Chapter Thirty Three.
The Generalship of Elsie McGunn.
It was evening, but Waybridge had not returned. He had started early that morning for Fort Isiwa, to deliver a lot of slaughter oxen for commissariat purposes, for which he had received a very good price indeed. He had been selling off as much of his stock as he could, for although he did not believe the scare would come to anything, still it was as well to be prepared for the worst, and money in the bank was better than stock herded from a laager, with all the contingent risks. So he had set forth in high spirits.
His wife was in no way anxious. There was nothing of the “unprotected female” about her. If put to it she could level a barrel and reload as quickly and as calmly as one of the opposite sex; besides, there was Dick Selmes, who had already proved his grit. He, when he had suggested moving on, had met with such a whole-souled negative, as to set at rest any doubts that might have been lingering in his mind as to outstaying his welcome.
“Why, Mr Selmes, you’d never desert us unprotected females,” she had said. “John has to be away a bit, on and off, just now. And now you want to run away and leave us all alone.”
“Eh, that I’m sure he wadna be doing,” had struck in Elsie McGunn—who was clearing the table—with her usual lack of ceremony.
Dick roared. He wanted some outlet for the intense relief that this cordial welcome conveyed. It was like a reprieve. He would not have to leave Hazel yet. She was his, and now he could stay and take care of her.
“Why, Elsie, you’re a host in yourself,” he said. “A mere man, more or less, doesn’t count when you’re on hand.”
The Scotswoman, who was brawny and muscular, accepted the compliment; moreover, she and Dick were great friends. He delighted to chaff her, but by no means always got the best of the encounter.
“Ay. A’d tak ony sax o’ yon heathen sauvages and mak ’em wish they’d never been born,” she returned complacently. “Still, it’s weel to have a mon on the place, speeshully sic a mon as yeerself, Mr Selmes.”
“Thanks, Elsie,” said Dick, with another laugh, appreciating the sly chaff. “It’s a comfort to know that my trumpeter isn’t dead, anyhow.”
It was evening, and the usual rush of myriad stars flashed and twinkled in the warm velvety sky. The moon had not yet risen. Dick Selmes and Hazel were strolling about round the house. It was much better in the open air, they mutually agreed, and they were alone together. Their hostess was engaged in the putting to bed of her nursery of two.
“What nights these are,” Dick was saying, the glow of his pipe making a red spot in the darkness. “Now, at good old Hesketh’s it was always jolly shivery after dark. But here—ah, it’s like a dream.”
“I don’t know. I feel unaccountably depressed to-night,” replied the girl, with a little shiver. Dick noticed it.
“Darling, let me go in and get you a wrap,” he said eagerly. “You’re chilly.”
“No. I don’t want a wrap. I don’t know what it is, but I feel a sort of presentiment, as if something was going to happen. I’ve been feeling it all the afternoon, but I wouldn’t say anything about it for fear of communicating it to Mrs Waybridge and making you laugh at me.”
“As if I should ever do that. Now chuck off this presentiment, my Hazel. Why, yesterday afternoon you were saying you would always feel so safe with me—with me,” he added tenderly. “That was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Was it? Well, then, Dick, it’s true. Oh, there are those horrid cattle groaning again. Will they never leave off?”
“But they often do it. If I were to drive them away they’d be back again in a minute or two. What does it matter? It pleases them and doesn’t hurt us.”
“It’s eerie, all the same,” she said, with another shiver.
The point of which remark was that the cattle, turned out at night to graze around the homestead, had collected at a place down by the kraals, where sheep were slaughtered, and with their noses to the ground, were emitting a series of groaning noises, culminating in a sort of shrill bellow. Then they would scurry away for a few yards, and returning to the blood-saturated spot, would repeat the performance again and again. After all, it was not an unusual one. On moonlight nights, especially, would it be enacted. To-night, however, in the darkness, the effect was particularly weird and dismal.
“Talking of old Hesketh,” went on Dick, bent on taking her mind off dismal fancyings, “I wonder how the fine old chap will cotton to me as a nephew, eh?”
“Now, Dick, you’re getting ‘too previous,’” she answered, with a laugh. “Why, what can that be?”
A glow was suffusing the far sky, growing brighter and brighter. It seemed to be in the direction of their ride of the day before, “Moon rising, I suppose,” said Dick, re-lighting his pipe.
“No. It’s not quite in the right place for that. Look. There’s another.”
At an interval of space to the left, another similar glow appeared. A very ugly and uncomfortable inspiration now took hold of Dick Selmes’ mind, but he was not going to share it with his companion.
“Grass fires,” he said. “That’s what it will be. And now, Hazel dear, although it’s a vast bit of self-denial to me, I believe we’d better go in. I’ve a very strong suspicion you’ve caught cold. What’ll Elsie say? That it was my fault, of course. She herds you, if anything, rather closer than Greenoak tries to herd me.”
“Yes. We are both in leading-strings,” laughed Hazel. “But it’s a good thing I brought her up here, and made her stay, or they’d have been all sixes and sevens. She’s as good as any half-dozen of these lazy, dirty Kafir or Fugo girls, and now they can’t even get them.”
Mrs Waybridge had returned to the sitting-room and was awaiting them.
“Why, Hazel dear, you look quite white and shivery,” she said. “You’ve been catching cold; yet, it’s a warm evening.”
“I believe she has, Mrs Waybridge,” said Dick. “I should give her something hot, and turn her straight in.”
Hazel smiled to herself at the airs of proprietorship he was beginning to assume. But it was with a very affectionate pressure of the hand that she bade him good-night.
Dick Selmes, left to himself, wandered out on to the stoep again, and then, as if this did not leave him enough room to stretch his legs, wandered out on to the grass below. He lit another pipe, and, his heart all warm with thoughts of love and youth, proceeded to pace up and down. His own company was congenial to him then. There was so much to let his mind dwell upon, to go back to—and, better still, to look forward to. So that it was not surprising that a full hour should have gone by like a mere flash. Awaking from his reverie, he looked up and around. The double glow which he and Hazel had noticed in the distance had died down. But further round, and nearer now, two more of a similar appearance were reddening the sky. What did it mean? His first uncomfortable suspicions had been lulled, then forgotten. But now? Grass fires were not wont to spring up from all points of the compass. Dick Selmes stood still, staring at the distant redness. The sky was becoming lighter now, but in a more gradual, more golden hue, precursor of the rising moon.
Then he became aware of a movement of the front door, which he had left, half open. Some one was standing there, clad in light garments, and beckoning to him. He recognised the stalwart figure of Elsie McGunn.
“Ye’ll be better inside, laddie,” she whispered, flinging ceremony to the winds in the importance of the moment. “A’m thinking there’s that going forward we’ll be nae best pleased to see.”
Dick sprang up the steps in a second.
“What’s the row, Elsie?” he said.
“Hoot, mon, dinna speak that loud. A’ hadn’t done washing up in the kitchen, and when A’ turrned there was a black heathen sauvage a-speerin’ in at the window under the blind.”
“We’ll soon settle him,” said Dick, making a move to start upon that errand. But a strong—a very strong—detaining hand was upon his arm.
“Ye’ll not leave the inside o’ this hoose. Come in, laddie, and look for yeerself. It’s from inside ye’re going to tak care o’ Miss Hazel, not from without, all stickit with the murdering spears of black sauvages.”
She drew him inside by main force, and noiselessly closed the door, turning the key in the lock.
“Get ye the guns now,” she said. “It’s at the back they’ll be wanted.”
In this brief but very stirring experience, Dick Selmes had learned the value of promptitude. In a minute he had joined Elsie in the kitchen. He was loaded with a double shot-gun, and combined rifle and smooth-bore, and a revolver. Going into an adjacent room where there was no light, he lifted a corner of the blind and peered forth.
The moon had not quite risen, but it was light enough to see that in the open space between the house and the quince hedge which railed off the garden, several dark forms were standing. They were some fifty yards off, and seemed to be making signs to others behind, probably hidden in the deep shade of the hedge. It was also light enough to make out that, tied round leg and arm, they wore tufts of cow-hair, and once the peculiar rattle of assegai hafts, hardly audible, vibrated to the horrified gazer’s listening ear.
All the blood seemed to curdle back to Dick Selmes’ heart. The warning words of the store-keeper seemed to burn in letters of fire into his brain. “There’ll be hell let loose directly,” Sampson had said. And now Hazel was at the mercy—or would be—of these savage fiends, for what could be done for long against the weight of numbers? He was back in the kitchen. One solitary candle was burning dimly.
“Can you shoot, Elsie?” he whispered hurriedly, making as if to hand her the shot-gun, which was loaded with Treble A. buckshot cartridges.
“Na, lad. A’ can do better nor that. Do you do the shutin’.”
She was rolling up her sleeves to the shoulders, displaying a pair of arms that would have been useful to a navvy or a drayman. At her feet lay a long-handled axe, rusty and blunt. This she now picked up, swinging it a couple of times aloft, but with the thick side of the head, not the edge, turned outwards.
“Yon’ll nae be movin’ as long as there’s a light,” she said. “They’ll be waiting until we’re in bed, as they’ll think, puir feckless loons. We’ll put it out the noo.”
Dick was moved to intense admiration for the cool intrepidity of the woman; at the art of generalship she displayed. Here, surely, was the true fighting blood of some old Highland or Border clan. Even he seemed to be taking a back seat. She put out the candle.
“Dinna shute till A’ give ye the wurrd,” she whispered.
The back door was in two parts. The upper one of these Elsie now noiselessly set a little open, so as to convey the idea that in a happy-go-lucky, careless, all-secure feeling, it had not been thought necessary to shut it. Then she stood back from the doorway, of course in black darkness, the axe, poised on high, held ready; its weight no more tax on her brawny arms than if it had been a quince switch.
Chapter Thirty Four.
Mrs Waybridge has an Idea.
Dick Selmes, who had intuitively grasped the simplicity of the tactics to be observed, was at the back of the room; not quite opposite the doorway, lest the light from without should fall upon him. The minutes of waiting were tense beyond the critical moment of any adventure which had come his way yet. And it was a time of waiting. The savages would allow time, after the removal of the light, for the occupants to retire. It would be so much easier to wreak their deed of red murder upon the slumbering and unsuspecting, and this he realised. But his pulses were throbbing, and it seemed that his own heart-beats must be audible to those outside. Then he pulled himself together. A grim, satirical impulse to laughter was upon him as he thought what a deadly surprise was in store for them, and cautiously he fingered the ammunition in his pockets so as to guard against the possibility of losing precious time in trying to jam the wrong cartridges into the wrong gun. Ha! Now for it!
For the upper half of the door was slowly opening. A dark head and shoulders were framed within the square of comparative light from outside, then the watcher could make out that their owner was bending over to try and undo the inner fastenings of the lower half of the door. The head was well within the room; why didn’t the axe descend upon it? But Elsie McGunn had laid her plans deeper than that.
The Kafir turned, and seemed to be signalling back to his fellows; then giving his attention to his own work, he straddled the lower half of the door and was within the room. But before he had time even to stand upright he fell like a log. For the axe-head had descended, catching him with a horrid crunch just where the skull joined on to the back of the neck. Not a groan, not a struggle. The chief, Sandili, had lost one fighting man, and that at the hand of a woman.
Silence again. Now another dark form filled the square, and the same inward move began, only the new-comer did not imitate his predecessor in striving to undo any fastenings. He was a gigantic, grease-smeared beast, and Dick Selmes could make out a glint of moonlight upon white eyeball, and a glisten on assegai blades, held in the dark cruel hand, as he made the effort of clambering over. Then the downward sweep, and crunch of the weighty iron, and this one sank as silently as the first. The chief, Sandili, had lost two fighting men, and that at the hand of a woman.
Heavens! could this go on for ever? thought the entranced spectator, standing back in the black gloom, awaiting his turn. Surely those outside would become suspicious—in popular parlance, would “smell a rat.” But he forgot that the essence of their plan was to effect an entrance one by one and in silence, and to that end they would wait until each was safely inside, and, so as not to press or hurry the foregoing one, would not wait immediately against the door. So, in a trice, a third appeared, and met with exactly the same fate. Sandili, the chief, had lost three fighting men, and still at the hand of a woman.
The extraordinary dexterity and noiselessness with which each savage had been felled, had awakened no sort of suspicion among those without. But with the arrival of the fourth within the room, Elsie had somehow miscalculated by ever so little, and instead of laying this one out, rigid and motionless, the heavy iron head of the axe had descended full upon the skull instead of upon the lower base thereof; consequently, although the Kafir went down like a felled ox, the stroke was not sufficiently vital in its effect as to prevent him from emitting a groan, such as will sometimes proceed from a felled ox lying prone beneath the hammer. And it carried to the ears of those outside.
These were seen to start and stand stock still, as though listening intently. Then massing together, they came straight for the door, at a sort of stealthy, creeping run.
“Shute, lad! Shute now!” whispered Elsie, quickly. Dick advanced a step or two, just keeping still out of sight. A sharp, detonating roar, and the heavy charge of Treble A. raked the bunched-up mass. Another roar, and the effect was terrific, indescribable. The ground was covered with dark, struggling forms, others staggering and tumbling over these. At such close quarters the execution done had been deadly, awful. The night air was rent with screams and yells. Some, leaping up, fell immediately, even before they could carry out their intention of limping away. Others lay still, as if never to move again. It seemed that there was hardly one untouched among that stricken heap.
But there was, and although the move escaped Dick, a rapid signal was given. Then from the further shade there rushed forth a number of dark forms, and in open line—for they had taken in the lesson and avoided massing—these spread out, so as to surround the house. But Dick Selmes had reloaded in a second, and now, quick to take in a favourable moment, he raked the line at such a point that three or four dropped beneath the deadly buckshot. And now the night air rang with demoniacal yells. The vengeful savages, drunk with fury, sprang round to the front of the house and swarmed up the steps of the stoep.
“Go ye round to the front,” said Elsie. “All keep ’em out of here.”
She had swung up her axe again. Dick, in a second, had gained the front. The house, situated on a slope, was considerably higher than the level of the ground on this side, and there were no end windows. There were, however, two commanding the stoep, one on either side of the front door. It took hardly a moment to throw open one of these, and not another to rake the mass of Kafirs pouring up the steps, with a charge of the deadly buckshot. Yelling, struggling, such as could move, that is, they would have fallen back, but those behind prevented this. Again the other barrel spoke, this time with the same effect. Thoroughly demoralised now, those who could do so glided away, and sought the nearest cover. And then upon Dick’s ears came a loud cry of alarm, and it came from Hazel’s room.
This was at the end of the house, projecting beyond the stoep, the window looking out in front. With a bound he had gained the door, and burst it open.
Hazel was standing back in a corner of the room, transfixed with terror. As a matter of fact, she had summoned up rare courage in deciding to remain quietly where she was instead of rushing out, and so, seriously to hamper and embarrass the defenders, as her natural impulse would have been. What Dick now saw was a big Kafir worming himself through the window, half in, half out. But, quick as thought, somebody pushed past him, and in the now flooding moonlight he saw the lift of the Scotswoman’s brawny arms, and, with a crunching thud, down came the axe-head on the skull of the venturesome savage, with the same result as before.
“You’ve left your side, Elsie,” he said.
“Go ye back to it,” was the answer. “A’m staying here.”
There was a crisp, uncompromising decisiveness about this statement that Dick well knew there would be no disputing. So he obeyed. Now, through the upper half of the door, the quince hedge was visible in the moonlight, and so, apparently, was he, for now a roar of firearms broke forth from that cover, and a shower of bullets and pot-legs came rattling against the walls of the house; one indeed inside, not far, he could have sworn, from his ear.
The moon, though far from at full, threw upon the house a great deal too much light, and, on the other hand, not enough to dispel the shade of the quince hedge. To this extent the enemy had the advantage, and the flash and roar, and the vicious spit of missile on wall or roof—or a humming whistle above either, as it hurtled away harmlessly into space—was continuous. Kafirs, as a rule, are execrable shots, though here and there a rare exception is to be found. Such a rare exception now Dick Selmes began to fear was present among this crowd, for every now and then a single bullet would hum through the upper half of the door, always striking in the same place, and always when he, judging position from some recent discharge, had returned the fire, using the rifle this time.
But now that he had to play a waiting game, his blood cooled. The nights were short at this time of year. With the first light of morning their weakness would become apparent. The Kafirs would find some means of rushing them. It was clear that Thompson’s prediction had been verified. This was no sporadic outbreak of irresponsible savagery. The whole Gaika location was up in arms, and the glow succeeding glow which he and Hazel had seen earlier in the evening, was that of flaming homesteads, deserted or the reverse, which the barbarians had fired to signal their rising. As for relief from without, why, it was probable that Komgha itself was threatened, or if not, to send forth a small force among thousands of savages pillaging and burning would be madness, whereas to send out a large one would be to expose the settlement itself to attack and massacre. Things looked dark enough, anyway, and now the first heat and excitement of actual and active fight over, a reaction of foreboding set in upon him. A soft rustle of garments beside him in the darkness made him start.
“Mr Selmes. I have a plan. It might be worth trying.”
“Good God, Mrs Waybridge, go out of here! There’s one beast who can shoot, and you’re bang in the line of fire. Ah!”
With the very words a missile came humming between the two, splashing itself into the wall. Dick pulled her suddenly and forcibly out of the line of the open half-door.
“This is it,” she said, as coolly as though nothing had happened. “The rockets. Why not do something with the rockets?”
“The rockets! Ah!”
The words escaped him with a gasp, and the explanation of the idea was this. By way of adding to their Christmas festivities, now barely a week back, the Waybridges had imported a big box of fireworks. But they had not been used, thanks to an opportune suggestion from Harley Greenoak to the effect that, in the current state of alarm, the firing off of rockets might be misunderstood and cause a scare, under the impression that they were being sent up as signals of distress. Now they would come in for just that very purpose.
“The idea is splendid, Mrs Waybridge,” said Dick. “Will you get them out. I can’t leave my post.”
“I have got them out. One minute.”
She went into the other room, and immediately returned with quite a bundle of rockets, all attached ready to the sticks.
“Is Hazel all right?” he whispered eagerly.
“Yes. Elsie is watching over her. I know I would about as soon try and steal its cub from a lioness under the same circumstances,” she added, with a laugh.
“And you? You are splendidly cool and plucky. What about the children? Aren’t they scared?”
“They are, of course, poor chicks. But they’ve learnt to do as they are told. They are inside—and quite quiet.”
The plan was soon formed. Dick was to go outside and stick up the rockets just in front of the stoep. None of the enemy seemed to be on that side, the ground was too open and devoid of cover in the clear moonlight. The while Mrs Waybridge, gun in hand, would watch his present post.
“It’s done,” whispered Dick, returning in a minute. “There are half a dozen of them there. But before I touch them off I’ve got a jolly little surprise for our friends yonder. Now look, and you’ll see some fun.”
Slightly opening one of the windows, with the aid of a chair he adjusted a rocket horizontally on the sill, in such wise as to rake the quince hedge, as near as he could judge, at the point whence the man who was a marksman had been making things lively for them. Then, striking a match, and carefully shading it, he touched the fuse.
It sputtered a moment. Then there was a deafening and appalling hiss, and a great fiery snake of sparks sped straight for the point designed, bursting with a crackling boom in among the quince hedge. The effect was ample. A hubbub of cries and shouts arose among the lurking savages, and immediately Dick had placed another rocket into position and touched it off with similar effect. Utterly panic-stricken now, the Kafirs thought of nothing but wild flight, and the crashing of their demoralised retreat through the garden was the most welcome sound the beleaguered listeners had at one time ever expected to hear again. Quick as thought Dick slipped out to the front, and applied a light to the upright rockets, one after another. Band after band of snake-red flame leapt up into the heavens, bursting with shell-like boom into beautiful blue and red and golden stars.
“There!” he said, coming back, and choking with laughter, in sheer reaction, “I believe Jack Kafir thinks the end of the world has come, or the Police artillery—doesn’t matter which. Your idea has been the saving of this camp, Mrs Waybridge, if he doesn’t get over his scare and come back.”
Chapter Thirty Five.
“Is it too late?”
Waybridge, having delivered his contract stock, had intended staying the night at Fort Isiwa, but some news which was brought in at that post decided him to start for home at no longer notice than it took him to saddle up, and to get there as fast as his steed could carry him.
It was rather late when he clattered into Komgha, but, late as it was, quite a number of men were astir. There was no help for it. He must perforce off-saddle if only for a quarter of an hour, after the pace at which he had pushed his horse, and that all uphill.
“Anything in this news?” he asked eagerly as he gained the stoep at Pagets and called for a very long brandy and soda.
“Or is it all a yarn?”
“Yarn? Not much. The Gaikas have broken out, and are burning all the farms within reach. Yours among ’em, I expect, Waybridge.”
“Mine among ’em! But, good Lord! man, my people are still there.”
The other whistled blankly.
“Didn’t they come in?” he said.
“No. We didn’t believe in the scare, you see. Devil take that confounded horse of mine! I shall have to give him a few minutes more, and then I’ll push him along if I kill him. Won’t any of you fellows come with me? Women in danger, you know.”
“Rather, I’ll go,” answered the man he had been talking to. Others joined, and soon a compact dozen started off to get their horses—if they could find them, and somebody else’s if they couldn’t—and whatever arms they happened to own.
“That you, Waybridge? Yes, it’s time you started. They are beginning to send up rockets at your place.” And Harley Greenoak, who had ridden up unperceived in the excitement, dismounted, and walked up the steps.
“I should think so,” said Waybridge, impatiently. “By the way, Greenoak, I wish you’d sent us some sort of warning. I’d have taken it from you.”
“Couldn’t, earlier than this moment.”
The rescue party now assembled. There were fifteen in all. But the presence of Harley Greenoak had the effect of sending up their confidence in themselves and each other. They felt as if their little force had suddenly been doubled.
“Have you been with Sandili, Greenoak?” said Waybridge, as they rode forth.
“No. With that fighting son of his, Matanzima. He’s practically baas, and he means mischief. He’d have let me be killed, but I happened to do him an important service some time back, and whatever may be said about there being no gratitude in a Kafir, there is. I’ve seen it in too many instances. Look. There are no less than six places ablaze.”
They were travelling at a smart canter. Glow after glow had arisen, at intervals over the dim moonlight waste. The barbarous orgy was in full swing. But no such glare hovered over the site of Waybridge’s homestead. Clearly, therefore, the Gaikas had not succeeded in capturing the place. The rocket flights had now ceased.
“That young Selmes is a plucky chap,” muttered Waybridge, more to himself than to the others. “It’s a Godsend he should be on the place.”
“He’s all that,” said Greenoak. “We shall find your crowd all safe, never fear.”
A little more than an hour’s sharp riding and they topped the last rise. There stood the homestead, white in the moonlight. An exclamation of relief escaped Waybridge. But on a nearer approach this feeling was dashed.
“There’s been a fight,” he said quickly. “Those are dead Kafirs, and, there are no lights showing.”
The dark, motionless forms lying in front of the house, and discernible in the moonlight, told their own tale. What other motionless forms would they find within? Instinctively they put their horses at a gallop now.
“Easy, easy!” warned Greenoak; “that line of quince hedge may cover any number. We don’t need to rush bang headlong into a trap.”
The warning told. Wildly excited as the men were now, such was the influence of its utterer that they slackened pace. Waybridge thought he had never known what tense, poignant anxiety was until that moment.
“I’ll go forward and make sure,” he said thickly. “If—if—anything has happened in there—it can’t matter what happens to me, and—”
He rammed the spurs into his horse’s flanks. But before he had shot ahead fifty yards, a sight met his eyes—met the eyes of all of them—which caused such a wild burst of relief that it could only find vent in a ringing cheer.
Upon the stoep several figures were now standing, and prominent among them the tall form of Dick Selmes. Harley Greenoak, whose feeling of relief was certainly not inferior to that of the others, shook a disapproving head.
“We want to bring this off quietly,” he said. “We don’t want to let the whole Gaika nation know we’re here, and that’s about what all this hullabaloo is likely to effect.”
“It’s all right, old chap. We’ll give ’em fits if they give us the chance,” said one man, airily. Him Greenoak at once set down as a fool.
They galloped up to the house, and there was a vast amount of handshaking and congratulation all round. Harley Greenoak held aloof.
“Who’s on guard at the back, Dick?” he said drily, when he could get in a word.
“At the back? Oh, we don’t want a guard now, old chap,” was the airy response. “We’ve beat ’em off, made ’em run like so many curs. It was the rockets did it, and the rockets were Mrs Waybridge’s idea. But it was Elsie who generalled the whole scrap. My hat, but you should have seen her swinging that axe! She ‘downed’ them one after another as hard as they came in. It was fine strategy, I can tell you.”
“And didn’t A’ tell ye that A’d mak ony sax o’ yon heathen black sauvages wish they’d never been born?” said the Scotswoman, complacently. “And A’ just stopped short at one.”
“Well, you didn’t give them time to wish they’d never been born, or anything else,” answered Dick.
“Ay, but they’ll be wishin’ it the noo, A’m thinking,” was the dry rejoinder, which, with its uncompromising Calvinism, evoked a great laugh.
“Take care that Hazel doesn’t go in there, Elsie,” Dick managed to whisper, referring to the kitchen, which had been the opening scene of the drama, and where lay the four bodies of those first slain by that intrepid Amazon.
The said bodies, however, were promptly dragged outside, and the sight of these, together with those lying around the house, rendered it unmistakably clear that a most gallant defence had been made. The while the feminine side of the garrison was busy getting out liquid and other refreshment for the relief party, though its consumption must of necessity be hurried, for Greenoak had advised immediate removal to the settlement, and Waybridge was already inspanning the Cape cart. Fortunately the Kafirs had not been able to get at the horses, the stable door being commanded by the firing-line. And the urgency of such advice was to receive prompt confirmation.
An exploration of the garden had been judged advisable, and this, accompanied by several others, was undertaken by Greenoak. Here they found one more body—and a badly wounded Kafir. He was shot through both legs, but had managed to drag himself into cover.
“It is Kulondeka,” he said, recognising his questioner. “Then I will speak. There are several more wounded lying about—yes. The people have gone, but they will come again, with many others, before sunrise. Take the white women and go, Kulondeka—now, at once. I know you. You and the other saved me, yonder, the day we fought Ndimba’s people with sticks. Go. Lose no time.”
Greenoak rejoined the others, feeling pretty anxious. They were by no means out of the wood yet. A large marauding band might appear at any moment, and, after all, their number was a mere handful. So it was with a modicum of relief that he saw the cart inspanned, and its inmates duly installed. But having seen them once started, with their escort, Greenoak slipped back to the garden with the remains of a bottle of brandy in his hand, and administered an invigorating drink to the badly wounded savage.
“Your people will find you here,” he said, “and the others. Now, you have felt how hard the white man’s blow can fall. Tell them.”
After the peril and relief a reaction ensued.
“I suppose those horrible wretches will burn down the house,” Mrs Waybridge remarked, as they sped along. “Or, at any rate, plunder it of everything.”
Hazel, for her part, thought the enemy would do both, when he saw the extent of his losses during the defence, for, of course, under the circumstances, the dead had been left just as they fell. But, not aspiring to the part of Job’s comforter, she refrained from recording an opinion.
Those forming the relief party laughed good-naturedly among themselves as they noted how uncommonly close to the Cape cart Dick Selmes would persist in riding, some of the younger ones with a tinge of envy. He, for his part, was keeping up a string of lively talk and banter with its occupants, and he was doing it with an object. Hazel had shown wonderful pluck during the stirring events of the night, but the ghastly sights she had witnessed, and the terror she had undergone, would be likely to come back to her now in the reaction of feeling safe, and he wanted her to forget them. So he rattled on, keeping their attention turned in a more salutary direction; whereby shows out another side of that missing link which the girl had decided had been supplied. He had learnt to think.
The following day, and for days after, all manner of scare rumours kept coming in, of homesteads burnt, of such inmates as were unable to escape in time surprised and massacred, of stock swept away, and crops destroyed. And then the savages began to watch the main road, to cut off express-riders, or small parties; indeed, it was not long before they waxed bolder, and news came of a fierce attack upon several companies of a regiment of foot, on its march to the Komgha. To make things worse, the so-called “conquered” paramount tribe swarmed back into Gcalekaland again, joining hands with the now revolted Gaika clans within the Colonial border. Thus the war, officially declared to be over, had, in actual fact, only just begun.
A few nights after its plucky defence, Waybridge’s homestead went the way of the rest, but not before he had managed, with the aid of a few daring spirits, to make a dash out there and bring away some of the more portable effects, and to bury, or otherwise hide, others. But he did not complain. The marvellous escape of his household, where others had died cruel deaths, alone precluded that. In other ways, too, he had been lucky, in that for some time past he had gradually been selling off most of his stock, so that his loss was comparatively small.
As the days went by Dick Selmes began to look with wistful eyes at this or that commando passing through, or at this or that patrol starting to reconnoitre the countryside or keep the road open. Hazel, reading what was in his mind, was furtively watching him. One day, when they were alone together, she said—
“Dick, my darling. You are eating your heart out because you want to go off again to this wretched war, and perhaps get killed. You are not content to stay and take care of poor little me.”
She had grown wondrously tender towards him since the night of peril they had shared, in pursuance whereof she had laid an embargo upon any more needless adventures on his part.
“It isn’t that, sweetheart,” he answered. “I’m only too happy here—with you. But I seem to be hanging back—sort of skulking—while every other fellow who can shoot straight, or not, is in the field.”
She laughed softly.
“Skulking! You? Why, you’ve done the share of any ten men since the beginning of the war. No—no—Dick. If that’s all that’s troubling you, why it needn’t. And now, look here, you are to go on escort duty. You are to escort me—home.”
Dick’s face brightened.
“But, dearest, you are forgetting,” he said, with a puzzled look. “The road isn’t safe yet—not by a long chalk—for you to travel under such a small escort as myself and Greenoak.”
“It’ll be a bigger one. The Commandant is sending a lot of Police to King Williamstown in a day or two, and he says I may travel under their escort. Will you make one of it?”
“Won’t I!” he answered delightedly.
Chapter Thirty Six.
Envoi.
The partridges were lying well, springing up in fine coveys from the turnips, or from corn-sheaves on the stubble, or in twos and threes, as the coveys were broken up. A soft haze hung over the fair English landscape, with its green meadow or golden stubble and vernal woodland, the latter hardly beginning to show the gorgeous wealth of autumn colour which would soon enwrap it; for it was the Glorious First.
“By Jove, Greenoak,” said Sir Anson Selmes, “we thought we’d got a few record bird-shots this side of the water. But even they don’t touch you. Why, man, I don’t believe you’ve let a bird go by this morning; all killed dead too—no runners.”
The two were walking together, gun on shoulder, an old and favourite pointer of Sir Anson’s trotting at their heels. The morning’s shoot was over and they were making for the spot where, in the cool shade of a spreading tree, luncheon was laid out and waiting. About half a field off our friend Dick was converging on the rendezvous, with the keepers and dogs, apparently engaged in animated converse with the former.
“Oh, as to that, Sir Anson, you couldn’t miss a bird with a gun like this,” was the modest reply; the gun being, in fact, one of a valuable pair which had been sprung upon Harley Greenoak as a surprise present from Dick and his father conjointly.
“And as to that,” rejoined the latter, “there are a good many men who’d miss a good many birds with a gun like that or any other. But how things shape themselves. When I turned the lad over to you, I knew he’d find plenty of adventure, and perhaps some risk, but the last thing I ever dreamed of him finding was a bride—and such a bride—ha-ha! And the daughter of an old brother officer of mine, at that. Why, I had almost forgotten Brandon’s very existence.”
“Well, when I saw how things were tending, it gave me some anxious times, I allow,” said Greenoak, “recognising that fathers are fathers, and naturally like to have a say in such matters. All the same, I tell you candidly, Sir Anson, that from the first I thought Dick would be extremely lucky if ever he managed to bring that off.”
“And you thought right. Lucky dog indeed. Why, the girl is a treasure.”
It was even as the old gentleman had said. He had held an Army commission in his younger days, and he and Hazel’s father had been subalterns together. But the latter, tired of waiting for his step, had exchanged into a regiment ordered to the Cape on active service, and at the close of hostilities had sold out, married, and settled down as a colonist, and a very fairly successful one he became. All this had come out in the course of Dick’s engagement, and Sir Anson, delighted at the prospect of once more foregathering with his former comrade-in-arms, had concluded to take a run out and look into matters himself. His welcome had been all that he could have desired, and Hazel won the old man’s heart—even as she had won that of his son—on sight. Thus everything ran on oiled wheels, culminating in a big wedding at the nearest district town, at which nothing would satisfy Dick but that Harley Greenoak should officiate as his best man. And the latter, ruefully comic over the incongruity of the rôle in his case, was obliged to comply.
“Hallo, dad!” now sang out Dick, as they all met at the rendezvous. “Has Greenoak been ‘wiping your eye,’ or is it t’other way on?”
“No, certainly not the other way on, Dick,” was the answer. “Greenoak’s a record. But—hasn’t Hazel come yet?”
“N-no. Wait though—oh—yes. There she is. I hear wheels.”
A minute later and a neat dog-cart drove up, halting at a gate on the further side of the field. Hazel had alighted before Dick could get there, and as the pair returned together, laughing and talking, the two older men watched them, each with his own particular form of satisfaction at his heart.
“What a couple they make,” said Greenoak, more to himself than to the other. But it was overheard and heartily seconded.
Hazel was looking lovely in her fresh, plain, summer costume, which set off her dark, piquante beauty to perfection.
“Good sport?” she cried merrily. “Ah, yes, rather,” as her eyes fell upon the rows of “little brown birds” laid out upon the grass with a few hares and a rabbit or two. Then, still laughing and talking, she set to work, aided by Dick, to extract and lay out the contents of the hampers, and soon there was popping of champagne corks, and the glasses creamed with their fizzing contents, and all fell to with a good appetite.
“There’s something very restful about this English scenery,” remarked Greenoak, gazing dreamily out over the rich meadowland and soft, towering foliage, to where, away in the distance, the gables and chimneys of the Hall were irregularly glimpsed.
“Yes, and to-day might almost be an African day,” said Dick. “It’s so still and lovely, and cloudless.”
“Oh, talking of Africa,” cried Hazel, “I’ve just got a lot of news—mail letters—came soon after you had started. Dick—Mr Greenoak—what do you think? Elsie is going to be married!”
“No!” shouted Dick; and he threw back his head and roared. “Oh, that’s good. Who to?”
“I don’t remember the man, but he was one of the party who came to our rescue that night. He’s got a farm in the Chalumna district.”
“He didn’t see the play she made with that axe,” laughed Dick. “That might have scared him off—eh?”
“Perhaps that constituted the attraction, Dick,” said Sir Anson. “Useful sort of wife to have, you know, in such a troublesome neighbourhood.”
“She says that now her ‘bairn’ has left her—that’s me,” went on Hazel—“she might as well look out for herself. And so—she did.”
“What a howling joke!” cried Dick. “Good old Elsie! We’ll ship her out no end of a tea-service—and things—eh, dad? What other news, dear?”
“The Commandant has resigned.”
“Pity, fine old boy the Commandant. Why did he chuck?”
“He couldn’t pull with the present Government. They hampered him too much.”
“Beastly shame! They don’t know a good man when they’ve got him. Who succeeds him—Chambers?”
“No, they’ve put in another man. Mr Ladell has been promoted Inspector. Oh—and that man who helped you in that absurdly foolhardy adventure, Dick—Sketchley—has been made a sergeant. That’s all the F.A.M. Police news.”
“That part’s good, anyway. What about the Commandant? Hasn’t he got anything better?”
“There’s some talk of giving him Basutoland.”
“Oh, well, that’s not so bad. The fine old chap’ll have lots of time to hunt butterflies and lizards up there.”
“They say there’s likely to be trouble up there,” went on Hazel. “Now, Mr Greenoak, what will South Africa do without its ‘providence’?”
“Yes. I knew that,” said Greenoak, ignoring the last question. “The Commandant and I have often talked it over as more than a possibility.”
“Then you’ll be there, old chap,” cried Dick. “Oh, for certain you’ll be there.”
“Maybe. I’m thinking of returning soon.”
“Not until you’ve had some pheasant shooting, Greenoak,” said Sir Anson. “I swear you shan’t go from here till you’ve had some pheasant shooting, and that won’t be just yet. So you’re anchored for the present, you see. Now,” he went on, “fill the glasses. I’m going to propose a toast. Here it is. ‘All our good friends across the water, coupled with the name of Harley Greenoak.’”
The latter looked, if he could look such a thing, a trifle nervous.
“I can’t make a speech, Sir Anson,” he said, when they had drunk it. “Well, since I took charge of Dick there, I discovered more than once the truth of what you told me at the time. He certainly has an amazing aptitude for getting into holes, but then he manages to get himself out again.” (“Or you do it for him, old chap,” interrupted Dick.) “Well, then, as you have coupled your toast with the name of Harley Greenoak, I reply by proposing another toast, and that is ‘Harley Greenoak’s Charge.’”
“Here, Dick,” said Sir Anson, “open another bottle or so, and give the men a brimming bumper apiece. They must drink this toast too. I forgot in the other case, but they can drink Greenoak’s health as a toast to itself afterwards.”
The keepers and watchers, who were eating their lunch under a tree a little way apart, were called up and duly supplied with the invigorating sparkle. Then the health was drunk with enthusiasm—
“Harley Greenoak’s Charge!”
The End.