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The Fire Trumpet: A Romance of the Cape Frontier

by Bertram Mitford · English · Gutenberg #36592 · 1,330,253 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Fire Trumpet: A Romance of the Cape Frontier

Author: Bertram Mitford


        
Release date: July 3, 2011 [eBook #36592]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36592

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIRE TRUMPET: A ROMANCE OF THE CAPE FRONTIER ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Fire Trumpet
A Romance of the Cape Frontier
By Bertram Mitford
Published by Spencer Blackett, London.
This edition dated 1889.


VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

A QUEER LEGACY.

"To my valued friend, Arthur Claverton, I bequeath the sum of nine
thousand pounds."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

He to whom this announcement was made could not repress a start of
surprise.  The only other occupant of the room paused and laid down the
document from which he had been reading.  The room was a solicitor's
office.

"You hardly expected to be remembered, then?" said the latter.

"No.  At least I won't say that, exactly; but nothing like to such an
extent.  I thought poor Spalding might have left me some trifle to
remember him by--his pet breechloader, or something of the kind; but,
candidly, I never expected anything like this!"

"Yet you saved his life, once."

"Pooh!  Nothing at all.  The weather was hot, and the swim did me good.
If I hadn't gone in, the nearest Jack Tar would have, and have thought
nothing of it; nor do I.  Poor Spalding!"

The speaker is a man of about thirty to all appearance.  His face, which
is a handsome and a refined one, wears a look of firmness, not unmixed
with recklessness.  It is the countenance of one who has seen a good
deal of the world, and knows thoroughly well how to take care of
himself.  The other man is more than twice his age, and looks what he
is--every inch the comfortable, well-preserved family solicitor.

"I don't know about that, Mr Claverton," answered the latter.  "The
story our poor friend told me was something very different.  The vessel
was going at thirteen knots, the night being pitch dark, and a heavy sea
running.  And no one saw him fall overboard but yourself."

The other laughed in a would-be careless way.  "Oh, well, I think you
are making too much of it.  But the job was a risky one, I admit, and at
one time I did think we should never be picked up.  And now, Mr Smythe,
I'm going to ask you a question that you may think queer.  First of all,
you knew my poor friend intimately for a good many years?"

"I did.  When first I made his acquaintance, Herbert Spalding was a
little chap in Eton jackets.  I've known him tolerably intimately ever
since."

"Well, then, didn't it strike you that latterly he had something on his
mind?"

"Yes, it did.  And I happen to know he had.  The old story.  He was
jilted; and being one of those sensitive men with a high-strung nervous
organisation, he took it to heart too much.  I believe it shortened his
life.  Poor fellow."

"Well, whoever did it, has something to answer for, or would have had,
at least; for, between ourselves, that time he went overboard he went of
his own free will."

"I had suspected as much," said the lawyer, quietly.  "That was on the
voyage out, wasn't it?"

"It was.  We first became acquainted on board ship, you know.  He hardly
spoke to any one on board till, all of a sudden, he took a violent fancy
to me.  We occupied the same cabin.  In fact, I soon began to suspect
there was a petticoat in the case, the poor chap was so down on his
luck; but he didn't tell me in so many words, and it wasn't for me to
pry into another fellow's private affairs.  One evening I came into the
cabin, and found him loading a revolver.  There was nothing very
astonishing in that, you know, because fellows often go in for revolver
practice at sea--shooting bottles from the yard-arm, and all that sort
of thing; but it was the way in which it was done.  He hid the thing,
too, when he saw me, and that looked fishy.  However, I managed to get
hold of it, unknown to him, and stuck it right away, and made up my mind
to keep an eye on him.  That very night, or rather morning, for it was
in the small hours, I was awoke by something moving in the cabin.  I
sung out, but got no answer.  Then I went over to Spalding's bunk, and,
by Jove, it was empty.  When a fellow has been kicked about the world as
much as I have, he don't take long to think; consequently I was on deck
in about a second, with precious little on but my nightshirt, and
luckily so as it happened.  It was pitch dark, and blowing half a gale.
I didn't want to sing out if I could help it--wanted to avoid a fuss,
you understand; so I peered about for Spalding.  At last I made out a
dark figure standing behind the wheel, looking astern.  They don't use
the rudder wheel, you know--steer from the bridge.  I was just going to
sing out quietly, when the figure disappeared, and I heard a splash that
there was no mistaking.  Then, you bet, I gave a war-whoop loud enough
to wake the dead, as I went over the side after it.  Fortunately for
Spalding--for it was him all right--fortunately for us both, the
quarter-master had his wits about him, and pitched over one of those
fire-buoys that are kept handy for these occasions; but there was a
heavy, lamping sea on that nearly knocked the breath out of one.  I
wasn't long reaching Spalding; but he could hardly swim a stroke at the
best of times, and at that time was simply helpless.  But I can tell you
I had my work cut out for me.  By the time the ship was brought round to
us again, and we were picked up, we had been nearer half an hour in the
water than twenty minutes, and not many seconds more would have done for
us.  I was all right again next day, and, by way of explanation, I gave
out that Spalding was given to somnambulism.  The idea took; and no one
suspected anything, or, if they did, never said so, and the affair
created a deuce of a sensation on board."

"I should rather imagine it did," said the lawyer, who had been vividly
interested in the other's narrative.  "But you were with him when he
died, weren't you--I mean at the moment?"

"Yes and no.  After the affair I've been telling you about we became
greater chums than ever.  He seemed to pick up in health and spirits,
and I began to think the poor chap was going to forget all about his
troubles.  We stayed in Sydney a little while, and then went up country,
where we spent three or four months, knocking about from station to
station, for Spalding had no end of letters of introduction.  At last,
as ill luck would have it, the mail--that curse of existence--overtook
us even away up in the bush.  I don't know what news he got; but poor
Spalding became worse than ever.  Nothing would satisfy him but we must
return home to England immediately.  I say `we,' because I'll be hanged
if I could make him see that I, at any rate, hadn't come to Australia
for fun, but to try and find a means of livelihood.  No; I _must_ go
back with him.  He had influence and abundant means, and could get me a
much better berth in England than I should ever find out there, he
argued.  He wanted my company on the voyage home, and was determined to
have it; I shouldn't be out of pocket by it, and so on.  We nearly had a
tremendous row over it; but at last I yielded, partly to sentiment, for
we were great chums and the poor fellow seemed utterly cut up at the
prospect of my leaving him to go back alone, partly to carelessness,
for, I reasoned, I should be no worse off than when I left England, and
could always pick up some sort of a living anywhere.  So we sailed by
the first vessel we could catch, and a precious slow old tub she was.
Before we had been a week at sea, Spalding got a notion into his head
that he would never see England again, and all I could say or do to
cheer him was of no use.  Well, to cut the matter short, one evening
about half an hour before sundown, we were sitting aft smoking our
weeds.  I left him, wanting to do a constitutional before dinner.  I
hadn't been gone five minutes when the quarter-master came to say that
my chum didn't seem well.  Back I went like a shot.  There was Spalding
sitting in his deck-chair just as I left him with his book in front of
him.  But his head hung forward queerly.  I had only to take one look at
him to know what was up.  The poor chap was stone dead."

"Dear me--dear me!" said the lawyer.

Claverton paused a little--moved by the recollection.  He had never told
the story so circumstantially before.

"We carried him to the cabin, and the doctor made an official
examination and all that sort of thing.  Then the captain sealed up his
effects, and the next evening our poor friend was buried.  It was in the
tropical seas, you know, where they don't delay funerals longer than
they can help.  And, curiously enough, it could not have been far from
the spot where the poor fellow made his nocturnal plunge on the voyage
out.  Yes; whoever _she_ is, she'll have something to answer for.  The
doctor called it heart disease; but heart-break would have been nearer
the mark, I believe."

There was silence for a few moments.  It was at length broken by the
lawyer.

"And you actually knew nothing of that codicil?"

"Nothing whatever.  Hadn't the faintest suspicion of anything of the
kind.  It's all right, I suppose; can't be disputed or upset--eh?"

"No.  It's perfectly in order--adequately witnessed and everything.  If
Spalding had been a solicitor in busy practice, he couldn't have added
that codicil more correctly.  And he did it at sea, too!"

"What did he die worth?"

"It's hard to say at present.  Most of his property was landed--very
extensive, but all entailed.  He has bequeathed to yourself nearly all
that it was in his power to bequeath to anybody; but--"

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of that," interrupted the other impatiently, and
somewhat annoyed.  "I merely asked out of curiosity.  And, as I told you
before, I never expected anything at all."

"But, I was going to say, there's a queer stipulation attached to your
bequest.  I don't quite know what you'll think of it," went on Mr
Smythe, with a dry smile.  "You only profit by the bequest--which is
funded--provided you remain single until the age of thirty-five.  Should
you marry before then you forfeit the whole, which, in that case, would
pass to a distant relative.  But I should think you will not have very
long to wait.  Three or four years, perhaps?" and he looked inquiringly
at the other.  "Of course you draw the interest from now," he added.

"More likely eight years."

"You don't say so.  I declare you look much older!"

"The conditions are queer, certainly," said the legatee, with a smile.
"I think I can see through it, though.  Poor Spalding was played the
mischief with so severely by a woman, that he thought the best kindness
he could do me was to offer a counter inducement to me against making a
fool of myself in that line.  And, look, thirty-five is the age
stipulated--his own age at the time of his death."

"It's singular, certainly," said Smythe; "but there seems to be method
in it.  Probably he thought that he, not having arrived at years of
discretion at that time of life, neither would you.  As if a man ever
does arrive at years of discretion where the sex is concerned!  But I
congratulate you heartily--at least, I suppose I must; for you look
heart-whole enough at present, anyhow.  But you are young--you are
young."

"Not too young to know the value of nine thousand pounds and its yearly
interest, I can tell you, Mr Smythe," said the other, with a laugh.
And then he took his leave.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TWO.

THE LEGATEE.

If there is one quality in this world which its fortunate possessor is
to be envied the enjoyment of, it is that of absolute _insouciance_.  I
don't mean the spurious article known as "putting a bold face on
things," though this is a gift by no means to be despised; but that
downright, thorough, devil-may-care way of taking the vicissitudes of
life, in such wise as these interfere neither with the appetite, sleep,
nor temper, which is well-nigh as rare--at any rate among us
Englishmen--as the Little Bustard.

When Claverton entered Mr Smythe's office, he owned barely enough
sovereigns in the world to make a creditable jingle in his breeches
pocket; when he left the lawyer he walked out into the street a man of
independent means.  Yet the change, welcome and wholly unexpected as it
was, in no wise disturbed his mental equilibrium.  He was conscious of
an increased feeling of complacency as he contemplated the world at
large by the light of his own improved prospects; but he would permit
himself no elation.  While going through the hardest times he had
known--and he had known some very hard ones indeed--he had cultivated
the severest philosophy; and now it had become second nature to him.
"Bad luck--no use growling, won't last; good luck--no use crowing, may
not last," was his self-invented and favourite maxim.

At the time when we first make his acquaintance, Arthur Claverton stood
absolutely alone in the world.  I don't mean to say that he had no
relatives, but they cold-shouldered him.  A few of them were near
relatives, others very distant; but the nearer they were, the more they
cold-shouldered him.  He was an only child and an orphan; his mother
having died at his birth, and his father being killed in a railway
accident sortie four years later, leaving him to the care of a guardian,
one of the near relatives aforesaid.  Near, too, in another sense of the
word; for, though very comfortably off, and indeed wealthy, this
conscientious and benevolent guardian impounded the scanty substance
left for the orphan's start in life, on the ground that his family was a
large one, and he could not afford the addition of his dead brother's
child.

His family certainly was a large one, which is to say that it was a
supremely disagreeable and discordant one.  The boys, rough and unruly,
worried the girls and their father.  The girls, underhand and spiteful,
tormented the boys and their mother.  Wrangling and mischief-making was
the order of the day.  After this it will not be surprising to learn
that it was a pious family, which is to say, that much attention was
given to morning and evening prayers; and that Sunday, jocosely termed
the day of rest, was to be employed getting up epistles and gospels by
heart, with a slice of catechism or so thrown in, what time the whole
master was not pent up in a square box undergoing edification at the
lips of a prolix and Geneva-clad Boanerges, who seldom said "And now to"
within an hour and a quarter from the enunciation of his text.  By an
odd coincidence, the day on which this exemplary piety had its full
scope--notably in the tabooing of all secular literature or any approach
to levity of demeanour--the reign of strife, squabble, and jar seemed to
reach its acme.

Such was the amiable family circle among which young Arthur's earlier
lot was cast.  But somehow he never assimilated.  He was a species of
Ishmael when "at home," which, by the way, was not often, for he spent
most of his holidays at school.  All things considered, a good thing for
him?  No.  For it was not a nice school where his educational lines were
cast.  It was a very cheap and a very nasty school; one in which he
learnt nothing but the art of getting into serious scrapes, and--perhaps
the only useful thing he did learn--the art of getting out of them.  A
bringing up of this kind would have been the ruin of most boys; but it
was not so with Arthur.  He came of a splendid stock, and the wretched
associations of his boyhood and youth, instead of destroying his
character, had the effect of forming it.  They hardened him.  True, they
rendered him cynical at an age when one looks for impulsiveness and
generosity, and if they had inspired him with a disgust for religion,
his mind was absolutely clear of cant.  They had taught him utterly to
despise sentiment, while leaving him capabilities of generosity and even
geniality.  And if any one showed him a kindness, he never forgot it.

One day, when he was seventeen, the second master of his school, the
clever son of an army Scripture reader, had the unwisdom to strike him.
In about ten seconds that ill-advised pedagogue was picking himself up
in a corner with a bleeding nose and otherwise in receipt of grievous
bodily harm.  Expulsion was imminent; but Arthur did not wait for it.
He took the first train, went straight to his guardian and told him he
wanted to emigrate.

His guardian looked acidly at the tall, handsome stripling before him,
and began a severe lecture.  He also looked uneasily; for it was evident
that Arthur had somehow got to learn that his father had not left him
absolutely penniless, which meant that no appeal on the grounds of
gratitude would lie--for the expenses of the orphan's bringing up and
education, such as it was, had by no means exhausted the sum which the
dead man had left.  Of this Arthur had gained a very shrewd idea; but he
merely asked for sufficient to pay his passage and a small sum towards a
necessary outfit, for he intended to go to one of our colonies.

Then his guardian, unlocking a desk, handed Arthur the sum of
thirty-five pounds, and told him--metaphorically, of course, good pious
man that he was, yet very plainly--to go to the devil.

He did not go to the devil; he went to the Cape.

Some of my readers may think this a distinction without a difference.
Well, that is a matter of opinion.  He turned his hand first to one
thing, then another; but nothing seemed to answer for long, possibly
because he was young and restless.  At last a small "coup" at the
Diamond Fields set him up with a few hundreds.  But fortune changed
round again; and, in disgust, he resolved to return to England previous
to trying his luck in some other colony.

He landed in his native country after several years of a hard,
adventurous life; but there was not a soul to welcome him.  Not long did
he stay; but, by the time he had taken his passage to Australia, not
much remained of the proceeds of his Diamond Fields' enterprise.  Then
on that eventful voyage he fell in with Herbert Spalding, and the rest
of his experiences we have heard from his own lips.

A few mornings after his interview with the lawyer, a card was brought
up to Claverton as he sat in his rooms.

"Rev George Wainwright," reading the name.  "Now, who the deuce is the
Rev George Wainwright?  Certainly not one of my kinsfolk or
acquaintance."

There entered an elderly man with stiff, iron-grey hair, a very red face
and fierce brown eyes, peering aggressively from beneath a pair of bushy
brows.  He wore clerical attire, and in his hand carried a tall hat like
unto a stove-pipe.  There was aggressiveness in his whole aspect,
especially in the short, stiff bow with which he greeted Claverton.
Farther, there was aggressiveness even in the knock and ring which had
heralded his arrival.

"A country rector," mused our friend, mentally reading off his visitor.
"In earlier life of the sporting order, now gouty and addicted to port.
Domineering in his parish, tyrant in domestic circle.  I know the breed.
What the deuce can he want with me?"  Then, aloud: "Pray be seated.
Cold morning, isn't it?" and he drew a chair to the fire for his
visitor.

"No doubt, Mr--er--Claverton, you will readily guess the object of my
visit," began the other, brusquely, leaning both, hands on the knob of
his umbrella, and staring his interlocutor straight in the face.

"Excuse me, but I hardly do."

"What!  You don't?  Why, about this will--this will of Spalding's?"

"Spalding's will!  My dear sir, I am afraid you have come to me by
mistake.  My poor friend's solicitor is Smythe of Chancery Lane.  I'll
give you his address in full."

"No mistake at all--no mistake at all," rejoined the other, abruptly.
"I've just come from Smythe, it was he who referred me to you.  I want
to know about that preposi--er--that bequest--the bequest to you.  Do
you intend to avail yourself of it, may I ask?"

"Well, really, that is a most astonishing question--"

"You don't.  No--of course you don't," came the angry interruption.  "No
young man with any independence of spirit, could possibly take the money
under such conditions.  It would be preposterous if he did--
preposterous."

"But, Mr Wainwright, I do intend to take the money."

"You do?"

"Every farthing of it--bar probate and succession dues."

The wrath struggling for suppression exhibited in the old man's
countenance beggars description.

"Well, well," he jerked out at last, "the case is a strange one--a very
strange one.  Wills have been upset on less fishy grounds than this.
Here you take this unfortunate man across the world and come back
without him, but profiting substantially by his death.  Putting it
mildly, what will be said?  Eh, sir, what will people say--what will
they say?" and, throwing out his hand, he glared at his interlocutor as
if awaiting a reply.

"I don't know what they'll say.  Equally certain is it that I don't
care.  As you remark, Mr Wainwright, wills have been upset, but I
hardly imagine there's any chance of this one being so dealt with.
Anyhow, I'm ready to take what chance there is.  However, you have no
doubt made yourself familiar with the conditions under which I inherit,"
he went on good-humouredly, but with a wicked twinkle in his eyes.
"Don't you know, for instance, of some young woman attractive enough to
induce me to pay forfeit?  She must be very attractive, mind; not too
young either--'teens mean selfishness; nor too passee--that carries
temper.  I incline to the dark style of beauty, or something between the
two.  And I should be sure to capitulate at discretion, if only because
it would be in a sense forbidden fruit."

The other sat speechless with anger.  At last he exploded.

"I did not come here to trifle, sir.  But, I tell you, this will bring
you no good.  Ill-gotten gains never do.  Ill-gotten gains, I say."
And, with a final glare, he bounced out of the room.

"Poor old man," thought Claverton, watching him from the window.  "Dare
say he's rather sore, and it was a sin to chaff him.  But then he
brought it upon himself by his bumptiousness.  Likely I'm going to cut
my own throat for his benefit.  The man must be a fool."

Had he but known it, his late visitor was at that very moment of the
same opinion, as, jolting along in the 'bus he had just hailed, a sudden
idea struck him.

"By Jingo!  What an ass I am!  He thought _I_ was the one who would
benefit.  I'll go back.  Hi!  Conductor--stop--stop!  No use, though.
The fellow has no sense of honour.  Still, if I hadn't lost my
confounded temper, I might have induced him to yield.  No, I shouldn't.
The man's a scamp any way--an utter scamp."

Wherein the old gentleman was wrong.  Had he entered upon the interview
with a clear head and courteous manner, it is highly probable that the
whole course of this not uneventful narrative would have been changed.

Having got rid of his choleric visitor, Claverton went out.  His face
was turned Citywards, and, as he walked, he pondered.

"Nine thousand pounds contingent on eight years of single blessedness.
Well, the terms oughtn't to be difficult.  Why, many a fellow would give
away double the amount for the same privilege, if I know anything of my
world.  But as I told that old parson in chaff just now--forbidden fruit
is what attracts.  Poor Spalding!  What on earth made him clog the
concern with such a condition?  The only thing is to turn the lot over--
capitalise and double it as soon as possible; and, fortunately, I'm not
particular how.  Grand thing, a careful training in a pious family."

An hour's walking, and he is in the heart of the City.  Turning down a
little lane out of Fenchurch Street, he looks about him carefully.
Through a doorway, then a couple of flights of stairs, and he is
hammering at a door labelled "Mr Silas B. Morkum."

"Boss engaged," said the sharp boy who appeared.

"Of course he is.  Take that pasteboard in at once."

Almost immediately the boy returned and ushered Claverton into an inner
office.  A thin, wiry-looking man, with a hooked nose and very keen grey
eyes; advanced with outstretched hand.

"Well, Claverton, my boy," he began, with a slight Yankee drawl.
"Thought you'd turn up again some day.  Devilish cold?  Yes.  Here's
some stuff, though, to counteract that," and he produced a
wicker-covered bottle and glasses.  "Fill up--that's right.  Here's to
old times.  Now what can I do for you?"

Claverton laughed drily.

"That's so like you, Morkum.  Can't you imagine any fellow looking you
up purely for the fun of the thing?"

"Well, not many do--not many," answered the American in an apologetic
tone.  "But--"

"But this time you've hit the right nail on the head.  There _is_
something you can do for me, if any one can.  You can put me in the way
of doubling a given sum in the shortest possible time."

"That all?" answered the other, almost disappointedly.  "Reckon I can--
and I'd do more than that for you--as you know.  Silas B. Morkum ain't
the boy to forget--well, we know what.  Now let's hear all about it."

Claverton told him.  The tie of gratitude to which Morkum had referred
went back to the time of the former's earlier wanderings, when our
friend had by the merest chance been able to do him a most important
service, and the American had never forgotten it.  He was a curious
unit.  By profession broker, money-lender, and half-a-dozen other
things; in reality, such of his dealings as were most remunerative were
known only to himself and to those immediately concerned.

"Well, then," he said, reflectively, lighting up a long Havana and
pushing the box across to his companion, "well, then--you want to turn
over this sum and ain't particular how?"

"Not in the least."

"Then I can lay you on to something.  But you are open to putting your
hide pretty considerably in pawn?"

"Quite open.  What is it?  Mines in Sonora?"

"No.  'Tain't that.  Two years ago I sent a party on that lay.
Twenty-three Western men, all well armed and mounted.  Game chickens all
round."

"What then?"

"They are there yet.  No one ever saw or heard of them again.  Beckon
the Apaches wiped 'em out.  No.  This is less risky; still, it is
risky--tarnation so."

"What is it?"

The other fixed his keen grey eyes upon Claverton for a moment.  Then he
delivered himself of just three words.

"The devil!" exclaimed Claverton, astonished, "I thought that game was
played out long ago."

"No, it ain't; not a bit of it.  And it's sure profits, quick returns;
but-all-fired risk."

"Well, let's hear all about it."

The other left the papers which he had been sorting, and, drawing his
chair to the fire, began to lay out his scheme.  And at last the dingy
office grew shadowy, and the boy came in to know if he shouldn't lock
up.

"Yes," assented Morkum.  "Come along and dine somewhere, Claverton, and
you shall tell me what you've been doing all this time.  We can talk
business to-morrow."

The clocks were chiming a quarter to twelve as they separated at King's
Cross Station.

"Going to walk home, are you?" said the American, reflectively.  "Queer
city, this.  Many a man disappears, and is never more heard of by his
inquiring relatives."

"It would be a precious risky job for any enterprising spirits to try
and conceal my whereabouts.  They'd get hurt," answered Claverton, with
a meaning laugh.

"That's right," said the other, approvingly.  "Never have your hand far
from your coat-pocket, and you'll do.  Good-night."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wind howls dismally round a cosy old country rectory on this gloomy
March evening, but, within, all is snugness and warmth.  From one
well-lighted room comes a sound of many cheerful voices; but passing by
this, let us take a look into the library, where sits a girl all alone.
She is a lovely girl, as far as we can see by the uncertain firelight,
and may be nineteen or twenty.  Her well-shaped head is crowned with an
abundance of soft, dark hair, tinted with strange lights as the
flickering glow plays upon it.  Her sweet, lustrous eyes are gazing
pensively at the clock on the mantelpiece, while the rain rolls in gusts
against the old-fashioned casement.

"Past six.  Uncle George should be back by now.  The train must be late.
Ah, there he is!" as the sound of wheels is audible on the gravel
outside.

She hears the occupants of the other room rush to the front door to
welcome their father; but with a hasty kiss all round, the rector goes
straight to the library.

"Here I am, Uncle George," says the girl, meeting him in the doorway,
for she heard him inquiring for her.  "But do go and change first, you
must be very wet."

"No, I'm not, my dear; not in the least.  Come in here and shut the
door; I want to tell you about this."

Then he hesitates, clears his throat, manages to knock down the tongs
with a hideous clatter, and jerks out:

"I could do nothing."

His niece waits for him to continue.

"Nothing.  He says he intends to stick to the money, every penny of it.
Why, when I put it to him fairly, he laughed in my face; made some
ill-chosen jest about it being only a question of time.  He's a scamp, a
downright scamp, and will come to no good.  Mark my words."

"Who is he, Uncle George?  What's his name?"

"Some adventurer.  I was going to say _low_ adventurer, but he isn't
that; the man's a gentleman by birth, unmistakably.  Name!  Why, bless
my soul, I've quite forgotten.  What is it again?  Clinton--Emerson--
something like that--I forget exactly."

The girl stood silently gazing into the fire, with one arm on the old
man's shoulder.  She was an orphan niece, whom he had welcomed to his
home, nominally until it could be decided what should be done with her;
actually he had already decided this, and his decision was that that
home should be a permanent one.  He was a very soft-hearted man, was the
Rev. George Wainwright, in spite of his quick temper and aggressive
exterior.  But the girl, for her part, was equally determined in her own
mind not to remain a burden on him.  He had a large family of his own,
and she must manage to earn her own livelihood.  Then came the news of
the death of her distant cousin, Herbert Spalding, and of the legacy
which would revert to her, contingent upon the nuptials of a stranger.
The rector, with characteristic hot-headedness, had voted the
contingency absolutely monstrous.  No man of honour, he had said, could
possibly accept a bequest subject to it, especially as by doing so he
would be robbing a penniless orphan--and had started for town there and
then with the intention of inducing the legatee to forego his claim.  In
which laudable mission he had signally failed, as we have seen--a
failure due in no small measure to his own hot temper and want of tact.

"Never mind, Uncle George; we are only where we were before, you see,
and I think I shall get that situation I advertised for."

"No you won't, my dear.  We shan't let you go away from us."

She kisses him affectionately.  She is determined to carry her point,
but does not press it to-night.  "Now you must go and talk to the
others, Uncle George; I've been keeping you from them quite long
enough."  And with her arm still on the old man's shoulder she leads him
to the door, and they join the family circle in the cheerful lamplight.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER THREE.

THE SLAVE SETTLEMENT.

"Idiot!  Don't you see that the poor devil can't move an inch further to
save his wretched life.  Leave him alone.  You're the greatest brute
even in this bestial land?"

"Am I?  And if I am, what's that to you?" is the defiant reply.

The first speaker is a young Englishman, whose face, tanned to a coppery
brown by exposure to a torrid sun, bears a stamp of recklessness and
determination.  His bearded lips are set firm as he confronts the other,
a powerful, savage-looking mulatto, and his eyes are ablaze with
wrathful contempt.  Around stretches a wide, sun-baked desert in Central
Africa.  A few palms, dotted about here and there, throw a faint
pretence of a shadow, and not far from the cloudless horizon hangs the
now declining sun.  A gang of black men and women, weary and emaciated,
and a few of them tied together, are standing wearily contemplating one
of their number who lies prone upon the earth, sick, footsore, and
unable to move another step.  It is a slave-gang on the march.

"Here, you two," goes on the first speaker, addressing a couple of the
strongest-looking among the slaves, "pick him up and carry him along."

The two fellows designated pause, and look hesitatingly from one to the
other of their drivers.  They stand in mortal fear of the ruffianly
mulatto, and prefer to chance the wrath of the Englishman.

"Do you hear what I say?  Let him alone, Sharkey," repeats the latter in
a warning tone.

For all answer the ruffian addressed advances upon the fallen slave, and
with a frightful grin, disclosing two pointed, shark-like teeth--whence
his hideous _sobriquet_--curls his raw-hide lash round the naked body of
the emaciated wretch.  But a terrific blow full in the face sends him
reeling half-a-dozen paces.

"There!  Won't you listen?"  And the Englishman stands between the
miserable wretch and his smiter.  With a growl like a wild beast, the
latter springs up.

"Stand off, Sharkey!" cries his companion in a firm, warning tone.  Too
late.  With features working in fury, and foaming at the mouth, the
other rushes upon him knife in hand.

"Stand off, I say, or--"

Crack!

The savage makes one spring and rolls over and over at his slayer's
feet, digging his knife into the hard earth in his death-throes.

"Dog!  You would have it!" observes the Englishman, calmly reloading the
discharged chamber of his still smoking revolver.  "You won't bite
again.  Now then, you fellows, do as I told you just now--pick up that
chap and--march."

They obey apathetically; and, with many a furtive glance backward, the
slaves move wearily on, leaving the body of their late oppressor to the
vultures and jackals of the desert.

And now, after a march of several miles further, the melancholy
_cortege_ arrives at its destination.  In a natural clearing, surrounded
by dense jungle, stand a few thatched shanties.  In the centre is a
large barracoon, and into this the miserable human herd is turned.  The
last rays of the sun have disappeared, and here and there in the open
space a fire glows redly.  Several men are standing about; awful-looking
cut-throats, villainy personified.  Half-a-dozen of them are Portuguese,
the rest Arabs and negroes.  They crowd up to inspect the slaves.

"Well, Lidwell," says one of the first nationality in good English,
addressing the new arrival.  "You've brought in a poor-looking lot.  How
many did you lose?"

"Two.  Both died."

"And Sharkey--wasn't he with you?  Where's he?"

"Dead."

"Dead?  Nonsense!  What killed him?"  And the first speaker stares in
amazement.

"A pistol ball, regulation calibre."

A gleam of triumphant malice flits across the other's swarthy features.
He is young, and by no means bad-looking but for a chronic scowl.

"Comrade," he replies, "you have done a good thing in ridding us of that
beast."  But the man addressed as Lidwell has marked that exultant
expression, and he knows that it means mischief.  Sharkey has relatives
in the camp who will certainly do their utmost to revenge his death, and
it is doubtful whether the ruffianly European element will have either
the strength or resolution to stand out against these should they
clamour for his slayer's blood.  It is more than doubtful if they have
the will; for this Englishman is both hated and feared by them.  His
coolness and daring in the pursuit of their lawless traffic has not only
been the means of quadrupling their gains, but has twice saved the whole
party from capture red-handed, for of late the Union Jack has been--to
them--unpleasantly active in Zanzibar waters.  Yes, they hate him
bitterly.  He has won largely from them at play, for they are great
gamblers, and can they once get him into their power they are fully
determined to make him yield up--by torture if necessary--the large sums
which they know him to keep concealed somewhere.  But then, his revolver
is ever ready, and they are most of them cowards at heart.

Sternly he now looks the young Portuguese in the face.

"Juarez," he says, in a very significant tone.  "Do you know, I always
think I can never have enough revolver practice.  It makes a man
invulnerable, does this little bit of wood and iron."

The other turns away with an oily smile.  He has his own reasons for not
being fond of the Englishman.

The latter strolls leisurely into one of the huts, keeping his eyes
about him, though, unobtrusively.  Arrived there, he sits down for a few
minutes to rest and think out his plans.  For he is determined to take
leave of his repulsive surroundings; and the sooner the better.  Nearly
two years of his life have been spent in this detestable traffic, and
how sick he is of it, he himself hardly knows.  He has amassed wealth
with a rapidity little short of marvellous; but not for the ransom of an
empire would he go through the experiences of those two years over
again.  Many and many a scene of human suffering has it been his lot to
witness during that period--for he is a slave-dealer, a trafficker in
human flesh.  But he is guiltless of any single act of brutality or
wanton oppression towards the unfortunate wretches who have passed
through his hands.  In his eyes mere cattle, yet he would never allow
them to be tortured or ill-treated.  More than once has he stood between
the victim and the lash, occasionally at the risk of his life--as we
have seen--or interfered to save some worn-out wretch from being
abandoned to the beasts of the desert.  More than once, even, during a
long desert march when water was worth its weight in gold, has he shared
his scanty stock of the priceless fluid with some toiling, parched, and
exhausted slave, who, with tongue swollen and protruding, could hardly
drag one foot after the other.  Yet, what is he but a hard-hearted,
self-seeking slave-dealer, coining money out of suffering flesh and
blood?

The gloom deepens.  Lidwell, sitting there in his hut, can make out a
knot of his rascally confederates talking earnestly together by one of
the fires.  A strange instinct warns him.  Unless he leaves this place
to-night he will never leave it alive.  Quickly he stows away a flask
and some biscuits in his pockets.  Already his gains are secured about
his person, carefully sewn up in his clothes--a large sum, partly in
gold, partly in the paper currency of several nationalities.  For some
time past he has been prepared for a sudden flight, and he has a canoe
snugly concealed in a convenient place on the river bank.  To-night he
will cut the whole concern for ever, and woe betide the man who shall
try to stop him.

He looks out of the doorway, carelessly.  All seems quiet enough, and it
is now quite dark.  His sheath-knife is ready to his hand in case of
need; so, too, is the brace of revolvers without which he never moves.

"Now for a start," he muses; "but--hang it--I must go round and say
good-bye to Anita.  Can't leave without seeing the little one again."

Down a narrow path through the shadowy forest a few hundred yards, and
he reaches a small thatched dwelling, more substantially built than the
rest.  Within all is silence.  But for a lamp burning in one of the
windows the place would seem deserted.  He imitates the cry of a jackal
twice.  A moment, and then a dark figure glides swiftly round the corner
of the house and stands beside him.

"At last!  I wondered when you were coming to see me.  You have been
back hours, and never came near me."  The voice is low, soft, and
musical; but there is resentment in it.

"Didn't I?  Well, I came as soon as I could.  Don't scold me to-night,
little one."

And he looks down at her with a queer expression.  Every moment lost is
a nail in his coffin; yet he is wasting those precious moments gazing
into a pair of dark eyes.

She nestles close to his side.  "I hate it so when you are away.  And I
am always afraid you may get killed, or catch that terrible fever over
there, and never come back to me at all."

"Listen now, Anita," he says, gravely.  "I must go away again--now--
to-night, or my life is not worth a pebble, and I don't feel inclined to
throw it away for the benefit of those brutes."  Then he tells her about
the fate of Sharkey, and the unmistakable signs he had read among his
associates of their deadly intentions towards him.

The girl trembles with horror and apprehension as she listens.

"You must indeed go, and immediately.  You can do nothing against them,
and there are so many of them; and--Ah, I may as well die," she breaks
off in a wail of despair.

"Don't say that, little one.  You will soon learn to do without me; but
I am afraid you will forget all your English.  And you were getting on
with it so nicely, too."

The girl is silent; but looks up at him with a stricken, hopeless
expression that goes to his heart.  She is very lovely, standing there
in the starlight, lovely in the rich, southern, voluptuous type.  She is
quite young--barely sixteen--but the delicate arched features are fully
formed.  As regards education or mental culture, Anita de Castro is a
wild flower indeed.  Her father is the head of this slave-dealing
colony.  Formerly a merchant in the Portuguese settlement of Delagoa
Bay, his rascalities have landed him in outlawry, and he has taken his
daughter with him into exile.  Such is the girl who had attracted the
attention of the Englishman Lidwell, who in her had found the one
redeeming feature in his present reckless life.  He had to a certain
extent, and in a desultory sort of way, educated this girl; at any rate
had moulded her into something better than a mere mental blank; and the
process had been to him a real recreation, a refuge from the disgust
which he increasingly felt for his cold-blooded and lawless occupation.
And she?  Here, on the threshold of budding womanhood, this stranger,
who looked upon her as a mere plaything, possessed her whole heart.  How
it was she could not tell, even had she asked herself the question.
Juarez, her sworn admirer, was softer of speech and far more
deferential; whereas Lidwell sometimes seemed to ignore her very
existence.  Yet she would with a heavy heart anticipate the absence of
the latter on long and perilous expeditions, and look forward so
anxiously and so joyfully to his return.  And now he has returned only
to leave again immediately, and well she knew that she would see him no
more.  Suddenly she throws herself on his breast in a fit of passionate
weeping.

"Ah, love!  I shall never see you again.  Never--never."

A wave of wild temptation sweeps over the man.  Why should he not take
her with him?  She is beautiful enough in face and form, and it suddenly
strikes him that she is not the child he has hitherto been wont to
consider her.  She is in his arms now.  He has only to say the word and
she will stay there.  But Lidwell is gifted with a cool head, and a
strong one.  He knows the world well enough, and he also knows his own
nature.  He will not sacrifice this girl to a passing impulse, however
powerful.  So he resists the momentary temptation, and--it is the saving
of his life.

He strokes back the soft hair from her forehead.  "Anita, child--you
must not grieve like this for me--I don't say forget the times we have
spent together.  What I do say is, you are, made for something better
than this kind of life; leave it as soon as you are able, and--"

"Hush!"

She has heard something.  With a quick gesture she draws herself from
him, and stands erect and listening intently.  A glow suffuses the sky,
and the golden moon peeps above the tree-tops.  And now the sound of
stealthy footsteps and smothered voices may be heard approaching.

"Go!" exclaims the girl, imprinting a shower of kisses upon his lips.
"Go--quick.  They are coming.  You shall not die here.  Good-bye, love.
I shall never see you again.  Go."  And, as she pushes him from her, the
advancing voices are very near indeed.  She has barely time to regain
the house before several men are knocking at the door.  Feigning to be
half asleep, she opens.

"Well, father, what has gone wrong?"

"Oh, nothing, Anita.  Has Lidwell been here?  We want him down at the
camp.  He promised to help us through with the wine," answers De Castro.

"The Englishman?  No, he hasn't been here.  He must be in his own hut."

A glance goes round the group.

"But he must have been here, senorita," replies Juarez.  "He was seen to
come in this direction."

A thought strikes the girl.  She must gain time.  So with an
admirably-feigned glance of uneasiness at a side door leading into
another room, she reiterates that she has not seen him.

"Ah, well, comrades, I have some old wine in here," says her father,
advancing towards this door.  "We will try it."  He turns the handle;
but the door is locked.  "The key, Anita, the key!"

"The key?  Oh, here it is," and after a pretended search she finds the
key.  They throw open the door suddenly, and stand staring in stupid
surprise into an empty room.

"Juarez," said the girl, calling him apart from the rest--"keep quiet
now.  Do you want the Englishman?  You shall take him."

The other started, and his eyes lit up with savage triumph.

"How?  Where?  Where is he?"

"You shall have him.  Listen, Juarez.  He has been here, but if you try
to find him now you will fail.  I promised to meet him two hours after
midnight at the corner of the cane planting.  He thinks I love him, but
I hate him," she went on, working herself into a state of
admirably-feigned fury.  "He laughed at me and treated me as a
plaything--now I shall have revenge.  But listen.  Go back to the camp.
He is suspicious of you already; but he will come to me two hours after
midnight.  Then be in waiting, and you shall take him as easily as a
leopard in a net.  Don't tell the others about it until the time comes,
only get them away now."

If Juarez felt a qualm of suspicion, she acted her part so well, that he
fell headlong into the trap.  With difficulty, he persuaded his fellow
ruffians to abandon their quest for the present.  He trusted Anita
implicitly; and, full of elation at the speedy vengeance which would
overtake his rival, he returned with the others to their carousals.

The hours drag their length, and silence reigns in the tropical forest.
A damp, unwholesome mist rises from the river and spreads over the
tree-tops.  Now and again the shout of the revellers breaks upon the
silence, or the deep bass of a bloodhound is raised in dismal bay at the
moon.  Still Anita sits there, gazing out upon the forest, and following
in spirit every step of him whose life she has saved, further and
further as each step takes him from her.  At last she falls fast asleep,
worn out with the excitement and tension of the past few hours.  Then
comes a loud, angry knocking at the door.

Opening it, she is confronted with her father.  He is shaking with
wrath, and behind him are nine or ten others all armed to the teeth.

"Where is the Englishman?" he roared.  "Have you fooled us?  It is
nearly daybreak--and two hours after midnight we were to take him!
Where is he?"

"Where is he?" echoed Anita, her voice as clear as a bell.  "Where is
he?  Safe.  Far away--leagues and leagues.  You will never see him
again.  He is safe."  And her large eyes flashed upon the enraged and
astonished group in scornful defiance as she stood in the doorway.

With the yell of a wild beast baffled of its prey, the old ruffian
sprang at his daughter.  She never moved.  But his clenched hand was
seized in a firm grasp before it could descend.

"Softly--softly, patron!" said Juarez.  "You would not strike the
senorita!"

De Castro struggled in the grasp of the younger man and yelled the most
awful curses upon Lidwell, his daughter, and all present; but Juarez was
firm.  He was not all bad, and a glow of admiration went through him at
Anita's daring, and the shrewd way in which she had outwitted them.
Moreover, rivalry apart, he had rather liked Lidwell.  The latter they
would never see again, for had not Anita herself said as much.  On the
whole, therefore, it was just as well that he had escaped, and saved
them the necessity of killing a former brave comrade.  So he tried to
pacify the old man.

"Patron," he said, "be reasonable.  We are well rid of this English
devil.  Certainly, he has won a lot of our dollars; but then he will
lose his share in the profits of the last expedition."  Then, in a low
tone: "And he has rid us of that turbulent beast, Sharkey.  He is a
determined devil, and while he was with us he served us well.  Let him
go."

The old slave-dealer fumed and raved, then fell in with things as they
were.  "Ah well," he said at last, "what is--is, and we can't help it.
We will empty another skin of wine."  Then they withdrew to drown their
discomfiture in drink, though some of the party, less easily pacified,
would fain have started in pursuit of the fugitive, but that they knew
it would be useless.

Six weeks later the mail steamer from Zanzibar was securely docked in
the port of London, and Lidwell, bidding farewell to a few fellow
passengers, stepped ashore, and in a moment was lost among the busy
crowd in the great restless city.  He was now in easy circumstances for
life.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER FOUR.

SERINGA VALE.

One round, black speck high up yonder on the stony hillside.  There he
sits--the large old baboon; wary sentinel that he is, keeping jealous
watch over the safety of the nimble troop under his charge, which,
scattered about amid the bush, is feasting upon succulent roots and
other vegetable provender afforded by its native wilds.  And from his
lofty perch he can descry something unwonted immediately beneath--danger
possibly, intrusion at any rate--and he lifts up his voice: "Baugch-m!
Baugch-m?"  The sun blazes in a blue, cloudless sky, darting down his
beams with a fierceness and vigour somewhat premature this lovely
afternoon of an early South African spring day, and all nature is at
rest in the drowsy stillness now broken by that loud, harsh cry.  A
cliff rears its perpendicular face from amid the bush-covered slopes,
which, meeting at its base, form a triangular hollow.  From the brow of
the cliff rises a rugged steep, thickly grown with dark prickly aloes,
whose bristling shapes, surmounted by bunches of red blossom, sprout
upwards from the dry, stony soil.  The tiniest thread of a streamlet
trickles down the face of the rock, losing itself in a pool beneath,
which reflects, as in a mirror, cliff, and overhanging bushes, and blue
sky.  A faint cattle track leading down to the water betokens that in a
land of droughts and burning skies even this reservoir, remote and
insignificant, is of account at times; but to-day here are no cattle.
The long-drawn piping whistle of a spreuw [of the starling species]
echoes now and again from the cool recesses of the rock; the hum of bees
among the blossoming spekboem and mimosa; the twittering of the finks,
whose pear-shaped pendulous nests sway to and fro over the water as the
light-hearted birds fly in and out--all tell of solitude and of the
peace of the wilderness.  Here a big butterfly flits lightly on spotted
wings above the flowering bushes; there, stalking solemnly among the
stones, an armour-plated tortoise seems to be in rivalry with a horny
and long-legged beetle as to which of them shall be the first to reach
the other side of the small open space.

"Baugch-m!  Baugch-m!"

Two round black specks high up there on the stony hillside.  The
resounding call is answered, and the two guardians of the troop sit
there, a couple of hundred yards apart, looking down into the
sequestered nook below.

The sleeper moves, then rolls over on his back and draws his
broad-brimmed hat right over his face.

Clearly he does not intend rousing himself just yet.  The sun's beams
strike full upon him, but he feels them not; evidently he is indisposed
to let even the monarch of light interfere with his siesta.  A few
minutes more, and, with a start, he raises himself on his elbow and
looks around.

"By Jove, how hot it is!  I must have been doing the sluggard trick to
some purpose, for the cliff was full in the sun when first I pricked for
the softest plank here, and now it's throwing out a shadow as long as an
attorney's bill of costs.  Past four!" looking at his watch.  "Now for a
pipe; then a start."

He picks himself up out of the pass, yawns and stretches.  The tortoise,
which had already stood motionless, its bright eye dilated with alarm,
now subsides into its shell, hoping to pass for one of the surrounding
stones; its scarabean competitor likewise is equal to the occasion,
after its own manner, and falling over on its side, with legs stiff and
extended, feigns death industriously.  Meanwhile the aloe-dotted steep
overhead is alive with the loud warning cries of the disturbed baboons,
whose ungainly but nimble shapes--some fifty in number--may be seen
making off helter-skelter up the hill, to disappear with all possible
despatch over the brow of the same.

"Noisy brutes!" grumbles the wayfarer, shading his eyes to watch them.
"But for your unprincipled shindy I could have done a good hour's more
snooze with all the pleasure in life.  If only I had a rifle here--even
a Government Snider--it would go hard but that one or two of you would
learn the golden art of silence."

Look at him as he stands there just six foot high in his boots--
well-proportioned, broad-shouldered, straight as a dart.  The face is of
a very uncommon type, with character and determination in its regular,
clear-cut features; but a look of _insouciance_ in the eyes--which are
neither grey nor blue, but sometimes one, sometimes the other--
neutralises what would otherwise be an energetic and restless
expression.  The mouth is nearly hidden by a drooping, golden-brown
moustache.  In the matter of age the man would have satisfied a census
collector by the casual reply, "Rising nine-and-twenty."

Colonial born you would certainly not pronounce him.  Yet not a touch of
the "rawness" of the greenhorn or "new chum" would you descry, even if
the serviceable suit of tancord and the quality of the saddle and riding
gear lying on the ground did not betoken a certain amount of
acquaintance with colonial life on the part of their owner.

He draws a rough cherrywood pipe from his pocket, fills and lights it,
sending forth vigorous blue puffs which hang upon the drowsy air.  He
stands for a moment looking at the sun, and decides that it is time to
start.

"Now, I wonder what has become of Sticks.  The old scamp is given to
erring and straying afar just when wanted.  When I don't require his
services he'll fool about the camp by the hour."

Sticks was his horse.  That estimable quadruped had at one time been
addicted to "sticking," an inconvenient vice of which his present owner
had thoroughly cured him.

Our wayfarer strolls leisurely to the ridge which shuts in the hollow,
and looks around.  Then a reddish object amid the green bush, some
hundreds of yards further down, catches his eye.  It is the object of
his search; and, with one hand thrust carelessly into a pocket, he makes
for the errant nag and returns leading his steed to the waterhole, where
clouds of yellow finks scatter right and left, vociferously giving vent
to their indignation at being thus invaded.

And now, having saddled up, he is on his way.  Steeper and steeper grows
the ascent; the bush meets here and there over the narrow path, nearly
sweeping the rider from his saddle, and the horse, blinded now and then
by a thick branch of spekboem flying back in his eyes, makes an approach
to a stumble, for which he is not to blame, for the track is rugged
enough in all conscience.  At length the narrow path comes to an end,
merging into a broad but stony waggon road.

But--excelsior!  The bay steps out at a brisk walk, ascending ever the
rough road which winds round the abrupt spurs of the hills like a ledge,
mounting higher and higher above the long sweep of bush-covered slope,
where, among the recesses of many a dark ravine, thickets of
"wait-a-bit" thorn, and mimosa, and tangled underwood, afford retreat to
the more retiring denizens of the waste--the sharp-horned bushbuck and
the tusked wild pig, the hooded cobra, and the deadly puff-adder.  And
beneath those shades, too, in the still gloom, the spotted leopard
creeps stealthily upon its prey, and the howl of the hyena and the
shrill yelping bay of the jackal resound weirdly through the night.

"It's waxing chilly.  Up, old Sticks!" ejaculates the traveller, with a
light tap of his riding-crop.  The horse picks up his head and scrambles
along with new zest.  A few minutes more and he is standing on the top
of the _randt_ [the high ground or ridge overlooking the valley of a
river] for a brief blow after his exertions, which his heaving flanks
proclaim to have been of no mean order, while his rider is contemplating
the fresh scene which opens out before his gaze.  For the wooded country
has been left, and now before him lies spread a panorama of broad and
rolling plains, dotted capriciously here and there with clumps of bush.
A lovely sweep of country stretches away in many undulations to the
wooded foothills of a beautiful mountain range which forms a background
to the whole view, extending, crescent-like, far as the eye can travel.
The snow-cap yet resting on the lofty peak of the Great Winterberg
flushes first with a delicate tinge and then blood-red; many a jutting
spur and grey cliff starts forth wondrously distinct, while the forest
trees upon a score of distant heights stand soft and feathery, touched
with a shimmer of green and gold from the long beams of the sinking sun
as he dips down and down to the purpling west.

The stranger rides on, enjoying the glorious beauty of this fair
landscape--never fairer than when seen thus, in the almost unearthly
lustre of a perfect evening.  A steinbuck leaps out of the grass, and
after a brief run halts and steadily surveys the intruder.  Down in the
hollow a pair of blue cranes utter their musical note of alarm, and
stalk rapidly hither and thither, as though undecided about the quarter
whence danger threatens, and the cooing of doves from yon clump of
euphorbia blends in soft harmony with the peaceful surroundings as in a
vesper chant of rest.

And now a strange group appears over the rise in front.  It is a Kafir
_trek_.  Two men, three women, and some children, driving before them
their modest possessions in live stock, consisting of three cows (one
with a calf), and a few sheep and goats.  The men wear an ample blanket
apiece thrown loosely round their shoulders, but other clothing have
they none, with the exception of a pair of boots, which however, each
carries slung over his shoulder, preferring to walk barefoot.  The women
are somewhat less scantily clad, with nondescript draperies of
blanketing and bead-work falling around them.  Each has her baby slung
on her back, and carries an enormous bundle on her head, containing pots
and pans, blankets and matting--the household goods and chattels; for
her lord disdains to bear anything but his kerries, or knobsticks, and
marches along in front looking as if the whole world belonged to him.
Some of the elder children are laden with smaller bundles, and even the
cows are pressed into the service as porters, each having a long roll of
mats fastened across her horns, and two or three mongrel curs slink
behind the group.  All Kafir garments are plentifully bedaubed with red
ochre, an adornment frequently extended to their wearers, giving them
the appearance of peripatetic flower-pots.

"Naand, Baas!"  [Note 1] sing out the men as they meet the traveller,
and then continue in their own tongue, "Nxazela."  [Tobacco.]

No bad specimens of their hardy and supple race are these two fellows as
they stand there, their well-knit, active figures glistening like bronze
in the setting sun.  They hold their heads well up, and each of their
shrewd and rather good-looking countenances is lighted by a pair of
clear, penetrating eyes.  The stranger chucks them a bit of the coveted
plant, and asks how much further it is to Seringa Vale.

"Over there," replies one of the Kafirs, pointing with his stick to the
second rise in the ground, about two miles off.  With a brief good-night
the horseman touches up his nag and breaks into a gentle canter, while
the natives, collecting their stock--which has taken advantage of the
halt to scatter over the _veldt_ and pick up a few mouthfuls of grass--
resume their way.

The sun has gone down, and the white peak of the Great Winterberg towers
up cold and spectral to the liquid sky, as the horseman crests the ridge
indicated, and lo--the broad roof of a substantial farmhouse lies
beneath.  Around, are several thatched outbuildings, and the whole is
charmingly situated, nestling in a grove of seringas and orange trees.
There is a fruit-garden in front of the house, or rather on one side of
it, though it may almost be said to have two fronts, for the verandah
and the _stoep_ run round the two sides which command the best and
widest view, while another and a larger garden, even more leafy and
inviting-looking, lies down in the kloof.  Close to the homestead are
the sheep and cattle kraals, with their prickly thorn-fences, into one
of which a white, fleecy flock is already being counted, while another,
preceded by its _voerbok_ [Note 2] is coming down the kloof, urged on by
the shout and whistle of its Kafir shepherd.  The cattle enclosure is
already alive with the dappled hides of its denizens, moving about among
whom are the bronzed forms of the cattle-herd and his small boys, who
are busily employed in sorting out the calves and shutting them up in
their pen for the night, away from their mothers, so that these may
contribute their share towards filling the milk-pails in the morning.
Behind the kraals stand the abodes of the Kafir farm servants, eight or
ten beehive-shaped huts to wit, and stepping along towards these,
calabash on head, comes a file of native women and girls who have been
to draw water from the spring.  They sing, as they walk, a monotonous
kind of savage chant, stopping now and then to bawl out some "chaff" to
the shepherd approaching with his flock as aforesaid, and going into
shrill peals of laughter over his reply.

The traveller draws rein for a little while, till the counting-in
process is accomplished, then rides down to the kraal gate and
dismounts.  A man turns away from giving some final directions to the
Kafir who is tying up the gate--an old man, over whose head at least
seventy summers must have passed, but yet stalwart of body and handsome
of feature, with hair and beard like silver.  He is dressed in the rough
cord suit and slouch hat of the ordinary frontier farmer, and in his
hand he carries a whip of plaited raw-hide.  His clothes have a timeworn
appearance, and his hands are large and hard-looking; but, in spite of
the roughness of his aspect and attire, you need only look once into
Walter Brathwaite's face to know that you were confronting a man of
gentle blood.

"Good evening," he says, heartily, advancing with outstretched hand
towards the stranger.  But a curious smile upon the tatter's face causes
him to pause with a half mystified, hesitating air, as if it were not
unfamiliar to him.  "Why, no.  It can't be.  Bless my soul, it is,
though.  Why, Claverton, how are you, my boy?  Glad to see you back
again in Africa," and he enclosed the younger man's hand in a strong
grip.  "But come in; the wife'll be delighted.  Here, Jacob," he
shouted, in stentorian tones which brought a young Hottentot upon the
scene in a twinkling, "take the Baas's horse and off-saddle him."

Passing through a hall, garnished with trophies of the chase, bushbuck
horns, and tusks of the wild pig, and a couple of grinning
panther-heads, they entered the dining-room, a large, homelike
apartment, plainly but comfortably furnished.

"Here, Mary, I've brought you a visitor," said the settler, as they
entered.  "You remember Arthur Claverton?"

A tall old lady, whose kindly and still handsome face bore unmistakable
signs of former beauty, rose from a sewing-machine at which she had been
working, with a start of surprise.

"What!  Arthur?  Why, so it is.  But I should never have known you,
you're so altered.  Ah, I always said we should see you out here again,"
she continued, shaking his hand cordially.

The stranger smiled, and a very pleasant smile it was.

"Well, yes, so you did, Mrs Brathwaite; but at least I have the faculty
of knowing when and where I am well off," he said, really touched by the
genuine warmth of his reception.

"So you've been all over the world since we saw you last--to Australia
and back?" she went on.  "And then the last thing we heard of you was
that you had gone to America."

"I attempted to; but Providence, or rather the blunder-headed lookout on
board a homeward-bound liner, willed otherwise."

"How do you mean?"

"Why! that the said idiotically-handled craft collided with ours, two
days out, cutting her down to the water's edge and sinking her in
thirteen minutes.  I and twenty-four others were picked up, but the rest
went to Davy Jones's locker.  There weren't many more of them, though,
for it was a small boat, and I was nearly the only passenger."

"Oh!  And you didn't try the voyage again?" said Mrs Brathwaite, in
subdued tones.  She was colonial born, and in her own element as brave a
woman as ever stepped.  In the earlier frontier wars she had stood by
her husband's side within the laager and loaded his guns for him, while
the conflict waxed long and desperate, and the night was ablaze with the
flash of volleys, and the air was heavy with asphyxiating smoke, and the
detonating crash of musketry and the battle-shouts of the savage foe,
and had never flinched.  But she had a shuddering horror of the sea, and
would almost have gone through all her terrible experiences again rather
than trust herself for one hour on its smiling, treacherous expanse.

"Well, no; I didn't," he answered.  "I took it as an omen, and concluded
to dismiss the Far West in favour of the `Sunny South.'  So here I am."

"Ah! well," put in the old settler.  "Perhaps we'll be able to find you
something in the way of excitement here, if that's what you were in
search of, and that before very long, too.  All isn't so quiet here as
they try to make out.  I've lived on the frontier, man and boy, all my
life, and I can see pretty plainly that there's mischief brewing."

"Is there?  I did hear something of the sort on my way up, now I think
of it; but I had an idea that the days of war were over, and that Jack
Kafir had got his quietus."

"Ha! ha!  Had you really, now?  Why, bless my soul, the Kafirs are far
more numerous than ever; they outnumber us by fifty to one.  They hate
us as much as ever they did, and for some time past have been steadily
collecting guns and ammunition.  Now, what do they want those guns and
that ammunition for?  Not for hunting, for there's next to no game in
all Kafirland.  No, it is to put them on an equal footing with us; and
then, with their numbers, they think to have it all their own way.
There's mischief brewing, mark my words."

"It wouldn't mean a scrimmage among themselves, would it?  They might be
anxious to exterminate each other," ventured Claverton.

The other smiled significantly, and was about to reply, when the
conversation was interrupted by the entrance of supper and--Hicks.

The latter was one of those young Englishmen often met with on colonial
farms, learning their business in the capacity of assistant, or general
factotum; and who may be divided into two categories: those who take
kindly to the life and throw themselves thoroughly into it and its
interests, and those who don't, and leave it after a trial.  Our friend
Hicks may be placed in the former of these.  He was a strong, energetic,
good-tempered fellow, who loved his calling, and was a favourite with
everybody.  He had served three years in the Frontier Mounted Police,
and had been two with Mr Brathwaite, and, by virtue of so much hard,
healthy, open-air life, was twice the man he had been when he left his
father's Midlandshire parsonage five years previously.

"You were asking if the Kafirs might not be preparing for a fight among
themselves?" resumed the old settler as they took their places at the
supper-table, which looked cheerful and homelike in the extreme.  He had
got upon a favourite hobby, and was not to be diverted from a congenial
ride.  "There isn't the slightest chance of it, because they know very
well we shan't let them.  We prefer encouraging them to hammer away at
us."

"Pickling a rod for our own backs?" remarked Claverton.

"Just so.  By patching up their tribal disputes we check just so much
salutary blood-letting, and foster hordes of lazy, thieving rascals
right on our border.  Even if the sham philanthropy, under which we
groan, obliges us to sit still while the savages grow fat on our stolen
cattle and laugh at us, the least it could do would be to allow them to
cut a few of each other's throats when they have a mind to."

"The Home Government, I suppose?"

"That's it.  A parcel of old women in Downing Street, ruled by Exeter
Hall and the Peace Society.  What do they know about the Colony, and
what do they care?  After British subjects have been murdered and
plundered all along the border, an official is sent to inquire into it.
Of course the chiefs all pretend ignorance, and throw the blame on
somebody else.  Then follows great palaver and buttering over.  The
chiefs are told to be good boys and not do it again, and are given
waggon-loads of presents--and a treaty is made.  A treaty!  With
savages--savages whose boast is that they are a nation of liars.  Can't
you imagine the wily rascals sniggering in their blankets, and wondering
how much longer they are going to allow themselves to be governed by
such a race of milksops!"

His listeners could not forbear a laugh.

"I can tell you it's no laughing matter to be burned out of house and
home three times as I have been," went on the old man, "and that through
the sentimental cant of our rulers.  No; coddling savages doesn't do--
never did do, and never will.  Treat them fairly and with the strictest
justice; but, if you are to rule them at all, you must do so with a
strong hand."

Walter Brathwaite had, as he said, lived on the frontier, man and boy,
all his life; for he was a mere child when his father, tempted by the
inducement of free grants of land, had transferred the family fortunes
to the shores of Southern Africa in the early days of the settlement of
the Cape Colony.  His youth and earlier manhood were passed amid the
hardships and obstacles of an emigrant's life.  And also its dangers--
for the tribes infesting the rugged and difficult country which then was
Kafirland, were wont to lay marauding hands on the settler's flocks and
herds--nor did the savages scruple about adding murder to pillage.
Still the emigrants throve; for those were the days of good seasons and
healthy flocks and herds--when pasturage was plentiful and succulent,
droughts were infrequent, and disease almost unknown.  Three successive
wars at short intervals swept away the fruits of the unfortunate
settlers' toil; but they managed to pick up again, and now, at this
period of our narrative, it is twenty years since the last of these, and
there are once more the same signs of restlessness among the tribes
which the experienced remember to have heralded former outbreaks.  So if
Walter Brathwaite expresses strong distrust of his barbarous neighbours,
it is not without ample justification.  He has done good service, too,
in the time of need; has fought valiantly and ungrudgingly on behalf of
his adopted country, and whether in peace or in war has ever enjoyed the
respect and good opinion of his fellows.  In truth, right justly so.
Gifted with strong, practical common sense; his straightforward nature
abhorring anything in the shape of humbug or meanness; of a thoroughly
kind-hearted, genial disposition and open-handed to a degree, he is a
splendid specimen of the colonist who is also by birth and tradition a
true English gentleman; and now in the latter years of his long, useful,
and honourable life, he is an object of esteem and affection to all who
know him--and they are many.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Dutch, "Evening, master."  Dutch is nearly always employed in
the Cape Colony for intercourse with the natives, comparatively few
frontiersmen, even, being well versed in the Kafir language.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 2.  "The goat which goes before."--A goat is always used instead of
a bell-wether on the Cape sheep farms, and so accustomed do the flocks
become to their leader that it is a hard and toilsome business to induce
them to enter their fold without it.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER FIVE.

THE BITER BITTEN.

It was early when Claverton awoke on the following morning; but, early
as it was, the occupant of the other bed had disappeared.  He had
"shaken down" in Hicks' room, and the two had talked and smoked
themselves to sleep; and, early as it was, there were plenty of sounds
outside, which told of the day's doings having begun.

The most epicurean of late sleepers will find it hard to keep up his
usual luxurious habit in a frontier house.  There is a something which
seems to preclude late lying--possibly the consciousness of exceptional
laziness, or a sneaking qualm over taking it easy in bed when every soul
on the place has long been astir; but even the most inveterate sluggard
will hardly find it in his conscience to roll over again, especially if
a companion's long since vacated conch is staring him reproachfully in
the face from the other side of the room.

Claverton, who was in no sense an epicurean, felt something of this, and
lost no time in turning out.  The sun had risen, but was unable to
pierce the heavy mist which hang over the earth in opaque folds.  He
found his host busy at the sheep kraals, the thorn-fence dividing which
had been broken through in the night, with the result of mixing the
flocks.  Three Kafirs were hard at work sorting them out again, and the
dust flew in clouds as the flock rushed hither and thither within the
confined space--the ground rumbling under their hoofs.

"Pleasure of farming!" remarked the old man, with a smile, after
greetings had been exchanged.  Both turned away their faces a minute as
a pungent and blinding cloud swept past them.  "The rascals might have
avoided all this by simply putting a thorn tack or two in its place last
night.  You can't trust them, you see--have to look to everything
yourself."

"Suppose so," replied Claverton, slipping out of his jacket.  "I'm going
to give your fellows a hand.  The brand, though, is rather indistinct.
Which come out?"

"All branded B, with the double ear mark."

"Right?"  And he dived into the thick of the fun, with all the energy
and more than the dexterity of the Kafirs, who paused for a moment with
a stare of astonishment and a smothered "Whouw!"  They did not know who
the strange _Baas_ was, but he was evidently no greenhorn.

Another hour's hard work and the flocks are separate again; but it is
rather too early to turn them out to grass.  So the two stroll round to
the cattle kraal, whose denizens stand patiently and ruminatingly about
for the most part, though some are restless and on the move, recognising
with responsive "moo" the voices of their calves in the pen.  Nearly all
the cows are of good breed--the serviceable and hardy cattle of the
country, crossed with imported stock, though now and again among them
can be descried the small head and straight back of an almost
thorough-bred Alderney.  Milking is going on.  There sits the old
cattle-herd beneath a wild young animal properly secured, milking away
and gossiping with his satellites as fast as he fills his pail--for
Kafirs are awful gossips.  Then he turns the frightened young cow loose,
and, removing the foaming pail out of the way of a possible upset,
proceeds in search of a fresh victim.  He salutes his master in passing,
and, with a rapid, keen glance at the stranger, extends his greeting to
him.

Mr Brathwaite is very proud of his choice and well-bred animals.  He
knows every hoof of them like ABC, almost every hair; and as they walk
about among the beasts he entertains his companion with the history of
each, and where it came from, and the events of its career in life.

"Hullo!  Who's this?" said Claverton suddenly, as two horsemen appeared
on the brow of the opposite hill.  "One's Hicks, the other looks like,
uncommonly like, Jim."

"Yes, it is Jim," assented Mr Brathwaite.  "What's brought him over
this morning, I wonder?"  The said Jim was his eldest son.  He was a
married man, and lived on a farm of his own some fifteen or sixteen
miles off.  A few minutes more, and the two horsemen drew rein in front
of the cattle kraal.

"Hullo, Arthur!" sang out Jim, jumping to the ground.  "Here we are
again!  Hicks told me I should find _you_ here, of all people.  Morning,
father!  Have Ethel and Laura arrived yet?"

"I believe so.  I saw Jeffreys' trap coming over the hill about an hour
ago, and he was to bring them.  I was busy and couldn't go in then.  My
brother's children, Arthur," he explained, noting a surprised look in
his guest's face.  "They have come from Cape Town to stay a couple of
months while their father is away up the country."

"Come to enliven us up a bit," said jovial Jim.  "Ethel will lead you a
life of it, or I'm a Trojan."

Jim Brathwaite was a fine, handsome fellow of thirty-five, over six feet
in height, strong as a bull and active as a leopard.  His bronzed and
bearded countenance was stamped with that air of dashing intrepidity
with which a genial disposition usually goes hand in hand.  He was a
quick-tempered man, and his native dependents stood in considerable awe
of him, for they knew--some of them to their cost--that he would stand
no nonsense.  Of untiring energy, and with all his father's practical
common sense, he had prospered exceedingly in good times, and had
managed to hold his own against bad ones.  Shrewd and clear-headed, he
was thoroughly well able to look after his own interests; and any one
given to sharp practice or rascality--whether cattle dealer or Dutchman,
Kafir or Hottentot--would have to get up very early indeed to reach the
blind side of him.

Claverton had been on very intimate terms with the Brathwaites some
years previously.  They had been good friends to him in the earlier days
of his wandering life, and he had a warm regard for them.  It was more
than pleasant, he thought, being among them again, laughing over many a
reminiscence evoked by the jest-loving Jim as they strolled towards the
house.

The long, low dining-room looked invitingly cool after the glare and
heat outside.  Mrs Brathwaite, who was seated at the table, scolded
them playfully for keeping breakfast waiting.  Beside her sat a girl--a
beautiful creature, with large blue eyes fringed with curling lashes,
and a sparkling, dimpled rosebud of a face made for capriciousness and
kisses.  The masses of her golden hair, drawn back from the brows, were
allowed to fall in a rippling shower below her waist, and a fresh, cool
morning-dress set off her neat little figure to perfection.

"Arthur.  This is my niece, Ethel," said Mrs Brathwaite.

Claverton started ever so slightly and bowed.  He was wondering where on
earth this vision of loveliness had suddenly dropped from in this
out-of-the-way place.  And Mr Brathwaite had said, "My brother's
_children_."

The girl shot one glance at him from under the curling lashes as she
acknowledged the introduction, and a gleam of merriment darted across
the bright face.  Each had been trying to read off the other, and each
had detected the other in the act.  She turned away to greet her cousin.

"Why, what in the world has brought _you_ here?" cried that jovial blade
in his hearty voice.  "We weren't expecting you for ever so long.
Where's Laura?"

"The Union Company's steamer _Basuto_.  Cobb and Co, and Mr Jeffreys'
trap.  Laura's in the next room.  One question at a time, please."

Jim roared with laughter as he took his seat at the table.  Between
himself and Ethel much sparring took place whenever the pair got
together.

"Sharp as ever, by Jingo," he cried.  "I say, Ethel, I wonder you
haven't been quodded for bribery and corruption.  They say Uncle George
only gets returned by sending you round to tout for votes."

The point of this joke lay in the fact that her father was a fervid
politician and a member of the Legislative Assembly.  Before Ethel could
retort, a diversion was created by the entrance of Mr Brathwaite and
his other niece.  Laura was her sister's junior by a year, and as unlike
her as it was possible to be.  She was a slight, graceful girl, with
dark hair and eyes, and as quiet and demure in manner as the other was
merry and impulsive; and though falling far short of her sister in
actual beauty, yet when interested her face would light up in a manner
that was very attractive.  So thought, at any rate, our friend Hicks, on
whom, during her last visit at Seringa Vale, Laura had made an
impression.  Not to put too fine a point upon it, Hicks was very hard
hit indeed.

"Really, those two are too bad," said Mrs Brathwaite.  "Beginning to
fight before they have been five minutes together.  Isn't it too bad of
them, Arthur?"

He appealed to, looked up just in time to catch Ethel's glance of
defiance which said as plainly as words: "You mind your own business."
She was not going to defer to the opinions of this stranger, and did not
see why he should be called upon to decide in the matter.  No doubt he
had come out there with the notion that they were a mere set of
half-civilised, ignorant colonials whom it was his business to set
right.  Those new arrivals from England always gave themselves such
airs, and expected to have everything their own way.  That might do with
the old people and good-natured Jim, but it would not go down with her,
Ethel Brathwaite, aged nineteen, and she intended to let him know it.
She had taken a dislike to this new arrival, which he saw at once, and
the idea rather entertained him.

"Uncle, I declare Jim gets worse and worse as he grows older.  Yes--
older, Jim, for you're quite grey since I saw you last, you know.  How
are you, Mr Hicks?" she continued, as that tardy youth entered the
room.  "Have you shot your twenty backs yet?  You know we said last year
we should vote you out of our good opinion unless you could show as
twenty pairs of horns fairly killed by your own gun when next we met?"

"Well, not yet," was the answer, somewhat reluctantly given.

"As you are strong, be merciful," put in Claverton, thereby drawing down
upon himself another indignant glance.

Our friend Hicks, like many a greater man, had his weaknesses.  One of
these was a passion for sport.  He would lay himself out to the most
arduous labours in the heat of the day, and forego many an hour of
well-earned rest at night, in the pursuit of his favourite pastime.  Not
that his efforts were always crowned with the success they deserved--
indeed, it was the exception rather than the rule if they were so--but
the mere pleasure of having his gun in his hand, expecting,
Micawber-like, something to turn up, satisfied him.  When he first came
to Seringa Vale he had been in the habit of starting off in quest of
game at times when by no possibility could he have obtained a shot, and
under such circumstances had been known to empty his gun at such small
fry as spreuws or meercats rather than not discharge it at all.  But
whatever he let off his gun at, it didn't make the least difference to
the object under fire.  He never hit anything, and much good-humoured
chaff was habitually indulged in at his expense.  "He couldn't hit a
house, couldn't Hicks," Mr Brathwaite was wont to observe jocosely,
"unless he were put inside and all the doors and shutters barred up."
Which witticism Jim would supplement by two or three of his own.  But
the subject of this rallying was the very essence of good humour.  He
didn't mind any amount of chaff, and devoted himself to the pursuit of
_ferae naturae_ with a perseverance which was literally as laid down by
the copy-books--its own reward.

"I move that we all go down and look at the ostriches," suggested Ethel,
ever anxious to be on the move.

"Who seconds that?" said Jim, looking around.  "Now, then, Arthur!"

"As junior member my innate modesty forbids," was the reply.

"That is meant satirically, Mr Claverton," cried Ethel.  "You deserve
to be voted out of the expedition, and if you don't apologise you shall
be."

"Then I withdraw the innate modesty.  What--that not enough?  Then
there's nothing for it but a pistol or a pipe.  Of the two evils here
goes for the pipe.  Hicks, we haven't blown our cloud this morning."  He
saw how the land lay.

"Er--well, you see--er--that is--er--I mean," stammered Hicks, who,
good-natured fellow, shrank from refusing outright.  "Er--the fact is,
I've got to go down and feed the ostriches some time, so I may as well
go now."

"Well, I am surprised at _you_, Mr Hicks," said Ethel.  "So the
pleasure of our company counts as nothing.  You deserve to be put on the
stool of repentance too."

"But really that's just what I meant--er--that is, I mean--it does, you
know--but--" stuttered the unlucky youth, putting his foot in it deeper
and deeper.

Laura had fled into another room under the pretext of finding her hat,
whence a stifled sob of suppressed laughter was audible now and again.
The originator of this turn of affairs was imperturbably sticking a
penknife through and through a piece of card, and contemplating the
actors in it as if he were unconscious of anything humorous in the
situation, though in reality he was repressing, with an effort, an
overpowering desire to go outside and roar for five minutes.

"Good-bye, Mr Claverton," said Ethel, with a mock bow, and emphasising
the first word.  She was rather disappointed at his ready acquiescence
in her ostracism of him, as it upset a little scheme of vengeance she
had been forming.

"Say rather `Au reservoir,' for your way, I believe, lies past the dam."

"Oh-h!" burst from the whole party at the villainy of the pun, as they
left him.

"I'm afraid your friend is a dreadful firebrand; Ethel and he will fight
awfully," said Laura to Hicks as they walked down to the large
enclosure.  These two had fallen behind, and Hicks was in the seventh
heaven of delight.  The mischief of it was that the arrangement would be
of such short duration.  Some twenty yards in front Ethel was keeping
her aunt and Jim in fits of laughter.

"Let me carry that for you," said Hicks, pouncing upon a tiny apology
for a basket which was in her hand.

"No, no; you've got quite enough to carry," she replied, referring to a
large colander containing the daily ration of maize for the ostriches,
and which formed his burden on the occasion.

"Not a bit of it.  Look, I can carry it easily.  Do let me," he went on
in his eagerness.

"Take care, or you'll drop the other," said she.

The warning was just one shade too late.  Down came the colander, its
contents promptly burying themselves in the long grass.  The salvage
which Hicks managed to effect was but a very small fraction of the
original portion.

"There now, I've spilt all the mealies," said he, ruefully, eyeing the
scattered grain.  He was not thinking of its intrinsic value, but that
the necessity of going back for more would do him out of the two or
three hundred yards left to him of his walk with Laura.

"Your friend would say `it's of no use crying over spilt mealies.'
Never mind, we can go back and get some more."

"What!" he exclaimed, delightfully.  "Do you mean to say you'll go all
the way back with me?  But really I can't let you take all that
trouble," he added, with reluctant compunction.

"I mean to say I'll go _all_ the way back with you, and I intend `to
take _all_ that trouble' with or with out permission," she replied,
looking up at him with a saucy gleam in her eyes.

Close to the storeroom they came upon Claverton.  He was sitting on the
disselboom of a tent-waggon smoking a pipe, and meditatively shying
pebbles at an itinerant scarabaeus, which was wandering aimlessly about
on a sun-baked open patch of ground about seven yards off.

"Well, has your sister thought better of it, and removed the ban?" asked
he, as the two came up.

"No, she hasn't," answered Laura, "but I see you're penitent, so I will
do so on her behalf.  You may come down with us," she added, demurely.
She knew he would do nothing of the sort, so could safely indulge the
temptation to mischief.

Poor Hicks was on thorns.  "Yes, come along, Claverton," he chimed in,
mechanically, in the plenitude of his self-abnegation fondly imagining
that his doleful tones were the acme of cordiality.

"Well, I think I will," pretended Claverton, making a feint at moving.
Hicks' countenance fell, and Laura turned away convulsed.  "Don't know,
though; think I'll join you later.  I must go in and get a fresh fill;
my pipe's gone out," and he sauntered away to Hicks' great relief, as he
and Laura started off to rejoin the others at the ostrich camp.

The male bird was very savage, and no sooner did he descry the party,
than he came bearing down upon them from the far end of the enclosure.

"What a grand fellow!" exclaimed Ethel, putting out her hand to stroke
the long serpentine neck of the huge biped, who, so far from
appreciating the caress, resented it by pressing the stone wall with his
hard breast-bone as though he would overthrow it, and making the
splinters fly with a vicious kick or two, in his futile longing to get
at and smash the whole party.  And standing there in all the bravery of
his jet-black array, the snowy plumes of his wings dazzling white in the
sun as he waved them in wrathful challenge, he certainly merited to the
full the encomium passed upon him.  Hicks emptied the contents of the
colander, which brought the hen bird running down to take her share--a
mild-eyed, grey, unobtrusive-looking creature.  She stood timidly
pecking on the outside of the "spread," every now and again running off
some twenty yards as her tyrannical lord made at her, with a sonorous
hiss, aiming a savage kick at her with his pointed toe.

"Oh, you odious wretch," cried Ethel, apostrophising the bird.  "Mr
Hicks, can't we give the poor hen some all to herself?"

"Behold the way of the world," said a voice behind her.  "Every man for
himself and--but I won't finish the saw."

She turned, and there was Claverton.  A cherrywood pipe was in his
mouth, and with one hand thrust carelessly into the pocket of a loose
shooting-coat, he stood regarding her from beneath his broad-brimmed
hat, looking the very personification of coolness and unconcern.

The sight of him angered her, but a thrill of malicious satisfaction
shot through her, as she thought of the rude shock she would inflict
upon that provoking imperturbability before he was an hour older.

"So you come down from the stool of repentance without permission," she
said, severely.

"Couldn't stop away any longer," he replied, without removing his
careless glance from her face.  "Besides, your sister absolved me in
your name."

"Then you may stay," she said, graciously, turning to look at the
ostriches.  The male bird was about fifty yards off, reluctant to leave
the spot, and rolling his fiery eye towards them with a frequency that
showed he had not quite given up all hopes of making mincemeat of some
one of the party that day.

"Mr Claverton," suddenly exclaimed Ethel, even more graciously.  "Do
get me those red flowers over there, the ones on the long stalks."

"With pleasure," he answered, coming to her side.  "Indicate them."

"There they are, those under that bush."

She pointed out ten or a dozen wiry-looking stalks with a few red
blossoms that would not have overburdened one of them, but were
injudiciously distributed amongst the group, which sprouted amid the
undergrowth in a small clump of thorn-bushes right in the enclosure.  To
reach it about seventy yards of open ground, destitute of all cover save
for a single mimosa bush growing half-way, must needs be traversed.

"Hold on, let's get the bird away first," said Jim, moving off with that
intent.

"Never mind the bird, Jim, he won't interfere with me," quietly answered
Claverton; and without even pocketing his pipe he climbed deliberately
over the wall.

"Don't go, Arthur.  Good gracious, he'll be killed!" cried Mrs
Brathwaite, in dire trepidation.  "Ethel, how could you?"

"No he won't, auntie; you'll see him run in a minute as for dear life.
I wanted to make him run," she added in a low tone, with a mischievous,
scornful laugh.

I know of no more perfect exemplification of the old adage about
familiarity breeding contempt than the case of the fall-grown male
ostrich.  In his wild state the most timid and wary of creatures, he is
up and away the moment you appear on the skyline, and fleetness and
endurance must be the character of your mount if you hope to overtake
him.  In a state of domesticity, however, his aggressiveness and
pugnacity know no bounds.  He will charge anything or everything,
resistance only adding to his blind ferocity--and when it is understood
that a single stroke of his sharp horny toe--for he kicks down, not
out--will shatter a man's skull, not to mention the possibility of a
broken limb, it will not be difficult for the reader to realise that
this gigantic fowl is a particularly awkward customer to deal with.  Of
course the bird is easily killed, or disabled, a very moderate blow from
a stick being sufficient to break its leg.  But it must be remembered
that the creature is, so to say, worth its weight in gold, and any one
would think more than, twice before slaying so valuable a possession,
even in self-defence.  So it is manifest that the expedition upon which
Claverton had now embarked was by no means free from the element of
peril.

Once over the wall he walked coolly forward, seeming altogether to
ignore his foe's existence.  The ostrich, however, was by no means
disposed to take matters so quietly, for before he had gone fifteen
paces it bore down upon him with a savage hiss; but a couple of light
bounds brought him to the small bash above mentioned, where he was safe
for the moment.  For the moment, because it was only a question which of
the two would tire first, and they dodged each other round the
precarious shelter which was only half-way to his destination.

Soon, however, besieger and besieged alike came to a complete
standstill, and the situation began to wax rather monotonous.  Then the
ostrich, withdrawing a couple of yards, dropped down on its shanks, and
contorting its neck, and at the same time fluttering its wings in
defiance, produced a curious drumming noise, of which grotesque
challenge its human antagonist took not the slightest notice, but waited
on as calmly as ever.  Suddenly it sprang up, and uttering its
trumpet-like hiss, dashed right through the bush at him; then, while it
was still blundering among the thorns, Claverton started off upon the
remainder of his journey.  This he could have accomplished with ease and
safety, but that above all he intended to do it quietly.  He knew why
Ethel had sent him in there as well as she did herself, and that astute
young lady should not have the pleasure of seeing him routed, or
enjoying a laugh at his expense.  Consequently he had not covered more
than half the distance that remained to him, at a quick but easy walk,
when the ostrich, now simply infuriate by reason of a few pricks from
the sharp mimosa thorns, which had penetrated even its tough hide, was
upon him.  And very huge and formidable looked the ferocious bird, as,
rearing itself up to its full height, its jetty plumage erect and
bristling, its eye glaring, and its fiery red bill wide open, it rushed
upon Claverton, hissing like a fiend.  No cover was at hand; there he
stood in the open, completely at the mercy of his savage assailant.

In vain Jim and Hicks ran into the enclosure shouting, to draw off the
creature's attention; it manifested a fell fixity of purpose, from which
it was not to be turned aside by any such puerile tricks.  Mrs
Brathwaite grew pale, and averted her head; even Ethel now saw that she
had carried her practical joke rather too far; but still her gaze was
riveted upon the combatants with a strange, eager fascination.

But Claverton's coolness always stood him in good stead.  He suddenly
advanced a couple of paces, thus forestalling the attack, and seizing
his powerful antagonist by the lower part of the neck, swung himself
nimbly aside, just managing to avoid a kick that would probably have
ripped him up, and held on firmly to the creature's throat, half choking
it.  It plunged and stamped, its great feet going all the time like
sledge-hammers, and to hold on was just as much as he could do, for it
was as powerful as a horse.  But hold on he did as for dear life; then,
watching his opportunity, he flung himself off, and before the bird,
half-dazed, had recovered from the effects of the choking it had
received, he stood safe within the friendly shelter of the clump of
bush, somewhat used up, but uninjured, except that his right hand was
torn and bleeding from contact with the bird's claw.  His pursuer,
indisposed to venture again among thorns, walked quickly up and down
before the entrance to the cover, flicking its wings about in baffled
wrath at the unaccountable escape of its victim.

The first thing he did was to gather every one of the flowers he had
come for.  Then the spectators could see him standing against a tree
doing something with a pencil and the back of an envelope.

"Hallo! what on earth are you up to now?" called out Jim.  "Tell us when
you're ready, and we'll get the bird away."

"By no means," was the reply.  "I'm making a rough sketch of the
situation, now that I'm master of the same.  Then you may call it a
drawing by one of the Masters."

This sally provoked a laugh from all but Ethel.  She was silent.  To
tell the truth, she was rather ashamed of herself.

In a few moments he put away his pencil and paper, and set to work to
cut a couple of large thorn branches.  This done, he issued forth from
his refuge to return.  The ostrich, apparently tired of the turn affairs
had taken, had drawn off a little way; but no sooner was he in the open
than it charged him again.  This time, however, it was out of its
reckoning; the _chevaux de frise_ of thorns that Claverton held before
him was not to be got over.  With a powerful kick or two it beat down
the branch, which, however, was immediately replaced by the other, and
kick and hiss as it would, it could not get rid of the formidable array
of prickly thorns which met its breast and unprotected neck whenever it
pressed on to the attack.  At last, convinced of the futility of the
undertaking, the savage bird turned round and trotted away about fifty
yards, and there stood, looking the picture of sullen defeat.  Its cool
opponent walked leisurely to the wall, and, abandoning his valuable
means of defence, climbed over and joined the party.

"By Jove, but you did that well," said Jim.  "Why, man, I expected to
see you most awfully mauled."

"I don't know.  `Needs must where the'--but I won't finish that
quotation, either.  Here are the flowers, Miss Brathwaite," he said,
handing her the innocent cause of all the pother.  "By the way, Hicks, I
forgot to tell you as I came down that there's been a porcupine in the
mealie-land during the night.  We might set the spring-gun for him, eh?"

"Rather!  We'll set it this evening," said Hicks, gleefully, his
instincts of destructiveness coming again to the fore.

That evening, between nine and ten o'clock, they were all sitting
indoors.  Jim had left in the afternoon to return to the bosom of his
family, after making them all promise to ride over in a day or two.
Suddenly a dull, heavy report was heard.

"_Pace_ the porcupine," remarked Claverton.

"I say," sputtered Hicks in his eagerness, "let's go down and see if
we've got him.  We might set the gun again, you know, in case another
came."

"Let's all go," cried Ethel.  "I'm dying to see the result of our
trap-setting.  Yes, _our_ trap-setting, Mr Hicks--you know you'd have
put that trigger too stiff if it hadn't been for me."

"But, my dear child," feebly protested Mrs Brathwaite, "the grass is as
wet as it can be, and--"

"And--there's a path all the way down, and--it's a lovely night--and--
you're a dear old auntie--and--we're going," she replied, with a hug and
a kiss; then darting into the other room reappeared, looking
inexpressibly killing, with a light-blue shawl thrown carelessly over
her golden head.

"Well, then, don't be too long, and don't get into any mischief.
Arthur, I shall look upon you as the responsible person.  Keep them in
order," said the old lady, with her kindly smile.

"All right, Mrs Brathwaite, I'll keep them well in hand, I promise
you."

"And--Arthur--just shy that old porcupine up in the air once or twice
for Hicks to practise at," sang out Mr Brathwaite jocosely as they left
the room.

It was a perfect night, the moon was at half, and the whole earth slept
in silence beneath its mantle of silver sheen, for a heavy dew had
fallen.  A grass fire or two shone forth redly upon the slopes of the
far Amatola.  Not a breath stirred the air, save for the faintest
suspicion of a cool zephyr which now and again partly dispelled the
light clouds of blue smoke which ascended from Claverton's pipe.  Hicks
and Laura were on in front.  Suddenly Ethel stopped.

"Mr Claverton," she said.  "Do you know I've been feeling quite ashamed
of myself all day?"

"What about?" asked her companion.

"Why, for sending you after those wretched flowers this morning--I
didn't mean you to get hurt, you know; of course I thought you would
easily be able to run away."

"I see.  But running away isn't altogether in my line--I don't mean
under any circumstances--those who declaim most against the lawfulness
of leg-bail at a push are generally the ones most prone to putting it to
the test.  In fact, I don't mind telling you that I have `run away'
before now, having no alternative."

"When I saw that dreadful creature coming at you, I declare I would have
given anything not to have sent you in there.  It was horrible."  And
she shivered.  "Do forgive me."

"But I assure you the whole affair was fun to me.  Keeps one in training
for emergencies.  Only--"

"Only what?"

"Only that I don't know whether your uncle quite likes his prize ostrich
being made the subject of a bull-fight."

"And--we are friends?"

"I hope so."

He looked with a trifle of wonder into the lovely eyes, now so soft in
the moonlight.  What an impulsive little thing it was, he thought.  Then
she said: "Do give me that drawing you made while the ostrich was
waiting for you.  It's sure to be fun."

"With pleasure.  Here it is," pulling the old envelope out of his
pocket.  "It about represents the position, though I'm no artist."

It did.  When Ethel examined it in her room half an hour later she found
a very comical sketch reproducing the situation with graphic and
whimsical distinctness.  It was labelled "Cornered--or Brute Force
_versus_ Intellect."

They found the other two standing over the mortal remains of a large old
porcupine.  The spring-gun had been set with the precision of clockwork,
and no sooner had the luckless rodent entered the mealie-land than he
ran his nose against the string and promptly received the contents of
the infernal machine clean through his marauding carcase.  There he
lay--a spoiler who would spoil no more.  Said Hicks:

"I'll come down in the morning and get some of his best quills."



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER SIX.

IN A NEW LINE.

"Of course you know the place well?"

"Every inch of it.  Two thousand _morgen_, rather over.  What did you
say Van Rooyen asks for it?"

"Three thousand.  Probably he'd take less."

"Far too much.  It isn't particularly good veldt; sheep don't do well
there, and the place is nearly all bush.  And then there's that stony
hill right over the river, about one-fifth of the whole area.  What sort
of house is it?"

"A classic tenement meriting the veneration of the Society for the
Preservation of Ancient Buildings."

"Humph!  You'd better have nothing to do with the concern."

The above dialogue took place about three weeks after the events
recorded in the former chapter, the speakers being Claverton and his
host, who were returning from a ride.

"You have made up your mind to settle here, then?" went on the latter.

"Yes, I've taken rather a fancy to this part of the country."

"H'm!  Well now, I'll tell you what I think.  Don't you be in too great
a hurry to buy; there's nothing like keeping your eyes open a bit first,
and biding your time.  Plenty of these fellows would be very glad to
clear out.  The Dutchmen round here are mostly a bankrupt lot, living
from hand to mouth, and you'll soon be able to make your own terms and
get a much better place than Springkaan's Hoek, which old Van Roozen, by
the way, has done his best to spoil."

"But do you know of another place about here that would be likely to
suit me?"

"Not at present--that is, not one that's in the market.  But I've been
thinking, why not stop on here a bit and help me?  You'd get into
practice and learn your craft, so to say.  You see, at present you know
precious little about it, though you're quicker at picking up wrinkles
than most new hands who come out.  I'm getting old now and am beginning
to feel it, and can't look after things as much as I should like them to
be looked after.  As for Hicks, he's a smart fellow enough, but then he
can't be everywhere _at_ once, and as it is he has his hands full.  Now
between you and him, all might be kept going, which would be a great
help to me, and, as I said before, you would get the experience you want
before setting up on your own account.  And it's not enough to see
things done, the great thing is to know how to do them yourself.  We do
a little of everything here, as you see, and I don't think you could be
much better placed for learning to farm," added the old man, with a
touch of pardonable pride.

Claverton readily closed with this offer.  Already during his stay he
had done many a hand's turn, helping Hicks to look up missing stock, or
seeing to odd jobs about the homestead when that invaluable majordomo
was out of the way; and his host's practised eye had gauged his
capabilities, seeing that he had all the makings of a first-rate
colonist.  The advantage of this offer Claverton could tell at a glance
was all on his own side.

"You see," pursued Mr Brathwaite, "farming now is not what it was.  You
needn't expect to make a fortune at it, but still you can always make a
very decent living, and then the position is a thoroughly independent
one, the life a free and healthy one, you are absolutely your own master
and need care for nobody.  Times are very far from what they used to be,
I admit; stock is more expensive, and there are more drawbacks in the
way of bad seasons, diseases, long droughts and used-up _veldt_; but
even then a good farmer can always manage to keep above water, and in a
fairly prosperous season can forge ahead.  Look at me: I've been burnt
out, stick and stone, by the Kafirs in three successive wars, and have
had to begin life over again, yet I've always got on.  The secret of it
is to look after everything yourself.  It won't do to set your people to
work and go away expecting them to do it, you must off with your jacket
and work _with_ them.  And you must be here, there, and everywhere at
once, Kafirs want continual looking after; directly they begin to think
the `Baas' is getting careless, good-bye to anything going straight.  I
don't mean to say that you must always be finding fault with them, they
are naturally stupid devils and you can't make them anything else; but
you can let them see that you've got your eye on them and will stand no
nonsense.  The great thing is to keep your temper with them, and, above
all, to treat them fairly but firmly.  Then again, you must make up your
mind to being out in all weathers.  The heavier and the colder the
rains, the more certain are the Kafirs to huddle in their blankets under
a bush or before a fire, and leave the flock to take care of itself.
With the result that at nightfall about a third of it is missing and
remains out in the _veldt_ for the benefit of the jackals and wolves;
what these leave perhaps stray to some Dutchman's place, and when you
get them again you find that they are covered with _brand ziekte_ [scab]
from his miserable brutes.  As I say, there are drawbacks innumerable,
but it rests with yourself to minimise them."

"Yes; I quite grasp the situation in all its bearings."

"Very well, then, that's settled, and I think you'll have reason to see
that my plan is the best."

They were nearing home now, and the sun, which was about an hour above
the horizon, shed a soft, golden lustre upon the broad, sloping plains
and on shining cliff and undulating vale, with many a dark patch of
forest here and there.  The peak of the Great Winterberg, his snowy cap
now removed--sleeping in a filmy haze against the horizon, and the lofty
backs of his lesser satellites purple and gold as they stood in the
shade or in the sun--formed a grand and effective background to the
picture, the beautiful range stretching from east to west, far as the
eye could travel.  Beneath lay the homestead, reposing among its shadowy
trees, looking the very abode of peace and prosperity.  Scarcely a
breath of wind to ruffle the balminess of the air, nor a sound to create
one, save for the occasional droning hum of some insect, while now and
again the soft mellow note of a hoopoe sounded through the slumbrous
dimness of the far distance.  Looking upon this vista of rest and
stillness, and in the midst of its influences, it was hard to realise
that the red tide of war could ever engulf this fair land, and its
fierce and jarring clangour break rudely upon such quiet calm.

On their return they found a visitor awaiting them.  This was one Will
Jeffreys, a sturdy, broad-shouldered fellow of five-and-twenty, with
rather a heavy expression of countenance bordering on the sullen.  A man
who was shrewd enough as regarded all matters directly in his line, but
would have a difficulty in grasping a very ordinary joke, and who was
totally deficient in appreciation of aught beyond the humdrum and
practical.  A man who might be a good fellow at bottom, but certainly
was a crusty dog on the surface.  He was the son of the neighbour
referred to in the foregoing chapter, as having brought the girls to
Seringa Vale, and was well-to-do.  But in one respect, at least, Will
Jeffreys wandered out of his natural groove.  He had a genuine
admiration for Ethel Brathwaite, whom he had met on previous occasions
of her staying at her uncle's, and though he had returned home only that
morning, had saddled up his horse and ridden over, under pretext of
consulting Mr Brathwaite about a certain span of oxen which he thought
of buying--most transparent of pretexts, which his good-natured father
saw through at once, and went into fits of laughter over as soon as his
hopeful's back was turned.

"Poor Will!" he would say to himself, "he's only singeing his wings.  He
hasn't the ghost of a chance in that quarter."

"Poor Will" certainly had not the ghost of a chance, for Ethel in no
wise reciprocated his admiration, though she would accept his homage
carelessly and half unconsciously at one time, and ruthlessly snub him
at another, particularly when the admiration became too open and
undisguised.  Now it so happened that that afternoon they had been
discussing the latest importation in all his bearings, with the result
that young Jeffreys greeted Claverton with no great show of cordiality
when the two were introduced.  Nor was it increased by Ethel's remark:
"At last, Mr Claverton!  I thought uncle and you were never coming
back.  Why, you've been out nearly the whole day."

"Well, Will," said the old settler, heartily.  "Had a good trip?"

"Yes, very good on the whole, thanks.  It's rather dry up Colesberg way,
and the locusts have been bad there, but my oxen were in good order, and
I came through quick."

He had just returned from a transport-riding trip up the country.

"H'm!  By the way, did your father manage to get back his horses?"

"No.  He and Bob followed them as far as Tembani.  The fellows had got a
forged pass [Note 1] and walked through right under the agent's nose.
After that the spoors separated; the thieves had taken two of the horses
in the direction of the Tambookie country, the other towards Sandili's;
and, of course, at every kraal they inquired at--for the spoor was soon
lost--the headmen did their best to put them on the wrong track,
although they set up to be no end sympathetic.  We've got a spy down in
the Gaika location, but a fat lot of good he'll do; he's sure to be in
league with the rest," growled Will, who was not in the best of humours.

"No, you can't do much when the whole country is in league against you.
We're quite at their mercy.  I'm afraid you'll never see a hoof of them
again," said the older man.

"Of course not.  Three as good all-round horses as we ever had on the
place, though Bles was a dev--er--a brute for bucking, at times.
By-the-bye, Mr Brathwaite, there seems to be an awful lot of
stock-lifting going on just now.  Seven of Dirk van Heerden's best cows
cleared off last week, and not a head of them has he been able to get
back, except one which had dislocated its shoulder, and the niggers
assegaied it to save its life."

"Well, it's time to count the sheep.  You'll stay to night, Will?"

He was delighted.

"Er--thanks--I--er, that is--"

"All right.  Better put your horse in the enclosure; only mind the
bird."

"How tiresome that Will Jeffreys is getting!" remarked Ethel that
evening, as some of them were standing outside in the garden.  "Listen
to him prosing away in there."

"Ssh!  He'll hear you," said Laura.

"I don't much care.  He comes over to see us, and instead of trying to
amuse one he bores us with tiresome yarns about this Dutchman losing his
cows and that Dutchman finding his horses."

"But what on earth do you want him to tell you about?" asked Hicks.

"Why, some of the news, of course.  The gossip, scandal, engagements,
and so forth."

"But he don't know anything about that sort of thing, so how can he tell
you about it?" said Hicks.

"Oh, you're just as bad.  Do go and join him and hear about Dirk van
Heerden's cows.  Please take my part, Mr Claverton.  Isn't Will
Jeffreys a bore?"

"Haven't been long enough in his company to answer with any certainty.
Will let you know later."

"How provoking you are!  Now I appeal to all of you.  If you see me
cornered by Will Jeffreys, come to the rescue."

"The greatest bore I ever knew," began Claverton, "was a lady--an
elderly lady.  She would volunteer instruction on any and every subject
under heaven, from the precise length of Aaron's beard, to the cost of
soup-kitchens; and once she cornered you, you had to listen or pretend
to.  One day she cornered me.  It was in the drawing-room, and there was
no escape; but there was a clock opposite.  It occurred to me to time
her.  For exactly twenty-one minutes she prosed on uninterruptedly, like
a stream flowing over its bed; never stopped to take breath once.  A
sermon was a joke to it.  Twenty-one minutes!  Heaven knows how much
longer she would have gone on, but for a lucky interruption."

"What was she prosing about?" said Ethel.

"I haven't the very faintest idea."

"Well, I don't believe a word of the story.  I believe you made it all
up."

"You don't believe a word of that story?" said Claverton, with a stare
of amazement, while Hicks and Laura went into fits.

"No, I don't; at least, I'll say this much--you may have known such a
bore, but if so it was a man, not a lady."

"I've told you a bare fact, upon my honour.  But if--"

They were interrupted by the appearance on the scene of Jeffreys
himself; but Ethel was too quick for him.  She had seen him coming, and
was already on her way indoors.  Then she began to sing duets with
Laura, whom she had manoeuvred to the piano by some mysterious signal.
Young Jeffreys, feeling very sulky and sore at his enslaver's
capriciousness and want of consideration, went and sat by himself at the
other side of the room, whence he could watch the author of his
discomfort.  The old people, under no necessity to talk, waxed drowsy,
and nodded through the music.  Presently Laura left the piano and, in a
trice, she and Hicks were deep in an animated conversation in a low tone
and in a snug corner, under pretence of looking through a pile of music.
Ethel the while was extracting wondrous combinations from the keys,
under cover of which she was carrying on a sharp running fire of banter,
or rather word-skirmish, with Claverton.

Jeffreys, watching them, was on thorns and tenterhooks.  Who the deuce
was this stranger?  A month ago no one had ever heard of him, and now
here he was, with his damned finicking ways and smooth tongue, thinking
that all the world was made for him.  A fellow, too, he'd be bound to
say, that with all his easy-going blarney, couldn't sit a bucking horse,
or hit a haystack at ten yards.  Yet there was Ethel carrying on
furiously with this fellow, while he, Jeffreys, was sent to the wall.
In reality, however, there was nothing that those two were saying that
all the world--Jeffreys included--would not have been perfectly welcome
to hear.

"Claverton," suddenly exclaimed Hicks, as two hours later they were
discussing the usual pipe before turning in.  Jeffreys had joined them,
but did not add much to the conversation.  "I hear you're going to stay
on here."

"Yes, I am."

Jeffreys' jaw fell at this announcement.  He had been laying balm to his
wounded spirit in the thought that this interloping stranger would soon
be going, and then--well, the field would be clear again.

"Glad to hear it, old fellow, awfully glad.  By Jove, it's the best news
I've heard for a long time."

"The deuce it is!  And why, may I ask?"

"Why?  Only hear him!  Haven't I had to do everything by myself, and
knock about by myself?  No fellow to talk to at work, or to go out and
sneak a buck with, or to blow a cloud with at night, and so on.  Now
we'll have a rare good time of it together."

"Especially when you go down to feed the ostriches," said Claverton,
with a mischievous laugh.

The other coloured and looked foolish, and was about to make some
stammering reply.

"Never mind, Hicks," said Claverton, in that wonderfully attractive
manner which he now and then exhibited, "I don't think you and I will
quarrel.  Now I'm going to turn in.  Good-night.  Good-night, Jeffreys."

"I say," inquired Jeffreys, after he had gone out.  "Is that
cattle-branding on to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Well, I think I'll stay and give you a hand, if Mr Brathwaite doesn't
mind.  Times are slack, and there's nothing doing at home."

"Rather--mind you do; we'll be only too glad," answered Hicks with a
yawn, as he blew out the candle; and in five minutes more a mild snore
or so showed that he was out of reach of any further conversation.

Jeffreys lay and ruminated.  Here, at any rate, he would be in his
element.  What sort of a figure would that stuck-up, priggish fool--
again, reader, pardon a jealous man--cut in the cattle kraal among the
clashing horns and the charging of maddened beasts, and all the dash and
excitement of a piece of very rough work, by no means unattended with
danger?  He was all there in the drawing-room; but where would he be at
this?  And Jeffreys dropped off to sleep with a sardonic grin upon his
countenance, to dream of his rival--for so he had already begun to
regard Claverton--losing nerve, and being tossed and trampled by the
wildest brute in the herd.  As to the fulfilment of which benevolent
expectation the morrow would show.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  No native is allowed to remove stock from the colony without a
pass granted by his late employer to certify that he acquired it
lawfully.  This pass is countersigned by the various magistrates and
native agents along the road.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE CATTLE-BRANDING.

"Here they come.  Is the whole of that lot to be done to-day, Xuvani?"

"Ja, Baas," replied that worthy, swinging back the ponderous gate of the
cattle enclosure where he and Jeffreys were standing.

For the ground echoes a low rumble, drawing nearer every moment.  It is
the trample of many hoofs, and Jeffreys and his swart companion fix
their attention upon a troop of cattle coming up the kloof.  They are
mostly young beasts, and skittish.  Now and then one will leave the rest
and attempt to strike out a line for itself, but lo, one of the two
horsemen riding behind is down on it like lightning; a shout and a crack
of the whip, and the recreant is back in the ways of the herd again.
Peradventure half-a-dozen will start off headlong down some well-known
track, and with frolicsome bellow and heels tossed in the air away they
go, refusing to hear the voice of the driver; but the spirited horse
darts beneath the spur like a greyhound from the leash; over ant-heap
and through rhinoster bush straight as an arrow he flies; and behold,
suddenly, from around that clump of spekboem, appears the form of one of
the drivers.  A shout, half-a-dozen appalling whip-cracks, the errant
beasts stop short, heads go up and eyeballs dilate upon the unlooked-for
apparition with startled inquiry, then wheeling round they scamper back
to their comrades, helter-skelter, and the unruly mass moves swiftly on,
urged by the horsemen, eyes glaring, horns clashing, and now and again
an aggrieved "moo" as some quarrelsome brute playfully prods his nearest
neighbour, in the crush.  One young bull especially, a fine, well-made
animal with curving wicked-looking horns, and not a speck of alien
colour on his glistening red hide, is inordinately given to leading the
rest astray, nor does he take kindly to correction, but puts his head
down and throws his horns about as if he had more than half a mind to
charge his drivers; but he is not quite used to that terrible cracking
whip, and thinks better of it.

"That brute'll make things lively for some of us to-day," remarked
Hicks, as his companion fell behind after "collecting" it for about the
twentieth time.

"Shouldn't wonder.  The interesting quadruped appears to be getting his
hand in.  That last time I had fully made up my mind for a roll, and
should have got it too.  `Sticks' is an awful fool at getting out of
anything's way."

"Well, we're in now," said Hicks.  "Hey, Xuvani!" he called out, darting
forward to head the animals into the kraal, "Look out over there!"

The Kafir gave a couple of bounds and threw up his arms.  He was just in
time; two seconds later and the whole troop would have streamed past him
and galloped away across the _veldt_, which meant that a large part of
the morning's work would have to be done over again.  The animals
stopped short, glared at the sudden obstacle, then looked wildly round
on one side and on the other, but they were hemmed in; the rear part of
the herd cannoned against the leaders, who at length made for the only
egress open, and amid much crush and plunging, interlacing of horns, and
starting eyeballs, the whole crowd poured through the wide gateway, the
pungent dust rising in clouds from the trampling hoofs.

"Whew! that's warm work!" said Claverton, as Xuvani made fast the huge
gate and drew a heavy beam across above the top of it for additional
security.  "Now for breakfast, I suppose.  Hallo, Jeffreys.
Good-morning."

"Mornin'," replied Will, shortly, as they turned towards the stable to
off-saddle their horses.

Mr Brathwaite was somewhat unwell that day, and not at all sorry to
have the assistance of Will Jeffreys in the morning's operations.  So
with many cautions to Hicks about this and that, more by way of showing
that he didn't let everything slide because of a little indisposition,
than for any misgivings as to his lieutenant's skill, he made up his
mind to remain quiet in his room.  Rheumatism is no respecter of
persons, the only wonder being that the old farmer, after such a life of
hardship and exposure, should be let down as easily as he was.

"Mr Claverton," said Ethel, as they were all seated round the
breakfast-table, "Laura and I are going to see the branding, so I hope
you'll show us some fun."

"Are you?  That determination I should advise you to reconsider."

"But we won't.  Aha, I know why you don't want us.  You have never done
that sort of thing before, and you don't want us to see you make a bad
shot and run round the kraal with a cow after you.  That's it, isn't it,
Mr Jeffreys?" turning to him.  She was in a bright, teasing mood, and
looked bewitchingly pretty.

Jeffreys chuckled to himself at Claverton's expense, as he thought, and
mumbled something about "it being dangerous for her."

"Dangerous!  Not a bit of it.  We shall stand outside and look over the
gate, and we shall be perfectly safe."

Hicks looked up from his plate with a low whistle.

"Perfectly safe!" he reiterated.  "Why, it was only last branding that
that big black and white ox of Jim's, after chevying Tambusa twice round
the kraal and knocking him down, jumped the gate, charged a big hencoop
that was pitched close by and threw it fifty feet in the air, and then
streaked off to the bush like a mad buffalo."

"What nonsense, Ethel!  Of course you can't go," said her aunt, who had
re-entered the room during this conversation.  "Why, the things often
break out of the kraal."

"Very well, aunt, I don't want to be a witness to poor Mr Claverton's
discomfiture;" and she cast at him a glance of petulance, mingled with
compassion, whose effect upon the object thereof was absolutely nil.

A business-like appearance was that of the scene of operations.  The
animals were standing quietly about the large enclosure seventy yards in
diameter, with its solid, bristling thorn-fence eight or nine feet high
and its massive five-barred gate.  In the centre burnt--or rather
smouldered, for it was of the red-hot glowing order--a great fire, over
which bent the bronzed form of Xuvani, the cattle-herd, superintending
the due heating of the branding-irons and gossiping in subdued gutturals
with the other "hands"--two Kafirs and a smart, wiry little Hottentot,
who, with the _penchant_ of his race for scriptural appellations,
rejoiced in the time-honoured and patriarchal one of Abram.  Xuvani was
a man of between fifty and sixty, of middle height, and of powerful,
almost herculean build; the muscles stood out upon his limbs like great
ropes, and a blow from his fist--that is, if he had known how to make
use of his fists, which Kafirs very seldom do know--would have sufficed
to fell an ox.  He was rather light in colour, and his beard and woolly
head were just shot with grey; there was shrewdness in his rugged
features, and a twinkle of satiric humour lurked in his eye.  He had
been a long time in the service of his present master, who had found him
a cut above the average Kafir in honesty and trustworthiness.  Moreover,
he was greatly looked up to by the other natives, not only on account of
his great physical strength, but also as one who had shown his prowess
in a marked manner during the wars which have been alluded to.  Although
far from quarrelsome by nature, Xuvani never needed a second challenge.
His kerries were all ready, as more than one party of Fingoes passing
Seringa Vale in search of employment could testify, to its sorrow.
Indeed, once he had expiated his share in one of these African
Donnybrooks by a sentence of several months in gaol.

"Well, Xuvani!" sang out Hicks, as they slipped off their jackets and
flung them on to the kraal fence--"Got the iron hot?  All right, let's
begin.  Now then, Piet--what the devil are you standing there for,
grinning like a Cheshire cat?  Lay hold of the _reim_ and catch that
heifer."

Piet, a stalwart Kafir, grinned all the harder, and drawing out the
running noose of the _reim_ he made a cast, then, as the heifer ran over
it, with a mighty jerk he drew it taut and the animal, noosed by the
hind leg, fell.  Before it could rise again they all threw themselves
upon it, and in a trice its legs were securely bound while two men
firmly held its head.  In a second Hicks had taken the branding-iron
from one of the Kafirs, and held it for half a minute lightly but firmly
pressed against the fleshy part of the thigh.  The poor brute groaned
and struggled violently as it felt the hot iron; there was a sharp,
hissing sound from the singeing hair, a foetid smoke arose, diffusing a
smell of burnt flesh, and the operation was complete.  Whatever danger
there is in the performance generally falls to the lot of him who
releases the victim, which not unfrequently, as soon as it feels its
logs again, fiercely charges its emancipator, all the others having
previously withdrawn themselves behind some of the other cattle standing
about the kraal.  The first animal, however, was not of an inherently
vicious nature.  Consequently, no sooner was it free than it ran off
among its kindred, greatly scared and bewildered.  All went merrily
enough till they had got a fine black and white cow under the iron.  She
lay still, but there was rage mingled with pain in her groaning.

"She'll be at some of us when she gets up," said Jeffreys, exerting all
his strength to restrain the frenzied plunges of her pointed horns.

They stood aside, as, with a rapid turn of the wrist, Xuvani deftly cast
loose her bonds.  She sprang to her feet in a twinkling, and, lowering
her head, furiously charged the old cattle-herd, who, there being no
room for dodging, was constrained to run, with his late victim after
him, head down, all ready to fling him a dozen feet in the air.  But the
consummate coolness and agility of the Kafir was to the fore.  He
zigzagged as he ran, to avoid a charge, then, seizing his opportunity,
he sprang aside, and placing one hand between the animal's shoulders he
vaulted lightly over her back as she sped past him and got in among the
rest.  A cheer broke from the spectators at this splendid feat, but
before it had time to die, a shout of "Look out, she's coming this way,"
sent them all scattering; and sure enough, singling out Jeffreys, she
made at him like a streak of lightning.  He just avoided her charge by
dodging round the rear of a great trek ox, who was standing quietly
wondering what the deuce all the hubbub was about.  The furious charge
of the maddened cow into his unoffending flanks may, or may not, have
enlightened him on the point; anyhow, he resented the familiarity by
lashing out with his heels, one of which coming in violent contact with
the chin of his assailant had the effect of somewhat modifying that
exuberant animal's spirits, and she slunk off in aggrieved fashion, all
thoughts of vengeance at an end.

"By Jove!" said Claverton.  "Xuvani's a smart fellow.  That's one of the
neatest things I ever saw done."

The old Kafir grinned a little, and they went on with the programme.
After two or three more beasts had been branded, Jeffreys remarked:

"Now then, you fellows, there are lively times in store.  It's that
bull's turn.  I've been watching him, and he looks wicked--devilish
wicked."  He pointed to the young bull which had been troublesome in the
morning.

"All right," said Claverton.  "That's my speciality.  I made up my mind
to have the burning of that chap when I turned him back twenty-one times
this morning."

"The branding's nothing; it's the letting him up that's the fishy part,"
said Jeffreys, with a thinly-veiled sneer.

Noose in hand the Kafirs advanced towards the bull, who was standing in
a corner of the kraal, pawing up the ground, with his head down, and
rolling his eyes viciously.

"Look out," warned Hicks, "he's all ready for a charge!"

Scarcely were the words out of his mouth than the animal sprang forward
as the noose was thrown down in front of him; then, as he rushed over
it, the thong was tightened, and he fell sprawling on all-fours and
roaring hideously.  He plunged and struggled as for dear life, but
another jerk of the _reim_ threw him, and in ten seconds he was lying
bound and helpless.

"Now then, Tambusa, bring the iron.  Sharp's the word!" cried Claverton;
then receiving it, he deliberately imprinted a neat B upon his prostrate
foe, whose frenzied roars drowned the hissing of burnt flesh, as the
moist steam rose in clouds from his tortured thigh.

"By Jove, there's a spree sticking out!" said Hicks, emphatically.  "We
_shall_ have to mind our eye when he gets up.  Are you ready, Xuvani?"

"No, he isn't.  _I'm_ going to loosen the _reim_," answered Claverton,
preparing to make good his words.

"Bosh, old chap!  Better let him do it, he's used to it," remonstrated
Hicks.

"Devil a bit.  Now!  Stand aside!" and as the others made themselves
scarce, he drew off the noose, and the bull, springing to his feet,
vented his feelings in an appalling roar as he glared round in search of
somebody to pulverise.  As luck would have it, at this moment a cow
behind which Tambusa had taken refuge quietly walked away, thus
disclosing that unfortunate aboriginal to the full view of the
infuriated beast, which came straight at him there and then.  Now
Tambusa was a youthful Kafir, and naturally of a mild and unaggressive
disposition, and when he saw the fierce brute making for him, he lost
nerve and blindly fled.  The kraal gate towered in front of him, and
with the energy of despair he half leaped, half scrambled over it, and
his foot catching the topmost bar he was hurled headlong, half-stunned
and wholly bewildered, a dozen yards off upon the smooth green sward
outside.  His pursuer, without pausing, cleared the gate like a stag,
and there he lay entirely at the mercy of the infuriated bull.  Another
minute, and he would be gored and torn in pieces.  But a cool brain and
determined heart was between him and certain death.  Seizing his jacket
from the hedge whereon it had been flung, Claverton was through the
kraal gate in a twinkling, and not one second too soon, for the bull,
who had been carried on some fifty yards by the impetus of his leap, had
now turned, and with head lowered was thundering down upon his prostrate
prey, "brilling" [Note 1] savagely.  At this juncture Claverton darted
in front of him, and throwing out his jacket, after the manner of the
_cappa_ of a _torero_, he succeeded in drawing off the headlong charge,
which temporary respite Xuvani was able to make the most of by lugging
his young compatriot through the gate again.  Then the bull stopped,
glared for a moment, and with a terrific roar came at Claverton again.
This time he nimbly leapt aside, striking the animal across the eyes
with the jacket.  Had the bull charged at that moment it would probably
have gone hard with him, for what with the violent exertion and the
tension of the nerves, he was somewhat exhausted; but it did not.  And
what a picture was that upon the smooth sward.  There stood the red
savage brute, the sun glistening on his sleek hide and white horns,
lashing his tail and pawing up the ground with his hoofs; the foam
dropping from his mouth as with head lowered he gathered himself for one
more terrific rush.  Facing him ten yards off--his intrepid adversary,
unarmed and exposed to his full fury.  The spectators might well hold
their breath.  And yet as he slowly retreated step by step, and though
he never took his eyes off the bull, Claverton was aware of every single
movement that went on around him.  He knew that the doorway leading into
the garden was thronged, mistress and servant alike being attracted by
the frenzied roars of the maddened beast.  He saw Ethel faint dead away,
and then summoning up nerve and strength for one final effort, he flung
the coat right upon the gleaming horns of the ferocious brute, as with a
new fury begotten of its short respite it made its deadly charge.
Suddenly blinded, the bull stopped and began turning round and round in
its efforts to free itself, for the jacket had caught firmly on its
horns; but taking advantage of his dexterous _coup de main_, Claverton
was over the gate again and safe, while his antagonist, having amused
himself by tearing the garment to ribbons, trotted away down the kloof,
growling in baffled wrath.

"Well, he can go, we've done with him this time, but Heaven help any
nigger that has the ill luck to cross that chap's path within the next
quarter of an hour," were Claverton's first words.  He was panting and
breathless, but wanted to create a diversion from the string of
congratulations which he knew was forthcoming; for, of all things, he
hated a scene, and didn't see what there was to make a fuss about
because a fellow had had a little spree with a bull, to divert his
attention from a young idiot of a nigger who had been ass enough to
tumble head-over-heels just at the wrong moment.  Whatever his faults,
there wasn't a grain of vanity in the man.

"Now then, Xuvani--Piet!" he went on sharply, as the Kafirs, with a
chorus of emphatic "whouws," were gazing after the retreating form of
the cause of all the shindy.  "What the devil are you fellows staring
at?  Come on--fall to--we've lost enough time already."

They resumed operations.  Now and then a beast, when it was let up,
would run at the Kafirs, but in a bewildered, half-hearted sort of a
way, and without doing any damage; and all the younger cattle were
disposed of.  There yet remained four or five large oxen who had come
into their present owner's possession late in life, and who were to be
sealed.  These were not thrown down, however, but their heads made fast
to a post by a _reim_ round their horns, while with another _reim_ the
leg to be operated on was drawn out at tension.  They were sober, sedate
creatures who had undergone plenty of the troubles of life, common to
their race, in the shape of heavy loads, scarcity of water and often of
grass in dry seasons, but, as if to make up for it, a plentiful
allowance of whip; and took this additional affliction philosophically
enough.

The result of the day's doings was to open Jeffreys' eyes.  His
estimation of the other had undergone a considerable change since the
previous evening.  The dressed-up, finicking carpet skipper was fully
his own equal in pluck, and in cool-headedness immeasurably his
superior.  This he could not but recognise, though he regarded Claverton
with no increase of cordiality.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes, life would flow pleasantly enough in this unruffled fashion,
thought Claverton, as they were all strolling in the garden towards
sundown.  After the stirring events of the day, the quiet and rest of a
perfect evening seemed more than ordinarily grateful.  All was so still,
and calm, and soothing, and such sound as reached them seemed so
softened and mellowed by distance as to harmonise rather than to
disturb.  A dove cooed softly from an adjacent thorn-brake, and bees
returning to the old basket hive set in a nook in the wall, made a
tuneful hum upon the sensuous air.  Yonder a dragon-fly zigzagged on
gauzy wing above the glassy surface of the dam, seeking its prey among
the gnats whose chrysalids were hatched beneath the overhanging weeds.
Suddenly this idyllic scene was invaded by a brace of Kafirs.  They were
Xuvani and Tambusa, and they began to accost Claverton.

"What on earth do they want?  Something to do with that eternal bull, I
suppose.  I wish the brute had found its way into some butcher's shop
long ago!  Here, Hicks I come and interpret, there's a good fellow!"

"He says Tambusa is his sister's child, and that you saved his life,"
interpreted Hicks; "that is to say you saved his--Xuvani's life, Kafir
way of putting it, you know--and not only did you save his life, or
rather both their lives," went on Hicks, manfully unravelling the
native's long-winded oration; "but you nearly lost your own."

"That all?"

"No--don't interrupt him.  He says that they are grateful--both he and
the boy.  That the future is uncertain, and that we never know what turn
events will take--"

"He never spoke a truer word than that, anyhow."

"And that if ever at any time he or Tambusa can render you any service
they will do so, even should it be at the risk of their lives--a life
for a life--and that they are glad to have looked upon such a howling
big swell," concluded Hicks, with the result that Ethel was obliged to
turn away to stifle her laughter.

"Bosh, Hicks!  He didn't say that, you know."

"He did, upon my word.  At least, to be more literal, he said he was
glad to have looked upon so great a chief.  But my rendering was more
euphonious--more poetical, don't you see?"

Then Tambusa knelt down and kissed his rescuer's foot, and the two
Kafirs withdrew.  Claverton looked after them with a curious expression.

"That's all too thickly laid on," he said.  "Gratitude, `lively sense of
favours to come,' _i.e._ prospective 'bacco.  H'm! much too thick!"

"What a dreadful person you are!" expostulated Ethel.  "Why shouldn't
they mean what they say?  I declare that speech of Xuvani's was a
perfect flower of savage poetry, and you don't know what a good fellow
he is.  I think it's quite horrid of you to throw cold water on him."

"So it would be if I had.  The noble savage don't affect that fluid much
as a rule in any state of temperature."

Did the Kafir mean what he said?  We shall see.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  Frontier term for the growling noise which is neither roar nor
bellow, made by enraged cattle.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER EIGHT.

SPOEK KRANTZ.

It is Sunday.

Ride we behind the horseman who is picking his way down a stony path
through the ever present bush, making for yon thatched building down
there in the hollow.  A low, rough shanty, built in the roughest and
readiest fashion, and of the rawest of red brick.  Three windows,
cobwebbed and cloudy with many a patched-up pane of blue or brown paper,
admit light and air, and a door made to open in halves.  A smaller
edifice hard by, with tumble-down mud walls and in a state of more or
less rooflessness, does duty as a stable, and in front of the two an
open space slopes down a distance of one hundred and fifty yards to the
river, whose limpid waters dash and sparkle over their stony bed,
between cactus-lined banks--the stubbornly encroaching and well-nigh
ineradicable prickly pear.  Opposite rises a great cliff, whose base and
sides are set in the greenest and most luxuriant of forest trees, but
whose brow, like its stern face, is bare of foliage and stands out in
hard relief against the sky.  There seems no reason why this cliff
should be there at all, seeing that the hill would have been far more
symmetrical without it, unless in its wild irregularity it were destined
for the purpose alone of giving a magnificent--if a trifle forbidding--
frontage to the ill-looking and commonplace dwelling-house.  On all
sides the towering heights rise to the sky, shutting in this beautiful
and romantic spot which might be a veritable Sleepy Hollow, so far does
it seem from the sights and the sounds of men.  But it must be confessed
that its beauty and romance are utterly thrown away upon its present
occupant, who is wont to describe the place as "a beastly stifling hole
out of which I'd be only too glad to clear to-morrow, by Jove; but then
one can't chuck up the lease, you know, and it isn't half a bad place
for stock, too."  It rejoices in the inviting name of Spoek Krantz
(Ghost Cliff), and is held in awe and terror as an unholy and
demon-peopled locality by the superstitions natives, as well as by the
scarcely less superstitious Boer; and gruesome tales are told of
unearthly sights and sounds among the rocky caves at its base; shadowy
shapes and strange fearful cries, and now and again mysterious fires are
seen burning upon its ledges in the dead of night, while the most
careful exploration the next morning has utterly failed to discover the
smallest trace of footprint or cinder.  Native tradition has stamped the
spot as one to be avoided, for the spirit of a mighty wizard claims it
as his resting-place.  Even by day the place, shut in by its frowning
heights, is lonely and forbidding of aspect.

But utterly impervious to supernatural terrors is he who now dwells in
the haunted locality.  The grim traditions of a savage race are to him
as mere old wives' fables, and he laughs to scorn all notion of any
awesome associations whatever.  He would just like to see a ghost, that
was all, any and every night you pleased; if he didn't make it lively
for the spectral visitant with a bullet, call him a nigger.  Yes, he
would admit seeing strange lights on the cliff at times, and hearing
strange sounds; but to ascribe them to supernatural agency struck him as
utter bosh.  The lights were caused by a moonlight reflection, or
will-o'-the-wisps, or something of that sort; and the row, why, it was
only some jackal yowling in the krantz, and as for getting in a funk
about it, that would do for the niggers or white-livered Dutchmen, but
not for him.  Tradition said that there was a secret cavern in the
cliff, but the entrance was known to very few even among the natives
themselves, and only to their most redoubted magicians.  Certain it is
that no Kafir admitted knowledge of this, and when questioned carefully
evaded the subject.

And now, as the horseman we have been following emerges from the bush on
to the open space surrounding the low-roofed, thatched shanty, a man is
seated in his shirt-sleeves on a stone in front of the door, intently
watching something upon the ground.  It is a large circular glass cover,
such as might be used for placing over cheese or fruit; but to a very
different use is it now being put.  For imprisoned within it are two
scorpions of differing species--a red one and a black one--hideous
monsters, measuring five inches from their great lobster-like claws to
the tip of their armed tails, and there they crouch, each upon one side
of its glass prison-house, both, evidently, in that dubious state aptly
known among schoolboys as "one's funky, and t'other's afraid."

"Hold on a bit," called out the man in the shirt sleeves, but without
turning his head, as the trampling of hoofs behind him warned of the
approach of a visitor, "or, at any rate, come up quietly."

"Why, what in the name of all that's blue have you got there?" demanded
Hicks, dismounting; for he it is whom we have accompanied to this
out-of-the-way spot.  "Well, I'm blest?" he continued, going off into a
roar of laughter as he approached near enough to see the other's
occupation.

"Tsh! tsh!  Don't make such an infernal row, man, you'll spoil all the
fun, and make me lose my bet."

"What's the bet?"

"Why, I've got five goats against that blue schimmel heifer of old
Jafta's on these two beggars, that the black one'll polish off the red
'un; but they are to go at it of their own accord, and now I've been
watching them for the last half-hour, but the beggars won't fight,"
replied the other, still without moving, or even so much as looking over
his shoulder.

"Stir them up a bit," suggested Hicks.

"Can't; it'd scratch the bet."

"Where's Jafta?"

"Oh, he wouldn't wait.  Went away laughing in his sleeve.  He'll laugh
the other side of his mouth, the old _schelm_, when he has to fork out."

"Well, you must have been hard up for some one to run a bet with.  A
nice little occupation, too, for a Sunday morning," replied Hicks, with
sham irony.

"Sunday be somethinged.  There's no Sunday on the frontier.  Hullo!"

This exclamation was the result of a change of attitude on the part of
the grisly denizens of the glass.  Slack began slowly to move round the
circumference of his prison, in process of which he cannoned against
red, and Greek met Greek.  With claws interlaced, the venomous brutes
plied their sting-armed tails like a couple of striving demons, till at
length their grip relaxed, and red fell over on his back with his legs
doubled up and rigid.

"Hooroosh!  I've won," called out our new acquaintance, jumping up
gleefully.  "Hi!  Jafta, Jafta!" he bawled, anxious to notify his
triumph over his sceptical retainer.

"Hold on; not so fast," put in Hicks, "t'other fellow's a gone coon,
too, or not far from it.  Look," he added, pointing to the glass.

And in good sooth the victor began to show signs of approaching
dissolution, which increased to such an extent, that in a couple of
minutes he lay as rigid and motionless as the vanquished.

"Never mind, it all counts.  He did polish off the other.  Jafta, we'll
put my mark on that cow to-morrow."

"Nay, Baas," demurred that ancient servitor, who had just come up.  He
was a wiry little old Hottentot, with a yellow skin, and beady monkey
eyes, and as ugly as the seven deadly sins.  "Nay, Baas, the bet's an
even one; neither thrashed the other.  Isn't it so, Baas Hicks?"

"Well, as you put it to me, I think the bet's a draw," began Hicks.

"Oh, no, that won't do," objected Jafta's master, "the black did polish
off the red, you know.  If he went off himself afterwards, it was owing
to his uneasy conscience.  That wasn't provided for in the agreement.
But never mind, Jafta, you can keep your old `stomp-stert' this time."
[Note 1.]

The old Hottentot grinned all over his parchment countenance, and the
numerous and grimy wrinkles thereof puckered themselves like the skin of
a withered apple.  He, and his two sons, strapping lads of eighteen and
nineteen, constituted the whole staff of farm servants.  No Kafir could
be induced to stay on the place, owing to its weird associations; a
circumstance which, according to its occupant, was not without its
compensating advantage, for the marauding savage, in his nocturnal
forays, at any rate kept his hands off these flocks and herds.  The old
fellow, however, was fairly faithful to his employer, though not
scrupulously honest in all his dealings with the rest of mankind at
large; the place suited him, and as for ghosts, well, he had never seen
anything to frighten him.

And now the jolly frontiersman, who has been driven to so eccentric a
form of Sabbath amusement, rises, and we see a man of middle height,
with a humorous and gleeful countenance; in his eyes there lurks a
mirthful twinkle, and every sun-tanned lineament bespeaks "a character."
And he is a character.  Always on the look-out for the whimsical side
of events, he is light-hearted to childishness, and has a disastrous
weakness for the perpetration of practical jokes--a vein of humour far
more entertaining to its possessor than to its victims--and game to bet
upon any and every contingency.  He is about thirty, and his name is
Jack Armitage.

"Well, Hicks, old man," said this worthy.  "Taken pity on my lonely
estate, eh?  That's right; we'll make a day of it.  Had breakfast?"

"No."

"More have I; we'll have it now.  Er--Jafta!" he shouted, "Jafta!  Wheel
up those chops.  Sharp's the word."

"Ya, Baas.  Just now?" called out that menial, and from the kitchen
sounds of hissing and sputtering betokened the preparation of a
succulent fry.

"Just now!  Only listen.  Why, he'll be twenty minutes at least."

"Not he," said Hicks; "he's nearly ready, I can smell that much."

"Nearly ready!  Give you a dollar to five bob he's twenty minutes from
now.  Is that on?" he inquired, putting out his watch to take the time.
[Rix dollar, 1 shilling 6 pence.]

"No, it isn't.  I'm not going to encourage your disgraceful and sporting
proclivities," was the reply, as they entered the house.  Three
partitions boasted this domicile--a bedroom, a sitting-room, and the
kitchen aforesaid.  Of ceiling it was wholly guiltless, the sole canopy
overhead being plain, unadulterated thatch; and the mud floor, plastered
over with cow-dung, after the manner of the rougher frontier houses,
gave forth a musty, uninviting odour, which it required all the ingress
of the free air of Heaven to atone for.  A large, roomy wooden press,
and a row of shelves, with a green baize curtain in front, stood against
the whitewashed wall, and in the middle of the room a coarse cloth was
laid upon the wooden table, with a couple of plates and knives and
forks.  Armitage dived into the press and produced a great brown loaf, a
tin of milk, and a mighty jar of quince jam.

"Hallo! the ants are in possession again," said he, surveying the jar,
whence issued an irregular crowd of those industrious insects--too
industrious sometimes.  "Never mind, we can dodge them; besides, they
are fattening.  Ah, that's right, Jafta,"--as that worthy entered with a
dish of fizzing chops in one hand and a pot of strong black coffee in
the other.  "Now we can fall to."

"By the way, I shall have to go back soon," said Hicks.  "I only came to
see if any of those sheep we lost had got in amongst Van Rooyen's, and
thought I'd sponge on you for a feed whilst I was down this way."

"Oh, that can't be allowed; I thought you had come to help a fellow kill
Sunday.  Hang it, man, don't be in a hurry; stop and have some rifle
practice, and then we can take out that bees' nest down by the river.
Ah, but I forgot," he added, with a quizzical wink.  "Never mind, my
boy; I don't want to spoil fun, you'll be better employed at home."

Hicks was sorely puzzled.  He was a good-natured fellow, and could see
that the other had reckoned upon his company for the day.  Yet he had
his reasons for wanting to get back.  "Look here, Jack," he said, at
length, "I'll tell you what we'll do.  I'll hold on here a little and
help you to get out that bees' nest, then you can go back with me and
we'll get to Seringa Vale just nicely in time for dinner.  Will that
do?"

"All right," assented the other, "that'll do me well enough.  I've had
nothing but my own blessed company for the last fortnight, except for a
Dutchman or two now and again, and a little jaw with my fellow creatures
will do me a world of good.  By the way, is that chap Claverton still
with you?"

"Yes.  How d'you like him?"

"Oh, he seems good enough sort, but about the most casual bird I ever
saw.  He was down here one day; did he tell you about it?  No!  Well,
then, a couple of Dutchmen came in--Swaart Pexter and his brother
Marthinus--and Swaart, who is one of your bragging devils and `down on'
a `raw Englishman' like a ton of bricks, after yarning a little while
points to Claverton, who was sitting over there blowing a cloud in his
calm way, and says rather cheekily: `Who's that?'  I told him.  `Can he
talk Dutch?' was the next question.  `Don't know,' says I.  `How long
has he been in this country?' says he.  `Tell him a year,' says
Claverton, quietly, without moving a muscle.  I told him.  `A year!'
says Pexter, turning up his nose more cheekily than before.  `A year and
can't talk Dutch yet!  He must be _domm_,' [stupid].  Thereupon
Claverton looks the fellow bang in the eyes, and says in Dutch, `Can you
talk English?'  `No!' replies Pexter, with a stare of astonishment.
`And how long have _you_ been here?'  `Been here!' says the other, with
a contemptuous laugh at this--to him--new proof of the other fellow's
greenness.  `Why, I was born here.'  `How old are you?' goes on
Claverton in a tone of friendly interest.  `Forty-seven last May,' says
the Dutchman, wondering what the deuce is coming next.  `Forty-seven
last May!' repeats our friend, calmly knocking the ash out of his pipe.
`That is, you have been in this country forty-seven years, and can't
talk English yet.  Well, you must be _domm_!'  I roared and so did
Marthinus.  `Got you there, old chap,' says I.  Swaart Pexter looked
rather shirty and tried to laugh it off, but Claverton had him.  Had
him, sir, fairly--lock, stock, and barrel.  Well, after a while we went
outside and stuck up a bottle at four hundred yards to have some rifle
practice.  The Dutchmen are first-rate shots, and I--well, a buck or a
nigger would be anything but safe in front of me at that distance--but I
give you my word that none of us could touch that bottle.  When we had
fired a dozen shots apiece and nearly covered the beastly thing with
dust, and ploughed up the ground all round it as if a thunderbolt had
fallen, out saunters Claverton with a yellow-backed novel in his fist.
`Doesn't your friend shoot?' asks Marthinus.  `Suppose so,' says I.
`Have a shot, Claverton!'  `Don't mind,' says he, taking over my gun.  I
could see a malicious grin on Swaart's ugly mug, and hugely was he
preparing to chuckle over the `raw Englishman's' wide shooting.
Claverton lay down, and without much aiming--bang--crash--we could
hardly believe our eyes--the bottle had flown.  By Jove it had.  `Well
done,' says I, `but do that again, old chap'; yes, it was mean of me, I
allow, but I couldn't help it.  `Don't want to do for all your bottles,
Armitage,' says my joker as quietly as you please, as I sent the boy to
stick up another, and I had just time to start a bet of five bob with
Marthinus in his favour when--bang--and, by Jove, sir, would you believe
it? that bottle shared the fate of the first.  Well, we _were_
astonished.  `Aren't you going to shoot any more?' says Marthinus,
handing over the five bob with a very bad grace.  `Too hot out here,'
replies he, sloping into the shade of the house; and diving his nose
into the yellow-back again, leaves us to our bottle-breaking or rather
to our attempts at the same, for I'm dashed if we touched one after
that.  After the Pexters had gone I says, `Look here, old chap, we'll
have a quiet match between ourselves, five bob on every dozen shots--you
shall give me odds.'  `My dear fellow,' says he, `odds should be the
other way about.  I shan't touch that bottle again three times if I
blaze away at it the whole morning.'  `The Lord, you won't,' says I;
`never mind, let's try.'  He did, and was as good as his word, and
handed over fifteen bob at the close of the entertainment, having hit
the mark twice to my seven times.  `And how the deuce did you pink it
before--twice running can't be a fluke, you know?'  I asked, when we had
done.  `Well, you see, those louts were bent on seeing me shoot wide, so
I held straight just to spite them,' was his cool answer.  But didn't he
tell you all about it?"

"Not a word," said Hicks.  "He just said he had been down here, and a
couple of slouching Dutchmen had looked in and tried to take a rise out
of him, but didn't manage it."

"Well, he is a rum stick and no mistake.  What's in the wind now?" and
as the trampling of hoofs fell upon the speaker's ear, he got up hastily
and made for the door, knocking over a wooden chair in his progress, and
treading on the tail of a mongrel puppy which had sneaked in and was
lying under the table, and which now fled, yelling disconsolately.
"Here come two chaps," he went on, shading his eyes from the sun's glare
and looking out into the _veldt_.  "Dutchmen--no--one is--David Botha, I
think; t'other's Allen--no mistaking him.  Wheu-uw!  Now for some fun,
Hicks, my boy.  We'll make him help us with the bees' nest, and if you
don't kill yourself with almighty blue fits, call me a nigger."

The two drew near.  The Boer with his stolid, wooden face, slouch hat
(round which was twined a faded blue veil), and bob-tailed and ancient
tail-coat, was an ordinary specimen of his class and nation.  The
Englishman, however, was not.  He was rather a queer-looking fellow,
tall and loosely-built, with a great mop of yellow hair and an absent
expression of countenance.  His age might have been five or
six-and-twenty.  He had not been long in the colony, and was
theoretically supposed to be farming.  On horseback Allen was quaint of
aspect.  His seat in the saddle would not have been a good advertisement
to his riding-master, putting it mildly, and he invariably rode screws.
Moreover, he was great on jack-boots and huge spurs.

"Good day, David," said Armitage, as the Boer extended a damp and
uncleanly paw.  "Hallo, Allen! you're just in the nick of time.  We are
just going to get out a bees' nest, and you must come and bear a hand."

"But--er--I'm not much use at that sort of thing.  Botha will help you
much better."

"Won't do, old chap--won't do," said Armitage, decisively.  "In the
words of the poet, `Not to-day, baker!'  So come along."

Allen's jaw fell.  If there was one thing on this earth he hated, it was
depriving the little busy bee of the hard-earned fruits of his labours,
not on humanitarian grounds--oh, no--but the despoiled insects had a
knack of buzzing viciously around the noses and ears of the depredators
and their accomplices in a way that was highly trying to weak nerves, to
say nothing of the absolute certainty of two or three stings, if not
half-a-dozen.  He glanced instinctively towards David Botha as though
mutely to ask: "Why the deuce won't _he_ do?"  But that stolid Boer sat
puffing away at his pipe, and showed no inclination to come to the
rescue.

"Hicks, give Allen one of those big tins to put the honey in while I
hunt up some brown paper to make a smoke with," said Armitage, as they
went into the house.  It had been arranged that Allen should hold the
receptacle for the honey, otherwise he would inevitably have sloped off.

They went down to the river bank, Armitage leading the way.  A keg fixed
in the fork of a small tree constituted the hive, and the busy insects
were winging in and out with a murmuring hum.  Armitage divested himself
of his coat so that the bees shouldn't get up the sleeves, as he said,
and slouched his hat well over his face and neck; then with a chisel he
removed the head of the keg, while Hicks ignited the brown paper and
made the very deuce of a smoke.

"Not much in it--quite the wrong time of year to take it," said
Armitage, as the waxen combs in the hive were disclosed to view.  "Never
mind, they'll make a lot more.  Oh-h!" as one of the outraged insects
playfully stung him on the ear.  "Come a little nearer, Allen;" and he
threw a couple of combs into the tin dish, while Hicks stood close at
hand plying the smoke with all the energy of a Ritualistic thurifer.

"Oh-h--ah!" echoed Allen, in dismal staccato, as he received a sting on
the hand, and another on the back of the neck.

"Hang it, man, don't drop the concern!" exclaimed Armitage, pitching
another comb or two into the large tin; nor was the warning altogether
ill-timed, for poor Allen was undergoing a _mauvais quart d'heure_ with
a vengeance, ducking his head spasmodically as the angry insects
"bizzed" savagely around his ears, and all the time looking intensely
wretched under the infliction.

And in truth the fun began to wax warm.  Armitage's hat was invisible
beneath the clusters of bees which swarmed over it, while others were
crawling about on his clothes.  Now and then he would give vent to an
ejaculation, as a sting, inflicted more viciously than usual, told
through even his hardened skin; but he kept on manfully at his task,
cutting out the combs and depositing them in the tin, while the air was
filled with buzzing angry bees and suffocating smoke.

"Think we've got enough now," he said at last, drawing his face out of
the cask, and quickly heading up the latter.  Allen, to whom this dictum
was like a reprieve to a condemned criminal, gave a sigh of relief, and
began to breathe freely again.  But his self-gratulation was somewhat
premature, for at that moment a bee insinuated itself into his thick,
frizzly-hair just above the neck, and began stinging like mad.  Crash!
Down went the tin containing the honey-combs, while the victim danced
and capered and executed the most grotesque contortions for a moment;
then, in a perfect frenzy, away he rushed to the nearest point of the
river--a long, deep reach--where he plunged his head into the water, and
losing his centre of gravity, ended by incontinently tumbling in, while
the spectators were obliged to lie down and indulge their paroxysms of
uncontrollable mirth to the very uttermost.

"Oh, oh, oh-h-h!" roared Armitage.  "P-pick him out, some one; I'm n-not
equal to it."  And he lay back on the sward and howled again.

And in good sooth the warning came none too soon, for at that point the
current flowed swift and deep, and poor Allen, what with his exertions
and the weight of his jack-boots, was in a state of dire exhaustion, and
a few moments more would have put an end to his hopes and fears.  Hicks
and the Dutchman, who had managed to recover themselves, ran down to the
water's edge, and shouted to him to seize a branch which swept the
surface, and at length the involuntary swimmer was fished out and stood
dripping and shivering, and looking inexpressibly foolish, on the bank.

"Oh-h, Lord! oh, Lord!" roared Armitage, bursting out afresh as he
picked up the fallen tin, and gathered up the fragments that remained.
"I never saw anything to beat that, by the holy poker I never did!  Come
along, old man.  We'll tog you out while I get out some of these stings.
The brutes must have been under the impression that I was a jolly
pincushion, and have used me accordingly."

"Dud--dud--don't think I'll go up to Seringa Vale to-day," stuttered
Allen, as soon as he recovered breath.  He feared the chaff which he
knew full well awaited him on the strength of this latest escapade.

"Nonsense, man!  We'll tog you out in no time, and then we'll all ride
over together and have a jolly day of it," said Armitage.

Allen yielded, and was speedily arrayed in various garments which didn't
fit him.  The jack-boots were inevitably left behind, to the great
concern of their owner, for there was no possibility of their being dry
before sundown at the earliest.  Towards noon the horses were brought
round and saddled, and having locked up the house the three started,
while the Dutchman took his leave and rode off home to regale his
_vrouw_ and _hinders_, and his cousins and his aunts, with the story--
highly coloured--of the "raw Englishman's" discomfiture.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1.  "Stump tail."  Taillessness is frequent among colonial cattle--
the result of inoculation.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER NINE.

IN WHICH THE READER BECOMES A PARTY TO MORE CHAFF.

They rode merrily along, or rather two of them did, for ever and anon
Allen's steed would drop behind, and its sorry pace wax slower and
slower, till at length, taking advantage of its rider's abstraction, it
would stop and snatch up a tuft of grass here and there by the way-side.

"What the deuce has become of that fellow again?" exclaimed Armitage for
the fifth time since their start, as he rose in his stirrups and turned
to look back.  "Hi--Allen.  Come on, man, we shan't get there to-night!"
he bawled.

"All right," echoed feebly from afar; and the white top of a pith
helmet, which had escaped its owner's immersion, hove in sight over the
scrub like a peripatetic mushroom, as the laggard came trotting up.

"Come on!  We thought you had got another bee in your bonnet," was
Armitage's salutation.  "Hi--Bles you _schelm_--hold up!"  This to his
horse, which started violently as something sprang up at its very feet;
something lithe and red, with curious pointed ears, which darted away
over the ground with lightning speed.  "A _rooi-cat_ [lynx], by Moses!"
he went on, "after some of the late lambs.  Hicks, _where is_ that old
shooting-iron of yours?" and thinking that though powerless to hurt the
objectionable feline, at any rate he could frighten it, Armitage opened
his mouth and gave vent to a true Kafir war yell, which certainly had
the desired effect.

"Didn't bring it.  Sunday, you know; must respect people's prejudices,"
replies Hicks.

"Oh, Lord! and I would have liked to have peppered that chap's hide,"
groaned Armitage.

They rode on over hill and dale.  Suddenly the rasping cry of the wild
guinea-fowl brought Hicks' heart into his mouth, and he certainly did
not bless the good old-world prejudice in deference to which he had left
his beloved gun at home on the first day of the week, and as a cloud of
those splendid game birds rose from a grassy bottom within a few yards
of them and winged away with their chattering note, poor Hicks fairly
groaned.

"Look at that.  Only look at that!" he exclaimed in tones of wrathful
disgust.  "Such a chance; did you ever see them rise like that!  When a
fellow has his gun and is all ready for them, blest if they won't run
hundreds of yards before they'll get up, whereas--"

"I suppose they know it's Sunday," put in Allen, with a feeble attempt
at chaff.

The other turned from him impatiently, without replying.  Good-natured
as he was habitually, there were moments when even Hicks felt
justifiably cantankerous.  This was one of them.

They continued their way without event, and, cresting the last ridge,
descended into the long valley, at whose head stood the old farmhouse.

"Hallo! some one's turned up," said Armitage, indicating the white tent
of a Cape cart, which stood outspanned before the stable-door, with the
harness lying beside the swingle bars.

"Looks like Naylor's trap," said Hicks.

"Good.  The more the merrier," rejoined Armitage, as they cantered up
and dismounted.

An air of perfect rest and peace seemed to enshroud the place, as though
nature would supply the absence of all outward signs of the Sabbath.
The gates of the empty kraals stood open, and save for a sickly sheep or
two feeding about near the homestead, there was not a sign of animal
life.  Here and there a long rakish-looking hornet flitted beneath the
leaves of a trellised vine, or sought the entrance of his pendulous
paper-like nest in the verandah.  In the garden a few butterflies
disported, vying with the flowers in their bright colours; and big
bumble-bees boomed in the burning glow of the noonday sun.  There was
that about the sultry stillness which warned of thunder in the air, a
presage not unlikely to be borne out towards evening, judging from the
great solid bank of clouds which loomed up blackly from behind the
distant mountains.

Hicks was right as to the identity of the visitors, whose conveyance
they had descried.  Edward Naylor, Mr Brathwaite's son-in-law, a jolly
bluff frontiersman, whose weather-tanned face heavily bearded, was the
soul of geniality, was seated on the disselboom of a waggon, discoursing
on the state of the country with his host.  His wife, a pretty,
fair-haired woman of about thirty, was sitting with Ethel and Laura in
the verandah, and was at that moment arbitrating, amid much laughter, in
an argument which the former had started with Claverton, by way of
passing the time.

"Hallo, Armitage," said that worthy, as the new arrivals drew nigh.  "I
was expecting to be summoned to your funeral."

"My funeral!  What the dev--er--what d'you mean?"

"Well, you see, it's such a time since I beheld the light of your
countenance that I began to think you must be dead."

"Wheuw!  That's what I call a cheerful greeting," replied Armitage,
shaking hands with the rest of the party.

The two who had been talking shop now appeared on the scene.

"How do, Armitage?  Hallo, Allen, who's your outrigger?" said Naylor,
eyeing the unwonted garb of that luckless youth, which garb bore
unmistakable appearance of makeshift from head to foot.

"Er--I stumbled into the river, and--"

"What; boots and all?"  There was a joke about Allen's jack-boots, which
he was seldom seen without.

"`What is good for a bootless bene?'" quoted Claverton.  "Never mind,
Allen, don't you let them chaff you."

Naylor was an inveterate joker.  When he and Armitage got together the
same room would hardly hold them, and when the two got Allen between
them, then, Heaven help Allen.  Now this is precisely what happened, for
at that moment the dinner-bell rang, and all adjourned to the festive
board, when, as luck would have it, the unfortunate youth found
himself--partly owing to that curious practice which is, or was, so
often found in frontier houses, of all the men hanging together on one
side of the table, leaving the other to the fair sex--in the
neighbourhood of his tormentors; but he was a good-natured fellow, and
took chaff very equably.

"I say," began Armitage, "here's a riddle--a regular Sunday one."

"Is there?  Roll it up this way," said Claverton, from the other end of
the table, where he was seated between Mrs Naylor and Ethel, for he
resolutely defied the dividing custom above mentioned.

"Here you are, then.  Why is Allen like Moses?" asked Armitage.

"Oh, villainous!" laughed Claverton.  "Don't anybody attempt it.  I
really think you might trot out something a little more original,
Armitage."

Of course, every one then and there tried hard to solve the conundrum,
and, of course, half of them gave it up, and, of course, the reply came
even as was to be expected: "Because he was drawn out of the water."

"Oh-h!" groaned the whole party; while the object of the aqueous jest
sat and grinned placidly, and made play with his knife and fork as
though he were the perpetrator of it instead of its butt.

"I say, Allen," put in Naylor, on the other side, "has that shooting
match between you and Hicks come off yet?"

"What are the conditions?" asked Armitage.

"Dollar a side--Target, the shearing-house door--Distance, five yards--
Hicks to be allowed four yards on account of his want of practice.  I'll
bet on Hicks;" and the speaker roared at his own sorry wit.

"Eh! what's that about me?" called out Hicks from the other end of the
table, which was longer than usual, by reason of the advent of the
Naylors with their five olive-branches.  He had just caught his name.

"Nothing, old man, nothing; we were only talking of those three
guinea-fowl you shot this morning, coming up," replied Armitage,
grinning mischievously.

"But bother it, I had no gun," said Hicks, thrown off his guard for the
moment by this bare-faced accusation of Sabbath-breaking, and fairly
losing his head as he caught a reproachful glance from Laura, which
seemed to say: "Didn't you promise me you'd leave your gun at home when
you went out this morning?"  For he had confidentially imparted to her
his intention to take the trusty shooting-iron, as he was starting so
early that there would be no one about to be scandalised; and Laura, who
had her own ideas of right and wrong, had peremptorily forbidden his
doing anything of the kind.

"I say!" exclaimed Armitage, with admirably-feigned amazement.  He had
taken in the other's look of confusion, and, incorrigible joker as he
was, resolved to turn it to his own mischief-loving account.

"But, confound it!" began Hicks, wrathfully; for that mute upbraiding
glance made him really savage with his tormentor, who he thought was
carrying the joke too far.  Chaff was all very well, but this kind of
thing went beyond chaff, and he would give him a piece of his mind
by-and-by.

"Er--n-no--of course--you hadn't a gun--I forgot--er--I--was thinking of
yesterday," rejoined Armitage, with the well-simulated air of a man who
has "put his foot in it," and is endeavouring to withdraw that unlucky
member--and endeavouring deucedly badly, too.

"I say, Jack, what about the scorpion fight, eh?" and Hicks proceeded to
narrate how he had found that unscrupulous joker in the thick of the
useful and intellectual little amusement at which we saw him in the last
chapter, thus drawing upon him the laughter and sallies of the
assemblage, under cover of which he said quietly to Laura: "I didn't
really take the gun this morning, 'pon my word of honour I didn't; it's
only that fellow's lies.  He might draw the line somewhere; chaff's all
very well, you know, but hang it, that's beyond a joke."

"Yes, I think it's really too bad of him.  I oughtn't to have thought
you did what you told me you wouldn't do," she replied, with an almost
imperceptible stress on "me," and a glance which Hicks thought fully
compensated for the former doubt.  Leave we them beneath the friendly
shelter of the noise at the other end of the table, and turn to the
rest.

"Don't care, I won my bet," Armitage was saying.

"What!  And so you were betting on it, too--and on Sunday!  I think it's
disgraceful of you," said Ethel.

"He's come up here to be reformed," put in Allen.

"Oh, you needn't talk," said Armitage, turning off the attack on to the
last speaker.  "Miss Brathwaite, what do you think of a fellow who comes
down to my place on a Sunday, and bothers me to take out a bees' nest;
on a Sunday, too!"

There was a great laugh at this.  The notion of Allen bothering any one
to take out a bees' nest, Sunday or any other day, struck them all as
ineffably rich.  He would rather travel twenty miles than embark
knowingly in that lively enterprise.  And then the joke about the
stings, and the plunge into the river came out, and poor Allen was
roasted unmercifully on the strength of it, and the fun grew apace, when
a vivid flash darting in upon them, and playing upon the knives and
glasses with a blue steely gleam, brought the conversation up with a
round turn.

"We shall have a storm," said Mr Brathwaite, glancing at the window.
The deep azure of the heavens had become dark and overcast, and even as
he spoke there pealed forth a long, angry roll of thunder.

A general move from the table now took place, and every one adjourned to
the verandah, which looked out on the wide sweep of country constituting
the great charm of the situation of the house.  But now the joyous
sunlight had disappeared, and the earth slept in a dread and boding
stillness.  Tall pillars of cloud, black as night, moved steadily on,
their jagged edges taking the forms and faces of hideous and
open-mouthed monsters.  All nature seemed waiting for the battle of the
forces of the air, the discharge of the pent-up cloud artillery which
was to strike the awed surface of earth with its blasting fire.  Then,
athwart the hot, listening deadness of the atmosphere comes a dazzling
flash, bathing the valley in a sea of flame; and a roll of thunder,
long, loud, and close at hand, makes the expectant group, which is
standing on the verandah to watch the storm, involuntarily start, and
the silence is more intense than before.  And now a great chain of fire
shoots from the blackness immediately overhead, and before you could
count one, an appalling crash shakes the solid old house to its very
foundations, while the windows rattle like castanets.

"Let's go inside," suggested Ethel; "I don't like this."

"It's getting wicked," said Armitage.  "It was just such a shot as this
that killed old Simmonds.  That was up in Kaffraria, where the storms
are about as bad as anywhere.  He and I were standing in the doorway
watching the fun; I went in to light my pipe, and while I was fumbling
about for the matches something knocked me clean over, and I heard a
bang and a crash enough to wake the dead.  At first I thought I had
upset the crockery shelf on top of me; but no, there it stood; then my
head felt queer, and there was a smell of burning about the place.  Then
I remembered, and got up and went to the door.  There lay poor Simmonds,
half in and half out, as dead as a log.  The lightning had caught him
bang on the head, burnt his coat and waistcoat to rags, and mauled him
about horribly.  I can tell you it wasn't a nice thing for a fellow to
see, having just narrowly escaped the same luck himself--Ah!"

Again a sheet of flame darts down, and a roar and a crash as of the
discharge of a dozen eighty-one-ton guns follows upon it.  This time
they beat a retreat indoors; and when they had a little recovered from
the momentary shock, Armitage goes on.

"Well, as I was saying, poor Simmonds was so knocked about, that his
early sepulture became a matter of necessity; besides, the first thing
to do was to get him into the house.  He was enormously heavy, and I
couldn't get a Kafir on the place to give me a hand.  Not for the cattle
upon a thousand hills will they so much as touch anything that has been
killed by lightning with the end of their little fingers, and the
nearest neighbour was twenty miles off.  However, I managed to lug the
poor fellow in, and the next day we buried him."

"That's a cheerful old yarn of yours, Jack, and well calculated to
reassure Miss Brathwaite," struck in Claverton.

"I believe he's only trying to frighten us," said Ethel.

"'Pon my word of honour, every word of what I told you's true,"
protested Armitage; and with that love for the horrific implanted in the
human breast, one story led to another, and the storm raved and flashed
without, and a few preliminary hailstones rattled at intervals upon the
roof.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER TEN.

CAVEANT!

"Well, you'll have a fine day for your ride.  Hicks, leave a buck or two
up at Jim's in case I should be coming over.  I suppose you'll all be
back the day after to-morrow.  Good-bye."

The speaker was Mr Brathwaite; the spoken to, an equestrian group of
four, consisting of Claverton, Hicks, and the two girls, who were
starting on a long-promised visit to Jim Brathwaite's place, where a
bushbuck hunt was to be organised on the following day.  It was the
morning after the narrow escape of the luckless Allen from a watery
demise--he and Armitage had returned home to fetch their guns, and were
to rejoin the others at the farm of a certain Dutchman who abode
half-way.  The Naylors had gone on ahead in their trap, and the four
equestrians were the last to start.  And such a morning!  The rain had
cleared away, and the great deep vault overhead was unflecked by a
single feathery cloud.  The sun shot his golden darts from his amber
wheel, and the outlines of the mountains slept in soft-toned relief
beneath the liquid blue.  A perfect day, with exhilaration in every
breath of the fresh, healthy atmosphere, now cooled by the thunderstorm
and rain of the previous evening.  And the glorious freshness and
radiant sunlight communicated itself to the spirits of the riders, as
they cantered gaily along, chatting and laughing in thorough enjoyment
of the unclouded present.

"Now, Mr Claverton," cried Ethel, as their horses bounded along over a
smooth level stretch, "we'll have our race--I'm to have a hundred yards
start, you know.  Shall we begin?"

"On no account.  I received strict injunctions from your aunt not to let
you do anything rash, and I intend exerting my authority to the
uttermost."

"Do you?  Well now, why don't you say you're afraid of being beaten?
You are, you know.  I'll tell you what.  _You_ shall have the hundred
yards start.  We shall easily walk in before that lazy old `Sticks,'
shan't we, Springbok, my beauty?" she said, banteringly, patting the
neck of her steed, a light, elastic-stepping animal with blood and
mettle in him, who arched his neck and shook his mane in response to the
caress.  She sat him to perfection, the little hand bearing ever so
lightly on the reins; and in a habit fitting her like a glove, and a
coquettish straw hat surrounded by a sweeping ostrich plume, beneath
which the blue eyes danced and sparkled in sheer light-heartedness, she
made as pretty a picture as ever one could wish to look upon.  At any
rate, so thought her companion.

"Well, Sticks is lazy--at times--I grant you; but there's method in his
laziness.  Don't abuse Sticks."

"Never mind, I know you're afraid.  Don't think any more about it.  Now
I suppose you're dying to.  You men always want to do a thing directly
you're told not to."

What will be the upshot, by-the-bye, of this standing arrangement of
quartette?  This is not the first ride by any means that those four have
taken together.  Together!  It has been shown that one of the party, at
any rate, had reached the "two's company, three's a crowd" stage--or for
the present purpose four.  Thus it followed that however often the group
may have started together, it was bound to split up before going very
far.  Frequently Hicks would manage to drop behind with one, and that
one was not Ethel.  Frequently, also, Ethel would, manoeuvre to rush
ahead in a swinging gallop, in which case she could not be suffered to
ride alone, but whoever undertook to superintend her on these occasions,
certainly it was not Hicks.  Whether she was wont to execute these
manoeuvres at Laura's previous instigation, or whether her motives were
less disinterested, deponent sayeth not.  As for Claverton, he accepted
the situation with, characteristic indifference.  Yet what could be more
fraught with elements of possible combustion?  As for the man, he was
perfectly unsusceptible, and wholly devoid of vanity.  He looked upon
his beautiful companion as a spoilt, pretty child, fond of teasing and
chaff, and who amused him, and if he thought anything about himself in
the matter, he supposed that he managed to amuse her.  This is how he
looked at it--but how did Ethel herself?

"Hallo!  There goes a buck!" cried Claverton, suddenly.  "May as well
have a shot," and he made a movement to dismount.

"No, don't--please don't!  Springbok won't stand fire, you know, and
he'll bolt with me."

"Oh, all right.  Then that lazy old Sticks has his good points after
all?"

"Yes; a steady old arm-chair has its good points too.  You can shoot
from it," she replied, scornfully.

"What a wooden comparison!  Why not say a clothes-horse?"

Bang!  The report of a gun behind them.  "Hicks to the fore," remarked
Claverton, shading his eyes to watch the effect of the shot.  But the
buck held on its way, caring not a straw for the bullet which buried
itself in the earth with a vicious thud some ten or a dozen yards
behind.

In this way they rode on in the pleasant sunshine, and eventually drew
rein in front of a prettily situated though roughly built house of red
brick, with thatched roof and high _stoep_.  This was the abode of a
Dutchman, Isaac Van Rooyen by name, and here they had arranged to stay
and have dinner, for on the frontier a standing hospitality is the rule,
and in travelling every one makes a convenience of his neighbour and is
made a convenience of in turn.  The Boer, a large corpulent man of about
sixty, advanced to welcome them as the clamorous tongues of a yelping
and mongrel pack gave warning of their approach, and consigning their
horses to a dilapidated-looking Hottentot, they entered the house.  A
long, low room furnished with the characteristic plainness of such an
abode; a substantial table, several chairs, on some of which none but a
lunatic or an inebriate would venture to trust his proportions for a
single instant.  In one corner stood an ancient and battered harmonium,
another contained a sewing-machine and a huge family Bible in ponderous
Dutch lettering, while the walls were garnished with sundry grievous
prints, high in colour and grisly in design, representing Moses
destroying the Tables of the Law, Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and
so on.  The _vrouw_ arose from her coffee-brewing as they entered--the
absorption of coffee is a _sine qua non_ in a Boer domicile on the
arrival of visitors--and greeted them with stolid and wooden greeting,
and a brace of great shy and ungainly damsels--exact reproductions of
their mother at twenty and twenty-one--looked scared as they limply
shook hands with the new-comers.  But others were there besides the
regular inmates, for the Naylors had arrived, as also Armitage and
Allen, and our friend Will Jeffreys, and these were keeping up a
laborious conversation with the worthy Boer and his ponderous _vrouw_,
whose daughters, aforesaid, eat together in speechless inanity, now and
again venturing a "Ja" or a "Nay" if addressed, and straightway
relapsing into a spasmodic giggle beneath their _kapjes_.

"Doesn't Miss Brathwaite play?" inquired the Boer, with a glance at
Ethel and then at the harmonium.

"`England expects.'  Go now and elicit wheezy strains from yon venerable
and timeworn fire-engine," said Claverton, in a low tone.

She drew off her gloves in a resigned manner, and was about to sit down
at the despised instrument, when some one putting a book on the
music-stool in order to heighten the seat, that fabric underwent a total
collapse and came to the ground with a crash.  Another seat was found,
and she began to play--but oh! what an instrument of torture it was--
more to the performer than to the audience.  Every other note stuck
fast, keeping up an earsplitting and discordant hum throughout; and the
bellows being afflicted with innumerable leaks, were the cause of much
labour and sorrow to the player.

"I can't play on this thing," she said.  "Every other note sticks down,
and the bellows are all in holes, and--I won't."

Naylor explained to the Dutchman that Ethel was a great pianist but was
nothing at harmoniums, which excuse covered her somewhat petulant
retreat from the abominable instrument, and just then dinner was brought
in.  Then it became a question of finding seats, many of the chairs
being _hors de combat_.

"Here you are, Allen; come and sit here," called out Armitage.  In a
confiding moment, and the table being full, the unsuspecting youth
dropped into the seat indicated, and then--dropped on the floor, for the
rickety concern forthwith "resigned," even as the music-stool had done
before it.  A roar of laughter went up from the incorrigible joker at
the success of his impromptu trap, and Allen arose from the ruins of the
chair, like Phoenix from the ashes.

"I say, though, that's better than the cruise down the river with the
bee in your bonnet, isn't it, old chap?" said Armitage, exploding again.
Allen looked rather glum, and another seat, not much less rickety than
the other, was found for him.

When he was settled, the Boer stood up and with closed eyes began a
long, rambling oration, presumably to the Creator, which was meant for
grace, and having discoursed unctuously on everything, or nothing, for
the space of several minutes, he set the example of falling to.

"Going up to Jim Brathwaite's for the hunt to-morrow, Oom Isaac?" asked
Armitage of his host.  [Note 1.]

"Ja," replied old Van Rooyen.  "Can _he_ shoot?" designating Claverton--
the popular idea on the frontier being that an "imported" Briton must
necessarily be an ass in all things pertaining to field pursuits.

"He just can.  Didn't you hear how he licked the Pexters down at my
place?"

"Yes, I did hear that; I remember now;" and the Dutchman looked at
Claverton with increased respect.

"But that's the fellow to bring down a buck at five hundred yards," went
on Armitage, indicating Allen, who, regardless of what went on around
him, was making terrific play with his knife and fork, and who, although
seated next the speaker, remained in blissful unconsciousness of being
the subject of any chaff, by reason of his ignorance of the Dutch
language.

"Is he now?  I shouldn't have thought that," was the deliberating reply;
the matter-of-fact Boer not dreaming for a moment that the other was
gammoning him.

And the ball of conversation rolled on, and the unseasoned stew was
succeeded by a ponderous jar of quince preserve, then another lengthy
grace and the inevitable coffee.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Van Rooyen, with the freedom
of his countrymen, was discussing "present company."

"What a pretty girl she is!" he was saying, referring to Ethel.  "Is she
another of Mr Brathwaite's daughters?"

"No, a niece," replied Naylor, to whom the remark was addressed.  "Her
father is George Brathwaite, the M.L.A."

"`Ja,' I know him," replied the Dutchman.  "He isn't a good man (in the
sense of `a good politician').  He voted against our interests in
several things.  But she's a pretty girl, a very pretty girl.  And the
Englishman's a good-looking fellow, too.  Are they engaged?"

"Damned fool!" angrily muttered Claverton, who, while talking to Ethel,
had overheard the above conversation and wondered whether Ethel had too.

"What's the matter now?" said she, and the frown left his brow as the
question convinced him she had not heard.  But he turned and suggested
to Armitage that it was time to saddle up.

"Well, yes--I think it is," replied that worthy, who was busily debating
in his own mind whether it would be carrying a joke too far if he
inserted a burr or prickle of some sort beneath the saddle of Allen's
steady-going old mare; and forthwith a general move was made for the
horses, which were duly brought to the door.

"Now, Allen, old chap, keep those awful spurs of yours out of my horse's
flank, or there'll be the deuce to pay," called out Armitage, as the
absent-minded youth backed his steed violently into that of the
speaker--whereupon a kicking match became imminent.  Meanwhile Ethel was
waiting to be put on her horse, and glanced half involuntarily and
somewhat angrily in the direction of Claverton, who, whether by accident
or of set purpose, was still on the _stoep_ beginning to fill his pipe
from Van Rooyen's pouch, and apparently as ignorant of his actual
ungallantry as though the fair sex formed no ingredient of the party.
With concealed mortification she resigned herself to Will Jeffreys, who
advanced to perform that necessary office, and eagerly seized the
opportunity of riding by her side.

"Mr Armitage," she called out, speaking over her shoulder, "do tell me
that story about Spoek Krantz."

Armitage ranged his horse on her unoccupied side and began his
narrative, enlarging to an appalling extent as he went on.

"Don't take in all he says, Miss Brathwaite.  He's cooking up a yarn for
the occasion," said Jeffreys.

Armitage vehemently protested that nothing was further from his
intention, but to the jocular recrimination which followed, Ethel hardly
listened.  She thought that Claverton should be punished for his neglect
by being made to ride behind.  A punishment to which, by the way, the
delinquent seemed to submit with exemplary patience, for he puffed away
at his pipe, discoursing placidly to Allen, whom he was just in time to
prevent from inflicting himself on Laura, thereby rendering Hicks a
substantial service.  Nevertheless Ethel, before they had gone one-third
of the way, began to wish that Armitage was less garrulously disposed,
and would vacate the place to which she had summoned him, and once when
he dropped behind a little to light his pipe, she half turned her head
with a strange wistfulness, and her pulses beat quicker as she hoped
that the hoof-strokes which she heard overtaking her were not those of
_his_ steed.  But they were, and as that light-hearted mortal ranged up
beside her and launched out into a fresh stream of chaff and jocularity,
and the end of the ride drew near, it seemed to her that the sunshine
had gone out of the day, although there was not a cloud in the heavens
and the whole beautiful landscape was bathed in that wondrous golden
glow which precedes a South African sunset; and shall it be confessed,
she felt sore and angry, and snubbed poor Jeffreys, and irritably
checked the flow of Armitage's running fire of small wit, till at last
they drew rein at Jim Brathwaite's house and were received by its jovial
occupant in person.

"Hallo, Ethel; so you've come to help us shoot a buck.  But where's your
gun?" chaffed he.  "Keep quiet; get away you _schelms_," he went on,
shying a couple of big stones into the midst of some half-dozen huge
rough-haired dogs, which rushed open-mouthed towards the equestrians,
baying furiously.  The rude but serviceable pack, stopped in their
career, thought better of it and turned back, one of their number
howling piteously, and limping from the effects of another "rock" hurled
by Jim's forcible and practised hand.  "Well, Arthur," as the other two
came up, "we'll show you some fun to-morrow.  But come inside; I'll send
Klaas round to off-saddle."

Note 1.  "Uncle."  Among the Boers, "Oom" and "Tanta," "Uncle" and
"Aunt," are used as complimentary prefixes when addressing elderly
people, though these stand in no relation whatever to the speaker.



VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

VENATORIAL.

It is early morning, and a party of mounted men, consisting of our
friends of the previous day and their genial host, is riding along the
high ground away from Jim Brathwaite's homestead.  All carry guns,
mostly of the latest and most improved pattern, though one or two still
hold to the old-fashioned muzzle-loader, and a pack of great
rough-haired dogs, the same which greeted our travellers with such
hostile demonstration last evening, careers around and among the party,
now and then getting a paw or a tail under the horses' hoofs, and
yelping and snapping in consequence.  The horses step out briskly in the
fresh morning air--for the sun is not yet up--which briskness will, I
trow, have undergone considerable abatement when they return at the
close of the proceedings, laden with a buck apiece--perchance two--and
their riders to boot.  And the dogs break out afresh into a mighty
clamour, leaping and curvetting, and each striving to outbay his fellow
as he realises more and more fully the important part which is to be his
in the coming destruction; and as the full-mouthed chorus rings over
hill and valley, many a graceful spiral-horned antelope starts in his
dewy lair far down in the tangled brake, where yet a white curtain of
mist hangs, waiting till the rising beams shall disperse it into warmth
and sunshine, and listens, it may be, apprehensively to the distant
baying.

"Here.  Spry!  Tiger!  Shut up that infernal row, you brutes.  A fellow
can't hear himself speak!"  And loosening a strap from his saddle, Jim
makes a sudden cut with the buckle-end at one of the chief contributors
to the shindy, who, starting back hurriedly to avoid the infliction,
unwarily places his tail beneath the descending hoof of Naylor's horse,
and yells in frantic and heartrending fashion for the next five minutes.

"Noisy devils, they'll scare away all the bucks in the country-side
before we get near them," remarks that worthy, shading a match with his
hand and lighting his pipe

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