Chapter Nine.
Disaster.
Saint Kirwin’s boasted a really beautiful chapel, large, lofty, rich in stained glass and abundant sculpture of first-rate design and execution. The services, which were fully choral, were rendered by an excellent choir drawn from the school, and on Sundays and on certain saints’ days its performance would have done credit even to the average cathedral. The structure was in shape a parallelogram, the seats running in long rows, tier upon tier the whole length, certain stalls, however, being returned against the west wall on either side of the entrance. The principal of these was that of the headmaster, who thus had the whole assemblage under his view. And his lynx gaze was quick to descry any irregularity, and woe indeed to the prefect in whose row such should occur, and still greater woe to the delinquent or delinquents.
We have said that Dr Bowen cut an imposing figure as he entered the big schoolroom in cap and gown amid an awed silence, but he looked, if possible, more imposing still in chapel, in his snowy voluminous surplice and great scarlet hood, as, preceded by a verger, he made his way along the aisle to read the Lessons from the great eagle lectern which stood in the middle of the choir; indeed, so majestic was his gait and bearing on these occasions as to be the source of a good deal of surreptitious fun on the part of the more satirically minded, among whom, needless to say, was our friend Haviland.
Now the latter, on this ill-fated afternoon, was standing outside the door, striving to recover breath after the length and severity of his run. If only he could enter and reach his place unseen by the Doctor, it would be all right. The master of the week—in this case Mr Williams—his own dormitory master, a good-natured and genial athlete, would give him an imposition, as in duty bound, but would almost certainly not report him at head-quarters, which he was not strictly bound to do. But how on earth could he accomplish any such entrance seeing that the Doctor’s stall was next to the door, and commanded everything that went on, as we have said? And then there occurred to him a desperate scheme, one which spoke much for his readiness and resource, and on that account alone deserved to succeed. What if he were to seize the opportunity when the Doctor should descend from his stall, and, the moment his back was turned, slip in and walk close behind him all the way to the lectern. Arrived there, the attention of the Great Panjandrum would be momentarily diverted while turning to ascend the steps, and he could slip into his seat, which, luckily, stood there hard by. The chance was a desperate one indeed, but it was his only one. He would risk it.
Would the chanting never cease? Haviland’s heart thumped, and a mist seemed to come before his gaze. Ah, now for it! The voices were tailing off into an Amen; the organ stopped with a final snarl, then silence, only relieved by a rustling sound and that of footsteps on the stone floor. Now was his time.
The door, fortunately, was not quite closed, and so could be opened noiselessly. Now it was done, and Haviland was within the chapel, his rubber-soled shoes making no noise as he stole along, conscious of a confused sea of faces; and, indeed, that progress seemed to his excited brain like hours instead of minutes, and the great scarlet hood adorning the Doctor’s back seemed like a huge red-hot furnace before his eyes.
This strange procession had reached the lectern. Haviland felt safe. He had calculated his move to a nicety, and in a fraction of a second would have gained his place. But he had reckoned without the consummate shrewdness, which was the result of long experience, of the headmaster of Saint Kirwin’s.
For the look of surprise, of interest, on the rows of faces on either side of him as he paced up the aisle had not escaped that potentate, but he was not going to impair the majestic dignity of his march by turning then. When he had gained his objective he did just half turn, and in the momentary compression of the lips and that one look on the Doctor’s face Haviland knew that his fate was sealed. To many there who had witnessed the episode, and there were few who had not, it seemed that there was a menacing growl in the sonorous voice rolling out the splendid old Scriptural English.
“Well, Haviland, what have you got to say for yourself?” said Mr Williams, when our friend went to report himself afterwards.
“My watch stopped, sir. I thought I had plenty of time, and then heard the bell begin when I was just coming off Sidebury Down. Even then I tried to do it, but it was impossible.”
“Well, I can’t help that. You’ll have to do four hundred lines,” answered Mr Williams, fully intending to let him off half of them. “One of my prefects, too,” he added, half quizzically, half with a mock aggrieved air.
“Very sorry, sir.”
The imposition was really less than he had expected. If only the matter were to rest there, he thought.
“I say, Haviland,” subsequently remarked Laughton in hall. “You’re a cool customer, marching in behind Nick in that stately manner. Did you think he wouldn’t see you?”
“Yes. It was the only chance, and I took it. He wouldn’t have, either, if all those asses hadn’t given, the show away by gaping like so many idiots, confound them.”
“What’s Williams given you?”
“Four hundred. I believe I’ll try and get him to let me off one. He hasn’t gated me either. He’s a good sort, is Williams. What do you think, Laughton? Think Nick’ll take the thing any further? The old brute looked vicious, and he perfectly hates me. I don’t know why.”
Laughton wouldn’t commit himself to an opinion, and the general feeling at the prefects’ table was about evenly divided as to whether the Doctor would take it up or not.
“If you could only have seen yourself, Haviland!” cut in Cluer, another prefect. “It was enough to kill a cat, I swear it was. It looked for all the world as if you and Nick were trying which could crowd on the most side.” And he spluttered over the recollection.
“Jolly good fun for you, Cluer, no doubt,” said Medlicott, “and for all of us, but it’s beastly rough on Haviland, remember.”
“Rather, if Nick’s in one of his rotten moods,” said Laughton. “But let’s hope he won’t be.”
Alas for any such hopes! On the way out of hall the fatal summons came: “Haviland to go to the Doctor’s study after prep, bell.”
“All up!” groaned the implicated one.
When, at the appointed time, Haviland entered the dread presence, there was no doubt but that the headmaster was “in one of his rotten moods,” as Laughton had so graphically put it. Seated there at his study table, his face wore a very thundercloud of sternness, as he curtly invited the other to make his explanation. This was exactly the same as that offered to Mr Williams, but here it was received with a wrathful grunt—and then in his most magisterial manner the Doctor proceeded to deliver himself.
“You have been guilty of a double breach of rules, in that you were absent from calling-over—for a part of which, by virtue of your office, you were personally responsible—and you were late for chapel. It is no excuse to say that your watch stopped; if that were any valid reason, why then half the school might stay away from calling-over, and, indeed, we might as well do away with calling-over altogether, or any other rule. For a prefect to break the rules, which it is his bounden duty to help in enforcing—to do which, indeed, is the very reason of his official existence—has always been, in my eyes, a ten times greater offence than the same conduct on the part of a junior.
“Now, over and above this double breach of the rules you have been guilty of two further and very serious offences. You have disturbed the decorum and dignity of divine service by entering the chapel in the way you did, and you practised deceit in making that entrance in such manner that you hoped it would escape my observation. Let me tell you that nothing escapes my observation—”
“No, by Jingo it doesn’t!” thought the delinquent, ruefully.
”—and of late that observation has convinced me that you are unfit to hold the office you bear, for I have had you specially under my notice for some time past. As, therefore, you have proved yourself utterly unfit to hold office, I have made up my mind to deprive you of it, and you may now consider yourself no longer a prefect.”
Here Haviland broke in desperately:—
“Sir, has there ever been any report against me—I mean of any disorder arising where I was in charge?”
The unheard-of audacity of this expostulation seemed to take away the Doctor’s breath, to render him utterly speechless. He to be answered, remonstrated with! Why, the thing was unprecedented!
“Silence, sir!” he thundered, rising in his seat, and Haviland thought he was going to strike him. However, he did not, and went on:—
“And as you have abused the reasonable liberty which the rules of the school allow—and that not once, but continually—thus setting a bad example where it was your duty to set a good one, you will be confined to the school grounds from now until the end of the term. You may go.”
Seen from the windows of the somewhat sombre room in which he stood, the fair open country seemed to Haviland’s gaze more alluring than ever in the summer twilight, as he heard his sentence of imprisonment. And now he might roam it no more.
Then, as he went forth from the dread sanctum, a feeling of desperation dashed with recklessness came upon him. They might just as well expel him now, he thought, and perhaps he would do something to deserve even that. Practically gated until the end of the term—a matter of about seven weeks! Yes, he felt desperate.
At the breaking up of preparation that evening there was considerable excitement among the groups scuffling to get a glimpse of the notice board in the big schoolroom, in the brief time allowed between prep, and prayers, and the attraction was a brand-new notice which ran thus:—
“Haviland—prefect.
“Suspended from his office and confined to the school grounds for the remainder of the term for gross breach of rules and general misconduct.
“Nicholas Bowen, D.D., Headmaster.”
“It was a pretty stiff account to have to settle, all because a fellow’s watch happened to stop,” Haviland had remarked to Laughton and some others when giving an account as to how he had fared. “Suspended, gated for the rest of the term, and four hundred lines to do for Williams into the bargain.”
The latter, however, was not to be added to his already burdened shoulders, for at dormitory time, when he went to report to Mr Williams that he was no longer a prefect, the latter said:—
“I’m sorry to hear that, Haviland. But now you must just lie quiet a bit and keep out of mischief. The Doctor’s sure to reinstate you. Oh, and look here. You needn’t do those lines I set you this afternoon. It doesn’t seem fair that a fellow should have two punishments for the same offence.”
“The Doctor doesn’t seem to think so, sir,” he could not restrain himself from saying. “But thank you very much, sir. Reinstate me? No. The Doctor has a regular spite against me—why I can’t think.”
“Oh, nonsense, Haviland,” said the master very kindly. “At any rate you must try not to think so. Good night.”
But while uttering this protest officially, Mr Williams did so half-heartedly, for in his own mind he thought the young fellow had been very severely treated indeed, and that the punishment was out of all proportion to the offence.
Chapter Ten.
Brooding.
Haviland, fallen from his high estate, did not take his misfortunes well. He was of a proud and sensitive temperament, and now that he found himself humiliated, reduced to the level of the rank and file, deprived of the very material privileges he had formerly enjoyed, shorn of his powers, and now in a position to obey where for so long he had been accustomed to command—yes, the humiliation was intolerable, and for no greater crime than that his watch had unfortunately stopped. A mere accident.
Not that his former colleagues were in the least likely to add to his humiliation by word or act of theirs. Esprit de corps was strong among them, very largely fostered indeed by his own influence while in a position to exert it. Even the two or three among them who disliked him would have shrunk from such an act, as being one of unspeakable meanness. And his fall was great. In seniority he had stood next to Laughton, the captain of the school, and were he eventually reinstated, he would lose this, and have to start again at the bottom of the list.
As for the juniors, some were unfeignedly glad, though their instinct of self-preservation made them remarkably careful not to obtrude that fact upon him, yet, though his strictness while in office had rendered him unpopular, now that he had fallen most of their sympathies were with him.
But from sympathy or condolence alike he himself shrank. His mind was bitter with thoughts of hatred and revenge—the latter, if only it could be obtained—yet why not? He was utterly reckless now. They could but expel him, and for that he didn’t care—at least, so he told himself. It was in this dangerous mood the day after his suspension that he encountered Jarnley—Jarnley and his gang.
But Jarnley had seen him coming, and tried to shuffle away. So, too, did his gang.
“Here—Hi, Jarnley!” he cried. “Wait a bit. I want to speak to you.”
There was no escape, short of taking to his heels, wherefore Jarnley stopped, with a very bad grace and faced round.
“Eh? What is it, Haviland?”
“Just this. That day I smacked your head for bullying Cetchy you said you’d fight me if I wasn’t a prefect. Well, I’m not a prefect now, so—come on.”
“Oh, I was only humbugging, Haviland,” returned Jarnley, not in the least eager to make good his words.
“Then you’d rather not fight?”
“Of course I don’t want to,” said Jarnley, shrinkingly. “And, look here, Haviland, I’m beastly sorry you’ve been reduced.”
What was to be done with a cur like this? Haviland knew that the other was lying, and was the reverse of sorry for his misfortunes. He had intended to give Jarnley his choice between fighting and being thrashed, but how, in the name of common decency, could he punch a fellow’s head who expressed such effusive sympathy? He could not. Baulked, he glared round upon the group.
“Any one else like to take advantage of the opportunity?” he said. “You, Perkins?”
“I don’t want to fight, Haviland,” was the sullen answer.
“Very well, then. But don’t let me hear of any of you bullying Cetchy any more. He can tell me now, because I’m no longer a prefect; and any fellow who does will get the very best hammering he ever had in his life. That’s all.”
His former colleagues spared no pains to let him see that they still regarded him as one of themselves. Among other things they pressed him to use the prefects’ room as formerly, but this he refused to do. If he had been walking with any of them he would stop short at the door, and no amount of persuasion could prevail on him to enter.
“You needn’t be so beastly proud, Haviland,” Laughton had said, half annoyed by these persistent refusals. “Why, man, Nick’s bound to reinstate you before long. The notice, mind, says ‘suspended’ only.”
At which Haviland had shaken his head and laughed strangely.
The confinement to grounds told horribly upon his spirits. Three miserable cricket fields—as a matter of fact they were remarkably open and spacious—to be the sole outlet of his energies during all these weeks! He hated every stick and stone of them, every twig and leaf. He saw others coming and going at will, but he himself was a prisoner. Not even to the swimming pool might he go.
In sheer desperation he had followed Laughton’s advice, and gone in for cricket, but had proved so half-hearted over the game, then bad-tempered and almost quarrelsome, that no one was sorry when he declared his intention of giving it up. More and more he became given over to brooding—seeking a quiet corner apart, and looking out on to the open country from which he was debarred. While thus occupied one day, a hand dropped on his shoulder. Turning angrily—thinking some other fellow was playing the fool, and trying to startle him—he confronted Mr Sefton.
“What were you thinking about, Haviland?” said the latter in his quick, sharp, quizzical way.
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. Nothing very particular, I suppose,” forcing a laugh, for he was not going to whine to Sefton.
The latter looked at him with straight, penetrating gaze.
“They tell me you’ve given up cricket again. Why?”
“I don’t care for it, sir, never did. Everybody seems to have a notion that nothing can be of any use, or even right, but that confounded—I beg your pardon, sir—cricket and football. A fellow is never to be allowed to take his own line.”
“Yes, but it’s a good wholesome rule that if a fellow can’t take his own line he’d better adapt himself to the lines of others. Eh?”
Haviland did not reply. He merely smiled, cynically, disdainfully. Mr Sefton, watching his face, was interested, and more sorry for him than his official position allowed him to say. He went on:—
“Don’t mope. There’s nothing to be gained by it. Throw yourself into something. If one has lost a position, it is always possible to regain it. I know, and some others know, your influence has always been used in the right direction. Do you think that counts for nothing? Eh?”
“It hasn’t counted for much, sir, in a certain quarter,” was the bitter reply. “It isn’t the position I mind—I don’t care a hang about it, sir!” he burst forth passionately, “but to be stuck down in these three beastly fields, in the middle of a crowd all day and every day—I’d rather have been expelled at once.”
“Don’t be an ass, Haviland,” said the master, stopping short—for they had been walking up and down—and peering at him in his quaint way. “Do you hear? Don’t be an ass.”
This commentary, uttered as it was, left no room for reply, wherefore Haviland said nothing.
“Why don’t you go to the Doctor and ask him to remove your ‘gates’?” went on Mr Sefton.
“I wouldn’t ask him anything, sir.”
The tone, the expression of hatred and vindictiveness in the young fellow’s face, almost startled the other. As a master, ought he not to administer a stern rebuke; as a clergyman, was it not his duty to reason with him? But Mr Sefton, no part of an ass himself, decided that this was not the time for doing anything of the sort.
“You talk about not caring if you were expelled, Haviland,” he went on. “How about looking at it from your father’s point of view? How would he feel, d’you think, if you ended up your school life with expulsion? Eh?”
He had struck the right chord there, for in the course of their conversations he had gathered that the young fellow was devotedly attached to his father, whom he regarded as about a hundred times too good for the barren, ungrateful, and ill-requited service to which he had devoted his life—at any rate, looking at it from the unregenerate and worldly point of view. And, with a consciousness of having said just the right thing at the right time, Mr Sefton wisely decided to say no more.
“Think it over, Haviland. Think it over. D’you hear?” and with a friendly nod of farewell, he went his way.
A few minutes later he was walking along a field-path, his hat on the back of his head as usual, and swinging his stick. With him was Mr Williams.
“I’ve just been talking to that fellow Haviland,” he was saying. “Of course, I didn’t tell him so, but Nick has made a blunder this time. He’s piled it on to him too thick.”
The Doctor’s sobriquet, you see, had got among the assistant masters. It was short and handy, and so among themselves they used it—some of them, at any rate.
“I think he’s been most infernally rough on him, if you ask me,” replied Mr Williams, who, by the way, was not in orders, but an athletic Oxford graduate of sporting tastes, and who was generally to be met when off the grounds surrounded by three or four dogs, and puffing at a briar-root pipe. This he was even now engaged in relighting. “One would think it’d be enough to kick the poor devil out of his prefectship without gating him for the rest of the term into the bargain. I promptly let him off the lines I’d given him when I heard of it.”
“That’s just my opinion, Williams. And it’s the gating that’s making him desperate. And he is getting desperate, too. I shouldn’t be surprised if he did something reckless.”
“Then he’ll get the chuck. That’ll be the last straw. Why has Nick got such a down on him, eh, Sefton?”
“I don’t know, mind, but perhaps I can guess,” said the other, enigmatically. “But look here, Williams. Supposing we put in a word for him to Nick. Get him to take off the fellow’s gates, at any rate? Eh? Clay would join, and so would Jackson, in fact we all would.”
“That’d make it worse. Nick would think we were all in league against him. He isn’t going back one jot or tittle on his infallible judgment, so don’t you believe it. We’d get properly snubbed for our pains.”
“Well, I’m going to tackle him, anyhow. I’m not afraid of Nick for all his absurd pomposity,” rejoined Mr Sefton, with something like a snort of defiance, and his nose in the air. He meant it, too. Yet, although the above expression of opinion between these two masters very fairly represented the general estimate in which the whole body held the Head, they were fully alive to the latter’s good points, and supported him loyally in upholding the discipline and traditions of the school.
Chapter Eleven.
A Midnight Foray.
There was one in whose eyes Haviland, fallen from his pedestal, was on a still higher plane even than he had been before; and that one was Mpukuza, otherwise Anthony, sneeringly known among the ill-disposed as “Haviland’s chum.” With the entire and unswerving loyalty of his race towards the object of its hero-worship, the Zulu boy looked upon his god’s misfortune as his own misfortune, and was not slow to proclaim the fact in season and out of season. Any fellow within measurable dimensions of his own size who professed satisfaction within Cetchy’s hearing had got to fight, while more than one thrashing came his way from bigger fellows, towards whom his championing of his hero’s cause took, perforce, the form of cheek. As for the prime author of the said misfortune, it would have been astonishing to note the result upon the reverend but stern Doctor’s mind, could he either have heard or understood the awful threats and imprecations muttered at him in the liquid Zulu language whenever he came within view of Anthony.
The latter, since he had been at Saint Kirwin’s, had made his way very fairly well. Acting upon an earnest and wise warning from the missionary who had placed him there, the masters had refrained from taking undue notice of him, and so spoiling him, as perhaps might otherwise have been the case, and being thus left to make his own way, he had made it, as we have said. And he was growing taller and stronger, with all the fine physique of his race. Lithe, active, enduring, he was as hard as steel; nor would it be very long before he might be in a condition to turn the tables on Jarnley and Co., quite independently of his hero and protector.
To whom one day he sidled up, and opened conversation this way:
“You not sick of being always in?”
“You ass, Cetchy! What d’you mean by asking such an idiotic question?” was the excusably irritable retort.
“Au! Then why you not go out?”
“Look here, Cetchy. If you’re trying to make a fool of me, you’ll promptly find you’ve got the wrong pig by the ear. What are you driving at? Eh?”
The other looked quickly around. The two were alone.
“I not make fool. Ishinga ’nkulu not let you go out in day. Au! go out at night. Why not?”
We regret to say that by the above epithet—which being interpreted means “big rascal”—this descendant of generations of fighting savages was of late wont to refer to the Reverend the Headmaster of Saint Kirwin’s.
“No one see you,” he went on. “Quite easy. I go with you; we find lots of nests. We go to Hangman’s Wood again. Plenty of time. All night long.”
“Now, Cetchy, you young ass, how are you going to find nests in the dark?”
“Not dark. Plenty moon. Besides,” and here he looked round once more, and said something in a quick, hurried whisper. Haviland started, and his face flushed red with eagerness and excitement.
“The very thing,” he exclaimed. “By George, won’t we have fun? But I’m not so sure about the other fellows in the room. Some of them hated me while I was a prefect. What if they sneak?”
“They not sneak,” tranquilly replied the other. “No; they not sneak. I know.”
Then the two plotters put their heads together and talked a good while, but always cautiously. If any one came within earshot, why they were only talking about bird-nesting.
We said that Haviland occupied a smaller room at the end of the big dormitory, the said room containing ten other fellows, and from this it had not been deemed necessary to shift him at the time of his suspension; indeed, the same order prevailed therein as before, so great the force of habit and his own prestige. Now, a night or two after the above conversation, just before “lights out” time, Haviland remarked meaningly:
“Any sneaks here?”
The boys stared, then tittered. What on earth was Haviland driving at? they were all thinking.
“Don’t stand grinning like a Cheshire cat, Smithson, you young ape,” said the ex-prefect. “Why don’t you answer, all of you? Are there any sneaks here?”
“No,” came the unanimous answer; while one or two added, “Of course not. Why?”
“Ha! Any fellow sneak, I kill him!” said Mpukuza, otherwise Anthony, in would-be blood-curdling tones, and rolling the whites of his eyeballs hideously.
“There’s no need for that, Cetchy,” said Haviland, judiciously. “I know none of these fellows are sneaks.”
“Of course not,” they repeated. “But why, Haviland?”
“You’ll see, or, rather, you won’t see, for you’ll all be asleep. You’ll all be asleep, d’you hear?” he added significantly.
He turned out the gas. Not for another hour could he begin operations, and all he and his accomplice had to do was to sit and wait.
Ten of the occupants of the room were pretending to be asleep, except two or three who, wearied with waiting to see what was going to happen, actually were so. The others noiselessly arose. Both were dressed, but instead of their boots wore light running shoes. Then the other inmates of the dormitory thrilled with excitement and admiration as, peeping furtively from beneath the clothes, they beheld in the moonlight, which streamed into the room, their ex-prefect busily engaged in knotting a cord to the framework of the two iron bedsteads which stood right under the outside window.
This long wing of the school buildings ended here. Without, the chapel wall, buttressed and lofty, extended at right angles to it. Another convenient buttress on the other side of the window screened the corner thus formed, in most effective fashion.
Haviland and his dusky satellite proceeded to pay out the cord. The end just swung clear of the ground, and the height, from twenty-five to thirty feet, was a mere nothing to such practised climbers. Down they went, hand over hand, first one, then the other. Then, taking advantage of the shadows thrown out by the rose bushes that grew outside, they flitted along the chapel wall, then over the fence and into the field beyond.
How good it was to be out again, to move freely over this glorious open country spreading around so still and soft and mysterious in the moonlight! Half hundred fragrant scents seemed to blend and fuse, distilled from grass and bank and hedgerow, upon the pure night air, and mingled with the odour of kine asleep in the pasture meadows. A nightingale “jug-jugged” in an adjacent copse, and was answered by another; a large hare, long-eared and ghostly, sprang out of their way and loped off into misty dimness—but, over all, that sense of freedom, of entire and complete liberty, which a sense of risk, and very real risk, did but add to.
For a keeper would likely be on his beat these moonlight nights, and to encounter one such would be almost fatal. And to-night they had higher game in view than bird-nesting.
“Here it is,” said Mpukuza, diving into a bed of leaves at the bottom of a dry ditch and dragging forth—an air-gun. “Now we have fun. Au!”
Haviland’s hand shook with excitement as he took the weapon. Fun indeed! Wouldn’t they? He was not unpractised in the use of firearms, for on rare and happy occasions when he had visited at the country place of a distant relative he had been taught and encouraged to shoot, and he was passionately fond of the sport. But his opportunities, alas, had been few and far between.
The air-gun was a good one of its kind, and up to a certain distance shot true and hard. The Zulu boy had seen it among the wares of a travelling pedlar during one of his solitary wanderings, and had purchased it for five shillings, it having probably been stolen in the first instance. He had hidden it craftily away, with an eye to just such an adventure as this.
Haviland put in a pellet and fired at nothing in particular. Even the slight twang as he pulled the trigger seemed quite loud in the midnight stillness; but he felt that it would hit hard.
They stole along in the shadow of a hedgerow, Haviland carrying the gun. A covert loomed darkly in front of them. As they entered it stealthily, the flap-flap of startled wood-pigeons set their nerves all tingling, for would not a tale be thereby conveyed in the event of keepers being abroad?
But alas for their reckoning! It was the wrong time of year for night-poaching. The foliage was so thick that they could see nothing. Every tree might have been weighted with roosting pheasants for all the sport that fact would afford them. For some time they went round and round the copse, looking upward, and were just going to give it up when—there in a young ash of scanty leafage, they made out two dark balls silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Controlling his excitement, Haviland took careful aim and pressed the trigger. There was a thud, a flapping of wings, and one of the dark balls fell to earth with a louder thud. There lay at their feet a splendid cock-pheasant. The Zulu boy promptly ended its struggles by a tap on the head with his stick.
“Shoot again,” he whispered. “Shoot again.”
Now at ordinary times Haviland’s sporting instincts were far too true to allow him to find much satisfaction in shooting birds on the roost. But here the night adventure, the secrecy and risk, and, further, the skill required to pick off a bird with a single pellet, and that in a very uncertain light, all went to render the situation intensely exciting. Again he raised the weapon and took careful aim, with the same result as before. Mpukuza capered with delight.
“That enough for to-night,” he whispered. “Now we go and eat him. Come.”
For the speaker had been carefully planning this adventure for some days past, consequently it was not surprising that when the two gained the congenial hiding-place formed by a deep dry ditch with clayey overhanging banks, the whole well concealed by brambles, the materials for a fire were laid and ready, and only wanted lighting. The fireplace was cunningly scooped out of the clay bank, and now, in deft manner known to himself, the Zulu boy managed to light and foster that fire in such wise that it soon consisted of a mass of ardent and glowing charcoal, giving forth little or no smoke. The while the birds had been hastily plucked and cut in pieces, and set on the embers to broil.
It was almost worth while undergoing his long imprisonment to have such glorious fun as this, thought Haviland, as he watched the hissing and sputtering flesh which, but half an hour ago, had been alive and totally unsuspicious of approaching fate. The dry ditch became a sort of cave of romance, an episode in a life of wild adventure. Perhaps some day, at no great distance of time either, such a life might be his. And as the roast went on, his dusky companion told him strange tales of his own country—tales of war, of stirring sights he himself had looked on with childish eyes, of grim legends fraught with mysterious horror; stories, too, of widespread slaughter, and ruthless, unsparing revenge. The listener’s blood was all on fire.
“I say, Cetchy, I would like to go to that country of yours,” he said, half breathlessly. “Perhaps I will one of these days.”
“Ha! you come. We have good fun then. But it’s no longer good country. The English have driven out the king—broken up the people. Ha!”
The first instalment of the broil was ready, and they fell upon it with a will, the while Anthony had raked up the fire and put on as much more of the birds as it would hold.
“Cetchy, old chap, this is splendid,” said Haviland gleefully, as with their pocket-knives they stripped the flesh from the bones, and devoured it with their healthy school appetites. “Why Nick himself can’t get roast pheasant now for love or money, because it’s out of season. Old brute! I’d like to give him a turn on that fire. Eh?”
“Oh yes, make him wriggle on it like Umbelini make the Tonga prisoners I was goin’ to tell about. They go work in diamond mines, come back through Umbelini’s country with plenty money. They no tell where it is, hide it away. He burn them till they tell—most of them never tell; Umbelini burn ’em till they dead. One man tell. Ha!”
The while Haviland had hardly noticed how the other had been allotting all the choicest bits to his share.
“I say,” he said at last, “I never thought you and I would be able to polish off a brace of cock-pheasants to our own cheek. Yet we jolly well nearly have.”
They had. The night air and their natural growing appetites had rendered the feat one of no great difficulty. But it was time to go back. The nights were nearly at their shortest. By two o’clock it would be almost daylight. So they started from their alfresco kitchen and banqueting-room, and, concealing the air-gun and its ammunition, made their way back once more, and neglecting no precaution, shinned up the rope which had been left dangling, and were safe and sound within the dormitory again—the rope being carefully coiled away in Haviland’s box—he about five minutes thereafter being fast asleep, and dreaming that he was plugging a huge cock-pheasant through and through with air-gun pellets, the riddled bird finally taking shape as the Doctor, to his own great and vengeful satisfaction.
Chapter Twelve.
Tying Knots in Nick’s Tail.
A change seemed now to have fallen upon Haviland. He was no longer to be met wandering alone, and the moody frown had left his brow, giving way to an expression of easy, light-hearted contentment. Yet there were days when he spent nearly the whole of his spare time lying in a corner of the playing fields, his cap over his face and—fast asleep. There was no fear of him sleeping too long, or being late for anything—Mpukuza, otherwise Anthony, took care of that—and was always at hand to awake him in time.
Not much together were they in the daytime, in fact, hardly at all, yet the Zulu boy was always at hand when his hero wanted him, actually or unconsciously. He could do without all this extra sleep, but the other, with his nervous, high-strung temperament, felt the reaction after these nights of adventurous excitement, to say nothing of the sheer physical fatigue following upon the hard exercise attendant on their nocturnal exploits.
For that first expedition was by no means the last. The appetite for such grew, and night after night the cord was let down, and these two amateur poachers would sally forth upon their lawless but entrancing errand. Not always so lucky were they, however, as on that first occasion, for it was generally impossible to see the roosting birds because of the abundant foliage, and then too, the moon began to wane, which added to the difficulty of bringing them down, even when they did see them. Moreover, they had at least two exceedingly narrow escapes at the hands of unduly vigilant keepers. They decided that the time had come to change their field of action. Things were getting too hot.
Not always, however, were they on poaching bent. Sometimes the air-gun would be left reposing in its place of concealment and egg-hunting would be the order of the day—or rather of the night—and here Haviland’s consummate knowledge of the life of the fields and woods brought success where another would have returned empty-handed. But the season was getting late, and the nests mostly contained young birds, or eggs so hard-set as to be useless.
Now this change in Haviland did not long escape the keen, observant eyes of Mr Sefton. True to his resolution, that kind-hearted disciplinarian had taken an opportunity of putting in a word with the Doctor, in mitigation of his favourite’s penalty, and had been incontinently snubbed for his pains. The headmaster saw no reason whatever for modifying his former judgment, nor did he recognise the right of his assistants to offer criticism upon his acts, had been the substance of his reply.
“Ha! Nick blew himself out like a bullfrog, by Jingo!” was Mr Sefton’s subsequent comment when he narrated the result to Mr Williams. “But I don’t mind his bounce, not I, ha ha! It’s like water off a duck’s back with me. Ha!” he added whimsically, with his head thrown back, as his way was.
Of course he said nothing to Haviland as to his kindly meant attempt, but this new attitude on the part of his favourite was sorely puzzling. He would engage him in conversation from time to time—not out of any motive of spying, but because he was really interested in the young fellow, and liked him genuinely, but even then he could arrive at no clue.
Haviland, for his part, was greatly enjoying that side of the situation. He knew they were all curious about him, those, that is, who were interested in him at all. Laughton and Medlicott and others had at times commented on his altered demeanour, but he had explained it away on the ground that the end of the term was not far off, and he expected to go and stay at an awfully jolly place for part of the holidays. If they only knew the fun he was having what time everybody else was in bed and asleep! The thought appealed to the humorous side of his nature. It is possible he might even have forgiven the Doctor, but that his sense of justice was outraged. Other masters had punished him, but never unfairly. He knew he had earned such. The extreme and double-weighted penalty with which the Head had visited a not very grave offence he could not feel he had earned. Other masters had set him more than one swingeing imposition, but even when they had spoken sharply they had always behaved like gentlemen. The Doctor, on the other hand, had a bullying, overbearing way with him, which was quite unnecessary, and galling and ungentlemanly to the last degree, he considered. It might be all right when dealing with some of these cads, thought Haviland, but he ought to know when to discriminate. No, he could not forgive the Doctor. The sense of injustice rankled, and festered, and not the least side of the enjoyment of his new escapades was that he was “tying knots in Nick’s tail,” as he put it to himself—and Anthony—consciously or unconsciously “lifting” from Ingoldsby.
The only misgiving—and it was rather a serious one—that would strike him was how long the other fellows in the dormitory would manage to hold their tongues. He did not believe that any among them would willingly give them away, but the young asses might get chattering. With this in view, many and oft were the monitions addressed to them by himself and his accomplice. They were admonished, not only to make no confidences to those outside, but never even to talk about it among themselves, for fear of being overheard—in fact, to regard their knowledge as the cherished secret of some privileged order, of which they had the honour to be members. This appealed to them more than any other argument, and it hardly needed Cetchy’s from time to time repeated threat: “Any fellow sneak—I kill him.” This threat he would emphasise by the production of a wicked-looking weapon, which he kept in his box—namely, the half of an old sheep-shear, with which, spliced on to a short, strong handle, he had manufactured a very creditable imitation of his native assegai. Nor did they regard the menace as an entirely futile one, for they had witnessed an outbreak or two of genuine, though not unprovoked, savagery on the part of the threatener, which, but for timely interference, might have entailed serious—if not fatal—consequences.
Yet the above misgiving grew by dwelling upon, and there were times when Haviland would feel exceedingly uncomfortable and almost make up his mind to give up these perilous expeditions. Were they worth the risk? The end of the term was drawing near, and his irksome restraint would, of course, end with it; whereas, were he detected, the result would be inevitable expulsion. Mr Sefton’s words would strike uncomfortably home to his mind, and, after all, embittered and reckless as he might feel, he had no desire to be expelled. His accomplice would get off with a sound swishing, for which, of course, he himself was too old. He would certainly be expelled.
But such prudential moods were not destined to last. His close confinement galled him more and more, and, besides, there was one expedition the pair had promised themselves, and that was to extend their midnight marauding to Hangman’s Wood. That would be a famous exploit. They would shoot two or three pheasants there—the place just grew pheasants—and at night they would be entirely safe, because no one dared go into it on account of the ghost. Yes, it would be the crowning exploit of all, and the sooner they undertook it the better, while there was some moonlight left.
They might have been less easy in their minds, however, could they have assisted unseen in a discussion then going on in the Doctor’s study between that potentate and Laughton, with a couple of the senior prefects.
“It is really becoming a serious matter,” the Headmaster was saying, “and I am considering what action I shall take. Again I have had complaints. Both Mr Worthington’s and Lord Hebron’s keepers have been to me again. There is no doubt as to the truth of their stories, I am afraid. Their woods are overrun and pheasants taken—they gave me ample proof of that. They have even found a place where the birds have been cooked and eaten, and a good many of them too.”
“Surely, sir, that’s no evidence whatever that it has been done by any of the school,” said Laughton, as the Doctor paused, as though inviting opinion.
“I think it is, Laughton. The ordinary poacher, you see, would remove his game, not cook and eat it in a dry ditch. Furthermore, the footmarks observed by the keepers were made by cricket shoes, and not large enough nor broad enough to be imprinted by the village ne’er-do-well.”
“But Lord Hebron’s preserves are too far away, sir,” urged Medlicott. “No fellow would have time to get there and back unless he got leave from calling-over.”
“That’s true,” rejoined the Doctor; “but the Question is, has anybody been getting such leave of late, and, if so, how many? I shall inquire into that. And now have any of you any other suggestions to offer?”
The prefects looked at each other rather blankly. It was, of course, very flattering, and all that sort of thing, to be taken thus into the counsels of the redoubtable Doctor; but then, unfortunately, they hadn’t the ghost of a notion what to suggest. At last Laughton said:—
“I should think, sir, the best plan would be for the owners of the shootings to increase their staff of keepers. It seems hard for them to lay the blame on the school when there’s so little to justify the suspicion.”
“On the contrary, I think there is a good deal to justify it,” returned the Doctor. “I think they have made out a primâ facie case. The question now is what steps I shall be called upon to take. I am very loth to put in force so grave a measure as withdrawing the privilege of rambling over the country and confining the school strictly to grounds, merely on suspicion, even though a strong suspicion. I have always held, too, that that privilege, combined with the natural healthiness of our situation, has not a little to do with the high reputation for health we have always enjoyed. But, if this goes on, I shall be obliged to take some such step.”
“Perhaps, sir, some of us might make it our business to go about a little and keep our eyes open,” suggested Read, the other prefect.
“That is just what I was thinking, Read,” replied the Doctor. “If we can discover the offenders, I shall make a grave example of them, and it will be to the interest of the whole school. Meanwhile, let me impress upon you that I particularly wish this meeting to be considered a confidential one. To the other prefects its burden must, of course, be imparted, but beyond them I desire no information to leak out, for that might be to defeat our object entirely, for it is better for the evil-doers to be detected than to be only warned and to desist for a time. And at this we will leave it.”
And so they were dismissed.
The while Haviland and his dusky accomplice, blissfully unconscious, were planning their great stroke, which had the additional attraction of tying yet another knot in Nick’s tail.
Chapter Thirteen.
A Grim Tussle.
“I say, Cetchy, isn’t this splendid?” said Haviland, drawing in long breaths of the cool night air. He was simply revelling in the sense of absolute liberty as he gazed around upon the dim fields, then up at the star-gemmed sky.
“Oh, yes. Splendid, rather! Hangman’s Wood long way—get morning very early,” replied the other.
The long, dark outline of the ill-omened covert loomed before them; and at sight of it Haviland could hardly restrain a wild paroxysm of laughter, as he remembered the last time they visited the place, and the awful scare they had put upon the unfortunate keeper. Just as they gained it, the moon in its last quarter arose above the tree tops.
“It’s awfully dark in here, Cetchy,” whispered Haviland, as they stood within the gloomy depths of the wood. “These trees are too thick. We can’t see a blessed bird.”
It was even as he had said. The light of the feeble moon hardly penetrated here, and the chill gloom and weird associations of the place began to take effect even upon their spirits. A fox barked in the further end of the covert, and ever and anon the doleful hooting of owls, both far and near, rang out upon the night, and now and again one of the ghostly birds would drop down almost into their faces, and skim along the ride on soft, noiseless pinions. The earthy moisture of the soil and undergrowth was as the odour of a charnel-house. Every now and then some sound—strange, mysterious, unaccountable—would cause them to stop short, and, with beating hearts, stand intently listening. Then they went on again.
They had secured no spoil; the tree tops were too thick to see the roosting birds. At last, as luck would have it—whether for good or ill we say not—they managed to glimpse a single pheasant through a gap against the sky. All of a quiver with excitement, Haviland pressed the trigger, and missed. Still the dim black ball up aloft never moved. Again he took careful aim, and this time it did move, for it came down from its perch with a resounding flapping of wings, and hit the earth with a hard thud, still flapping. In a moment the Zulu boy was upon it and had wrung its neck, but not before it had uttered a couple of raucous croaks that seemed, to the over-strained sense of its slayers, loud enough to be heard for miles in the midnight stillness.
“I’m glad we’ve got something at last, Cetchy,” whispered Haviland, as he examined the dead bird. “We’ll have to be contented with it, though, for time’s up. Come along, we must get back now.”
Bearing off their spoil in triumph, they had gained the centre of the wood—the spot, in fact, where the old tragedy had occurred, and close to that whereon they had so badly frightened the keeper. Suddenly Haviland felt a hand on his arm, heard a brief whisper:
“Stop! Something moving.”
At first he could hear nothing; then his ears detected a sound, and his nerves thrilled. As the other had said, it was something moving, and instinctively he realised that it was something heavier, more formidable than any of the light-footed denizens of an English wood. Somehow his mind reverted to the grim legend. What if it were true, and the strangled man actually did walk, with all the marks of his horrible and violent death upon him? In front, where the rides of the wood intersected each other, the moonlight streamed through in a broad patch, rendering blacker still the pitchy blackness beneath the trees beyond. The stillness and excitement, together with the gruesome associations of the place, had got upon their nerves even more than they knew. What if some awful apparition—appalling, horrible beyond words—were to emerge from yonder blackness, to stand forth in the ghostly moonlight, and petrify them with the unimaginable terrors of a visitant from beyond the grave? Haviland’s pulses seemed to stand still as the sounds drew nearer and nearer. A keeper’s? No. They were too quick, too heavy, too blundering, somehow. Then Anthony breathed one word:
“Dog!”
A dog! Of course, that solved the mystery. But even then the jump from supernatural fears to the material hardly seemed to mend matters. A dog meant a keeper, of course, unless it were a midnight poacher like themselves, in which event it would give them a wide berth; but this was too much to hope. On the other hand, if it were accompanying a keeper on his midnight round, the brute would certainly attack them; and that it was a large and heavy animal they could determine by the sound of its quick, fierce rushes to and fro, and a sort of deep-toned grunt which it uttered now and then as it snuffed the ground.
Breathlessly they crouched. Ha! It was coming! The sound of its approaching rush in the pitchy blackness was almost upon them—then it passed. It had not discovered them yet, but evidently suspected their presence. When it winded them, as it might do any moment, then it would come straight for them. There was something terribly unnerving in this feeling of being hunted, and that by an enemy whose strength they had no opportunity of estimating.
As the retreating sound grew fainter, Haviland suggested climbing a tree. There was no such thing as playing the ghost again. That was all very well with a keeper, but it wouldn’t do for a moment with a dog. Besides, the brute could maul them horribly even before the keeper should arrive on the scene; but Anthony negatived the suggestion.
“No climb tree,” he said. “I kill him. Look, he come again.”
It was even as he had said. The rush of a heavy body through the undergrowth, this time on the other side of the ride, and then, from the darkness beyond, there sprang forth into the moonlit ride an enormous bull-mastiff.
Terrible to a degree looked the formidable brute, his fangs exposed in a white line across the blackness of his huge bullet head: and the great muscular brindled body looked powerful enough to bring down a bullock with ease. Why, these two would simply be torn to pieces.
As the brute sprang into the light it paused a moment. Then, uttering one deep, cavernous “gowl” it came straight for them.
But at the moment it began its rush, there darted forth into the light a form, lithe and dark. Something flashed aloft, and at the same time descended—and then animal and human were mixed up together in a struggling mass upon the ground. The descendant of a long line of warriors knew better than to give his antagonist the choice of battle ground, and did not prefer to fight in the dark, wherefore he had hurled himself straight at the onrushing monster—stabbing furiously with his improvised sheep-shear assegai.
Not ineffectually either, but the sheer weight of the heavy muscular brute had hurled him flat.
It had all been done with a rapidity that was almost lightning-like. Haviland, witnessing it, felt all in a maze for a moment, realising that he was unarmed—for the air-gun of course would be about as effective against such an adversary as this as the common or school pea-shooter. Yet he bethought him of a weapon more useful still, and without hesitation he advanced upon the struggling pair, and his right fist was armed with a knuckle-duster of the most formidable kind, each knuckle constituting a sharp point—a terrible implement, one moderately strong blow of which could kill a man easily.
The Zulu boy lay on the sward beneath the great dog—his one object being to shield his throat. Fortunately he had previously rolled his jacket round his left arm, and this had received the powerful jaws, which hung on, with a dreadful worrying snarl—while, with his right, he was stabbing furiously at the creature’s body, but somehow without much effect. Haviland saw his chance—and the good moonlight befriended him. With the utmost coolness and ready promptitude he selected his opportunity—letting out with all the force of his iron-bound right hand. “Woof!” It caught the snarling, gnashing monster full and square on the side of the head, and without waiting to see the result he followed it up with another. One quick gasp, and the great brute rolled off, lying on its side, hardly moving—stunned, if not dead. But the Zulu boy would leave nothing to chance. Springing to his feet he drove his sharp weapon through and through the body of the dog. There was no doubt about it then. The animal lay still—the dark pool of its blood widening ever in the moonlight.
“Are you hurt, Cetchy? D’you hear—are you hurt?” gasped Haviland, panting with the effort and excitement of his supreme exertion.
“Hurt? No. He bite me once. Ha! I, Mpukuza! I can kill! Ha!”
Thus spoke the savage—the descendant of a line of fighting savages, standing there, grasping his savage weapon, surveying the dead and bleeding body of his formidable enemy, not in his own native wilds, but in the peaceful glade of an English game preserve.
“Well, come along then, and quick. There’s sure to be a keeper not far off.”
Quickly they took their way to the edge of the wood. They were over the fence and away, but hardly had they gone some fifty yards when a voice behind them shouted:—
“Hi! Stop there! Stop, do ’ee ’ear? I’ll shoot ’ee if ’ee don’t.” And immediately the bang of a discharged gun crashed out upon the night, Haviland laughed.
“It’s all right, Cetchy. He daren’t fire at us, for his life. It’s bluff. Come along.”
And away they raced, but a glance over their shoulder showed them that the keeper was giving chase.
That in itself didn’t afflict them much, but by and by when they had covered several long fields, they observed with concern that he was still on their heels. As a rule, a keeper was easy to distance, but this one seemed lightly built and in excellent training. Even a dark lane down which they dived, hoping to double on him, proved of no avail; rather did it serve to make matters worse, for the keeper, knowing where they were bound to come out, had wasted neither time nor energy, but made straight for that point: a manoeuvre which brought him alarmingly close when he did emerge. And at all hazards he must not be suffered to head them off from their objective.
“Now, then—’ee’d better stop, I tell ’ee!” he shouted, reckoning them done up. But the fugitives knew better than to waste wind, if he did not. They simply raced on, offering no reply. And by degrees their superior wind and training told, the more so that the race was a long one. They saw they were shaking their pursuer off, and it was all important they should do this, because it would never do for them to let him run them all the way back to the school. They might as well surrender at once as that.
“My clothes all over blood!” said Anthony at last, when they were safe beyond pursuit. “What I do?”
Haviland examined him critically in the moonlight.
“So they are,” he said. “Well, Cetchy, you must peel them off and stow them away in the ditch, and go in without them. You can think you’re back in Zululand again.”
“So I can. Yes,” answered the other, showing his white rows of splendid teeth.
Half an hour later, two wearied perspiring figures shinned up the cord under the angle of the chapel wall at Saint Kirwin’s, and so ended another night of excitement and adventure—as they thought.