa’s location, and witness the fun? It would be a chance he might never get again. As for the risk, old Chambers was probably exaggerating. Even if he were discovered, they wouldn’t hurt one man all alone. He would just give them tobacco and tell them to go on with the programme; and, acting on this idea, he rose quietly and stole out of the camp.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
Hang it! He had forgotten the confounded sentry.
“Oh, it’s all right, old man,” he answered genially. “It’s only me, and I’m taking a walk. Here, fill your pipe, I’ll be back soon,” putting a coin into the man’s hand.
Trooper Carter was not one of the best men in the Force, and F.A.M. Police pay was none too liberal in those days. The weight of a sovereign felt good.
“All right, sir. Don’t be too long, though.”